The Frankish Reich

Well, at least the kid wasn't autistic. - RFK Jr.

Agreed. I will also note that we have - and will have to even a greater degree - the same problem with the federal civil service. To me that's the most troubling thing about the attacks on the federal employee. What young person in their right mind would consider federal service a good option now? And before people jump in and say "good," think about the career path. When I was with the federal government a lot of the people I worked with were veterans. There's a career path there, particularly in law enforcement agencies. Vets get a preference, as they should. Why sign up for the military when a lot of those benefits start disappearing?

The general idea that Russia (well, the USSR) tried to recruit Trump as an asset makes perfect sense. And the story - told by the Kazakh former KGB spook - that Ivana provided the entry point makes perfect sense. You don't have to believe that the recruiting attempts were successful in order to believe that this was typical, ordinary Soviet KGB activity at the time. But you also need to take the likelihood of that attempted - or successful - recruitment into account when looking at Trump's subsequent actions and his unusually close ties to Russian oligarchs, not to mention his obvious fawning admiration of the quintessential KGB operative, one V. Putin. "Recruitment" as an asset isn't necessarily limited to "doing the USSR's bidding as a secret agent." It includes all the obvious things like flattering an egotist who is particularly susceptible to the most ham-handed forms of flattery with the hope that tends to take your side when it matters. Which he has, of course, done. And it may also mean having Russians (who learned how to survive and get ahead by doing these things) cozying up to Trump and developing kompromat on him. All of these things are why Security Clearance Background Investigations ask things like: "do you have any close and continuing foreign friends or contacts?" "Have you ever been involved in business dealings with foreign nationals or governments?" It's not that these things are per se suspect; it's that these things provide opportunities for recruitment or for developing kompromat on Americans.

I can't even comprehend the defense - the ability to "tip the lender?" Zero interest loans that come with what, a required tip? Who would ever "tip" a lender? This is the kind of crap the CFPB was created for.

Verb/subject agreement, Yuri's ghost. Learn it.

Absolutely correct. Abstaining would have been justifiable - "we are currently involved in mediating a settlement" etc. Voting no is just taking sides with Putin.

You have to be selling online sh!t or you're simply not qualified! https://store.bongino.com/ At least he's not hawking that anti-mRNA shedding potion like his boss is. I am getting this one. Still for sale, Danny? Who's minding the store?

We stand with Belarus, North Korea, and Nicaragua! Our finest moment on the world stage.

Am I allowed to half agree? 😀 Please keep track of that for me.

OK, unlike you I don't track these things. So I hope you're sitting down ... I DISAGREE with Fergiefan/Redhawk. There. I said it. And it wasn't hard to say. It's not like we're Team Frankish here and I dare not disagree with those ostensibly on "my side." You should try that with our Tarheel friend, or the execrable white nationalist who rears his head from time to time. It's liberating.

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/doj-slip-ups-show-challenges-of-defending-trumps-freewheeling-approach-6ce6a25e This was my job for a while - defending Executive Branch policies (Democratic and Republican) before judges. You start out by talking to the Agency lawyers to get the government's position. I need to know what I'm defending and on what basis. Here, the Trump Administration hasn't even thought it out. They just send out a DOJ lawyer to twist in the wind. WASHINGTON—A judge posed what he thought was a straightforward question: As the government laid off federal employees en masse, was it required to give advance notice to newly hired workers who were still in their probationary periods? “Your honor, I don’t have the answer to that precise question off the top of my head,” said Justice Department lawyer Abhishek Kambli, representing the Trump administration in a hearing last week. “OK, but that strikes me as a pretty important question,” said U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, in Washington, D.C. It was the kind of uncomfortable exchange that has been increasingly familiar over the past month as government lawyers have scrambled to defend against scores of lawsuits spurred by President Trump’s blitz of executive actions. During fast-moving proceedings, DOJ lawyers at times have struggled on questions of law and fact about what Trump and his lieutenants are actually doing, drawing frustration and rebukes from judges across the country. In some cases, lawyers later submitted corrections to what they have told the courts.

They apparently agreed with me when I said that targeting federal agents was repugnant. But keep flogging that dead horse!

A sane result from a still-sane country.

I have not agreed with everything Francis has done as Pope. Sometimes it is too "conservative" for me; sometimes too "liberal." But I have no reason to think anything other than that he is a fine man who understands the gravity of his position and tries to do his best to navigate a troubled world and an unwieldy Church bureaucracy. Conclave is getting a lot of Oscar buzz. It is a fine film (until a rather silly/preposterous ending) that is well worth watching. So too The Two Popes, an unusually serious examination of Benedict and Francis and why they had very differing views of the direction of the Church in the 21st century despite both being, at their cores, decent and committed men. I don't understand this comment. I said of course I disagree with anyone who thinks attacking federal agents is acceptable. Some people agreed. Good. Does that satisfy your weird obsession?

Jesus begged to differ.

Jackass response.

⬆️ Russian asset. Just like our President (Codename: Krasnov)

What did I pay for gas this month? Nothing. Because I took Biden up on his incentives to buy an EV. $7500 federal + $5600 state. Traded in a 2013 BMW that was gathering dust. Total lease payment under $150/month on a car with a mid-50k sticker. Highly recommended strategy. Do it now before Trump kills it.

Wow, you were proven wrong by the very next post.

Total bs. If there's one thing any lazy-ass worker - federal government, state government, private company, whatever - does, it's check email, if only to make sure your boss isn't looking for you and trying to make a record of your absence.

Go back to Ireland.

Musk: Send me 5 bullet points about what you accomplished last week by Monday or I'll say you resigned. Kash Patel: Wait, don't do it. DOJ: Umm, yeah, not so fast. You know what they say about having QBs split duties? When you have two starting QBs, you don't have a starting QB. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/23/elon-musk-tells-us-federal-workers-to-explain-what-they-achieved-last-week-or-be-fired

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/47630 As Trump himself would say: "I don't know, but people are saying he was recruited as a Russian asset in the 1980s." In the book, which relies heavily on Shvets’ recollections, Unger describes how Trump first came to the Russians’ attention in 1977 when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model. In 1979, once she married Donald Trump, already a notable American real estate mogul, the Czech Secret Service spied on Ivana at home and abroad, and reportedly questioned her father about the couple after his trips the United States. Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia’s intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB. Three years later, Trump opened his first big property development, the Grand Hyatt New York hotel near Grand Central station. Trump bought 200 television sets for the hotel from Semyon Kislin, a Soviet émigré who co-owned Joy-Lud electronics on Fifth Avenue, nearby. Shvets told the Guardian that Joy-Lud was controlled by the KGB and Kislin worked as a so-called “spotter agent” who identified Trump, a young businessman on the rise, as a potential asset. Kislin denied that he had a relationship with the KGB. Then, in 1987, Trump and Ivana visited Moscow and St. Petersburg for the first time. Shvets said Trump was fed KGB talking points and flattered by KGB operatives who floated the idea that he should go into politics. A 2017 Politico article by Luke Harding sustains that “according to files in Prague, declassified in 2016, Czech spies kept a close eye on the couple in Manhattan.” Harding adds that the agents who undertook this task were code-named Al Jarza and Lubos. “They opened letters sent home by Ivana to her father, Milos, an engineer. Milos was never an agent or asset. But he had a functional relationship with the Czech secret police, who would ask him how his daughter was doing abroad and in return permit her visits home. There was periodic surveillance of the Trump family in the United States. And when Ivana and Donald Trump, Jr., visited Milos in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, further spying, or ‘cover.’” Unger, however, has been quick to point out that the Trump recruitment process was almost fortuitous. “He was an asset,” Shvets said of Trump. “It was not this grand, ingenious plan that we’re going to develop this guy and 40 years later he’ll be president. At the time it started… the Russians were trying to recruit like crazy and going after dozens and dozens of people.” Shvets noted that Trump was the perfect target: “His vanity, narcissism made him a natural target to recruit. He was cultivated over a 40-year period, right up through his election,” he said, referring to the 2016 election.