Every month we devote posts to just general political class insanity that is running rampant through the country. The members of the American political class continue to show that they are incapable of operating any level of government in this country.
Even their best efforts are almost always inefficient and ineffective at resolving any problem facing Americans. They spend a great amount of time not trying to improve the lives of their citizens but continually ensuring their reelection and enriching themselves, their families, and their friends in the process, all at taxpayer expense.
1)We have not made it a secret that we find the corruption and greed of most Washington politicians to be disgusting. These people have access to inside information relative to market segments and companies, given their legislating responsibilities. And they have not been afraid to use that information to enrich themselves, their families, and their political cronies. If we had done what they do on a regular basis, see Martha Stewart, we would be in jail for insider trading. Yet for a very long time, they have gotten away with it.
During the Obama administration, there actually was a piece of legislation passed into law that was supposed to stop this practice of insider trading by Washington politicians and their senior staff. It was called the STOCK Act and prohibited the ownership of stock shares in individual companies by these folks. It was a much needed piece of legislation which was supposed to eliminate this insider tracking corruption.
However, very slyly and quietly, after the legislation was enacted, subsequent legislation was enacted that made violation of the law pretty meaningless in that it greatly reduced the penalties for violating the STOCK Act. As a result, trading stocks by Washington insiders with insider information could result in making thousands and thousands of dollars of stock trading profits while the penalty for being caught could result in penalties totalling hundreds of dollars, if that much.
Thus, a good idea to prevent insider trading was defanged and made virtually useless. And Washington politicians continued to get richer and richer with insider trading information and never had to forfeit their gains, just had to pay a small fine IF they got caught.
To their credit though, Washington politicians are going to try again to get this self enrichment path under control:
A bipartisan effort in the Senate is trying again to put this habit to rest with new legislation that would again ban Washington insiders from owning individual shares of company stock while in office.
These people would also be prohibited from owning individual stocks even if those shares were in a blind trust.
A sponsor of the bill, Senator Josh Hawley summed it up quite nicely: "Members of Congress and their spouses shouldn't be using their position to get rich on the stock market."
He cited the example of Nancy Pelosi’s husband who bought in semiconductor companies shortly before Congress passed legislation that provided a $52 million subsidy to those companies.
Senator Richard Burr sold his medical care stock holdings after receiving classified information relative to the COVID pandemic.
Nice try, hopefully it will finally fix this atrocious hypocrisy. It is unknown, though, at this point if spouses, kids, and other relatives can hold individual stocks and can still profit from Washington politicians’ insider information. However, if I had to bet I would bet that there will be a loophole or two that will allow them to continue their greedy ways.
2)Over the years we have given the Defense Department TRILLIONS of dollars. Given that outrageous amount of funding, one would hope that this would be a first class operation, it certainly has had enough funding to get the best of everything.
However, as with just about every other government operation, hoping for quality is usually a useless endeavor:
Apparently, over a period of years, millions of emails intended for the U.S. military have instead been routed to the West African country of Mali.
This happened because of a typing error that changed the email domain name from the military’s “mil” domain to Mali’s “ml” domain.
This is bad enough, embarrassingly enough that the military has lost control of its email traffic but apparently Mali is closely aligned with Russia, which means there is a very good chance that these millions of military emails ended up with Russian intelligence agencies.
And this was not a short time screw up, for more than 10 years these military emails ended up with a Russian ally, i.e. it took a whopping 10 years to find this idiocy.
Those 10 years of emails included sensitive military personnel information including passwords, medical records, travel itineraries, maps of U.S. military installations, and other information.
And even worse, as if it could get worse, is that a Dutch internet operator, Johannes Zuubier, identified the problem 10 years ago and yet the Pentagon did nothing to remedy the situation.
According to Steven Stransky, a lawyer who once served as a senior counsel to the Department of homeland Security, "Those sorts of communications would mean that a foreign actor can start building dossiers on our own military personnel, for espionage purposes, or could try to get them to disclose information in exchange for financial benefit. It's certainly information that a foreign government can use."
Trillions of dollars and the Pentagon cannot even control its email system, so pathetic and such a waste of taxpayer money.
3)Biden has been a font of lies, speaking gaffes, and speeches and comments that make no sense within the context of the English language. It has been our theory that Biden is in a state of cognitive decline or has already entered a dementia stage, given his verbal gibberish.
But at least he has an excuse if, indeed, dementia is present. Not sure that Vice President Kamala Harris can use the same excuse. She has recently been out in public making statements and speeches and it has not been coherent or pretty:
She was recently speaking at Coppin State University and discussing climate change and pollution.
Specifically, "When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water."
So, somehow population reduction is related to clean energy, that is a first connection of those two topics.
It is unclear how the use of clean energy reduces the population.
And even without clean energy, our kids and ourselves have always had clean water and clean air so what is the point of her assertion?
But her verbal gibberish did not end with the tying of population control to clean energy.
In another meeting she had this infantile definition of artificial intelligence (AI): "I think the first part of this issue that should be articulated is AI is kind of a fancy thing. First of all, it’s two letters. It means artificial intelligence, but ultimately what it is, is it’s about machine learning."
AI is a fancy thing, how childish is that description of AI?
“AI is a fancy thing?” Seriously, this is her depth of understanding the technology, it is a fancy thing?
Her own words can be seen at the following links: https://www.blabber.buzz/conservative-news/1050729-kamala-harris-latest-word-salad-sparks-outrage-with-call-for-population-reduction-adn-incoherent-definition-of-ai?utm_source=c-alrt&utm_medium=c-alrt-email-Gmail&utm_term=c-multi-alert&utm_content=6q6j3As-QVvoj90bBfmdSmfNfTvpG7V_BSSsdWY0F2Ko.A
4)But her word salad, mindless, childish gibberish does not end with population control and artificial intelligence, consider her definition of culture: “Culture is — it is a reflection of our moment in our time, right? And in present culture is the way we express how we’re feeling about the moment. And we should always find times to express how we feel about the moment that is a reflection of joy, because as you know, it comes in the morning. We have to find ways to also express the way we feel about the moment in terms of just having language and a connection to how people are experiencing life. And I think about it in that way too. So I think it’s very important — as you have heard from so many incredible leaders for us at every moment in time and certainly this one — to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past but the future.”
I dare anyone to tell me what she is talking about. Joy only “comes in the morning?” I do not think so. Total nonsense. And this is the person who will take over if and when Biden’s dementia overtakes his ability to even show any semblance of being in control and is coherent. Lord help us.
Another day of political class insanity: can Congress really reform itself, more incompetence from a wealthy Defense Department, and Kamala Harris has the depth of a puddle on a Las Vegas sidewalk in August.
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