Trumps Presidency 2025

[oblong]

13 minutes ago, Hongbit said:

Unlimited PTO has a few main purposes:
 

1) PTO is no longer accrued, so it’s no longer a fixed line item on a corporate budget.

2) Eliminates the cost and effort of having a time management system in HR.

3) Marketed as a perk to employees but is really a corporate mindf as many people get scared to use more vacation time for fear of being thought of as a slacker and having it impact their chances of raises and promotions. 

Perfectly stated.

At our place I'm lucky that's casual. We have a vacation bucket that's based on seniority and another bucket, that everybody gets the same, for "Personal/Family Flex".   There's a few rules, like you can't book one of each on top of one another.  But in reality it's between you and your direct supervisor to manage and in all of my time not one ever really chased it.  "Just put it on my calendar if you are off" kind of thing.  

The last 3 years I made an effort to use all of my personal time.  It was intended for things like doctor appointments, or sick days, but during the pandemic and working from home it wasn't required to be used as often.  You'd just go to your appointment.  NObody noticed you were gone.  But each month I take one day off to just do whatever needs to be done around the house.  Silly things like clean out the garage or the yard, maybe tackle that junk drawer or area under the stairs where crap piles up.  THrowing away bags of loose screws and anchors.  Random allen wrenches.  Organize the tool box.  

 

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, romad1 said:

Yeah, if you are in the pool of people with essential skills that require the bosses to worry if you leave, people can get away with that sort of thing. 

This definitely plays. When I was working in refineries the mothership had a strict rule that you couldn't take more than 2 weeks away at one time. I told them I was going 12000 miles away and would gone for three weeks. There wasn't much they could do. I'm sure it went into the corporate memory banks as something to ding me for later but at that particular time they needed me more than I needed them. I tried to keep myself in jobs I enjoyed but I was never a live to work person. 

But it's a piece of advice I would give to any young worker - don't just work - take every opportunity to expand your skill set and make it more valuable because not only will it make the job more interesting,  it's something that can give you leverage later.

Edited June 20 by gehringer_2

[romad1]

9 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

This definitely plays. When I was working in refineries the mothership had a strict rule that you couldn't take more than 2 weeks away at one time. I told them I was going 12000 miles away and would gone for three weeks. There wasn't much they could do. I'm sure it went into the corporate memory banks as something to ding me for later but at that particular time they needed me more than I needed them.

When you are part of a company that has cult-like behavior, that can mean something.  Later as you get to understanding your unique value as an adult this sort of thing becomes laughable.  I've been in all points of this compass while i've been on MTF and its predecessor MTS. 

[CMRivdogs]

Most of my working career was spent in an industries that had few days off. Always needed someone to man the microphone. Getting a few hours off for Thanksgiving or Christmas was a bonus. 
The fear of taking a long vacation was that they would find someone to replace you upon your return.

[CMRivdogs]

Don't forget he critiqued Obama for his time on the golf course during the 2016 campaign

[romad1]

1 minute ago, CMRivdogs said:

Most of my working career was spent in an industries that had few days off. Always needed someone to man the microphone. Getting a few hours off for Thanksgiving or Christmas was a bonus. 
The fear of taking a long vacation was that they would find someone to replace you upon your return.

when i was a manager, i remember that I'd say "every vacation has risk" because invariably someone would take the fact that you were not around to hand hold them through some crisis with the company they would quit.  

[oblong]

When I come back from extended time off there's a feeling either of "Crap, I can never leave...." and "****, nothing fell over, it's as if I never left" and I don't know which one bothers me more?

Although a lot of my work just sticks around.  I'm not part of a team all doing the same thing.  It often means I just have to make it up when I get back.

 

[Tiger337]

49 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

Don't forget he critiqued Obama for his time on the golf course during the 2016 campaign

Stan told us that when Trump golfs that is actually part of his work.    

[RatkoVarda]

Tucker Carlson humiliated Ted Cruz, something that Ted usually pays people to do but Tucker did it for free.

The similarities between Iraq and Iran are striking.

Neocons say we have to drop bombs to protect Israel, just like we had to remove Saddam (in part) to protect Israel.

Iran is about to have WMDs that threaten Americans, just like Saddam had WMDs.

If we drop bombs on Iran, it will spur regime change, just like Bush 1 encouraged an Iraqi uprising against Saddam and when the Kurds and others followed through, Saddam gassed them to death and we did nothing.

Also, there is no guarantee that regime change will happen; or that the next person will not be more insane. Considering the current government of Iran was installed after a popular uprising, unlikely that having the US turn parts of Iran into a nuclear wasteland for all eternity will inspire Iranians to do what the US wants.

There will never be US boots on the ground in Iran as that alone would coalesce all Iranians against the US, and Trump has no stomach for it (thankfully). So any "war" would be us bombing lots of Iranians from 30,000 feet.  Any extended bombings would kill another 100,000+ civilians but no one cares about that.

I wish there would have been some way to have a diplomatic solution where Iran would agree to forego nuclear weapons in exchange for something else.

Edited June 20 by RatkoVarda

[Motown Bombers]

Perhaps in order to get a diplomatic solution we send in a former president like Obama to negotiate a nuclear deal. I'm sure he can get Iran to agree to a deal. 

[RatkoVarda]

from that well-known liberal rag the WSJ:

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Poised for More Power

Ousting or killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could lead to more radical, anti-Israeli Iran

“The balance of power within Iran in the aftermath of this will shift in the direction of the military, in the direction of the Guard,” said Ray Takeyh, an Iran expert and senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. “Those in charge will be the men with guns. And they will try to bring back some sort of clerical leadership because, after all, this is an Islamic Republic.” 

[Mr.TaterSalad]

Maybe we can get some of the most prominent, centrist Democrats to be war mongers on Iran just their centrist peers from the past were when they voted to invade Iraq under false pretenses. Then, after that, we can nominate 3 of our next 5 candidates for President who supported invading Iran. Who will step up and fill Kerry, Clinton, and Biden's shoes on Iran? The progressives in Congress at the time had a mostly united front against the invasion of Iraq and history proved them right.

Seriously though, the Democratic Party should be united in opposition to war with Iran. Every Democrat should be talking about Trump's diplomatic failures here, how he tore up a perfectly good diplomatic deal with Iran, and how he is leading us off into a costly war with Iran. Every Democrat should be calling him out for campaigning as a President who would end these wars, not start more of them. Hopefully, unlike when DubyaMD was President, centrist Democrats don't cave like cowards to Trump and support war with Iran.

Edited June 20 by Mr.TaterSalad

[ewsieg]

I worked dial-up Internet for quite awhile and a majority portion of that was well after it's prime years.  I did everything I could to automate myself out of that job or train others to take it over.  I assumed I was going to get laid off eventually anyway, just like every other person I worked with (400+ folks in Ann Arbor, eventually down to 5 of us in our Southfield location).  Because I was able to decrease my workload, I found myself helping other teams with their work but was still needed as there were only two of us that knew how to manage the network all the way through.  Both of us are still with the company in different roles.  He does a better job of taking time off now.  I don't have the concerns anymore in terms of being swamped with work when I come back (team picks up the slack when I'm gone, as I do when a co-worker takes time off).  Still ingrained to me that taking time off impacts other people and hate that feeling.  My boss regularly yells at me when I say i'm taking a day off but jump on for a meeting that i'd prefer not to miss.  

[chasfh]

2 hours ago, RatkoVarda said:

I wish there would have been some way to have a diplomatic solution where Iran would agree to forego nuclear weapons in exchange for something else.

[VegasTiger]

5 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

Most of my working career was spent in an industries that had few days off. Always needed someone to man the microphone. Getting a few hours off for Thanksgiving or Christmas was a bonus. 
The fear of taking a long vacation was that they would find someone to replace you upon your return.

Same

[1776]

From today’s WSJ

(The Weekend Interview)

As Israel’s mission to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity continues, a grave and obvious question confronts us: How did the West, the U.S. in particular, allow Tehran’s nuclear threat to grow unchecked for so long? 

David Albright, an American physicist and nuclear-weapons tracker, is among the world’s foremost experts on Iran’s nuclear program. He’s president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonprofit, nonpartisan institution that focuses on the spread of nuclear weapons to rogue nations and terrorists. On June 12, the day before the first Israeli attack, Iran could “make enough weapon-grade uranium for 11 nuclear weapons within a month,” Mr. Albright says. Pre-attack Iran was on track to have enough highly enriched uranium for 22 weapons in five months.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/iran-is-down-but-not-yet-out-nuclear-development-program-tehran-915d683d?mod=WTRN_pos2

Edited June 20 by 1776

[ewsieg]

3 hours ago, RatkoVarda said:

The similarities between Iraq and Iran are striking.

The similarities are striking.

One glaring difference is that while in hindsight we were aware of differing opinions on WMDs with Sadam due to many different variables, our Intel thought he had them.

Our Intel now says Iran is not even pursuing WMD's, let alone have them.  And honestly the only real pushback i've seen towards Trump are from a few conservatives and the 3 or 4 folks in the house on the Dem side that don't like siding with Israel on anything.  As a whole, seems like most are good with the fact that Trump is ignoring his own Intelligence because of Netanyahu's gut feeling.

[CMRivdogs]

There was a reason that wiser people than the current Trumpians created the National Park System. From U-S Grant to Teddy Roosevelt to Woodrow Wilson to FDR. These lands belong to the people, all the people, not just the privileged few. Any funds coming from the sale of these lands should be divided among ALL The PEOPLE and the private property taxed at the highest rates. 
 

 

[Motown Bombers]

 

[1776]

2 hours ago, ewsieg said:

The similarities are striking.

One glaring difference is that while in hindsight we were aware of differing opinions on WMDs with Sadam due to many different variables, our Intel thought he had them.

Did our intel think they had WMD or were they directed to back that narrative? To this day I find it hard to believe that the US intel actually believed that some dude riding a jackass through the streets of Baghdad randomly firing off a rifle with a cigar in his mouth was any kind of threat, whatsoever, to the security of the United States. It just didn’t add up. It never will. It was a prefabricated lie. 
Colin Powell, the man that urged Bush, Sr. to end the Desert Storm Operation push when he did, is the same guy that did W’s dirty work in front of the congressional bodies to sell Americans on the lie that Hussein and Iraq posed a threat to our national security. 

 

[romad1]

My social media has blown up with warnings about public lands being stolen .

 

 

[GalagaGuy]

Tulsi will be gone withing the next few days, maybe even before the weekend is over.

 

[Motown Bombers]

 

[Motown Bombers]

I love spicy Newsom. 

 

[Motown Bombers]