Florida State Seminoles

[Tree]

I don't think you're ready for the geopolitics of the Ukraine war. It's a long discussion and you clearly just decided to throw in with the US narrative (which is what the DNC requires of you) which is all bs. I can tell you that Ukraine stopped letting fighting age men leave the country (60 and under in fact). What do you think that means?

[innocentbystander]

I have not heard from or spoken to even one parent anywhere with a young adult son that said they would be willing to sacrifice the life of their son to save Ukraine or Israel. Not one.

[hedge]

Nobody has asked them to...

[innocentbystander]

Exactly. Thank God Trump is President.

And thus, we have no political will to ante up in any way to stop what is happening. We do not care. It is none of our interest. We know the man in the Oval Office feels that way. I don't know about too many others.

[Jungle Rat]

Retard

[hedge]

A Maryland town backed Trump's cost-cutting pledge. Now it's a target

Emmitsburg Mayor Frank Davis voted for Donald Trump in hopes he would cut federal spending. Now Davis hopes those cuts don't include the permanent cancellation of classes at the National Fire Academy, which is part of the town's identity and helps drive its economy. Davis is also a chief at Emmitsburg's firehouse, known as the Vigilant Hose Company.

EMMITSBURG, Md. — Frank Davis saw a lot of waste during his decades in the federal government. In November, he voted for Donald Trump to get rid of it. So far, Davis likes a lot of what he has seen.

"I'm probably gonna get shot for this, but he is doing what he said he was going to do," says Davis, who serves as mayor of this town of about 3,000 people in western Maryland, just south of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

In March, the Trump administration suddenly canceled in-person classes at the National Fire Academy here, which trains the United States' firefighters. Not only is the academy a big part of Emmitsburg's identity, but it also helps drive the local economy.

Davis says the administration is reviewing the academy's operations, and he is hopeful it will restore classes. If not, he says, he'll see the administration somewhat differently.

"It will change my outlook to say that they're not being fair," says Davis, who also serves as emergency medical services captain at the local firehouse, known as the Vigilant Hose Company. "They're just going in to cut and not caring what they cut."

Emmitsburg voted overwhelmingly for President Trump in November. NPR interviewed about two dozen people here. Almost all of them voted for Trump, and many said his plans to cut federal spending were a key attraction. Now, they say they are puzzled as to why the administration would cancel national training for firefighters. (LMAO!!)

Denis Onieal is also puzzled. He served for two decades as superintendent of the academy, which he says trained 8,000 to 10,000 firefighters on campus each year. The academy, often referred to as the national war college for firefighting, offers courses in everything from leadership and management for fire chiefs to how to conduct fire, arson and explosion investigations.

"The National Fire Academy takes men and women out of their comfort zone and ... exposes them to real serious tragedies and forces them to work through ... what kind of decisions they're going to make," says Onieal, who lives over the border in Pennsylvania.

If the courses aren't restored, Onieal says, Americans will pay.

"We're on a very long, slow path to self-destruction," he says. "Every day that this training is unavailable to the locals is one day closer to a disaster they can't handle or won't know how to handle."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency oversees the academy, which pays for firefighters to come to Emmitsburg. When NPR asked why classes were canceled, FEMA did not answer directly but suggested in a statement that it had to do with travel costs.

"The bottom line is we are no longer paying for non-employee travel," the statement reads. "We are only authorizing travel for mission critical programs, this isn't one. Some of these classes are still available online." (LMAO!!)

The fire academy website does show some upcoming in-person courses. They've been left up for now in case the administration changes its mind.

John Beck, who serves as fire chief of the Waynesboro Volunteer Fire Department nearby in Pennsylvania, had applied for a weekend leadership and development course at the academy in July. It would be his first one, but he doesn't expect it'll happen now. He also says online courses don't cut it.

Beck, who runs a landscaping company, works for free as fire chief. He voted for Trump and supports cutting waste and making government smaller. But Beck doesn't see how training first responders is wasteful.

"We're only 100-plus days in," Beck says of Trump's current term. "I wish things were going differently."

Beck doesn't regret his vote — yet.

"I'm not 100% there yet, but it may not take much more," he says.

Back in Emmitsburg, the dinner crowd is arriving at Ott House, a family-run pub and home away from home for firefighters who train at the academy. Over the decades, firefighters have left thousands of patches from their departments, which now blanket the walls of the pub. They include patches for a government fire bureau in Taiwan and departments in Bath, Maine, and Juneau, Alaska.

Firefighters make up more than 30% of the pub's business. Co-owner Susan Glass is worried about the long-term impact.

"I've already told a lot of our employees that it's a possibility they won't have a job for the summer, but we're hoping things open back up," Glass says.

In fact, many of the town's residents hold out hope that the administration will see the value of the academy and start classes again. Glass also voted for Trump but feels the administration is moving too fast.

"I agree with a lot of things that they're doing, but sometimes I disagree on how they're doing them," says Glass, who thinks the administration shouldn't try to do so much at once. "Maybe ... spread it out a little bit. It just seems like it's just one hammer after another."

Some members of Maryland's congressional delegation have pressed the administration for answers about the cancellation of the academy's classes but say they've heard nothing back.

"I have no idea why they're doing this," says Rep. April McClain Delaney, whose district includes Emmitsburg. "It is absolutely nonsensical."

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a fellow Democrat, says he's equally baffled.

"It's extremely shortsighted and dangerous to cut this program," he says.

[hedge]

They're all coming out of the woodwork now, ain't they?

[innocentbystander]

No

[Tree]

[hedge]

I wonder what Chomsky thinks of your hero Trump?

[hedge]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/us/p ... ticleShare

Twice a month, planes land on the gravel airstrip in Noatak, Alaska, about 70 miles north of the Arctic Circle, carrying the diesel that residents need to heat their homes in the bitter cold.

And once a month, they receive electricity bills four times higher than those for most of the rest of the country that include two separate charges: one for the cost of the energy itself, and another for the cost of the fuel used to fly it there.

“The fuel cost is the thing that kills,” Bessie Monroe, 56, who works as an assistant to the village’s tribal administrator, said as she pulled up her bill. Even though she supplements the heat from her generator with a wood-burning stove — and can still sometimes feel the chill of wind through one of her walls — Ms. Monroe has paid roughly $250 a month for electricity for her small one-bedroom house this winter.
So a few years ago, in an effort to build a local source of electricity and save residents money, the Inupiat village of 500 worked with its utility company to install a small farm of solar panels. And when Congress approved new tax credits for clean energy projects in 2022 through the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the village saw an opportunity to buy more.

But the fate of the project — and dozens more like it in Alaska and around the country — is now in doubt, leaving villagers unsure of their financial future.

Those doubts are at the root of an intraparty feud unfolding among Republicans in Washington, where G.O.P. members of Congress are casting about for ways to pay for President Trump’s domestic agenda. Some fiscal hard-liners have zeroed in on clean energy tax credits as a prime target for elimination.


____________

2024 presidential election, Noatak - Harris: 19.19%, Trump: 66.67%. Whoops...

[Tree]

Trump really did take up fulltime residence in your brain, Hedge. I can't help but feel partly responsible for this extreme case of TDS. Get help soon. It's a bad look for you.

[aTm]

I'm supposed to feel bad for not financing the fuel costs of people who live 70 miles above the arctic circle? Pay, move, or freeze, fuckers.

[hedge]

I agree. Enjoy the day you voted for, Magas!

[hedge]

Trump’s Alcatraz Announcement Comes The Morning After Clint Eastwood Prison Classic Was On Local TV

“I guess I was supposed to be a moviemaker,” said Donald Trump today when asked why he decided to reopen the infamous prison on Alcatraz Island.

Turns out there might be a more prosaic answer: Clint Eastwood’s 1979 classic Escape From Alcatraz was shown on a South Florida PBS station the night before. (Trump was at Mar-a-Lago for most of the weekend.)

Local outlet WLRN had the Don Siegel directed prison picture on at 9 p.m. ET Saturday and 11 a.m. ET the following morning. Shortly thereafter, the president posted an emphatic announcement not just once, but twice.

“Today, I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders,” wrote Trump.

https://deadline.com/2025/05/trumps-esc ... 236386328/

[Jungle Rat]

Looks like Donnie has his 1st war.

[innocentbystander]

Here is the problem with Noam Chomsky

Imagine you are driving down the California intercoastal highway looking out on a beautiful sandy beach spilling out into the Pacific Ocean. The beach will be perfectly white sand. But if Chomsky was standing next to you, he would say, no, that beach is black sand. You would look at him like he was insane, but then he would go down to the beach with a pair of tweezers, an empty beach bucket, and a magnifying glass. He would then kneel down and start looking only for the tiny grains of sand that were entirely black. He would then take his tweezers and pull each one of them and stick them in his bucket. It would take a long time, Chomsky has been filling this bucket of his for decades, half a century or more. But if you do what Noam did, you would be able to fill this bucket and say to everyone and anyone, see, the beach is black! And you would be right. This is how you lie by telling the truth. You count ONLY the hits, never the misses. Never ever. That is Noam Chomsky's dark art, hits only, delete all outliers from his sample (and any data point that disagrees with his politics must be an outlier.) That is his skill. He would be technically right about everything he says (see, the beach is BLACK sand!), but at the same time lying like the most pernicious son of a bitch that ever lived.

[eCat]

how can you take these countries seriously when they have a dance off at the border?

[eCat]

this should get heads exploding

[innocentbystander]

We’re done with that shit