23 minutes ago, DEagle7 said:

Fun anecdote. One of my brother's colleagues recently had all of his research funding frozen.  He studies the genetic mechanisms of animals adjusting to acute chemical stressors in their habitat. It was flagged because he used the term "acclimate" his papers titles and abstracts.  

But go on.  Go ahead and tell me about how this is all just part of the process and not just a bunch of dopes typing in "climate" "environment" "black" "trans" "immigrant" into a search functions and just blindly cutting whatever pops up. 

that's the best part.  His supporters think they are actually digging through and rooting out waste.  When in reality they are just hitting the edit->find button to search for their "trigger" words.  That's how we get "transgender" mice nonsense.  And then when they fire people that they then need to rehire.  Or unfreeze funding that they froze.  They just go with the excuse of "hey, we never said we're perfect.  Mistakes will be made along the way".   Yeah, mistakes like that happen and will happen routinely when instead of doing REAL WORK you're trying to impress your boss....

1 hour ago, Phillyterp85 said:

that's the best part.  His supporters think they are actually digging through and rooting out waste.  When in reality they are just hitting the edit->find button to search for their "trigger" words.  That's how we get "transgender" mice nonsense.  And then when they fire people that they then need to rehire.  Or unfreeze funding that they froze.  They just go with the excuse of "hey, we never said we're perfect.  Mistakes will be made along the way".   Yeah, mistakes like that happen and will happen routinely when instead of doing REAL WORK you're trying to impress your boss....

What a bunch of absolute nonsense

2 minutes ago, The Norseman said:

What a bunch of absolute nonsense

Yes I agree, the way they are doing things is absolutely nonsense.  Glad we are on the same page.

People have no idea how big the federal government is. 

Should they go program by program, dept by dept, line by line, and debate everything in Congress?  Is that how you want it to be done?

 

85 years and literally no changes later you'll still be crying about how they didn't do it right 

2 hours ago, DEagle7 said:

Fun anecdote. One of my brother's colleagues recently had all of his research funding frozen.  He studies the genetic mechanisms of animals adjusting to acute chemical stressors in their habitat. It was flagged because he used the term "acclimate" his papers titles and abstracts.  

But go on.  Go ahead and tell me about how this is all just part of the process and not just a bunch of dopes typing in "climate" "environment" "black" "trans" "immigrant" into a search functions and just blindly cutting whatever pops up. 

 why are we f'ing paying for this?

Cut

2 hours ago, DEagle7 said:

Fun anecdote. One of my brother's colleagues recently had all of his research funding frozen.  He studies the genetic mechanisms of animals adjusting to acute chemical stressors in their habitat. It was flagged because he used the term "acclimate" his papers titles and abstracts.  

Sounds a little too "sciency" for @Mike31mt

Tell your brother's colleagues to write a paper on how long a man can survive inside a giant fish.

13 minutes ago, Mike31mt said:

 

Should they go program by program, dept by dept, line by line, and debate everything in Congress?  

If that's what it takes

2 hours ago, DrPhilly said:

The onus is on Musk here and so far his boasting has been proven to be highly inaccurate.  Every large item he has gone and yelled about has proven to be incorrect, e.g. SS payment claims, $8B which turned out to be $8M.  I know he said he would be incorrect at times but you'd think he'd get a few of the large items right at some point.

He's continuing on so maybe he'll actually come up with something that will make a real significant impact.  So far, he's made a lot of noise and found peanuts from a relative perspective.  You have to wonder if he's even made a net positive contribution at this stage when you consider the negative effects due to his chosen methods.

On average, it takes more than 65 thousand tax paying Americans to make up a billion dollars in federal tax revenue.

The same amount of people that it takes to fill Lincoln Financial Stadium.

65 thousand American's, paying money that they desperately need, only to produce a tiny fraction of the Federal Government's spending. 

But to you, tens of billions in savings in 2 months are "peanuts".  You demand that they use a traditional audit process, while simultaneously complaining that they aren't finding more money faster.

Never has TDS been more on display than it has been these last few weeks.  

 

23 minutes ago, Mike31mt said:

 why are we f'ing paying for this?

Cut

A lot of basic science research seems relatively abstract to the lamen, but the potential medical benefits of understanding "the molecular mechanism of toxic stress mitigation" shouldn't be a tough one to explain to anyone with a middle school education and above. 

If the standard for our country's science research funding is "can it be adequately explained in 1 sentence to an inbred dumbF from West Virginia with zero scientific background" we're pretty screwed. 

17 minutes ago, Mike31mt said:

 why are we f'ing paying for this?

Cut

"Why are we paying for research on Gila monsters? Who cares about how peptides in their venom might serve as the basis for the development of novel treatments for diabetes. Cut."

Surely "genetic mechanisms of animals adjusting to acute chemical stressors in their habitat" is a central theme of Constitution 

17 minutes ago, Mike31mt said:

People have no idea how big the federal government is. 

Should they go program by program, dept by dept, line by line, and debate everything in Congress?  Is that how you want it to be done?

 

85 years and literally no changes later you'll still be crying about how they didn't do it right 

Congress appropriates the money, so they have a role to play in larger decisions. For instance, Congress created the DoE, and only Congress can formally terminate it. Now, the executive branch has broad discretion in how it spends the money allocated, and Congress has abrogated a ton of its responsibilities on a range of issues to the executive branch (e.g., tariffs). I think this trend to strengthen the executive branch has been a mistake, but it has been a bipartisan effort. 

I think what people want, more than anything, is basic competence and to simply operate within the existing rules and contracts. Move fast and break things is fine for Silicon Valley, but it's not going to work with the behemoth that is the Federal Government. Employees have contracts and unions, and there are rules on how they need to be terminated. Don't just fire a bunch of people and then scramble to rehire people who you actually need -- take a minute and get it right.

Simply put, you can't ignore rules, contracts and laws simply because you claim to have noble purpose. That has been the justification of every autocrat in history. The system of checks and balances exists precisely to stop this kind of thing. Do I wish we never entered into onerous labor contracts for federal workers? Of course. But we can't just ignore binding contracts because we find them inconvenient. 

25 minutes ago, Mike31mt said:

People have no idea how big the federal government is. 

Should they go program by program, dept by dept, line by line, and debate everything in Congress?  Is that how you want it to be done?

 

85 years and literally no changes later you'll still be crying about how they didn't do it right 

Nah, we should have an unelected foreigner do it so he can keep his billions in subsidies and get rid of everything else. Just as the founders intended. 

2 minutes ago, we_gotta_believe said:

"Why are we paying for research on Gila monsters? Who cares about how peptides in their venom might serve as the basis for the development of novel treatments for diabetes. Cut."

Go fund that research yourself commie

I don't know what about Trump turns people into raging liberal commies but here we are

Just now, Mike31mt said:

Surely "genetic mechanisms of animals adjusting to acute chemical stressors in their habitat" is a central theme of Constitution 

This might be the dumbest comment I read here today. You are in way over your head.

1 minute ago, we_gotta_believe said:

"Why are we paying for research on Gila monsters? Who cares about how peptides in their venom might serve as the basis for the development of novel treatments for diabetes. Cut."

you're s'posed to pray that diabetes away

Just now, Paul852 said:

This might be the dumbest comment I read here today. You are in way over your head.

You too, if you want to pay to study random chemicals and animals you can donate your money and have at it.  

1 minute ago, Arthur Jackson said:

you're s'posed to pray that diabetes away

Waah waahh religion hurts me!

1 minute ago, Paul852 said:

This might be the dumbest comment I read here today. You are in way over your head.

Beat me to it. In all seriousness it's kind of tragic. 

2 minutes ago, Mike31mt said:

You too, if you want to pay to study random chemicals and animals you can donate your money and have at it.  

Nah, I'm good with my tax dollars being spent on scientific advancement. You need to stay in your lane.

2 minutes ago, Mike31mt said:

You too, if you want to pay to study random chemicals and animals you can donate your money and have at it.  

I'll play along. 

So do you advocate eliminating all federal funding for science research in the US?

If not, who should decide on what gets funding and what doesn't?

I await your well thought out and nuanced response 

6 minutes ago, Mike31mt said:

Go fund that research yourself commie

I don't know what about Trump turns people into raging liberal commies but here we are

Funding research into one of the safest and most effective weight loss drugs and treatments for diabetes is teh communizm!

3 minutes ago, Mike31mt said:

Waah waahh religion hurts me!

The warm feeling is your fight/flight adrenaline. Either that or you peed yourself.

Either way go  take a shower.

21 minutes ago, The Norseman said:

But to you, tens of billions in savings in 2 months are "peanuts".  You demand that they use a traditional audit process, while simultaneously complaining that they aren't finding more money faster.

I'm happy with them going at a slower pace.  What I'm not happy about is them "pretending" to find things at a faster pace when it isn't true.

Yes, 35B in real savings is peanuts vs. the goals they have stated AND in relation to the mess they have made.

Let me try and translate it into stupid:

 

Pay money study why animal get big fear in wild. 
Learn what cause animal big fear.

Maybe find how stop animal big fear.
You me animal too.  
Army man same animal as you me.

Army man fight other army man get big fear.

Cost many money to help big fear army man.

Better help mean big fear people less money.

Less money for better help more money you me scratcher and cheeseburger.