No. of Recommendations: 4
By the way. This is the type of person the left would have keep running the government. Meet Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks in an interview with Jon Stewart on CSPAN:
STEWART: There is a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse within a system…
HICKS: Audits and waste, fraud, and abuse are not the same thing, so let's decompose these pieces for a moment.
STEWART: Then please educate me on what the difference is.
HICKS: Sure, so an audit is exactly what you just described, which is, do I know what was delivered to which place?
STEWART: Right.
HICKS: The ability to pass an audit or the fact that the DOD has not passed an audit is not suggestive of waste, fraud, and abuse. That is completely false right there.
STEWART: So what is it suggestive of?
HICKS: It's suggestive that we don't have an accurate inventory that we can pull up of what we have where. That is not the same as saying we can't do that because waste, fraud, and abuse has occurred.
STEWART: So, in my world, that's waste.
HICKS: How is that waste?
STEWART: If I give you a billion dollars and you can't tell me what happened to it, that to me is wasteful. That means you are not responsible. But if you can't tell me where it went, then what am I supposed to think? And when there has been reporting, I mean, this is not, look, I'm not saying this is on you and that you caused this, but I think it's a tough argument to make that an $850 billion budget to an organization that can't pass an audit and tell you where that money went, I think most people would consider that somewhere in the realm of waste, fraud, or abuse because they would wonder why that money isn't well accounted for. And especially when they see food insecurity on military bases, and they see-
HICKS: You wanna talk about that? Cause that's a good...we should be talking...I mean, I'm trying to understand where you're trying to go other than the dollars, which really bother you.
STEWART: I think it doesn't really bother me. I think it's all connected.
HICKS: Okay, tell me that story. Tell me how you're thinking about that.
STEWART: Well, when I see a state department get a certain amount of money, and a military budget be 10 times that, and I see a struggle within government to get people like more basic services, and then that, uh, department that got that... I mean, we got out of 20 years of war, and the Pentagon got a 50 billion dollar raise that's shocking to me. Now, I may not understand exactly the ins and outs and...and the incredible, uh, magic of an audit, but I'm a human being who lives on the earth and can't figure out how 850 billion dollars to a department means that the rank and file still have to be on food stamps. Like, to me, that's fucking corruption. I'm sorry. And if, like, if that blows your mind, and if you think like, that's like a crazy agenda for me to have, I really think that that's institutional thinking and that it's not looking at the day-to-day reality of the people that you call the greatest fighting force in the world. So I just, again, I get back to this idea of, like, I'm not looking to pick a fight with you, that the reaction to these questions are, you don't know what an audit is, bucko. That's just weird to me.
HICKS: Okay.
See, we can't tell you where $850 billion in taxpayer dollars went, and sure, we've failed 7 audits in a row, but that doesn't mean we're wasting money or anything.
This is the level of quality that for some reason is acceptable to 1 of our political parties.
To Normies, this isn't acceptable.
No. of Recommendations: 1
This is the level of quality that for some reason is acceptable to 1 of our political parties.
To Normies, this isn't acceptable.
So Stewart is not a "normie", he's a lefty in your book. It isn't acceptable to me, I consider myself center left, and I'm not a "nomie" in your book. So this is a left wing conversation happening on a left wing show, you agree with left wing host John Stewart and somehow you come to the conclusion that the conversation only appeals to the right wing "normies" in your book? Can you find a comparable conversation on a hit right wing talk show?
No. of Recommendations: 4
To Normies, this isn't acceptable.Just to be clear the term "normies" refers to members of the Trump Cult, correct?
So when we see that term we are talking about folks who are low/uneducated, low-income/poor, low information voters who tend to live shorter lives?
OK cool, got it...glad I'm not a "normie"...
Blue States have higher Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita.
Blue States are less dependent on federal government assistance. States with higher per capita GDP (often blue states) tend to be less reliant on federal funding.
I.E. Blue States contribute more in federal taxes than they receive back in federal spending, effectively subsidizing red states (ie "normies"). (Liberals financially supporting MAGAs.)
Blue States have lower rates of poverty compared to red state "normies".
Blue States invest more in infrastructure, leading to better roads and public transportation systems.
And...
Folks in Blue States live longer...
"A growing mortality gap between Republican and Democratic areas may largely stem from policy choices."
"People in Republican Counties Have Higher Death Rates Than Those in Democratic Counties."
"It joins an already existing, pretty robust literature showing that politics do have life-and-death consequences."
"The U.S. mortality rate has decreased since 2001. But the improvement for those living in "normie" Republican counties was half that of those in Democratic counties 11 percent lower versus 22 percent lower.
And...
Murder rates are consistently higher in "normie" Red States compared to Blue States.
In 2021 and 2022, murder rates in Red States were 33% higher than in Blue States.
Contributing factors: Higher gun ownership rates in red states, Higher poverty rates in red states, Lower educational attainment in the "normie" Red States.
And...
Folks in Blue States are better educated...
"Blue states outpace red states by 5.3 percentage points in 4-year college degree attainment."
"All of the top 15 most college-educated states are blue, while only 3 of the bottom 15 are blue."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-...https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2023/0...https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/07...https://www.chadaldeman.com/p/red-state-education-...
