An excellent point:
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Marissa's musings about liberty, individual rights, justice, grief, loss, and other random things
An excellent point:
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Sen. Adam Schiff recently stated:
“Elon Musk is trying to access your personal bank and tax data. The world’s richest man should not and cannot be able to snoop around your personal finances. Period. End of story.”
This response by a user called Chaotic Good is spot on:
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Personally, I find it rich that Schiff would complain about Musk being able to “snoop around” people’s personal data when he and his party demanded that people be required to provide personal medical information in order to be allowed to work, attend school, eat at restaurants, work out at gyms, or attend public events. This demonstrates a great deal of hypocrisy, lack of logic, and moral inconsistency, in my opinion. Why does Schiff care about people’s privacy now, when Musk is allegedly violating it, after he and his party spent years actively violating people’s medical privacy and personally insulting anyone who objected to these policies as selfish, irresponsible, ignorant, ridiculous, and stupid?
Also, it’s a bit puzzling that Schiff feels the needs to point out that Musk is the world’s richest man. Musk’s economic status doesn’t have anything to do with which data, if any, he should be able to access. Therefore, there really isn’t any reason to mention this. It’s almost as if Shiff thinks that being the world’s richest man is inherently something negative, and somehow makes Musk inherently bad and untrustworthy.
What Schiff should be saying is: Governments, companies, and other institutions should not and cannot be able to require people to undergo medical procedures. Period. End of story.
That is what is important. That is what is worth being outraged and upset about. Not Musk’s access to data.
“No one elected Elon Musk,” Democrats have been pompously stating (see an example here).
This statement is angering for several reasons:
First of all, it is hypocritical. As various commentators on the post linked above have pointed out, no one elected Kamala Harris, or Bill Gates for the matter, yet Democrats aren’t complaining about them.
Second, a good argument can be made that people did, indeed, elect Elon Musk. As DC Draino explains in the post linked above, Trump campaigned with Musk and made it clear that Musk would play a role in his government. Trump also campaigned on the idea of cutting wasteful government spending, which is exactly what Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency are doing. A majority of people voted for Trump, knowing that Musk would be part of his administration; therefore people did, arguably, elect Musk.
Third, even if no one elected Elon Musk, so what? Because taxation is morally bad, and government spending requires taxation, government spending is morally bad. Spending should be kept to an absolute minimum in order to keep taxation to an absolute minimum. Therefore, the steps that Musk and DOGE have taken to cut government spending are morally good. And this is true regardless of whether anyone elected Musk, and regardless of whether anyone voted in favor of the things that Musk and DOGE are doing. Moral right and wrong are completely independent of what anyone voted for.
As Robert Kroese points out in a tweet that is quoted in the post linked above, “I didn’t vote for the FBI, ATF, CIA, PBS, NPR, FDA, WHO, UN, IRS, Federal Reserve, EPA or CDC.”
And I didn’t vote for the historical figures that I love to be brutally murdered, or for all people who work at a company with over 100 employees to be forced to undergo a medical procedure.
Yet Democrats did these things anyway.
For them to pompously condemn and shame Musk and Trump for actually doing something good with the government, is reprehensible.
This past Monday, I wore an American flag necklace to work. With it, I chose the red version of my work t-shirt, with a blue shirt underneath. As you might expect, employees aren’t allowed to wear any overtly political clothing or accessories while on the job, so the patriotic look was my way of celebrating Donald Trump’s inauguration as our 47th president, without making it explicit that that was what I was doing. If anyone had asked, which they didn’t, I figured that I could somewhat plausibly claim that my patriotic look was in honor of Martin Luther King Day.
When I first had the idea of wearing the flag necklace, I couldn’t find it. This is because, at some point after the 2020 election, I gathered all of my possessions with American flags on them and decided to throw them away. While growing up, I had always considered myself a patriotic person. I loved learning about, and memorizing fun facts about, American history, presidents, the 50 states, and all the different countries of the world. I loved flags and had accumulated numerous pins, jewelry, clothing, mugs, decor, and stationery adorned with them, not to mention actual flags themselves of various sizes. But given that the United States had collectively decided to destroy everything that made my life worth living, and then confirmed this decision by making Biden president, I hated America. Obviously, from that point on, every future president would be either a Democrat, or a Republican so moderate and devoid of principles that he/she might as well be a Democrat. My country had betrayed me, betrayed the ideals upon which it was founded, and betrayed everything that it was supposed to stand for. The odds that Donald Trump would ever be able to win the Republican nomination for president in such a country, let alone become president again, were precisely zero. My patriotic possessions had become just another painful reminder of this sickening reality, and so I decided to get rid of them.
But something made me hesitate. So instead of putting them into the trash can, I hid away my flag items in my spare room.
By the time the impossible occurred, I had forgotten where I had put them. But after spending part of my Sunday night searching, I located my flag necklace. Not only did I proudly wear it to work, but when looking at the pins, mugs, flags, et cetera that were stashed away with it I realized…. that there was nothing wrong with them. No reason to put them in the trash, and no reason to keep them hidden away out of sight. I looked at my patriotic items with new eyes, just as I now look at my country with a sense of pride that I thought had been permanently lost. America is the country that has elected Donald Trump president!
I was able to watch some of the inauguration coverage before work, and coverage of the inaugural balls when I returned home. The experience of watching and following a major news event that is actually positive for once, has been a joy.
Here are a few of my favorite moments from the inauguration:
Here are a few of my favorite quotes from Trump’s inaugural address:
After his swearing-in, Trump signed a slew of executive orders, both at Capitol One Arena and in the Oval Office. These included:
The one negative aspect of watching Trump’s inauguration was seeing the statues in the Capitol building, which of course reminded me of the statues that are supposed to be there but aren’t, due to the actions of intolerant bullies. And this reminded me of the larger fact that Trump’s victory cannot fully undo the atrocities that were done regarding statues over the past four years. Things like this will always be worth mentioning, because what happened to the statues is not okay and should never be forgotten. But overall, Inauguration Day was a wonderful day both for our country and for me personally.
Here are some of the best social media posts about Trump’s inauguration:
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So cool to see:
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First for the bad news: due to sexism and sexist double standards, Matt Gaetz did not have the necessary votes needed for confirmation and therefore withdrew his nomination for Attorney General.
Trump has nominated Pam Bondi for Attorney General instead, who also seems like a good pick.
Now for the good news: Ron Paul has officially been named an advisor to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) 🙂
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And another thing in the news that has made me smile: Trump’s visit to SpaceX with Elon Musk!
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Another thing in the news that has brought a smile to my face is President Trump’s visit, along with some members of his new administration, to Madison Square Garden for a UFC match. No further commentary from me is needed, because the wonderful pictures speak for themselves:
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