Nightwingdragon

Wrong. Ukranian parents have to worry about literal bombs falling on them every single day. I cannot suggest what would have to be done to JD Vance and his family for him to feel what Ukranian parents feel every day without getting a visit from the Secret Service myself.

Wouldn't this be secession, and therefore already prohibited by our Constitution (for what that matters anymore)? If this is allowed, what's stopping California from declaring itself a "freedom state" free of government regulation?

Reread everything I just said, REALIZE WHO'S FUCKING IN CHARGE NOW, then read my comments again.

There is nothing -- NOTHING -- stopping Trump from just firing everybody who is heading the CDC right now and replacing them with his own loyalists who will publish exactly what Trump tells them to publish. It's what he's been doing to literally every other federal agency. Or have you not noticed the amount of information that has already disappeared from government websites on Trump's orders while Congress cheers him on?

This is the Trump administration now. Prior rules and norms no longer apply.

Have you been paying attention lately? Trump has absolutely zero issues making up complete, 100% Grade-A bullshit on the fly and getting the rubes to believe it. And there are enough of those rubes to apparently force Republican congresspeople to fall in line under threats of violence. Take a look at the long list of politicians, up to and including his own Vice President, that have done a complete about-face with regards to Trump. He has shown that he absolutely can get people to listen whether it's because they're true believers, or if it's out of threats of violence or leverage of his political power. Either way, they're listening.

The CDC doesn’t control anything. They just publish data.

And they can be told by the Trump administration to publish what the Trump administration tells them to. Take a look at all of the other agencies who have had data changed or removed from government websites on Trump's orders. The CDC would be very, very far from the first.

They can’t ban vaccines, nor can Congress, and there is no legislation that can prevent people from getting them,

Um.....who says they can't? They absolutely could pass an anti-vax bill tomorrow and have it signed by Trump and suddenly vaccines would be banned nationwide.

so whatever the darkest possible outcome is won’t do anything.

No, the darkest possible outcome is the banning of vaccines and the widespread re-emergence of diseases ranging from measles to polio. And as long as this man is in office doing irreparable damage to the scientific progress we've made over the past century or so, there is a very real chance of this happening.

This applies to normal, rational, intelligent human beings.

We're talking about the Trump administration and their followers. The whole thing is for an audience of one, and their base just wants to be told what they want to hear. The rest of the studies and previous data will be written off as woke DEI studies funded by George Soros.

It’s like trying to fake a slip and fall in a casino when you have hundreds of cameras watching you from all angles.

This is the same man that once used a Sharpie to alter a weather map live on TV, remember? Not only does he not care how stupid he looks, he will double down on it. And remember that he was re-elected as President and now the NOAA is getting defunded. To go back to your analogy, he would just respond by buying the casino, removing the security cameras, and firing any staff members that say he didn't slip and fall.

I would suggest remembering who's in charge of HHS now.

By the time this "study" is done, they'll blame the COVID vaccine for every case of autism in the US since 1976.

Even if they don't, which is highly unlikely, they still want to be able to say "Obviously vaccines are dangerous. Even the US government is looking into the links between vaccines and autism." to give the anti-vax movement some "credibility" and a kernel of "truth".

Well take a look at our leadership.

We currently have Hakeem Jeffries basically cowering in the corner like a little bitch and Chuck Schumer saying Jeffries should ask New York republicans to cooperate out of the kindness of their hearts because there's nothing he can do in the Senate.

And all we have is one guy trying to bring attention to the problem but everybody complaining that he's too old, and a minority woman that is deeply unpopular outside of her home district and nobody wants to listen to because she's a minority woman, while the rest of the party is trying to appease the Republicans. I feel like we've been here before.......

And when people start asking questions, just start shouting out random numbers with absolutely no context.

"Your numbers are totally wrong. The numbers I got from my people are uh....62. And 79. And uhhhh I think in one place 103. Nobody's ever seen numbers like these."

What, you don't think Chuck Schumer's plan of "Let's just beg and plead with a few New York republican house members to play nice with us." strategy is going to work?

Well, from what little I've seen so far and my understanding, Hakeem Jeffries seems to be taking the "cower in the corner and take it like a little bitch" approach to government.

Think of how many workers have been fired since the start of Trump's term.

Think of how many of those workers still have access to the systems they used to work on because DOGE has no idea what they're doing and these agencies simply haven't had time to revoke the access of these people.

Now think of what happens if .1% of those people either sell out to or are compromised by Russian and Chinese spies. Just one pissed off systems administrator. That's all it would take. One systems administrator either intentionally selling out or themselves being compromised and suddenly the Chinese government has admin access to our critical systems.

Here's a question.

Trump believes that tariffs are paid for by the selling country's government, right? He keeps saying that foreign governments are either writing these checks to pay the tariffs, or are going to.

Why hasn't anybody asked Trump if the US government has written checks to Canada, China, Mexico, etc. to pay for the retaliatory tariffs? And if/when he says "No", what the hell makes him think the other countries do?