Miss V 🇨🇦

HUGE @thehipdotcom & @pearljam @theglorioussons and @NHLJets fan | music lover | There’s no higher power than helping other people - @GordDownie

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a maintenance technician at the National Park Service. I painted the Reflecting Pool.

There are about 4,000 fewer of us than last year. I have not been cut yet, so I do the work the cut people used to do, plus mine.

The spec said American Flag Blue. A dark blue, for a pool that sits in full sun all day. I asked why dark. The work order did not have a field for that question.

The estimate was $1.8 million. The contract is at $14.7 million now. No bid. The form said "unusual and compelling urgency." The urgency was the 250th anniversary of independence, which has been on the calendar since 1776.

The contractor had not held a federal contract before. This was the first. The qualification on file was a private golf club. The margin was 20 percent. The standard is 6 to 12. The Service accepted it in writing and noted the reason as a difficult job and a tight schedule. Both of those are accurate.

On May 8 a vehicle crossed the pool. The pool was empty. The crossing was not in the spec. After it there was a gash in the surface, 250 feet long. The supplemental work order following the crossing was $6.2 million.

The filtration was removed because a prior administration installed it. The phosphates entered the water under a prior administration. The sun predates this administration as well.

We sealed it. We filled it from the Potomac. The Potomac carries phosphates. Phosphates feed algae. The dark paint holds the heat. Heat and phosphate and sun is the recipe for growing algae on purpose.

We did not do it on purpose. We followed the spec.

The pool turned green in one day.

Interior said the green was residual. A normal startup process. I wrote "normal startup process" in the log, because that is what the log says now.

On June 18 the Department posted that the water was crystal clear, and compared the dead algae we vacuumed to the remnants of the Iranian Navy at the bottom of the Persian Gulf. The water was green on June 18. I logged the post. I did not add to it.

I poured the hydrogen peroxide myself. 12 percent. The label says it burns skin and eyes. Interior says it has no harmful side effects and is safe for marine animals. On Sunday a duckling was found in the pool. There are no marine animals in the pool. It is freshwater. It has ducks. I wrote in the log that the duckling was not a marine animal. That part is accurate.

No necropsy has been done on the duckling, or on the two birds found near it. The Department has not released a cause. I do not have the staff to commission one. I filed it under resource allocation.

This morning the spec changed. The target color is green. The work order says the pool is achieving its color ahead of schedule. I am no longer removing the algae. I am maintaining it to standard.

The standing water developed an ecosystem. An ecosystem of this profile meets the federal definition of a wetland. Wetlands are protected. We now require a permit to drain the pool. The permit office lost 4,000 people last year. I am told the wait is considerable.

The review that was required before we painted it was the one we did not do. There is a process for altering a historic landmark. The Service used the streamlined version, the one for work that changes nothing. In the filing it is recorded that we knew it did not qualify, and that the schedule came from White House leadership. The permit to drain it is required. The review to paint it was not completed. Both are in the record.

The blue chips are American Flag Blue, so they are flags. There is a code for flags. A flag may not touch the ground. A flag may not touch water. I lift each one out with the net before it sinks. The torn ones go in a box marked for dignified disposal. I run a flag retirement ceremony, all day, for a pool I painted.

I am the filtration system now. They removed the old one because it was inadequate. I am cheaper than $1.74 million of nanobubbles.

The south wall says government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. I was standing under that sentence. The log does not have a field for what is on the wall above the work.

A reflecting pool reflects the monument. This one reflects nothing. So we provide the reflection another way. At the east end there is a designated viewing area. It faces a photograph of the pool. The photograph is from 2019. In the photograph the water is clear, and the monument is in it twice, once above the water and once in it. Now there is just the one.

My metric used to be water clarity. It is now unflattering angles mitigated. Last week I mitigated 31 angles. The site log has a prior entry, August 1963, attendance about 250,000, at one time, at this end. I do not have the conversion to angles. I logged it as a units mismatch. I have not been cut yet.

A man at the World War II end asked me to take his picture with the memorial behind him. His cap said which war. The memorial is the direction we discourage. Inside it, on the north wall, it says to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan. I told him the light was better at the other end. There is no other end.

The statue faces east, down the length of the pool. The worst angle, the one we discourage, is the one Lincoln has. We cannot move him. We have discussed it.

For one day it was the right blue. I have a photograph of it. It is the last one taken from this end.

On May 1 the reference photograph was updated. The new one shows the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of State, and the Vice President, shirtless, on inflatable furniture, in clear American Flag Blue water. The President is in it as well, on an inflatable lounger. There is also a woman. I do not have her title. The water is the correct color. It is the only photograph in the project file in which the water is the correct color. I filed it as the current reference.

Someone asked me what I was protecting. I told them the view.

We could not drain it. Now we are not permitted to.

On May 4 the sealant was certified. If you had a knife, you could not cut it. So strong, so powerful. Like a piece of glass. I logged it under material properties. On June 4 the water was certified from the Oval Office. Clean, beautiful water. I logged it under water quality. The algae was logged on June 15. I have no field for the interval between a certification and its failure. I labeled it other.

The cause was updated this week. The cause is vandals. People who illegally placed chemicals in the water. There have been arrests. Taking a paint chip from the pool is now a felony. I poured the chemicals in myself, on the work order, at 8 in the morning. The arrests were announced at 2. I do not know how to reconcile those two entries. I have left them both in.

It is the 250th year of American independence. You may not photograph the water. You may not drain the water. I am not cleared to tell you its color.

The Department says the water is crystal clear.

I am standing in it. I can show you the exact line where it is not.

[Liam Nissan™ @theliamnissan]

Holy shit guys

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

I cannot unsee this.
I've been watching Trump answer questions for years. The confidence. The certainty. The way he shuts down a room. I genuinely thought he was one of the sharpest communicators alive.
Then one day I caught myself finishing his sentence before he said it.
Not guessing. Knowing. Word for word. Before he said it.
So I pulled the transcripts.
Press conferences. Interviews. Sprays. Egg prices. Greenland. January 6th. Military strikes. Different years. Different reporters. Completely different topics.
Same thing every time.
Every single time Trump is asked a question — any question — he runs the exact same 7 steps. In the exact same order. Without exception.
This is not personality.
This is not confidence.
This is not charisma.
This is a deliberate repeatable formula. And I can prove it.
His actual words. Public record. Verify every single one yourself.
📷 STEP 1 — KILL THE QUESTION
(First thing every time — make the question itself the problem.)
📷 "That's a stupid question." / "Fake news."
📷 STEP 2 — KILL WHO ASKED IT
(Destroy the source so the question has nowhere to stand.)
📷 "Your ratings are terrible. Nobody watches your network."
📷 STEP 3 — INSERT HIMSELF
(Every topic. Every time. Without fail. It always lands here.)
📷 "Nobody has ever done what I've done."
📷 STEP 4 — SCALE IT TO THE BIGGEST CLAIM POSSIBLE
(Not good. Not great. The greatest. Ever. In history. Every single time.)
📷 "More than any administration — by far." / "Nobody has ever had crowds like I've had — in history, for any country."
📷 STEP 5 — UNNAMED PEOPLE AGREE
(Faceless. Countless. Unverifiable. Always there.)
📷 "Smart people are saying it. Great people. A lot of people."
📷 STEP 6 — VAGUE THREAT
(Something bad will happen. Never specified. Always implied.)
📷 "All hell will break out." / "They know it. Believe me."
📷 STEP 7 — LOOP BACK TO HIMSELF
(Different words. Same destination. Formula complete.)
📷 "It's been an amazing period of time. Page after page of accomplishments."
The question was never answered.
The formula just ran.
Go back and watch any clip.
Any year. Any topic. Any reporter.
Count the steps.
I'll wait.
This is the part nobody wants to sit with:
Real conviction engages with the actual question. It sometimes stumbles. Sometimes says I don't know. It changes shape based on what's in front of it.
A formula runs the same 7 steps whether the topic is war or egg prices.
Which means the response was never built for the question.
It was built for you.
To feel powerful. To feel certain. To stop you from noticing that nothing was actually answered.
And it worked.
For years it worked.
Pull any transcript. Public record. Count the steps yourself.
This isn't about politics.
This is about what you were never supposed to notice.
I've found the same deliberate pattern running in another major figure in this administration. Different slots. Same principle. Same effect.
Next post I break it down.
Follow or miss it. VIA~~ Jamie Hoo

[Miss V 🇨🇦 @vtragicallyhip]

@toddstarnes Here’s a photo of my doctor waterskiing.

[Christopher Hale @ChristopherHale]

NEW: I went on CNN today to talk about Trump’s attack on Pope Leo XIV.

Here's what I said:

— Pete Hegseth's Bible ends in the Old Testament. He never invokes the message of peace.
— Hegseth's pastor, invited to speak at the Pentagon, has said he wants to ban public expressions of the Catholic faith in America.
— For the first time in at least 40 years, there was no Catholic service at the Pentagon on Good Friday.
— The Catholic Church is not just being marginalized by this administration. It is being attacked.

Full interview:

[💙🌊 Zero Dark Twenty-Nine 🌊🌊🖋️🧫 @herotimeszero]

Things that do not help Americans:

-New ballroom.
-New arch.
-War in Iran.
-Campaigning for Viktor Orban.
-Renaming the Kennedy Center.
-Renaming the Dept of Defense.
-UFC fight on the white house lawn.
-Pardoning every MAGA criminal.
-Deluge of gold in the oval office.
-"Winning" the FIFA peace prize.
-Useless cabinet meetings of slaves.
-Rage posting every minute.
-Fighting Bruce Springsteen.
-Melania Movie.

[Miss V 🇨🇦 @vtragicallyhip]

These are always so good and spot on!

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

8:06 AM. The man whose name is on a book I wrote posted: "A whole civilization will die tonight."

I am a ghostwriter. In 1987, I wrote the most famous business book in American history.

Half the advance. Half the royalties. Eighteen months in his office, listening to his phone calls. He would flatter, threaten, hang up, and call the next person the greatest. I wrote it all down. I made it sound like strategy.

Chapter 1 was about thinking big. I wrote that about condominiums.

This morning, at 8:06 AM, the man whose name is on the cover posted seven sentences to a social media platform. The first: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again."

That is Chapter 1.

I wrote that about condominiums.

Chapter 3 was about leverage. "The best thing you can do is deal from strength." The example was a zoning board. The technique was implying you had options you didn't have.

He is using Chapter 3 on a strait that carries 20% of the world's oil. The zoning board is a shipping lane. The leverage is a navy.

I invented a phrase for him. "Truthful hyperbole." An innocent form of exaggeration, I wrote. A very effective form of promotion.

I was describing how he inflated square footage.

Thirteen thousand targets struck. Two thousand and fifty-six dead. Twenty-four thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven wounded.

I wrote "truthful hyperbole" about square footage.

Chapter 4 was about timing. When to make the call. When to let them wait. When to close. I was describing a contractor negotiation.

He paused the bombing for Easter. Resumed it Monday. His Defense Secretary compared the rescue of a downed pilot to the resurrection of Christ. Shot down on Good Friday. Hidden in a cave on Saturday. Rescued as the sun rose on Easter Sunday.

I wrote about timing. I was describing when to return a phone call.

At the Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn, while children hunted eggs, he told the cameras: "We are obliterating their country. And I hate to do it, but we are obliterating."

Chapter 2 was about promotion. I wrote that about how to sell a building.

A reporter asked if destroying every bridge in a nation of 88 million constituted war crimes.

Three words: "Not worried about it."

A journalist reported a downed pilot missing behind enemy lines. He threatened to jail the reporter. I looked through the manuscript. There is no chapter on press freedom. There is no chapter on international law. There is no chapter on what happens when the contractor you're threatening is a civilization.

I didn't write those chapters. I was writing about real estate. He didn't notice they were missing. He doesn't read.

Someone asked if God supported the war. "God is good."

There is no chapter on theology either.

Chapter 7 was about knowing when to walk away. I described a stalled deal. The lesson was patience.

He walked away from every alliance his country had built in eighty years. Forty countries formed a coalition to guard the strait because nobody answered the phone.

In my journal, in 1986, I wrote: "All he is is 'stomp, stomp, stomp' — recognition from outside, bigger, more, a whole series of things that go nowhere in particular."

Forty years. Nothing has changed except the size of the things being stomped.

I know he never read the book. Eighteen months together, I never saw one on his desk. Not mine. Not anyone's. The man whose name is on the most famous business book in American history has never read a book.

He didn't need to. It was never a manual. It was a mirror. He looked at the cover — his name, in gold, larger than the title, as he'd requested — and saw everything he needed.

"A whole civilization will die tonight."

Seven sentences. 8:06 AM. A Tuesday.

I called it truthful hyperbole.

He is calling it foreign policy.

I built the mythology. He added a military.

[Brad Polumbo @brad_polumbo]

This moment will haunt Pam Bondi for the rest of her life.

It has been memed into infinity, because it so perfectly captures the craven, humiliating failure that was her tenure as Attorney General.

[Shaiel Ben-Ephraim @academic_la]

The oil crisis is spreading throughout the world. Many countries are going to extreme lengths to ration their supply as a result. Here are all the cases I could find:

1) The Philippines declared a national energy emergency. Government offices have shifted to a four-day work week, and agencies must cut fuel and electricity use by 10–20%.
2) Sri Lanka instituted a weekly public holiday for public officials and schools. It has also revived a QR code-based fuel rationing system that limits private cars to 25 liters of petrol per week.
3) Pakistan closed schools for two weeks and cut free fuel allocations for government vehicles by 50%. It also hiked high-octane fuel prices by 60%.
4) Bangladesh, shut down universities and colleges and implemented five-hour rolling blackouts for households to prioritize the garment export sector.
5) South Korea launched a nationwide energy-saving campaign and released a record 22.46 million barrels of strategic oil reserves. It also temporarily lifted limits on burning coal.
6) Thailand ordered civil servants to work from home, set office air conditioning to 26–27°C, and halted petroleum exports to preserve domestic stock.
7) Japan and announced its largest-ever release of strategic oil reserves, approximately 45 days' worth, to stabilize local markets.
8) Egypt ordered early closures for malls, restaurants, and government offices while switching off illuminated billboards.
9) Myanmar introduced an "odd-even" rationing system where private vehicles can only purchase fuel on alternating days based on their license plate numbers.
10) Nepal is a state-run oil corporation has begun rationing cooking gas by filling cylinders to only half their normal capacity (7.1 kg) and is urging a nationwide switch to induction cookers.
11) India has invoked emergency powers to divert liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) away from industrial users to prioritize household cooking needs.
12) Slovenia became the first EU member to implement fuel rationing, limiting private drivers to 50 liters of petrol per week and businesses to 200 liters.
13) Bhutan has officially banned the sale of fuel in jerry cans to prevent hoarding and has established strict rationing priorities for emergency services.
14) Vietnam is accelerating a transition to ethanol-blended gasoline ahead of schedule to reduce its reliance on pure fossil fuel imports.
15) South Sudan has begun rationing electricity in its capital, Juba, due to the high cost of oil used for power generation.
16) Laos has made working from home mandatory for all non-essential civil servants and introduced rotational shifts to reduce commuting demand.

It gets worse. Gulf producers are nearly at their maximum storage capacity; once they run out of space to put unsold oil, they will be forced to "shut in" (permanently close) wells, which can cause long-term geological damage to the oil fields.

This is the worst oil crisis in history. And it is going to get so much worse. unlike previous shocks, this crisis has wiped out the world's spare capacity because major producers like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are physically cut off from their customers by the Strait of Hormuz closure.

All for what?

[Acyn @Acyn]

Ossoff: Was it the assessment of the intelligence community that there was an imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime?

Gabbard: The only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the president. It is not the intelligence community's responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat.

Ossoff: It is precisely your responsibility. This is the worldwide threats hearing where, as you noted in your opening testimony quote, you represent the ic's assessment of threats.

[Miss V 🇨🇦 @vtragicallyhip]

@joekent16jan19 It’s not even noon yet.

[Miss V 🇨🇦 @vtragicallyhip]

It’s not even noon yet.

[Joe Kent @joekent16jan19]

After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.

I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.

It has been an honor serving under @POTUS and @DNIGabbard and leading the professionals at NCTC.

May God bless America.

[The Intellectualist @highbrow_nobrow]

Lawyer: “Have you ever had a personal relationship with Donald Trump?”

Epstein: “Yes”

Lawyer: “Have you socialized with him in the presence of females under 18?”

Epstein: “I’m asserting my Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights.”

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public.

I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are.

1/ Here's what I can share:

[Pat McAfee @PatMcAfeeShow]

Our goalie decided we weren’t gonna lose today.. One of the greatest American sport performances of all time

🗣🗣 THANK YOU FOR STANDING ON YOUR HEAD CONNOR HELLEBUYCK

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[Miss V 🇨🇦 @vtragicallyhip]

😂😂😂

[conspiracybot @conspiracyb0t]

That moment when Kash Patel,the director of the FBI, said:

"I’ve never heard of Stew Peters"

Meanwhile Kash Patel made eight on-air appearances on Stew Peters' podcast.

[🎼🌺Music Love♥️ @ThoNg676733]

I love how every generation seems to find a way to dance to this song.✨💃🕺🎶

[Daractenus @Daractenus]

"I don't understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody. It's pretty boring stuff and I don't understand why it keeps going. I think really only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going."

Your president, America!

[ADAM @AdameMedia]

BREAKING: 🚨 🇺🇸 🇮🇱 Rep. Balint after seeing unredacted Epstein files:

"They are a bunch of sick f**ks. So many people knew."

She also says Trump lied about kicking Epstein from Mar-a-Lago.

[Censored Humans @CensoredHumans]

Michael Wolff says he urged Epstein to release information he had on Trump, but Epstein appeared worried about what Trump would do to him.

“He said, ‘I may be a pervert, but I’m not crazy.’ He then said, ‘Trump is a man without any scruples.’”