I mean, is anyone surprised?

They expanded hugely, without bothering to vet their new recruits, apparently only caring that they had once held a badge, could read, and could fog a mirror…..

Then they bought (rather than lease) a bunch of warehouses to use as bases, only to find out that they had bought buildings that, while cheap, were in really poor repair….requiring millions of dollars to make them even marginally usable.

Then some rocket surgeon decided that they could put the detainees in tents, except that the tents they bought didn’t meet the (low) standards that ICE had for such tent cities….and there were no refunds on the tents.

Then, of course there is the $50K signing bonus they gave out to each new recruit that they didn’t bother to do a background check on…, at least 30% of whom they are firing because the (too late) background checks are demonstrating why these folks were so eager to sign up and leave their former jobs….

There are a LOT of failures of managements here, And it all falls back on the appointees that Trump put in place…..Ms. (Barbi) Noem, Mr Gregory (“Agents are always right, even before we know the facts!”) Bovino , and Tom (“Deport everyone, let God sort them out”) Homan, and their underlings.

Tens (Nearly Hundred million (so far)) of millions of dollars, that even a BIT of forward thinking could have saved, wasted by bad choices.

Piss Poor Management.

The blame for this really rests on Donnie, as it was his people, that failed so utterly.  (Or perhaps they simply didn’t care how much money they wasted and how many people they got killed…..)

Toldya:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has begun quietly firing new officers hired during the agency’s push to recruit thousands of “Homeland Defenders.” The results have been deadly.

ICE has started to dismiss some of its newest recruits, citing poor performance and red flags that should have been identified in the vetting process, three former DHS officials told The Washington Post Tuesday.

ICE (and now, of course, Border Patrol also) had many new recruits who had nothing to lose by applying…..being one step in front of a review board at their former jobs….and there was that wonderful $50K signing bonus.

When you hire substandard people you get substandard results.

Related

Thanks to MC for the hint

Trump proposes a $5 BILLION fund to “Rebuild Persian Gulf Infrastructure”…Because some of the states surrounding the Persian Gulf have been attacked “due to the presence of US Military in their country”…

That same military is what keeps them from being invaded for their oil….It isn’t like we charge for the security we provide, which also cost BILLIONs of dollars.

Unlike NATO, they don’t even pretend.

It isn’t like they sell their oil to the US at a discount for that protection either.

Let em fix their own infrastructure….If they don’t like the presence of US troops, then we can always pull out and let them defend their own soil…..(Not that they could, or (mostly) would be able to).

I mean, then of thousands of people like me are “Journalists” is you want to define us as such.

Do we also get access to the While House?

Why should CNN, MSNow and Politico get special treatment and have their access restored?

Access to the White house and the President is a privilege, not a right.

And if you claim “Freedom of the Press” then you show that you haven’t bothered to lean the Constitution, and thus demonstrate your ignorance.

If anyone can demand access then there’s gonna be flood of us.

I’ll expect my press pass to the White house (and Air Force One) momentarily?

(I missed last week, thing got out of hand on the homestead. Shit doth occur at times)

“The right to bear arms is not present in our Constitution so that we can impose our will on others via gunpoint, but rather so that others cannot impose their will on US at gunpoint”

“Counting to 10 only makes it premeditated….”

“Learn something new every day: The day you stop learning is the day you begin to die”

“Fear is temporary, regret is forever”

“Just do it”

“Other people’s opinions won’t pay your bills”

“Worrying never prevented anything from happening”

“Someone will judge you no matter what”

Not just the ban on Burquas, but the limits on the number of foreign students.

Integrate, assimilate, or Get the Fuck Out.

Italy is preparing to ban face coverings in schools and to cap the number of foreign students per class, Prime Minister Giorgia ​Meloni said on Sunday.

I am all for immigration: I am the descendent of immigrants, and I have worked for several people who were immigrants to the US. All great assets to their new country.

But none of them were INVADERS. If you aren’t gonna learn the language and culture of the country you emigrate to, you are not an immigrant, you are an invader,  a colonist, and a pestilence upon the host country.

How the reporters (News Organizations) are all up in arms about the fact that several of their members have been banned from the White House and other Presidential functions.

They are all claiming that this violates the “Freedom of the Press”….but that is a LIE.

They are all free to PUBLISH whatever they wish (Which is what IS constitutionally protected (with caveats)), but there is no Constitutionally protected right to be at a function nor to be present or invited to press conferences.

‘Tis interesting how they conflate the right to publish with the right to be present.

But then again, this isn’t the first time that the Press has lied, is it?

From start to stop.

Unpacking to lighting the pilot.

(I decided to install the water heater myself….I am both too cheap to pay someone $600 for a 2 or three hour job, and I think every man should be able to do such a task himself….It’s part of being a man, after all) Plus no one was interested in coming out until Monday….And I wanted a hot shower.

Wasn’t the hardest water heater change I ever did, but not the easiest one either.

Retrofitting from a 1972 34 gallon unit to a much larger diameter 40 gallon unit. Of course, NOTHING lined up right, so there was that. But not too bad. (They don’t even MAKE 34 gallon units today)

‘Twas fun, if you like that sort of fun….

All in all, it wasn’t that bad. This wasn’t just fitting a new one where everything lined up like the old one…., None of the water lines (or gas lines) lined up. Apparently they did things slightly differently in 1972 vs today. And the threaded connections weren’t gonna turn after 50 years.

I hadn’t done a water heater at all in 10 years or so. Never one that old. (I knew it was coming, it is 54 years old after all. It wasn’t a matter of if it failed, but rather, when…..Borrowed time and all that. Seldom does a water heater last more than 10 years around here. I always expected (Like every day for the past 20 years) to find the thing leaking on the floor someday…but until now it was perfect…Rheem apparently made ’em really good in 1972.

MC did hand me tools. Which helped. I did cheat and used a SharkBite connector for the new cold side water valve. Too lazy to sweat (or use compression fitting) a new one in. Old copper can sometimes be a bitch to solder with newer solders.

I hated to lose the old one though: 20 years ago the gas valve died and I had just changed a leaking water heater in a restaruant…one that had a 75 gallon per hour recovery rate. I put that bigger burner in the old Rheem and it worked well, recovering almost faster than I could use it

It lasted until yesterday, essentially giving me unlimited hot water.

End of an era and all that.

First the well tank, then this:

Yeah, the 1972 water heater finally sprung a leak. I guess the deflation and inflation from having the well taken offline to replace the pressure tank was the final straw….Plus the well guy put in a new pressure switch that ran from 40-60 PSI rather than the original pressure switch that went from 30-50, so maybe the extra 10 lbs of pressure just overcame the tank (that was 54 years old after all). (I turned the pressure down down, but only after a day of having the higher pressure before I noticed…..)

Either way, more work for me…. I am sorta debating if I want to change it myself or pay someone to do it. The cheap part of me says do it myself (and it isn’t manly to let someone else do it), but the more practical part points out that I can afford to pay someone to do it and this isn’t gonna be an easy replacement as NOTHING is the same size or shape as the old heater.  Different diameter, different height, different height for the gas valve and the water inlet, different size vent pipe, etc.

I dunno.

Maybe I will just take cold showers from now on…..

But not for Democratic Socialists.

I mean, Grifters like her gotta grift. It’s part of what makes them Socialists. after all….they want to make sure that someone pays for things, just not them.

Florida Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon, an avowed Democratic Socialist who owns two homes and raked in at least $270,000 from her jobs and investments last year—in addition to her husband’s unpublished income—is lamenting the injustice of having to pay taxes on her outsized income.

(She owes $14,000 in unpaid taxes to the IRS on top of $17,600 in unpaid federal student loans…at least).

Are there any socialists who aren’t hypocrites?