Readit NewsAlso in the context of federal budget, 1% is a huge number since most of the budget (like social security, interest payments, and Medicaid) is non negotiable.
~30B a year (USAID budget) is enough to make improvements domestically, e.g free college for 10% of students, transportation, housing, etc.
It’s politics. These are political roles. It’s organizational leading and having people in place who are aligned with your goals, not splicing DNA.
And we’ve had the qualified one who got 90 Senate votes in confirmation and what did that get us? The Iraq War and the Afghan departure with abandoned locals falling off airplanes.
It’s laughable when the idea of checking the same boxes that always get checked is “qualified”.
I'm old enough to remember when Biden nominated someone with no aviation experience to lead the head of the FAA, and also had corruption charges while acting as head of the LA transit system....AND Democrats were in _favor_ of that lack of experience:
"Democrats...spinning his lack of direct involvement with aviation as a positive, theoretically making him less likely to be aligned or swayed by any of the many interest groups or companies in the industry."[1]
I'm also old enough to remember when Pete Buttigieg was appointed Transportation Secretary, despite having virtually no experience in mass transit (no, a McKinsey deck doesn't count) and whose highest office was mayor of a small Indiana town.[2]
So can we stop with the hyperbole? Yes there are many good candidates, but the US could do much worse than a guy with experience in Iraq/Afghanistan/Guantanamo + 2 Bronze Stars + Joint Commendation + 2 Army Commendations + Expert Infantryman Badge + degrees from Harvard & Princeton.[3]
[1]https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/faa-nominee-quizzed-on-a... [2]https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit... [3]https://www.aetc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4042297...
Just look at how their usage is promoted in this thread to defeat supposed evils elsewhere in the language.
It's almost as revealing as "Yikes, there's a lot of issues to unpack there. Top of mind is the absence of guardrails around inappropriate language and metaphor."
Quite how we've reached the point where political persuasions are linguistically distinct I have no idea.