Curiously Curated Conspiracies, Cover Ups and Corruption. All content is 'for your consideration' only. "The Truth, when you finally chase it down, is almost always far worse than your darkest visions and fears." ~ Hunter S. Thompson
The national payment error rate for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) hit 10.62 percent for Fiscal Year (FY) 2025, far exceeding the 6 percent threshold set by Congress.
“While this is a modest decrease from FY 2024, the FY 2025 rate still shows significant waste at the state level,“ the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said in a June 24 statement.
”Including both overpayments and underpayments, this year’s rate represents a collective $10.1 billion in improper payments nationwide.”
The payment error rate measures how accurately states calculate SNAP eligibility and the amounts that beneficiaries receive.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump last year, established a State Quality Control Incentive provision under which states must pay a percentage of SNAP program bills if their payment error rate exceeds a certain limit.
A state with an error rate of 6 percent to 8 percent will be required to fund 5 percent of the benefits. This scales up as error rates get higher. States with error rates of 10 percent or more must fund 15 percent of benefits.
“[This has instituted] real financial consequences for states that mismanage taxpayer dollars,” the USDA stated, noting that these rules could come into effect as soon as Oct. 1, 2027.
States with error rates exceeding 6 percent are also required to submit a Corrective Action Plan to the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, explaining how they intend to address the root causes of the high error rates. Some states may end up getting financially penalized.
“These payment error rates are further proof that state accountability is severely lacking in SNAP,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said.
“USDA has taken historic action to help interested states curb SNAP waste, and I hope other states, regardless of political leadership, prioritize needy families and the American taxpayer over politics.”
President Trump on Saturday threatened to wipe Iran off the face of the Earth after US forces launched strikes against the country for its violations of the 60-day memorandum of understanding and ceasefire.
“It is very possible that they will never learn!” Trump said, noting that Iranian missile, drone storage locations, and coastal radar sites were hit by US aircraft.
“There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started,” he continued. “If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”
United States aircraft just struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations, and coastal radar sites, for violating the Cease Fire Agreement, AGAIN! It is very possible that they will never learn! There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started. If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist! President DJT
In Lamerd, in Iran’s southern Fars province, the threat of war gave way to reality when previously untested missiles struck a school, sports grounds and nearby neighbourhoods.
The attack came just six hours after the double-tap strikes on the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab on 28 February, over 400km away in Hormozgan province, where 120 children, 24 staff, seven parents, a school bus driver and a pharmacist were killed.
Four missiles from a new weapon system, the Lockheed Martin Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), which had never before been seen or deployed, would be field-tested on the town of 30,000 people.
At 5.11pm (1.41pm GMT), the missiles struck a residential area where a row of homes adjoined a few neighbourhood shops.
Rounia Fakori, 12, was at volleyball practice when the first explosion shook the school building.
“We were in our practice when we heard the first impact. We rushed to the door,” she recalled.
Then another missile struck, plunging the girls and their coaches into darkness as smoke and heat filled the sports hall. The force of the blast slammed the doors shut.
“We couldn’t see anything,” the girls’ volleyball coach, Rahimeh Shehabi, told Middle East Eye. “We could only hear the screams of the children.”
As the missiles struck the school and sports hall, a football game was underway outside.
Eleven-year-old Mahdiar was playing with his friends, including 12-year-olds Ilya Khatami and Abdulmosavar Rahmani, when explosive shrapnel tore through the area.
According to Mahdiar, he and one of his friends ran towards the canopy, where their football coach, Mahmoud Najafi, called out: “Come here quickly, it’s dangerous there.”
Ilya and his coach then rushed towards the building to help open the door for the girls and women trapped inside as a fourth missile struck, rattling the sports hall.
One of the most loathsome leftist Democrats in America learned this week that nothing he has done will ever satisfy the most extreme people in America.
As Newsweek reported, a viral video emerged showing openly gay California State Senator Scott Wiener getting some very rough treatment while attending San Francisco’s Trans March on Friday.
The footage shows Wiener getting screamed at and mobbed by rallygoers. Loud profanities can be heard throughout the two-minute video as the attendees slam him as a Zionist and his position on Gaza.
“Your policy on the genocide in Gaza is terrible!” one man shouts at Wiener.
“We f**king hate you!” others scream. “You do not belong here!”
This treatment came despite the rallygoers’ own admission that Wiener, who is Jewish and running for Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat, has stood in lockstep with them on advancing their sick agenda.
“You’ve done wonderful things for trans people, but not anymore!” the first man yells. “And it breaks my f**king heart!”
Tuesday’s primary results weren’t just a bad night for the Democratic establishment. They were a warning shot that the party’s socialist insurgency has arrived, is organized, and intends to win. And the problem for them is that they have no idea what to do about it, which could spark a civil war within the party.
The Democratic Socialists of America have been running their own long game inside the Democratic Party for years. Now DSA NYC co-chair Gustavo Gordillo is willing to say the quiet part out loud. The DSA runs candidates on the Democratic ballot line, wins primaries, and places members inside Democratic caucuses. The difference is that they don’t answer to the party apparatus or its donor class.
“Our candidates run as Democrats,” Gordillo said. “We’re on the Democratic Party ballot line. We contest the primaries, and when they’re in the legislature, they’re part of the Democratic Party caucus. But we don’t agree with the way the Democratic Party establishment organizes or runs its party apparatus.“
Gordillo identified a contradiction at the core of the party’s identity. “There’s a problem in the Democratic Party where they are funded by billionaire donors and at the same time they’re trying to represent the working class,” he said. “And in our opinion you have to choose between the billionaire class and the working class. It’s just impossible to satisfy all of them.”
Many of the topics I address are met with silence because they question the quasi-religious beliefs that underpin our entire way of life: the belief that Progress is inevitable because technology inevitably drives Progress–a belief structure I call The Mythology of Progress–and the belief structure that the desire to get rich inevitably drives innovation which then drives Progress.
Neither belief is actually grounded in science, but each is cloaked in the finery of science to mask their true nature, i.e. quasi-religious belief structures: the gods of technology and finance are real and powerful.
Questioning the existence of these gods is met with silence because if these gods are imaginary constructs of belief, then the entirety of Modernity collapses. And so we continue worshiping these gods with charts and spreadsheets and euphoric headlines announcing thousands of modular nuclear reactors are on the way to power super-abundance when there is not a single one that is functioning 24/7 reliably, safely and cheaply, and vast quantities of dollars are needed to dig up and process the fuel, construct the reactors and operate them. But never mind that, the gods have promised that technological Progress is unstoppable and inevitable.
The possibility that Anti-Progress might not just negate Progress but reverse it is strictly verboten, as is even recognizing Anti-Progress as a reality.
As a thought experiment, let’s consider two things:
1. Let’s define the highest value technology as devices that operate reliably with little maintenance for many decades, without extracting any money from their owners beyond operational expenses such as electricity or fuel.
For example, the coffee maker, rice cooker and microwave on our counter are 25+ years old and still functioning reliably with zero maintenance costs. Our 1998 car is 28 years old and has required only modest maintenance to date, and given its condition, it can easily function reliably for another 12 years, a 40-year period of service.
Why this is the highest value technology is self-evident: the devices make the highest and best use of the resources consumed in their manufacture because they are durable, long-lasting and require minimal maintenance. In financial terms, since the technologies don’t require the owners to pay any more than the purchase price and operational costs, the owners’ costs are predictable and modest, leaving all the income they earn beyond the purchase price and operational expenses available for other uses.
All technologies that fail to meet these standards are inferior or defective. That is also self-evident.
2. Let’s imagine a new law requires everyone to wear a Silly Hat in public. This requirement generates a vast and highly profitable surge in economic activity, pushing Gross Domestic Product (GDP), business profits, employment and taxes up.
The legal-regulatory sector is suddenly busy defining what qualifies as a Silly Hat, launching lawsuits challenging the laws requiring Silly Hats, codifying regulations regarding the safety and quality of Silly Hats, litigating claims of defective Silly Hats, hiring vast numbers of compliance, oversight and enforcement personnel, and so on.
The fashion industry leaps into action to design haute couture Silly Hats, designer Silly Hats, Silly Hats promoted by celebrities, Hello Kitty branded Silly Hats, and so on.
Retailers rush to market Silly Hats, offering discounts on cheap Silly Hats manufactured overseas, and promoted the “latest fashions” in Silly Hats.
Not to be outdone, the finance sector quickly generates a bubble in stocks relating to the manufacture and marketing of Silly Hats. The Silly Hat Index soars, minting thousands of mega-millionaires.
I think you see where this is going: the entire economic boom generated by completely needless Silly Hats is real, but the hats have no real value. Okay, now please take a deep breath.
I consider it self-evident that much of our economy is nothing more than Silly Hats that we call something else that sounds less silly. The percentage of our economy that actually produces life’s essentials is a fraction of the share devoted to marketing, PR, unproductive “engagement,” legal and regulatory busy-work, meetings, junkets, conferences, billions of needless communications, shadow-work required to deal with all the needless complexity generated by all this needless activity, and so on.
By the standard of high-value technology defined above, our economy is a wasteland of throw-away products and planned obsolescence run amok. Those who claim today’s coffee makers, rice cookers, microwaves and autos will all last 30 or 40 years are delusional, as new appliances fail in a few years and the electronics in vehicles will fail long before 28 years of service, never mind 40 years of service, and the repair or replacement of these components are outrageously costly.
A New York clerk was caught in a blatant attempt to steal a local election last month, prompting the state to order a brand-new one.
As The New York Post reported on Thursday, a Hempstead Union Free School District petition revealed that District Clerk April Keys tore up several ballots and helped smuggle them out of her office, which helped board president Victor Pratt ‘win’ his reelection campaign for the Hempstead Union Free School District on Long Island.
The election took place on May 19.
State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa ordered a new race to take place within 60 days, just hours after the petition surfaced.
The district issued the following in a statement to The Post:
The Board appreciates the Commissioner’s expeditious review of this matter, which enables the District to move forward with the revote in accordance with the Commissioner’s ruling.
Per the Post, Keys took the ripped-up ballots and tossed them into the dumpster. She also gave Pratt, a local DJ who goes by DJ Vic-Lover, absentee ballots to dispose of.
The U.S. Secret Service failed to secure mobile devices that became security risks, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) said pertaining to a review of the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024.
The OIG, which operates under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said in its report published Monday it found the Secret Service “did not effectively secure and manage mobile devices, including during protective operations. As a result, adversaries could have intercepted and exploited Secret Service information, placing at risk our Nation’s leaders, other protectees, and employees — especially when unsecured devices were used overseas.”
The office noted that during other reviews after the attempted assassination in Butler, officials learned, “Secret Service personnel frequently used personal cell phones for official business, raising security concerns. We conducted this review to determine whether the Secret Service effectively manages and secures mobile devices used to conduct official Government business, including its protective mission.”
Furthermore, the OIG report said:
This heightened risk occurred because the Secret Service’s process for identifying and implementing mobile device capabilities did not always fully identify employees’ operational needs, leaving employees without essential capabilities such that they resorted to using personal devices. The Secret Service’s processes for securing mobile devices for international use were insufficient, and it did not have a policy of testing mobile device app code before installation.
The OIG noted it made five recommendations to improve mobile device security and “reduce the use of unmanaged personal mobile devices,” adding the Secret Service concurred with those recommendations.
President Trump’s right ear was bloodied when a bullet grazed it and members of the Secret Service rushed him offstage moments after shots were fired in an assassination attempt during the Butler rally, Breitbart News reported at the time.
Gun rights experts are schooling Far-left Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson following her stupid dissent in a key gun rights case earlier this week.
As TGP’s Jordan Conradson reported, the Supreme Court sided with three Hawaii residents on Thursday, overturning a law that barred concealed-carry permit holders from exercising their rights in public.
All three liberal justices, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Jackson, dissented in the 6-3 ruling.
To defend disarming its residents, Hawaii relied in part on a blatantly racist 1865 Louisiana statute enacted as part of the post-Civil War Black Codes. This made it illegal to carry firearms onto another person’s property without the owner’s consent.
Of course, this was due to the fact that Louisiana, which was ruled at the time by racist white Democrats, feared an armed black populace.
“It is disgraceful that any state would rely on a law specifically aimed at taking away the Second Amendment rights or any constitutional right of Black Americans as it was at that time,” attorney Kevin O’Grady, who represented the plaintiffs, told Fox News.
Jackson, however, had a different take. Jackson claimed in her dissent that the Court ignored what she considered an important constitutional question.
Ukraine announced Saturday that it used its Flamingo cruise missiles overnight to strike Russia’s Titan-Barrikady weapons plant, which reportedly manufactures parts for its powerful Oreshnik missile.
The military plant is in Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, which is a major industrial city in southwest Russia. Writing on X, President Zelensky described it as a “major industrial complex” where Russia “produces artillery systems and specialized military equipment, including components for missile launch systems.”
“Every Russian defense facility involved in the war against Ukraine is a legitimate target for our long-range strikes,” he wrote.
The Associated Pressreports, “Volgograd Gov. Andrei Bocharov confirmed an attack on a business in the region’s Krasnooktyabrsky district, saying 10 people had been wounded and taken to a hospital. He said production facilities at the site were damaged but did not identify the company.”
Additionally, “Ukraine’s state security service said Saturday morning that Ukrainian forces also struck an oil pumping facility in Russia’s Vladimir region that supplies fuel to Moscow, for the second time this month.”
But on the other side of the border, Ukrainian media reports that Russia was also busy with now nightly airstrikes:
Russian forces targeted production facilities belonging to the Naftogaz Group, Ukraine’s largest national oil and gas company, in the Poltava and Kharkiv regions.
The barrage of attacks included 129 drones, of which 113 were destroyed or jammed by Ukrainian forces, Ukrainian media reported.
The Russian overnight attacks on Ukraine killed two people and injuring more than 20, according to state officials.
At a moment much of the globe’s attention remains fixated on Iran and the fate of energy shipping through the largely blocked Strait of Hormuz, the Ukraine war is rapidly escalating.
Hellbound and Down 
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