The Counterrevolution

Caption: 45/47

 

 

Bullet Points:

** Trudeau, who will step down as prime minister after the ruling Liberal Party chooses a new leader Sunday, warned Canadians that tough times were coming. Economists say Canada, which sends 75% of all exports to the United States, will plunge into a recession unless the tariffs are lifted quickly.

** Memo to EdB – I think your boat is big enough – The Shark.

** China is experiencing deflation, or falling prices, that contrasts with inflationary pressures prevailing elsewhere. Cheaper prices can be a blessing for some, but deflation is a symptom of weak demand and stalling economic growth.

 

IS/WAS Europe Serious about the Ukraine War?

“A new report reveals that the anti-Russia, pro-Ukraine EU – spent more money on Russian oil and gas in 2024 than they did on military aid to Ukraine. According to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) report, the EU spent approximately $23 billion on Russian fossil fuels vs. $19.6 billion on military and financial aid to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, China purchased at least $82 billion of Russian energy, India spent $51 billion, and Turkey spent $36 billion.

In total, Russia raked in $254 billion on energy exports.

“Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Europe has made significant progress in energy independence. Imports of Russian oil and gas have decreased substantially, with gas imports dropping from 45% in 2021 to 18% in 2024,” said EU MP Thomas Pellerin-Carlin in response to the report. “However, a quarter of Russia’s fossil fuel export revenues still come from Europe,” he continued.

And despite EU efforts to reduce Russian dependence, member nations spent 7 billion euros ($7.3 billion) on Russian natural gas in the third year of the Ukraine war – an increase of 9% vs. 2023.”

 

Money for Nothing – (Chicks for Free)

Jaw-dropping accounts from the workers themselves

This article was first published on SHARYL ATTKISSON‘s free Substack

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Watching the developments and controversies over downsizing the federal workforce, I’m reminded of a series of shocking but eye-opening stories I reported at CBS News in 2003.

That was the year I learned that more than a few federal employees are being paid six-figure salaries to not work.

Three people I profiled were getting big money to do nothing, and they happened to work at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The first person was NIH grants manager Edward McSweegan. With little to do at work, he became a successful mystery writer on the job and joined a nearby gym to “break up the day.”

He told me he wasn’t the only one.

Indeed, after I aired his story, I began connecting with numerous other federal workers who told me they were being paid six figures to do no work!

It is so difficult to fire federal employees that when they get on the wrong side of a vindictive supervisor, the supervisor may simply isolate the person and give him nothing meaningful to do.

After reporting the story, the comment I heard the most was, “I’d love to be paid six figures to do nothing!”

But the workers I spoke to were not the kind of people who wanted to do nothing. They were Type A personalities who, like many of us, derived some of their worth based on how much they could contribute meaningfully on the job. Their supervisors understood that removing this worth served as tremendous punishment. I even learned of one case where such a scenario had driven a woman to commit suicide.

Read on for details and view the two videos where the employees told their outrageous stories.

The Man With No Work

June 26, 2003 / CBS Sharyl Attkisson

“There’s nothing to do. There’s nothing to pretend to do,” laments Dr. Edward McSweegan.

McSweegan once managed an extensive research portfolio at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but his work days have been pretty much empty since March 1996.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to work. He says they won’t let him. Meanwhile, CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports that taxpayers are covering his generous paycheck.

McSweegan, who earns about $100,000 a year, believes he’s being punished for using his personal time to discredit a charity that influenced his bosses at NIH.

In 1995, McSweegan and other scientists felt the charity was publishing unscientific and incorrect information about Lyme Disease, and he used his personal time to discredit the charity.

In 1997, the NIH suspended McSweegan for two weeks, partly because he had referred to the charity as “whacko” on his Web site. However, documents show that the NIH’s own lawyers agreed there were no grounds to fire him. The charity later sued McSweegan for slander but lost. McSweegan won his counter-suit against them.

Before the feud, McSweegan received the highest rating possible in his annual job reviews and was awarded yearly cash bonuses for his good job performance. His personnel file is full of commendation letters from his bosses. Even after the feud–including his most recent job review–McSweegan’s bosses have continued to give him good job performance scores.

CBS News wanted to talk to McSweegan’s bosses, but NIH denied a request. A spokesman said that allegations that some employees don’t have enough work to do are “expected” in any giant agency. NIH employs 18,000 people. The spokesman also suggested that the same might be true at CBS. This correspondent pointed out that taxpayers don’t pay CBS salaries.

So what does McSweegan do all day?

“I’ve managed to publish a couple of books, some short story fiction, a little bit of non-fiction writing,” he said.

Yes, with all that free time and taxpayers footing the bill, he’s become a successful mystery writer. And more: “I wound up joining a health club near the office, just to sort of break up the day,” he said

Oddly enough, McSweegan has been getting good job reviews.

“I guess I’m good at doing nothing,” he said.

On July 1, NIH issued the following statement: “Dr. McSweegan has always been assigned duties appropriate to his position and pay level. The claim that he is being compensated for doing nothing is completely inaccurate.”

CBS News showed McSweegan’s interview to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, whose Finance Committee doubled NIH’s budget over the last five years to a whopping $27 billion.

And now Grassley wants action. He has sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson demanding that McSweegan be returned to work.

After clarifying that the CBS News investigation raised questions about NIH’s use of taxpayer money, Grassley said: “Dr. McSweegan wants to work – I expect HHS/NIH to find him appropriate work that makes good use of his experience and talents.”

His letter included this rebuke: “The fault lies in great part with NIH management. I request that NIH take immediate steps to ensure that all NIH employees are fully employed and helping to achieve the organization’s goals. To come rattling a tin cup asking for more money when the NIH pays for full-time novelists has to stop.”

Some might call Edward McSweegan lucky. However, McSweegan said he wants to expose the kind of waste that gives federal bureaucracy a bad name. Even if — after all these years of doing nothing — he gets fired for telling about it.

McSweegan said that talking about this in public is like playing Russian roulette. “You pull the trigger and see what happens.”

He might title his own incredible story “Under Worked and Overpaid.” For now, he’s waiting for someone else to write the last chapter.

Watch the second video using the following link (transcript is below).

https://rumble.com/v6q38vo-women-paid-six-figure-govt-salaries-to-not-work.html

 

Women With No Work

September 15, 2003 / CBS / Sharyl Attkisson

When Congress sought to make the National Institutes of Health more efficient, Joyce Sweasy came to the rescue. A top supply manager at NIH, she offered an idea to cut waste and save taxpayers $2 million a year. It’s one reason her boss re-assigned her, but as CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports, it was no promotion.

“I was given no work to do,” Sweasy says.

She claims her boss was angry because her cost-savings plan exposed waste in his branch; he says she was repeatedly insubordinate. But Sweasy never imagined her “punishment” would be a do-nothing assignment with taxpayers forking out her paycheck.

“My gross salary was over $100,000 a year,” she says. “How can they continue to pay me,” she wondered. “I’m not doing anything.”

Rosemary Cummings was also a high-level manager at NIH.

“I was going into work at 7 a.m. and staying until 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock. Weekends I’d be there,” says Cummings.

That all came to a sudden halt when she, too, was transferred from her position, in which she was in charge of 130 people.

In her new position, Cummings says, she was doing nothing but still earning plenty: more than $100,000 a year on the taxpayers’ dime.

Joyce Sweasy became depressed and desperate. She even offered to do the clerks’ photocopying.

She took her case to an employment judge who said her boss was justified in transferring her but not to a do-nothing job with “less than three hours of work over two years.” The judge called that illegal retaliation, and blamed her boss, the same man who gave Cummings nothing to do: a top NIH official, Leamon Lee.

The judge found Lee “has a history of taking reprisal action” against workers, but his career hasn’t seemed to suffer.

Raynard Kington, NIH’s number two official, won’t talk about Lee, but insists managers like Lee are punished when they do wrong. As to how many employees complain they’re in “do-nothing jobs,” he says there’s no epidemic.

“We know that there are allegations like this that get resolved,” says Kington. “The important thing is it’s resolved.”

Sweasy won a $200,000 judgment against NIH for suffering the do-nothing job, but says the lost year decimated her career.

As for Cummings, she left her highly-paid position to begin a much busier early retirement.

As a taxpayer, Cummings says, “My thought is, what a waste.”

It’s a waste of time, talent and taxpayer dollars.

 

The US Doesn’t Want all of Canada

The 51st State thing is red meat for stand up comedians in Canada. In the US nobody cares, but in the massively taxed Canada (sometimes referred to as Gay America), there is a lot of talk of tariffs and of giving more money to the Indians. (Indians receive more government in Canada than the military does – but that’s ok because the US will save them.)

There are rallies in Alberta, a conservative and wealthy province with many hard working people who financially support the rest of Canada. They’d like to sign up, carry firearms legally, and keep most of the money they earn. The same is true of Saskatchewan, which will follow Alberta because that’s how they roll.

I think the US might want Alberta and Saskatchewan. We might also like British Columbia (renamed “Columbia“) if we could filter out the Asian organized crime element, the drug cartels, and the PRC infiltrators from the population. Would Canada take the crooks, welfare cheats,  the gender-confused and leave us the good part of BC? It would connect the Lower 48 with Alaska, and everyone would be happy. The rest could stay in Canada (Gay America).

 

Aircraft Notes (NO ID Required)

The British seem to have always had an eye for bizarre crew members “accommodation”. The more uncomfortable, the better. The PR- 9 was the ultimate Canberra photo-reconnaissance version. Taking the B(I).8 Interdictor as a basis, the guys of English Electric stretched the fuselage, increased the wingspan and added the more powerful Avon R.A.27 Avon engines—all that to improve the already notorious high-altitude performance of the basic Canberra. Just 23 of them were produced and they were not retired from the RAF until 2006.

The PR – 9 retained the cool offset canopy of the B(I).8 and to be a bit more peculiar they conceived this hinged nose to the navigator station and his ejection seat.

 

Identify the Aircraft

1

Be exact, plz

 

2

 

3

 

4

USN Aircraft (hint)