Former State Department employee pleads guilty to $650k+ embezzlement scheme

Our take: Since President Trump was elected in November last year, DOGE and the activities they planned to undertake have been a hot topic of conversation. While no one has said they did not want waste, fraud, and abuse rooted out of the government; some have been skeptical about how much there was to find. That group of people will not like this story.

This week, a former State Department employee pleaded guilty to embezzling over $650,000 across 2 years. What was her high-tech scheme, you ask? She literally had checks cut to herself, in her own name, and then went back into the system and changed the name of the payment in the system to a legitimate vendor.

Over $650,000. For over 2 years. 60 checks. In her own name. Sounds like security and

oversight are rock solid. I’m sure the bureaucrats that have been working in the Governments for decades were all over this and will make sure it never happens again.

Any organization as large as the US government will always have people (both on the inside and the outside) trying to steal from the government. In our opinion, the oversight

and willingness to aggressively find and hold these bad actors accountable is severely

lacking. It is high time we took a different approach. DOGE is a different approach. We will see. how it shakes out, but if we do what we have always done, we will get what we always got.

Melinda French-Gates tells people not to avoid change because it’s uncomfortable

Our take: Successful people learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Melinda French-Gates, ex-wife of Bill Gates, preached this exact concept on a recent podcast.

Gates has experienced this many times in her life, most recently when she decided to divorce her ultra-wealthy and ultra-famous husband, as well as stepping down from the philanthropic foundation that bears her name.

We don’t have much to add to her comments, but we wanted to make sure we shared the article so you could read it. Gates does a good job of providing examples of her experiences and articulates the concepts well. It’s worth reading.

Minnesota Governor Walz says he was picked to “code talk to White guys”

Our take:

We had never heard of Tim Walz until last year. We miss the good old days before we had heard of Walz. The Democratic governor of Minnesota is a strange guy but thinks he is normal. Since his ticket suffered a humiliating loss in the presidential election last November, he has been largely quiet—until recently.

In some misguided attempt to keep himself relevant on the national stage (he was not and is not relevant, no matter how desperately he wants to be), he has launched a “listening tour” across the country. At one of the tour stops at Harvard, Walz told the crowd that he was selected as Kamala Harris’ running mate because he could “code talk to white guys watching football, fixing their trucks.”

What the fuck is this guy talking about? I’m a white guy that watches football and can fix a lot of things on an automobile. I don’t know what “code talk” is. It sounds like something 2 nine-year-olds do when they are playing cowboys and Indians (indigenous people for any politically correct readers). No wonder these guys lost the election. No one knew what the fuck they were talking about half the time. And when we could understand what they were saying, it was crazy and untrue most of the time.

Keep in mind, this is the same guy who claimed to have been in Beijing in 1989 when the Tiananmen Square protests took place (he wasn’t), was the head coach of a state championship-winning football team (he wasn’t), that he retired from the National Guard as a command sergeant major (he didn’t), and denied signing a law that allowed doctors to not treat infants who survived abortions (he did). Hopefully he will go back to Minnesota and “code talk” to the idiots who keep electing this guy to run their state.

Tip of the Day

Your emotions and behavior come from you; they don’t come from anyone else, and once you start accepting responsibility for how you feel and how you behave, it will have a positive impact on all areas of your life.

Quote of the Day

"The problem in America isn't so much what people don't know; the problem is what people think they know that just ain't so." ~ Will Rogers

Former State Department employee pleads guilty to $650k+ embezzlement scheme  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/former-us-state-department-employee-pleads-guilty-to-embezzling-over-650-000/ar-AA1DW70E?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=a625c9457a924cc9ea08dba88b78713b&ei=35

Melinda French-Gates tells people not to avoid change because it’s uncomfortable  https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/stop-avoiding-change-because-it-s-uncomfortable-says-melinda-french-gates-her-tactic-for-being-resilient-in-tough-moments/ar-AA1DVT6A?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=a625c9457a924cc9ea08dba88b78713b&ei=41

Minnesota Governor Walz says he was picked to “code talk to White guys.” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/walz-says-harris-picked-him-for-vp-to-code-talk-to-white-guys/ar-AA1DUJed?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=a625c9457a924cc9ea08dba88b78713b&ei=114