The List

[Some Schmo]

Distaste for immigrants seems to have been the primary motivation for MAGA to have elected Trump.

Sometimes, though, some of those MAGA voters find their own loved ones in the crosshairs.

GOP voters are notorious for changing their views the moment something affects them personally.

It's impossible to feel sorry for selfish pricks. They deserve this.

[canpakes]

The Trump Administration’s efforts related to corruption seems more focused on enabling rather than eliminating it.

Treasury ends ownership reporting rules for U.S. companies

The rules, intended to combat money laundering and other financial crimes, imposed an undue burden on American businesses, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.
August 11, 2026 - By Riley Beggin


Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Democrats said the repeal makes it easier for criminals to use shell companies to avoid detection. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)


The U.S. Treasury Department permanently repealed a rule Tuesday that required businesses formed in the United States to report who owns them to federal financial-crimes investigators.

Foreign companies and pooled investment vehicles (such as mutual funds or hedge funds) must still report information about foreign owners. But they will no longer have to identify Americans who help them register to do business in the U.S., according to a Treasury Department advisory. And Treasury will delete any information it has already collected about U.S. business owners, the advisory said.
In a statement, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the new rule eliminates “a burdensome reporting requirement for millions of law-abiding business owners without compromising our national security.”

Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee quickly thanked Treasury for “standing up for job creators.” But Democrats and some national security experts criticized the move, which they said would make it easier for drug cartels, human traffickers and money launderers to use anonymous shell companies to avoid detection.

Richard Nephew, who led anti-corruption efforts at the State Department during the Biden administration, called the move “a terrible decision that opens up the U.S. to financial crime, money laundering and corruption.”

The reporting requirements were implemented in January 2024 during the Biden administration as part of an effort to curb illicit finance. It stemmed from the Corporate Transparency Act, which was included in the National Defense Authorization Act and enacted into law in 2021 after Congress overrode President Donald Trump’s veto. It required U.S. and foreign companies doing business in the country to report information about “beneficial owners” — people who have “substantial control” over the company or own at least 25 percent of it — to Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

The CTA was supported by law enforcement officials, the American Bankers Association and human rights advocates, who said it would combat the corrupt use of anonymous companies, known as shell companies. But it immediately drew fire from the National Small Business Association, which pushed Congress to repeal the act and sued the Treasury Department, arguing that the reporting requirements disproportionately affected small-business owners.

In March 2025, the Trump administration announced that it would temporarily suspend reporting requirements for U.S. businesses and American owners of foreign companies. On Tuesday, Treasury made that decision permanent. In an FAQ on the new rule, Treasury said FinCEN and federal law enforcement agencies have multiple alternative sources of information to prevent domestic companies from engaging in money laundering or financing terrorism that it does not have for foreign companies.

Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler praised the decision, writing on social media that it will save American businesses $6.7 billion in compliance costs over the next decade.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, called the decision “a gift to cartels, criminals, and U.S. adversaries that exploit shell companies to move millions through our financial system.”

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

[Some Schmo]

Does this surprise anyone?

Putting an R beside your name is basically a criminal confession. Who's an actual honest Republican? I've never met one.

"Honest Republican" is an oxymoron like "jumbo shrimp" or "military intelligence." "Smart Republican" falls into that same category. Criminals are dumb "F"s.

I mean... we're talking about people who enthusiastically voted for a convicted felon, so... do the math. The GOP is a party of broken toys that all belong on misfit island.

[Chap]

This is unbelievable.

Some time last year we had a good laugh on this board about Trump's idiotic statement that electromagnetic launch systems on aircraft carriers were a lousy idea, because he thought magnets would not work if they got water on them. Remember? When we heard no more, I assume that somebody had distracted him from this ignorant little episode.

The Chinese noticed, however since news was circulated about Xi Jinping visiting a new Chinese carrier with an electromagnetic launch system. And they are building more.

Now I see that this recently appeared in the Guardian:

14 Aug 2026
01.06 BST
White House releases Trump's order to install steam catapults on new US aircraft carrier
The White House has released the full text of a memorandum from Donald Trump to Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, ordering a change in the construction of a new US Navy aircraft carrier, to replace the electromagnetic aircraft launch system with steam catapults.

The supposed superiority of steam catapults for launching fighter jets has been an obsession of the president’s since 2017 when, he says, he was convinced by a single conversation with a Navy officer that the electromagnetic system installed in modern aircraft carriers was too complex.

The presidential memorandum, titled, “Rebuilding the United States Navy and America’s Shipbuilding Industrial Base”, claims to address “a series of shipbuilding setbacks stemming from overly complex designs” for US Navy ships.

Section 2 of the memo includes the order to change the construction of the USS Doris Miller, a Ford-class aircraft carrier known as CVN-81, which is already two years behind schedule:

Sec. 2. Restoring Steam and Hydraulic Systems to Carriers. Within 60 days of the date of this memorandum, the Secretary of War, in consultation with the Secretary of the Navy, shall provide to the President, through the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (APNSA), a plan on the required measures to replace the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Weapons Elevators with steam and hydraulic systems for the construction of CVN-81, including timelines and resourcing requirements.

I am amazed that no admiral has resigned in response to this.

[Chap]

Here's Wang Chung's post that started the conversation:

viewtopic.php?p=2913139#p2913139

I can't believe MAGA entrusted this bumbling idiot with our nuclear codes. We are, without a doubt, the laughing stock of the world right now. I really wish I was making this up.

During an incoherent ramble aboard a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier today, President Trump took a courageous stand against two of the world's oldest and most misunderstood conspiracies - magnets and water. Apparently unburdened by the laws of physics, and much to the shock and dismay of the entire world, the orange buffoon delivered an insane lecture suggesting that if one were to simply drop a little glass of water on a high-tech magnetic catapult or elevator, poof, the entire $13 billion system would be instantly disabled.

Not only did Trump fearlessly advocate for replacing the high tech aircraft carrier with 1940s-era steam and hydraulics systems (that the Navy has been retiring over the last 50 years), but Trump also blamed China for the world's reliance on magnets China. Huh/what?! Trump's entire address was a testament to his awesome ability to confidently reject millennia of human knowledge and science in favor of the bizarre and crazy. Trump even asked the top-ranking general to publicly co-sign his plan to build a less-functional aircraft carrier.

From the article:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/Trump-79- ... -the-navy/

Speaking aboard the USS George Washington aircraft carrier during his tour of East Asia, the president appeared to suggest—in a largely incoherent speech—that he is pushing for aircraft carriers to use “steam for the catapults” and hydraulics for elevators, while wrongly claiming that water can disable magnets.

The elderly president was talking about the magnetic catapults used to launch planes from the latest Navy super carriers, the USS Gerald R. Ford class, and the electromagnetic elevators used to move weaponry to the flight deck. Both systems double the speed with which planes can be armed and launched but slowed the delivery and commissioning of the $13 billion flagship of the class.

“You know, the new thing is magnets. So instead of using hydraulic that can be hit by lightning and it’s fine. You take a little glass of water, you drop it on magnets, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Trump said.

“So, you know, the elevators come up in the new carriers—I think I’m going to change it, by the way—they have magnets. Every tractor has hydraulic, every excavator, every excavating machine of any kind has hydraulic. But somebody decided to use magnets.”

The 79-year-old president then stumbled over his words and failed to complete a coherent sentence before moving on and asking the watching troops whether they preferred hydraulics or magnets.

Trump then called out to a “top-ranking general” in the crowd for his opinion before continuing his tirade against the 2,000-year-old technology.

“I’m going to sign an executive order. When we build aircraft carriers, it’s steam for the catapults and it’s hydraulic for the elevators. We’ll never have a problem,” Trump said. “He agrees. Everybody agrees. But, ahh, these people in Washington.”

Trump also suggested that the global reliance on magnets was some kind of conspiracy orchestrated by China.

“You know, China intelligently went and they sort of took a monopoly of the world’s magnets, and nobody needed magnets until they convinced everybody 20 years ago, ‘Let’s all do magnets,’” Trump said. “There were many other ways that the world could have gone.”

Ironically, it was the Chinese who first made use of magnets as far back as 200 B.C.

Trump’s hatred of magnets even dates back to at least January 2024, when he once again pushed the bizarre claim, “Give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that’s the end of the magnets,” during a campaign speech in Iowa.

[Chap]

And here is my reply:

viewtopic.php?p=2913153#p2913153

Responses to Trumps "water and magnets' speech'

Level 0: Yup, utter crap. He doesn't know what he is talking about. Water does not stop magnets operating. The use of magnetic fields on aircraft carriers to power launch systems, elevators and so on, is just fine. May I point out that sailors have known for about 1,000 years (starting in China) that you can use a magnetic compass at sea for direction finding, and that water does not mess it up?

Level 1: Just a little bit of physics: Trump may have heard from somewhere that, like all materials, water does react to a magnetic field. That is not untrue, but in the case of water (and most other substances) the effect is very weak indeed, and for practical purposes is irrelevant in dealing with the extremely strong magnetic fields that act in electric motors, magnetic launch systems and elevators. As usual, his narcissistic self-confidence and tendency to react with hostility to any contradiction of the first idea that he lets into his head means that anybody in the White House who knows about such matters will be too scared of losing their job to tell him. If he ever gets to the stage of preparing an executive order banning the use of magnets on aircraft carriers, one hopes that a technical expert high in the military will be prepared to take early retirement as the price of sparing the USA from being made to look like a country governed by morons.

Level 2: Some classical physics, of the kind that in my country should be within the capacity of any teenager taking a physics major in high school. Please note that this explanation has a warning on the packet saying "This is a simplified picture, of heuristic value only. At this level, you really need quantum physics to understand what is happening, and to 'do the math' of getting quantitative answers."

(a) Basically, a magnetic field is the consequence of an electric current going round in a circle. Take your right hand, bend your fingers so they are part of a circle. Then if the fingers point round in the direction of the electric current (thought of as being a movement of positive charge), the direction of the magnetic field produced is in the direction of your thumb.

(b) Atoms may, in classical terms, be thought of as having (negatively charged) electrons orbiting round the massive (positively charged) nucleus at the centre of the atom, just like planets orbit round the sun. So each orbiting electron is a little circle of electric current, and will generate a magnetic field. Because the electron is a negative charge, it has the same effect as a positive current in the opposite direction to its movement. So to apply the rule in (a), curl the fingers of your right hand against the direction of the electron moving round its orbit, and your thumb will indicate the direction of the magnetic field generated.

(c) Electron orbits in atoms with even numbers of electrons come in pairs, where the directions of electron movements are in opposite directions. So the magnetic fields generated cancel out. Such materials can however be made to show a very weak reaction called 'diamagnetism' if they are put in a magnetic field, so that (for reasons I shall not try to explain), the electrons going one way round the atom speed up a little bit, and those going round the the atom in the other direction tend to slow down, and the magnetic cancelling out effect of pairs of electrons is put slightly out of balance. So the magnetic field applied to the material does have the effect of making the material create a weak magnetic field. This weak magnetic field will act in the opposite direction to the outside magnetic field. As a result, the material will be very slightly pushed away from the device (such as a piece of magnetised iron) creating the magnetic field. Water is weakly diamagnetic, and you can see the small repulsion effect between a magnet and some water in a plastic cup floating on a polystyrene 'raft' in the video shown on this page. (The words are in French, but just watch the video). This is, I think, the effect that Trump may have heard of. But it is negligible for all practical engineering purposes such as the powered devices in aircraft carriers listed above.

(d) If however there is an odd number of electrons in an atom, each atom will have a small magnetic field due to the effect of the 'unpaired' electron. But pairs of atoms tend to arrange themselves so that their magnetic fields cancel out, so there is no overall magnetic effect. But if the substance is put in a magnetic field, the atoms tend to change their alignment slightly so that their magnetic fields move towards lining up and tend to reinforce the applied field. This effect is called 'paramagnetism', and is shown by materials such as aluminum. Of course all the atoms in the material also react like the atoms in (c) - but the paramagnetic reaction is stronger, and more than cancels out the diamagnetic effect. As a result a piece of aluminum will be slightly attracted by a magnet. This effect is not noticeable in everyday life.

(e) Finally we come to the well-known effect called 'ferromagnetism' (from Latin ferrum = 'iron'). This is basically paramagnetism on steroids. Atoms in materials such as iron, nickel, cobalt, their alloys, and some alloys of rare-earth metals. have unpaired electrons, so that each atom generates a magnetic field of its own. However (for reasons I shall not try to explain) these atoms have a tendency to settle down so that they do not cancel out each other's fields, but reinforce them. OBVIOUS QUESTION ALERT: why isn't every lump of iron a magnet? Answer: because as the iron cools from its molten state and soldifies, the atoms settled down into little clusters of aligned atoms, and these clusters (domains) have fields in different directions, so they cancel out. However, in a strong magnetic field the domains with favourably aligned atoms tend to grow, by recruiting atoms from neighbouring domains, and when you switch off the external magnetic field the lump of iron retains an overall magnetic effect.

SUMMARY: All atoms, including those in water, exhibit the very weak diamagnetic effect if you put them in a magnetic field - this will tend to push them away weakly from a nearby magnet. However, in materials with an odd number of orbital electrons, this effect is cancelled out by the considerably stronger paramagnetic effect, which will attract them (still rather weakly) towards a nearby magnet. In materials with a ferromagnetic response (think iron and a few others, including rare earth metals) the basic paramagnetic effect becomes much, much stronger. If we are thinking about power engineering, ferromagnetism is the only important effect, and we can forget about water completely.

[PHYSICSGUY: Like you, I should mostly be doing other things than giving science lessons to DJ Trump, which he will never read. On a first read through, the above text looks OK to me. But please check it through and correct/criticise/supplement freely.]