by me, Kerry Burgess, 01/30/2025 12:45 PM
That is not even the least bit funny.
There is absolutely no artistic-merit to THEM creating that pattern in my original-work
I am not a government employee.
I never even had a government email address when I was active-duty enlisted US Navy until 05/14/1990
I debated referencing here the extensive, past comments I made. I have the sense this blog-post by me will be especially ignored after reading the first few lines.
You monkeys infesting this planet Earth have no intellectual curiosity.
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/28/trump-federal-workers-quit-severance
AXIOS
Updated Jan 28, 2025 -
Business
Trump offering buyouts to all federal workers
Marc Caputo, Emily Peck
The White House issued a memo Tuesday offering to pay federal workers who don't want to return to the office through Sept. 30, as long as they resign by Feb. 6.
by me, Kerry Burgess, posted by me: 5:31 PM March 04, 2020 Astro_Spook @Kerry_W_Burgess
I was debating writing about this and just moments ago I downgraded the notion to something I may or may not do later
A moment later I got an email from a VA administration distribution list I had signed up for at some point and that changed my mind to put some work on it
The notion centers around a sleeping dream I had earlier today and then the work I put into looking at Google Maps
There was no location info in the sleeping dream from today
The only specific detail I had was that, because of some change, I could now shop at a nearby Safeway
The Safeway had become convenient for two reasons
One is that I had seemed to move my residence to a place closer to the shop and its location was convenient because I don't have a car, as I did not in the dream, seemingly
When I went in there, I was showing a woman my i.d. There was more to it but that's all that seems important now
Then it got weird
There was something very unusual about one of my i.d. cards
She went behind a c.r.t. screen computer monitor and I was seeing strange images
On that screen I started seeing images of people and that was weird
Then the images became a composite with her face on it
And some other weird stuff
I walked around behind the c.r.t. monitor but she had disappeared
That was about the time I woke up and got out of bed
There were several others during the time I was sleeping but that's the only one I can recall now. Was fairly vivid
I decided to record my thoughts about it because of the content of an email I just got here in the real world
Then there's the observations I made on the internet after waking up
I was left with the sense of Redmond
That's the city I lived at in the Seattle suburbs in 2004
My first thought was of a grocery store about a block away from where I lived until 3/1/2004
I thought of Safeway but I quickly remembered that's a QFC
I couldn't very well in my mind visualize the location of Safeway
So I searched Google and there are two nearby
Neither very familiar to me now
So I looked at the one nearest where I once lived
Then I looked at the Google Streetview images - and Eureka - that was immediately familiar
I had completely forgotten about that
That Safeway parking lot includes the Starbucks I made world-famous with my blog posts
That was the place as I had reminisced about the specific calendar day 02/07/2004
That was the day after I quit my full-time employment at Microsoft Corporation
I went in there that Saturday morning, back when I used to waste money on coffee, and there was some zombie banter
"After all that, he leaves", I heard a zombie comment behind me as I stood in line waiting for my coffee
by me, Kerry Burgess, September 02, 2005
And I was overhearing people saying things that stuck in my mind. A person in line behind me at Starbucks on February 7, 2004, (I remember the date because I quit Microsoft the day before) comments to another person, in the only words they shared, that "after all that, he quits." I thought about that for a long time.
http://articles.latimes.com/1988-04-18/news/mn-1005_1_iranian-oil-platforms
Los Angeles Times
U.S. Attacks Iran Frigates, Oil Platforms, Sinks Boat : American Helicopter Is Missing
April 18, 1988 Times Wire Services
MANAMA, Bahrain U.S. warships and aircraft destroyed two of Iran's Persian Gulf oil platforms today, sank a patrol boat and damaged two Iranian frigates that fired missiles at American planes.
Iranian naval forces responded with attacks on Arab oil facilities, U.S., British and Cypriot commercial vessels and on a press helicopter chartered by NBC.
It was the most intense direct U.S.-Iran conflict since President Reagan ordered last summer that Navy forces be strengthened in the gulf, where Iran and Iraq have been at war since September, 1980.
Later today Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci said that a two-man U.S. attack helicopter was missing and "we are concerned."
Defense Department officials said naval forces were searching for the Cobra chopper, a Marine aircraft that had been stationed aboard the cruiser Wainwright.
Washington called destruction of the oil platforms a "measured response" to the explosion of a mine, allegedly planted by Iran, that blew a hole in an American frigate last week and wounded 10 sailors.
Reagan said today's operations were a warning to Iran that "we will protect our ships and, if they threaten us, they'll pay a price. We undertook this action to make sure the Iranians have no illusions about the cost of irresponsible behavior."
No casualties were reported among U.S. forces. Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency said there were deaths and injuries aboard the platforms but it did not say how many.
Gave Advance Warning
On Reagan's instructions, about 9 a.m. gulf time, two groups of Navy warships struck the Iranian oil platforms Sassan and Sirri, 100 miles apart in the southern Persian Gulf.
They gave the Iranians advance warning to evacuate the platforms, which have been used as speedboat bases for attacks on neutral shipping. Reagan ordered the attacks as retaliation for the mine that holed the frigate Samuel B. Roberts on Thursday.
Both platforms were destroyed and left ablaze, one by naval gunfire and the other by explosives that were placed on it, according to statements in Washington.
The Iranian news agency said U.S. warships hit the Sassan platform at 9 a.m. and, 23 minutes later, the Sirri platform off nearby Sirri Island.
IRNA said Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati wrote a letter of protest to U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar that said, in part: "Iran will never submit to the policy of violence and intimidation and will definitely respond to the cowardly U.S. attacks."
Gunboats on Rampage
After the U.S. attacks, Iranian gunboats went on a rampage in the southern gulf. They attacked oil facilities and commercial vessels at the Mubarak oil field off the Sharjah emirate and, hours later, a Cypriot freighter leaving the United Arab Emirates with a load of fertilizer.
Carlucci said a Navy helicopter was fired on during the raid on the platforms but was not hit. Iranians shot at a press helicopter carrying an NBC-TV crew and an Associated Press photographer but missed.
AP photographer Norbert Schiller said the "Iranians fired at least half a dozen .50-caliber rounds and small-arms fire" at the helicopter.
Two Iranian warplanes tried to harass a U.S. warship but the ship fired missiles and the aircraft fled, shipping sources reported.
They said an Iranian patrol boat fired at the Wainwright, one of the ships attacking Sassan and Sirri, but did not hit it.
https://www.history.navy.mil/content/dam/nhhc/about-us/leadership/hgram_pdfs/H-Gram_018.pdf
Operation Earnest Will
Operation Earnest Will, the U.S. Navy escort of re-flagged Kuwaiti tankers, officially commenced in July 1987. However, on 25 May, U.S. Navy ships did provide escort for a Kuwaitiflagged cargo ship that was transporting U.S. arms to Bahrain. Operation Earnest Will would last from 24 July 1987 to 26 September 1988 and was the largest naval convoy operation since World War II.
H-018-1: No Higher Honor - The Road to Operation Praying Mantis, 18 April 1988
H-Gram 018, Attachment 1
Samuel J. Cox, Director NHHC
April 2018
Chandler opted to keep Wainwright's bow pointed at Joshan to minimize radar cross section. The Iranian Harpoon's seeker either failed to activate or was lured off by chaff, and the missile passed close aboard down Wainwright's starboard side. Bagley also fired a Harpoon at Joshan, which missed. The U.S. ships then sank the crippled patrol boat with guns. The Joshan suffered 15 sailors killed; among the severely wounded was Captain Mallek with a severed leg. While the surface action was going on, two Iranian F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers were orbiting too close for comfort and Wainwright engaged them with two extended-range Standard missiles.
From 11/4/1986 ( as me, Kerry Burgess, my official enlisted US Navy documents includes: Date Completed - US Navy Fire Control Technician Class "A", Service School Command, Naval Training Center, Great Lakes, Illinois, - leading to permanent assignment until 1990 to CF-division, Missile Plot - guided-missiles Fire Control Computers Complex (UNIVAC digital-computers Mk152 Terrier System for, primarily, SM2-ER {Extended Range} Standard Missiles ordnance), USS Wainwright CG-28, US Navy, while enlisted paygrade E-5, designated Fire Controlman Petty Officer Second Class (FC2) ) To 2/7/2025 ( ) is 13975 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 2/6/2004 ( as Kerry Burgess my final day as full-time employee of Microsoft Corporation in Seattle beginning 12/07/1998 ) is 13975 days
From 9/17/1965 ( premiere USA TV series "Hogan's Heroes" ) To 12/23/2024 ( Joe Biden, 46th President of USA: Press Release: Bill Signed: H.R. 5009 - Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement ) is 21647 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 2/7/2025 ( ) is 21647 days
From 1/8/2004 ( ) To 2/7/2025 ( ) is 7701 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 12/3/1986 ( ) is 7701 days
From 10/28/1994 ( premiere USA film "Stargate" ) To 2/7/2025 ( ) is 11060 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 2/13/1996 ( illustrations referenced here, below ) is 11060 days
From 8/22/2006 ( me, Kerry Burgess - illustration, referenced here ) To 2/7/2025 ( ) is 6744 days
6744 = 3372 + 3372
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 1/26/1975 ( premiere USA TV series episode "The Six Million Dollar Man"::"Return of the Robot Maker" ) is 3372 days
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/28/trump-federal-workers-quit-severance
AXIOS
Updated Jan 28, 2025 - Business
Trump offering buyouts to all federal workers
Marc Caputo, Emily Peck
The White House issued a memo Tuesday offering to pay federal workers who don't want to return to the office through Sept. 30, as long as they resign by Feb. 6.
Why it matters: The action, first reported by Axios, marks an acceleration in President Trump's already unprecedented purge of the federal workforce.
Driving the news: The Office of Personnel Management described the offer as administrative leave with pay and benefits.
More information was shared by OPM later on Tuesday online in a memo titled, "A Fork in the Road."
State of play: Employees who wish to resign were told: "1) Select "Reply" to this email. You must reply from your government account. A reply from an account other than your .gov or .mil account will not be accepted. 2)Type the word "Resign" into the body of this reply email. Hit "Send."
The subject line, and some of the wording, echoed an email Elon Musk sent to Twitter employees in 2022 giving them a similar ultimatum: to either leave, or stay and become "hardcore," The Verge points out.
Musk himself appeared to acknowledge this in a post on X Tuesday evening.
Zoom in: "The government-wide email being sent today is to make sure that all federal workers are on board with the new administration's plan to have federal employees in office and adhering to higher standards. We're five years past COVID and just 6 percent of federal employees work full-time in office. That is unacceptable," a senior administration official tells Axios.
The White House expects 5% to 10% of federal employees to accept the offer, which would potentially mean hundreds of thousands of people.
The administration projects the buyouts could ultimately save taxpayers up to $100 billion a year.
The offer applies to all full-time federal employees, except for military personnel, the Postal Service, and those working in immigration enforcement or national security.
The big picture: The memo is just the latest step in the White House's unprecedented move to push career federal workers out of their jobs, and, observers say, replace them with loyalists — a return to a patronage system that federal law sought to banish more than a century ago.
On Monday, the administration offered more details on its plan to reclassify thousands of federal civil servants, stripping them of legal protections from firing, in a memo to agency heads.
The executive order and the guidance is a way to make it easier to fire civil servants and turn what had been career jobs into patronage jobs, said Sharon Parrott, head of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a former Office of Management and Budget appointee under Obama.
The moves "will almost surely lead many expert, knowledgeable career civil servants to withhold their best advice," Parrott tells Axios.
Between the lines: Many federal workers are already feeling scared about the administration's crackdown on DEI, its return-to-office policy and the reclassification efforts.
That unease could increase take-up on this new offer.
The offer could also spur the most talented federal employees with the best private-sector prospects to leave, according to Terry Clower, an economist who studies the capital region at George Mason University.
"So how does that work if you're trying to accelerate government efficiency if who you drive away are your best workers?" Clower tells Axios.
What they're saying: The largest federal employee union, known as AFGE, denounced the buyouts.
"Between the flurry of anti-worker executive orders and policies, it is clear that the Trump administration's goal is to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to," its president Everett Kelley said in a statement.
Reality check: The White House claim that only 6% of federal workers are in-person is widely disputed, and contradicted by data released by the Biden administration last month.
State of play: Earlier on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the president has the authority to fire federal employees.
More from Axios:
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt vows to hold media accountable for "lies"
Trump's funding freezing temporarily halted by federal judge
Scoop: Pete Buttigieg taking "serious look" at Michigan Senate race in 2026
Editor's note: This story has been updated with confirmation from the Office of Personnel Management, details of an OPM memorandum and further context.
by Kerry Burgess, June 15, 2019
But what happened is that the person I was talking to gave me the key to the house. I can stay there right now. And I did. And that was a great feeling in the sleeping dream. I saw myself in there. I could see the landscape out the windows. I could envision the layout of the rooms in the house. I heard a radio broadcast. The broadcast was about the weather in Denver.
The reason that all seems so profound is that it is a distinct variation on a recurring dream I have had many times in the last 20 years. But until today, the variation was always about that house I owned in South Carolina. In that recurring sleeping dream, I would discover unexpectedly that I still owned that house. But I had forgotten about it. Suddenly, I would discover that I still owned it and I could go there at that very moment and live there again. I always loved that feeling. I don't actually care about that house in South Carolina.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/10/us/ex-spy-chief-is-convicted-of-lying-to-congress-on-iran-contra-affair.html?pagewanted=all
The New York Times
Ex-Spy Chief Is Convicted of Lying To Congress on Iran-Contra Affair
By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: December 10, 1992
WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 - A Federal jury today found Clair E. George, once a top Central Intelligence Agency official, guilty on two felony counts of lying to Congress about his knowledge of the Iran-contra scandal. The jurors acquitted Mr. George of five other counts of lying to Congress and investigators about the Reagan Administration's arms sales to Iran and its weapons pipeline to Central America.
The verdict came on the 11th day of deliberations in Mr. George's second trial on the charges brought by the independent prosecutor for Iran-contra matters. The first proceeding ended in a mistrial in August when the jury reported it was hopelessly deadlocked.
The resolution of the George trial is the latest event in the six-year quest by Congress and the independent prosecutor to discover what happened and who was responsible for the scandal that consumed and tarnished the final years of Ronald Reagan's Presidency. By all accounts, Mr. George's trial and conviction added little to that knowledge.
Mr. George, 62 years old, once headed the C.I.A.'s operations directorate, which is responsible for clandestine operations around the world. While he seemed largely unaffected, even cheerful, at the trial, Mr. George was tense and his face was flushed as he entered the courtroom today. Tense, and a Flinch
As he heard the jury acquit him of the first three charges of lying to Congress he stood stiffly. When the clerk announced "guilty" on the fourth count, he flinched. He was also convicted of the fifth count and acquitted of the remaining two.
Judge Royce C. Lamberth set sentencing for Feb. 18. Mr. George faces up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines on each of the two counts, but it is considered unlikely that he will be sent to jail. His lawyer, Richard A. Hibey, said he was planning an appeal and had several grounds on which to do so.
The most senior official to be charged in connection with the Reagan Administration's secret sale of arms to Iran and diversion of profits to the Nicaraguan rebels is Caspar W. Weinberger, Mr. Reagan's Defense Secretary. Mr. Weinberger is to go on trial next month on charges that he lied to investigators about Iran-contra deliberations in the President's inner circle.
The most lasting effect of today's verdict may be on the fractious and distrustful relationship between Congress and the intelligence agencies. Intelligence officials may now find testifying before Congress a far more perilous business than they have in the past.
In essence, the jurors found that Mr. George gave crafty and misleading answers in the final months of 1986 to two Congressional committees. The panels were trying to find out about the secret arms sale to Iran and the diversion of some profits to the rebels, who were known as contras.
"This marks the first time that a senior C.I.A. official was convicted of felony offenses for crimes committed while he was in his position at the C.I.A.," said Craig E. Gillen, the chief prosecutor. Mr. Gillen said the broad lesson of the trial is that "Congress expects and deserves full and truthful answers from the intelligence agencies."
The secrecy of the Reagan Administration's effort to supply arms to the contras at a time when Congress had forbidden it to do so began to unravel in October 1986 when a cargo plane resupplying the contras was shot down over Nicaragua. The lone surviving crew member, Eugene Hasenfus, said at a news conference in Managua that he had been working for two C.I.A. officers, one of whom he identified as Max Gomez.
According to trial testimony, Max Gomez was an alias of Felix Rodriguez, a former C.I.A. employee.
One charge on which Mr. George was convicted was making a false statement to the House Permanent Committee on Intelligence on Oct. 14, 1986, when he said he had no idea about Felix Rodriguez's role in the resupply operation. Prosecutors presented testimony that he had known that Mr. Rodriguez was working with Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North, then a White House aide, to bring military supplies to the contras. The prosecutors said Mr. George had been trying to conceal the involvement of Colonel North.
Mr. George was also convicted of perjury for telling the Senate Intelligence Committee on Dec. 3, 1986 that he did not know what role either Colonel North or Richard V. Secord had played in providing funds to the contras.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0760197/
IMDb
The Apprentice
S1.E1
Meet the Billionaire
Episode aired Jan 8, 2004
The inaugural episode of the series has virtually all the same components that propelled it to 15 seasons. There are 16 candidates in a 13 week job interview with the promise the winner gets a "6 digit salary" in the Trump organization.
Donald Trump ... Self
Safe House (1998)
Dr. Simon: [ to Sowell's daughter: ] With extreme paranoia so early on in the disease, he could go fast.
[Scene change]
Mace Sowell: You're taking the same route home!
Michelle Sowell-Ross: I know, Dad. I'm sure we weren't followed.
Mace Sowell: Bullshit! You can't be sure of anything! They look for patterns. Sometimes they have teams of 10, 15 cars tailing someone.
Michelle Sowell-Ross: Dad, doesn't it strike you as strange that Mom and I never knew you were in the C.I.A.?
Mace Sowell: D.I.A., D.I.A.!
Stargate (1994)
(from internet transcript)
EXT DESERT, DAY
INT CAVES
[Skaara starts drawing on one of the cave walls. Daniel warms his hands by the fire embers. Everyone else is asleep.]
DANIEL
What are you drawing?
SKAARA
The day of our victory.
[Daniel sees the drawing is the pyramid with three circles for the three moons. He stands up and comes closer. He begins drawing himself.]
DANIEL
(drawing lines)
Connect the moons. This is the symbol for this planet. That's it. The point of origin.
[Kawalski approaches.]
KAWALSKI
What are you doing?
DANIEL
I found it!
KAWALSKI
What are you talking about?
DANIEL
The seventh symbol. We're going home!
- by me, Kerry Wayne Burgess, posted by me: 2:38 PM Pacific-timezone USA Thursday 01/30/2025
