In a court filing last night, the Director of the Office of Administration in the Trump administration, Joshua Fisher, clarified the government position of billionaire Elon Musk.
Heather writes "...the Director of the Office of Administration in the Trump administration, Joshua Fisher, clarified the government position of billionaire Elon Musk. In a sworn declaration to the court, Fisher identified Musk as “a Senior Advisor to the President.” He explained: “In his role as a Senior Advisor to the President, Mr. Musk has no greater authority than other senior White House advisors. Like other senior White House advisors, Mr. Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself. Mr. Musk can only advise the President and communicate the President’s directives.”
Joshua Fisher lied.
And based on the rest of Heather's reporting, it is obvious the Trump administration is running a "shell game" here. Every time someone asks a question designed to hold them accountable - including Judge Chutkan - they say what they need to say to deflect blame.
Musk and his people are OBJECTIVELY causing chaos throughout the government. They are NOT "reporting to Trump who then can do whatever he wants to with their 'advice'." I pray Judge Chutkan says "I have had enough of the bullshit" and throws the bunch of them in jail... with orders to "take some time to think about what the truth is".
The game Trump & Musk is playing MUST BE SHUT DOWN... like any illegal shell game would be if found being run at a carnival!
While cases proceed through the courts, we have the court of public opinion. Shine a light as much as possible on the DOGE crew (and complain if their names are not included in the lawsuits):
When DOGE illegally entered the Aid development offices and struggled with security officers, the officers should have pulled their weapons out and shot the entruders dead just like the Capital police’s should have defended the Capital on Jan 6 by laying a volley of shots at the front line of the insurrectionists. This is the only lesson they understood.
The TRO was denied, but Chutkan will take testimony and give both of the parties an opportunty to be heard.
The standard for a TRO is the plaintiffs must convince the judge that they will suffer immediate irreparable injury unless the order is issued. If the judge is convinced that a temporary restraining order is necessary, she may issue the order immediately, without informing the other parties and without holding a hearing. Requires "clear and convincing evidence" of harm. I wasn't there, but I bet Chutkan did not receive clear and convincing evidence, undermined buy Fisher's testimony.
To seek a permanent injunction, a plaintiff must pass the four-step test: (1) that the plaintiff has suffered an irreparable injury; (2) that remedies available at law, such as monetary damages, are inadequate to compensate for the injury; (3) that the remedy in equity is warranted upon consideration of the balance
Joshua Fisher could be called as an adverse witness, as if on cross examination. Was Musk sworn? When? By whom?
Musk seems to be operating with an undue level of independence and with no one seriously monitoring the actions of his team. An indication of this was the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt's response to a question from the press corps about potential conflicts of interest affecting Musk. She said that if he identified such conflicts affecting his many government contracts he would "excuse (sic.) himself". As legal experts subsequently pointed out, the mere fact that he is allowed to police those conflicts of interest himself was itself a conflict of interest!! It seems to me likely that Musk and his team may not have been properly empowered to conduct this exercise of this scale and if so the courts will eventually get to the bottom of this.
Musk can be called a a witness and subjected to cross examination. I'm sure he has been investigated for every government contract he has ever had. Every agency has an audit procedure.
All his public companies also have to be aujdited. One of the categories is "contingent liabilities." I don't know this as a fact, I bet he knows what his exposure is/has been and he has insurance to cover.
AI says Musk has been involved in multiple shareholder derivative lawsuits, including ones related to Tesla's SolarCity acquisition and Musk's compensation package. https://www.lieffcabraser.com/securities/tesla-musk/
Tesla Inc. must pay $176 million in legal fees to the shareholder attorneys who challenged four years of pay for its board of directors, including Elon Musk, a judge ruled Wednesday.
"Elon Musk will face coordinated litigation—rather than a flurry of separate lawsuits by Tesla Inc. shareholders—over his alleged insider trades, Twitter Inc. acquisition, and artificial intelligence side projects.
A Delaware judge Monday combined multiple suits filed against Musk and other Tesla board members last spring, in the days and weeks before the world’s richest person moved its most valuable automaker to Texas. Musk, now serving as a government cost-cutting czar in Donald Trump’s second presidential administration, has a net worth of $428 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
"Musk shifted Tesla’s corporate home in June, five months after the chief judge of Delaware’s Chancery Court struck down his $56 billion CEO pay package. The judge in December stood by her initial ruling—defying nearly a year of social media attacks from the tech titan—and handed $345 million to the shareholder attorneys who led the litigation. The compensation case is now finally headed for appeal after a six-year drama in the elite business court."
"The lawsuits filed against Musk on Tesla’s way out the door—between late May and mid-June—represent a final effort to hold Musk accountable in Delaware for his alleged wrongdoing at Tesla’s helm.
"They involve claims that the billionaire stole corporate opportunities when he bought the former Twitter and started a new business, xAI, after failing to engineer a merger between Tesla and OpenAI Inc., the artificial intelligence pioneer he’s now suing. The suits also say Musk sold billions worth of Tesla stock based on inside information while manipulating the market".
What I find truly stunning in all of Musk's cuts to federal funding and access to databases is how Congress is watching Musk rip away their Constitutionally mandated job of holding the purse strings. Johnson (the pussy) is applauding Musk's cuts and helping put the cuts into a budget. The Democrats are acting as though they're powerless to push back and are confused by the whole situtation.
Be careful about giving the Trump/Musk Regime an excuse to declare martial law. They are itching for it and posts like this are the kind of thing the Homeland Security will use as justification. Not that they'll need much. But be aware of the end game here.
Trump does not own the military, Congress does. We do take an oath to a president or party, our Oath is to the Constitution of the United States. Truly I tell you, there are many old Veterans today (to which I am One) that would stand up and defend democracy!
I have wondered why DOGE has been allowed to enter any of these government offices. Lock the doors, do not allow entry. If DOGE tries to break in, guards must stand their ground by all means necessary. If employees get termination notices ignore them. Let’s see how long the DOGE team lasts after the first has lost his life.
Sounds good, Joanne, except that in addition to easily—ignored termination notices, employees are locked out of computer systems as well. Tough to “ignore” that.
Unfortunately, I think that is what it is going to come to. Trump and his minions already have the blood of thousands on the hands. And they are preparing for more.
Penny, my husband and I were just discussing this last night. We feel tensions building and this is heading to some kind of explosion. We did not speculate as to exactly what. We do now read about many death star voters who are angry and expressing regret. Also lots of fools are still defending this and I would bet that they have not felt the heat....yet.
I suspect that is one of the reasons that Trump pardoned all the January 6 folks. He wants his army out so they can re-group and get ready for the next assault!
Steady on, Bill! Let's give the courts a chance to undertake a review of what exactly is happening. It may well be that no one else in the administration is monitoring what Musk and his team are actually doing on a day-to-day basis and if this is the case then it will substantially weaken the government's case that it is acting reasonably within its powers.
So you are saying the Secretaries of Treasury, Energy, Transportation, et.al, are not aware of Trump's day-to-day decimation of our government? Are they illiterate and deaf? Why did so many Democrats vote for these incompetent men and women if they could not understand and lead?
CNN recently interviewed Kristi Noem, secretary of Homeland Security, about Musk's activities and she seemed clueless (although I concede this might be a default position in her case).
Russell the Gnome is a dog and pony show and is dumb as a rock. Since my husband has Lakota ancestry, we have lots of relatives in South Dakota. The ones we have contact with can't stand her. When I am feeling extra angry about her, I think about a gravel pit.
But they did. He was indicted on 93 criminal charges in four separate jurisdictions and ended up with a criminal conviction for fraud on his record, although he was not punished. And it infuriated him so much that he's spent the best part of a month in office taking his revenge instead of governing the country. Inflation is rising, none of his foreign policy initiatives have so far been successful or even widely supported and once again he's facing a battery of legal challenges. More and more members of his administration have beaten a retreat to friendly faces at Fox News to try to explain the administration's strategies as the chaos unleashed by Trump and Musk unfolds around them.
Trump NEVER had any desire to govern. He only needed to be "president" so he could avoid jail. He's just a place-holder, and his co-conspirators are calling all the shots.
While I agree emotionally, doing that would have subjected them not only to loss of their jobs, but to relentless prosecution by Trump’s “Justice” Department.
I disagree-their movement does not need more martyrs, as the protester on Jan 6th was framed, but arrests and prosecutions of the wrong-doers should be vigorously pursued.
Okay, they are slow hackers whose only weapon was a flash drive with the hacker’s hardware … shoot at the legs. Or in the foot, they are slow musky ‘little shits’ and don’t deserve to die.
WARNING!!; For the second time in recent months the NYTimes' (Legacy media? Right!) on line e-mail this morning included a TWO-YEAR-OLD Paul Krugman column I should have remembered he was no longer writing for them. I missed the tiny 2023 date and read it assuming the "administration" Krugman referred to in the opening line was Trump's. The current upheaval is bad enough without the Times contributing to it with this kind of inexcusable editorial error. My apologies for interrupting the flow here. [Once a lifeguard, always a lifeguard!!]
Hendrik, nice catch. We do take the Times. I like to do the puzzles and read the book review and some other things. My husband reads it more seriously and at this point, I sometimes wonder why.
When government data—ranging from internal agency records to detailed bureaucratic interactions—is combined with commercial and social media data, the result is an extraordinarily comprehensive picture of individual lives. Elon Musk’s ventures, such as the integration of DOGE into new data mining projects, are purported to access this kind of information. Such data often includes not only basic demographic details but also complex behavioral, financial, and political tendencies. When these diverse datasets converge, they enable the creation of hyper-detailed digital profiles that can predict individual behavior with high accuracy.
This powerful combination can be leveraged to manipulate public opinion and behavior down the road through highly personalized messaging. With access to government data, the information gathered can reveal insights into how citizens interact with public institutions, comply with regulations, or even their proximity to politically sensitive areas and issues. When such insights are merged with data from commercial transactions and social media activity, it opens the door to microtargeting strategies that can craft messages tailored to exploit an individual’s specific vulnerabilities or ideological leanings. Political campaigns or other influential entities could, for instance, design persuasive content that reinforces pre-existing biases or subtly nudges individuals toward certain decisions—ranging from voting behavior to broader public policy stances.
Moreover, the integration of government data intensifies concerns around privacy and consent. Unlike commercial or social media data, which users may inadvertently agree to share through complex terms and conditions, government data is often collected without the same level of transparency or user control. This raises profound legal and ethical questions: Is it acceptable for public agencies to allow private companies to access and combine their data with other data streams? And even if it is legally permissible under current regulations, what are the ethical implications of such deep intrusion into personal lives? The potential manipulation through these means not only undermines democratic processes by subverting informed, autonomous decision-making but also risks creating a society where behavior is engineered through algorithmic nudges and targeted messaging—a scenario that fundamentally challenges individual freedom and privacy.
Exactly Ted. When the breadth of that data is combined with other sources (like the one Musk already has) and run through AI, it'll take on a whole new dimension. It'll make what Cambridge Analytica had look like cave drawings...
After doing a lot of thinking and reading, I have a conclusion forming that needs vetting.
The government data confirms your real name, address, Social Security number, etc. you can cross reference this across all social media records that are just your IP address to your phone or your computer. This way the algorithms can hone in very deliberately on an individual basis.
Great point. Dr Steven Hassan actually has a presentation on politicians using fear as a motivator towards apathy and inaction. It’s worth checking out his Substack. His area of study is cult leaders and mind control
The inaction in response to a fear response is used in “training” horses in some (horrible) systems. Eventually they just shut down. It is pathetic to see in animals. Learned helplessness is awful to see in people.
Here in a pair of back and forth comments is what is so frustrating to me about this substack technology. Here I am trying to respond and onlyu now do I realize I'm in my e-mail, not HRC's Substack and I'mnot at all sure it will get to where you can see it. It looks good, but I don't know until I hit 'send' whether it will go . . .
The riotous spe table of Trump's rule from the beginning has resembled a circus show--the young new Republican electeds were a new act,
a collection of clowns exploding from a tiny car in the center ring. Excesses abounded, in-your-face impolitic, impolite confrontations of both individuals and policies, replacing historic, boundary-observing professional political decorum. Everything since has been accomplished by whackamole feverishness. This general theme--purposeful explosive disconcertation and intended confusion, endless revolving catch- me-if-you-can antics--has remained completely consistent as their operating modality. It worked for them. They won because the Democratic Party sat in the bleachers, transfixed and stupified silent. The MSM media were barkers outside the tent, selling, selling, selling. Since Trump took the helm, the shclock show has accelerated. Musk has operated in nano speed, moving super fast, accompanied by unconventional
method, that has created a blizzard of confusion just to catch up with his moves. All this to say that this has all been intentionally created. On purpose. Identification of the actual people behind this is the key to the coup. Not the players out front but the unseen planners. They must be named.
We know Cambridge Analytica mined Facebook accounts to manipulate the Brexit fiasco in the UK. Given what's happening now and the willingness for 1/3 of Americans to vote for Trump, do you really think the privacy setting on social media accounts prevented Musk and other actors from using that data to undermine the last election?
Well said! Richard Reich warned in one of his articles on Substack, to be careful of supporting boycotts and protests even now. Because the DOGEs are trying to influence us. Muskrat said he's going to "destroy the woke mind." He can't change my core values! It's important to remember, as incredible as AI is, it is still artificial. It does not think like an authentic human being. It can't steal our personal integrity. It can sow confusion and division but it can't change our fundamental nature.
The judge’s comments in her decision clearly indicted that she knows they are LYING. She has, I believe, left the door open to refile in a different manner. All of this is BS and it is extremely dangerous. As Timothy Synder stated on MSNBC yesterday, we are but mere inches away from no longer being a democracy. The felon who is president has successfully destroyed every relationship with our allies for the sake of his Putin worship. He has lied and lied about everything and the republicans sit silently in congress. Each and everyone of them should be recalled, fired or impeached for betraying our country. They are traitors, one and all.
Help me, dear HCR fans, with a dilemma. Several years ago a charming, Maine, harbormasterr friend cued me in to HCR's posts, but I paid only random attention to the discussion they stimulated. That changed at the turn of the New Year when my dismay over last November 5 took deeper root. A week ago I found myself reading ALL each day's comments . . . along with a few of you others, if your-all-of-the-way-to-the end-of-the-list posts are a valid clue.
I've learned several things from my multi-day marathon:
Reading (and reacting) takes 6-8 hours of my time each day; it's all I've done for a solid week now.
(Can HCR herself afford to read them all and still generate a new post a day?)
Should I continue the addictive delight I've experienced since last Wednesday?
I have been reminded how much I love to banter and how brevity is achieved primarily through the investment of all the time it takes to achieve it. (And as I realized just minutes ago, that I must TAKE that time lest I make dumb and very public mistakes.) But several of my posts have been quite new revelations to ME, both surprising and gratifying, as I suspect any others approaching 89 would feel.
How addictive warm responses from others can be (you know who you are!)
But . . . by participating so fully and relentlessly in this dialog, am I really contributing to the DOTR (Defense of the Republic) or merely SIW (Surfing its Wave)???
What counsel would you share with me, dear new acquaintances. as I consider what to do and how?
Snow piles lining my driveway are now 7 feet high. I think snow shoveling should be an Olympic sport. My grandmother, living in Buffalo, N.Y. At age 92 she called my dad and said, Put me in a home." He said, "Why? You still shovel your driveway!" She replied, "I can't get it over my shoulder anymore."
Hendrik, I wish I had an answer for you! I tend to scroll quite a bit, and read comments of my favorite responders; however, even that takes a lot of time, leaving projects not completed, chores delayed, and a guilty conscience.(Can you tell I was raised Roman Catholic? It’s remnants still leak through to me at 85.)
I would love to see a Search option so you can go directly to the people you regularly read. So many good replies, so little time!
Yesterday, I dialed Susan Collins office to ask "What do we when our social security numbers, our financial information and any other data is released to the highest bidder?
When I dialed the number, the number didn't ring it just returned to the screen like I didn't hit send. So I checked the number and hit send again. Same thing. And then I tried again -- same thing.
We can speculate about what is going on, but I can't imagine her staff cannot handle the trauma of being yelled at and threatened and likely several of her staff have quit. If I were Trump or many Republicans, I would hunt down her Staff and release their personal information just to be a cruel asshole, but of course, I never would.
One of Musk's former colleagues has already entered the race against her -
"Feb. 14—Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins has her first challenger for the 2026 election cycle: Phillip Rench, a former senior engineer for Elon Musk's SpaceX, who lives in Waterboro.
Rench is a 37-year-old board member of the Maine Space Corp., a quasi-governmental nonprofit created by the state Legislature to establish sites to launch small vehicles and satellites into low orbit. He is challenging Collins — who is seeking her sixth term — as an independent, according to paperwork filed with the Federal Election Commission."
This could get real interesting and very expensive. Leonard Leo has been a large fundraiser and donor for Collins in the past and probably will be again.
My complaints to my Senator (Ernst of Iowa) about musk and DOGE acting in violation of the 1974 Privacy Act were met yesterday with this reply from Ernest’s office: “employees serving on the government efficiency team have read-only access to federal payment data.”
My point being— if you’re writing to republican senators to complain about these illegal activities, be sure to explicitly state that read-only access allows copying, and therefore, even *if* these illegal snoops have been effectively constrained from altering computer code, once in their hands our private data are out the door.
“Read-only” is not a defense. Oh, and of course Ernst also claimed how great DOGE is for helping to tame our out-of-control federal deficit of $36 trillion (which I’m going to tell her appears to be a pledge on her part NOT to vote for a budget busting renewal of t***p’s billionaires’ tax cut.)
Republicans are not familiar with the words duty, honor, country. They are traitors just like the confederates in the CSA. The only good Republicans are pushing up daisies, as Harry Truman said.
Certainly they are without honor. They see their duty as doing whatever Trump says he wants at any particular moment. Their country is red. And European red.
I can picture it like yesterday, though it was in 2011, my friend and Michigan State Representative declaring triumphantly, " We have gerrymandered this state so badly, those f%&#ing Democrats will never win again!!" I remember the year because I had so diligently worked, going door to every door, on the 2010 Census.
You are assuming the Republicans in Congress do not actually agree with Trump and Project 2025. You would be wrong on that assumption. They believe Biden lost the election to Trump in 2020, they believe in rolling back voter rights, they believe in forcing women to die rather than life-saving care during pregnancy. They do not like LGBTQ+ human beings. They will not object to their own beliefs!
I’ve been leaving messages for Collins daily! She’s a lost cause- always has been. Time to find a Dem who can appeal to Districts 1&2. That won’t be easy. Golden has won in D1 but he often supports Republican bills. ME Dems have to get busy and take action. The Dems weren’t going to sponsor the rally in Augusta on Pres’s Day on Monday out of fear. Another group stepped forward & 100’s of us rallied peacefully in the cold & blowing snow. Mills, Bellows, Jackson come to mind as possibilities to challenge Collins.
Even more important is to say that to the staffer who answers the phone. The startled reactions I've gotten to that would be funny if it wasn't so serious.
Musk's swingeing cuts and lay-offs are beginning to have an effect in Republican circles. Rep. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia has introduced an aid program to help the families of federal workers who have been fired by Trump and Musk while insisting that he fully supports the administration. Senators Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Chuck Grassley and Katie Britt have all asked for exemptions from the cuts but none have dared to defy Trump.
Probably evidence was conflicted. Like I said "clear and convincing" is a difficult standard and to survive an appeal she would have to justify her decision.
You're absolutely right that judges should require the administration to specify unambiguously the powers under which Musk and his operatives are working and they should require this information to be produced immediately. They also need to ask for an explanation of exactly what Musk is doing in the various departments and agencies and not be fobbed off with the usual claim that they are there to principally cut bureaucracy and reduce costs. They need to be reassured that people's personal information, like medical and financial records, have been adequately protected during this exercise. It seems odd to me that the whole burden of adducing this sort of evidence should fall on the plaintiffs.
I agree, enough violation of privacy has occurred and it's time for consequences. Jail time might teach the young punks to reconsider their work. Jailing Musk or other senior leaders will further entrenched their behavior but hopefully would slow this nightmare down.
First there is a government agency with a head and plenary authority to dispose of other government agencies, then there is no government agency, merely some temporary White House employees looking in to everything they want. Not feeding USAID through the woodchipper. Not trying to gain programmer level access to every government computer system. Not locking doors shut. Pushing employees and security guards aside. Not telling them them to go home. Not freezing accounts. Not boasting of having shutdown the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Not going from Department to Department within government starting with Treasury and doing much the same. Not doing any of these things on their own, nor executing orders received from the President nor Stephen Miller nor OMB. Just looking at things.
I have hit a paywall with CNN. But I understand that DC Judge Chutkin denied the TRO sought to put a stop to this by 14 states, based largely on the appointments clause we are informed.
Perhaps she was completely dazzled by this shell game and the audacious display of lying and dissembling it entailed, and though incredulous, out of the abundance of caution that almost all judges have or outright fear and confusion decided that the best course of action now was to do nothing. Mind you, the federal courts are underfunded and understaffed, and have neither the time nor the money to allow judges to conduct lengthy evidenciary hearings on TROs all the time. Or even have a room to do it in. Rather I will bet, they are decided on the basis of "offers of proof" made by lawyers in hearings or found in pleadings and affidavits. And any "offer of proof" not false on its face or which the judge is afraid to challenge, and which raises some probable issues of material fact sufficient to cast in to doubt one element of the kill chain of conditional probabilities a plaintiff must set out in order to show a likelihood of success on the merits will be enough to cause any judge to decline to issue a TRO. Judges are cautious. At best.
Still I would have thought the offers of proof made in this instance, if Stephen Miller's smug out of court statements are to be trusted as any guide, amounted to more of a confession than they did a challenge to the plaintiffs aversions. So ....Elon Musk is not a constitutional officer of any kind. He is merely a confidential adviser to the President. And the "DOGE" he boasted of setting up with Trump's blessing and more than one executive order, as those orders reveal, is merely a prior existing "department" within the Offices of the White House, not a governmentsl department newly formed, staffed with mere leaderless employees who merely study things and make recommendations. And present two faces to the public. And shroud their activities in secrecy. Yet also openly and notoriously boast of them. And leave a swath of destruction for all to see and hear tell of
This is truly an offer of proof fit for an Emperor with No Clothes. I wonder why Judge Chutkin bought it. I wonder if the plaintiffs lawyers did their jobs and covered all the bases. Perhaps their assault what neither broad enough nor blunt. If you leave a judge a back door out the judge will take it
We cannot rely on Chutkin to save us. She ruled against 14 State Attorney Generals suit. When she has enough evidence she MAY rule against Trump/Musk, but she will wait. After all, if Musk is not in charge of DOGE then Trump is, in his Official Capacity as President, and he is immune from all actions taken in that capacity.
The lawyers have a duty of candor to the court. If they breach that, they should be reported to the relevant bar authorities for discipline. An opposing counsel, or even a member of the public could file such a report.
Mr. Brant, what you, as well as many others, speak the truth. HOW can this chaos-creating shell game be stopped? While legal actions grind through the court system, Frump and Muck aren’t even slowing down. Congress is full of pussies (apologies to cats everywhere) who put fear for their jobs above their ‘love’ of country. Prayer and protests seem to be futile. Phone calls, emails, and any other sort of communication to those who should be able to halt this shell game result in … nothing because they choose inaction. Mid-term elections? The country will be gone by then, the worldwide economy will collapse, and the populace will pay the price. (Since I have not yet heard how to pronounce ‘DOGE,’ I have elected to pronounce it ‘doggy.’ 😏)
Protesting is fighting the enemy on their chosen battlefield. I’m sure you have heard Trump would love to be able to declare Marshall Law. My strategy is asymmetrical warfare… Replacing the system not fighting the system. Here’s the link to an existing community development model and supporting nationwide organization that will be part of the strategy I write about in my next Substack newsletter essay… Hopefully coming out later today.
Agree, it seems a very high bar. You must wait until the hackers have cleaned out your bank account to have a case? I have a lot of respect for Judge Chutkan, think she's a terrific jurist. She wrote that excellent decision on Donnie Convict's immunity appeal where she said "A president is not a king." So I'll have to give her the benefit of the doubt that her decision is legally correct. Don't think she's one to be intimidated by the felon and his coterie of thugs.
It is most unfortunate that so many Americans have not come to EXPECT dishonesty from anything to do with tRump. If one continues to believe a liar, there will be consequences. Oaths are irrelevant to these folks who are bereft of principles other than ME. Nonetheless, the only defense is to get them under oath and then prosecute. tRump has learned that the justice system is +/- toothless against liars and scoundrels.
Since no one can define what DOGE is, other than "Not an official government agency," that means the Teenage Mutant Ninja Antisocial Basement Dwellers have no official authority. They are trespassers when they come into a government building. They should be grabbed, taken to the building roof, and thrown off. Then call Elmo to come clean up his garbage because it's going to start stinking as the corpses rot. Do that once and you can bet the little shits who didn't get grabbed won't be walking into a second building.
Exactly my thinking. Why do government officials LET these freshman Musk cronies do what they want? They have no legal authority, so kick them out!
It’s true what was said: “For evil to triumph, it’s only necessary fir good people to do nothing.” (Was that by Churchill?) This is it. Musk has no legal authority, he wasn’t voted for, but in his world-encompassing arrogance, he’s simply DOING it: “I’m so rich and so great, let’s see somebody stop me.” And it works.
Yes, but we have each other. I can see how it’s gonna take millions of people protesting, putting their bodies in between the billionaires like Mosque and our government agencies and departments.
We outnumber them big time. And that should scare the f out of them. It might take some serious sit ins and protests 1960's style. But that I fear is what it is going to take.
And most of those people petrified to object, have mortgages or rent , kids in college, medical bills and so on....and the maga architects know abd use that fear as weapon against we the people. What a nightmare. Thanks for your comment JD.
The goal of data mining isn’t a better understand you, the human, the consumer, the voter.
Once a person or a business has the data they can create psychological profiles. These profiles can be manipulated by algorithms that learn how each individual can be persuaded or manipulated most of the time without their consent.
It’s one thing to do this commercially for the purpose of selling you more stuff. It’s another to do it to manipulate a person to develop their feelings towards an issue like uncontrol abortion, the basic identity stuff.
Social media also is very addicting which results in the user supplying more data without their consent that makes the algorithms learn more.
Doge is about optimization. The collection of so much data to improve algorithms that form psychological profiles to persuade to manipulate consumer and voter behavior.
He who controls the data controls the masses.
We Americans were always taught that we have free will, freedom. and we’ve always been critical of authoritarian regime that control freedom by controlling with force, and not with force, both propaganda and psychological soft weapons. Usually, we see this from a government.
we don’t recognize what’s happening to us here in America because it’s been so slow developing.
It’s been almost two decades now, this new commercial software product services, aka social media, with AI, has morphed into “ behavior, modification tools”.
We never signed a consent form permitting our social media public company’s billionaire owners to take over our government without our vote.
“ we are at war”, Rep LaMonica, McIver, New Jersey
🙏 I’ve been reading published books by phd s that study this stuff since the election and news articles on technology billionaires and the kit industry in general. Focus less on Trump, and more on the how he won. Laser focus on his campaign donors, their process of winning.
If it sounds ‘conspiratorial’ to some how could I present it differently? I am not a tin foil hat wearing conspiracist.
Hey Ted, I was definitely NOT being sarcastic. I think you are absolutely right about the current AI sprint as covered in “The Coming Wave” by Mustafa Suleyman, and the battle for Attention - “the world’s scarcest resource” as it is termed by the recent “Siren’s Call”, by Chris Hayes.
I think you are correctly tuned into the real game, not the misdirection of the shock and awe at how fast a US President and a 100 Billionaire can wreck a powerful nation (and a back-slid government).
And I think your notes are doing good work to inform many here who haven’t read much about the edge of tech, and the nature of the power of attention control.
I didn't think/assume you were being sarcastic. Our assumptions in digital communication miss so much detail of human to human communication. Its new for all of us. I don't mind at all.
I would recommend everyone watch the documentary, The Great Hack, on Netflix. Its a soft version of the book, that will eventually get banned soon, if things keep going the way they are going.
Journalists to follow are:
Carrol Cadwadlar, who just got laid off at the Guardian ( in true Orwellian twist, the Guardian is replacing 100 journalists with AI to write stores instead). She is here on Substack doing a banger job!
Helen Lewis at the Atlantic.
Both women are British, and they got exposed to Surveleince Capital's strategies and tactics and the serious downside covering the beat on Brexit. ( this is covered in the Documentary, The Great Hack).
Putin is a problem. Russian meddling is a problem, but Mueller missed the real opportunity. The Russians used Meta and Twitter as their delivery vehicle. We asked and answered the "What", but didn't consider the "How" as Europe did. Now, the "How" is being used against us all by the tech-oligarchy. Even though Cambridge is gone, the Republicans, Trump, and former Director at Cambridge Analytica, Steve Bannon is still here. His benefactor is Robert Mercer, a billionaire MIT PhD in algorithms. Mercer wrote the algorithm for rapid trading that disrupted Wall Street and made more than George Soros did earlier. Mercer is Libert-Aryan like Murdoch, Musk, Theil, Ellison, etc.
These are very smart people. Too bad they lack any ethical consideration for what they are doing to our democracy. They have corporate America's backing. Its always about MORE. More $ for them. Ill break that down next.
Worse. We keep saying “ I can’t believe MAGA believes…”
The method, their method is the madness. “It’s their Facebook newsfeed stupid”
Social experiment:
Targeted and addicted to Facebook
Silo into an opinion group
Form a closed identity politics group ( 1 view only Bo counter opinions)
And see what happens…
Hence, there are hundreds of these studies already that all say the same thing the same conclusion.
The difference today is the scale of what’s happening and people don’t know their participating in one of the biggest propaganda experiments in the history of the world. Thanks to social media.
Ted, it would help me, and I suspect others, if you could clarify and expand what you mean by this social experiment. I'm all ears but my eyes need such clarification. These are all new concepts to many of us.
Most experiments involve a consent form. While we all click the "I consent" form, nobody reads those, right? So, what is it that we are consenting to?
Ill give a few examples. How many people understand that messaging apps in Meta, Facebook/instagram/whatsap messenger and X, and Google ( gmail) are being monitored by AI ( word identification software) to mine data points?
What do they do with that data...hint they call the data the "Behavior Surplus"
Meta's data consent forms outline how user data is collected, processed, and shared. Analyzing these terms through the lens of Shoshana Zuboff's principles of surveillance capitalism reveals several key insights:
1. Unilateral Data Claiming: Zuboff defines surveillance capitalism as the "unilateral claiming of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data." (NEWS.HARVARD.EDU)
Meta's consent forms often require users to agree to extensive data collection as a condition of service use, effectively appropriating personal experiences without explicit, informed consent for each specific use.
2. Transformation into Prediction Products: The collected data is processed to create detailed user profiles, which are then used to predict and influence future behaviors. This aligns with Zuboff's assertion that behavioral data are computed and packaged as prediction products sold into behavioral futures markets. (NEWS.HARVARD.EDU)
3. Lack of Genuine Consent: While Meta's forms may present an appearance of user consent, the complexity and opacity of these agreements often leave users unaware of the full extent of data usage. This practice undermines the autonomy of individuals, as they are not provided with clear, granular choices about how their data is utilized.
4. Instrumentarian Power: By leveraging vast amounts of user data, Meta exercises what Zuboff terms "instrumentarian power," shaping user behavior through subtle cues and personalized content without users' conscious awareness.
Meta's data consent practices exemplify the core tenets of surveillance capitalism, where personal data is harvested extensively, often without fully informed consent, and utilized to predict and modify human behavior for profit.
An Eric Shcmidt of Google, quote comes to mind when describing modern technology platforms, Schmidt revealed,
" Almost nothing, short of a biological virus can scale as quickly, as effectively, or as aggressively as these technology platforms. And this makes the people who build, control and use them powerful too."
From the book, Surveilence Capital, Shoshana Zubloff, chapter 6
This quote explains a lot. It explains how much power Silicon Valley Billonaires have over both political parties. And now, because we failed to outlaw the use of commercial surveilence algorygthms in polical communications, they have the power of influencing the masses. ( manipulation in my definition). Maga is not stupid, ( not everyone in it), but they are victims to overt propaganda and military grade psychological weaponry strategies and tactics, paid for by Musk and delivered to the masses by Meta, X, and Google.
I think THIS is a threat that most of us barely grasp, nor even adequately discuss. We regulate gambling. We regulate liquor. We prohibit 'stalking". Yet commercial organizations are using the methods of science against us (as the tobacco industry was discovered to be doing) designing products that are problematically addictive. In doing so, they (and sometimes the government) are regularly transgressing thresholds of privacy that would have been socially unacceptable and frankly illegal in my youth. An asymmetry of information IS a defining characteristic of despotic societies, and is a clear impediment to democracy. Somehow, when it involves "new media", we have just let it happen.
I think in part this turn of events can be rationally called "conspiratorial",deliberately but even more so to the overall push for "deregulation' of business; which is dry-sounding word for removing social protections against commercial behavior that undermines the commonwealth. That is pretty starkly obvious in the ways plutocrats attack environmental restrictions, but is comprehensively true in the prerogatives carved out for corporations that that are withheld from the public. Just a coarse example of this are the bailouts offered to bankrupt corporations that were largely unavailable to a struggling public, but that's just a piece of it.
Such good observations, JL (& Hendrick & Ted). I wish it/they were closer to the 'front' of the stack. I think it is fair to edit and submit a refined and careful thought/piece more than once, AND to calculate the submission context and timing to reach many more people. ;)
Ted if the wheels of justice are so slow as to, in the meantime they keep collecting all the information they need to alter the midterm election we need to find another way to counteract. Unfortunately I can think ahead of a problem but I can't offer a practical solution 😕.
Yeah, that is the dilemma I keep running into....a dead-end alley where democracy is bludged to death by tech oligarchs. Those who control public opinion can stay in power indefinitely until some how their spell is broken. The tools Si Valley has today are nothing the world has ever seen, and the populace is oblivious to how it works against us. Theirs is a gentle yet effective cyber weapon. ( go back to the Super Bowl. AI was painted as this great gift to humanity, but the tech oligarchy is misusing it for the gain and power of the few.
Read up on the history of the Maidan in Ukraine. There it took millions taking to the streets to protest and eventually the uprising caused their Russian-backed leader Yanokovich ( a former governor of Luhansk, ( now occupied by Russia, and a former convicted Russian mafia dude), to flee to Russia.
Think about that. It might come to that. Tens of millions of citizens descend on DC in protest and force Trump and Musk flee to Russia or Saudi Arabia or Israel.
I follow and read Margaret Atwood, and she speaks of today, closer to the French Revolution while every other scholar is comparing today to the 1930's and 40s'. Not that either is wrong, but none of the scholars today are in step with Atwood on this and I find that very interesting, considering she is the George Orwell for today.
It was a different zeitgeist, but I read that the corrupt exoneration of the murderers of Emmet Till, with the perpetrators subsequently bragging about it help to shift public opinion away from indifference to racism. For that matter, credit is routinely given to the story "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for increasing awareness of the human side of slavery. We have a rampaging herd of rogue elephants in the room that need to be brought into keener focus. What is the harm with what the plutocrats are doing? Plenty, and that needs to be seen with a human face on it.
Denial is a human coping mechanism the I think we all indulge in. I know I do. Over a million dead from COVID, thousands of grieving families. Stuff happens, right? We can fuss about the price of eggs.
What we have done to the families of undocumented immigrants and much of what we are doing now seems starkly to cross the line from law enforcement into hate crime. Does it matter?
Your comment it's very hard to read Ted, not because is complex but because is true. The starting point in moving Ukraine towards democracy, started with a blood bath ,over many days in a public square and that dream it's going to end in a blood bath all over Ukraine under the watch of the Putin- Trump alliance. Remains me of the Molotov- Ribbentrop pact that divided Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. You mentioned massive march of we the people towards DC to accomplish what the Ukrainians dis successfully but I think, why eventually we need to do that? This is or was, days ago, a democracy, why we need to perhaps risk our life marching? What happens if with the same careless as demonstrated when they fire decent people right and left front the jobs, they decided to unleash armed groups against us? After all, we are no Ukraine, this is the US. It's been only a month since inauguration and we are living in a totally different country we had 30 days ago. I still don't have answers and I don't hear anybody suggesting valid solutions.
I am old, and possibly qualify to be a Luddite. But what would be a way forward to starve AI of the massive amounts of power that it needs to run? “They” say that our energy infrastructure can’t support the draw on it and that is why we can’t have clean energy. I say it is because so much of the drain comes from the shiny new toys of AI and Crypto mining.
DOGE means "Department Of Grabbing Everything", in my opinion.
But yeah, it's about manipulation, but with one goal: getting even more insanely rich. That's why the Zucc and Musk go hand-in-hand: together, they will control what we think.
Dutch, they are going to use all the information being stolen to cook up the results for the next midterm election and manipulate the voters, if we have one.
That's a big "IF"... Chump promised his cultists needed to vote only one more time, then he would fix it "so you'll never have to vote again." That was a promise and a warning if there ever was one...
But what if Nature DID have a control mechanism for this pathology? I mean, think back some 20.000 years, when we were still running around in small tribes... How long do you think malignant narcissists with antisocial disorders like Trump and Musk would last in a tribe of, like, 25 to 50 people? Not long. The group would be so sick of their manipulations and their grabbing everything for themselves, they would kick them out of the tribe. Effectively a death sentence, because a human cannot survive alone in the wilderness - thus weeding out this pathology. But then we went and jinxed it by settling down with agriculture and coming up with the concept of "property"...
And they are stealing valuable info from the taxpayers of this country. Next muskrat is going to Ft. Knox to take “inventory” of our gold holdings. Wanna bet he reports huge thefts of our gold reserves and accuses others (probably Biden and company) of stealing what he actually steals?
So I woke this morning and I had a conclusion to draw on DOGE, musk, and what they’re really doing.
Maybe the stealings already been done. This is just a cherry on top to make the algorithms even stronger and better at what they wanna do to control populations.
And then I thought the stealings already been done. Maybe they’re also in those systems to erase data and cover their tracks for what they done, how they spent in the 2924 election ( social media newsfeeds to influence/perduade/ manipulate voters)
Plausible? ( just a hunch). But isn’t that always the case with smart criminals? Cover your tracks?
Unfortunately, violence never works that way. It does not stop the little twits, they just bring the guns to back them up. Laws exist to prevent this behavior but enforcement lies in the hands of the executive at the federal level. If there is to be resistance, it needs to stay non-violent and turn the DOGE techno-robbers away at the door. If the guns come, photograph it and publicize it as much as possible. Let the blame for violence fall on their heads, not ours. If it falls on ours, the kakistocracy will turn the situation into Kristallnacht.
TC is a historian. He writes about WW2. He’s close to those WW2 vets who suffered fighting fascism. He’s interviews thousands of WW2 vets who lost friends in the savagery of that war. So I cut him a lot of slack if he comes across advocating violence, because that’s what it took from dec 7th 1941 to spring 1945. And right now, doing nothing is squandering that national sacrifice. It’s personal to him in way that should be.
Actually DOGE is from Italy and the titular head of Venice for several centuries. Another era of Italy for a short time as well. The men were part of the Vatican political system and Byzantine Empire systems. Interesting that Leo has supported Senator Collins.
The DOGE of Venice. A business leader who has ultimate state control, even over the police and military. Musk chose the name for a reason. Then in true NAZI fashion he rearranged the meaning to fool the masses. Such a fascist prick!
We are all frustrated. But resorting to violent metaphors is precisely what the President and his team have done ever since he delivered himself on an escalator all those years ago. Let us all do our best to resist the temptation and not raise the rhetorical temperature.
Yop. Our strength is numbers. Our minds. Our empathy for others. Non violence is key. There is much historical support for non violent opposition, it succeeds for a reason. When opposition moments are dealt with violently by the powers that be, the people become sympathetic, and more and more join the movement and/ir stop supporting those in power.
Violence, often in subtle ways, is the enemy. That said I can not bring myself to condemn violent self defense in clearly violent circumstances (such as attacking Hitler) but there are always nasty side effects, and the devil has an advantage when playing by the devil's rules. An ounce of prevention can be worth well more than a pound of cure. Diminishing violence of many sorts would seem a wise strategy for any society, as well as the readiness to fight if necessary.
Charge them with trespassing and put them in jail and confiscate any and all equipment and tools and turn it all over the the FBI…fun to see what software they were using to spy in us!
Well, Heather, I truly want to throw up. Elon and his band of young thieves are rifling through each government department like kids looking for their favorite Halloween candy. Compromising all of us exposes us to being stripped down naked. My daughter said she was going to out a “hold” on her credit cards. She is changing her banking account from a major corporation to a credit union. She even checked to see when she last had the MMR shot. Chaos is Donnie and Elon’s middle name. Two narcissist bros from other mothers. May Judge Chutkin be able to slam these m’effers to the ground!
Smart mama raised a smart daughter! All of us should be freezing our credit and diversifying our savings so we don't have all our eggs in one basket, and be prepared if the Project 2025 plan to do away with the FDIC comes to pass. Credit unions are insured by an independent government agency, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA).
Freeze your credit individually at each bureau. It’s free:
Fun fact, James. Did you know that 25% of our national debt since our founding was created during the last Trump administration? And that extending his tax cuts to billionaires will add even more?
America doesn’t hate our government. You might, but I don’t. I like OSHA and workplace safety. I like clean air and water. I like it when the IRS enforces existing laws to make everyone, even including billionaires, pay their lawful share of taxes. I like it when the CDC monitors disease status so we can be informed and make good decisions if, for example, another pandemic is looming, like it is now. I like it when the FDA insists on safe food and medicine. I like safe roads and bridges. I like that the FDIC insures our bank deposits. I liked having bodily autonomy. I liked it when the FAA made it safer for us to fly. I miss that. I like it when we use our soft power to help fledgling democracies overseas. I like it when the US subsidizes important university research - that’s one of the things that has made us the strongest country in the world, and I’m worried we’re throwing that away and handing that space to the Chinese.
I could go on all day.
What I don’t like is someone calling other people “illegals”. Pretty sure you can come up with a less demeaning name, try undocumented workers. Far from promoting an open border, democrats have tried to address the root causes of migration at the source. It’s a far more humane policy than separating children from their parents, don’t you think? These are people. They are desperate, and we need workers. Democrats negotiated border policy with republicans in good faith, coming up with a bill that was truly bipartisan - only to see their efforts scuttled by Trump, so he could campaign on the border. Did you like that? I didn’t.
Transing children? Again, that’s very demeaning language. No one, literally no one, is forcing children to transition. At most, they have access to counseling and puberty blockers so they can make their own decisions later. What earthly business of yours is it, if a parent, child, and physician together decide that this is in their best interest? How on earth does this affect you? Mind your own business.
The way to solve the problem is NOT to put the one twice as bad (Trump) back in charge (with even worse ideas that will do far more damage than he did the first time.
Eisenhower grew the economy while also paying down the huge WWII and Korean War debt, with relatively high taxes but incentives to invest in making the country more productive for all. This is not the time for even greater tax breaks for irresponsible billionaires.
I still consider myself a conservative, but one along the lines of Sheila Bair G W Bush's FDIC Chair. I would first point out that the previous administration dedicated a lot of the spending to plan and start building out very much needed new infrastructure and repairing old, dangerously neglected infrastructure (to me like Eisenhower was doing). A huge amount went to Red States who may have needed it more (but appreciate less), with the longer term improvements schedule over a longer period that may never be finished by Trump).
It sure seems like we were getting steady progress, despite the revenue not collected after Trump got his billionaire's tax cut, and Trump could have gotten the credit for the repairs and improvements if he simply continued them with the restoration of previous tax rates at the top. So we now seem likely to get double the bill and half the goods.
"...Both Republicans and Democrats have settled on deficits as the easiest way to pay for politically popular initiatives, be they lower taxes (Republicans) or higher spending (Democrats). Elected officials are wary of braving the political pain of deficit reduction, knowing their successors could easily squander those hard-fought battles with more deficit-financed spending and tax cuts.
Case in point is the current election. Both presidential candidates are proposing tax and spending giveaways to curry favor with voters. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects that Vice President Kamala Harris’ proposals will increase the debt by $3.95 trillion over the next 10 years, which pales in comparison to Donald Trump’s plans, which will increase it by $7.75 trillion..."
As HCR has pointed our, Old School Republicans crafted a graduated income tax to pay for the Civil War. W's plan was to pay for two wars with tax cuts for the wealthy. That's the modern "Republican" answer to everything.
"...In all previous conflicts, the United States paid for wars as part of its regular defense appropriations (the defense “base budget”), after the initial period (1-2 years) of supplemental “emergency” funding bills. By contrast, for the entire decade from FY 2001 to FY 2011, Congress paid for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as “emergencies,” devoid of serious legislative or executive oversight.
By statute, emergency spending is defined as “unanticipated…sudden…urgent…unforeseen…and temporary” and is typically reserved for one-off crises such as floods and hurricanes. Such emergency spending measures are exempt from regular procedural rules in Congress because the intent is to disburse money quickly in situations where delay would be harmful.
Congress continued to enact “emergency supplemental” funding even as the war effort expanded. The United States sent 130,000 military personnel into Iraq in 2003 (alongside troops from more than 30 countries). By 2009, there were 187,200 U.S. “boots on the ground” in Iraq and Afghanistan, supported by a similar number of military contractors, with nearly 500 U.S. military bases set up across Iraq, but the conflict was still being paid for as an “emergency.” In FY 2012, President Obama renamed the “Global War on Terror” as “Overseas Contingency Operations” (OCO) but the war continued to be funded using money that – although not designated as “emergency” – was explicitly exempted from regular spending limits on other government spending programs..."
We have 37 Trillion in debt. At 45 Trillion we become bankrupt….. most of which was built up on the policies of republican presidents. MAGA?? When in your simpleton mind was America not great? … it was when republican presidents put the desires of the uber rich over those of the general population. It wasn’t great when lies and fear became the modus operandi of the fascist right. It wasn’t great when it allowed a sulking baby felon into the whitehouse and he gave the keys to the government to muskrat and told him to do his worst, it wasn’t great when the corrupt Roberts/Thomas court gave FOTUS imperial power. No people like you have no idea what great is. You just parrot the lies you have been manipulated to believe.
Are you implying that it’s now dangerous to criticize the president and his Doge? Have we really gotten to that Soviet dictator style low point, and you’re blithely fine with it? Wow.
James, your MAGA muck is interesting. In our view, we like how the government was working even for ignoramuses like you that resent help. We also liked how the debt keeps shrinking under Democratic administrations vs how it grows under Republican administrations due to increased military spending, approval I'd sll pork projects, and reduced tax revenues. No one wants illegal aliens overruning the country, but for all the scary numbers, the dangers have been overblown by fear mongering. And no child has been "transified". You can take THAT littke piece of Russian propaganda and shove it.
Musk spent $290 million to get trump elected. He wants a return in cash, influence, power, laws in his favor, apartheid, US security secrets, and Uncle Sam's balls. Donny has that battered submissive housewife look when MuskRAT is around. He sold the USA down the river.
I think that's right -- as long as they keep him in the spotlight -- like when he circled the Daytona race track - and heap enough adulation on him (e.g "let's make Trump's birthday a national holiday!!") he is pliable. He just wants to be seen as a powerful leader - he's not a leader at all. Just wants golf and applause
I cannot stand to listen to his ridiculous BS anymore. When Congress has had enough of his BS will they really impeach him? Unlikely.
This is disturbing but not surprising at the end of HCR's letter-
Analysts ran that information through an algorithm that created a psychological profile of an individual to enable precise targeting of potential voters. Ads based on these profiles reached almost 378 million views on social media and sent more than 60 million visitors to the National Shooting Sports Foundation website. When Trump won in 2016, the NSSF took partial credit for the results. Not only was Trump in office, it reported, but also, “thanks in part to our efforts, there is a pro-gun majority in the U.S. House and Senate.”
Saying someone is "pro-gun" is like saying there is a "pro-hammer" majority in the US House & Senate. Hammers kill people, so why isn't there a pro-hammer lobby. The whole pro-gun lobby is stupid. Republicans waste so much time and effort on guns and any effort to control who owns them.
The Second Amendment is one of the best arguments for scrapping your outdated, procrustean Constitution and sitting down and writing a new one fit for modern times.
With Republicans in charge, I am sure a new Constitution will be a few words at the top of Page One: "We are in charge and we make new rules each day. Trust in Us."
The Convicted Orange Felon sold out to Muskolini for $290 million - that was the price of American democracy. A small price to pay for real big gains: Musk has already got richer by 15 billion dollars, and can now steal all of the money that’s in the American government. And: he will take care that ALL government contracts will go to HIS companies. Americans will be paying for his profits directly through their taxes.
I don't believe he was in the room. They have been trying to get a meeting between the two rascals, but it seems Putin is content for the time being to allow Trump to make all the running on his behalf and Trump seems only too willing to oblige.
Putin has not "been straining at the bit" to have a private conversation with Trump. He has not been willing to meet or talk to Trump according to Trump! Putin knows Trump cannot negotiate anything since he cannot put two thoughts together. Better to let Liddle Marko do the negotiating.
The question remains: Who is going to stop them? Even if all the courts deny them access, who is gong to stop them? Congress cannot direct the military or the National Guard. What jurisdiction do the DC police have in or on government facilities? None that I know of. And even if they are stopped, the damage done to information systems remains. The data remains stolen. It would take years to get Musk even brought to trial, let alone convicted, of illegal actions, even if they could be proven. Remember, Mump and Tusk do not care about destruction of the country or right vs wrong. Repeat: Do.Not.Care. They only care about doing what they want, so--Who will stop them?
It has to be a battle we all fight. At this point they have revealed to the world That indeed they are going to destroy Democracy world wide . No regard for their fellow Americans, after all, WE are the enemy from within. The photo journalists have captured photos of two of our most high ranking government officials at meetings in both Germany and Saudia Arabia one looking like a DEER inthe headlights as he as he follows a script that appears to scare even himself. The other, looks damn crazy as he grovels towards Putin and basically tells Zalenski your on your own unless you GIVE IT ALL BACK !!! SHAMFUL, UNAMERICAN, SCARY, SICKENING, CRAZY but most of all so so incredibly sad. For the World, FOR our Country. HOME OF THE FREE AND THE BRAVE. I'm afraid not so free . But question is can we muster the BRAVE. They have told us who they are.They have shown us who they are and now they are taking it to the world. We did nothing about Jananuary 6th
They seem to think that they are "the free world". Trump says he's the leader of the Free World. When that expression was coined, it meant anything that wasn't in the power of the USSR. Now it has no meaning, like most of what he says.
The Justice Department and FBI need to be separate from the Executive Branch. Perhaps they should be independent similar to the Federal Reserve. Since they are now within the Executive Branch, I'm afraid you are correct that they cannot be stopped.
First, Democrats are part of a well-coordinated Court strategy to stop lawlessness. We implemented this on Inauguration Day and have had great success so far in lawsuits to protect federal workers — a judge has already paused the sham federal worker buyout — stop erosion of constitutional rights, preserve congressional power of the purse, protect immigrants, and restrict people like Elon Musk from rampaging through federal agencies. We won’t win all these cases, but initial signs are positive.
Congress
In Congress, Democrats are in a minority. But we forced the withdrawal of an Attorney General nominee, and I led an effort that gained three Republican votes against the Secretary of Defense. In the coming weeks, we are prepared to wage major battles on the budget and GOP plans to give tax breaks to the wealthy — and I’ve recently used an unusual Senate procedure to set up a challenge to Trump’s plans to gut environmental protections and clean energy projects to benefit Big Oil.
States
Democratic Governors and other officials are acting at the state and local levels to alert the public to the damage caused by Trump budget cuts — and are doing everything possible to protect our neighbors from lawless acts.
Elections
We began 2025 winning key special elections in Virginia and Iowa, and the momentum is growing! I am particularly focused on the Virginia Governor’s race this year, which can send a national message of revulsion over Trump’s failures, so I hope you will join me in getting involved. Virginia will also hold elections for our Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General, both of which we can flip to Democratic leaders, and our House of Delegates, where we must maintain our majority. Your efforts in Virginia’s 2025 elections will be crucial to Democratic success — and the message it will send.
We also need to gear up for a strong showing in the 2026 midterm elections — yes, already. In about 20 months, we have the opportunity to disrupt the GOP trifecta, re-elect strong leaders like my friend Mark Warner, and establish an opposition better able to fight back against this extreme Administration.
Activism
And finally — your activism matters. Vigorous, peaceful public protest is building all across this nation. Our Founders knew that elections were not sufficient to safeguard democracy, so they protected the right of the people “peacefully to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Your dedication is an integral part of our path forward.
I would respect Senator Kaine's comments more if he hadn't already obeyed in advance by voting to confirm many of Trump's unqualified cabinet nominees.!
And why does anyone think we will have elections in 2026? Voldemort told his beautiful Christian followers they would never have to vote again. Then they applauded.
I think that when their constituents begin to be hit personally by the changes, they may find it is to their advantage to turn against Trump and Musk. The problem then would be: what next?
I have a spineless congresscritter who's afraid to meet constituents. So, I’m going local in the hopes that bottom-up democracy can channel our outrage. Many of my local elected officials are right wing, too. But they have to listen in a public meeting.
These infidels are stealing private information without permission. If we had a real Attorney General the DOJ would be all over this. Bondi appears worthless. What else can you call it when she sits idly by, thereby cooperating if not participating in the acts themselves.
Sorry, but to the Australian eye, the new Attorney-General has a joke name. What's the most famous beach in Australia? Google "Bondi", (pronounced bon-dye).
Er, no. Now maybe the most famous one in America... No, we've got a few bitches, but none named after scenic wonders. On the contrary, the biggest one is monumentally unattractive, as well as obscenely rich.
Goodness me! what State are you from? although you're not the only one to have made this observation! I must see if I can find an American voice saying "beach". We usually avoid the other word, except in veterinary contexts, or as a verb meaning "complain", which is considered a bit rough but not asterisk-worthy. A green whistle? It might get stopped at the border....how about a Mexican wave?
DOGE's incursions into American government data systems was never about limiting waste and inefficiency in the US federal government. The real agenda is ACCESS. Access to prized data which can be used to sweeten deals with people like Putin and other card-carrying members of the Autocrat Club.
Exactly. Musk is a lying little shit, it’s only about making his overly fat bank accounts even fatter. He is the cartoon villain who wants to own the whole world, he doesn’t care about the American people at all.
Whenever fascists like Muskolini accuse someone of something, it's not an accusation but a confession. Up til now, this has proven true for both Rump and Darth Musk.
I did not know Musk won that one. If they liked to say in Apartheid S. Africa I guess it's OK.
"Elon Musk did not defame a British caver who helped in last year's rescue of trapped Thai schoolboys by calling him a "pedo guy", a US jury has found.
Vernon Unsworth sought $190m (£145m) in damages from the Tesla founder, arguing that the tweet damaged his reputation.
A public row broke out between the two men over the rescue of 12 boys trapped in a Thai cave in June 2018.
Mr Musk told the court this week the phrase "pedo guy" was common in South Africa, where he grew up.
Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom after the jury reached its decision, Mr Musk said: "My faith in humanity is restored." BBC
Of Course, Elon is not so laid back when the shoe is on the other foot:
Yes it is. But THAT is because of his bruised narcissistic ego. He MUST go beyond his heroes who went to the moon, to show them that he is better than them, so he MUST go to Mars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MoACklnnxk&t=2s
"Matt told me some of his firefighter friends were fired and left without any money or resources or plane tickets, or even their government email, to get home !"-- from my college years roommate from her son, in his 50s, who's given much time and energy to being a West Coast forest fire fighter.
The many, many thousands of Americans who've done their jobs can similarly be left high-and-dry with this mad enterprise of Trump / Musk ending funding without considering the human cost.
They are possessed. Rituals of sorcery and manic episodes of sleeplessness combined with drugs, sex and violence. I invoke the spirit of Jimmy Carter to weave a spiderweb that attracts, then neutralizes all those possessed by evil and greedy spirits. May the good people on earth be relieved of the ghastly manlike apparitions being held afloat with the massive drain of energy they are extracting from our souls. Amen, Salam, Aho
Right. But the US government has been screwing the US public way before this little nightmare. The Health Insurance millionaires, the higher education rip offs, the expensive losing wars, children trained to hide from military weapons, the support for genocide.
Come on now. We got used to getting screwed. Get ready to be royally Effed.
Keep pressure on Congress and the Senate, support Democrats verbally and financially, and vote Blue whenever we get the chance. We can take to the streets but only the voting booth makes a real difference and that only if we preserve our democracy.
In a way this chaos is right up the alley they want to go as it demoralizes citizens who now are so suspicious and wary of the government and how easily it can be turned into menace instead of a stabilizing force. The alliance with big business monopolies is abundantly obvious and people are walking away from their monopoly vendor in droves. The battle lines are shaping up for protests, strikes, boycotts and sit-ins. The answer you have to ask yourself is will I engage in this struggle or will I give in to despair. Yes, it's a circus and the clowns are running the show. We need to get serious and disrupt wherever we can and urge our democratic representative to gum up the works and fight everything they mess with in the courts. Resistance by 150,000,000 citizens will turn the tide.
I TRUELY BELIEVE YOU ARE RIGHT. TAKE THEM BY STORM. The young and the old in the streets in our Capital in our Neighborhoods at our State Capitals. STORM them on the
congressional Switchboard and at their local and state offices. Gather at the Whitehouse and on the steps of OUR CAPITAL.
Repeatedly now the best, the decent, the long-standing ethical have to resign.
Timothy Snyder today calls key parts of it "ghastly." Heather today itemizes the lies, the continuous illegality and criminality from the criminal administration. So we can ask, how so?
I'd say the worst is due to liars at the top who never in their lives learned how to feel comfortable with themselves as individuals. Trump, Putin, Musk, and Vance all lack this comfort. Instead they seek fantasy lands, in quests for abstractions, growing one's wealth, living ever more within religious orthodoxy, "manly" stereotype, or racial dominance.
They may not be the top greedy and humanly empty, but tens of millions of Americans have also fallen into the same self-discomfort, through bad education -- the batteries of tests promoting abstractions, the logic of dutiful categories – the personal from all severed from every test, every school.
Lying at the top. Mass lying around them – mass fear, permanent paranoia.
No end to it but death. Maybe by violence (Heather today concluding noting again the guns, guns, guns U.S.). Maybe an end to it by the epidemics that sheer idiocy and incompetence may occasion.
One of the things I thought about on waking this morning (current events preying on my mind) was of your repeated support for humanities education in our schools, which I share also. It also crossed my mind that any category of education can be soul-killing if it is no more than packages of disembodied information; such as many I suffered through in school, memorizing names, dates and other detritus that I, and I think a lot of other students, would never find a beneficial occasion to bring to mind again. It's only words, but the phrase I was toying with was "contextually human". OK, is there any there there in that?
What I am grasping for is how can I, and how can we, pack a human experience context in our communication that resonates with our internal and observed experiences of sentience? How does it matter to a living breathing thinking and feeling animal? How is it that we experience being? "The this is me" (and you) flow of novel (and here, the word "information" does not really capture it) sights, sounds, tastes, odors, sensitive touch, and the elusive, integrated, sense of "me" and "we" that all identify as being human?
Most of my earliest memories are scattered vignettes, but what might be my earliest memory in a narrative form is wandering away from my home and becoming completely disoriented just beyond my back yard. (It ended well, I wandered without a clue until I recognized the home of a family friend, but as a stranger in a strange land in between). It seems that as we age and learn, the sphere of familiar things and places grows, along with a skill to project from similar experiences to one encountered fresh, with varying accuracy. That elaborating consciousness includes knowledge of and empathy with others, and all of that inner/outer world can be expanded as a matter of choice.
So for me the key question for me with respect to school curricula is, is it empowering? Is it "consciousness expanding"? It is likely to be useful? Is it civilizing? There is more, of course, but the emphasis I am aiming for as transformational, empathical, capable, curiosity and verity inducing methods and content. It seems to me that's a large order and one on which many already labor, but well worth the extra effort.
Of course the key here comes from how you found your way again, J L.
You were little, "wandering away," "becoming completely disoriented" until you "recognized the home of a family friend."
Bingo.
Yes, J L, "as we age and learn, the sphere of familiar things and places grows." But I disagree with the next few words, "along with a skill to . . .."
That skill doesn't come naturally or automatically. It comes by some effort, some teaching, some reach on our part to touch, reference others -- so we can see some places where we hurt, or we are lost, in light of others (from books, other arts, conversation).
Good to see you at some length here. Good to see you "waking . . . current events preying" on your mind.
Aren't we all in these days of real threats by real monsters.
I am not really disagreeing but skills grow or the human doesn't. A babe even needs to learn to suckle, ours did, and yes, that was with the help of instruction, but even without it, we are born to explore and learn. A babe making any sort of movement or babble is doing just that. We are also born to teach, and kids learn a ton of things from each other, including stuff adults would not want them to share. Hearing it though the grapevine is very much a part of childhood, regardless of how accurate what you hear might be.
Certain we gain immensely from direct instruction and observation. More than once I solved an adult life problem by recalling what I saw some random adult do in my childhood. Or in my adult life for that matter. Monkey see, monkey do. Play, solitary or together can be a powerful learning tool. Einstein once described his creative process as "combinatory play".
And maybe best of all, we can be taught to improve our approach to learning; to learn to learn more effectively. I think that in particular winds up paying outsized "dividends".
Phil, I'm enamored by your final sentence, quite beautiful. The question of whether "epidemics" could conceivably include some "Gun Play" right between the eyes lies heavily on my soul.
Ms. Richardson, Thank you for reporting on this crazy epic crazy period in the nation's history. I am one of your elderly readers, but I find it difficult to follow all of the new media reports. So your report "In the early hours of Monday, he (Mr. Musk reposted a picture of a leaner, meaner version of himself dressed as a Roman gladiator with the caption: “I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus.” Musk added: “And I am.”
His stunning immaturity of the post and the word virus triggered my concerns for the termination of the pipeline hires in the CDC, NIH, and FDA.
I am a retired Navy Officer, former director of the Navys Energy R&D program during the turbulent
70s and in 1979, I joined the Senate staff so I have been through the Reagan Revolution and the Grace Commission and have witnessed the increasing power of the far right. Fortunately, the American Experiment has survived and the United States has continued to be a force for good in the world.
The international effort to develop vaccines has been a cornerstone of global health advancements, saving countless lives and improving the quality of life worldwide, seems to be threatened by the DOGE efforts and agency consolidations. I note recent outbreaks of measles in Texas have raised concerns. Some expert colleagues of mine have suggested unvaccinated migrants crossing the southern border and entering our society may be contributing to these outbreaks. Additionally, the relocation of unvaccinated migrants to major cities further exacerbates the risk. In short, we are creating a microbial soup that could lead to a pandemic.
Growing up, my family and I were no strangers to the devastating effects of childhood viruses. My mother's siblings suffered greatly, with her closest brother losing his hearing due to measles, and my father enduring "milk leg," which left him with a distinctive limp. My younger brother contracted polio and spent a long time away from home, isolated in a county polio rehabilitation facility. These experiences have deeply influenced my interest and understanding of the importance of disease prevention and the progress made in combating infectious diseases through vaccination.
The recent lawsuit filed by a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general against President Trump highlights the ongoing tension between federal authority and states' rights. The suit is encouraging and supports my belief that the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution has been violated and could bring a more deliberate GAO, CBO, Congressional Oversight approach to improving government efficiency. The DOGE is not the way to approach the problem.
The outbreak in Texas is apparently the largest in 30 years, according to a spokesperson for the Department of State Health Services. Measles' reproductive number (sometimes referred to as R or RO) is around 12-16. For comparison, SARS-CoV-2 was no more that 5-6 at the height of the pandemic. Kennedy was there last week, but he didn't refer to the measles outbreak. Instead, he falsely suggested that childhood vaccines like MMR may be linked to chronic illnesses. He said he would convene a new panel to study the childhood vaccination schedule and other “formally taboo” issues. Vaccination rates have been steadily falling across the US in recent years thanks to conspiracy theories about the safety of vaccines and Kennedy has been a leading proponent. It's scandalous that he should have been appointed to any offical position in the Department of Health and Human Services, never mind secretary of state. He's joined by other conspiracists, Dr Mehmet Oz, Jay Bhattacharya and Marty Makary.
The lack of knowledge about medicine and its history and public health has led to part of this. I was just reading about Lillian Wald who helped create the Henry Street Settlement in NYC. I am sure Kennedy and others have never heard of her though he has certainly NYC roots. The loss of the concept of Settlement Houses and the siphoning off of services has been an issue for along time. And the idea that middle class or upper middle class folks do not need supports along with the cutting off of supports for others in lower SES stratas just another part of this tragedy. I am surprised the gun industry news hasn’t been discussed. Another piece of our so scattered and stomped on American puzzle .I began to realize this in the mid eighties and just saw the buttresses start to crumble and become stained with rust. Perhaps the need for a new puzzle with repaired and remade and some new pieces as well
Among his more eccentric views, RFK believes his 14-year addiction to heroin (which he has claimed improved his school grades) has somehow endowed him with a special knowledge of how to combat drug addiction. It's another reason why his appointment is so alarming to the medical community. When Trump decides to promote quack remedies for dangerous infectious diseases you really need someone in the vicinity to get a grip before too much harm is done. I read that one of Musk's team has accidentally fired people responsible for monitoring bird flu outbreaks and now they're urgently trying to re-hire them. The same thing happened when they fired federal workers in charge of the safety of the nuclear arsenal (and left Homer Simpson in charge). People are going to get hurt with all this craziness going on.
Well if nothing else we will need a new way to educate if we survive this fiasco. Yes I knew about both highly dangerous missteps. He was RFK Jr damaged long ago and for whatever reason been led down a very unhelpful and tragic path not only for himself but for all of us. And he dies have some things that are correct but most just so so uninformed and every person that leds this type off history has to be able to know names like Elizabeth Blackwell, Samelweiss, Salk, Fleming, Nightingale, Dix, Clifford Beers, Jane Hamilton among many others. In the fifties lots of bio films like the one for Pastuer. We need films and other ways to get the history and the ability to analyze out to the general public besides the so called elite.
I have been an auditor of public companies for 40 years. I have seen my share of poor management, weak internal controls, sloppy oversight and fraud. But I have never seen a company actively invite fraud and corruption. That’s precisely what has been going on with DOGE. First the auditors (the IGs) were fired. Then senior management (who oversee the controls that protect systems and data) were fired. Then lower level employees were threatened with job loss. And now Elon Musk and a group of unvetted techies have unfettered access to millions of terabytes of government data, including its payment systems. These folks can do as they please with no one to stop them, blow the whistle or even identify what they are doing. They could be stealing dara, altering it, planting malware, creating backdoor portals either to benefit themselves or others, including foreign countries. I have been calling and writing MOCs since the start of this trying to get them to focus on this massive security risk, even asking the GOP to talk to their CEO friends about how out of control this is, and gotten nowhere. Yesterday I wrote to the Comptroller of the GAO. Congress was all worried about what China might do/learn via TikTok and its algorithms and yet they sit idly by as Trump literally hands over the keys to key government systems to Lord knows who???????
Heather writes "...the Director of the Office of Administration in the Trump administration, Joshua Fisher, clarified the government position of billionaire Elon Musk. In a sworn declaration to the court, Fisher identified Musk as “a Senior Advisor to the President.” He explained: “In his role as a Senior Advisor to the President, Mr. Musk has no greater authority than other senior White House advisors. Like other senior White House advisors, Mr. Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself. Mr. Musk can only advise the President and communicate the President’s directives.”
Joshua Fisher lied.
And based on the rest of Heather's reporting, it is obvious the Trump administration is running a "shell game" here. Every time someone asks a question designed to hold them accountable - including Judge Chutkan - they say what they need to say to deflect blame.
Musk and his people are OBJECTIVELY causing chaos throughout the government. They are NOT "reporting to Trump who then can do whatever he wants to with their 'advice'." I pray Judge Chutkan says "I have had enough of the bullshit" and throws the bunch of them in jail... with orders to "take some time to think about what the truth is".
The game Trump & Musk is playing MUST BE SHUT DOWN... like any illegal shell game would be if found being run at a carnival!
While cases proceed through the courts, we have the court of public opinion. Shine a light as much as possible on the DOGE crew (and complain if their names are not included in the lawsuits):
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-doge-recruiting-palantir/
https://bsky.app/profile/demlabs.bsky.social/post/3lhmeulmrvk26
https://bsky.app/profile/denisedwheeler.bsky.social/post/3lhowh3ijgs2f
When DOGE illegally entered the Aid development offices and struggled with security officers, the officers should have pulled their weapons out and shot the entruders dead just like the Capital police’s should have defended the Capital on Jan 6 by laying a volley of shots at the front line of the insurrectionists. This is the only lesson they understood.
Agree that’s the only thing that will stop them.
The TRO was denied, but Chutkan will take testimony and give both of the parties an opportunty to be heard.
The standard for a TRO is the plaintiffs must convince the judge that they will suffer immediate irreparable injury unless the order is issued. If the judge is convinced that a temporary restraining order is necessary, she may issue the order immediately, without informing the other parties and without holding a hearing. Requires "clear and convincing evidence" of harm. I wasn't there, but I bet Chutkan did not receive clear and convincing evidence, undermined buy Fisher's testimony.
To seek a permanent injunction, a plaintiff must pass the four-step test: (1) that the plaintiff has suffered an irreparable injury; (2) that remedies available at law, such as monetary damages, are inadequate to compensate for the injury; (3) that the remedy in equity is warranted upon consideration of the balance
Joshua Fisher could be called as an adverse witness, as if on cross examination. Was Musk sworn? When? By whom?
Musk seems to be operating with an undue level of independence and with no one seriously monitoring the actions of his team. An indication of this was the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt's response to a question from the press corps about potential conflicts of interest affecting Musk. She said that if he identified such conflicts affecting his many government contracts he would "excuse (sic.) himself". As legal experts subsequently pointed out, the mere fact that he is allowed to police those conflicts of interest himself was itself a conflict of interest!! It seems to me likely that Musk and his team may not have been properly empowered to conduct this exercise of this scale and if so the courts will eventually get to the bottom of this.
Musk can be called a a witness and subjected to cross examination. I'm sure he has been investigated for every government contract he has ever had. Every agency has an audit procedure.
All his public companies also have to be aujdited. One of the categories is "contingent liabilities." I don't know this as a fact, I bet he knows what his exposure is/has been and he has insurance to cover.
AI says Musk has been involved in multiple shareholder derivative lawsuits, including ones related to Tesla's SolarCity acquisition and Musk's compensation package. https://www.lieffcabraser.com/securities/tesla-musk/
Delaware Court of Chancery Rejects Elon Musk’s $55.8 Billion Tesla Compensation Package (Again) https://www.mccarter.com/insights/delaware-court-of-chancery-rejects-elon-musks55-8b-tesla-compensation-package-again/
Tesla Inc. must pay $176 million in legal fees to the shareholder attorneys who challenged four years of pay for its board of directors, including Elon Musk, a judge ruled Wednesday.
"A Delaware judge signed off on a settlement worth up to $919 million, resolving the lawsuit by a pension fund that challenged the board’s compensation from 2017 to 2020, and awarded the fees. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/esg/musk-gets-court-nod-for-settlement-pact-in-tesla-board-pay-case
"Elon Musk will face coordinated litigation—rather than a flurry of separate lawsuits by Tesla Inc. shareholders—over his alleged insider trades, Twitter Inc. acquisition, and artificial intelligence side projects.
A Delaware judge Monday combined multiple suits filed against Musk and other Tesla board members last spring, in the days and weeks before the world’s richest person moved its most valuable automaker to Texas. Musk, now serving as a government cost-cutting czar in Donald Trump’s second presidential administration, has a net worth of $428 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
"Musk shifted Tesla’s corporate home in June, five months after the chief judge of Delaware’s Chancery Court struck down his $56 billion CEO pay package. The judge in December stood by her initial ruling—defying nearly a year of social media attacks from the tech titan—and handed $345 million to the shareholder attorneys who led the litigation. The compensation case is now finally headed for appeal after a six-year drama in the elite business court."
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/esg/musks-last-dance-in-delaware-court-consolidated-by-chief-judge
"The lawsuits filed against Musk on Tesla’s way out the door—between late May and mid-June—represent a final effort to hold Musk accountable in Delaware for his alleged wrongdoing at Tesla’s helm.
"They involve claims that the billionaire stole corporate opportunities when he bought the former Twitter and started a new business, xAI, after failing to engineer a merger between Tesla and OpenAI Inc., the artificial intelligence pioneer he’s now suing. The suits also say Musk sold billions worth of Tesla stock based on inside information while manipulating the market".
What I find truly stunning in all of Musk's cuts to federal funding and access to databases is how Congress is watching Musk rip away their Constitutionally mandated job of holding the purse strings. Johnson (the pussy) is applauding Musk's cuts and helping put the cuts into a budget. The Democrats are acting as though they're powerless to push back and are confused by the whole situtation.
Russell, you hope!!
Is this the same court that ruled that a public survive union did not have a standing in a discharge case?
What’s the 4th requirement for a TRO? (“4” stated, 3 listed)
Harm.
amen!
Be careful about giving the Trump/Musk Regime an excuse to declare martial law. They are itching for it and posts like this are the kind of thing the Homeland Security will use as justification. Not that they'll need much. But be aware of the end game here.
Trump does not own the military, Congress does. We do take an oath to a president or party, our Oath is to the Constitution of the United States. Truly I tell you, there are many old Veterans today (to which I am One) that would stand up and defend democracy!
Oops ...we DO NOT take an....
Be careful -- Putin has said that there are 3 was to influence/deal with people: blackmail, vodka and the THREAT OF MURDER....
Or windows in hotel rooms, Stephanie.
or a tainted cup of tea...
Yikes!!!
I have wondered why DOGE has been allowed to enter any of these government offices. Lock the doors, do not allow entry. If DOGE tries to break in, guards must stand their ground by all means necessary. If employees get termination notices ignore them. Let’s see how long the DOGE team lasts after the first has lost his life.
Sounds good, Joanne, except that in addition to easily—ignored termination notices, employees are locked out of computer systems as well. Tough to “ignore” that.
Who is giving them admin privileges on these computer systems?
Well, Bessant allowed them into Treasury
I agree - force confrontation while controlling the bully pulpit. I do not see backbones at work.
My thoughts exactly — where was security and why didn’t they stop them, by force if necessary ?!
Unfortunately, I think that is what it is going to come to. Trump and his minions already have the blood of thousands on the hands. And they are preparing for more.
Penny, my husband and I were just discussing this last night. We feel tensions building and this is heading to some kind of explosion. We did not speculate as to exactly what. We do now read about many death star voters who are angry and expressing regret. Also lots of fools are still defending this and I would bet that they have not felt the heat....yet.
Soon it will be the other way around with their blood if this isn't stopped.
I suspect that is one of the reasons that Trump pardoned all the January 6 folks. He wants his army out so they can re-group and get ready for the next assault!
Steady on, Bill! Let's give the courts a chance to undertake a review of what exactly is happening. It may well be that no one else in the administration is monitoring what Musk and his team are actually doing on a day-to-day basis and if this is the case then it will substantially weaken the government's case that it is acting reasonably within its powers.
So you are saying the Secretaries of Treasury, Energy, Transportation, et.al, are not aware of Trump's day-to-day decimation of our government? Are they illiterate and deaf? Why did so many Democrats vote for these incompetent men and women if they could not understand and lead?
That's the million dollar question. And no real signs yet of buyer remorse.
You can bet your ass they don't what is going on.
CNN recently interviewed Kristi Noem, secretary of Homeland Security, about Musk's activities and she seemed clueless (although I concede this might be a default position in her case).
Russell the Gnome is a dog and pony show and is dumb as a rock. Since my husband has Lakota ancestry, we have lots of relatives in South Dakota. The ones we have contact with can't stand her. When I am feeling extra angry about her, I think about a gravel pit.
Noem- clueless, indeed!
Ask Trump how the courts held him accountable
But they did. He was indicted on 93 criminal charges in four separate jurisdictions and ended up with a criminal conviction for fraud on his record, although he was not punished. And it infuriated him so much that he's spent the best part of a month in office taking his revenge instead of governing the country. Inflation is rising, none of his foreign policy initiatives have so far been successful or even widely supported and once again he's facing a battery of legal challenges. More and more members of his administration have beaten a retreat to friendly faces at Fox News to try to explain the administration's strategies as the chaos unleashed by Trump and Musk unfolds around them.
Trump NEVER had any desire to govern. He only needed to be "president" so he could avoid jail. He's just a place-holder, and his co-conspirators are calling all the shots.
I wonder why that is so hard to understand, Bill. Are the PoPo collaborating?
While I agree emotionally, doing that would have subjected them not only to loss of their jobs, but to relentless prosecution by Trump’s “Justice” Department.
I disagree-their movement does not need more martyrs, as the protester on Jan 6th was framed, but arrests and prosecutions of the wrong-doers should be vigorously pursued.
Okay, they are slow hackers whose only weapon was a flash drive with the hacker’s hardware … shoot at the legs. Or in the foot, they are slow musky ‘little shits’ and don’t deserve to die.
Bill Katz, YES!!!
Kitty! Kitties!
Sadly - - I must agree.
Katz, YES!!
Agree 💯
Bill Katz: NO.
I take a back seat to nobody in opposition to and anger with MUSK/VANCE/TRAMP.
But advocacy of violence is dangerous and potentially illegal.
I advocate strong resistance by any means necessary and convenient within the bounds of the law and morality.
WARNING!!; For the second time in recent months the NYTimes' (Legacy media? Right!) on line e-mail this morning included a TWO-YEAR-OLD Paul Krugman column I should have remembered he was no longer writing for them. I missed the tiny 2023 date and read it assuming the "administration" Krugman referred to in the opening line was Trump's. The current upheaval is bad enough without the Times contributing to it with this kind of inexcusable editorial error. My apologies for interrupting the flow here. [Once a lifeguard, always a lifeguard!!]
Krugman is on Substack now.
And very good! Nice complement to HCR!
Hendrik, nice catch. We do take the Times. I like to do the puzzles and read the book review and some other things. My husband reads it more seriously and at this point, I sometimes wonder why.
DOGE = Department of Gratify Elon
Or, as HCR says, "dog e." Here doggie, doggie.
I like Do(D)ge. It is what it is.
Yes little Shitz!
Along with his puppet, the PINO (President in Name Only)
Perfect!
Muskrat and his Doge pet FOTUS.
Thank You Ellie - I think.
When government data—ranging from internal agency records to detailed bureaucratic interactions—is combined with commercial and social media data, the result is an extraordinarily comprehensive picture of individual lives. Elon Musk’s ventures, such as the integration of DOGE into new data mining projects, are purported to access this kind of information. Such data often includes not only basic demographic details but also complex behavioral, financial, and political tendencies. When these diverse datasets converge, they enable the creation of hyper-detailed digital profiles that can predict individual behavior with high accuracy.
This powerful combination can be leveraged to manipulate public opinion and behavior down the road through highly personalized messaging. With access to government data, the information gathered can reveal insights into how citizens interact with public institutions, comply with regulations, or even their proximity to politically sensitive areas and issues. When such insights are merged with data from commercial transactions and social media activity, it opens the door to microtargeting strategies that can craft messages tailored to exploit an individual’s specific vulnerabilities or ideological leanings. Political campaigns or other influential entities could, for instance, design persuasive content that reinforces pre-existing biases or subtly nudges individuals toward certain decisions—ranging from voting behavior to broader public policy stances.
Moreover, the integration of government data intensifies concerns around privacy and consent. Unlike commercial or social media data, which users may inadvertently agree to share through complex terms and conditions, government data is often collected without the same level of transparency or user control. This raises profound legal and ethical questions: Is it acceptable for public agencies to allow private companies to access and combine their data with other data streams? And even if it is legally permissible under current regulations, what are the ethical implications of such deep intrusion into personal lives? The potential manipulation through these means not only undermines democratic processes by subverting informed, autonomous decision-making but also risks creating a society where behavior is engineered through algorithmic nudges and targeted messaging—a scenario that fundamentally challenges individual freedom and privacy.
Exactly Ted. When the breadth of that data is combined with other sources (like the one Musk already has) and run through AI, it'll take on a whole new dimension. It'll make what Cambridge Analytica had look like cave drawings...
After doing a lot of thinking and reading, I have a conclusion forming that needs vetting.
The government data confirms your real name, address, Social Security number, etc. you can cross reference this across all social media records that are just your IP address to your phone or your computer. This way the algorithms can hone in very deliberately on an individual basis.
How one one possibly like what can only be feared??
Great point. Dr Steven Hassan actually has a presentation on politicians using fear as a motivator towards apathy and inaction. It’s worth checking out his Substack. His area of study is cult leaders and mind control
The inaction in response to a fear response is used in “training” horses in some (horrible) systems. Eventually they just shut down. It is pathetic to see in animals. Learned helplessness is awful to see in people.
Here in a pair of back and forth comments is what is so frustrating to me about this substack technology. Here I am trying to respond and onlyu now do I realize I'm in my e-mail, not HRC's Substack and I'mnot at all sure it will get to where you can see it. It looks good, but I don't know until I hit 'send' whether it will go . . .
Combine this Musk directed data manipulation with news that the companies who test our election equipment and software may be compromised (see: https://open.substack.com/pub/smartelections/p/voting-machine-testing-lab-website?r=x4w9d&utm_medium=ios ) and the result is any future elections will be utterly meaningless.
That was the plan all along. It's why Trump said, "Vote this one time and you'll never have to vote again".
Especially with the Republicans SAVE ACT!
:- (
The riotous spe table of Trump's rule from the beginning has resembled a circus show--the young new Republican electeds were a new act,
a collection of clowns exploding from a tiny car in the center ring. Excesses abounded, in-your-face impolitic, impolite confrontations of both individuals and policies, replacing historic, boundary-observing professional political decorum. Everything since has been accomplished by whackamole feverishness. This general theme--purposeful explosive disconcertation and intended confusion, endless revolving catch- me-if-you-can antics--has remained completely consistent as their operating modality. It worked for them. They won because the Democratic Party sat in the bleachers, transfixed and stupified silent. The MSM media were barkers outside the tent, selling, selling, selling. Since Trump took the helm, the shclock show has accelerated. Musk has operated in nano speed, moving super fast, accompanied by unconventional
method, that has created a blizzard of confusion just to catch up with his moves. All this to say that this has all been intentionally created. On purpose. Identification of the actual people behind this is the key to the coup. Not the players out front but the unseen planners. They must be named.
How about the Project 2025 crew???
‘ceremonial’ elections… just like in Russia and Hungry.
There will be future elections but the outcomes will be known well before the votes are counted. This action falls under the heading of "competitive authoritarianism." https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/path-american-authoritarianism-trump
We know Cambridge Analytica mined Facebook accounts to manipulate the Brexit fiasco in the UK. Given what's happening now and the willingness for 1/3 of Americans to vote for Trump, do you really think the privacy setting on social media accounts prevented Musk and other actors from using that data to undermine the last election?
Suckerberg probably just handed it ask over to Musk. He acts like a teenage kid with a bromance.
Right now, if DOGE is trying to influence me all it's doing is pissing me off.
Well said! Richard Reich warned in one of his articles on Substack, to be careful of supporting boycotts and protests even now. Because the DOGEs are trying to influence us. Muskrat said he's going to "destroy the woke mind." He can't change my core values! It's important to remember, as incredible as AI is, it is still artificial. It does not think like an authentic human being. It can't steal our personal integrity. It can sow confusion and division but it can't change our fundamental nature.
Not to mention what will likely happen when all that data is loaded into AI.
Ted, that’s a lot to digest!
Well stated. Thank you.
The judge’s comments in her decision clearly indicted that she knows they are LYING. She has, I believe, left the door open to refile in a different manner. All of this is BS and it is extremely dangerous. As Timothy Synder stated on MSNBC yesterday, we are but mere inches away from no longer being a democracy. The felon who is president has successfully destroyed every relationship with our allies for the sake of his Putin worship. He has lied and lied about everything and the republicans sit silently in congress. Each and everyone of them should be recalled, fired or impeached for betraying our country. They are traitors, one and all.
This is the place to post this!!
Help me, dear HCR fans, with a dilemma. Several years ago a charming, Maine, harbormasterr friend cued me in to HCR's posts, but I paid only random attention to the discussion they stimulated. That changed at the turn of the New Year when my dismay over last November 5 took deeper root. A week ago I found myself reading ALL each day's comments . . . along with a few of you others, if your-all-of-the-way-to-the end-of-the-list posts are a valid clue.
I've learned several things from my multi-day marathon:
Reading (and reacting) takes 6-8 hours of my time each day; it's all I've done for a solid week now.
(Can HCR herself afford to read them all and still generate a new post a day?)
Should I continue the addictive delight I've experienced since last Wednesday?
I have been reminded how much I love to banter and how brevity is achieved primarily through the investment of all the time it takes to achieve it. (And as I realized just minutes ago, that I must TAKE that time lest I make dumb and very public mistakes.) But several of my posts have been quite new revelations to ME, both surprising and gratifying, as I suspect any others approaching 89 would feel.
How addictive warm responses from others can be (you know who you are!)
But . . . by participating so fully and relentlessly in this dialog, am I really contributing to the DOTR (Defense of the Republic) or merely SIW (Surfing its Wave)???
What counsel would you share with me, dear new acquaintances. as I consider what to do and how?
Balance. Don't get behind on your chores. Ope! the dryer alarm just went off.....but I got the driveway cleared of snow.....!!!
Snow piles lining my driveway are now 7 feet high. I think snow shoveling should be an Olympic sport. My grandmother, living in Buffalo, N.Y. At age 92 she called my dad and said, Put me in a home." He said, "Why? You still shovel your driveway!" She replied, "I can't get it over my shoulder anymore."
Every year it gets a bit more difficult....
I LOVE this!..from another 80-something woman. We DO have a voice, and a wise one, at that!
Hendrik, I wish I had an answer for you! I tend to scroll quite a bit, and read comments of my favorite responders; however, even that takes a lot of time, leaving projects not completed, chores delayed, and a guilty conscience.(Can you tell I was raised Roman Catholic? It’s remnants still leak through to me at 85.)
I would love to see a Search option so you can go directly to the people you regularly read. So many good replies, so little time!
Yesterday, I dialed Susan Collins office to ask "What do we when our social security numbers, our financial information and any other data is released to the highest bidder?
When I dialed the number, the number didn't ring it just returned to the screen like I didn't hit send. So I checked the number and hit send again. Same thing. And then I tried again -- same thing.
We can speculate about what is going on, but I can't imagine her staff cannot handle the trauma of being yelled at and threatened and likely several of her staff have quit. If I were Trump or many Republicans, I would hunt down her Staff and release their personal information just to be a cruel asshole, but of course, I never would.
One of Musk's former colleagues has already entered the race against her -
"Feb. 14—Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins has her first challenger for the 2026 election cycle: Phillip Rench, a former senior engineer for Elon Musk's SpaceX, who lives in Waterboro.
Rench is a 37-year-old board member of the Maine Space Corp., a quasi-governmental nonprofit created by the state Legislature to establish sites to launch small vehicles and satellites into low orbit. He is challenging Collins — who is seeking her sixth term — as an independent, according to paperwork filed with the Federal Election Commission."
This could get real interesting and very expensive. Leonard Leo has been a large fundraiser and donor for Collins in the past and probably will be again.
Colins worked for Bill Cohen who switched parties from Maine's Republcan Senator to become a Clinton cabinet member.
We have a common denominator, even with most Republicans in Congress: Treason.
I think the sell out re Ukraine, Vance meeting with the Nazis, etc has to shake up even Senate Republcans. This may be a window of oppotunity....
I keep sayin' we need Republicans to object -- pressure the Senate Republicans who voted for the Ukraine package https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4464791-here-are-the-senate-republicans-who-voted-for-the-ukraine-package/
Duty, honor country.
It is treason, which started back when the felon stole classified documents.
How is this not espionage? I realize that we don’t have a DOJ that will investigate, but I thought I would raise the question here.
My complaints to my Senator (Ernst of Iowa) about musk and DOGE acting in violation of the 1974 Privacy Act were met yesterday with this reply from Ernest’s office: “employees serving on the government efficiency team have read-only access to federal payment data.”
My point being— if you’re writing to republican senators to complain about these illegal activities, be sure to explicitly state that read-only access allows copying, and therefore, even *if* these illegal snoops have been effectively constrained from altering computer code, once in their hands our private data are out the door.
“Read-only” is not a defense. Oh, and of course Ernst also claimed how great DOGE is for helping to tame our out-of-control federal deficit of $36 trillion (which I’m going to tell her appears to be a pledge on her part NOT to vote for a budget busting renewal of t***p’s billionaires’ tax cut.)
Republicans are not familiar with the words duty, honor, country. They are traitors just like the confederates in the CSA. The only good Republicans are pushing up daisies, as Harry Truman said.
Certainly they are without honor. They see their duty as doing whatever Trump says he wants at any particular moment. Their country is red. And European red.
I was in the same reserve unit with some of them.
I am so sorry.
I can picture it like yesterday, though it was in 2011, my friend and Michigan State Representative declaring triumphantly, " We have gerrymandered this state so badly, those f%&#ing Democrats will never win again!!" I remember the year because I had so diligently worked, going door to every door, on the 2010 Census.
agreed!
You are assuming the Republicans in Congress do not actually agree with Trump and Project 2025. You would be wrong on that assumption. They believe Biden lost the election to Trump in 2020, they believe in rolling back voter rights, they believe in forcing women to die rather than life-saving care during pregnancy. They do not like LGBTQ+ human beings. They will not object to their own beliefs!
THE ONLY COMMON DENOMINATOR IS TREASON --
Duty, honor, country. Trump sold Ukraine to Putin.
Got to thnk like a Republican...especially those who were in the military.
Exactly right Mr Solomon
I’ve been leaving messages for Collins daily! She’s a lost cause- always has been. Time to find a Dem who can appeal to Districts 1&2. That won’t be easy. Golden has won in D1 but he often supports Republican bills. ME Dems have to get busy and take action. The Dems weren’t going to sponsor the rally in Augusta on Pres’s Day on Monday out of fear. Another group stepped forward & 100’s of us rallied peacefully in the cold & blowing snow. Mills, Bellows, Jackson come to mind as possibilities to challenge Collins.
ME REPUBLICAN patrikots have to get busy and take action.
I trust you mentioned to her that her own medical and financial details were also likely compromised.
Even more important is to say that to the staffer who answers the phone. The startled reactions I've gotten to that would be funny if it wasn't so serious.
Musk's swingeing cuts and lay-offs are beginning to have an effect in Republican circles. Rep. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia has introduced an aid program to help the families of federal workers who have been fired by Trump and Musk while insisting that he fully supports the administration. Senators Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Chuck Grassley and Katie Britt have all asked for exemptions from the cuts but none have dared to defy Trump.
And it must be shut down now. I hope Judge Chutkan doesn't delay.
She did.
I don’t understand why she made this judgement do you?
Probably evidence was conflicted. Like I said "clear and convincing" is a difficult standard and to survive an appeal she would have to justify her decision.
😢
You're absolutely right that judges should require the administration to specify unambiguously the powers under which Musk and his operatives are working and they should require this information to be produced immediately. They also need to ask for an explanation of exactly what Musk is doing in the various departments and agencies and not be fobbed off with the usual claim that they are there to principally cut bureaucracy and reduce costs. They need to be reassured that people's personal information, like medical and financial records, have been adequately protected during this exercise. It seems odd to me that the whole burden of adducing this sort of evidence should fall on the plaintiffs.
Oh remember, no one is driving the car, it's a driverless Musk-la.
I agree, enough violation of privacy has occurred and it's time for consequences. Jail time might teach the young punks to reconsider their work. Jailing Musk or other senior leaders will further entrenched their behavior but hopefully would slow this nightmare down.
What do we want: freedom from tyranny, equality, fairness, decency, honesty .. when do we want it --- eventually!!
First there is a government agency with a head and plenary authority to dispose of other government agencies, then there is no government agency, merely some temporary White House employees looking in to everything they want. Not feeding USAID through the woodchipper. Not trying to gain programmer level access to every government computer system. Not locking doors shut. Pushing employees and security guards aside. Not telling them them to go home. Not freezing accounts. Not boasting of having shutdown the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Not going from Department to Department within government starting with Treasury and doing much the same. Not doing any of these things on their own, nor executing orders received from the President nor Stephen Miller nor OMB. Just looking at things.
I have hit a paywall with CNN. But I understand that DC Judge Chutkin denied the TRO sought to put a stop to this by 14 states, based largely on the appointments clause we are informed.
Perhaps she was completely dazzled by this shell game and the audacious display of lying and dissembling it entailed, and though incredulous, out of the abundance of caution that almost all judges have or outright fear and confusion decided that the best course of action now was to do nothing. Mind you, the federal courts are underfunded and understaffed, and have neither the time nor the money to allow judges to conduct lengthy evidenciary hearings on TROs all the time. Or even have a room to do it in. Rather I will bet, they are decided on the basis of "offers of proof" made by lawyers in hearings or found in pleadings and affidavits. And any "offer of proof" not false on its face or which the judge is afraid to challenge, and which raises some probable issues of material fact sufficient to cast in to doubt one element of the kill chain of conditional probabilities a plaintiff must set out in order to show a likelihood of success on the merits will be enough to cause any judge to decline to issue a TRO. Judges are cautious. At best.
Still I would have thought the offers of proof made in this instance, if Stephen Miller's smug out of court statements are to be trusted as any guide, amounted to more of a confession than they did a challenge to the plaintiffs aversions. So ....Elon Musk is not a constitutional officer of any kind. He is merely a confidential adviser to the President. And the "DOGE" he boasted of setting up with Trump's blessing and more than one executive order, as those orders reveal, is merely a prior existing "department" within the Offices of the White House, not a governmentsl department newly formed, staffed with mere leaderless employees who merely study things and make recommendations. And present two faces to the public. And shroud their activities in secrecy. Yet also openly and notoriously boast of them. And leave a swath of destruction for all to see and hear tell of
This is truly an offer of proof fit for an Emperor with No Clothes. I wonder why Judge Chutkin bought it. I wonder if the plaintiffs lawyers did their jobs and covered all the bases. Perhaps their assault what neither broad enough nor blunt. If you leave a judge a back door out the judge will take it
The Judge was being careful. She denied a TRA but the plaintiffs are still in the game. Hard as it is, let's wait her out to the end.
We cannot rely on Chutkin to save us. She ruled against 14 State Attorney Generals suit. When she has enough evidence she MAY rule against Trump/Musk, but she will wait. After all, if Musk is not in charge of DOGE then Trump is, in his Official Capacity as President, and he is immune from all actions taken in that capacity.
The lawyers have a duty of candor to the court. If they breach that, they should be reported to the relevant bar authorities for discipline. An opposing counsel, or even a member of the public could file such a report.
Mr. Brant, what you, as well as many others, speak the truth. HOW can this chaos-creating shell game be stopped? While legal actions grind through the court system, Frump and Muck aren’t even slowing down. Congress is full of pussies (apologies to cats everywhere) who put fear for their jobs above their ‘love’ of country. Prayer and protests seem to be futile. Phone calls, emails, and any other sort of communication to those who should be able to halt this shell game result in … nothing because they choose inaction. Mid-term elections? The country will be gone by then, the worldwide economy will collapse, and the populace will pay the price. (Since I have not yet heard how to pronounce ‘DOGE,’ I have elected to pronounce it ‘doggy.’ 😏)
Technically it's very "dodgy", but in notice DOGE coin has a dog mascot.
Thank you Steve. Your comment provides the action to be taken. Now how to implement it?
Protest gatherings nationwide is one. But we need more focused ones. Any idea?
Protesting is fighting the enemy on their chosen battlefield. I’m sure you have heard Trump would love to be able to declare Marshall Law. My strategy is asymmetrical warfare… Replacing the system not fighting the system. Here’s the link to an existing community development model and supporting nationwide organization that will be part of the strategy I write about in my next Substack newsletter essay… Hopefully coming out later today.
https://communitiesofexcellence2026.org
Thank you for the link. I agree with you that street protests could invoke Trump marshall law. How about weekly polls on Musk by major medias?
Martial rather?
“Talk to text” sucks
Judge Chutkan declined to enjoin Musk's illegal, unconstitutional activities because she said states did not show evidence of specific harms.
But if one needs evidence of 'specific harms', wouldn't that make ANY data breach legally unassailable?
Agree, it seems a very high bar. You must wait until the hackers have cleaned out your bank account to have a case? I have a lot of respect for Judge Chutkan, think she's a terrific jurist. She wrote that excellent decision on Donnie Convict's immunity appeal where she said "A president is not a king." So I'll have to give her the benefit of the doubt that her decision is legally correct. Don't think she's one to be intimidated by the felon and his coterie of thugs.
It is most unfortunate that so many Americans have not come to EXPECT dishonesty from anything to do with tRump. If one continues to believe a liar, there will be consequences. Oaths are irrelevant to these folks who are bereft of principles other than ME. Nonetheless, the only defense is to get them under oath and then prosecute. tRump has learned that the justice system is +/- toothless against liars and scoundrels.
OK, I'll bite. Who is Joshua Fisher??
Ignore this mistaken question. Indication of my fatigue and dismay. See my yet-to-be-fully-written dilemma to appear below, when it's completed.
Since no one can define what DOGE is, other than "Not an official government agency," that means the Teenage Mutant Ninja Antisocial Basement Dwellers have no official authority. They are trespassers when they come into a government building. They should be grabbed, taken to the building roof, and thrown off. Then call Elmo to come clean up his garbage because it's going to start stinking as the corpses rot. Do that once and you can bet the little shits who didn't get grabbed won't be walking into a second building.
Exactly my thinking. Why do government officials LET these freshman Musk cronies do what they want? They have no legal authority, so kick them out!
It’s true what was said: “For evil to triumph, it’s only necessary fir good people to do nothing.” (Was that by Churchill?) This is it. Musk has no legal authority, he wasn’t voted for, but in his world-encompassing arrogance, he’s simply DOING it: “I’m so rich and so great, let’s see somebody stop me.” And it works.
“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing” Edmund Burke.
Thanks for that one!
G
Have the HR Seargeant of Arms ARREST Musk. You or I or anyone there illegally, would be arrested. Use the tools they have!
Yes, _we_ would be arrested - but we don't have the "f*ck you level" money that Musk has.
Yes, but we have each other. I can see how it’s gonna take millions of people protesting, putting their bodies in between the billionaires like Mosque and our government agencies and departments.
Yes. Otherwise, it's "What you gonna do when they come for you?"
"The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind"
We outnumber them big time. And that should scare the f out of them. It might take some serious sit ins and protests 1960's style. But that I fear is what it is going to take.
Chump fires anybody who objects. That’s what happens when the Trojan Horse sits on the throne.
Humpty Dumpty will have a great fall 👍
And most of those people petrified to object, have mortgages or rent , kids in college, medical bills and so on....and the maga architects know abd use that fear as weapon against we the people. What a nightmare. Thanks for your comment JD.
" It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it." Upton Sinclair
That was Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Anglo-Irish philosopher and UK politician.
Thanks!
Wasn’t he one of early founders of what conservatism used to mean?
Exactly!
They are probably physically throwing people out of their way! Bully is a better word.
That's the biggest problem Dutch, it works and even bigger problem is that we allowed it to happens because we still don't know what to do.
This is the time we need a Lider.
So true. But what is a Lider?
Until it doesn’t (he is such a demonic sick bastard)
I can define what doge is.
It is about data mining.
The goal of data mining isn’t a better understand you, the human, the consumer, the voter.
Once a person or a business has the data they can create psychological profiles. These profiles can be manipulated by algorithms that learn how each individual can be persuaded or manipulated most of the time without their consent.
It’s one thing to do this commercially for the purpose of selling you more stuff. It’s another to do it to manipulate a person to develop their feelings towards an issue like uncontrol abortion, the basic identity stuff.
Social media also is very addicting which results in the user supplying more data without their consent that makes the algorithms learn more.
Doge is about optimization. The collection of so much data to improve algorithms that form psychological profiles to persuade to manipulate consumer and voter behavior.
He who controls the data controls the masses.
We Americans were always taught that we have free will, freedom. and we’ve always been critical of authoritarian regime that control freedom by controlling with force, and not with force, both propaganda and psychological soft weapons. Usually, we see this from a government.
we don’t recognize what’s happening to us here in America because it’s been so slow developing.
It’s been almost two decades now, this new commercial software product services, aka social media, with AI, has morphed into “ behavior, modification tools”.
We never signed a consent form permitting our social media public company’s billionaire owners to take over our government without our vote.
“ we are at war”, Rep LaMonica, McIver, New Jersey
Might sound a bit ‘out there’ if you haven’t followed things like the Cambridge Analytica hack of the 2016 election, but what Ted says is true.
It would appear we are in a cyberwar and we’re being gutted by DOGE.
🙏 I’ve been reading published books by phd s that study this stuff since the election and news articles on technology billionaires and the kit industry in general. Focus less on Trump, and more on the how he won. Laser focus on his campaign donors, their process of winning.
If it sounds ‘conspiratorial’ to some how could I present it differently? I am not a tin foil hat wearing conspiracist.
Hey Ted, I was definitely NOT being sarcastic. I think you are absolutely right about the current AI sprint as covered in “The Coming Wave” by Mustafa Suleyman, and the battle for Attention - “the world’s scarcest resource” as it is termed by the recent “Siren’s Call”, by Chris Hayes.
I think you are correctly tuned into the real game, not the misdirection of the shock and awe at how fast a US President and a 100 Billionaire can wreck a powerful nation (and a back-slid government).
And I think your notes are doing good work to inform many here who haven’t read much about the edge of tech, and the nature of the power of attention control.
I didn't think/assume you were being sarcastic. Our assumptions in digital communication miss so much detail of human to human communication. Its new for all of us. I don't mind at all.
I would recommend everyone watch the documentary, The Great Hack, on Netflix. Its a soft version of the book, that will eventually get banned soon, if things keep going the way they are going.
Journalists to follow are:
Carrol Cadwadlar, who just got laid off at the Guardian ( in true Orwellian twist, the Guardian is replacing 100 journalists with AI to write stores instead). She is here on Substack doing a banger job!
Helen Lewis at the Atlantic.
Both women are British, and they got exposed to Surveleince Capital's strategies and tactics and the serious downside covering the beat on Brexit. ( this is covered in the Documentary, The Great Hack).
Putin is a problem. Russian meddling is a problem, but Mueller missed the real opportunity. The Russians used Meta and Twitter as their delivery vehicle. We asked and answered the "What", but didn't consider the "How" as Europe did. Now, the "How" is being used against us all by the tech-oligarchy. Even though Cambridge is gone, the Republicans, Trump, and former Director at Cambridge Analytica, Steve Bannon is still here. His benefactor is Robert Mercer, a billionaire MIT PhD in algorithms. Mercer wrote the algorithm for rapid trading that disrupted Wall Street and made more than George Soros did earlier. Mercer is Libert-Aryan like Murdoch, Musk, Theil, Ellison, etc.
These are very smart people. Too bad they lack any ethical consideration for what they are doing to our democracy. They have corporate America's backing. Its always about MORE. More $ for them. Ill break that down next.
We the people are being duped
Worse. We keep saying “ I can’t believe MAGA believes…”
The method, their method is the madness. “It’s their Facebook newsfeed stupid”
Social experiment:
Targeted and addicted to Facebook
Silo into an opinion group
Form a closed identity politics group ( 1 view only Bo counter opinions)
And see what happens…
Hence, there are hundreds of these studies already that all say the same thing the same conclusion.
The difference today is the scale of what’s happening and people don’t know their participating in one of the biggest propaganda experiments in the history of the world. Thanks to social media.
Ted, it would help me, and I suspect others, if you could clarify and expand what you mean by this social experiment. I'm all ears but my eyes need such clarification. These are all new concepts to many of us.
Most experiments involve a consent form. While we all click the "I consent" form, nobody reads those, right? So, what is it that we are consenting to?
Ill give a few examples. How many people understand that messaging apps in Meta, Facebook/instagram/whatsap messenger and X, and Google ( gmail) are being monitored by AI ( word identification software) to mine data points?
What do they do with that data...hint they call the data the "Behavior Surplus"
Meta's data consent forms outline how user data is collected, processed, and shared. Analyzing these terms through the lens of Shoshana Zuboff's principles of surveillance capitalism reveals several key insights:
1. Unilateral Data Claiming: Zuboff defines surveillance capitalism as the "unilateral claiming of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data." (NEWS.HARVARD.EDU)
Meta's consent forms often require users to agree to extensive data collection as a condition of service use, effectively appropriating personal experiences without explicit, informed consent for each specific use.
2. Transformation into Prediction Products: The collected data is processed to create detailed user profiles, which are then used to predict and influence future behaviors. This aligns with Zuboff's assertion that behavioral data are computed and packaged as prediction products sold into behavioral futures markets. (NEWS.HARVARD.EDU)
3. Lack of Genuine Consent: While Meta's forms may present an appearance of user consent, the complexity and opacity of these agreements often leave users unaware of the full extent of data usage. This practice undermines the autonomy of individuals, as they are not provided with clear, granular choices about how their data is utilized.
4. Instrumentarian Power: By leveraging vast amounts of user data, Meta exercises what Zuboff terms "instrumentarian power," shaping user behavior through subtle cues and personalized content without users' conscious awareness.
Meta's data consent practices exemplify the core tenets of surveillance capitalism, where personal data is harvested extensively, often without fully informed consent, and utilized to predict and modify human behavior for profit.
I always said that social media are a cancer that will make society sick and ultimately will cause its demise. Damn, I hate being right...
Right!
An Eric Shcmidt of Google, quote comes to mind when describing modern technology platforms, Schmidt revealed,
" Almost nothing, short of a biological virus can scale as quickly, as effectively, or as aggressively as these technology platforms. And this makes the people who build, control and use them powerful too."
From the book, Surveilence Capital, Shoshana Zubloff, chapter 6
This quote explains a lot. It explains how much power Silicon Valley Billonaires have over both political parties. And now, because we failed to outlaw the use of commercial surveilence algorygthms in polical communications, they have the power of influencing the masses. ( manipulation in my definition). Maga is not stupid, ( not everyone in it), but they are victims to overt propaganda and military grade psychological weaponry strategies and tactics, paid for by Musk and delivered to the masses by Meta, X, and Google.
I think THIS is a threat that most of us barely grasp, nor even adequately discuss. We regulate gambling. We regulate liquor. We prohibit 'stalking". Yet commercial organizations are using the methods of science against us (as the tobacco industry was discovered to be doing) designing products that are problematically addictive. In doing so, they (and sometimes the government) are regularly transgressing thresholds of privacy that would have been socially unacceptable and frankly illegal in my youth. An asymmetry of information IS a defining characteristic of despotic societies, and is a clear impediment to democracy. Somehow, when it involves "new media", we have just let it happen.
I think in part this turn of events can be rationally called "conspiratorial",deliberately but even more so to the overall push for "deregulation' of business; which is dry-sounding word for removing social protections against commercial behavior that undermines the commonwealth. That is pretty starkly obvious in the ways plutocrats attack environmental restrictions, but is comprehensively true in the prerogatives carved out for corporations that that are withheld from the public. Just a coarse example of this are the bailouts offered to bankrupt corporations that were largely unavailable to a struggling public, but that's just a piece of it.
Such good observations, JL (& Hendrick & Ted). I wish it/they were closer to the 'front' of the stack. I think it is fair to edit and submit a refined and careful thought/piece more than once, AND to calculate the submission context and timing to reach many more people. ;)
Actually, not merely 'fair', but quite important.
Mind Blown. Thanks.
Ted if the wheels of justice are so slow as to, in the meantime they keep collecting all the information they need to alter the midterm election we need to find another way to counteract. Unfortunately I can think ahead of a problem but I can't offer a practical solution 😕.
Yeah, that is the dilemma I keep running into....a dead-end alley where democracy is bludged to death by tech oligarchs. Those who control public opinion can stay in power indefinitely until some how their spell is broken. The tools Si Valley has today are nothing the world has ever seen, and the populace is oblivious to how it works against us. Theirs is a gentle yet effective cyber weapon. ( go back to the Super Bowl. AI was painted as this great gift to humanity, but the tech oligarchy is misusing it for the gain and power of the few.
Read up on the history of the Maidan in Ukraine. There it took millions taking to the streets to protest and eventually the uprising caused their Russian-backed leader Yanokovich ( a former governor of Luhansk, ( now occupied by Russia, and a former convicted Russian mafia dude), to flee to Russia.
Think about that. It might come to that. Tens of millions of citizens descend on DC in protest and force Trump and Musk flee to Russia or Saudi Arabia or Israel.
I follow and read Margaret Atwood, and she speaks of today, closer to the French Revolution while every other scholar is comparing today to the 1930's and 40s'. Not that either is wrong, but none of the scholars today are in step with Atwood on this and I find that very interesting, considering she is the George Orwell for today.
It was a different zeitgeist, but I read that the corrupt exoneration of the murderers of Emmet Till, with the perpetrators subsequently bragging about it help to shift public opinion away from indifference to racism. For that matter, credit is routinely given to the story "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for increasing awareness of the human side of slavery. We have a rampaging herd of rogue elephants in the room that need to be brought into keener focus. What is the harm with what the plutocrats are doing? Plenty, and that needs to be seen with a human face on it.
Denial is a human coping mechanism the I think we all indulge in. I know I do. Over a million dead from COVID, thousands of grieving families. Stuff happens, right? We can fuss about the price of eggs.
What we have done to the families of undocumented immigrants and much of what we are doing now seems starkly to cross the line from law enforcement into hate crime. Does it matter?
What if they came for me?
Your comment it's very hard to read Ted, not because is complex but because is true. The starting point in moving Ukraine towards democracy, started with a blood bath ,over many days in a public square and that dream it's going to end in a blood bath all over Ukraine under the watch of the Putin- Trump alliance. Remains me of the Molotov- Ribbentrop pact that divided Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. You mentioned massive march of we the people towards DC to accomplish what the Ukrainians dis successfully but I think, why eventually we need to do that? This is or was, days ago, a democracy, why we need to perhaps risk our life marching? What happens if with the same careless as demonstrated when they fire decent people right and left front the jobs, they decided to unleash armed groups against us? After all, we are no Ukraine, this is the US. It's been only a month since inauguration and we are living in a totally different country we had 30 days ago. I still don't have answers and I don't hear anybody suggesting valid solutions.
Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite!
I am old, and possibly qualify to be a Luddite. But what would be a way forward to starve AI of the massive amounts of power that it needs to run? “They” say that our energy infrastructure can’t support the draw on it and that is why we can’t have clean energy. I say it is because so much of the drain comes from the shiny new toys of AI and Crypto mining.
DOGE means "Department Of Grabbing Everything", in my opinion.
But yeah, it's about manipulation, but with one goal: getting even more insanely rich. That's why the Zucc and Musk go hand-in-hand: together, they will control what we think.
Dutch, they are going to use all the information being stolen to cook up the results for the next midterm election and manipulate the voters, if we have one.
That's a big "IF"... Chump promised his cultists needed to vote only one more time, then he would fix it "so you'll never have to vote again." That was a promise and a warning if there ever was one...
100%.
We know they will try, especially if "the people" stays passive.
It's a pathology, no? And it has plagued our species for centuries. Nature doesn't grant exemptions. We have to be smarter about that.
But what if Nature DID have a control mechanism for this pathology? I mean, think back some 20.000 years, when we were still running around in small tribes... How long do you think malignant narcissists with antisocial disorders like Trump and Musk would last in a tribe of, like, 25 to 50 people? Not long. The group would be so sick of their manipulations and their grabbing everything for themselves, they would kick them out of the tribe. Effectively a death sentence, because a human cannot survive alone in the wilderness - thus weeding out this pathology. But then we went and jinxed it by settling down with agriculture and coming up with the concept of "property"...
Ted. It’s all a brainwashing technique 🤮
It's a political card under their sleeves. They are already cheating Ted.
That is certainly part of it.
So maybe this is to make X profitable by blackmailing us into paying him money?
"He loved Big Tesla".
Just arrested works for me, but yeah; if they have no authority then they have no business there. They a patently breaking the law. Arrest them.
And they are stealing valuable info from the taxpayers of this country. Next muskrat is going to Ft. Knox to take “inventory” of our gold holdings. Wanna bet he reports huge thefts of our gold reserves and accuses others (probably Biden and company) of stealing what he actually steals?
So I woke this morning and I had a conclusion to draw on DOGE, musk, and what they’re really doing.
Maybe the stealings already been done. This is just a cherry on top to make the algorithms even stronger and better at what they wanna do to control populations.
And then I thought the stealings already been done. Maybe they’re also in those systems to erase data and cover their tracks for what they done, how they spent in the 2924 election ( social media newsfeeds to influence/perduade/ manipulate voters)
Plausible? ( just a hunch). But isn’t that always the case with smart criminals? Cover your tracks?
You are not wrong
The Great Hack, Netflix. Spread the good word.
Yep. "Blame the Dems". It works every time.
It’s also disgusting
Unfortunately, violence never works that way. It does not stop the little twits, they just bring the guns to back them up. Laws exist to prevent this behavior but enforcement lies in the hands of the executive at the federal level. If there is to be resistance, it needs to stay non-violent and turn the DOGE techno-robbers away at the door. If the guns come, photograph it and publicize it as much as possible. Let the blame for violence fall on their heads, not ours. If it falls on ours, the kakistocracy will turn the situation into Kristallnacht.
I know where TC is coming from, but yeah, never bring a knife to a gunfight.
TC is a historian. He writes about WW2. He’s close to those WW2 vets who suffered fighting fascism. He’s interviews thousands of WW2 vets who lost friends in the savagery of that war. So I cut him a lot of slack if he comes across advocating violence, because that’s what it took from dec 7th 1941 to spring 1945. And right now, doing nothing is squandering that national sacrifice. It’s personal to him in way that should be.
Or just change alla the locks and make certain no coup plotters get access to keys.
Tom I want to be there for the Musk ‘perp walk.’
Actually DOGE is from Italy and the titular head of Venice for several centuries. Another era of Italy for a short time as well. The men were part of the Vatican political system and Byzantine Empire systems. Interesting that Leo has supported Senator Collins.
Yep, and the fact that it's also a shiba dog meme is probably designed to amuse his tech bro fan boys, but it doesn't make it funny in the least...
Why? Collins is for Trump and Kananaugh. Both are Leo's stoolies.
Collins is addicted to the power and money too. They all are.
I know and am very aware of his ties to people including Harlan Crow and other groups. That is why I wonder about the name.
The DOGE of Venice. A business leader who has ultimate state control, even over the police and military. Musk chose the name for a reason. Then in true NAZI fashion he rearranged the meaning to fool the masses. Such a fascist prick!
I agree -- why let them in. Throw the little bastards out.
We are all frustrated. But resorting to violent metaphors is precisely what the President and his team have done ever since he delivered himself on an escalator all those years ago. Let us all do our best to resist the temptation and not raise the rhetorical temperature.
Yop. Our strength is numbers. Our minds. Our empathy for others. Non violence is key. There is much historical support for non violent opposition, it succeeds for a reason. When opposition moments are dealt with violently by the powers that be, the people become sympathetic, and more and more join the movement and/ir stop supporting those in power.
Violence, often in subtle ways, is the enemy. That said I can not bring myself to condemn violent self defense in clearly violent circumstances (such as attacking Hitler) but there are always nasty side effects, and the devil has an advantage when playing by the devil's rules. An ounce of prevention can be worth well more than a pound of cure. Diminishing violence of many sorts would seem a wise strategy for any society, as well as the readiness to fight if necessary.
"Some will rob you with a six-gun
And some with a fountain pen"
Insightful - words of someone who knows history.
Showing my age perhaps but I refer to them as juvenile delinquents and they belong in reform school.
Charge them with trespassing and put them in jail and confiscate any and all equipment and tools and turn it all over the the FBI…fun to see what software they were using to spy in us!
Well, Heather, I truly want to throw up. Elon and his band of young thieves are rifling through each government department like kids looking for their favorite Halloween candy. Compromising all of us exposes us to being stripped down naked. My daughter said she was going to out a “hold” on her credit cards. She is changing her banking account from a major corporation to a credit union. She even checked to see when she last had the MMR shot. Chaos is Donnie and Elon’s middle name. Two narcissist bros from other mothers. May Judge Chutkin be able to slam these m’effers to the ground!
Smart mama raised a smart daughter! All of us should be freezing our credit and diversifying our savings so we don't have all our eggs in one basket, and be prepared if the Project 2025 plan to do away with the FDIC comes to pass. Credit unions are insured by an independent government agency, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA).
Freeze your credit individually at each bureau. It’s free:
• Experian: www.experian.com/freeze
• Equifax: www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-freeze
• TransUnion: www.transunion.com/credit-freeze
https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3liiul3umis2l
Also print out and save pdf files of your Social Security documents.
Heaven help us, but like the 12 Steppers say, it's up to us to do the footwork.
Christopher Webb is exactly the person my daughter referred to so thank you for putting his bluesky account out there, Ellie!
Marlene...who is Christopher Webb? Credentials?
Great suggestions and links Ellie. Thank you.
Chutkin is going to wait until the damage is done. Perhaps she will be able to Crown the King - the one who wins the duel.
Rifling? Like IRS agents or DOJ? NSA? CIA? HHA?
Please keep supporting the spending of the beaucratic State. America hates it.
BTW it would have if you continue to support illegals and the transing of children.
We have 37 Trillion in debt. At 45 Trillion we become bankrupt.
Fun fact, James. Did you know that 25% of our national debt since our founding was created during the last Trump administration? And that extending his tax cuts to billionaires will add even more?
America doesn’t hate our government. You might, but I don’t. I like OSHA and workplace safety. I like clean air and water. I like it when the IRS enforces existing laws to make everyone, even including billionaires, pay their lawful share of taxes. I like it when the CDC monitors disease status so we can be informed and make good decisions if, for example, another pandemic is looming, like it is now. I like it when the FDA insists on safe food and medicine. I like safe roads and bridges. I like that the FDIC insures our bank deposits. I liked having bodily autonomy. I liked it when the FAA made it safer for us to fly. I miss that. I like it when we use our soft power to help fledgling democracies overseas. I like it when the US subsidizes important university research - that’s one of the things that has made us the strongest country in the world, and I’m worried we’re throwing that away and handing that space to the Chinese.
I could go on all day.
What I don’t like is someone calling other people “illegals”. Pretty sure you can come up with a less demeaning name, try undocumented workers. Far from promoting an open border, democrats have tried to address the root causes of migration at the source. It’s a far more humane policy than separating children from their parents, don’t you think? These are people. They are desperate, and we need workers. Democrats negotiated border policy with republicans in good faith, coming up with a bill that was truly bipartisan - only to see their efforts scuttled by Trump, so he could campaign on the border. Did you like that? I didn’t.
Transing children? Again, that’s very demeaning language. No one, literally no one, is forcing children to transition. At most, they have access to counseling and puberty blockers so they can make their own decisions later. What earthly business of yours is it, if a parent, child, and physician together decide that this is in their best interest? How on earth does this affect you? Mind your own business.
The way to solve the problem is NOT to put the one twice as bad (Trump) back in charge (with even worse ideas that will do far more damage than he did the first time.
Eisenhower grew the economy while also paying down the huge WWII and Korean War debt, with relatively high taxes but incentives to invest in making the country more productive for all. This is not the time for even greater tax breaks for irresponsible billionaires.
I still consider myself a conservative, but one along the lines of Sheila Bair G W Bush's FDIC Chair. I would first point out that the previous administration dedicated a lot of the spending to plan and start building out very much needed new infrastructure and repairing old, dangerously neglected infrastructure (to me like Eisenhower was doing). A huge amount went to Red States who may have needed it more (but appreciate less), with the longer term improvements schedule over a longer period that may never be finished by Trump).
It sure seems like we were getting steady progress, despite the revenue not collected after Trump got his billionaire's tax cut, and Trump could have gotten the credit for the repairs and improvements if he simply continued them with the restoration of previous tax rates at the top. So we now seem likely to get double the bill and half the goods.
See https://wwsg.com/speaker-news/sheila-bair-u-s-debt-could-drive-the-next-financial-crisis/
"...Both Republicans and Democrats have settled on deficits as the easiest way to pay for politically popular initiatives, be they lower taxes (Republicans) or higher spending (Democrats). Elected officials are wary of braving the political pain of deficit reduction, knowing their successors could easily squander those hard-fought battles with more deficit-financed spending and tax cuts.
Case in point is the current election. Both presidential candidates are proposing tax and spending giveaways to curry favor with voters. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects that Vice President Kamala Harris’ proposals will increase the debt by $3.95 trillion over the next 10 years, which pales in comparison to Donald Trump’s plans, which will increase it by $7.75 trillion..."
As HCR has pointed our, Old School Republicans crafted a graduated income tax to pay for the Civil War. W's plan was to pay for two wars with tax cuts for the wealthy. That's the modern "Republican" answer to everything.
I remember the 1st War in which taxes weren't increased (in fact decreased). An interesting description of the "Ghost Budget" trick, now called "Overseas Contingency Operations or OCO is at https://www.justsecurity.org/90907/the-ghost-budget-how-america-pays-for-endless-war/
"...In all previous conflicts, the United States paid for wars as part of its regular defense appropriations (the defense “base budget”), after the initial period (1-2 years) of supplemental “emergency” funding bills. By contrast, for the entire decade from FY 2001 to FY 2011, Congress paid for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as “emergencies,” devoid of serious legislative or executive oversight.
By statute, emergency spending is defined as “unanticipated…sudden…urgent…unforeseen…and temporary” and is typically reserved for one-off crises such as floods and hurricanes. Such emergency spending measures are exempt from regular procedural rules in Congress because the intent is to disburse money quickly in situations where delay would be harmful.
Congress continued to enact “emergency supplemental” funding even as the war effort expanded. The United States sent 130,000 military personnel into Iraq in 2003 (alongside troops from more than 30 countries). By 2009, there were 187,200 U.S. “boots on the ground” in Iraq and Afghanistan, supported by a similar number of military contractors, with nearly 500 U.S. military bases set up across Iraq, but the conflict was still being paid for as an “emergency.” In FY 2012, President Obama renamed the “Global War on Terror” as “Overseas Contingency Operations” (OCO) but the war continued to be funded using money that – although not designated as “emergency” – was explicitly exempted from regular spending limits on other government spending programs..."
We have 37 Trillion in debt. At 45 Trillion we become bankrupt….. most of which was built up on the policies of republican presidents. MAGA?? When in your simpleton mind was America not great? … it was when republican presidents put the desires of the uber rich over those of the general population. It wasn’t great when lies and fear became the modus operandi of the fascist right. It wasn’t great when it allowed a sulking baby felon into the whitehouse and he gave the keys to the government to muskrat and told him to do his worst, it wasn’t great when the corrupt Roberts/Thomas court gave FOTUS imperial power. No people like you have no idea what great is. You just parrot the lies you have been manipulated to believe.
1) What does this have to do with HEATHER LYING about the lawsuit.
2) Federal deficit spending is EVERYONE’s problem. The Democrats are stupid to not get on-board to cutting wasteful spending.
You criticize Musk and Trump at your own peril
Are you implying that it’s now dangerous to criticize the president and his Doge? Have we really gotten to that Soviet dictator style low point, and you’re blithely fine with it? Wow.
A fool and a puppet James. You are drinking the cool-aid of a corrupt regime.
James, your MAGA muck is interesting. In our view, we like how the government was working even for ignoramuses like you that resent help. We also liked how the debt keeps shrinking under Democratic administrations vs how it grows under Republican administrations due to increased military spending, approval I'd sll pork projects, and reduced tax revenues. No one wants illegal aliens overruning the country, but for all the scary numbers, the dangers have been overblown by fear mongering. And no child has been "transified". You can take THAT littke piece of Russian propaganda and shove it.
Musk spent $290 million to get trump elected. He wants a return in cash, influence, power, laws in his favor, apartheid, US security secrets, and Uncle Sam's balls. Donny has that battered submissive housewife look when MuskRAT is around. He sold the USA down the river.
Trump is weak in the head. Everyone around him knows that. Musk knows that. Putin knows that. WE know that.
It used to be just his narcissism and rotten character. Now it’s much worse: brain soft dementia. Mad as a hatter. No body home.
The US is being run by whomever can play him and make him think he’s a big man. A happy megalomaniac.
I think that's right -- as long as they keep him in the spotlight -- like when he circled the Daytona race track - and heap enough adulation on him (e.g "let's make Trump's birthday a national holiday!!") he is pliable. He just wants to be seen as a powerful leader - he's not a leader at all. Just wants golf and applause
The Emperor in his new suit. Definitely.
I cannot stand to listen to his ridiculous BS anymore. When Congress has had enough of his BS will they really impeach him? Unlikely.
This is disturbing but not surprising at the end of HCR's letter-
Analysts ran that information through an algorithm that created a psychological profile of an individual to enable precise targeting of potential voters. Ads based on these profiles reached almost 378 million views on social media and sent more than 60 million visitors to the National Shooting Sports Foundation website. When Trump won in 2016, the NSSF took partial credit for the results. Not only was Trump in office, it reported, but also, “thanks in part to our efforts, there is a pro-gun majority in the U.S. House and Senate.”
Saying someone is "pro-gun" is like saying there is a "pro-hammer" majority in the US House & Senate. Hammers kill people, so why isn't there a pro-hammer lobby. The whole pro-gun lobby is stupid. Republicans waste so much time and effort on guns and any effort to control who owns them.
The Second Amendment is one of the best arguments for scrapping your outdated, procrustean Constitution and sitting down and writing a new one fit for modern times.
With Republicans in charge, I am sure a new Constitution will be a few words at the top of Page One: "We are in charge and we make new rules each day. Trust in Us."
Spot on!
The Convicted Orange Felon sold out to Muskolini for $290 million - that was the price of American democracy. A small price to pay for real big gains: Musk has already got richer by 15 billion dollars, and can now steal all of the money that’s in the American government. And: he will take care that ALL government contracts will go to HIS companies. Americans will be paying for his profits directly through their taxes.
He needs to pay the American citizens back, in turn for his efforts to bring the entire USA 🇺🇸, to a screeching halt!💸💸💸💸💸💸
Both Drumpf & Elon Muck owe us big time for messing up OUR country 🇺🇸….they’re nothing more, than common pirates 🏴☠️…& need to walk the plank👍🏻
Are you forgetting he’s the President of the United States?
SCOTUS decreed that every official act is just fine.
He and his “boys” are not going anywhere.
They don’t give a flying fk about you or me or our grandkids or our cats.
Kitty! Kitties!
And Putin has him on a short leash
My impression is that President Putin is the adult in the room.
We know he can influence Trump.
I am sure he has been straining at the bit to have a private heart to heart with a man he “admires so much “.
Russia has already won that war. It will just be a matter of getting Ukraine the best bad deal.
Of course the neocons and the weapons industries much prefer we keep funding until every last 17 year old Ukraine is wiped out.
Very sad, but true 😳😱😭😢
Drumpf is a complete fool 😜🤪🤓🤯🤡 and a pirate 🏴☠️!!!! & a pc of 💩, a monster 👹 & the devil 👿
& I forgot dunce, & 🤥 liar
I don't believe he was in the room. They have been trying to get a meeting between the two rascals, but it seems Putin is content for the time being to allow Trump to make all the running on his behalf and Trump seems only too willing to oblige.
How 😢 sad, but true😭👎🏻
Putin has not "been straining at the bit" to have a private conversation with Trump. He has not been willing to meet or talk to Trump according to Trump! Putin knows Trump cannot negotiate anything since he cannot put two thoughts together. Better to let Liddle Marko do the negotiating.
Once a fool,always a fool!!!🃏
🃏
Hope to see lots of folks peacefully protesting at tesla dealers on March 1!
He already got his investment and more from the government. Just look at his worth climbing.
The question remains: Who is going to stop them? Even if all the courts deny them access, who is gong to stop them? Congress cannot direct the military or the National Guard. What jurisdiction do the DC police have in or on government facilities? None that I know of. And even if they are stopped, the damage done to information systems remains. The data remains stolen. It would take years to get Musk even brought to trial, let alone convicted, of illegal actions, even if they could be proven. Remember, Mump and Tusk do not care about destruction of the country or right vs wrong. Repeat: Do.Not.Care. They only care about doing what they want, so--Who will stop them?
This could be the battle of the young IT people. They aren't all wearing red hats.
It has to be a battle we all fight. At this point they have revealed to the world That indeed they are going to destroy Democracy world wide . No regard for their fellow Americans, after all, WE are the enemy from within. The photo journalists have captured photos of two of our most high ranking government officials at meetings in both Germany and Saudia Arabia one looking like a DEER inthe headlights as he as he follows a script that appears to scare even himself. The other, looks damn crazy as he grovels towards Putin and basically tells Zalenski your on your own unless you GIVE IT ALL BACK !!! SHAMFUL, UNAMERICAN, SCARY, SICKENING, CRAZY but most of all so so incredibly sad. For the World, FOR our Country. HOME OF THE FREE AND THE BRAVE. I'm afraid not so free . But question is can we muster the BRAVE. They have told us who they are.They have shown us who they are and now they are taking it to the world. We did nothing about Jananuary 6th
They seem to think that they are "the free world". Trump says he's the leader of the Free World. When that expression was coined, it meant anything that wasn't in the power of the USSR. Now it has no meaning, like most of what he says.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/doges-gov-site-lampooned-as-coders-quickly-realize-it-can-be-edited-by-anyone/
When they no show at court or defy the Judge, I think the Judge can order a bench warrant for their arrest. Let it be!
And who will serve that warrant and take them into custody?
The Justice Department and FBI need to be separate from the Executive Branch. Perhaps they should be independent similar to the Federal Reserve. Since they are now within the Executive Branch, I'm afraid you are correct that they cannot be stopped.
Could there be an "enforcement" agency to the Supreme Court, with powers limited only to enforcing Court decisions?
Where is Congress in the role of defenders of Democracy?
The GQP are proving themselves to be spineless, corrupt cowards.
Weasels.
From Senator Time Kaine (D-VA):
Five actions we can take:
Courts
First, Democrats are part of a well-coordinated Court strategy to stop lawlessness. We implemented this on Inauguration Day and have had great success so far in lawsuits to protect federal workers — a judge has already paused the sham federal worker buyout — stop erosion of constitutional rights, preserve congressional power of the purse, protect immigrants, and restrict people like Elon Musk from rampaging through federal agencies. We won’t win all these cases, but initial signs are positive.
Congress
In Congress, Democrats are in a minority. But we forced the withdrawal of an Attorney General nominee, and I led an effort that gained three Republican votes against the Secretary of Defense. In the coming weeks, we are prepared to wage major battles on the budget and GOP plans to give tax breaks to the wealthy — and I’ve recently used an unusual Senate procedure to set up a challenge to Trump’s plans to gut environmental protections and clean energy projects to benefit Big Oil.
States
Democratic Governors and other officials are acting at the state and local levels to alert the public to the damage caused by Trump budget cuts — and are doing everything possible to protect our neighbors from lawless acts.
Elections
We began 2025 winning key special elections in Virginia and Iowa, and the momentum is growing! I am particularly focused on the Virginia Governor’s race this year, which can send a national message of revulsion over Trump’s failures, so I hope you will join me in getting involved. Virginia will also hold elections for our Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General, both of which we can flip to Democratic leaders, and our House of Delegates, where we must maintain our majority. Your efforts in Virginia’s 2025 elections will be crucial to Democratic success — and the message it will send.
We also need to gear up for a strong showing in the 2026 midterm elections — yes, already. In about 20 months, we have the opportunity to disrupt the GOP trifecta, re-elect strong leaders like my friend Mark Warner, and establish an opposition better able to fight back against this extreme Administration.
Activism
And finally — your activism matters. Vigorous, peaceful public protest is building all across this nation. Our Founders knew that elections were not sufficient to safeguard democracy, so they protected the right of the people “peacefully to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Your dedication is an integral part of our path forward.
I would respect Senator Kaine's comments more if he hadn't already obeyed in advance by voting to confirm many of Trump's unqualified cabinet nominees.!
He should have voted " NO" on every one of those.
And why does anyone think we will have elections in 2026? Voldemort told his beautiful Christian followers they would never have to vote again. Then they applauded.
I think that when their constituents begin to be hit personally by the changes, they may find it is to their advantage to turn against Trump and Musk. The problem then would be: what next?
Impeachment.
I have a spineless congresscritter who's afraid to meet constituents. So, I’m going local in the hopes that bottom-up democracy can channel our outrage. Many of my local elected officials are right wing, too. But they have to listen in a public meeting.
https://substack.com/@sarahagreen1/note/p-157431614?r=7jhrp&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
O M G ‼️
Many thanks for your work Professor ⭐
There really is no one to match HCR.
These infidels are stealing private information without permission. If we had a real Attorney General the DOJ would be all over this. Bondi appears worthless. What else can you call it when she sits idly by, thereby cooperating if not participating in the acts themselves.
Sorry, but to the Australian eye, the new Attorney-General has a joke name. What's the most famous beach in Australia? Google "Bondi", (pronounced bon-dye).
Anne-Louise A misprint? The most famous bitch in Australia?
Er, no. Now maybe the most famous one in America... No, we've got a few bitches, but none named after scenic wonders. On the contrary, the biggest one is monumentally unattractive, as well as obscenely rich.
We call her Pam Bondage.
Oh, GOOD! Thanks. Instant mental picture.
I thought that also.
My husband and I have been watching Bondi Rescues.
And to be honest, everytime they say beach , to my ear it sounds like b*tch.
Loving the show.
By the way, could you send me a green whistle? ;)
Goodness me! what State are you from? although you're not the only one to have made this observation! I must see if I can find an American voice saying "beach". We usually avoid the other word, except in veterinary contexts, or as a verb meaning "complain", which is considered a bit rough but not asterisk-worthy. A green whistle? It might get stopped at the border....how about a Mexican wave?
Bondi is both worthless (hopelessly corrupt and cowardly) and morally bankrupt. Truly a waste of oxygen.
Bondi is a co-conspirator.
DOGE's incursions into American government data systems was never about limiting waste and inefficiency in the US federal government. The real agenda is ACCESS. Access to prized data which can be used to sweeten deals with people like Putin and other card-carrying members of the Autocrat Club.
Exactly. Musk is a lying little shit, it’s only about making his overly fat bank accounts even fatter. He is the cartoon villain who wants to own the whole world, he doesn’t care about the American people at all.
He gets very nasty when crossed. Remember the cave rescue submarine episode?
He always seemed a little, I don't know, disturbing, but that was the first time I thought "Wow, he's a creep".
I don't remember that, but I know that Musk is a ruthless narcissist with a temper, and he's on drugs, too.
He called the other guy a pedo (defamatory per se,) but the guy lost when he took Muskrat to court.
Whenever fascists like Muskolini accuse someone of something, it's not an accusation but a confession. Up til now, this has proven true for both Rump and Darth Musk.
I did not know Musk won that one. If they liked to say in Apartheid S. Africa I guess it's OK.
"Elon Musk did not defame a British caver who helped in last year's rescue of trapped Thai schoolboys by calling him a "pedo guy", a US jury has found.
Vernon Unsworth sought $190m (£145m) in damages from the Tesla founder, arguing that the tweet damaged his reputation.
A public row broke out between the two men over the rescue of 12 boys trapped in a Thai cave in June 2018.
Mr Musk told the court this week the phrase "pedo guy" was common in South Africa, where he grew up.
Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom after the jury reached its decision, Mr Musk said: "My faith in humanity is restored." BBC
Of Course, Elon is not so laid back when the shoe is on the other foot:
https://www.the-independent.com/tech/tesla-crash-brakes-musk-china-zhang-yazhou-b2699677.html
Tesla claims the car was fine and of course they would never lie.
It is so he has enough money to colonize Mars.
Yes it is. But THAT is because of his bruised narcissistic ego. He MUST go beyond his heroes who went to the moon, to show them that he is better than them, so he MUST go to Mars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MoACklnnxk&t=2s
Just so long as he stays there.
It’s a bit ‘about the Benjamins’, but primarily ‘bout the Power.
After raw force, the levers of power are wealth, information, and human attention. In ascending potency.
Let’s give OUR attention to a focused & practical resistance to this AI coup.
Fight the Power! (is a red& black anime poster on my son’s bedroom wall.)
Gradually understanding…😏👍
"Matt told me some of his firefighter friends were fired and left without any money or resources or plane tickets, or even their government email, to get home !"-- from my college years roommate from her son, in his 50s, who's given much time and energy to being a West Coast forest fire fighter.
The many, many thousands of Americans who've done their jobs can similarly be left high-and-dry with this mad enterprise of Trump / Musk ending funding without considering the human cost.
Unconscionable by any measure. But then, cruelty is the point…
They are possessed. Rituals of sorcery and manic episodes of sleeplessness combined with drugs, sex and violence. I invoke the spirit of Jimmy Carter to weave a spiderweb that attracts, then neutralizes all those possessed by evil and greedy spirits. May the good people on earth be relieved of the ghastly manlike apparitions being held afloat with the massive drain of energy they are extracting from our souls. Amen, Salam, Aho
I also invoke the spirit of Jimmy Carter and our shared blessed ancestors: Wovoka -
Amen, Salah, Aho
🐈⬛
Right. But the US government has been screwing the US public way before this little nightmare. The Health Insurance millionaires, the higher education rip offs, the expensive losing wars, children trained to hide from military weapons, the support for genocide.
Come on now. We got used to getting screwed. Get ready to be royally Effed.
You’ve not really been screwed until you’ve had at it with an AI that knows you better than you know yourself.
Same old serpent.
YEAH!!!
Keep pressure on Congress and the Senate, support Democrats verbally and financially, and vote Blue whenever we get the chance. We can take to the streets but only the voting booth makes a real difference and that only if we preserve our democracy.
That and solidarity. Speaking to in common interests with an in common voice.
Pressure LOCAL elected officials, too. They will have to deal with the trickle-down chaos.
https://substack.com/@sarahagreen1/note/p-157431614?r=7jhrp&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
In a way this chaos is right up the alley they want to go as it demoralizes citizens who now are so suspicious and wary of the government and how easily it can be turned into menace instead of a stabilizing force. The alliance with big business monopolies is abundantly obvious and people are walking away from their monopoly vendor in droves. The battle lines are shaping up for protests, strikes, boycotts and sit-ins. The answer you have to ask yourself is will I engage in this struggle or will I give in to despair. Yes, it's a circus and the clowns are running the show. We need to get serious and disrupt wherever we can and urge our democratic representative to gum up the works and fight everything they mess with in the courts. Resistance by 150,000,000 citizens will turn the tide.
Don’t forget, he can get out his Jan 6 criminals. And. The United States Military.
And, he will.
We the People, united, vastly outnumber and outperform either his proud boy army or OUR boys & girls in uniform. And OUR boys & girls belong to us.
Larry, exactly!
“Resistance by 150,000,000 citizens will turn the tide.”
I TRUELY BELIEVE YOU ARE RIGHT. TAKE THEM BY STORM. The young and the old in the streets in our Capital in our Neighborhoods at our State Capitals. STORM them on the
congressional Switchboard and at their local and state offices. Gather at the Whitehouse and on the steps of OUR CAPITAL.
They are mad.
Repeatedly now the best, the decent, the long-standing ethical have to resign.
Timothy Snyder today calls key parts of it "ghastly." Heather today itemizes the lies, the continuous illegality and criminality from the criminal administration. So we can ask, how so?
I'd say the worst is due to liars at the top who never in their lives learned how to feel comfortable with themselves as individuals. Trump, Putin, Musk, and Vance all lack this comfort. Instead they seek fantasy lands, in quests for abstractions, growing one's wealth, living ever more within religious orthodoxy, "manly" stereotype, or racial dominance.
They may not be the top greedy and humanly empty, but tens of millions of Americans have also fallen into the same self-discomfort, through bad education -- the batteries of tests promoting abstractions, the logic of dutiful categories – the personal from all severed from every test, every school.
Lying at the top. Mass lying around them – mass fear, permanent paranoia.
No end to it but death. Maybe by violence (Heather today concluding noting again the guns, guns, guns U.S.). Maybe an end to it by the epidemics that sheer idiocy and incompetence may occasion.
One of the things I thought about on waking this morning (current events preying on my mind) was of your repeated support for humanities education in our schools, which I share also. It also crossed my mind that any category of education can be soul-killing if it is no more than packages of disembodied information; such as many I suffered through in school, memorizing names, dates and other detritus that I, and I think a lot of other students, would never find a beneficial occasion to bring to mind again. It's only words, but the phrase I was toying with was "contextually human". OK, is there any there there in that?
What I am grasping for is how can I, and how can we, pack a human experience context in our communication that resonates with our internal and observed experiences of sentience? How does it matter to a living breathing thinking and feeling animal? How is it that we experience being? "The this is me" (and you) flow of novel (and here, the word "information" does not really capture it) sights, sounds, tastes, odors, sensitive touch, and the elusive, integrated, sense of "me" and "we" that all identify as being human?
Most of my earliest memories are scattered vignettes, but what might be my earliest memory in a narrative form is wandering away from my home and becoming completely disoriented just beyond my back yard. (It ended well, I wandered without a clue until I recognized the home of a family friend, but as a stranger in a strange land in between). It seems that as we age and learn, the sphere of familiar things and places grows, along with a skill to project from similar experiences to one encountered fresh, with varying accuracy. That elaborating consciousness includes knowledge of and empathy with others, and all of that inner/outer world can be expanded as a matter of choice.
So for me the key question for me with respect to school curricula is, is it empowering? Is it "consciousness expanding"? It is likely to be useful? Is it civilizing? There is more, of course, but the emphasis I am aiming for as transformational, empathical, capable, curiosity and verity inducing methods and content. It seems to me that's a large order and one on which many already labor, but well worth the extra effort.
Of course the key here comes from how you found your way again, J L.
You were little, "wandering away," "becoming completely disoriented" until you "recognized the home of a family friend."
Bingo.
Yes, J L, "as we age and learn, the sphere of familiar things and places grows." But I disagree with the next few words, "along with a skill to . . .."
That skill doesn't come naturally or automatically. It comes by some effort, some teaching, some reach on our part to touch, reference others -- so we can see some places where we hurt, or we are lost, in light of others (from books, other arts, conversation).
Good to see you at some length here. Good to see you "waking . . . current events preying" on your mind.
Aren't we all in these days of real threats by real monsters.
I am not really disagreeing but skills grow or the human doesn't. A babe even needs to learn to suckle, ours did, and yes, that was with the help of instruction, but even without it, we are born to explore and learn. A babe making any sort of movement or babble is doing just that. We are also born to teach, and kids learn a ton of things from each other, including stuff adults would not want them to share. Hearing it though the grapevine is very much a part of childhood, regardless of how accurate what you hear might be.
Certain we gain immensely from direct instruction and observation. More than once I solved an adult life problem by recalling what I saw some random adult do in my childhood. Or in my adult life for that matter. Monkey see, monkey do. Play, solitary or together can be a powerful learning tool. Einstein once described his creative process as "combinatory play".
And maybe best of all, we can be taught to improve our approach to learning; to learn to learn more effectively. I think that in particular winds up paying outsized "dividends".
Yes, J L -- wondrous the phenomena of learning.
Phil, I'm enamored by your final sentence, quite beautiful. The question of whether "epidemics" could conceivably include some "Gun Play" right between the eyes lies heavily on my soul.
...we....need...to...be...very...very...careful...about...such...discourse...
Thank you, Bruce, for such kind words amid otherwise insane crisis.
Ms. Richardson, Thank you for reporting on this crazy epic crazy period in the nation's history. I am one of your elderly readers, but I find it difficult to follow all of the new media reports. So your report "In the early hours of Monday, he (Mr. Musk reposted a picture of a leaner, meaner version of himself dressed as a Roman gladiator with the caption: “I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus.” Musk added: “And I am.”
His stunning immaturity of the post and the word virus triggered my concerns for the termination of the pipeline hires in the CDC, NIH, and FDA.
I am a retired Navy Officer, former director of the Navys Energy R&D program during the turbulent
70s and in 1979, I joined the Senate staff so I have been through the Reagan Revolution and the Grace Commission and have witnessed the increasing power of the far right. Fortunately, the American Experiment has survived and the United States has continued to be a force for good in the world.
The international effort to develop vaccines has been a cornerstone of global health advancements, saving countless lives and improving the quality of life worldwide, seems to be threatened by the DOGE efforts and agency consolidations. I note recent outbreaks of measles in Texas have raised concerns. Some expert colleagues of mine have suggested unvaccinated migrants crossing the southern border and entering our society may be contributing to these outbreaks. Additionally, the relocation of unvaccinated migrants to major cities further exacerbates the risk. In short, we are creating a microbial soup that could lead to a pandemic.
Growing up, my family and I were no strangers to the devastating effects of childhood viruses. My mother's siblings suffered greatly, with her closest brother losing his hearing due to measles, and my father enduring "milk leg," which left him with a distinctive limp. My younger brother contracted polio and spent a long time away from home, isolated in a county polio rehabilitation facility. These experiences have deeply influenced my interest and understanding of the importance of disease prevention and the progress made in combating infectious diseases through vaccination.
The recent lawsuit filed by a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general against President Trump highlights the ongoing tension between federal authority and states' rights. The suit is encouraging and supports my belief that the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution has been violated and could bring a more deliberate GAO, CBO, Congressional Oversight approach to improving government efficiency. The DOGE is not the way to approach the problem.
The outbreak in Texas is apparently the largest in 30 years, according to a spokesperson for the Department of State Health Services. Measles' reproductive number (sometimes referred to as R or RO) is around 12-16. For comparison, SARS-CoV-2 was no more that 5-6 at the height of the pandemic. Kennedy was there last week, but he didn't refer to the measles outbreak. Instead, he falsely suggested that childhood vaccines like MMR may be linked to chronic illnesses. He said he would convene a new panel to study the childhood vaccination schedule and other “formally taboo” issues. Vaccination rates have been steadily falling across the US in recent years thanks to conspiracy theories about the safety of vaccines and Kennedy has been a leading proponent. It's scandalous that he should have been appointed to any offical position in the Department of Health and Human Services, never mind secretary of state. He's joined by other conspiracists, Dr Mehmet Oz, Jay Bhattacharya and Marty Makary.
The lack of knowledge about medicine and its history and public health has led to part of this. I was just reading about Lillian Wald who helped create the Henry Street Settlement in NYC. I am sure Kennedy and others have never heard of her though he has certainly NYC roots. The loss of the concept of Settlement Houses and the siphoning off of services has been an issue for along time. And the idea that middle class or upper middle class folks do not need supports along with the cutting off of supports for others in lower SES stratas just another part of this tragedy. I am surprised the gun industry news hasn’t been discussed. Another piece of our so scattered and stomped on American puzzle .I began to realize this in the mid eighties and just saw the buttresses start to crumble and become stained with rust. Perhaps the need for a new puzzle with repaired and remade and some new pieces as well
Among his more eccentric views, RFK believes his 14-year addiction to heroin (which he has claimed improved his school grades) has somehow endowed him with a special knowledge of how to combat drug addiction. It's another reason why his appointment is so alarming to the medical community. When Trump decides to promote quack remedies for dangerous infectious diseases you really need someone in the vicinity to get a grip before too much harm is done. I read that one of Musk's team has accidentally fired people responsible for monitoring bird flu outbreaks and now they're urgently trying to re-hire them. The same thing happened when they fired federal workers in charge of the safety of the nuclear arsenal (and left Homer Simpson in charge). People are going to get hurt with all this craziness going on.
Well if nothing else we will need a new way to educate if we survive this fiasco. Yes I knew about both highly dangerous missteps. He was RFK Jr damaged long ago and for whatever reason been led down a very unhelpful and tragic path not only for himself but for all of us. And he dies have some things that are correct but most just so so uninformed and every person that leds this type off history has to be able to know names like Elizabeth Blackwell, Samelweiss, Salk, Fleming, Nightingale, Dix, Clifford Beers, Jane Hamilton among many others. In the fifties lots of bio films like the one for Pastuer. We need films and other ways to get the history and the ability to analyze out to the general public besides the so called elite.
I have been an auditor of public companies for 40 years. I have seen my share of poor management, weak internal controls, sloppy oversight and fraud. But I have never seen a company actively invite fraud and corruption. That’s precisely what has been going on with DOGE. First the auditors (the IGs) were fired. Then senior management (who oversee the controls that protect systems and data) were fired. Then lower level employees were threatened with job loss. And now Elon Musk and a group of unvetted techies have unfettered access to millions of terabytes of government data, including its payment systems. These folks can do as they please with no one to stop them, blow the whistle or even identify what they are doing. They could be stealing dara, altering it, planting malware, creating backdoor portals either to benefit themselves or others, including foreign countries. I have been calling and writing MOCs since the start of this trying to get them to focus on this massive security risk, even asking the GOP to talk to their CEO friends about how out of control this is, and gotten nowhere. Yesterday I wrote to the Comptroller of the GAO. Congress was all worried about what China might do/learn via TikTok and its algorithms and yet they sit idly by as Trump literally hands over the keys to key government systems to Lord knows who???????
I would say that's exactly what they are doing. There's no "could be" here.