Sunday, February 23, 2025

Saving Grace

 So I got curious (for no good reason) and googled David Bentley Hart. Not really my cup of tea, if only because he’s neither a Barthian (some of my older seminary professors were), or a process theologian (a few were, or still process-curious), and the rest were Niebuhrians (Xian ethics, not necessarily theology), or in the Jesus Seminar, and so only interested in refuting literalists (the raison d’etre of the group; and now that the founder is dead and the popular works are no longer popular, so has the Seminar passed beneath the horizon (although I realized that a very few years out of seminary, when I met an even more recent graduate already schooled in a new school treating the Seminar as passé and no longer cutting edge; or even interesting. Sic transit gloria.)). Nor is Hart any other kind of interesting thinker, to me. Mind, I don’t have much use for Barth, and process theology rapidly went the way of the “God is dead” theologians. I don’t even have much use for systematic theology (which I understand Hart does). Too much Kierkegaard when I was young, too much Derrida in my middle years. Anyway, Bentley Hart made his biggest splash (says Google) arguing everyone will eventually be saved.

There. Don’t you feel better? ❤️‍🩹 

But his argument seems (to be fair, I’ve never read anything he’s written) to be still based on some notion of metaphysical Christian soteriology. And while I’ve nothing against metaphysics (classical or otherwise), That All Shall Be Saved still pushes the matter into “pie in the Sky bye and bye;” for me.

Which I would have ignored, but I came across this post from a few years back and, since it was inconveniently long to copy and paste, I decided to write an inconveniently long introduction to the subject to reintroduce it.

Or just reframe it; because my purpose in bringing it up is to oppose “classical” soteriology (especially of the dominant Protestant form) with the soteriology of my spiritual ancestors in the church which ordained me lo these many, many years ago now. That soteriology focused on service to persons, not salvation of souls (you see the practical/metaphysical split there, I hope). I think Jesus (and Paul!) were more about the practical than the other; and I think an examination of Romans 12 and the parable from Matthew, along with the insights of Walt Brueggeman (several of my seminary professors still remembered when he taught there, so I learned the familiarity from them) begins, at least, to establish that.

We’ll see if I’m right. Even partially.


“The First Thing We Do…”

FOLLOWUP: SECDEF Hegseth also firing the CNO, the USAF Vice-Chief, and somewhat unusually and ominously to do in the same breath, the senior JAGs of the Army, Navy, and USAF
"Let's kill all the lawyers."

Shakespeare meant that as a recipe for anarchy.
See?

One Tweet To Bind Them

Because this is the situation in a nutshell.

Still Imagining If Obama Or Biden Had Tried This

 Shot:

Chaser: The people hired to “stop the car” are Congress. Not Elmo, who isn’t even a government employee.

 And the oath of office you swore said:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
Nothing in there about “and test the Constitution to destruction via illegal “consultants” usurping Art. I authority and thumbing their nose at Art. III judges.”

Or maybe you used a different oath; or just secretly crossed your fingers. 🤞

Gym Jordan Has Answers For Everything

Not The Onion:
"I grabbed this headline, national parks in chaos after — it's a Washington Poststory," the Ohio Republican replied. "Here's the first paragraph, California National Park, the Trump administration fired the only locksmith on staff."

"Next sentence, he was fired, he was the sole employee with keys and institutional knowledge needed to rescue visitors from locked restrooms," he continued. "Now, if that is it, I mean, that's the best you can do. The real question is how do visitors get locked in restrooms? I mean this is how ridiculous some of this thing is!"

Jordan admitted that "maybe there have been some mistakes made, but I think the intensity and the focus on getting rid of the wasteful spending, the one guy who can unlock people who somehow get locked in a restroom at a national park, this is ridiculous!"

So leave visitors locked in the bathroom to teach ‘em a lesson?  Leave the bathroom locked to all visitors until a locksmith can be found and brought in from the nearest town? (Here’s a clue Mr. Representative from Ohio: many of the national parks west of the Mississippi are in sparsely populated rural areas . There aren’t necessarily any conveniently available locksmiths around.) Alternatively, they can just get a sledgehammer and batter the door down. Then wait for approval for a new door, hire a carpenter, and pay to have the door replaced. In the meantime, no bathroom access.

Which of these scenarios is less ridiculous than having a locksmith readily available?

And I’m going to repeat myself: DOGE is not Congress. It is in apparent violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act. Even Trump has no authority to authorize these cuts and layoffs. He certainly can’t delegate such authority to Elmo.

And while we’re talking about useless Gym (what law has he ever sponsored?):

The majority of recipients of Medicaid are children, the elderly, and disabled persons.

Asshole.


By this rational, Congress could pass legislation to fund an agency, the president could veto it, and Congress could override the veto. But then the president could still eliminate the agency, rendering the override null. That is a fundamental change of power that even our corrupt SCOTUS is unlikely to endorse.
Well, Trump is doing what the GOP wants done so…what’s the problem? I mean, if you can’t pick and choose what parts of the Constitution to follow, why be in power at all, huh? 🤔 

Goobers In Paradise 🖍️

The junior Senator from Oklahoma:
"What is your message to the people of Oklahoma who say they are being hurt by these cuts by President Trump and Elon Musk?" 
Mullin insisted Democrats were "manufacturing these protests."

Outside Agee-taters! Infiltrators!  Commies under the bed!! ANTIFA!!!!!

"But what about the headlines in your state?" Welker pressed. 

"There has to be a reset. It has been abused," Mullin replied. "So if you want to start talking about actual cuts, what Oklahomans want is to make sure that we rid or we get rid of the waste and fraud inside the federal government. And that's exactly what the president's done."

"But Senator, first of all, they haven't provided proof of fraud," Welker noted. "But talk to the people in Oklahoma who've lost their jobs, who say they are hurting. They don't know how they're going to pay their mortgage. They don't know how they're going to make ends meet. Talk to those people... They say enough of these cuts."

"I don't want anybody to lose their job," Mullin argued. "Cuts had to take place. And every business business owner understands this. Every business owner understands that you have to get your house in order before you can advance."
Cutting funding, or even reallocating it, is the job of Congress. All 435 of them. Art. I of the Constitution, the same document that gives this clown a job, says so. There’s nothing in the constitution or federal law (the ones passed by Congress) that says the President can appoint a non-federal employee as a “budget czar.” In fact, Elmo doing anything for the government on a volunteer basis is a violation of federal law. (It’s called the “Anti-Deficiency Act.” Markwayne should get somebody to explain it to him. With crayons and construction paper. DOGE is in violation of it.) Eliminating employees, stopping allocated funding, closing agencies: all strictly the job of  Congress. All 435 of them. Nothing in the constitution gives 1 person the authority Elmo has.

BTW, government is not a business. And both Trump and Elmo are lousy business owners. And neither of them own the federal government. We, the people, do.

And we didn’t hire Elmo to take a sledgehammer to it. In fact, nobody’s hired Elmo. That’s the first problem. He’s acting against the law.  HE’S ILLEGAL!!!*

*Just putting it in language Markwayne would understand. I don’t have any crayons. 🖍️ 

Working From Home

Must be raining on his golf courses.

Saturday, February 22, 2025

🎭

As of November 2024, the federal government employed just over 3 million people. The number of federal employees has topped 3 million since September 2024. The last time the government could claim that many employees was in September 1994.
If every employee in the federal government responds, that will be 3 million emails. Assuming a minimum of 5 minutes spent reading and evaluating each email, DOGE will need at least 10,000 man hours to complete the task. Even with Elmo’s infamous 160 hour work week, that would take over 62 weeks. 

Or he could just say he fed it all to Grok, and we could trust him to tell us what Grok said.

DOGE is a farce. And yet it’s being treated as a tragedy. Certainly its effects are going to be.

The Plan And The Punch In The Mouth

 The punch in the mouth:

According to GOP strategist Melik Abdul, an acquaintance of his lost his federal job in a rural community as part of the purge after only being on the job for six months. 
After CNN's "Table for Five" Abby Philip shared clips of Jesse Watters of Fox News "freaking out" about the federal worker purge after a veteran getting "DOGE'd," as the Fox host put it, after previously gleefully calling the mass firings "a blessing from heaven above," Abdul chimed in with a similar story.
Now multiply these anecdotes by hundreds of thousands:
The total number of federal government workers who will lose their jobs because of mass layoffs being pushed by the second Trump Administration and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) remains to be seen. But according to reporting from the Washington Post and Newsweek, the number could be as high as 200,000.

In an article published Saturday, Salon's Daria Solovieva examines the layoffs' possible economic impact. And she warns that according to some economists, the layoffs could trigger a major recession.
At which point that punch in the mouth reaches millions. And all plans are over. Even Trump’s plans:
He went on, "You can see how much Trump's numbers have taken a dive, how much they've taken a dive since he's come into office. The bottom line is, a month in and voters are not liking what Trump is doing compared to how they thought they'd feel a month ago.”

But, he said, polls were most surprising when they asked voters about the economy.

“This to me is the biggest shocker of all of this because you can recall even when Trump was underwater during pretty much all of his first term, he was positive on the economy. Trump's net approval rating on the economy in February of 2017, he was five points above water in the average poll.

“Look at where he is now. The economy, which was once his bread and butter, has all of a sudden been something that is holding him back. He's actually doing worse on the economy than he is doing overall.
Trump is going to pay anyway. Unfortunately, the rest of us have to pay, anyway.

Too high a price to pay, so no smiling and rejoicing here. But you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone. Over and over and over.

There’s a parody of a jingle for toothpaste (probably originating with MAD Magazine): “You’ll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent!  But when your teeth start turning black, you’ll wish you had the yellow back!”

And here we are. Heading toward the brick wall we diverted ourselves to. Once again hellbound on finding out. But already wishing we had the yellow back. And knowing it’s going to be a long time before we can get it.



🎶 “So Complicated, So Complicated”🎶

It’s all as American as cherry pie.

America didn’t teach Hitler Nazism, any more than Europe taught us to have labor unions. We taught Germany how to write and implement race laws, laws as common in the North as the South, and what we taught Germany specifically was how to write laws based on eugenics. A legal concept upheld by no less a New Englander than Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Cherry pie is for everyone.

And the line doesn’t start with Reconstruction. It starts with the slave trade itself, a deal with the devil that has corrupted American culture since we found dealing in human flesh and labor proved so profitable (and made profit, at any cost, the highest good. As Gordon Gekko said: “Greed is good. Greed works.” Or the immortal words of “Deep Throat”: “Follow the money.” Neither phrase uttered by a Southerner, nor in a location below the Mason-Dixon Line.).

Greed means there’s never enough cherry pie. Which, according to the market, is also good.

The churches weren’t either subverted or infiltrated. They have always supported the powers that be. And always prophesied against them. But the former get along better than the latter. Just ask Dr. King.

Cherry pie, cherry pie, sweet, sweet cherry pie.

Nobody infiltrated anything. No body snatchers grown in pods replaced our “good” Northerners with their “bad” Southerners. Oregon and Washington were started as white supremacists enclaves. Reagan came out of California. Racism in America west of Appalachians against Native Americans and people with ancestral roots in Mexico (and the rest of Central America) is alive and well. Strom Thurmond didn’t teach Trump his racism; his New York daddy did that.

Cherry pie is as American as racism. 

Randy Newman’s song is as as accurate now as it was 50 years ago. George Floyd didn’t die on the streets of Houston. He died in Minneapolis, at the hands of a racist cop I think any large city in Texas would have hesitated to hire.  “We’re gatherin’ ‘em up from miles around.” And doing it all over the country.

No body snatchers needed. No insidious takeover, no strategic spreading of hate until even persons of goodwill are powerless. I saw this conspiracy theory spread in the years of the Red Scare.  HUAC, after all, only changed its name in 1969, and wasn’t abolished until 1975. The favored term used against the civil rights marchers and workers, and the anti-war protesters, was “outside agitators.” Blaming someone else for the evil we grow in our own gardens, is as American as cherry pie.

We didn’t get “here.” We never left.

The great lesson of Pogo came out of the rampant racism conspiracy theory of the Red Scare (Trump is still a piker by comparison. That one had the entire U.S. Congress behind it, for over a decade), and it is the curative to this recurring “don’t blame you, don’t blame me, blame that feller behind the tree” denial of responsibility:

“We have met the enemy, and he is us!”

A very good lesson to learn, indeed.

🎤 🤡

The way you tell it, is. The truth is, it’s perfectly sound. And I’m supposed to believe this guy is credible? But you can lie to them, right? You spent four days playing golf last week. We have the pictures. We also know you cheat (it’s well-documented). So your handicap has no relationship to reality, anyway. Ummm... Double "ummm..." Twice (at least) in the same speech. Does he even listen to himself? Is that why your approval ratings are lower than any President’s except yours, from your first term? And Elmo’s are even lower? (Good reason to keep him around, right?) Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Really? 

Let C-PAC end on that note.

🍒 Picking

You knew he had to be.  Meanwhile, in Oklahoma (!):
Yikes.

"Congressman Kevin Hern said today he doesn't know how many federal employees have been laid off in Oklahoma."

"Several of his constituents told him they didn't think he was doing his job."
Yeah, reality is gonna be a real slap in the face. And not only for Trump: Even if DOJ tries to prosecute an obstruction charge for a sovereign state not aiding and abetting ICE, it won’t survive its first contact with a courtroom. The Administration is already looking to remove immigrants from Gitmo to military bases stateside. Maybe Homan didn’t get the memo.

Or maybe the Administration is just incoherent. Neither way is reassuring.
I’m going with “incoherent.” He’s gonna be doing this for four more years, isn’t he? It’s going to be almost impressive how much he can deny reality.

Almost. 😅 

Makes You Wonder What The Staff Is Keeping From Him

Or if the problem is, the staff reflects the ignorance at the top:

His Own Goebbels

 Rolling Stone:

Noem said that Trump instructed that he didn’t want to be in the ads himself, telling her: “I want you in the ads, and I want your face in the ads … but I want the first ad, I want you to thank me. I want you to thank me for closing the border.” 
She recalled: “I said, ‘Yes, sir, I will thank you for closing the border.’ So if you notice, in that ad, we thanked him for closing the border.” 
The Homeland Security Department announced this week that it was launching ads “on radio, broadcast, and digital, in multiple countries and regions in various dialects.” 
In the domestic version of the ad, Noem says: “Thank you, President Donald J. Trump, for securing our border, for deporting criminal illegal immigrants, and for putting America first.”
No, not some scoop or leak. That’s Noem speaking at C-PAC. Last night.

Biden’s Fault

The NEW "Gospel of Wealth" "Lord, when did we see you?”

Friday, February 21, 2025

But Trump Has Higher Approval Than He’s Ever Seen!

 Wisconsin:

Oklahoma: Elsewhere in Wisconsin:

FAFind Out

“There WILL Be Pain!”

May well be true. It’s the little things that tell you the wind is shifting.

I’m Old Enough To Remember When The FBI Was Efram Zimbalist, Jr

This: is a B-grade movie. In real life. And sure enough, it gets worse.

Best Wishes!!

 


Domestic Enemy Hat:

Tomorrow in the NYT: I voted for Donald Trump because I hate the people he hates and wanted to see them suffer. Now that I am suffering, why can’t you find it in your heart to be sympathetic? RUDE

“The buck? The buck goes where I say it goes.”

"And ‘fraud’ is what we say it is.” "Curtsy to the Queen/Turn your back on the mean old King” Per the Constitution, states conduct voting for all offices, state and federal. Grandpa's off his meds again. 🤷🏻‍♂️  But Trump vlosed the border! This conspiracy theory has been around since the’70’s. Amazing how it won’t die.

“There Will Be Some Pain”

I appreciate what Carville is saying. "You got fact-checkers at Fox?" But at the moment, more words are just being lost in the anger. Carville is right. But facts on the ground are winning everyone's attention right now. It’s the economy, stupid.

Thursday, February 20, 2025

A Member of the European Parliament

 


FAFO

Schadenfreude is not going to make me feel better about that. But I am pretty damned sure tariffs are not going to make up for it.

🤦‍♂️ 
Come for the racism and xenophobia. Stay for the abject cruelty. JD Vance is the personification of Trump’s id.

The Wheels On The Bus Are Coming Off

 The best I can figure:

Trump’s approval ratings are dropping steadily across multiple polls. A new WaPo poll shows that only 45% of Americans now approve of his job performance while 53% disapprove. 57% believe that Trump has been exceeded his constitutional authority as president. 62% said Trump is not “honest and trustworthy.” 
… The WaPo poll shows that only 34% approve of what Elon Musk has been doing, 49% disapprove, and 14% say they aren’t sure. A whopping 63% are concerned about DOGE getting access to sensitive personal data of individuals. 
… A Reuters/Ipsos poll has Trump’s approval at 44%, with 51% disapproving. Trump only had 41% disapproval a few weeks ago in the same poll. 
… 53% said they think the economy is on the wrong track, which is up from 43% a few weeks ago. Trump now has only a 39% approval from voters on how he has handled the economy so far. 
… The Quinnipiac Poll has Trump’s approval at 45%, Disapprove 49%. 
… The CNN poll has Trump’s approval at 47% with 52% disapproving. 
… The WaPo poll shows the American people against Trump’s pardons for violent J6 defendants 83%-14%.
He's confused the percentage against his J6 pardons with approval of his nascent second Presidency. Or he’s just a delusional old man. The Constitution is sure:
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
There is some commentary at that site:
By its terms, the Twenty-Second Amendment bars only the election of two-term Presidents, and this prohibition would not prevent someone who had twice been elected President from succeeding to the office after having been elected or appointed Vice President. Broader language providing that no such person shall be chosen or serve as President . . . or be eligible to hold the office was rejected in favor of the Twenty-Second Amendment’s ban merely on election. Whether a two-term President could be elected or appointed Vice President depends upon the meaning of the Twelfth Amendment, which provides that no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President. Is someone prohibited by the Twenty-Second Amendment from being elected to the office of President thereby constitutionally ineligible to the office? Note also that neither Amendment addresses the eligibility of a former two-term President to serve as Speaker of the House or as one of the other officers who could serve as President through operation of the Succession Act.
None of that applies to Trump. He is squarely within the first section. I think he’s just trolling, for the attention. But the 22nd is self-actuating, unlike any portion of the 14th. What “due process and equal protection of the law” is, has to be up to the courts. Section 3 is no exception. But the 22nd is clear on this point. And the states, which allow candidates on their ballots by their laws, can refuse to violate the 22nd.

It would only take a handful, and Trump is a third-party candidate without access to all 50 states. If he even wants to try.
There are 10.  Get him to name the 5 in the acronym. Energy has gone up since Trump took office. Eggs are up because of scarcity, due to bird flu. Coffee is up because of a drought in Brazil. Energy costs have nothing to do with it. No wonder he can’t fix it. He doesn’t know what the problem is. Sure. Why not? What could go wrong?😑  So we don’t want to help Ukraine, but we do want to overthrow the government of Panama?
My way of saying that is never going to happen. Mostly because:
… After the broad outline of the House Republican budget came out, Mike Johnson is discovering that many Republican voters - especially in the south, are on government assistance. Especially Medicaid. 8 Republicans signed a letter to Johnson imploring him not to slash Medicaid, SNAP, and Pell Grants as planned. These are Reps Gonzales, Malliotakis, De La Cruz, Valadao, Ciscomani, Bresnahan, Moylan and King-Hinds. 
… Rep. David Valadao (R-CA): “I don’t know where they’re going to get the cuts.” 
… Sen. Tammy Baldwin: "Last night, the president said, 'I'm not touching Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, VA, I'm not touching them.' But this morning, he endorsed the House budget resolution which paves the way for massive cuts to Medicaid." 
… Jasmine Crockett to CNN: "Alabama, who's broke. Louisiana, who's broke. I can go through pretty much the entire south and tell you that they're broke and rely on a lot of welfare from the government. To be perfectly honest, they are supported by dollars from these big blue states. We're in the find out phase." 
… Rep. Jake Auchincloss: “Medicaid cuts are in the budget resolution. They are coming this month, $888 billion of Medicaid cuts. I know why Trump wants to do it. He's got to pay for the tax cuts for the billionaires, but I don't know why someone like Rep. Sessions would vote for it. TX-17 has 100,000 people on Medicaid. The majority of them are children. And for every dollar that gets spent on their primary care visits, on their vaccinations, on their at home care for the elderly, the fed govt picks up $0.66. So who's going to pay for that? When you take out $888 billion out of Medicaid, what are you going to say to your constituents back home?”
8 Republicans. Johnson can’t lose more than 2. And the Freedom Caucus wants more draconian cuts. 

Meanwhile, the Commerce Secretary thinks DOGE can do it without Congress. Yeah, this is already not going the way they think it will.

Manchild In D.C.

The tech mogul hired former employees and other loyalists to access data sets including the private personal data of taxpayers, government workers, grants and contracts. A former Tesla engineer recently installed as director of Technology Transformation Services at the General Services Administration, appeared to confirm concerns by some tech workers inside the government that Musk planned to impose artificial intelligence tools on the federal machine. 
“We want to start implementing more AI at the agency level and be an example for how other agencies can start leveraging AI,” said Musk ally Thomas Shedd in a recording made at an all-hands meeting Feb. 3 that was shared with The Atlantic. 
Shedd suggested AI-powered coding assistants and federal contract analysis as examples of what he envisioned, but veteran federal employees saw tremendous risks in centralizing government data in that way, because the systems are hardened against outside attacks — but remain vulnerable to insider threats. 
“At present, every hacker in the world knows there are a small number of people new to federal service who hold the keys to access all U.S. government payments, contracts, civil servant personal info and more,” wrote one recently departed federal technology official in draft testimony for lawmakers. “DOGE is one romance scam away from a national security emergency.”
Elmo is preparing the way for the government contract to end all government contracts.

Elmo has no fucking clue what he’s doing.

These are not contradictory statements.

I keep coming back to it because it’s illustrative if not dispositive: Elmo can’t even get a self-driving car on the road (several companies have better programs/success). But he claims AI can run the government. Not because it can, but because Tesla is still a meme stock and, like Trump, Musk has realized the real easy money is in government work. (It’s pretty clear Trump’s most successful business venture has been the Presidency).

There are (were?) at least 30 federal investigations into Musk and his companies. His federal contracts are worth at least $13 billion. That alone presents enough conflicts of interest to keep him miles away from any federal government position, much less the White House. It also explains why he’s there.

Besides, he’s such a nice guy. For a ten-year old with anger issues:
And the real power is still in Congress:
attempt to call Elon to account that the judges and "justices" and lawyers and legal process will be so stretchedthe out to the crack of doom that the only judgement will have to be the Last one. The laws delay has been weaponized like all of the automatic weapons in the United States for the protection of rich criminals.
I agree. I think the market takes care of Elmo. Tesla is likely to lose market share and go into the dark, simply because it is such a reviled brand due to its Nazi public face. SpaceX may well start losing contracts if Democrats regain Congress in two years and Elmo’s unpopularity gives them a spine. He’s already advocated abandoning the ISS and going to Mars. NASA wants to do that, but Elmo’s rocket for Mars keeps blowing up. Maybe Congress puts that on the back burner as it cleans up the wreckage of DOGE.

I think that’s where the accounting will come from. Elmo can’t do anything without Trump, and if inflation returns, even without a recession, Trump is gonna need a scapegoat. Trump is only ever loyal to Trump. And I still think Elmo is only his heat shield. After they’ve done their job, heat shields are always discarded.

Who knows? Trump may even try to cancel the SpaceX contracts. I wouldn’t really be surprised.

Manchild At C-PAC

 Possibly:

Numident, or "Numerical Identification System," is the Social Security Administration's computer database file of an abstract of the information contained in an application for a United States Social Security number (Form SS-5). It contains the name of the applicant, place and date of birth, and other information. The Numident file contains all Social Security numbers since they first were issued in 1936.
"Possibly" here meaning Musk is probably referring to the “Numident” which, among other things, “contains all Social Security numbers since they were first issued in 1936.” I can’t say that doesn’t amount to 400 million entries. I can say it doesn’t mean SS is paying 400 million people. Or even thinks there are 400 million people alive with active SS numbers.

I can say with confidence that Elmo is an idiot. And that he’s ignoring, intentionally or from rank ignorance, the Social Security Death Index:
The file contains information about persons who had Social Security numbers and whose deaths were reported to the Social Security Administration from 1962 to the present; or persons who died before 1962, but whose Social Security accounts were still active in 1962. As of 2018, the file contained information on 111 million deaths. 
In 2011, some records were removed from the file.
I’m sure Elmo thinks there’s some scandal in that last sentence. Although I take back the ignorance defense. If I can find this information so readily, Elmo can, too. He just doesn’t want to.

Easier to make the story what you want it to be, that way. But mostly, Elmo is just a superannuated adolescent, and this is all a game to him.
Giving him access to one of the most secure facilities in the world seems like such a good idea. You just know he wants to take some DOGE guys with him so they can replay scenes from “Goldfinger.” Or he’ll claim it’s not the “real” Fort Knox because it’s not the one James Bond fought in. When it should be going to Xitter. Or SpaceX. Or Tesla. I think the government actually gives SpaceX more money than DOGE has claimed is spent on “legacy media.” In his dreams he’s Keanu Reeves, dodging bullets in slow motion. And he’s skinny.

🍻 And DEI

 J.D.Vance:

"Our culture sends a message to young men that you should suppress every masculine urge," Vance said, without citing any evidence to support such a claim. "My message to young men is don't allow this broken culture to send you a message that you're a bad person because you're a man, because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends."
Is it masculine to drink beer and tell jokes? Because my daughter drinks beer and tells jokes. Are you saying she’s masculine?

Because that sounds awfully DEI to me, when you put it that way.

What’s Really Wrong With This Country Is All The People In It

 


I remember 1968. George is too young to.  👴🏻 

It’s Only A Matter Of Time…

...before he tries to sic DOGE on the CBO.

About the time reality shows the DOGE numbers are fantasy and tariffs aren’t doing shit except causing inflation.

🤦‍♀️

A) Is she improving child trafficking?

B) Does she have Middle East’s phone number?
The chickens infected with bird flu? And the money “saved” by DOGE by firing (and now trying to rehire) the people trying to protect the rest of us from bird flu?😷 

And just so I’m clear: Trump wants to end FEMA and let the states take over disaster relief, but he wants to give people checks to…buy eggs? To eat in the houses they don’t have because natural disasters destroyed them?
Just not the ones you’re expecting.

I’d wonder how this woman ever got through law school, but I’ve seen too many idiots get through too many schools.

🌊

A) credit to MeidasTouch

B) MAGA bros are old news. Just a month in.

C) Trump’s tide is going out. Just a month in.

⛳️ v ♟️

 Anybody else…

Kurt Volker, who had been a key witness in Trump's first impeachment inquiry over his Ukraine extortion scheme, pointed to a Truth Social post the president made shortly after his inauguration threatening taxes, tariffs and sanctions against Russia if an agreement couldn't be reached to end the war – which stands in stark contrast to his threats against Zelenskyy. 
"It's really striking, it is such a divergence from what Trump himself said just on his first full day in office," Volker said. "If you remember that tweet on Jan. 21, he said that Putin needs to stop the war, that it should never have happened, and that he's prepared to escalate with sanctions if he doesn't, and now he launches this tweet where he doesn't mention Russia at all. The real dictator in the room here is Vladimir Putin, who has been in power for 25 years, not Zelenskyy, and it is Russia that launched this unprovoked invasion against Ukraine, not the other way around – so very, very, very, very strange and divergent from where Trump himself was." 
Trump's former UN ambassador Nikki Haley posted on X that his remarks calling Zelenskyy a "dictator" were "classic Russian talking points," and Volker speculated the president was angry that his Ukrainian counterpart had rejected his terms on ending the war. 
"I think that there is probably a lot of pique at president Zelenskyy because Zelenskyy pushed back on some things, and, you know, Trump just always wants to push for what he's trying to achieve," Volker said. "When he had J.D. Vance at Munich and there was some reaction to that, he gave Zelenskyy an ultimatum on minerals that was really very one-sided and very poorly written, and Zelenskyy rejected that and made some counter proposals." 
"Then he said that Trump is living in a disinformation space, so I think all of those things created this sense of pique from Trump that he wanted to lash out," Volker added. "But does that really advance American interests, as you're asking? Uh, I think it doesn't, because ultimately, what we need to do is get to a place where we have an end of the war in Ukraine, as Trump has said many, many times. We have a prevention of future war, meaning there is a deterrent effect in place again, so Putin doesn't attack again, and that we shift more of the burdens to our European allies so we don't have to carry as much, which they're not going to do if they're very, very unhappy."
 …seeing a pattern here?
According to a report from Politico's Ben Leonard, Adam Cancryn and Robert King, the president at first reaffirmed his belief that the program that provides help for millions should not be touched and then, hours later, threw his support behind a House proposal that would severely gut the program. 
Politico reported that set off a mad scramble among Trump aides who were as "blindsided" as some GOP lawmakers who were immediately asked what the president was agreeing to.
This isn’t four-dimensional chess or negotiating strategy or tic-tac-toe or eating the game pieces.  This is an old man who’d rather be cheating at golf and telling himself he can beat the club pro on his worst day.

Burning Down The House

 NPR:

In fact, the chair of the Council of Inspectors General actually reached out to the contacts at DOGE to try to engage with them and talk about what we do, because, if you're interested in waste, fraud and abuse, that's what our offices go after, right, and have gone after for years. And so he never heard back.
Now, why would that be?
Here’s a neat trick for saving taxpayers billions of dollars: billions of dollars: just make stuff up! 
I mean, sure, you could do all the hard work of actually finding government waste and fixing inefficient processes. But why bother when you can just… invent numbers? (This is not financial advice.) 
The innovator of this approach — and I really should give credit where credit is due — is DOGE, the government agency that is totally, absolutely, definitely not run by Elon Musk (wink wink). 
After there were complaints about the near total lack of transparency from the DOGE brats, Musk insisted that the website was super transparent, except at the time the website was empty. It has since been updated with what they claim are receipts, but if these are receipts, they’re complete nonsense. The topline claim is that DOGE has saved taxpayers $55 billion.
The correct answer is: TRANSPARENCY!
Let’s look at their crown jewel: an $8 billion contract that DOGE proudly claims to have canceled. Except… it wasn’t an $8 BILLION contract. It was an $8 MILLION contract. 
That’s quite a difference! (About $7.992 billion, if you’re counting.) 
Now, to be slightly fair to the DOGErati — and I do try to be fair — there was indeed an incorrect document floating around that listed the contract as $8 billion. That document was corrected weeks ago, because, you know, reality. The actual payments were set at $8 million total over multiple years, with $2.5 million already paid out. So even if we’re being incredibly generous, the maximum possible savings here would be $5.5 million. 
That’s 0.069% of what they claimed (a number that I’m sure would still get a snicker out of Musk). 
But why let reality get in the way of a good story? 
When reporters called this out, the DOGE team made a fascinating choice. Instead of fixing their error, they actually removed the correct document from their website and replaced it with the old, incorrect one. They are now deliberately posting false information to support the narrative.
So they didn’t really alter government documents. That just made up documents to suit their story, and called that a “government document”! Transparency! Hey, presto!

DOGE also claims it has saved $55 billion, when its receipts only add up to $16 billion. And some of that includes taking credit for closing offices of the National Archives.

Those closings were announced on August 1, 2024.
But even that’s not the best part. That same article notes that many of the contracts DOGE claims to have “cancelled and saved” were contracts that had already been fully paid out. This is like claiming you saved money on last year’s rent by deciding not to pay it today. The money’s already gone! But DOGE adds these amounts to their total anyway, because apparently that’s how math works now. 
The cherry on top of this mathematical fantasy sundae? The Liar-in-Chief of DOGE, Elon Musk, has already amplified someone’s made-up claim that DOGE had saved $110 billion — a number that somehow manages to double their own already massively inflated figures.
But Elmo is a genius businessman, and genius businessmen never lie!!! (“Businessperson” is way too DEI.)

And it can’t be repeated too often now:
It’s worth noting that the US government already has established, professional watchdogs with actual expertise in tracking down waste, fraud, and abuse: the Inspectors General (whom Trump illegally removed upon taking office) and the Government Accountability Office. These are people who know how to follow the money, understand federal contracting rules, and can tell the difference between waste and, you know, normal government operations. (A distinction that seems to elude the DOGE crew.) 
DOGE seems determined to ignore these existing competent oversight bodies, perhaps because their methodical, fact-based approach doesn’t generate enough social media buzz with which to fluff Musk’s ego.
"Move fast and break things."
This is Government Finance 101, but apparently DOGE skipped that class to instead share dank memes in Telegram chat groups. If you cancel a contract that helps collect taxes more efficiently, you haven’t “saved” the contract cost — you’ve just made tax collection less efficient. If you eliminate training that helps prevent costly mistakes, you haven’t “saved” the training budget — you’ve just guaranteed more costly mistakes.
And never look back; something might be gaining on you.
At last week’s White House briefing, Musk claimed DOGE would welcome corrections when they make mistakes. Yet when confronted with actual errors — like that pesky $8 billion vs. $8 million difference — their response wasn’t to fix the mistake, but to deliberately showcase the incorrect information. It’s a perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with this approach: rather than leveraging actual expertise to address real government waste, DOGE is manufacturing outrage through mathematical sleight-of-hand. The real fraud isn’t in the government contracts they’re “investigating” — it’s in their own reporting.
Something called “reality.”

I mean, lay off enough people, and the economy starts to show it (not to mention government services, which are what everyone misses in a government shutdown, when we are assured no one will miss the government).  Whither the magic of government savings then?

Matthew 16:26

As TC said:
Read the whole thing, it's always better to act than it is to just wring our hands. Realizing that you are eventually left with nothing to lose except your soul is the first step to finding it.

“Tin Soldiers And Nixon Coming…”

 “We’re finally on our own…”

This country has seen some bad moments in the 61 years, 5 months, 16 days I’ve been on this Earth. But it has never, ever before come close to the supertoxic level of stupidity, mendacity, narcissism, nihilism, and moral apathy that threaten to destroy it today.
--George Conway

"This summer I hear the drumming
If protests keep getting larger, and they will, we’re quickly approaching the point at which Trump tells Hegseth to order the military to fire on protesters. 
Trump yearns for this. The question is if the soldiers under Hegseth will carry out these illegal orders. I don’t think the answer is clear.
"Four dead in Ohio.”

George Conway was six when the Kent State Massacre occurred. I was 15, and two years away from going to college myself.

None of the students killed at Kent State were involved in the anti-war protest that brought out the National Guard. The soldiers who fired on the students were exonerated at trial. The jury decided the students were the responsible parties.

And before that, there were the dogs, and the water cannons, used to attack peaceful protestors marching for their civil rights.  Those police officers were praised for their conduct by public officials.

George is probably too young to remember that, too.

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Not Necessarily Fraud, But Certainly Fraudulent

Hmmmm... Double hmmmmm…

And Trump says Musk is in charge of DOGE? Did he speak intemperately? Or in CYA?

And it is an intentional misrepresentation (what, somebody didn’t know they were changing government records to reflect a misrepresentation they wanted others to rely on?), so it could be found to be fraud…