Elon vs TACO Don

The world's richest man and the world's most powerful man are locked in a playground-level tussle over how best to fuck over Americans in order to hand more yacht money to wealthy people and corporations.

On DOGE In Restrospect

 

Elon on Drugs
byu/EsperaDeus inPublicFreakout

Musk Says He’ll Be Trump’s ‘Friend And Adviser’ After Leaving White House

Key Facts:

• Musk said, “I’ll continue to be visiting here and be a friend and adviser” to Trump, who said Musk’s “not really leaving.”
• Trump repeatedly praised Musk and what he described as “colossal change” spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency, telling reporters “he’s gonna be back and forth, I think, I have a feeling—it’s his baby and he’s going to be doing a lot of things.”
• Musk departs the White House after publicly criticizing the price tag of Trump’s signature policy bill earlier this week, and announcing earlier this month he would scale back his political spending.
• Trump tapped Musk, the richest person in the world, to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) earlier this year after Musk spent more than $250 million to help elect him.
• As a special government employee, Musk was not paid and his service was limited to 130 days.
• Musk admittedly fell far short of his goal to cut $1 trillion in government spending, but made drastic reductions that could have a lasting effect, including eliminating some agencies entirely and laying off tens of thousands of federal workers, though many of those decisions remain under challenge in the courts.

DOGE’s Elimination Of Usaid May Have Led To Over 300,000 Deaths

Eliminating the U.S. Agency for International Development: The Trump administration has terminated more than 80% of grants and contracts, having a drastic and in some cases, devastating, impact on global health funding. The cuts may have resulted in about 300,000 deaths, according to an estimate by Brooke Nichols, an associate professor of global health at Boston University. The majority—more than 200,000—are child deaths. Many stem from malnutrition and malaria. The White House has denied any deaths from the USAID cuts—Secretary of State Marco Rubio told House lawmakers earlier this month “no one has died” because of the cuts.

DOGE Firings Under Musk Remain Contested

Courts have overturned tens of thousands of the firings spearheaded by Musk, among multiple legal actions against his work at DOGE. A judge this week refused to dismiss a lawsuit against 14 states that sued Musk and DOGE, alleging illegal access of government data. More than 260,000 federal workers have been fired, taken buyouts or retired since Trump took office, a tally that far exceeds the record 195,000 cut during former President Dwight Eisenhower’s first year, according to Reuters. The Supreme Court last month paused an order by a San Francisco judge requiring the federal government to reinstate more than 16,000 probationary workers—or those who were newly hired—fired by six agencies. New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg called DOGE’s work “a failure” in a piece published Friday that notes “its firings, re-hirings, use of paid administrative leave and all the associated lack of productivity” could cost more than $135 billion this year, according to the Partnership for Public Service.

Musk Repeatedly Changed DOGE’s Goals

Musk said during Trump’s campaign he believed he could find $2 trillion in federal government savings, then made a goal of $1 trillion in cuts when he was appointed to lead DOGE before saying last month he anticipated $150 billion in savings. DOGE’s website has featured numerous errors, including triple counting savings from a contract, claiming it cancelled grants that were terminated years ago and using “billions” when it meant “millions,” according to The New York Times, which also reported DOGE changed its public reporting methods in an apparent attempt to make errors harder to find.

Musk raised eyebrows when he used a salute that closely resembled the one used in Nazi Germany at a Trump inauguration event in January. Twice while on stage Musk projected his arm diagonally upward from his chest with an open, downward facing palm. Some observers said it was a “Roman salute,” a take reshared by Musk, who never outright denied the accusations likening him to Hilter, and the Anti-Defamation League determined it was “not a Nazi salute.”

Bye Bye Elmo

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/

We've Done It Before

So let's do it again. 

And let's keep doing it until we don't have to do it anymore.

A Glimmer

This Is Good Bidness?

So, Tesla has recalled pretty much every "truck" it's sold so far.

The thing has been out there for about a year, and they've had to issue like 8 recalls.

I think that means the "truck" is actually a hybrid - a cross between the Edsal and the Pinto.

Tesla Recalls Nearly All Of Its Cybertrucks Due To Them Falling Apart

This is the eighth time Elon Musk has had to recall the Cybertruck, which has only been on roads for just over a year.

Tesla, the electric car company owned by Elon Musk, is recalling most of its Cybertrucks due to an exterior panel that can fall off while driving ― posing a serious setback for a company whose shares already have been taking a nosedive.

Tesla announced the recall of more than 46,000 Cybertrucks in a filing with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The recall applies to all vehicles built from November 2023 through Feb. 27 of this year ― accounting for nearly every Cybertruck in existence. In its filing, Tesla says that the cant rail, a stainless-steel exterior trim panel, can detach from the vehicle.

“A detached panel can become a road hazard, increasing the risk of a crash,” Tesla admitted in its NHTSA filing.

This is the eighth time Tesla has had to recall Cybertrucks, which have been on roads for less than a year and a half.

Tesla already has seen its stock lose about half of its value this year, in part due to rising competition and in part due to outrage over Musk’s job under President Donald Trump overseeing massive cuts to federal funding, including money spent on school meals for kids, national parks and forests, programs combatting infectious disease and research to help sick and wounded veterans.

Demand for used Teslas also has been plummeting, according to a survey from Cars.com that found searches for used Teslas dropped 16% over the past month.

A bizarre plea on Wednesday night from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick for Americans to buy stock in Musk’s company massively backfired. After Lutnick’s TV appearance, in which he urged viewers to “buy Tesla” and promised them that the stock will “never be this cheap again,” the company’s shares dropped another 1.7% Thursday morning.

Lutnick’s sales pitch comes just over a week after Trump ― in an unprecedented and ethically dubious move ― shilled for Tesla by parading the company’s vehicles outside the White House in support of “great patriot” Musk.

This week, several families of victims who died or were injured in crashes involving Tesla’s self-driving technology wrote to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy expressing their concern that Musk’s influence in the Trump administration may weaken government oversight on automated vehicles, according to reporting in Politico.

The families said they were worried about the status of the policy from President Joe Biden’s time in the White House that required Tesla and other vehicle manufacturers to report crashes that involved advanced driver assistance technologies or automated driving systems.

“We fear this important measure is under threat given recent media reports and the influence of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose company operates the most widely used [advanced driver assistance technologies] in America,” the letter reads.

Stoned Elmo

Although he's made public statements about being a "regular user", I'm not aware of any really solid confirmation of Elon's suspected ketamine addiction. But can we dismiss the probability altogether?

 

     (hard pay wall)

Research has not yet established the side effects of long-term ketamine therapy, but older studies of recreational users offer some insight on heavy, extended dosing.

Celia Morgan, now a psychopharmacology professor at the University of Exeter, in England, led a 2010 study that followed 120 recreational ketamine users for a year. Even infrequent users—those who used, on average, roughly three times a month—scored higher on a delusional-thought scale than ex–ketamine users, people who took other drugs, and people who didn’t use drugs at all. Those who averaged 20 uses a month scored even higher. People believed that they were the sole recipients of secret messages, or that society and people around them were especially attuned to them," writes Shayla Love.

BTW, 90% of ketamine metabolites are passed through your bladder. Maybe we need to be a bit more diligent about drug testing certain people who're making some pretty heavy decisions.

Politician Rips Elon Musk as a ‘Jester High on Ketamine’

A French politician has mocked Elon Musk as a “jester high on ketamine,” and compared Donald Trump to Nero.

Claude Malhuret also called the world’s richest man a “traitor” for abandoning Ukraine, in a speech discussing discussing European support for the nation.

“Washington has become Nero’s court, with an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers and a jester high on ketamine in charge of purging the civil service,” Malhuret said in a speech

Malhuret, leader of the center-right party, The Independents, called Trump a dictator, and said, “We were at war with a dictator, we are now at war with a dictator backed by a traitor.”

In the past week alone, Trump has cut military aid to Ukraine after berating President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House and floated lifting sanctions on Russia, even as Ukraine continues to fight off Russian invasion.

The “traitor” referenced in Malhuret’s speech, Musk, was once a vital backer of Ukraine. The billionaire has since flipped, and echoed Trump’s rhetoric after last week’s Oval Office meeting, accusing Zelensky of wanting a “forever war” in a post on X.

Malhuret, wearing a pin showing Ukraine’s national flag, referenced Musk’s ketamine use, which the billionaire has admitted to using every other week to treat what he called a “negative chemical state” in his brain.

The Daily Beast has contacted Musk for comment.

Republicans—the “submissive courtiers” in Malhuret’s image of an unhinged court—have largely taken a backseat in Trump’s second term. As Trump has carried out legally questionable executive actions and orders firing FBI executives and federal prosecutors, Republicans have stayed mum.

Trump set the tone early in his term, making clear that GOP lawmakers who don’t submit to him will be cast aside.

A White House official put it bluntly in January, telling NBC News that Senate Republicans should “advise and consent, not advise and adjust.”

Nero ruled Rome from AD 54 until AD 68, entering myth for purportedly fiddling while the city burned. He committed suicide after being declared a public enemy by the senate.

Elon Couldn't Quite Get It Up

Not so much a "not sorry not sorry" on this one.

I'd like it a lot better if Elmo stuck with fucking up his rockets and stayed the fuck outa everybody else's business.

SpaceX’s latest Starship test flight ends with another explosion

Nearly two months after an explosion sent flaming debris raining down on the Turks and Caicos, SpaceX launched another mammoth Starship rocket on Thursday, but lost contact minutes into the test flight as the spacecraft came tumbling down and broke apart.

This time, wreckage from the latest explosion was seen streaming from the skies over Florida. It was not immediately known whether the spacecraft’s self-destruct system had kicked in to blow it up.

The 403-foot (123-meter) rocket blasted off from Texas. SpaceX caught the first-stage booster back at the pad with giant mechanical arms, but engines on the spacecraft on top started shutting down as it streaked eastward for what was supposed to be a controlled entry over the Indian Ocean, half a world away. Contact was lost as the spacecraft went into an out-of-control spin.

Starship reached nearly 90 miles (150 kilometers) in altitude before trouble struck and before four mock satellites could be deployed. It was not immediately clear where it came down, but images of flaming debris were captured from Florida, including near Cape Canaveral, and posted online.

The space-skimming flight was supposed to last an hour.

“Unfortunately this happened last time too, so we have some practice at this now,” SpaceX flight commentator Dan Huot said from the launch site.

SpaceX later confirmed that the spacecraft experienced “a rapid unscheduled disassembly” during the ascent engine firing. “Our team immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses,” the company said in a statement posted online.

Starship didn’t make it quite as high or as far as last time.

NASA has booked Starship to land its astronauts on the moon later this decade. SpaceX’s Elon Musk is aiming for Mars with Starship, the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket.

Like last time, Starship had mock satellites to release once the craft reached space on this eighth test flight as a practice for future missions. They resembled SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites, thousands of which currently orbit Earth, and were meant to fall back down following their brief taste of space.

Starship’s flaps, computers and fuel system were redesigned in preparation for the next big step: returning the spacecraft to the launch site just like the booster.

During the last demo, SpaceX captured the booster at the launch pad, but the spacecraft blew up several minutes later over the Atlantic. No injuries or major damage were reported.

According to an investigation that remains ongoing, leaking fuel triggered a series of fires that shut down the spacecraft’s engines. The on-board self-destruct system kicked in as planned.

SpaceX said it made several improvements to the spacecraft following the accident, and the Federal Aviation Administration recently cleared Starship once more for launch.

Starships soar out of the southernmost tip of Texas near the Mexican border. SpaceX is building another Starship complex at Cape Canaveral, home to the company’s smaller Falcon rockets that ferry astronauts and satellites to orbit.

Cracks

It doesn't sound like much - and it isn't much just yet.

But this is actually kind of encouraging.

In every deeply corrupt operation, some of the minions doing the dirty work will invariably hang on to bits of incriminating evidence as bargaining chips.

Daddy State Awareness Guide

Rule 6: Total criminalization

If we're all guilty, then you can't hold me responsible without the risk of exposing your own culpability.

Federal technology staffers resign rather than help Musk and DOGE

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”

“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”

The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.

The mass resignation of engineers, data scientists, designers and product managers is a temporary setback for Musk and the Republican president’s tech-driven purge of the federal workforce. It comes amid a flurry of court challenges that have sought to stall, stop or unwind their efforts to fire or coerce thousands of government workers out of jobs.

In a statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was dismissive of the mass resignation.

“Anyone who thinks protests, lawsuits, and lawfare will deter President Trump must have been sleeping under a rock for the past several years,” Leavitt said. “President Trump will not be deterred from delivering on the promises he made to make our federal government more efficient and more accountable to the hardworking American taxpayers.”

Nearly 40% of contracts canceled by Musk’s DOGE are expected to produce no savings

Musk posted on his social media site X that the story was “fake news” and suggested that the staffers were “Dem political holdovers” who “would have been fired had then not resigned.”

The staffers who resigned had worked for what was once known as the United States Digital Service, but said their duties were being integrated into DOGE. Their former office, the USDS, was established under President Barack Obama after the botched rollout of Healthcare.gov, the web portal that millions of Americans use to sign up for insurance plans through the Democrat’s signature health care law.

All previously held senior roles at such tech companies as Google and Amazon and wrote in their resignation letter that they joined the government out of a sense of duty to public service.

Trump’s empowerment of Musk upended that. The day after Trump’s inauguration, the staffers wrote, they were called into a series of interviews that foreshadowed the secretive and disruptive work of Musk’s’ Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

According to the staffers, people wearing White House visitors’ badges, some of whom would not give their names, grilled the nonpartisan employees about their qualifications and politics. Some made statements that indicated they had a limited technical understanding. Many were young and seemed guided by ideology and fandom of Musk — not improving government technology.

“Several of these interviewers refused to identify themselves, asked questions about political loyalty, attempted to pit colleagues against each other, and demonstrated limited technical ability,” the staffers wrote in their letter. “This process created significant security risks.”

Earlier this month, about 40 staffers in the office were laid off. The firings dealt a devastating blow to the government’s ability to administer and safeguard its own technological footprint, they wrote.

“These highly skilled civil servants were working to modernize Social Security, veterans’ services, tax filing, health care, disaster relief, student aid, and other critical services,” the resignation letter states. “Their removal endangers millions of Americans who rely on these services every day. The sudden loss of their technology expertise makes critical systems and American’s data less safe.”

Those who remained, about 65 staffers, were integrated into DOGE’s government-slashing effort. About a third of them quit Tuesday.

“We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services,” they wrote. “We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.”

The slash-and-burn effort Musk is leading diverges from what was initially outlined by Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign. DOGE, a nod to Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency meme coin, was initially presented as a blue-ribbon commission that would exist outside government.

After the election, however, Musk hinted there was more to come, posting to his social media site, X, “Threat to democracy? Nope, threat to BUREAUCRACY!!!” He has leaned aggressively into the role since.

Last week he stood on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference gathering outside Washington, where he boasted of his exploits and hoisted a blinged-out, Chinese-made chainsaw above his head that was gifted by Argentinian President Javier Milei.

“This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy,” Musk bellowed from the stage.

Still, Musk has tried to keep technical talent in place, with the bulk of the layoffs in the Digital Service office focused on people in roles like designers, product managers, human resources and contracting staff, according to interviews with current and former staff.

Of the 40 people let go earlier this month, only one was an engineer — an outspoken and politically active staffer name Jonathan Kamens, who said in an interview with the AP that he believes he was fired for publicly endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, on his personal blog and being critical of Musk in chats with colleagues.

“I believe that Elon Musk is up to no good. And I believe that any data that he gains access to is going to be used for purposes that are inappropriate and harmful to Americans,” Kamens said.

U.S. Digital Service veterans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal, recalled experiencing a similar sort of shock about how government processes worked that Musk and his team are discovering. Over time, many developed an appreciation for why certain things in government had to be treated with more care than in the private sector.

“‘Move fast and break things’ may be acceptable to someone who owns a business and owns the risk. And if things don’t go well, the damage is compartmentalized. But when you break things in government, you’re breaking things that belong to people who didn’t sign up for that,” said Cordell Schachter, who until last month was the chief information officer at the U.S. Department of Transportation.

USDS was established over a decade ago to do things like improving services for veterans, and it helped create a free government-run portal so tax filers did not have to go through third parties like TurboTax. It also devised systems to improve the way the federal government purchased technology.

It has been embroiled in its fair share of bureaucracy fights and agency turf wars with chief information officers across government who resented interlopers treading in their agency’s systems. USDS’ power across government stemmed from the imprimatur of acting on behalf of the White House and its founding mission of improving service for the American people.

FAFO con FUBAR

Meanwhile - as if Gov Kemp's problems with FEMA relief aren't enough - Elmo's Weevils have been busy fucking over more people Georgia.

Atlanta News First:

Mythic

Elmo is not a genius. He's not a visionary. He's not a mythic hero in any way.

He was born to privilege, riding to school in his daddy's Rolls Royce.

He's just another parasitic billionaire making money on other people's work.

And he's playing the rubes like a tin whistle.

• He didn't start Tesla. He bought it.
• He doesn't build rockets. Government engineers do that for him.
• He didn't create PayPal. He bought in, and when he tried (and failed) to take it over, he was forced out.

His fortune was created by contracts, subsidies, and tax loopholes, compliments of various levels of government.

Tesla is losing market share and the stock price is down 26% since mid-December.

Twitter has lost 80% of its value since Musk took it private.

Membership is down by millions of users

Hate speech is up by triple digits

Credibility is near-zero

SpaceX is a gauzy dream of billionaires who think they can fuck up the Earth any way they want, and then just migrate to the next Green Spot - in a galaxy far far away - to start the raping and pillaging all over again. While, at the same time, it's a way for Elmo to fleece the rubes and keep them distracted.

While real leaders innovate, and elevate, and motivate the people to excel, Musk markets himself by picking stupid fights, tweeting conspiracy fantasies to keep his devotees entertained, and consolidating his power so he can go on mooching off the taxpayers.

We have to break free of this kind of Gilded Age brain fog we're trapped in. We have to stop allowing these leeches to make themselves out to be our god-anointed rulers, worthy of unending fealty and bloodlust-invoking devotion.

We have to move on to the next Enlightenment.

We have to tax these assholes

into non-existence.

Overheard

So - ICE set up an anonymous Tip Line so people could report their suspicions on possible "Illegal Aliens", and within hours, they had to shut it down because 90% of the calls were complaining about Elon Musk.

Allow Me To Retort

Questions

1. How much did that cost me?
2. How much does Elon put in his pocket per failure?
3. How do you spell boondoggle?

Oh, Elmo

I like to believe that someday, we'll start to think real people doing real things is what's admirable, and not just this week's PT Barnum. But I'm not holding my breath on that one.

Oops

Wait just gol-durn minute, Elmo.

"... it's most ambitious goals"?

Like trying to get the thing not to explode?

That seems like a very low bar

for a rocket scientist.

Are we sure we've got

the right guy working on this project?

Today's Tone Deaf Mogul

"Gimme 8 bucks a month or I'll make it easier

for the bad guys to steal your shit."

-- Elon Musk

 

Today In ElmoLand

Elon Musk loves to spout off about "unfettered free speech" and "the first amendment means the right to express your views is absolute".