Tag: Musk

No Brakes on the Musk Train

Posted on by documentingdescent

Musk gave away two checks for 1 million dollars each last night, as Wisconsin’s supreme court declined to take up AG Kaul’s lawsuit. They gave no reasoning behind their decision, but promised to give it at a later date. I have heard it argued that the lawsuit was not the correct path, because it’s a criminal affair, but I have no confirmation on that.

I mean, Kaul probably should have criminally charged Musk. As Nick Cave put it in “Until the End of the World”, however, we’re in the age full of “men with big mouths and no guts.”

I’ve also heard it reported that in his 100 minute speech, he called for the elimination of the Federal Reserve, and creating a federal crypto banking system to run parallel to the US Dollar.

Frankly, I can’t find any independent reporting on that, and I’m not listening to him for five minutes, much less 100. So those can remain rumor for now.

Roundup: March Madness

Posted on by documentingdescent

I’ve been a bit busy to keep up day by day, dealing with a rather impressive volume of bureaucratic paperwork. As such, I didn’t have much time to deal with any of this moment to moment over the last week. So you get a round-up of what’s been happening instead!

First off, Trump signed the Executive Order known as “Preserving and Protecting American Elections“. This EO essentially attempts to usurp the role of individual states in how elections are administered and run, moving everything under review of the federal government – namely the Department of Homeland Security, the Secretary of State, and DOGE.

Obviously, there is no reason for DOGE to be involved in elections for any legitimate reason. What’s more, the Executive Branch cannot set election law under any circumstances, and this is a transparent power grab by the president. Lest we forget, Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution:

“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of choosing Senators.”

This EO relies on two things to enforce its’ bullshit: the willing compliance of States, and the threat of federal funding being withheld. We’ll see how callow individual states are soon, I suppose.

Trump also told automakers in the United States not to increase prices due to his tariffs. I don’t know how he expects that to go; no corporation is gonna eat a massive loss on every item sold just because they want to appease his ego – at least not for long. If they can’t make money selling cars, it won’t matter if he’s mad at them or not. Obviously, this signals he knows his tariffs are shit that will hurt consumers in the United States, but we already knew he didn’t give a shit about them.

Still, seeing it in the open is good, just so there’s some kind of public acknowledgement of this rank insanity.

There was also a Trump EO that basically orders the Smithsonian and other federal museums/monuments to enforce white supremacist history, re-erect confederate monuments, strip anything uncomfortable (i.e. accurate) from their displays, and re-write the history of the USA to be pro white people. Among the more offensive things in the EO is the demand that race be identified as a quantifiable, genetic reality, rather than something socially constructed and understood. Note: this isn’t ‘some people have dark skin’ type of race, but the notion that there are identifiable, distinct ‘races’ of human beings.

The EO also risks shutting down any museum dedicated to non-white history, under the guise of ‘protecting’ us from “racially divisive exhibits.”

JD Vance addressed Greenland while there with his wife, saying both that Greenland hadn’t been treated very well by Denmark and that only the United States will respect their rights. Funny way to show it, by simultaneously threatening them by (essentially) saying “The United States will get Greenland no matter what.” That’ll be a shitshow of epic proportions if it happens. I’m not wasting any more time on JD Vance, though.

ICE is disappearing students around the United States for political speech. We’re up to 8 at least now, and in each case these students were targeted for things like writing Op-Eds in their student newspaper, engaging in protest or other protected speech, or generally saying stuff the Trump administration doesn’t agree with. They’re being taken while on the streets by ICE agents who are usually out of uniform, masked, and who only identify themselves as ‘police’ – which, I should note, is fucking terrifying.

ICE is trying to deny all of these students their day in court before an immigration judge, and Rubio is trying to deport them without due process, all because they said some uncomfortable truths about the United States and Israel.

Elon Musk is in hot water with Wisconsin after deciding to hand out several million dollars to select voters, in return for them voting. While federal law prohibits payment in exchange for voting for a particular candidate, Musk isn’t doing that. It’s Wisconsin state law he’s run afoul of.

In Wisconsin, paying for voter turnout is explicitly against state law, and it seems Wisconsin isn’t having any of his shit. He deleted his tweet advertising this, but many people captured it before it vanished. I doubt anything will happen legally, but I sure hope Wisconsin tries. We don’t need any centibillionaires messing around with out already broken political system.

I suppose we shall see what horrors next week brings. Stay safe out there.

Elon Musk at CPAC: a Study in Being on Drugs

Posted on by documentingdescent

Elon Musk took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) today. It was… an interesting show, by all accounts.

Sarah Jeong at The Verge has a transcript of Musk’s time on stage. Highlights include “I am become meme”, waving a chainsaw around after it was gifted to him by Argentine President Javier Milei, loads of bullshit claims such as “In Europe, they put people in jail for memes!” and a 306 year old Social Security recipient (see previous posts – he doesn’t understand the data he’s looking at).

He also never removed his sunglasses, slurred words, couldn’t form a lot of coherent sentences, lost trains of thought and devolved into giggles mid-statement. I’ve been around people on drugs a lot in my day, and this guy was likely high as a fucking kite on a cocktail of things.

Hope You Liked Vaccines

Posted on by documentingdescent

RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services

RFK Jr. has been confirmed as the head of Health and Human Services. You know, Mr. Drinks Raw Milk, Mr. Vaccines Cause Autism, Mr. Exercise Will Cure Your COVID and probably some other diseases. While he says he’s got no plans to roll back vaccine authorizations or stifle their development, I trust that statement about as much as a rattlesnake on mescaline. One thing that’s been proven time and again with the people in this administration is that they’ll say whatever it takes to get confirmed, and then just do… whatever they intended to do before.

That’s just the truth of what has been proven, time and again, with the people Trump surrounds himself with. It’s not some clairvoyant skill on my part, just past evidence informing me. Also, as one quip put it, RFK Jr. is just as crazy as the rest of them, and is “Alex Jones in a nice suit” when it comes to health and medical decisions. Hope y’all enjoyed not having preventable diseases, because I’m expecting a big spike in them in coming months and years.

President Musk’s Press Conference

I don’t think I’ve seen many federal spectacles as pathetic and telling as the press conference in the Oval Office the other day, run by Elon Musk, talking about DOGE. Musk, standing, giving a press conference while Trump sat at the Resolute Desk, occasionally throwing in a comment here and there. All the while, Musk’s 4 year old son picked his nose (wiping it on the desk), climbed Musk, and told Trump “You’re not the President, you need to go away.” I’m not 100% sold that he said that, because I hear “Mr. President, you need to go away.” Either way the message is “Daddy is talking and you’re not important enough to be here.” He also told Trump “I want you to shush your mouth” at another point in the briefing.

Talk about a goddamn embarrassment.

Let’s be clear about a few things:

  • The Oval Office is for the office of the President, not somebody he hired, to give briefings in. At worst, it’s for the VP if the President is incapacitated.
  • Four year old children should not be in national briefings, even if the President is giving them.
  • The President was not giving this briefing. Musk was.

The contents of the briefing isn’t really important – it was Musk touting DOGE’s successes and how much fraud they’ve uncovered, with absolutely no proof other than “trust me, bro”, and repeating absolute bullshit about shit he doesn’t understand. Mike Masnick of TechDirt had some pretty good thoughts on it. But the presence of Musk’s son, as well as Musk’s level of formality in his clothing, suggests two things. One is that Musk is devoted to trying to humanize his image and make himself seem like a relatable family man. This seems to have worked somewhat, as today there are headlines from CNN and other outlets suggesting exactly that.

The second message is: “I can do whatever I want, and nobody can stop me.”

Armored Cybertrucks

The State Department is set to spend $400 million dollars on “armored Tesla Cybertrucks”, in a move that should surprise no one that understands the adage one hand washes the other. Or, more commonly, tit-for-tat. They walked this back to $400 million for ‘armored electric vehicles’, but we all know they’ll be Teslas. Nobody has pushed back on why there’s a need for this, or why Cybertrucks (in the initial procurement order) rather than just about any, more practical electric vehicle.

It’s worth noting that time and again, it’s been proven that despite Tesla’s claims to the contrary, they do store and collate all of the camera and audio data from Tesla vehicles. Meaning Musk will have a direct line to review footage and audio from all of these State Department vehicles, without oversight. So essentially all of them are bugged, and answerable to a non-governmental individual.

Edit: The State Department put out a press release today noting that they have not, in fact, awarded Tesla a contract for $400 million for armored vehicles. In this context, awarded is doing some very heavy lifting. Yes, of course they haven’t awarded it. It doesn’t change the fact that their own released budgetary info was soliciting a desire for these vehicles yesterday.

Weekly Roundup, February 7

Posted on by documentingdescent

Playing Catch Up

I was too ill to post effectively last week, and this week I’ve been too busy. So consider this weekly catch up for the past two weeks for what I think are the most important things that have happened, as well as the most important things not to forget. The Bannon idea of “flood the zone” with actions is definitely underway, with Trump issuing EO after EO, and Musk directing his minions to do all kinds of things, so it’s been tough to keep up.

In light of that, I think it’s important not to focus on every little thing that happens. Yes, they matter. Yes, many of them are reprehensible. However, trying to keep up with every rant or mad idea is frankly untenable in light of their sheer volume. So instead, let’s talk about the more salient points from one specific perspective: to whit, Trump is not a distraction, but he is not the only player in the room. He was supported by groups such as the Heritage Foundation, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Andreessen Horowitz, and others. All part of either Project 2025, or the so-called ‘dark enlightenment’ movement espoused by Curtis Yarvin, or both.

Trump may sit behind the Resolute Desk, but given his absolutely illiterate nature, utter inexperience with legal matters other than lawsuits, and utter disregard for anything longer than a TV snippet, it seems obvious that many of the people around him are drafting the EOs and policies he is pushing. To whit, he cares about money, his image, and revenge. Probably in that order, but not always.

DOGE and its Employees

Elon Musk’s DOGE and his cadre of youths have been running roughshod over a vast swath of federal departments and institutions since just after the inauguration. Their actions have amounted to the largest breach of digital security in the history of anything computational, and by a wide margin as well. This is because these systems are designed to be secure and isolated, yet he’s had his team start connecting external and unvetted machines to them. They have data tunnels to outside systems, and have been both hoovering up the personal data of millions of Americans, and mucking about in production code directly without testing the code.

Aside from the central leadership, their boots on the ground are basically children. This team is largely between the ages of 19-25 years of age, and none of them have more than a cursory understanding of security, software, or government. Many are fresh out of high school, or only finished 1-2 years of college before being hired by either SpaceX, Tesla, or an allied venture capital firm.

There’s been no vetting of them other than Musk’s “trust me, bro”. Prior to DOGE, some had been working with Russia, soliciting illegal cyberattacks, espousing the need for eugenics and the destruction of non-white races. After resigning for making these statements, the last one was re-hired following the enthusiastic endorsement of both Trump and JD Vance. That was yesterday, I guess.

Vance and several others have said statements made on social media in earlier times shouldn’t ruin somebody’s life or prevent them from having a good career. Putting aside the fact that they would like to do exactly that to anyone who opposes them, Marko Elez made his eugenics statements in September 2024. So I guess we all have to have memories of goldfish now.

So which departments have the Muskenjugend hit so far, and what have they done?

  • The United States Agency for International Development
    • USAID is instrumental in promoting democracy around the world. It was created to counteract Soviet influence in 1961, but was instrumental in ending Apartheid in South Africa. This may explain some of Musk’s animus toward it, and it was likely a convenient test target because very few people inside the United States had heard of it.
    • Lawsuits over this are currently flying left and right, and are ongoing, after staffers were locked out without warning.
  • Office of Personnel Management
    • With access to OPM, DOGE gained access to records relating to other agencies’ activities, and who was involved in things they can target in their DEI witch hunt. This has allowed them to search for ‘disloyalty.’
    • Totally taken over, lawsuits incoming,
  • National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
    • It’s long been a desire for the people behind Project 2025 to destroy the NOAA so that weather information can be privatized and sold via outlets like The Weather Channel.
    • The NOAA is also embarrassing to them because it keeps finding evidence of climate change, which they insist is not real.
    • Not sure what the current state of NOAA is right now.
  • Health and Human Services
    • HHS oversees the National Institute of Health and the Center for Disease Control. Both of these angered Trump during the COVID pandemic, so he’s happy to see them gone.
    • Musk and the 2025 crew want their activities privatized so that we have to pay more for basic health research and they can make money off of it. This also shunts their public institution grant money into coffers they feel are better used by private research.
    • Destroying these also hurts trans people. As usual, the cruelty is the point – or part of the point.
    • Lawsuits incoming.
  • Treasury
    • The goal was to gain the levers of payment for everything the government does. The Secretary of the Treasury said DOGE had merely read-only access to it; this turned out to be a lie, they were writing code to the servers. Or attempting to.
    • There’s a current legal injunction against DOGE from doing anything on the Treasury servers, and ordered the deletion of data they’ve hoovered. We shall see if they obey the order. But it does seem they are currently locked out for the time being.
  • Department of Labor
    • Blocked from their takeover by unions, for now.
  • Department of Education
    • “No such government department exists” tweeted Musk on Friday.
    • Dissolving the Department of Education has been a goal for a long time, for 2025. More money for private religious schools in conservative states, less money for public education, less oversight over curriculum.
    • It also has the practical upshot of totally disrupting federal student loans, for now. They may want college to be entirely fueled by predatory loans or keep it entirely in the hands of the wealthy. A poorly educated population tends to be more in line with their desires.
  • Department of Energy
    • No clue where they’re at with the DOE yet.
  • Housing and Urban Development
    • No clue where they’re at with HUD either. Supposedly their actions won’t affect Section 8 payments, but they’re likely to impact Public Housing.
    • This falls in line with Trump and 2025ers wanting to look good for veterans, as VASH is part of Section 8.
    • Perhaps more importantly, Section 8 is already wealth transfer from Federal coffers to landlords. Many may be mom and pop type owners, but many are also large corporate owners.
    • Secretary of HUD Scott Turner, who I believe is a former football player, has announced he will no longer be enforcing HUD’s 2016 rule “Equal Access in Accordance With an Individual’s Gender Identity in Community Planning and Development Programs” due to Trump’s EOs.

There are definitely other agencies affected, but these are the ones I remember and the specific states they’re in as far as I recall. I’ll try to keep up with more of this madness as it unfolds, but life happens even when your country is tearing itself apart.

Trump’s Territorial Ambitions

Trump’s talked a lot about taking back the Panama Canal, invading Mexico, taking Greenland, owning Gaza and the West Bank, and even making Canada the 51st state. He’s said these things repeatedly, and that he’s not joking.

Do I believe him? Unequivocally yes.

Do I think he can do it? Not without kicking off World War 3. The Panama Canal is probably the safest of these, but any move against Greenland or Canada would absolutely incite war. Mexico would as well, but that would probably go to a global war slightly slower than the other two. It still would, but it wouldn’t be, to use nuclear terminology, a “prompt critical”.

Ultimately, he thinks of power as money and land ownership, because he’s a sleazy real estate developer. So seeing big colors on a big map appeals to his “I’m a big boy now!” attitude. And Gaza is it’s own morass that is just so monumentally stupid as to be nearly unbelievable, but he’s a monumentally stupid man. As one internet wit put it, “Yeah, when did anything bad ever happen after the USA tripped dick-first into the Middle East?”

Make no mistake, though: despite calling Canada the 51st state, none of these places would be states. They’d be territorial possessions, because why on earth would you annex anywhere that hates you and then give them an ounce of power?

Signing off for now. I’ll try to be better about keeping up with the day by day.