MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2025
Also, could Musk be the world's dumbest person? It didn't take long for Masha Gessen to make use of a key term.
We're referring to something Gessen says in the new column which appears in this morning's New York Times. Presumably, Gessen was speaking colloquially—but here's what was quickly said:
The Barrage of Trump’s Awful Ideas Is Doing Exactly What It’s Supposed To
The first month of the second Trump presidency has put the lie to the widespread wisdom that Donald Trump has no ideology and no ideas, only an insatiable thirst for power and money. Trump has shown that he has ideas. So many ideas. They are just really bad ideas:
The United States can own, ethnically cleanse and redevelop Gaza as a luxury resort. The U.S. will buy Greenland and take possession of the Panama Canal. The government will become more efficient by cutting the Department of Education, U.S.A.I.D., medical and science research and many many jobs. D.E.I. caused the collision of an Army helicopter and a passenger plane in the air near Washington, D.C. Immigrants and transgender people are an existential threat to Americans. The president can and should rule by decree. These are all ideas, in the sense that they are opinions, beliefs or expressions of a possible course of action.
Some of these ideas would have seemed unthinkable just weeks ago. But now that they have been thought and uttered by the man in possession of the world’s biggest megaphone, all of us are forced to engage with them. Otherwise sane people start debating questions like: Could the U.S. really take over Gaza? ...
And so on from there. Gessen offers a list of the questions which are now being debated.
In paragraph 2, Gessen lists some of the commander's ideas, describing them as "just really bad." At that point, Gessen employs a key term, offering this formulation:
Otherwise sane people are forced to debate such ideas.
Borrowing from Camus, the question of "sanity" had just been raised for the first time!
For the record, we'll assume that Gessen is speaking colloquially with respect to this key medical / psychological / psychiatric term. We'll assume there is no reference to some array of clinical diagnoses.
In that second paragraph, Gessen lists some of the commander's "really bad ideas." Also included is one of the commander's amazingly bogus claims / suggestions / assertions:
D.E.I. caused the collision of an Army helicopter and a passenger plane in the air near Washington, D.C.
When the commander launched that suggestion, there was no apparent reason to believe that it was an accurate claim. It joined the long list of crazy claims the commander has made through the years.
Colloquially, so many crazy claims! It started in 2011, when he began his reign as king of the crackpot birthers. It extended through his crazy claim, posted last fall, that no one was actually present at a jam-packed airport rally staged by Candidate Harris.
Why would someone make such a crazy statement? Should inquiring minds want to know?
Down through the years, the commander has made an astonishingly long list of extremely strange factual claims. Recently, he's been joined in this practice by Elon Musk, who might almost seem, at the present time, to be the world's dumbest known person.
As with Trump, so too with Musk! That said, the leading lights of Blue America's journalism seem to be playing the slacker role with respect to this array of gonzo misstatements by this pair of warfighters. Consider the latest gonzo assertion by the person who might almost seem, at times, to be quite possibly the world's dumbest known human:
MUSK (2/11/25): You know, there's crazy things, like, just a cursory examination of Social Security, and we've got people in there that are 150 years old. Now, do you know anyone that's 150? I don't. OK. They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. they're missing out.
So, you know, that's the case where, like, I think they're probably dead! That's my guess. Or they should be very famous. One of the two.
Yes, he actually said it. Speaking colloquially, he seemed to say that he himself had spotted something crazy! He said it in the Oval Office, as the commander babysat his four-year-old son.
Many journalists reported the fact that the youngster's name is X. You can score that report as technically accurate—but for the record, we'll note today that the youngster's full name seems to be this:
X Æ A-Xii Musk
That's the youngster's full name, according to this report by Forbes. On the other hand, according to this report by People magazine, his full name is actually this:
X Æ A-12 Musk
Needless to say, there's no single perfect way to confer a name on a child. We're simply reporting the fuller name the world's possibly dumbest person chose to confer on one of his many children.
The youngster has an unusual name. That said, his father keeps making highly unusual statements, few of which turn out to be accurate.
For example:
It's being widely claimed, though not by anyone at the New York Times, that Musk's claim about the 150-year-old Social Security recipients stems from his cluelessness about certain aspects of COBOL On that basis, it's being widely said that Musk's insinuation about the 150-year-old recipients was just clownishly wrong, like so many other things he has, for some reason, said.
We're going to guess that this debunking is accurate, though our biggest news orgs have largely walked away from the task of examining Musk's array of possibly crazy claims.
To see Paul Krugman suggest the possible explanation-via-COBOL, you can just click here. This explanation is general over the web, but newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post have walked away from the duty of reporting such possible divergences from the related realms of sanity and fact.
Is something "wrong" with Donald J. Trump? How about with Musk?
No, really! Is something actually wrong with these guys?
Could something be clinically wrong? Also, if something is clinically wrong, should the public be told?
We've long recommended compassion, sympathy, empathy, "pity" for people who are severely afflicted in the way some people are. Long ago and far away, the newly resurgent Bob Dylan framed the matter that way in the unexplained song which carries this title:
I Pity the Poor Immigrant
"Immigrant" is metaphorical there. The song was written in 1968. Its description of the "poor immigrant" seems to be drawn, with remarkable accuracy, from the headlines of the present day.
Could something be wrong with Trump and Musk? Could something be clinically wrong? Intellectual leaders in Blue America have agreed that this complex question must never be discussed!
We refer to Blue America's academics, as well as to Blue America's journalists. Silence has thus invaded the suburbs of our spotless Blue American minds.
That said, and in fairness, the conceptual landscape of "mental illness" is actually rather complex.
Some leading figures have even insisted that there's no such thing as "mental illness." According to this minority view, cancer and measles are real things. Mental illnesses are not.
The conceptual landscape is hard. That said, Gessen turned directly to a key term in this morning's column. By paragraph 3, questions concerning the issue of "sanity" seem to be floating there.
The New York Times will disappear any such thought or suggestion. Tomorrow, we'll start to explore the landscape of a widely discussed "disorder."
For today, the youngster's name is X Æ A-Xii Musk! With that in mind, is it even imaginable? Could a form of madness perhaps be lurking here?
Is the father of this youngster possibly just the world's dumbest person? Or could something beyond that be wrong?
Could something be "wrong" with the youngster's father? If so, should the public be told?
Tomorrow: AI Overview speaks!
This afternoon: What Dagen McDowell said
ReplyDeleteJeez, Bob. So, a clearly retarded dyke is your standard of normality? And the judge of normality? Really?
Oh, never mind.
From The New Yorkers Magazine:
Delete"Masha Gessen began contributing to The New Yorker in 2014 and was a staff writer from 2017 to 2024. Gessen is the author of eleven books, including “Surviving Autocracy” and “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” which won the National Book Award in 2017. They have written about Russia, Ukraine, autocracy, L.G.B.T.Q. rights, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump, among other subjects, for The New York Review of Books and the New York Times. On a parallel track, they have been a science journalist, writing about AIDS, medical genetics, and mathematics; famously, they were dismissed as the editor of the Russian popular-science magazine Vokrug sveta for refusing to send a reporter to observe Putin hang-gliding with Siberian cranes. They are a distinguished professor at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York and a distinguished visiting writer at Bard College. They are the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, a Nieman Fellowship, the John Chancellor Award, the Hitchens Prize, the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought, a Polk Award, and an Overseas Press Club Award. After more than twenty years as a journalist and editor in Moscow, Gessen has been living in New York since 2013."
This is clearly a person who knows more about what is happening in our country than Somerby does.
Delete"They have written"? Jeez.
DeleteLike I said: a clearly retarded dyke.
Why do you guys find pronouns so threatening? That's on you. Look at the list of books Gessen has written, including first-hand accounts about what it is like to live under tyranny. That's what Trump has on his agenda.
DeleteYour premise is incorrect. We find the insistence on pronoun usage to be profoundly stupid, not threatening.
DeleteAnd you should be the judge and jury of which pronouns are mandatory because, why?
DeleteAll pronouns are voluntary. You are complaining because other people have used them. You seem to want to dictate for others. That's the problem with folks who support dictators -- it is the idea of dictating that they like, not the asshole who wants to be in charge. This triggers you because you want to dictate and others are not obeying you.
DeleteI already knew that you too are a retarded dyke, Corby. No need to keep confirming it in so many words.
DeleteI'm not sure what it means to say pronouns are 'voluntary'; they are part of the English language, over which we all have joint ownership, and which depends like any language on common understanding of the meaning of words, and which is not subject to change by the fiat of a tiny sliver of the population.
DeleteIf someone wants to dress up as the opposite sex and mutilate their body as part of the charade, fine. Go for it. But don't compel, or even expect me, to say stupid things like referring to a biological man as a 'she'.
Right, you go on speaking however you want. And let other people do the same. It is the "let others use their pronouns" part that you are falling down on. Where has a single commenter here object to YOU not using the right pronouns for Gessen? It is as if you are disappointed no one said anything, so you are going ahead as if you had actually been reprimanded. Jumping the gun. How snowflakey is that?
DeleteCorby hasn't been here in years.
DeleteAnonymouse 11:10am, you’re more than likely to be an anonymouse flying monkey in political drag, but just for the record, go jump in the lake.
Delete11:58,
DeleteYou triggered, bro?
Yeah.
DeleteOne look at this particular retarded dyke and you understand what people mean by "even looks evil."
DeleteBest zinger yet Cecelia! Boiling your zinger down to one word is gold. Gold!
DeleteRightisRight, jump.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete"Retarded dyke"? I'm assuming these terms are being used pejoratively? But I thought white, male, bearded (and yet somehow invisible at the same time) sky daddy didn't make mistakes. Very confusing.
DeleteThe Right has been rabid, since they saw that photo of Hunter Biden's impressive penis.
ReplyDeleteYou know what The last Democratically elected President said?; "that's my boy!"
DeleteIt's no wonder the Right pretended to care about grocery prices.
DeleteAn efficient government wouldn't need courts to enforce contracts.
ReplyDeleteHow would contracts be enforced?
DeleteThat's the part of "get government out of the way of business" they forget about.
DeleteMusk is the President, now.
ReplyDeleteIf Trump were still in charge, someone would have paid for parading a 4-year old with hands twice the size of Donald Trump's through the Oval Office.
The Republican Party embrace of a new Nazi Party in Germany, must be a shock to people who haven't been paying attention since Reagan was elected President.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, we have the reassurance that Trump's dementia is not complete. He still has enough sense to realize he can't backhand a child for shushing him, because the public is watching.
DeleteMAGA,
ReplyDeletejust letting you know I've found billions in waste and fraud. Details to follow. Later. Much later. Maybe never. Definitely never. - Elon
Somerby muses over the name given to one of Musk's children. Meanwhile, there are serious and important events happening that have nothing to do with what name to call Musk this morning.
ReplyDeleteFrom Daily Kos:
"Two new lawsuits were filed February 13 directly against Musk, DOGE and Trump. The organization Just Security (link below) has a great litigation tracker on their web site with all the legal filings related to Trump’s presidency since January 20. The two cases are “J. Doe 1-26 v. Elon Musk” and “New Mexico et al. v. Musk”.
https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal-challenges-trump-administration/
These are fascinating, deadly serious and reassuring to read, all at the same time. They helped me understand and put in perspective all the chaos Musk and Trump have inflicted on all of us and specifically how damaging their actions are on federal employees and our constitution. It also explains in unambiguous terms how they are breaking the law.
The most horrifying details to me, surround how government employees and their families have been, and are still being, threatened, financially damaged, and abused by Musk and DOGE. It reads like a spy movie gone bad in some places. The following is one excerpt concerning J. Doe 9, that is particularly jarring from “J. Doe 1-26 v. Musk:”
“J. Doe 9 is a PSC offshore, in a high-risk area in the Middle East. On Monday, February 3, 2025, J. Doe 9 tried to login to their USAID email account but was locked out. J. Doe 9 received no warning or notification in advance from being shut out of USAID’s systems. Their supervisor and head of mission were not informed in advance of the cutoff. All of the contacts and the safety and security applications from J. Doe 9’s USAID work phone were removed remotely. The safety and security application is the mechanism by which federal government staff overseas in dangerous areas indicate that they are in a dangerous situation and access help. J. Doe 9 lives with their family in the foreign country in which they are stationed and is concerned for their safety. If there is an emergency, J. Doe 9 hopes they will be able to get out and be taken care of by USAID, but there is no guarantee as over the last few weeks, nothing done within USAID by Defendants has been according to protocol or implemented in a methodical, safe manner. J. Doe 9 has no idea what their status is each day.”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/15/2303984/-Two-new-lawsuits-fired-directly-at-Musk-DOGE-and-Trump-get-to-the-heart-of-the-problem?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
Reminds me of when Republicans reduced security funding at our foreign outposts, like Benghazi, because they wanted to make Obama a one-term President. They blamed Hillary Clinton for the deaths at Benghazi, because they are lying sacks of shit, as we all know.
DeleteUSAID does some good but its fundamental role is projecting US world dominance and promoting regime change. It is used to undermine governments that fail to serve US interests. Many countries are glad to see it go.
DeleteIt does nothing good. If it did do something good, it wouldn't need to bribe and intimidate the media everywhere.
Delete11:55,
DeleteZero out the military budget, and really make them happy.
12:07,
DeleteWhich corporate elitist told you that lie?
“ Many countries are glad to see it go.”
DeleteEspecially China and Russia.
The public doesn't need to be told what psychiatric term to apply to Elon Musk. The public needs to be told that what Musk and Trump are doing is illegal and not permitted under our Constitution. My hope is that the Supreme Court will act on this matter quickly, to prevent more harm to American workers and their families. In the meantime, Somerby expresses not one shred of concern for them. It is as if the only crazy thing that Somerby sees Musk doing is to give his kids odd names. That isn't what makes this situation crazy and a reasonable person could wonder whether there is something seriously wrong with Somerby that he appears not to see, much less worry about, what is happening with our government.
ReplyDeleteSomerby is David in Cal.
ReplyDeleteHe's his brother from another mother, like all of Elon's children.
Delete"The song was written in 1968. Its description of the "poor immigrant" seems to be drawn, with remarkable accuracy, from the headlines of the present day."
ReplyDeleteIf Somerby doesn't understand that our timeline runs from the past to the present to the future, and not from the present to the past, then there is something seriously wrong with him. Dylan did not have Musk or Trump in mind when he wrote that song. The song may evoke images of Trump and Musk in Somerby's brain, but that is his problem. The rest of us are recalling Hitler as we watch in real time what Musk and Trump are doing to people who did nothing wrong except serve their country. However, George Washington is turning over in his grave. He really was an immigrant, one who became our first president. Today, immigrants are being swept up and sent to prison in Guantanamo, without a single glance at their paperwork or concern for their right to remain in the USA under our own laws. Puerto Ricans are getting the same treatment. Crickets from Somerby about that, as he hums Dylan and wonders whether a child's name contains arabic or roman numerals.
USAID spent 20 million on mallets.
ReplyDeleteHopefully to beat MAGA over the head with.
DeleteCan't find this bit of misinformation via Google. Can you please provide a link so we can check it out?
DeleteJust enter this into search "USAID"+"$20 million"+"mallets"
Deletehttps://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1754858/antonine-maillet-mort-deces
DeleteNope. USAID didn't fund 20 million in mallets. More trumpian stupidity.
DeleteDespite Somerby’s delicate sensibilities to the contrary, calling out trump, musk and basically the entire gop for lying as policy is an essential recognition of their MO.
Delete"The Federal Aviation Administration has officially begun the process of laying off hundreds of probationary employees despite recent plane crashes that have impacted areas across the country.
ReplyDeleteOver the past several weeks, since Donald Trump took office, the nation has seen plane crashes impact cities across the country...
...The employees impacted by the layoffs over the weekend are those that help with the installation, maintenance, and inspection of air traffic control communications and computer systems.
In a new statement issued by the union that represents these aviation employees, it states:
“We are troubled and disappointed by the administration’s decision to fire FAA probationary employees PASS represents without cause nor based on performance or conduct. Several hundred employees have been impacted with messages being sent from an ‘exec order’ Microsoft email address, not an official .gov email address. Messages began arriving after 7 pm ET on February 14 and continued late into the night. It is possible that others will be notified over the weekend or literally barred from entering FAA buildings on Tuesday, February 18." [MeidasNews.com]
Apple Falling Not Far From Tree
ReplyDeleteDuring the podcast discussion, the host suggested, "Michelle Obama is a man." Errol Musk (Elon's father) responded, "Of course. Joan Rivers mentioned it publicly. Two weeks later she was dead. You can look it up on any internet thing. Michelle Obama is a man."
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/118220388.cms?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM%253D&utm_source=Taboola&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=recirculation&utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
A beautiful, kind, and generous woman, smeared by a scumbag racist pigs. Surprise, surprise, surprise. Also enjoy the fascists rallying behind idiot RFKJR telling fat fck MAGA Americans to eat healthy, the same fat fcks that screamed in horror when Michelle suggested kids eat healthy school meals. Can't fix the fat or the stupid in this country.
Delete
DeleteShe certainly does look like a man. On those kayaking photos.
She's committing rape in her kayaking photos?
DeleteIf so, I can see why people think she looks like a man.
Michelle has a big butt. I don’t think she’s a man.
DeleteMy point was that if you're wondering how Elon got to be such a depraved nutcase...look at his father.
DeleteMusk and Trump are the government tyranny gun-owners lied about using their 2nd Amendment rights on.
ReplyDeleteJust because Somerby's name is "bob" and someone else might be called "masha" doesn't make a child's odd name stupid. There are real things to attack Musk over, besides him giving odd names to his kids (whose mothers perhaps contributed their permission). Musk has committed actual crimes. Why not discuss those?
ReplyDelete“Why would someone make such a crazy statement? Should inquiring minds want to know?”
ReplyDeleteMinds not corrupted by TDS do know. Trump makes such statements because THEY WORK.
Air traffic controllers have life and death responsibilities. Hiring them on any basic other than merit is bad policy. Trump’s statement worked to get people thinking and talking about how wrongheaded and dangerous DEI is for air traffic controllers.
And is the fact that THEY WORK a reason to keep saying CRAZY SHIT? Should leaders say CRAZY SHIT? What do YOU THINK, David?
DeleteThere were no similar crashes during Biden's administration. That suggests that the air traffic controllers hired under DEI policies were effectively keeping air travel safe -- for 16 years prior to Trump taking office.
DeleteShouldn't someone decide whether DEI policies are wrongheaded or rightheaded based on performance and not racist and sexist beliefs about people's capabilities judged by skin color or sex? When you actually do that thinking that Trump inspired, what basis is there for concluding that DEI is dangerous or wrong? NONE
Trump makes such statements because THEY WORK.
DeleteIn what sense did it WORK to assign blame for a tragic accident before knowing any facts, Dickhead? The only thing it accomplished was to work up a good hate for racists like you.
@David "Trump makes such statements because THEY WORK."
DeleteIndeed. And they work because everyone hates statements made by Bob's favorite shape-shifting alien Reptiloids: Clinton, Gore, Pelosi, Schumer. People don't want to hear their ugly shit no more.
By "people," perhaps you mean you. We other people who don't belong to Q-Anon can speak for ourselves.
DeleteBy "people" I mean people. You are bots, not people.
DeleteTrump makes such statements because THEY WORK on people who don't care about anything but bigotry.
DeleteFinish your thoughts, David.
Interesting that DiC takes the ravings of a lunatic for effective leadership.
Delete@12:14 - You may disagree with President Trump's goals, such as shrinking government and ending DEI. But he's clearly accomplishing them with remarkable effectiveness. Look at all he accomplished (or destroyed) in less than a month.
DeleteDiC, you are commenting at Somerby’s blog. He has asserted for years his view that Trump is nuts. You just keep coming back here instead to sing Trump’s praises. And think about the import of “look at all he destroyed in less than a month.” Are you seriously putting this forward as some sort of praise of trump? Destroying things is easy, building them is hard, and it’s quite easy for a nutcase to destroy shit. If you think that’s commendable, then I feel sorry for you and this country.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete@10:57 - your comment reminds me of the pro-DEI argument, DEI hires may not always be the best people, but they're good enough. That's a plausible argument, but I don't buy it. First of all, for life and death positions I'm not OK with "good enough." I want the best possible brain surgeon rather than one who is good enough.
DeleteSecond, I believe there's a tendency for DEI to evolve into quotas or such strong preferences that some minorities who aren't good enough are hired.
Notice how Dickhead in Cal completely avoids any attempt at a good faith normal response to 12:36 and instead attempts to divert the argument to something about his opinion of DEI. You will save a lot of time and sweat by just telling Dickhead to go fuck himself right off the bat.
Delete@12:36 - Cutting government isn't easy IMO. VP Gore and President Obama worked at it, with only limited success. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq55MqX57cY&ab_channel=VoiceofAmerica
DeleteEnding racial and gender preferences isn't easy. Whether you call it "affirmative action" or "DEI", it's been an integral part of all our institutions -- government, media, universities, non-profit, businesses -- for many decades. It's entrenched.
You are wrong in your first conclusion. Targeted cost cutting with emphasis on the grotesque Defense Dept. bloat is hard, and I would argue next to impossible. The Agenda 2025 approach is destructive and ignores the long-term consequences from it's slash-and-burn vandalism.
DeleteYou are wrong in your second conclusion by taking as a given that DEI and affirmative action needs to be a consideration as a cost-cutting basis. It is a white nationalist jihad.
However, your bigotry, MAGA grounding, and phony concern about the budget is duly noted ... AGAIN.
Cutting government isn't easy because democracy is messy. As Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” Trump is incapable of governing in a democratic way. He is ruling as a tyrant with your enthusiastic approval. As Ezra Klein said, "Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president".
DeleteYou remember when your hero looked the American people squarely in the eye and denied he knew anything about Project 2025? Multiple times. I do. And now he is implementing the agenda cover to cover. And you claimed Kamala Harris was lying about it then? That doesn't even phase you.
Whether you call it "affirmative action" or "DEI",
I call it non-discrimination, Dickhead.
That man you worship recklessly and shamelessly assigned blame to DEI for that tragic crash in DC that resulted in over 70 deaths. What a fucking foul and execrable act for a man who is supposed to be representing all the people, not just those who voted for him. And you think that was wonderful. You're loathsome.
Remember how you stole a good job from a nice white Anglo protestant by hiding the fact that you were Jewish?
@1:34 wrote, "Targeted cost cutting with emphasis on the grotesque Defense Dept. bloat is hard, and I would argue next to impossible."
DeleteI agree, but I think Musk and Trump and Hegseth will accomplish this almost-impossible task. Let's check back in 6 months and see what they accomplished.
Musk is not part of the government, you fucking fascist freak.
DeleteIt’s bizarre that DiC, and the gop in general, are willing to hand power and access to sensitive information to a man (musk) that they in actuality know little about. The gop, no longer the party of protecting sensitive American interests. I remember when Hillary’s email server caused them conniption fits. It’s a freaking cult.
Delete@1:56 wrote, “I call it (DEI) non-discrimination.” I wish you were right @1:56. In reality DEI calls for equality of outcome, not just equality of opportunity.
Delete
DeleteDEI (like everything else Democrats do) doesn't call for equality of anything. It's a mechanism to make people at the workplace hate each other, to prevent them from having discussions, from communicating, from organizing.
No, it does not, Dickhead.
DeleteDavid in Cal,
DeleteI'm thrilled to be the person who reminds you that you pretended to care about inflation in order to get a fascist elected President, every day for the rest of your life.
No need to thank me.
You have to understand David. He has no shame. He will say whatever he needs to say at any given moment to support the felon. When he thought that Project 2025 was hurting trump's chances, he came here to vociferously argue that trump had no connection to that document. Now, he doesn't give two shits as we watch trump implement the agenda from that document.
DeleteSensitive IRS info is already in the hands of people I know nothing about. Namely, all the IRS employees. Past leaks show that some of these employees abused their trust.
Delete
DeleteAll, Dickhead? Can you back that up, you lying sack of shit fascist freak?
Yes, @5:56. How could IRS employees do their job if they didn't have access to IRS records?
DeleteBTW suppose one wanted to check whether some IRS employees were abusing their trust. You would send in some kind of auditors. Wouldn't these auditors need to have access to IRS records in order to do their job? Of course they would. Musk's team is essentially auditing various governmental units.
past abuses? I don't recall any instances where IRS staff were caught misusing people's data.
Delete
DeleteIf it "ain't no auditing", Soros-bot, then why are y'all Soros-bots scared shitless, and can't stop whining about it?
Go back to polishing putin's knob, Boris. You apparently can't understand english.
DeleteSomerby focuses on trivialities to distract us from the seriousness of Trump's recent behavior. Thom Hartmann says today:
ReplyDelete"After writing over 1500 pages describing how it’s the essential duty of every white man in the world to marginalize or even kill as many non-white non-Christians as possible, Anders Breivik set off a bomb in Oslo’s Government Quarter, killing eight people.
He then drove to Utøya, an island in Tyrifjorden where the Norwegian Social Democratic party’s youth organization, the Workers’ Youth League (AUF), held their summer camp. There he used a semiautomatic rifle to kill another sixty-nine people, most in their teens or early twenties. He shot and wounded another 41 mostly young people, leaving many with life-changing injuries.
The epigraph to the paragraphs cited above was the polestar of Breivik’s philosophy, one he’d learned from studying the writings and lives of his heroes: Adolf Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte. He opened the chapter with it at the top of the page, apart from all the other text:
“He who saves his country, violates no law.”
The phrase was most recently quoted three weeks ago — on January 24, 2024 — by El Salvador’s notoriously violent and lawbreaking President Nayib Bukele, who also tweeted: “He who saves his country violates no law.”
Napoleon overthrew the Directory in 1799, naming himself as First Consul, and then declared himself Emperor in 1804 with those same words: “Celui qui sauve sa patrie ne viole aucune loi.”
Emperors like Napoleon and dictators like Bukele don’t bother with trivial details like obeying the law. They rule by decree. Write it down, put your signature on it, and boom, it’s now the law of the land.
That was also Breivik’s hope for the Scandinavian countries: throw off the yoke of the “globalist” EU and embrace a racist strongman to lead the continent into an era of whites-only paradise. Replace “the system” of democracy with a white supremacist Christo-fascist oligarchy.
Which is why it’s so troubling that Trump tweeted the same Napoleonic phrase that Breivik made famous. The phrase every white supremacist has memorized, along with the fourteen words and the number 88 as code for “Heil Hitler.”
It would be a mistake at this point to think that when Trump quotes people like Breivik he’s just trolling us: People are now dying all over the world because a half-billion dollars’ worth of USAID food is rotting in storage; millions have lost access to AIDS drugs that were keeping them alive; children in cancer drug trials have been cut off from lifesaving medication; and federal workers who thought Civil Service would protect them are now on the verge of homelessness.
He means it. And for three weeks he’s been acting on his words, largely with impunity."
https://hartmannreport.com/p/historys-darkest-echo-when-mass-murderers-af2
ReplyDeleteHey Bob. I would like to hear why JD Vance's beautiful speech telling totalitarian Western European Dear Leaders to get lost, is insane.
Are you gonna get to it today or tomorrow, Bob?
Dear Bob,
ReplyDeleteWe know your consider Paul Krugman an MVP-level spokesman for Dem causes. But the Woke Mind Virus infected his brain long time ago, and he is now a standard issue leftist hack partisan. You should not put too much faith in Krugman's predictive or diagnostic powers – in the 90s, he predicted the Internet will be no more valuable to the economy than fax machines. And I trust Musk completely to achieve productive things and streamline any organization than an academic hack like Krugman who never had to hire or fire anyone.
When you become a leftist partisan hack, you don't stop being a Nobel prize-winning economist. There is far less basis for trusting Musk, who already has blood on his hands because people have died as the result of his indiscriminate firing of govt workers. How many more must die?
Delete
DeleteKrug is a good argument for getting rid of the academia, removing the pieces, cleaning up the place, and building a whole new one.
Karl Marx warned you about corporate education over a century ago, but Americans thought they knew better.
DeleteKarl Marx didn’t warn us about COBOL dates.
Delete"the academia" This odd usage is more evidence that we are being plagued with trolls who are non-native speakers of English, probably on some Russia-funded Eastern European troll farm.
DeleteMusk is a good argument for getting rid of billionaires
DeleteJeff Tiedrich explains why the new Trump appointee in charge of bird flu doesn't know what he is talking about. Kevin Hassett (one of Trump's economic advisors with no bird flu expertise) was asked what Trump's plan was to combat bird flu. He responded that killing chickens was unnecessary because the flu is spread by birds that can fly. He suggested building fences around the chickens. Tiedrich says:
ReplyDelete"here’s why you kill an entire flock when one bird gets infected.
This virus kills chickens FAST. We’re talking 24 hours or less to wipe out an entire backyard flock of ~50 birds. Most of the time the reason the tests are run is because someone wakes up in the morning and finds half the flock dead and the rest dying. The culling is just to speed up the inevitable and contain the virus as quickly as possible.
This is possibly our next pandemic but Trump is bungling it as badly as he did covid.
Hassett is sure in love with the word perimeter. he uses it four times in that one-minute clip. here’s what he’s talking about: a fence. his big-brain idea is to put the chickens inside fences — which is something that poultry farmers have already been doing since forever, so the birds don’t, y’know, wander away, or get eaten by predators."
Tiedrich sums it up as "they have no plan." In fairness Hassett is not a bird flu or chicken expert, but it is also fair to ask why Trump is not taking bird flu seriously given that he has promised to bring down egg prices.
https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/team-donny-bird-flus-no-biggie-because
Meanwhile, DOGE has closed and fired the people actually communicating with each other and working to keep chickens from getting bird flu, and to keep the bird flu from transmission to other animals (dairy cows) and humans.
Stamp it on your forehead:
ReplyDeleteNO TRUMP VOTER EVER GAVE A SHIT ABOUT INFLATION!
Scraping the bottom of the barrel quoting the hateful leftist, clinically insane degenerate Masha Gessen. Her depraved ideology is in the mainstream of what passes for Democrat thought.
ReplyDelete“It’s a no-brainer that (homosexual activists) should have the right to marry, but I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist. Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there — because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie.
"The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist.
"I have three kids who have five parents, more or less, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t have five parents legally… I met my new partner, and she had just had a baby, and that baby’s biological father is my brother, and my daughter’s biological father is a man who lives in Russia, and my adopted son also considers him his father. So the five parents break down into two groups of three… And really, I would like to live in a legal system that is capable of reflecting that reality, and I don’t think that’s compatible with the institution of marriage.”
Fine. Whatever. Now deal with what she said that Somerby quoted.
DeleteHateful incel 1:01 shakes his tiny fists and raves at the water heater in his tiny basement dwelling. Completing his rant, he spends the rest of the day shitposting and wondering if he'll go out on a date before he dies. I pity the poor incel.
DeleteCalm down, Masha. Take some valium.
DeleteMaybe her child's father who is also her brother can calm her down.
DeleteRussians are so lucky to be rid of her. I envy them.
DeleteI read a book a little while ago, called Infectious Madness. It talks about how mental illness can be caused by various infectious diseases. It also talks about how certain types of memes can take over our psyche and cause us to become overtaken with anxiety or even forms of psychosis. Belief in Trump is a form of psychosis. And we can see people succumbing to this psychosis in front of our eyes.
ReplyDeleteWhat we have here is a public health emergency. Trump and Must are trying to destroy the NIH because they would be on the front line of battling this severe form of psychosis.
Yeah, the last para of the word-salad @1:21 PM does sound a lot like psychosis.
DeleteYep, that's an example. Although, I doubt that that kid was every normal. I was thinking more of someone like DavidInCal, who has been twisting in the wind trying to justify his support for Trump, while falling deeper and deeper into the throes of mental illness. It's sad.
DeleteYou read a book that talks about mental illness being caused by infections and therefore belief in Trump is a form of psychosis? Are you stupid?
DeleteAs I remember, Ilya was better in the past. But TDS completely ruined him. The usual sad story.
DeleteSome mental illness is caused by infections, and some is caused by societal memes; or mass psychosis. This is the case with the Trump cultists. Although, there have been other cults, albeit it the failed to infiltrate the government.
DeleteLike with a lot of illnesses: you have to want to be cured. Good luck to you. Hope you will recover one day.
@Ilya 5:29 PM
DeleteEven your English grammar is ruined by your TDS.