WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2, 2025
...few persons seemed to care: It may be time for Chainsaw Charley to stop payment on those checks!
We refer, of course, to Elon Musk—to the million-dollar checks he handed out in Wisconsin over the weekend.
Along the way, he transitioned from Chainsaw to Cheesehead Charley. His peculiar behavior is fully visible—has been for a long time.
Is something "wrong" with this influential person? It's time for us to ask. Also, it's time for us to start using our words to describe him as he actually is—but that's a topic for another time, perhaps for next week's reports.
For today, the stumblebum took a defeat in last night's Wisconsin election. His odd behaviors didn't seem to sell among Badger State voters. Then too, there's what this visibly strange person said to Bret Baier last Friday evening.
From the start, Baier referred to his interview subject as "Elon." We showed you the words of that guest in Monday's report.
Musk was sitting for an imitation of an interview with seven alleged associates. Four minutes into the session, this exchange occurred:
BAIER (3/28/25): For you, what's the most astonishing thing you've found out in this process?
MUSK: The sheer amount of waste and fraud in the government. It is astonishing. It’s mind-blowing. Just—we routinely encounter wastes of a billion dollars or more. Casually.
You know, for example, like the simple survey that was—literally, a ten-question survey. You could do it with SurveyMonkey—it would cost about $10,000. The government was being charged almost a billion dollars for that.
BAIER: For just a survey.
MUSK: A billion dollars for a simple online survey, "Do you like the National Park?" And then, there appeared to be no feedback loop for what would be done with that survey. So the survey would just go into nothing. It was like insane.
Thanks to the invaluable Rev, you can see the transcript and the videotape of the Fox News session simply by clicking here.
At any rate, sad! In the exchange we've posted, the richest person in D.C. had lobbed a silly softball at the planet's richest person. Just this once, we'll let you ask us to perform a translation:
Translation, Softball to English:
BAIER: What's the most astonishing thing you've found out in this process?
ENGLISH: Please say whatever you want our millions of viewers to hear.
So it can go with the persons who people the (so-called) Fox News Channel. And so it can go when a person like Musk replies.
Musk seemed to be making a rather remarkable claim. Everything is always possible, of course—but this is what he had now said:
According to Musk, "the government" had paid "a billion dollars" (originally, almost a billion dollars) for a simple bit of product which should have cost ten grand. Moments later, one of fellow's alleged associates made the claim more specific:
BAIER: But you're finding the money. I mean, it's big numbers, right?
STEVE DAVIS: Yeah. Like Elon said, the minimum impulse bit is often a billion dollars.
For example, the $830 million, which was the online survey, that's an enormous amount of money that wouldn't have been found if the DOGE team wasn't working with, in that case, the Department of Interior.
But then, taking it one step further, DOGE then publishes these things on our website for maximum transparency. It would have been impossible for the general public to have seen that. Now, anyone can just log into DOGE.gov anytime and see these payments as— They're not yet in real time. They're close, but they'll probably be in real time within the next few weeks.
With that, the facts had been nailed own. Or was it just a set of claims?
We were now less than five minutes into this "interview session. Baier seemed to have cast himself in the role of potted plant.
The initial billion-dollar claim had been nailed down. Now, a very unusual bit of conduct occurred. Within the halls of CBS News, some persons now published a fact-check!
Why do we call that conduct unusual? Simple! Given the kinds of person who now people our mainstream news orgs, it seems to occur to very few people that a claim like that, broadcast to millions, should be subject to public review.
On its face, Elon's clam was startling. Plainly, it had been intended to seem that way.
That said, was the claim in question accurate? Was the startling claim really true? From within the halls of CBS News, an initially typo-riddled fact-check piece started exactly like this:
Musk makes false claim about billion-dollar National Park survey
Elon Musk claimed in a Fox News interview Thursday night that the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, frequently uncovers "billions" in government waste, citing a supposed $1 billion survey about National Parks as an example.
CBS News found no evidence that the Department of the Interior spent or planned to spend that much on a survey or on any single contract.
[...]
Later in the Fox News interview, Steve Davis, who works closely with Musk at DOGE, said that the online survey was part of an $830 million contract by the Department of the Interior that DOGE stopped.
Do the fact-check began.
By now, the initial typos have been corrected. Having said that, Say what?
CBS News "found no evidence" that this jaw-dropping claim was true? Eventually, the fact-check added this:
CBS News has reached out repeatedly to the White House for more information. The Department of the Interior declined to comment.
No $830 million contract is visible on DOGE's online "wall of receipts," the list of contracts the group said it has terminated. According to data published on the site, only five canceled contracts have a total estimated value of over $800 million, and none are from the Department of the Interior.
In the interview Davis also said "[DOGE] publishes these things on our web site for maximum transparency. So, now, the general public—it would have been impossible for the general public to have seen that. Now, anyone can just log into doge.gov anytime and see these payments as they are not yet in real time."
But CBS News and other news organizations have been reporting for weeks on the errors and overstatements of savings that have been posted there.
Oof! As you can see right in its headline, CBS News seemed to be saying that the DOGEmaster's startling claim has been false! CBS also seemed to slap aside Davis' claim about transparency.
Continuing directly, CBS even said this:
DOGE recently re-formatted their website making it more difficult for the general public to confirm savings and cancellations. Anyone accessing the "wall of receipts" page needs to manually navigate through 711 webpages to see the entire list of contracts, 923 webpages for grants and another 68 pages for cancelled or expired leases.
Available federal contracting data does not show any individual contract valued at over $800 million awarded by the Department of the Interior over the last 17 years. The DOGE "wall of receipts" currently lists 366 cancelled contracts for the Department of the Interior; 199 of those are listed as $0 in savings. The total savings DOGE claims for the remainder adds up to only $144 million.
The three largest alleged savings for canceled contracts associated with the Department of the Interior on the "wall of receipts" are for $37 million, $23.5 million and $10.75 million. The latter two appear to be mislabeled and are actually USAID contracts.
So said CBS News. But are those claims really true?
Let's go ahead and use our words. CBS News seemed to be describing stumblebum conduct on the part of these masters of the known world.
We're showing you what CBS wrote. We can't tell you, with ultimate certainty, what is actually true—but we can tell you this:
By now, the fellow in question seems to have has been involved in endless misstatements of truth. In one example, his stumblebum conduct had led the commander to make this famous oration:
THE PRESIDENT (3/4/25): We’re also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors and that our seniors and people that we love rely on. Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old.
It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. I don’t know any of them. I know some people that are rather elderly, but not quite that elderly.
(LAUGHTER)
3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129.
3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139.
3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149.
And money is being paid to many of them, and we’re searching right now.
In fact, Pam [Bondi], good luck. Good luck. You’re going to find it.
But a lot of money is paid out to people because it just keeps getting paid and paid, and nobody does—and it really hurts Social Security and hurts our country.
1.3 million people from ages 150 to 159. And over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are age over 160 years old.
We have a healthier country than I thought, Bobby [Kennedy Jr.].
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)
Including, to finish, 1,039 people between the ages of 220 and 229; one person between the age of 240 and 249; and one person is listed at 360 years of age—
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Joe Biden!
(LAUGHTER)
THE PRESIDENT: —more than 100 years older than our country.
But we’re going to find out where that money is going, and it’s not going to be pretty.
By slashing all of the fraud, waste, and theft we can find, we will defeat inflation, bring down mortgage rates, lower car payments and grocery prices, protect our seniors, and put more money in the pockets of American families.
(APPLAUSE)
Are we still supposed to believe that those insinuations and claims were true? Later in the session with Baier, another associate made a very murky reference to those dramatic claims.
The earlier, dramatic claims had been rendered quite hard to parse. Baier never mentioned the earlier clams, or the apparent problems.
How do persons behave on the Fox News Channel? Baier's laconic semi-interview gave us one example.
That said, how do persons behave in the major journalistic and academic realms of our own Blue America?
All in all, many persons in those realms behave as if they don't much care about such apparent gong-shows. Presentations like these tend to come and go, with little front-page reporting or assessment.
In the face of this widespread disinterest, persons like the commander and his lieutenant are thus free to indulge in such conduct.
In a very unusual bit if behavior, CBS News ran a fact-check! This fact-check has been cited nowhere. Simply put, elite persons who "went to the finest schools" don't much seem to care.
What is the truth about the Musk/Davis claim? In part because of Blue America's lazy elites, we can't necessarily tell you.
For amusement purposes only, we can offer this early clip from this week's Conversation between Collins and Stephens.
The column appeared in yesterday's New York Times. At one point, the persons say this:
Nothing Ever Goes Wrong in Trump’s White House
[...]
Gail: We’re seeing trillions of reports from town hall meetings held by members of Congress where their outraged constituents complain about programs that were frozen at the behest of Elon Musk.
Musk, of course, is frequently rated the richest man in the world. More and more Americans are beginning to wonder about trusting their financial future to a guy who thinks 20 million dead people are collecting Social Security.
You’ve always been a let’s-spend-less conservative, right? Any hope you can offer up on this one?
Bret: I suspect historians will one day remember the Department of Government Efficiency the way we now remember lobotomies. It seemed, to some at the time, like a good idea.
Oof! The center-left Collins mocked the startling claims about Social Security claim; in his reply, the center-right Stephens unloosed an L-bomb. As the colloquy continued, Stephens stated an obvious point, then made an intriguing reference:
Bret: The problem isn’t that we shouldn’t pare down spending or rethink the org chart of the federal bureaucracy or get rid of agencies or departments that may be doing more harm than good....
The problem is that competence and execution matter; that public input matters; that the federal government is not a tech company where you can afford to move fast and break things; and that you can’t afford to take a hammer to a problem that requires a scalpel without grievously injuring your patient. As for Musk, I’ve been calling him “the Donald of Silicon Valley” for years.
Say what? The Donald of Silicon Valley? Luckily, Stephens provided a link to a column from 2018. Headline included, here's the way that column started:
Elon Musk, the Donald of Silicon Valley
He is prone to unhinged Twitter eruptions. He can’t handle criticism. He scolds the news media for its purported dishonesty and threatens to create a Soviet-like apparatus to keep tabs on it. He suckers people to fork over cash in exchange for promises he hasn’t kept. He’s a billionaire whose business flirts with bankruptcy. He’s sold himself as an establishment-crushing iconoclast when he’s really little more than an unusually accomplished B.S. artist. His legions of devotees are fanatics and, let’s face it, a bit stupid.
I speak of Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, the Donald Trump of Silicon Valley.
[...]
[Tesla] has rarely turned a profit in its nearly 15-year existence. Senior executives are fleeing like it’s an exploding Pinto, and the company is in an ugly fight with the National Transportation Safety Board. It burns through cash at a rate of $7,430 a minute, according to Bloomberg. It has failed to meet production targets for its $35,000 Model 3, for which more than 400,000 people have already put down $1,000 deposits, and on which the company’s fortunes largely rest.
Also, the car is a lemon. Like the old borscht belt joke, the food is lousy and the portions are so small.
Rightly or wrongly, Stephens had Musk pegged as a major BS-artist even in 2018. The column continued from there.
For the record, we don't know if Stephens' mockery of the quality of the Tesla was accurate back then. We don't know if his portrait has held up over time.
We were intrigued to see that the Stephens had been mocking this display rack for cheeseheads and 3-year-old kids even way back then.
We'll summarize today's findings, then leave you with a question:
Persons on the Fox News Channel often say the darndest things. They may also stage Potemkin interviews with the world's richest apparent human.
Also, persons within Blue America's elites may not much seem to care.
CBS News conducted a substantial fact-check of the latest remarkable claim. Other big orgs didn't. Nor did the CBS effort produce a bit of discussion. Over here in Blue America, our own persons don't seem to care!
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but these are some of the persons shaping our D-minus discourse. That said, could something be "wrong' with Elon Musk?
If so, that would be a tragic loss of human potential. Tomorrow, the ketamine files.
Tomorrow: Three major news orgs published reports. Can you guess what happened next?
“As I mentioned several years ago, it increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence.”
ReplyDelete— Elon Musk, on X."
Meanwhile, Heather Cox Richardson has apparently been "disappeared" from Facebook. Her essays are still available on substack -- see "Letters from an American." Just don't expect Facebook to be free of censorship.
ReplyDeleteFacebook is a ghost town.
DeleteHCR has moved to YouTube, which is full of independent media, much of which daily covers the lunatics at Fox News.
Somerby is not much less out to lunch than Trump is.
She posted to Faceback and her work disappeared, repeatedly. She may also be on YouTube, but her disappearance on Facebook was not voluntary.
DeleteThe "ghosttown" has a lot of traffic you clueless moron.
DeleteFacebook Statistics 2025: (In A View)
As of 2025, Facebook has 3.07 billion monthly active users (MAU).
The platform has 2.11 billion daily active users (DAU), representing 68.73% of its monthly active user base.
India boasts the largest Facebook audience, with 375 million users, followed by the United States, which has 194.1 million users.
In 2023, Facebook recorded an impressive 553 million downloads.
On average, a user spends approximately 30.9 minutes on Facebook.
A little bit of irony. Somerby says:
ReplyDelete"Do the fact-check began.
By now, the initial typos have been corrected. Having said that, Say what? "
Somerby never has been very good about correcting his own typos.
To be fair, the mythical Jesus' retort to the Pharisees about those without sin can cast the first stone, never made much sense.
DeleteMakes sense to me.
DeleteYes, Trump and Musk tell lies. Somerby complains about a lack of fact-checking and uproar over their lies. What he misses is that the lies aren't the worst thing being done by these guys. These are evil men doing cruel and illegal things to innocent people. It is the evil that is the main problem. The lies are in service to the evil.
ReplyDeleteSomerby's concern is misplaced. He should care about the evil more than the "fact-checking".
What is wrong with Elon Musk? Is Somerby now going to suggest that he too is crazy? In Somerby's world, everyone who breaks the law and does bad things to other people seems to get a bye because of being "not quite right" or "insane" or a "lost boy". Somerby needs to call it like it is. For whatever reason, Musk is a bad person doing bad things to innocent people at will. He is ignoring law. He has no right to be firing people and destroying institutions. Why is anyone letting him do this stuff? Somerby needs to be expressing more outrage and doing less excusing.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteOkay, I get it: the CBS, "CBS News", make false claim about various things. And the CBS smear idiot-Democrat's opponents.
Hey, what else is new, Bob? They always have.
Your comment does a piss poor job of addressing the question, is the incredulous Musk claim of $1B being wasted on a useless survey true? Again, where are the fucking receipts?
DeleteOf course it isn't true. Do you have to ask? What is wrong with your common sense?
DeleteToday we Dems celebrate an important victory in Wisconsin and applaud the efforts of Cory Booker in congress. We are seeing some resistance and taking heart that even voters who put Trump into office are reconsidering their actions (based on FL special election results yesterday.
ReplyDeleteWhat is Somerby writing about today and how does it help address the wrongs being perpetrated by Musk & Trump? What is the point of what Somerby has written?
Somerby's supposed buyer's remorse over Trump is...COMPLETELY DISINGENUOUS!
ReplyDeleteAk! That ringing in my ears! Make it stop!
DeleteIgnorance aint gonna manufacture itself.
DeleteSomerby continues his right wing quest to normalize capitulation.
DeleteTrump continues his quest to normalize sexual predators.
DeleteSomerby is down for that too, ignoring Trump's and many in his admin and the whole Republican party's prodigious proclivity for rape/sexual assault.
In a way, their whole program to return women to the kitchen, take away women's right to vote, enact forced birth and remove birth control, and so on, is a kind of institutionalized sexual assault. Rape has never been fully prosecuted and rolling back procedures that take rape accusations seriously will just give men license to treat women badly again. And this is all coming from the right, not the left.
DeleteAt the extreme, incels want the government to assign them a woman for their own use and comfort, and they think girls over age 17 are past their prime, so they want elimination of statutory rape laws and access to "youngish" girls. Adult women scare them. And, of course, men want to know who they are raping, so no more transwomen or lesbians or any of that, since it is embarrass to find you have raped someone who no one would envy you touching.
Somerby would call this "sexual politics" and remind us how Cassandra was treated.
"That said, could something be "wrong' with Elon Musk?
ReplyDeleteIf so, that would be a tragic loss of human potential. Tomorrow, the ketamine files."
Whatever is wrong with Musk, it doesn't involve a loss of human potential. Musk is hurting people. He is doing illegal things. He is ruining our government and helping to plunge our nation into a dark time in which citizens will suffer, for who knows how long? The tragedy is not to Musk with his lost potential, it is to his victims, all of us who are experiencing the consequences of Musk's wrongdoing. Musk wasn't elected. He used his money to take over our government and destroy it. He used his power to control Trump, who is diminished to a demented old man who plays golf and occasionally issues an executive order at the behest of cronies controlling him. But Somerby thinks the problem is Musk's lost human potential! It is astonishing that Somerby would have the gall, the lack of empathy to say something like that.
And now he says he is going to talk about ketamine (promised for last Friday, as I recall). Ketamine is not what is causing Musk to hurt people. It is not a valid excuse for anything Trump and Musk have done. It is a controlled substance being abused illegally by Musk (apparently without legal consequences) but it only brings out the evil at the core of Musk's being. Musk needs to go to jail. Ketamine is no excuse for what he has done to other people's lives.
Somerby seems to have lost any capacity for outrage. That makes him a hindrance to efforts to set our country back on its proper course, to help those damaged in this right wing coup. Somerby is empty and has nothing to say to us. He is on the wrong side in this fight.
Shut up.
DeleteYes, censorship, that's the next step. Heather Cox Richardson has been "disappeared" from Facebook. Soon none of us will be allowed to hold divergent opinions and guys like you will get to listen to Fox crap unmolested. Just as Somerby urges.
DeleteHas FB bothered themselves enough to explain why they’ve resorted this?
DeleteMark Zuckerberg needs a favor from the Trump regime. Next question.
DeleteAnonymouse 11:27am, I’m taking that to mean that FB issued no explanation. I can’t find one. I’m taking your attitude as a sign that you thought these autocrats would never do it to you wonderful people.
DeleteWait until you see what the GOP does to the David in Cal's of the world. For me, the wait is the torture.
DeleteNo, this is a warning that Facebook is not a safe space for those opposing Trump and friends.
DeleteAnonymouse 11:47am, it would be torture for you to have to wait to see David get some sort of comeuppance (for some reason), but it’s not for David. He never ruffles a feather. Shalom.
DeleteAnonymouse 11:48am, you weren’t worried about it when it was happening to conservatives for eight years. You’re surprised now?
DeleteIt never happened to "conservatives"; Republicans got mad when their desire to push an agenda harmful to public health (resulting in the unnecessary deaths of thousands of Americans) was halted. Boo hoo.
DeleteYou and David have zero credibility, no further "comeuppance" required.
Anonymouse 12:06pm, zero credibility is what you give everyone who even mildly deviates from your opinions. No surprise there.
DeleteCecelia,
DeleteThank you for always being there to support me, when I write that all Republican voters are bigots.
We need more open-minded people who accept all opinions, like you do, in this world.
Anonymouse 12:06pm, they are globalists, dope. They give big money to your orgs and pretend to care about all your DEI and gender stuff and so squelch dissent from your opponents. You pretend not to notice when they never come thru with any changes in economic policy.
DeleteCecelia - what eight years you bitching about - Obama's. You really that racist? Or you going back to Clinton? Weird people.
DeleteFor Cecelia, a man pretending to be a woman, and Republicans in general, "globalists" means Jews.
DeleteIn reality, few are more globalist than Trump and Musk, and few engage in more censorship than them as well.
This is in part why 12:06 notes that Cecelia and the other trolls have no credibility. They are all bigots with no consistency, and they do not care, they only care about appearing to "own the libs", which they fail miserably at, but they are addicts so they come here every day looking for their hit - a boost to soothe their emotional discomfort over their inability to feel dominant over others.
What the hell you smoking Cecelia? "You pretend not to notice when they never come thru with any changes in economic policy." Yea right. After four years of the Orange blobs infrastructure week, Biden gets it done. So the Orange blob returns, replaces the Biden signs with his name on it, and mission accomplished. You make so little sense.
DeleteAnonymouse 12:44pm, you default to the notion that all the rich and powerful are Jews, then you resort to calling me an antisemite. I don’t see anonymices as being representative of regular Democrats. I’m too equanimous and honest to do that to rank-and-file liberals.
DeleteCool word salad, 1:03.
DeleteNo, the people who use "globalist" as a euphemism for Jews are you right wingers. Yes, Cecelia, every time you refer to globalists or Soros, you are being an anti-semite. Your embrace of QAnon conspiracy theories on the right is what makes this language antisemitic. It is all spelled out explicitly by those guys, your fellow travelers. If you don't want to be thought an anti-semite, stop using that language.
DeleteI once criticized Netanyahu. That makes me anti Semitic according to DiC.
DeleteCecelia, Obama salvaged Bush's historic economic collapse, Biden salvaged the felons historic economic collapse. What's so hard for you morons to figure out?
DeleteAnonymouse 1:29pm, you’re absurd in your attempt to defend globalists. The Bushes are globalists. The Cheneys are globalists. There are probably more Republican non-Jewish globalists than any other kind. Again- as long as they ignore your gender and DEI dogma, you don’t really give a rat’s.
DeleteThe Bushes are globalists, Cecelia? I guess that why you frequently call commenters here “Bush-bots.”
Delete…
Anonymouse 1:52pm, no, I don’t call anyone names like that. Not Bush-bots. Not-DemoRats. Not libtards. I call anonymices- anonymices because thats what the are. They have chosen to be an anonymouse and they are every anonymouse.
DeleteAnd yet you just called several people globalists.
DeleteCecelia constantly name calls or mocks. She is so full of it. I can't wait for the sitting in his own shit felon to dismiss Musk after getting trounced in Wisconsin. DiC & Cecelia will be going all in on no true Trumpet ever trusted Musk. It is what you rejects do.
DeleteAnonymouse 2:49pm, I call you a dolt. I don’t call you names that disparage Democrats in general.
DeleteI’m a globalist bot.
DeleteAnonymouse 2:39pm, they are globalists. That’s their outlook. You might not appreciate capitalists, but calling someone that is not a pejorative in the sense of calling them a Maggat.
DeleteMaggot is an insect larva. Magat is a derogatory name for MAGA supporters. Maggat isn't anything.
DeleteIf you don't want to be considered anti-semitic, stop using the term globalist the way right wingers do. We know you are not referring to Bush or Cheney when you use the word. You aren't fooling anyone with this sophistry (look that one up, Somerby engages in it all the time).
Cecelia - I never call names you globalist dolts.
DeleteCecelia, you have frequently accused the anonymous commenters of being agents of Soros. Not Bush/Cheney, but Soros.
DeleteElon Musk Loses Big in Wisconsin
ReplyDelete'Musk: “I expected to lose, but there is value to losing a piece for a positional gain.”'
Does anyone have an English translation of Musk's statement?
Like when Peewee Herman crashes his bike and says "I meant to do that."
DeleteSounds like Elon is playing one dimensional chess.
DeleteWisconsin passed voter ID. Excellent.
DeleteDoes that mean the end of western civilization?
Delete11:12,
DeleteEvery state would have Voter ID, if they could raise taxes on the rich to pay to find each and every eligible voter and give them a free Voter ID.
Alas, the rise in taxes will eat into the important people's "Another Yacht for Me" Fund, in most states.
"WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—After being handed a bruising defeat in the state’s Supreme Court election on Tuesday, Elon Musk angrily demanded that Wisconsin pay him back “in full” for the money he poured into the contest.
ReplyDelete“I want $20 million wired into my account by end of business Wednesday,” the furious South African declared. “And I want it all in cash, none of that worthless crypto shit.”
“Until I am refunded, every voter I bribed is my employee,” he continued. “As such, I forbid you to work remotely and demand that you report to Tesla headquarters at once.”
In a final demand, Musk said he expected to be reimbursed $16.95 for the cost of his cheesehead."
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but these are some of the persons shaping our D-minus discourse."
ReplyDeleteMusk and Trump are ruining our country, but the real problem is that our discourse sucks, says Somerby.
Somerby quotes Robert Frost again, another of his favorite conservative poets.
There is an article today about how the Roman Empire wasn't the way conservative bros imagine it. I suspect the same is true of ancient Troy.
"Musk and Trump are ruining our country, but the real problem is that our discourse sucks, says Somerby."
DeleteHow else did Musk and Trump get to run our country?
Our country doesn't run on discourse. It runs on money. Every person who buys into Trump's coup is a grifter hoping some crumbs will fall from his table, and afraid of his threats of retribution should they oppose him. The rest are rubes.
DeleteSometimes I think that Trump voters identify with JD Vance because he comes across as the biggest rube of all -- he is shut out of the actual plot, used by Trump, and no one sees him as a future leader after Trump dies. He is like the everyman in the Republican party, a bit vague, venal when in action, but essentially laughed at behind his own back.
"but as always with the Space Nazi, he’s primarily looking out for himself.
ReplyDeleteMusk has a personal stake in the outcome, too. Last year, his car company, Tesla, filed an application with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to open four dealerships in the state. The request was denied owing to a state law that bars car manufacturers from selling directly to consumers. A week before Musk first posted about the race, Tesla filed a suit challenging the law.
that challenge is on its way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Elon did everything he could to buy himself a victory. he pumped millions of dollars into the campaign to defeat Democratic candidate Susan Crawford. he held an alleged “contest” where he handed million-dollar checks to people who had signed some cockamamie petition. somehow, the “winners” ended up being Republican party insiders. how fucking convenient.
he bribed people to vote for Crawford’s opponent.
the silly dipshit even wore cheese on his head.
how could he miss?
this arrogant asshole just presumed he could waltz in and buy himself a Supreme Court. gimme gimme gimme, mine mine mine. that’s just how plutocrats roll. but yesterday, the voters of Wisconsin — tired of being bullied by fascist gazillionaires — told the Space Nazi to go fuck himself sideways.
this is an huge victory. Susan Crawford crushed her opponent and cruised to 9-point victory.
Crawford was technically running against Republican Brad Schimel — but everyone knows who she really defeated."
https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/susan-crawford-fuck-yeah-cory-booker
Crawford reminds me of the "Home Alone" mom.
DeleteCatharine O’Hara is from Canada, which isn’t that far from WI.
DeleteSuck on it, trumptards.
ReplyDeleteWatching Democrats cheerlead for bringing MS-13 into our country and blocking the eradication of waste and fraud is reassurance that they will do the heaviest lifting for Republicans, who can just stand by and watch the self-destruction.
ReplyDeleteLike what happened in Wisconsin last night. Are you trumptarded?
Delete11:11,
DeleteYou make it sound like bringing MS-13 into the country to replace Republican voters is a bad thing.
Immigrants have a much lower crime rate than Republicans.
DeleteDeport Republicans.
Scratch that.
Render Republicans.
Some critics of the decision to replace Republican voters with MS-13 members, say it could lead to more violence, but anything could happen.
DeleteBest to move forward with the decision, and see how it plays out.
Folgers endorses the switch.
DeleteWhen we Dems meet we spend the whole 90 minute meeting discussing how to import more MS-13 to gang rape republican daughters. It is the lefty credo you thumb sucking morons.
DeleteLet us give Trump some credit, he never raped his own daughter (that we know of), even though he frequently expresses his sexual attraction to her. No, instead, he externalized that misery onto someone else's daughter, a 13 year old.
DeleteTo be fair, Trump did rape his ex wife, herself the daughter of a KGB operative, you know, the one he unceremoniously dumped in an unkempt grave in an overgrown and weedy part of his golf course to get a tax break.
To be even more fair, he did give his 13yo rape victim some money in case she needed an abortion. After all he did pay for his own daughter's two abortions when she was a teen.
OTOH Hegseth, not having the kind of cash Trump throws around, pulled out of his rape victim to ejaculate, nullifying the need to pay for an abortion.
Should we talk about Gaetz and Musk's fun times as sexual predators? I mean, what is the REAL Hastert Rule?
And I don't know why you are bringing up Mike Waltz, all we know is that he follows the social media account of a gay porn star. He and Ted Cruz probably bond over sharing their favorite porn, so cute.
LOL!!!!!!
Amazing that hegseth wasn’t too drunk to think about that.
DeleteI believe it’s appropriate at this time to say that Republicans exude a moral squalor.
DeleteMore: they celebrate and instantiate moral squalor.
"In a very unusual bit if behavior, CBS News ran a fact-check! This fact-check has been cited nowhere. Simply put, elite persons who "went to the finest schools" don't much seem to care."
ReplyDeleteElite persons who go to the finest schools don't need to fact check Musk's ridiculous claims because they are absurd on their surface, defy common sense, are presented with no evidence. Citing a CBS fact check isn't needed to separate the liars and scum from real discussion. No one cited that CBS fact-check perhaps because no one needed it to know that Musk was a lying liar. Just as no one bothers to fact-check Trump any more unless he is giving a state of the union address.
The only people being fooled by these lies today are those who want to be fooled.
Trump to Musk: YOU'RE FIRED!
ReplyDeleteBwahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Wall Street is rejoicing. LOL!!!!
Demand for Tesla is way down, demand for Musk's head on a pike is way up.
Deletewomp womp trumptards
How can you fire someone who you never actually hired?
DeleteLogic never stopped Trump, neither do laws.
Delete"Trump tells inner circle that Musk will leave soon".
DeletePoor Musk, he even transitioned to a Cheesehead in order to get on Trump's tiny knob.
Too funny.
How long before trump claims he never met musk.
DeleteTesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) saw a significant rebound in China-made vehicles sold last month, as the effects of the Chinese New Year holiday subsided.
ReplyDeleteTesla China sold 78,828 vehicles in March, including those sold in China and those exported to overseas markets, according to data released today by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).
That's a 156.87 percent increase from February's 30,688.
Remarkable, especially given that Tesla’s sales in 23 and 24 were higher than any other car so a huge proportion of the market that wanted them and already has newer models is significantly lower. These are fresh buyers.
The Tesla Model Y topped the sales charts in Norway for both March and the first quarter of 2025, maintaining its lead even after the transition to the refreshed model.
Despite fierce competition, the Model Y achieved impressive figures, outperforming other vehicles, including Toyota’s BZ4X and Nissan’s Ariya.
The vehicle’s dominance in both periods highlights its continued success in the Norwegian electric vehicle market, setting a strong pace for the year ahead.
Seriously, wtf is wrong with you people?
Delete"In Norway, Tesla has experienced a significant decline in sales recently:
In early 2025, Tesla's sales dropped 48% compared to the previous year.
1
The Model Y saw a 64.4% decrease in sales, with only 965 units delivered in January and February.
1
The Model 3 also faced a substantial decline, with sales falling to 324 units in January, a 70% drop.
1
Overall, Tesla's market share in Norway has plunged to just over 7%, down from more than 21% in 2024.
1
These trends indicate a challenging market environment for Tesla in Norway."
Not to mention, when looking to sell cars, Norway is a HUGE market (not).
A communist country, and a socialist one.
DeleteThe Right must be vey proud of their boy.
Tesla released their deliveries today and it was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down, so 12:42 is trying to mask the terrible news for Tesla.
DeleteAnd Tesla is getting stomped by BYD in China.
Tesla sales have plummeted to their lowest level in three years after a backlash against its boss Elon Musk.
DeleteThe electric car maker delivered almost 337,000 electric vehicles in the first three months of 2025, a 13% drop from a year ago.
Tesla shares tumbled in early trading on Wednesday after the release of the unexpectedly low sales numbers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g4zp3z1p3o
Quakerchild - TSLA went up 5% today and is up a percent and half more after hours. That's a 50 billion dollar increase.
DeleteIt perhas went up because Musk said he is leaving Doge.
Delete@4:33
DeleteAnd now? What's the latest?
As of 8:00 pm EDT, Tesla has given up all of today's gains AND another 2.7% beyond that.
DeleteGosh. What do you think it will do tomorrow?
DeleteTesla won’t take its own truck as a trade-in:
ReplyDelete“Tesla is sitting on $200 million worth of Cybertruck inventory”
https://electrek.co/2025/04/01/tesla-is-sitting-on-200-million-worth-of-cybertruck-inventory/
That sounds scary but it's only one-quarter of one-thousandth of a percent of Tesla's market cap. If all the money you had in the world was 100k, that figure would represent 23 cents.
DeleteTESLA REFUSES TO ACCEPT ITS OWN TRUCK AS A TRADE IN.
DeleteThe whole industry of electric cars has been performative.
ReplyDeleteIf that were true, they wouldn't run or operate as cheaply as they do. I've owned my Tesla for 5 years and never had it serviced because it has a battery instead of an engine. EVs are great!
DeleteCecelia doesn't know what the word performative means, except that it is negative in tone:
Deleteperformative definition: "Performative" generally means something done or said for show, to impress others, or to fulfill a social expectation, rather than being genuinely felt or believed."
Maybe she means that people only buy them for performative reasons, but the car's performance justifies its purchase (no puns intended). If you throw in the benefit to the climate, then the car's features justify its purchase. These days, liberals are being stoned for owning a Tesla, but most of us don't want to sell them because they work fine and the market is down, so poor resale value. How then are we driving them for performative reasons?
Anonymouse 2:06pm, are you keeping it?
DeleteAnonymouse 2;09pm, I just take it that you’re more than a little limited. That someone has misdefined a term is always your first or second means for objecting.
DeleteWhy do you mess up using words so often? It supports my theory that you speak English as a second language because you are a troll operating from a troll farm in some Eastern European country. I'd hate to think that any American is as badly educated as you seem to be.
DeleteCecelia, there are stickers that say "Anti-Elon Tesla Club" to put on your car. This eliminates a lot of the horn honking. Of course I am keeping it. I bought it to support the environment and it is still doing that, whether Republicans like it or not. Musk didn't have anything to do with my car.
DeleteWhen I was a student back in the 1960s, I encountered Jewish people who wouldn't drive a VW because of its original association with Hitler. That was 15 years after the war. I understand their feelings but the VW bug was cherished by people my age and the van even more so.
Cars can and do transcend their origins, culturally speaking. Musk is an asshole, but the Tesla was built by others:
"Tesla Motors was founded as an electric carmaker by engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003. Elon Musk, co-founder of Paypal, was an early investor in Tesla and board member, before taking over as CEO." The CEO never wields a wrench. He plays games with money.
Anonymouse 2:20pm, I would never object to anyone saying that I make typos and occasionally use terms in ways that aren’t strictly from the dictionary. I’m not a part of an organization. If I were the opposite would be true. They would hire better writers and have a system of proofreading. You are proof of that. Your handlers can hire good writers and proofreaders. They can’t make unreasonable and poorly reasoning people sound more reasonable.
DeleteAnonymouse 2:27pm, good for you. Truly. Keep your Tesla under watch. I wouldn’t put any faith in a sticker.
DeleteI take it you know this from experience. If you can't use words well, what makes you believe that you are thinking well? Words have meanings.
DeleteSeems to me you are supporting my suggestion that you are just an undereducated person who doesn't know how to use the big words but likes to sound semi-educated. Proofreaders and copy editors disappeared about 20 years ago, with spell-check I guess, or perhaps with financial decline of media (including book publishing). AI is taking over content generation online. AI can make any unreasonable idea sound more reasonable, so get ready for another decline in "discourse" as Somerby puts it.
No one can replace ignorant people like yourself. Nor would they want to. You ignorant Republican voters are keeping Trump in gold-plated hamberders. You have an important role to play in destroying our nation!
Anonymouse 2:35pm, you do the same thing with Bob. If Bob were to quote-
Delete“O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.”
You’d ask why garden pests had been referenced in his essay.
Anonymouse 2:35pm, no, you proofread each other and you have posts that you have written beforehand based upon Bob’s well known themes.
DeleteI thought the convicted fraudster changed his mind on electrics after Mux bought his office? Time to go with the flow Cecelia, electric vehicles are the shit now.
DeleteYour idea that we are writing our essays ahead of time is ridiculous because of the amount of predictability required to make that time-saving at all. But it also fails to recognize that there are people who are adept at English and who can write an essay quickly because they have their ideas organized and the words follow from that. Writing is neither time consuming nor laborious for those who are adept at it and experienced with words. If that isn't you, that doesn't mean no one else can do it without your hypothetical prepared scripts.
DeleteI’m proud to drive an internal-combustion care. It produces carbon dioxide, a vital nutrient for plants.
DeleteAnonymouse 3:05pm, I don’t share Trump’s every opinion. They aren’t The Shite enough to keep some liberals from keying them. I do know that your last sentence is why Trump is interested in that market.
DeleteEmily Dickenson has been thought to be autistic herself, which is ironic because she might take literally things that she encountered online if she were living in this time period. So you using her to advance this claim about someone else is accidentally derogatory to autistic people (who often have such a trait).
DeleteI objected to Somerby quoting another conservative poet, not to anything literal about the woods being lovely dark and deep, which has nothing whatsoever to do with anything Somerby has written today, figuratively or literally. Only Somerby knows why he throws these random lines into his essays. You certainly don't.
Emily Dickenson has been characterized by those studying her life and writing as being "quite conservative" politically.
Anonymouse 3:58pm, all your genius aside,… anyone observing you over the years knows that you have posts at the ready.
DeleteI don't, but what would it mean if I did? At the very least, it would suggest that Somerby is too repetitive.
DeleteCecelia is describing the way that lazy students use AI to generate the framework of a homework assignment and then modify it slightly before turning it in. That might work to create a rebuttal to a Somerby essay, but what is the fun of that? What is expressive about it? AI doesn't know my opinions on things and it wouldn't do a better job of saying what I mean than I can myself. The goal of a lazy student is to get a passing grade (even a C will do). The goal of someone commenting here is to keep Somerby's total garbage from leading weak minds astray, or portraying liberals as people who don't care about today's important issues.
DeleteThe larger question is whether Somerby is using AI to cobble together the boring and repetitive articles he posts each day. It is hard for me to see how he wouldn't accidentally come up with more expressive variety if he were writing fresh than if he were asking AI to combine a few of his past essays.
It is as if Somerby never read more than a single line from that Robt Frost poem, just as he doesn't seem to have read past page 40 in My Atonia or beyond the preface to that book about Godel. AI is for lazy people and Somerby is the laziest.
"the boring and repetitive articles he posts each day."
DeleteAnd that you read and bitch about. Each day.
What are you, his ex-girlfriend?
Somerby doesn’t like women.
Delete"U.S. farmers who are desperately awaiting congressionally appropriated funds to pay their bills have been told by the Trump administration that they first need to remove "diversity aspects or make other revisions to better align" their clean energy projects "with President Donald Trump’s agenda."
ReplyDeleteA new report in The Washington Post said farmers received the confusing demand in a letter from the Agriculture Department last week urging farmers to make the changes in exchange for quicker payments.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins wrote that "the department was issuing a course correction after the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s signature climate and health-care law, delivered more bureaucracy than benefits for rural families," according to the Post.
"But farmers said the announcement only created more confusion and another hurdle to receive funding they desperately need to pay off loans and replenish money they had already spent on projects," wrote reporter Daniel Wu.
One farmer in Maryland, Michael Protas, who was expecting funds for solar panel installation, said he forwarded the letter to his USDA representative, asking, "What in the world does this mean? DEI has nothing to do with solar panels. I don’t know what they’re asking for.”
Wu wrote that the Agriculture Department "declined to answer questions from The Washington Post about what changes to remove diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility from rural energy projects could entail."
Hana Vizcarra, an Earthjustice attorney suing the Agriculture Department said the farmers “expect the government just to fulfill their obligations. And instead, as the new administration came in, they just froze all the funds and disrupted work that was already ongoing and put everything at risk.”
Travis Forgues, who runs a creamery in Wisconsin, reportedly told The Post, “When you’re trying to talk about solar or energy independence, this is not a DEI issue. And quite frankly, if it was a DEI issue, who cares?”
Rawstory
What the he'll is conservative about chopping down trees and pumping poison into the air? Bunch of jaggoffs and weirdos that hate their offspring.
DeleteEarly in my career, I discovered that my company’s excess liability line of business was producing enormous unrecognized losses. Business that was being booked as profitable was actually very unprofitable. My discovery allowed the company to take corrective action to stop the losses.
ReplyDeleteThe people running the excess liability business didn’t thank me. They blamed me for taking a profitable business and making it unprofitable. These people did not care about economic reality.
Musk is finding enormous waste and taking difficult steps to correct it. Is he thanked? No. People who don’t care about economic reality are demonizing him for the side effects of the necessary corrective actions.
They are no fucking receipts dumbass, and chopping without identifying where needed first only adds to financial loss in the long run. Also I doubt you ever did anything useful in your career being so fing stupid.
DeleteOK bean counter DiC, counter this argument from the Noble Economic prize winner Krugman,
Delete"I don’t know how many people realize that the administration’s case for tariffs is completely incoherent, that it has not one but two major internal contradictions.
Here’s the story: Trumpers are claiming that tariffs
1. Won’t increase prices, because foreign producers will absorb the cost
2. Will cause a large shift in U.S. demand away from imports to domestic production
3. Will raise huge amounts of revenue
If you think about it for a minute, you realize that (1) is inconsistent with (2): If prices of imports don’t rise, why would consumers switch to domestically produced goods? At the same time, (2) is inconsistent with (3): If imports drop a lot, tariffs won’t raise a lot of money, because there won’t be much to tax."
Can't fix your stupid can you David?
Government agencies are not profit-making. They measure success by service provided. An agency that is cut to the point where it cannot provide services is failing.
DeleteMusk is finding enormous waste and taking difficult steps to correct it."
DeleteWhat difficult steps? How difficult is it to peruse a list of contracts and eliminate the ones you don't like? Same with staff. M&A specialists do it all the time.
Even you could do it, DiC.
What kind of idiot insurance company loses money on historically safe excess liability coverage?
Delete@3:41 - You wrongly assume that I'm in favor of Trump's tariffs. Actually I agree with you.
DeleteThere is a possibility that Trump's tariffs will force other countries to reduce their tariffs. Then the net result of Trump's actions would be lower tariffs in general. That would be a great outcome. But, if Trump's tariffs remain in place, then I agree that would be bad for the US and bad for the world.
What are these high tariffs you think other countries impose on us, DiC? I mean, the ones that existed prior to Trump’s idiocy?
Delete"Óscar Arias Sánchez, the former president of Costa Rica who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987, has had his visa revoked without explanation this week.
ReplyDeleteThe New York Times reported that Sánchez has been a "vocal critic" of President Donald Trump and that the rescission of his visa "appears to be the most high profile in a string of individuals who have had their visas canceled or been denied entry as the Trump administration bars people who it says have 'hostile attitudes' toward the United States."
During a news conference in Costa Rica on Tuesday, Sánchez said he didn't know why his visa had been revoked, but he vowed not to remain silent in his criticism of Trump.
“If someone wants to punish me in the hopes of silencing me, that isn’t going to work,” he declared." Rawstory
I suppose he had his visa revoked for having gang tattoos, right?
If Arias is in Costa Rica, why does he need a US visa?
DeleteWhy are we kicking out ex-president nobel peace prize winners? Because he has brown skin?
DeleteFollowing a hard fought loss in the race for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat, Elon Musk today announced the end of Western Civilization. He said he will be stepping down as head of DOGE in order to flee to Mars, leaving the people of Earth to deal with the expected waves of Moors, Visigoths and fraudsters.
ReplyDeleteTrump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said DOGE operations would continue, and that Musk would be replaced by Mike Lindell.
My post is always ready for Cecelia.
ReplyDeleteNilafar Du Nile is a luxury perfume brand known for its unique scents
ReplyDelete