Turning On The Giant Faucet Of Bullshit - US Politics February 2025

I saw that Musk ceased payments to government contractors as of today, so curious to see how well that pans out for him. what kinds of contractors I don't know.

i'm not a lawyer but he quite literally is not allowed to do that

Ha, headlines say that he is ceasing all contractor payments, but he's not ceasing payments to himself or to any military contractors but he did, based upon advice from felon and retired lt general Michael Flynn shut down payments by the US Department of Health and Human Services to Lutheran Family Services, a faith-based charity that has been providing social services to refugees.

of course he isn't ceasing payments to himself

at what point do americans start the well armed militia thing

i'm not a lawyer but he quite literally is not allowed to do that

― treeship., Sunday, February 2, 2025

It doesn't matter if he is allowed to do that, he's doing it and nobody is going to stop him, and by the way he is never going to jail

We have let arsonists take over our government. All of my rich republican friends assured me that Trump wasn't going to start trade wars, that it was all a bluff, and that lower tax rates on capital gains would be good for them etc. Even non-rich people like my sister and her husband bought into that. My sister sat across the sofa from me last fall and was so sure that his tariffs were a bluff, that they would never be imposed

the well armed militia thing

um, that's supposed to be well-trained militia

honestly I thought the same thing, like this is what he does, I figured the endgame was him implementing then pulling the tariffs because Mexico agreed to hire a few more border cops or whatever, then prices come down and he gets to brag about how he Art of the Deal'd away fentaynl (as it kills more teenagers than ever), it works because the media falls for this shit hook line and sinker, that said if that was the plan he wouldn't be doing this with 3 countries at once, kinda think there really is no plan here

Xxxpost to that ezraklein article:
Speed and force are 100% a strategy unto themselves.
Maybe unsustainable long term, but by then the situation has changed, and the damage has been done...
They don't require a coherent long term strategy because they're not trying to build anything.
They just want to wreck shit, hurt people and steal money.
As somebody said upthread, it's a school shooter mentality.

sink the US into a Depression and then claim that he needs a third term so he can solve it

Luigi Natione

how many more years do we think this guy has left? hes 78 and has spent every single day the last 9 years cranked out and angry

Ppl kept saying that during the ny trial but

sabrina carpenter just won best pop vocal album. i felt like you all should know.

I would even settle for a well-dressed militia

sure but he's very visibly deteriorated over the years, he is clearly not the same guy he was in 2016 or even 2020

Sabrina Carpenter/Chappell Roan 2028

frogbs: this has been a recurring theme on ilx, wishing/hoping he would die, but bad people like him aren't going to die on our schedule so let's stop speculating

you can say that about Musk too, I don't think he ever came across as smart exactly and his public speaking skills have always sucked but he wasn't different from most techbros - good at bullshitting and saying things that seemprofound if you don't think about them too much, now he has the sort of energy I recognize from meth heads who are a week out from overdosing or getting arrested

you guys. beyonce. best country album.

They don't require a coherent long term strategy because they're not trying to build anything.
They just want to wreck shit, hurt people and steal money.
As somebody said upthread, it's a school shooter mentality.

― m0stly clean (Slowsquatch), Sunday, February 2, 2025 8:36 PM (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i don't think trump believes this is what he is doing.

do any of you think that fascism is actually coming, is close, already arrived? i'm not sure what people think it looks like, but when it's "how is he doing it? that's not allowed! that's clearly against the law!" and it keeps happening and no one seems to be in a position to put up effective opposition, and people who oppose these things within the government get removed. i'm not saying anyone here is a perpetual eyeroller of "fascism", but a lot of people are, and i think the time is past to make an adjustment

any chance of a military coup?

to make a similar sweeping statement, i think it's not surprising that schumer et al aren't doing anything and have no effective message - they are out of new ideas. they are stuck somewhere, i don't know where, but not here. there are different ideas on the left, but they're not acceptable to the upper-middle and above class liberals who make up the bulk of the party and their voters because they involve moving on from capitalism and endless growth

sabrina carpenter just won best pop vocal album. i felt like you all should know.

No trophies for art.

it would be nice if a MSM outlet would call out the illegality of this shit this week

MSNBC does. All the time. They've devoted 10 years to documenting Trump's crimes.

yeah i don't think trump has gotten a free pass from the media, overall. he just built power regardless.

i think it's not surprising that schumer et al aren't doing anything and have no effective message - they are out of new ideas. they are stuck somewhere, i don't know where, but not here. there are different ideas on the left, but they're not acceptable to the upper-middle and above class liberals who make up the bulk of the party and their voters because they involve moving on from capitalism and endless growth

it's not surprising because their portfolios will profit handsomely from the boots on our necks.

Except for about 20 mins on Chris Hayes' segment, MSNBC devotes more time to Trump's perfidies than, no surprise, progressive policy.

https://newrepublic.com/post/190784/trump-lawsuit-funneling-info-federal-workers-elon-musk

This lawsuit was filed against Musk earlier this week but it has gotten little attention and no judge has issued a temporary restraining order against Musk. In the spending freeze case at least 2 judges granted tro's.

Scott, looks like no one at the Grammys has had the courage to speak out about Trump or Musk. The Grammys are on CBS whose corporate owner is trying to work out a settlement with Trump over some ridiculous lawsuit he filed against them. The owner of CBS wants to merge with another company and thus is bending the knee

A group of about eight DOGE officials entered the USAID building Saturday and demanded access to every door and floor, despite only a few of them having security clearance, according to a Senate Democratic staff member who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the incident.

When USAID personnel attempted to block access to some areas, DOGE officials threatened to call federal marshals, the aide said. The DOGE officials were eventually given access to “secure spaces” including the security office.

The Senate staffer also said top officials from USAID’s office and the bulk of the staff in USAID’s Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs were put on leave later Saturday. Some of them were not notified but had their access to agency terminals suspended.

Katie Miller, a spokeswoman for DOGE, said on X that “no classified material was accessed without proper security clearances.”

i'm having that unsettling feeling where i keep forgetting that doge is a joke about dogecoin, which is a cryptocurrency which is itself a joke about how things of utter nonsubstance have value if you will it into existence with your techbros and money you got from your dad

no. there has been no politics tonight. other than a black woman winning best country album.

x-post

Oh and the lawsuit I mentioned was filed against the Trump administration for giving info to a Musk company employee. I misstated it above.

Why didn't USAID call the federal marshalls?
This is the brass tacks of it.
As I said on the guardrails thread, whoever's got the guns makes the rules. That's where we are now.
Seems like USAID clearly had the law on their side...
So either they capitulated out of fear or they had good reason to believe the federal marshalls would show up and be on DOGE's side...
I don't understand this stuff...

It feels rather strange that in a country so very heavy with gun ownership, usage and abuse, no one is popping of and trying to shoot these unelected jackboots. For once, use stand your ground for good for christs sakes.

no. there has been no politics tonight. other than a black woman winning best country album.

controp: riding a white horse waving an american flag, beyoncé is as much a symbol of what is wrong with the US as any of the fascists we supposedly hate.

ok man yeah beyonce is as bad as elon musk, got it

Obviously not as bad, but he self-absorbed super-rich don't automatically count as good guys because you like their tunes.

It feels rather strange that in a country so very heavy with gun ownership, usage and abuse, no one is popping of and trying to shoot these unelected jackboots. For once, use stand your ground for good for christs sakes.

idk I have the feeling a lot of strange people are gonna be coming out of the woodwork soon, one thing about Trump is he's not just radicalizing his own base here

Weird dark times ahead for sure. But it can be easy to forget how many weird dark times we’ve had, as a country and a species. It’s always weird dark times somewhere.

My sister sat across the sofa from me last fall and was so sure that his tariffs were a bluff, that they would never be imposed

What does she say now?

do any of you think that fascism is actually coming, is close, already arrived? i'm not sure what people think it looks like, but when it's "how is he doing it? that's not allowed! that's clearly against the law!" and it keeps happening and no one seems to be in a position to put up effective opposition

I think people referring to the law is interesting, because I think a key component of fascism is the absence of law, the explicit pursuit of order without law (rather than "law and order"). That power should reside in the man not in the office

still maintain that Democrats should be hammering "President Musk" nonstop - dual purpose of highlighting that Trump handed over the powers of the office to a billionaire who creeps people out and makes Trump feel weak. He's not smart enough to use Musk as a fall guy for a failed coup but he is dumb enough to be mad that people credit Musk for attempting a coup and not Trump.

Also, for republicans richer=smarter, so musk is defacto the smartest guy in the room.

I think people referring to the law is interesting, because I think a key component of fascism is the absence of law, the explicit pursuit of order without law (rather than "law and order"). That power should reside in the man not in the office

― anvil, Monday, February 3, 2025 5:06 PM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

For a chillingly quick education in the rise of fascism; read ‘M son of the century’ by Antonio Scurati about the rise of Mussolini from WW1 to the murder of Giacomo Matteotti in 1924 (also you can curse the lack of English translations of the latter two books).

From the co-opting and collaboration of the industrial oligarchy and the reliance on an angry, violent, militarised and dispossessed working class; there’s a lot of parallels. Order without law is a very apt phrasing.

Hey, I just finished the chapter in Francois Furet's The Passing of an Illusion depicting Mussolini's consolidation of power. He "remained a dictator who had escaped from the control of the governing classes and justice." The major causes of fascist dictatorship: "first, the success among the masses of the fascists' ideological preaching, which lent credibility to their pretention to govern; and, second, and even more important, the Fascists' political autonomy. What was surprising was not that they compromised with the bourgeoisie but that they remained independent of it."

I am surprised Trump is ceding so much power to Musk to clear out the bureaucracy. I knew he was going to do this but I thought it would be Heritage Foundation appointees leading the effort and doing it in a less chaotic way.

In a way maybe this is better. Musk might screw up and fail to execute the project 2025 vision