Youngkin showed up to his Inauguration in a full tilt Monopoly Game black tie Tuxedo with top hat. No kidding. These people are f**king weird, just for starters
Youngkin's attempt to show "empathy" to fired federal workers reflects the condescension and antipathy the Elon regime has toward federal employees in general - that they represent laziness, incompetence, inefficiency, and a waste of taxpayer dollars- for it to be implied that their years of loyalty and hard work mean so little, to be thrown into the garbage bin. Do they really need help updating resumes, finding nonexistent jobs on LinkedIn? these are not recent graduates entering the workforce for the first time - for more senior EEs, what additional difficulties will they face in finding new work, and what will happen to their plans for retirement? Elon has not provided any evidence to support his mass firings, and it is clear that they are based on a purge of all who are not Trump loyalists, anyone who is investigating Elon's business dealings, and to find some of the funding (in addition to a huge increase in the federal debt and stealing from medicaid) all to fund tax cuts to him
Interesting interview on NPR this morning with David Pressman, a former ambassador to Hungary, about the love conservative voices are showing to Viktor Orban's version of "greatness" there.
Spoiler alert: the conservative cultural values message is the sheep's clothing, covering a wolf that is actually all about wealth transfer to the leaders and their buddies.
"...There is this narrative that the Hungarian government is... standing up for important values on issues that resonate with a lot of Americans, whether it's gays or guns or migration. But in fact, what's happening in Hungary isn't conservatism, it's corruption. And it's a system that's designed to enrich a clique of elites to take public assets and put them in private pockets while talking about standing up for conservative values."
Maybe the Musk/Trump "break it and take it teams" will wake some folks up when their stuff gets broken and taken...bring on the Medicaid cuts to fund the tax cuts for the billionaires!
Speaking of broken, I'm still reveling in Trump decapitating Casey Desantis's (Meatball's wife) potential run for FL governor...hey Ron and Casey, ask Nikki/Pence/et al how this plays out - you apparently haven't been paying attention.
Maybe someone should ask Musk how much taxes he paid last year, and his companies as well. I recently read that Tesla paid nothing to the Feds. He seems worried about how taxpayer money will be spent and not about those people who paid taxes and were fired for no cause.
There you go again, thinking you’re going to get one shred of empathy from any voter who voted for Trump, or stayed home, knowing he’d win. None of those 77 million plus voters gives a rat’s ass about what happens to fired federal employees. It’s “learn to code”, as far as they are concerned. So we need to stop focusing these stories on the plight of the fired. It might feel good, but it gets us nowhere.
The focus needs to be on how this hurts everyone else. What services will have to be eliminated because of these force reductions? What added inconvenience will I have to endure to purge a few government employees? What is the risk to the rest of us, because of these arbitrary and capricious cuts?
Forget sympathy for people with government union protections, guaranteed pensions, great healthcare coverage, lots of vacation time, and every holiday under the sun off. All paid for “by my taxes”. That is what the average voter believes, and defending federal workers will only harden their resolve to give DOGE the benefit of the doubt.
Agreed. They have been convinced government employees are lazy miscreants engaged in useless activity (because they have no clue the extent to which we all depend on their work). So the impact of tangible, and sometimes difficult to grasp concepts like the rule of law, things all of us can no longer count on must become clear.
I agree. 5 stars! The most important point you make is about giving "a rats ass". The people who are terminated have quite specific Due Process guarantees once probationary periods end. Without enumerating here is a link for anyone interested in these protections:https://www.civilservicestrong.org/resource/checklist-of-current-rights
Speaking of efficiencies and savings, what do you suppose it costs the taxpayers for those few remaining federal employees to take a half hour each week to describe last week's tasks?
Exactly. I’m still waiting for the “efficient” part of DOGE. Elon is not all there. Like Trump, he lives in his own reality. Although Elon is more like an overgrown adolescent while Trump is an overgrown toddler. Neither is equipped to handle grown up responsibilities.
Lt. Gov. Sears is bucking "backlash headwinds" in his run for the Virginia governor's mansion. In normal times I'd wager that his election chances are slim. But I didn't think Trump would win, or that Lauren Bobblehead would get reelected.
I give Sears a 60/40 chance of winning. The 60% in his favor, folks. Sadly, voters are just too fickle to wager against the GOP nowadays.
If he keeps up being to tone deaf, his chances will continue to drop as the misery to everyone keeps rising through more firings, inflation and high food prices.
Maybe just a technicality to you, but Lauren B. is now in a different seat than before, not actually “re-elected”. She was going to lose her western Colorado seat, so she parachuted into a firmly GOP district in rural eastern Colorado.
"they know we care about them and we value them and we want them to find that next chapter.”
Interpretation: All the above is true, "unless you vote for commies and our internal enemies, and if so, then it's the big F U and out the window you go. Have a nice day."
Meanwhile they're trying to steal an election for State Supreme Court seat from a Democrat in North Carolina and Musk wants to buy one in Wisconsin in an April 1st election. Breaking down gerrymandering is the prime issue in both. We need to get some pro democracy focus on those. It's not just how many IRS perrsonel are left. They are going after elections already
I expect there will be a tsunami of pushback against this absurd nonsense from Trump's Rasputin. Civil Service Employment carries guarantees of Due Process. Imagine a Class Action filed against Musk by tens of thousands of Civil Service employees fired by a guy who apparently has no actual or implied authority to do so? With all of the different harms inflicted across this vast spectrum of people Chainsaw Charlie could find himself liable for many hundreds of millions of dollars. Maybe not much for this crazed man-child, but it sends a message. This pendulum swings both ways.
It would be priceless to see Musk take the stand and say Trump said he could do that, only to hear Trump say, “I don’t know this guy. I never met him.”
Can we start a calculator on how much this idiocy is going to end up costing with legal fees, back pay and judgements versus what it would have cost if they did nothing? ACLU and other legal groups are going to get a big payday.
Laugh or Cry Department:
All 5 of the top spending cuts for last week listed by the DOGE website have been removed once the claims were checked by outside sources
- An $8 billion cut in ICE was actually $8 million
- Three cuts totaling $2 billion at USAID was actually one cut for $18 million
- A $232 million cut at the Social Security Administration turned into $560,000
- This week's biggest cut of $1.9 billion at Treasury was actually done during the Biden administration!
You can't make this up:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/upshot/doge-spending-cuts-changed.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zk4.slNi.y-1qgwExpavI&smid=url-share
Youngkin showed up to his Inauguration in a full tilt Monopoly Game black tie Tuxedo with top hat. No kidding. These people are f**king weird, just for starters
Youngkin's attempt to show "empathy" to fired federal workers reflects the condescension and antipathy the Elon regime has toward federal employees in general - that they represent laziness, incompetence, inefficiency, and a waste of taxpayer dollars- for it to be implied that their years of loyalty and hard work mean so little, to be thrown into the garbage bin. Do they really need help updating resumes, finding nonexistent jobs on LinkedIn? these are not recent graduates entering the workforce for the first time - for more senior EEs, what additional difficulties will they face in finding new work, and what will happen to their plans for retirement? Elon has not provided any evidence to support his mass firings, and it is clear that they are based on a purge of all who are not Trump loyalists, anyone who is investigating Elon's business dealings, and to find some of the funding (in addition to a huge increase in the federal debt and stealing from medicaid) all to fund tax cuts to him
You can be sure a lot of those pissed-off Virginia DOGE victims voted for the Trump/Musk junta. A little message for them: https://chris88.substack.com/p/memo-to-maga-ce7
Interesting interview on NPR this morning with David Pressman, a former ambassador to Hungary, about the love conservative voices are showing to Viktor Orban's version of "greatness" there.
Spoiler alert: the conservative cultural values message is the sheep's clothing, covering a wolf that is actually all about wealth transfer to the leaders and their buddies.
"...There is this narrative that the Hungarian government is... standing up for important values on issues that resonate with a lot of Americans, whether it's gays or guns or migration. But in fact, what's happening in Hungary isn't conservatism, it's corruption. And it's a system that's designed to enrich a clique of elites to take public assets and put them in private pockets while talking about standing up for conservative values."
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/25/nx-s1-5294699/former-u-s-ambassador-to-hungary-discusses-democratic-decay-under-pm-orban
Maybe the Musk/Trump "break it and take it teams" will wake some folks up when their stuff gets broken and taken...bring on the Medicaid cuts to fund the tax cuts for the billionaires!
Speaking of broken, I'm still reveling in Trump decapitating Casey Desantis's (Meatball's wife) potential run for FL governor...hey Ron and Casey, ask Nikki/Pence/et al how this plays out - you apparently haven't been paying attention.
Off topic but topical- thank you Gov Abbott and supporter of vaccinations RFK Jr. Actions have consequences: https://www.tpr.org/bioscience-medicine/2025-02-25/state-reports-west-texas-measles-outbreak-cases-now-at-124
Maybe someone should ask Musk how much taxes he paid last year, and his companies as well. I recently read that Tesla paid nothing to the Feds. He seems worried about how taxpayer money will be spent and not about those people who paid taxes and were fired for no cause.
Thanks for this overview. We need to know how much these firings are costing us taxpayers; how delayed our SS and Medicare will be;
There you go again, thinking you’re going to get one shred of empathy from any voter who voted for Trump, or stayed home, knowing he’d win. None of those 77 million plus voters gives a rat’s ass about what happens to fired federal employees. It’s “learn to code”, as far as they are concerned. So we need to stop focusing these stories on the plight of the fired. It might feel good, but it gets us nowhere.
The focus needs to be on how this hurts everyone else. What services will have to be eliminated because of these force reductions? What added inconvenience will I have to endure to purge a few government employees? What is the risk to the rest of us, because of these arbitrary and capricious cuts?
Forget sympathy for people with government union protections, guaranteed pensions, great healthcare coverage, lots of vacation time, and every holiday under the sun off. All paid for “by my taxes”. That is what the average voter believes, and defending federal workers will only harden their resolve to give DOGE the benefit of the doubt.
Agreed. They have been convinced government employees are lazy miscreants engaged in useless activity (because they have no clue the extent to which we all depend on their work). So the impact of tangible, and sometimes difficult to grasp concepts like the rule of law, things all of us can no longer count on must become clear.
I agree. 5 stars! The most important point you make is about giving "a rats ass". The people who are terminated have quite specific Due Process guarantees once probationary periods end. Without enumerating here is a link for anyone interested in these protections:https://www.civilservicestrong.org/resource/checklist-of-current-rights
Speaking of efficiencies and savings, what do you suppose it costs the taxpayers for those few remaining federal employees to take a half hour each week to describe last week's tasks?
Exactly. I’m still waiting for the “efficient” part of DOGE. Elon is not all there. Like Trump, he lives in his own reality. Although Elon is more like an overgrown adolescent while Trump is an overgrown toddler. Neither is equipped to handle grown up responsibilities.
Lt. Gov. Sears is bucking "backlash headwinds" in his run for the Virginia governor's mansion. In normal times I'd wager that his election chances are slim. But I didn't think Trump would win, or that Lauren Bobblehead would get reelected.
I give Sears a 60/40 chance of winning. The 60% in his favor, folks. Sadly, voters are just too fickle to wager against the GOP nowadays.
If he keeps up being to tone deaf, his chances will continue to drop as the misery to everyone keeps rising through more firings, inflation and high food prices.
Maybe just a technicality to you, but Lauren B. is now in a different seat than before, not actually “re-elected”. She was going to lose her western Colorado seat, so she parachuted into a firmly GOP district in rural eastern Colorado.
She's still a member of congress. And a piss-poor one, at that.
"they know we care about them and we value them and we want them to find that next chapter.”
Interpretation: All the above is true, "unless you vote for commies and our internal enemies, and if so, then it's the big F U and out the window you go. Have a nice day."
I prefer the name "Dogebags" instead of Doge Bros.
Meanwhile they're trying to steal an election for State Supreme Court seat from a Democrat in North Carolina and Musk wants to buy one in Wisconsin in an April 1st election. Breaking down gerrymandering is the prime issue in both. We need to get some pro democracy focus on those. It's not just how many IRS perrsonel are left. They are going after elections already
Gerrymandering doesn't effect a statewide election like the Supreme Court in North Carolina.
What that is is a sore loser who is hoping someone somewhere will give him that Supreme seat, because he deserves it, dammit (snark)!
I expect there will be a tsunami of pushback against this absurd nonsense from Trump's Rasputin. Civil Service Employment carries guarantees of Due Process. Imagine a Class Action filed against Musk by tens of thousands of Civil Service employees fired by a guy who apparently has no actual or implied authority to do so? With all of the different harms inflicted across this vast spectrum of people Chainsaw Charlie could find himself liable for many hundreds of millions of dollars. Maybe not much for this crazed man-child, but it sends a message. This pendulum swings both ways.
It would be priceless to see Musk take the stand and say Trump said he could do that, only to hear Trump say, “I don’t know this guy. I never met him.”
Judging from the number of lawsuits already in progress, I can definitely see civil rights lawyers pulling together a class action as we speak.
Can we start a calculator on how much this idiocy is going to end up costing with legal fees, back pay and judgements versus what it would have cost if they did nothing? ACLU and other legal groups are going to get a big payday.