Title.
Foreign nationals have unrestricted and unfettered access to the Treasury, office of management and budget, and are installing their own hardware and personnel as we speak.
What is there even to do? What would protesting even do? Who /where would you protest?
When people start 'disappearing' like former inspectors general, what will we do?
Panic.
A lot of your anxiety, Ben, is related to the fact that the question is what can you do, not what are you supposed to do. For God? For Country? For your clique? For randos on Reddit? What audience are you serving here? Because "supposed to" speaks to an authority or audience whose expectations you are attempting to meet. Who, exactly, is judging you here? From my perspective, you are a medically-compromised young man without the temperament for public office or the resources to affect policy. You're supposed to do fuckall, dude. You're supposed to breathe deeply, count to ten and recite the Serenity Prayer. I'm not going to tell you to like it but I am going to tell you that railing against your own helplessness prolly ain't great for your blood pressure. I would imagine it makes you harder to live with, too. I can tell you what a buddy did. He flew out to protest the inauguration. Sent lotsa photos. Plenty of pissed off people in the streets, marching around with witty signs. I hope it made him feel better; nobody doing the shit we don't like gives the first fuck, though. We all know this entire movement is fueled by liberal tears. They moved the ceremony indoors so that nobody could gauge crowd sizes; they all know they aren't popular. My buddy? He had him a week-long vacation ostensibly to express his rights as a citizen. He also went to the Smithsonian, as one does. I think it helped him. I don't think it moved the needle, though. I can tell you what I did. I re-upped my ACLU membership at twice the price and reported every fucking textbeggar who asked me for more money. I did this shit with Kerry; we did exactly what you fuckers asked and you absolutely ate shit and now you can leave me alone. You conclusively verified that there is no link between my money and your ability to perform so go fucking starve, dipshits. Yeah, this isn't the question you're asking, not really. I get that. I figured I'd start with the question that would do you more good, and then move on to your actual question, which is "what can be done." And it depends. Sucks, but there it is. Ross Douthat said one competent thing in his entire life, and that is that government is far more norm than law and that Trump gives no fux about norms. In IT terms, what you're seeing is called "pentesting." Part of that pentesting is "what can we do" and part of it is "how hard is it." Elon Musk sent out a "quit and we'll give you lots of money" email to see if anybody quits; that's a low-cost, high-reward pentest. Actually laying people off? Actually violating due process? That's much higher-cost, lower-reward because the goal isn't to actually change anything, it's to own the libs and get praise from the base. Samantha Bee referred to Elon Musk as "the world's first Billionaire edgelord" and that's the man in a nutshell. I don't know about you but if I owned a car company more valuable than all others combined and had basically become the predominant vendor of space launch I'd maybe focus on the important shit. I wouldn't be posting on Twitter 70 times a day. But that's where he gets the juice. "Let that sink in." Trump? Trump definitely wanted Musk to run rampant over the weekend (no idea if he was even consulted) because he probably had some warnings that the markets wouldn't respond well to tariffs. I honestly think he cares more about crypto taking it in the nuts harder than FTX than he does about the Dow; crypto are his peeps and any shitcoin with "trump" attached to it ate unholy shit (DOGE gave up nearly all of its gains since the election). Right now? Right now Trump looks like Mexico's bitch because within an hour of the market opening, Sheinbaum said "yeah he's pushing off our tariffs for a month" which means there won't be any. Even a couple Democrats got in some hits; Chris Murphy pointing out that Trump, who ran on lowering groceries, was raising the costs of avocados and Corona just in time for the Super Bowl is the sort of thing that's gonna land. Meanwhile Elon Musk going after Lutherans is just fuckin' weird shit, man, real 4 Seasons Total Landscaping errata. I think you have to accept, Ockham's Razor style, that the people who are in government are in government because they benefit from being in government. Be that financially, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, the guys who show up to work every day - even Samuel Alito - know they function within a framework. The Supreme Court going "actually, the President does whatever he wants" says two things: (1) they're spineless fucktards (2) they give no shit about precedent. "Oh, but they set a precedent!" Tell me the Warren Court would have ruled the same in 2000 if Gore was ahead, I dare you. A lot of people insist that the Supreme Court has been about "Trump does what he wants" but it's not - it's about "we want a Republican government at any cost." Republican. Government. This is the sort of shit that makes even Dick Cheney find his conscience. So it comes down to "it depends." How badly will Trump let Elon break the government? It depends. How badly will the government let Trump break the government? It depends. I will point out that Trump has mostly reversed things that can be reversed immediately and that the first thing Biden did when he came to office was reverse all of Trump's reversals. What are we supposed to do? I'm focusing on what I can do, which is extremely limited. What can be done? We're about to find out.
I don't know how likely that could be. I used to think it was nigh impossible for foreign nationals to gain access to these kinds of things. And to your follow up, the answer is 'get better magically' or 'die in even worse poverty after an extended battle to do otherwise.'
Okay, let's work from that. "I don't know how likely that could be" is something I can answer - whenever anyone is talking about the "third rail" in politics, they're talking about social security. It's the original untouchable entitlement. It's been argued that Putin invaded Ukraine to prop up sagging popularity from raising the retirement age - if you check that "third rail" wiki page you'll notice that there are more than a few countries where the one thing you don't fuck with is healthcare and/or pensions. USAID? That's easy to pick on because no one has ever heard of it. Treasury? Weren't they the bad guys in Die Hard 2? Social Security is what nana uses to take your kids to McDonald's. You've been paying into it since you delivered newspapers. Now - let's talk "foreign nationals." I mean, yes, Elon was born in South Africa but he's been effectively American since 1992. It's like Arnold Schwartzenegger, the only Austrian thing about him at this point is the accent. YOU care about this very much because there are procedures and they must be followed and that's one of the reasons they step all over them when they can, they give no fux for procedures. The bullshit Musk is pulling is plenty bad, you don't need to get the vapors over his birth certificate about it. Besides I'd rather have Musk in there (I don't want Musk in there - at all) than, like, Paul Manafort, who is American AF. "Foreign national" is posturing language that inflates the magnitude of the problem in a useless direction - it lets you feel more fear without solving the problem. Finally, you skipped straight to "my health" when the question was "can you affect the likelihood of TrumpCo fucking with social security." Here's the thing - social security is pretty easy to defend, most of the people who are on it are the vulnerable members of our culture. Here you are - a legit choir boy whose health could be jeopardized by threats to social security and it's not like you're the only one. I call up Action 7 News and say "they're coming for my social security!" and nobody gives a shit. You? You're making a life with a congenital heart defect. My question was not "how do you survive without social security" it was "how do you increase the difficulty of fucking with social security" and this is a situation where your very existence gives you a leg up over me. I'm a mostly-healthy white male, we're the problem. You? You're sitting down with Gayle King. I say this because I recognize your brand of catastrophizing. More than that, you're mostly too far gone to even have this conversation. Things are bad - not going to sugar-coat that. You're vulnerable - not going to diminish that either. But you're not powerless and you're not threatened. None of this is good? but running around with your hair on fire is what they want.
Lots of great stuff in these posts, and ho yeah, the chaos and intimidation is very, very intentional, yes. But.. I get the ironic framing, but it is superseded by: The richest man ever, who just finished doing a couple Nazi salutes two weeks ago, is inside of the U.S. purse's information and performance systems with six 20-year-olds and no accountability. He's just closed a $50 billion annual budget agency (turns out USAID was pretty integral in pushing for the end of apartheid, btw) after doing that little Catholic Mafia hit job, and they're doing Dept. Education next (in a totally brilliant legal move, "diminish" is now the verbiage used). You can "technically only diminish" something a lot! Elon status: 100% untouched. Pentesting: 100% success story. The democrats announced this afternoon that they'll make more laws that ensure this is all illegal. OK! It already is all illegal. This is an admission that they have no mechanism of enforcing laws from the Congress, especially without the GOP, which, yeah, that's how we thought it would work. But Chuck Schumer just told Congress to enforce the laws on BlueSky a few hours ago. The executive is in complete control of enforcement, as one might expect, but they like this lawbreaking, actually. Does the executive selectively enforce laws all the time? Yeah, but usually not (specifically never) when it comes to the inner workings of the U.S. treasury department being handed over to a guy who has a lot of his massive wealth built on U.S. gov't contracts, and also might genuinely think this reality is a level he's gotta beat, with us as NPCs. But wait it gets worse. Again, I'm sorry, it is so fucked to believe this, but I think it is a total waste of time to gameplan electoral strategies. There will not be an exchange of power. In fact it's a little fuckin' hilarious to imagine Trump or JD or anyone MAGA now being like "Well, the people have spoken at the ballot box, I guess, and my feelings are a little hurt... y'know, I thought I did a good job.. Oh well, guess I'll head back home. Thanks for the chance, America!!". No, the level of lawbreaking already performed over the last two weeks, and extrapolating to one or three years from now, even after stuff slows way down (and I know it will, don't worry, and thank god)? Yes, this is "merely" Project 2025, one might say, but nobody, nobody thought they'd gun it out of the gate like this. Or thought this extent of the Elon shit was possible. That, really, is a distinguishing feature. Shit like this is a clue: It's not but for the last section of a rather strange announcement (strange b/c we're in a large budget deficit, with huge accrued debt) that the article addresses where the money for a sovereignty fund would come from. Answer: nobody knows! Trump and Musk will sell the gov't off to private industry (including their own companies) for parts, like facilities, personnel, other capital assets, etc., but I think the plan is to also take that money the gov't gets and then "re-invest" it into the(ir) companies through this sovereignty fund. Will this plan come to fruition? Uh, no, the country will collapse long before any of that can even begin to play out. "They can't be that stupid"? ...You know what? They.... they can, man. They can. And I just don't see anything showing me that anyone will be able to stop them. They will ignore court rulings. They are now officially criminalizing resistance, as I had warned a day or two ago here. They've announced they're going after people who are posting the names of the DOGE staff. It's why I didn't post the names. The rest of the world is not overreacting. This is a coup, definitionally. They are right. I think many foreigners, Europeans, especially, are watching Americans tell themselves that this series of Trump-Musk doings and those surely to come soon are somehow not going to herald the worst geopolitical events to happen in at least 70 years, and the foreigners might think "Yup, that's how it happens." I do not come here to terrorize or incite, and I do not come to disparage, disrespect, or dispute for fun, or play devil's advocate, or to troll, whatever. This is my truth, and unfortunately, in this truth, increasingly, it's beneficial for the entire planet if other Americans also understand it. So.. Fuck I'm evangelical now. Ugh. But yes, I agree that there is not terribly much to do right now, except: As you plan and organize any domestic resistance, and I mean nonviolent resistance, you might want to obfuscate everything as much as you can For those who can, maybe show up and peacefully assemble (but not if it's an entire week off work, c'mon), and everyone can keep calling their reps (sigh), advocating, and get ready to help people getting bankrupted and losing their jobs understand what's happening (if you have the fucking capacity edit: LOL this is a comment for myself, sorry everyone. Capacity of patience, I suppose is what I mean). A lot of people draw the line at "if we don't have elections" but I'm not really sure we have until an election to come around before irreversible calamity. And again, I think the plan is to create some sort of magical half-calamity, maybe slow death by a thousand little (/moderate) agency cuts, that still keeps the economy greased well enough for a few years, but gives Trump the chance to seize more emergency powers. But no, I don't think the Trump admin is capable of dutifully limiting the damage it inflicts to one-half calamity. edit2: realize that while this unfolds, in some areas we will reach the end of the Project 2025 playbook and go beyond it. And he'll build The Camps, too. I have a bunch of adsb screencaps over the span of the last two weeks showing the flights of an Alaska-based surveillance company that puts up a fleet of three or four Skyhawks every other day-ish, combing the land between Del Rio and San Antonio, operating out of SAT Int'l. I forgot to mention that. I'm working with a reporter, the aim is to find out through the company some scale of the intended facilities, or find a contract with that info. Maybe not so large of facilities if we deport our criminals to El Salvador, as we just announced! Great. Stay safe everyone.Treasury? Weren't they the bad guys in Die Hard 2?
- absolutely flies off the fucking handle - - "stay safe everyone" - Let's try breaking down your screed using the same tools I just suggested to Ben: "He's just closed a $50 billion annual budget agency" So the fact of the matter is that USAID has been rolled into State, near as we can tell, and it'll be tough to figure out what happens next. Another thing to consider is that USAID is everywhere the CIA wants to be. I'm so old that I remember when the liberals hayyyyyyyyyyted USAID because it mostly exists to distribute money to rebels under embargo by congress. "turns out USAID was pretty integral in pushing for the end of apartheid, btw" Do you remember Apartheid? I do. It was this thing the Reagan administration propped up because the two places to buy titanium in the world were the USSR and South Africa. Back in the '60s and '70s the CIA successfully purchased Soviet titanium through shell companies (every A-12 OXCART and SR-71 that ever flew was figuratively born in the USSR) but by the '80s the Soviets were wise. It took fifteen years for congress to finally get some sanctions through and then when the Reagan administration needed money that could go to South Africa despite the sanctions? There was USAID. Look - you can't hate the World Bank and love USAID. They're the same sort of organization, except one of them is pretty much riddled with spooks. So whatever you love about USAID, guaranteed it'll be back next quarter because that's how the CIA rolls. "The democrats announced this afternoon that they'll make more laws that ensure this is all illegal. OK! It already is all illegal." "Illegal" doesn't mean "you can't do it." "Illegal" means "you'll possibly face consequences, depending on how white and rich you are." Remember Brad DeJoy and the post office? This is that. There are things that can be done and things that can't be and what you've got is pen-testing and flooding of zones. "Again, I'm sorry, it is so fucked to believe this, but I think it is a total waste of time to gameplan electoral strategies." You're not sorry, you're playing your favorite game. Nothing that has happened in the past two weeks gives you any juice to lean into that, you're just leaning into that because it's fun to lean into that. It's the rationalization of your panic and writing it down makes it feel more true. "In fact it's a little fuckin' hilarious to imagine Trump or JD or anyone MAGA now being like "Well, the people have spoken at the ballot box, I guess, and my feelings are a little hurt... y'know, I thought I did a good job.. Oh well, guess I'll head back home. Thanks for the chance, America!!" This is all happening because Trump won the (conditional) popularity contest. Trump's ideas did not win the popularity contest, which is why our trade war lasted approximately six hours. JD Vance has never won a popularity contest. He barely made it into the Senate, and made it in by less of a margin than anything else Republican. The thing about populists and demagogues is their populism and demagoguery isn't readily transferrable - You remember Duterte, you don't remember who came after Duterte. You remember Berlusconi, you don't remember who came after Berlusconi. More than that, Trump's ability to act hinges on his popularity. Trump, more than anyone, knows that his life got progressively harder the more people he pissed off. He'd never been President before so he didn't know the lay of the land, but his entire existence has been pissing off the people he can get away with pissing off and fellating the people he can't. Last time around? He fellated the Russians. This time around? He's recognizing that fellating the Russians didn't keep him from being impeached twice. " the last section of a rather strange announcement " Sovereign wealth funds aren't weird, they just aren't American (because Americans aren't cool with the word "sovereign"). You wanna see America's Sovereign Wealth Fund? It's called the IMF. It used to be called "Bretton Woods" but we had to default on our Vietnam debt. That whole "sovereign wealth fund" canard is because Trump doesn't have an obvious mechanism to keep Tik Tok afloat that doesn't involve selling it to Elon, and even Trump doesn't want to give Elon that much power. "This is my truth, and unfortunately, in this truth, increasingly, it's beneficial for the entire planet if other Americans also understand it. So.. Fuck I'm evangelical now. Ugh." This is you, running around with your hair on fire, because it's what you see everyone else doing. In order to get here you had to embrace howlers like As if Project 2025 weren't the backbone of the Harris campaign. Everyone. Everyone thought they'd gun it out of the gate like this. How many "dictator on day 1" commercials did you watch? See, I know you were there for the first Trump administration. We watched it together. It was a man who was bad at government throwing elbows to see if he could get his place in line. I'm not seeing how this is any different - it's stupider, it's more venal, but it's the same fucking show dude. And you know it. And you survived it. And embracing the panic? Did that actually help last time?
Yes, this is "merely" Project 2025, one might say, but nobody, nobody thought they'd gun it out of the gate like this
I have a terrible track record of responding lately so here is just one thing: It's very clear that the dems didn't really believe their own rhetoric about fascism and the "end of democracy" or else they wouldn't have shied away from it because of slightly disfavorable focus group testing results, and certainly because if they believed it, they wouldn't still be leaning hard into electoralism, as they still are. That was pretty disillusioning for me. I'm good though! Tone of my voice would be illuminating, I have come to realize just how much is lost in these text-only expressions. It's lots. I'm not advising anything crazy, even tried not to sow any distrust, beating around the fact that I think we should all take a hard look at the trust we have in our social networks. Signal app audio connection test later today. I hope. It's been an insane day for me, so far. Nothing to do with any of this. Just workin'.
Honestly, it’s because they know better. The fascist thing was a counter to flagging interest in their own ideas. Their ideas have nothing for average people, it’s all about set asides for minorities, and quite often those are only accessible to those minorities who are already middle class. Or maybe they have a plan to … make sure prisoners and grade schoolers can get cross-sex hormones. That doesn’t excite anyone who works a regular job and is hoping to afford Top Ramen after paying rent. It doesn’t help people who were tricked into college and will be paying for their four year degree into their 40s. It doesn’t help millennials who are literally praying for a housing collapse so they can finally dream of buying a tiny house in which to raise a family. When you can’t convince people that you can make their life better, the only thing you actually have is standing in the center stage screeching to anyone who will listen that those guys over there are going to steal your democracy. Now don’t misunderstand Trump is a twat and he’s going to try to get away with stuff. But as you say, if the democrats actually thought he was going to “end democracy “, they would not stand for it. They’d have too much to lose as opposition parties tend to end up dead if democracy actually dies.
I think what you don't/refuse to understand is that it's like this: You go to a bar. Someone insults you mildly. You fly into a rage and act like you're going to pummel the shit out of that someone, except your friends are holding you back. You feel better, your honor is restored, you stood up for yourself, hooray for you. Except your friends are suddenly apologizing for you, they're having to get physically violent with you, they're involved in a scene, and their whole night has just been given over to caretaking because their friend is too fucking weak to solve his own problems. If you were good you wouldn't spew this up where other people have the option of responding to it. You're looking for an audience, which means you're trying out your ideas. Maybe you're good now? 'cuz the thing is, people howl onto the Internet for affirmation or reassurance and once they have it, they get their dopamine. BlueSky? that's a place for affirmation. I noped out of that place the day after Trump was shot because it's a bunch of '00s bloggers and former gifted kids wittily describing the end of the world to each other and god help you if you have an even vaguely dissenting opinion. Here? I'ma level with you. It's fucking exhausting. It fucking killed my whole day having to write that. I couldn't fucking eat until about 20 minutes ago. I worry about this shit. But I wrote it, because you needed to hear it. I write it to Ben, because he needs to hear it. I wrote it to Spence, because he needed to hear it - until he chose the drugs. Until he chose "well actually an insurance executive is allllllllllllllmost as bad as Osama bin Laden" because he spends all day hanging out with his junkie friends who roll around in the crack shack blowing smoke up each other's asses about the virtue of shooting a bitch rather than the pragmatic impacts of shooting a bitch. And the real problem is you think that leaning on friends and family for your strength doesn't cost them anything. I bailed on this place for what, four months? Because you guys lean on me so reliably to put a positive spin on things that you think it's my job. You think I can put a positive spin on everything. When Ben decided to snark about the positive spin I'd put on the collapse of the liberal court it was too fucking much, dude. Because I - and those of us who pay attention all the time, rather than when we've read something in The Atlantic - have long been warning about Mitch McConnell's ultimate mission to deliver a conservative supermajority to the Supreme Court. Because I - and those of us who pay attention all the time - actually assess the threat. You read "hurricane coming." I read "hurricane coming." I go "well, it looks like it's coming close, we need to board up the windows, we definitely need to leave, is the car gassed up, do we have somewhere to stay, what is it going to look like when we come back, what are our options." You go "WEEEEEEERALLLGONNNADYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEwhargarbl" until someone slaps you because you want the slap. You need the slap. You're too lazy to find your own center so you make someone else find it for you. And you don't realize how much energy you're taking away from people who are trying to find a path forward. And the worse part is if you don't get the slap, you have no way to switch from useless, inchoate panic to problem solving. Your internal support has atrophied so much that if you can't find your external support, you collapse. If you were good? You wouldn't do this shit in the middle of the night. If you weren't leaning into it? You'd react to the news, rather than the reaction to the reaction to the news. If you were even-keeled about it? You wouldn't go from zero to Air Pinochet at the slightest story prompt. And I'll keep doing it because I know you need it. But fuckin' hell man it takes it out of me.I'm good though! Tone of my voice would be illuminating,
I'm not worth that toll on you, homie. I apologize, I will stop. But I will catch you soon.
You know, the more I look at it? If I were Trump, I'd give Musk free reign to break everything he can touch, piss off everyone he talks to, ruffle every feather he sees, and generally act like a magnum jackass until the whole country is at wit's end. Then I'd go "I alone can fix it" and cut him off entirely to twist in the fucking wind. We're talking about a man who is entirely focused on how Forbes reports his wealth. He hides his tax returns because they report his wealth as less than he brags about. And he's resoundingly beaten every Democrat out there; the only opposition he has is other populist billionaires. Elon Musk is doing whatever the fuck he wants because Trump is letting him. Trump has a get-out-of-jail-free card from the goddamn Supreme Court. My only wonder is how bad trump thinks this needs to get before he casts Elon into the pit.
The child hacker crew has been intercepted (need an account to view, sorry, not my privacy setting): https://bsky.app/profile/missmouse.bsky.social/post/3lhak2oufzc2l Anyone with no bluesky account: It's a video of someone mildly harassing, following a bit close, etc. some young white guys outside OPB as they grab delivery food. The takeaway is that some random bluesky user has managed to make touch with the young coup officers on scene, while congressional members, of either party, members of the media, or literally anyone else FOR ~36 HOURS were like "oh but noo it's cold out there and my showey show's onnnnnnn". Wired got the IDs on these guys earlier this evening, I won't post here. Five or six very young men, probably at least one foreign national among them. Besides Elon. fuckin' amazing times. Sorry the edits are shifting. edit: People are starting to organize a march on DC this Wednesday, Feb. 5th. That's all I know, it's only beginning. It might not even crystallize. But I think people are pretty mad. edit 2: one thing I have learned is that you can now begin to trust your instincts better than entire newsdesks regarding how you perceive severity and immediacy of threat to what's going on. Most Americans have been kept in the dark about the (latest) administrative coup attempt we just had. It's not like a "get on the Sunday shows, like usually, everyone!" thing, this is when you cable-mount Bernie up on a steeple downtown or something. Trump & Elon's plan (it seems fairly joint for now) is to intentionally create mass civil unrest, provoke riots, and declare martial law, seize emergency powers, and blame the migrant o' tha day. Hegseth and the much more competent military personnel will button up DC real tight in the coming future, per request. And that'll really put a damper on any sort of marching. Political organizing in resistance to Trump will soon be declared illegal, or will see laws enforced illegally against organizers, you get it. When I see people engaging in electoralism, I do not engage anymore. We cannot be one step behind. ESPECIALLY ME. THEY FUCKING GOT ME LAST WEEK, in the truly swift deployment of all these fuckups. I didn't see it comin' like that. But... sadly I think that concludes the American experiment, unless you can name me the people planning on wrestling our Treasury back. The only hope we have is a fight between Musk and Trump. Guaranteed massive collateral carnage. So, to clarify. We are fucked.