— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2025ADDED: In the same interview, a joint interview with Trump, Trump also used an illness metaphor. From the transcript:
They never talk about where the money is going. They just talk about, “It’s a constitutional crisis.” It’s so sad. And honestly, I think they’re bad people. I used to give them the benefit of the doubt, but you almost think they hate the country. I think they hate the country. They’re sick people.
I can't figure out who said this first — but I heard it from one progressive who was describing other progressives — They're sick people stealing each other's medicine.
But watch out for reasoning by metaphor... especially this metaphor of disease (see "Illness as Metaphor" by Susan Sontag)... and especially if you've got enemies hot to frame you as a Nazi (Hitler called Jews "a racial tuberculosis" and said "We must exterminate the Jew as one exterminates a pestilent bacillus").
Posts
85 comments:
I agree.
Heh.
At the end of the day, what are you for, Democrats?
Bureaucrats? Waste? Theft?
Musk is spot on.
Leftism is a societal cancer. And it's Stalinist DEI/politically correctness is an autoimmune syndrome equivalence of HIV, designed to prevent the body from fighting off the malignancy.
I read a book about the beginning of PayPal. It was written by employee #3; I can’t recall his name.
Millions was flying out the door every day. The thieves were the regular suspects from Russia, Ukraine, China and Nigeria.
Elon is an expert at uncovering fraud. PayPal got the fraud under control. PayPal was the beginning of Elon’s fortune.
Democrats: Feces of Failure
"That's how we knew." That bore repeating, obviously. Sometimes I forget just how much experience Musk has in various technologically challenging industries. I'm glad he's hiring young smart people who can do this in the future with whatever challenges we face.
The entire reason behind made up problems like climate change, DEI, reparations, etc. is to rob taxpayers of money so the fraudsters can collect it, donate some of it back to the political enablers, and live a lavish lifestyle with the rest. It’s got to stop.
A perfectly logical explanation.
Opponents have now shifted to "everybody is against waste, but this has to be done in a careful and methodical way," i.e., never. Musk is absolutely right. Those are the people with something to hide.
Painting the opposition as harmful bacteria is a nice touch, and very close to the mark.
Chris Coons from DE is apoplectic. I’d go after him first.
You’d think anyone committing fraud would be smart enough to not out themselves by complaining so vociferously. I guess they’re not that smart.
Nobody likes change, even when it will make them better in the end. I suspect in a few years, we will have stories, not via the MSM, about former federal employees that enjoy their new jobs in the regular workforce. If not, I'll at least say I'm happy to no longer be a government contractor. I never kept one of those jobs for longer than 5 years. I've been with my current company for over a decade, because they treat employees better and pay more.
"Opponents have now shifted to "everybody is against waste, but this has to be done in a careful and methodical way,"
Yep. Let's do it the old way. Identify billions of waste in, say, medicare payments. Bemoan the fact. Then announce nothing to be done.
Look at the firing of IG's. But, but, but the JOB of the IGs is to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse, cries the left. OK, then, why is DOGE finding such easy targets if these IGs were doing their jobs?
And the call that we are gutting the bureaucracy? So far the vast majority of layoffs are probationary employees. (I still have contacts with several Feds that confirm this). But to hear the MSM the firings are the best and brightest, the experienced... the valuable. Feh.
They are cutting needed services, necessary research, assistance to millions here and overseas, and removing protections for workers and consumers. Disgraceful.
Welp, it's true.
"They are cutting needed services, necessary research, assistance to millions here and overseas, and removing protections for workers and consumers. Disgraceful....."
What as become obvious to many, is that the poor quality of accounting and the lack of an audit trail has made it impossible to show what is good spending, and what is bad spending. Does that sound familiar? Does it sound like, say, a recent election result, in the past 5 years? Yes, it does. And the voters have spoken - haven't they?
'Hard resets' are sometimes a necessity, especially when you have lost sight of the baseline. There are always some that plead for the comfort and familiarity of their habits, thinking they represent safety, without wanting to know whether these are destructive or beneficial.
there are Sob Stories, in the Iowa media (KCCI, Des Moines Register), about WHAT A TERRIBLE HEARTBREAK it is that some Federal employees have lost their "dream jobs"..
Serious Question:
WHY is it FINE, for a pipeline worker (or a coal miner (or a Tractor factory workers)) to lose THEIR jobs..
but it is A TERRIBLE HEARTBREAK for Government worker to lose Their jobs?
I no longer care, about ANY Government worker..
let them 'learn to code'.. and find out how That is working out
Every time I hear a politician or news "celebrity" express concern about these "unfair reductions" my first thought is "How much money are you receiving from these targeted programs? Do you have a spouse, mistress or family member that is being specifically affected by these reductions?"
Washington has become so in-bred with the purpose of perpetuating the grift. There used to be surveys of the wealthiest counties in the U.S. Twenty years ago, none of those counties were close to the DC Beltway. Now, a majority of those counties are in the DC area. I wonder what caused the shift?
I've spent a lot of my life trying to clean up broken federal agencies. There's a group culture and structural blindness baked into statism (to include establishment Rs such as Mitch McConnell and John McCain). They cannot see because they do not want to see; it's not antibodies so much as maintaining the plausibile deniability cover story. Everything in their lives was built on the state system, so they'll be penniless without it. They now have nothing to lose in denial, and those were the rules when they started their careers.
Behind the DEI executives, university administrators are likely the most overpaid group in the country or the world. They do not need $200K, $300K, or $900K (i.e., Harvard's Caludine Gay) for what is a fixed and formal role without a meaningful impact. See the student loan and research grant money funnels that keep them fat and happy.
"They are cutting needed services..."
That's a long list there, let's start with the first item. What services have been cut? Who needs them? Who's paying for them? Do the people paying have unmet needs of their own that have been ignored in order to address the needs of others? With the understanding that there are more needed services than available resources, why are these needs more important than others that go unfulfilled?
One more thought- seems to me, fraud redirects money away from needed services. Unless one is personally benefitting from it, why anybody would be opposed to identifying fraud is a mystery to me.
Another sure indicator of fraud and waste is when enormous amounts of money go out the door for "projects," but, somehow, almost nothing gets accomplished. Think about EV chargers, "affordable housing," broadband internet for "underserved communities," etc. etc. etc. I read this morning that Stacy Abrams started a "non-profit" in 2023 with an initial contribution of $100, to which in 2024 the EPA granted $2 billion (B as in Billion!). Supposedly, to promote electrification of everything: stoves, heating, everything. That's pure left-wing Democrat slush fund. Grants like that are a huge problem, with no accountability. People tend to get riled up when the government tries to do stuff like that directly, but when they just push money out the door to shady "non-profits" like Stacy's, that makes it too hard to follow.
tastid212 said...
Painting the opposition as harmful bacteria is a nice touch, and very close to the mark.
Actually, Musk is comparing fraudsters' reaction to antibodies, and Doge to invaders of the body politic. A titillating 1960s scuba metaphor is from the movie "Fantastic Voyage."
Watch as the men enthusiastically "grab" at the antibodies covering Raquel Welch's tight wet suit after she's attacked as a foreign invader.
"[W]hen you're Doge and they're under attack by Deep State antibodies, they let you do it. You can do anything."
"I no longer care, about ANY Government worker.."
I suspect all these "Poor government workers losing their jobs" stories being pushed by the media will not obtain the results they're looking for.
The overwhelming response I'm seeing to them from private sector workers is "Welcome to the party, pal!"
In my many years handling finances with a large non-profit, I went through more than a dozen routine internal audits. In the early years, I feared I might be embarrassed by some error in process or execution. I soon gained sufficient confidence in my competence that my response to an internal audit notification became "Bring it on!" I knew my processes were solid and if they weren't, I wanted to know about it so it could be fixed ASAP.
I definitely think there are few people in Washington right now that are responding to DOGE with "Bring it on!"
IMHO, the most pernicious corporate attitude developed during the baby boom dominance of the business world was to stay out of the weeds and to remain focused on the 30,000 ft view. I always thought how in hell are you supposed to figure out what is going on from 30,000 ft if you have no idea what the actual conditions are like on the ground where the rubber meets the road. Elon is all about the weeds.
Another thought on the "needed services are being cut" topic- there's no reason anyone who thinks this is disgusting can't get together with other like-minded people and volunteer to pay for those services, you know.
Two laconic jerks (LCs) discussing Musk's observation:
LC1: "Nail."
LC2: "Hammer."
LC1 & LC2: "Head."
@JRoberts: I definitely think there are few people in Washington right now that are responding to DOGE with "Bring it on!"
The Bernie Madoff pyramid/Ponzi case brought to light the frequent lack of skill in the government. The regulators didn't know what to look for nor how to interpret what they saw. Some career people dislike the politicians but lack the ability to respond, and must comply with every administration or risk losing their jobs.
Where do you think Trump and the DOGE team got all the information to go into the new Executive Orders and DOGE efforts? Trump 2025 is so fast and focused that he must have had many insiders feeding him ideas and language.
"Opponents have now shifted to "everybody is against waste, but this has to be done in a careful and methodical way,"
The other day I was at the gym, and Fox News was on one of the screens (subtitles only). They were covering Border patrol arrests of criminal illegal "migrants." They had Henry Cisneros on, who was saying that it was absolutely correct to be arresting the criminals, but that it needed to be done carefully and 'fairly.'
The interviewer just kept asking him--"Why wasn't this done earlier?" He of course didn't answer the question.
@JRoberts: I definitely think there are few people in Washington right now that are responding to DOGE with "Bring it on!"
Yeah, the voices of bureaucrats saying "bring it on!" are overwhelming.
I'm sure that will start any time now.
DOGE:
Department of Government Exaggeration.
On a par with the claim DOGE had uncovered people marked as 150 years old who had been receiving social security benefits. Ready to allege fraud before talking to COBOL programmers who knew that it was a result of a standard COBOL practice to use 1875-05-20* as a sentinel value to mark missing data.
In the best case, Musk calls anything he doesn't understand "fraud." But he also seems to call anything he doesn't like "fraud."
*1875-05-20 is used because it's the epoch for the date system in many COBOL systems. It's just like Excel's use of 1900 as a date epoch.
"Lucille Ballers said...
They are cutting needed services, necessary research, assistance to millions here and overseas, and removing protections for workers and consumers. Disgraceful."
36TRILLION dollars in debt. They will have a chance to prove your statement. Make your case, on a case by case basis. It's like an automatic subscription, if you not actively monitor it, they jack up the price underneath you. Every dollar should be able to be traced. If it cannot, it is graft and corruption.
The entire reason behind made up problems like climate change, DEI, reparations, etc. is to rob taxpayers of money so the fraudsters can collect it, donate some of it back to the political enablers, and live a lavish lifestyle with the rest. It’s got to stop.
When the governmental climate authorities in Australia deleted all their original historical records of temperatures and replaced them with "calibrated" measurements, I figured something like this was afoot. When they explained that it was to compensate for the "urban heat island" effect, but the manipulations in fact erased the warming of the 1930's and inflated the more recent measurements, which is EXACTLY THE FUCKING OPPOSITE DIRECTION of what a correction for urban heat islands would do, I knew for sure it was falsified from top to bottom in order to swindle money from the taxpayers.
Now my only question is, are they doing it for the grant money and tenure alone? Do these whores really sell themselves that cheaply? Or is someone actually handing them cash under the table? Or are they doing it for political purposes, because they are Gramscian termites who want to stampede us into coercive left-wing social engineering that would never win a democratic vote without a socially contagious moral panic?
I'm hoping that DOGE does not overlook the climatistas when rooting out the fraud and waste and abuse over the next 4 years.
Amazing how many pig-ignorant leftists who can't balance a checkbook are suddenly experts on legacy COBOL/VSAM programming practices.
The "Bat Signal" really went out loud and clear this week, didn't it, coprophage?
@Kaki: *1875-05-20 is used because it's the epoch for the date system in many COBOL systems. It's just like Excel's use of 1900 as a date epoch.
If you ever see data inexplicibly clustered around Ghana, Africa, it's likely because the geolocation codes were set to 0 Latitude, 0 Longitude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Island
LLR-democratical Rich: "*1875-05-20 is used because it's the epoch for the date system in many COBOL systems. It's just like Excel's use of 1900 as a date epoch."
LOL
This has been debunked a hundred times. But then again, Rich is still stuck on russia collusion and all the other hoaxes launched over the last 10 years so he's not really capable of adapting his latest BS to reality.
"Another thought on the 'needed services are being cut' topic- there's no reason anyone who thinks this is disgusting can't get together with other like-minded people and volunteer to pay for those services, you know."
So true. I had the same thought after Roe v. Wade was struck down. All the pro-abortionists kept trotting out stories about 12-year-old incest victims who wouldn't be able to get abortions. But for the same money they were spending on pushing that narrative, they could easily have flown every pre-teen incest victim to California or NY to get an abortion, by luxury jet.
It's like an automatic subscription, if you not actively monitor it, they jack up the price underneath you.
Great analogy, Dude1394. I'm stealing it.
They are cutting needed services
Like multi-billion dollar programs resulting in 8 electric car charging stations, or 18 miles of high speed railroad track connecting nowhere to nowhere in California, or broadband subsidies for underserved communities that haven't connected a single household to the Internet? Those sorts of necessary services?
necessary research
We'll have more money for necessary research once we do away with all the unnecessary research, not to mention the lavish overhead charges that feed the bloated empire-building of university administrators.
assistance to millions here and overseas
We'll have much more ability to help our own citizens once we have clawed back the hundreds of billions of tax dollars that now flow to the Democrat Party and its ward heelers and cronies, to lazy government paper-pushers sending unread memos to each other, and to "charities" that are importing and lavishly housing millions of illiterate, dependent Third World peasants to replace us and outvote us.
As for those overseas, FUCK THEM. Not one single dollar to foreigners while American citizen taxpayers in western North Carolina, whose homes were destroyed in a storm months ago, are still living in tents and trailers in the middle of winter.
and removing protections for workers and consumers
What would those be? Not a single law has been changed yet under Trump.
Disgraceful.
Oh ho ho, you want disgraceful, just wait until DOGE has run through the Pentagon and the Department of Education.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrJhQpvlkLA
Great Rogan interview with Mike Benz about USAID and what the money is being used for in foreign countries….
Drago. The current meme in FB is that ,"There can't be Social Security fraud! Every funeral parlor has to fill out a federal form to report the death to the government!"
Yes. They are that stupid.
I don't care what Hilter said. Hitler liked oatmeal, Beethoven, and apple strudel. Guess Trump had better hate those things, or "He's just like Hitler".
Some people, particularly the old Left, have all these Nazi phrases and Hitler quotes in their head, and alarm bells go off when they hear them. Instead of thinking that's well crazy and irrelevant to 2025 USA, we have somehow pat their hand and go "there, there, so-and-so isn't the new hitler". Fuck that.
Hitler and the Nazis died 80 years ago. Its time to assign them to the Dustbin of History and MOVE ON!
You’d think anyone committing fraud would be smart enough to not out themselves by complaining so vociferously. I guess they’re not that smart.
Let me start by saying I'm 100% in favor of what the DOGE teams are doing, and I do suspect that among those howling about it are a cohort, possibly a large one, who benefit from the current no-meaningful-oversight system.
But - because I don't want "my" side to behave like the other side, I would like to point out that this reasoning is what the left and the establishment right used on Trump supporters from at least the 2016 election on: 1. If there's smoke, there's fire, and 2. They wouldn't be defending him unless they knew he was guilty, because you don't have to defend the innocent - their innocence is all the defense they need.
Yes, I recognize that those same people manufactured the smoke, and yes, I recognize that those same people likewise howl about injustice in the legal system whenever a member of an oppressed group is accused of a crime. I'm just saying, let's see the receipts. If, say, McConnell (might as well pick on someone nominally on "my" side) objects strenuously to a particular program's being cut, let's find out how he's connected to that program - without manufacturing any smoke.
Rusty: "Drago. The current meme in FB is that ,"There can't be Social Security fraud! Every funeral parlor has to fill out a federal form to report the death to the government!"
Yes. They are that stupid."
They are indeed. And the dem collapse in the polls, particularly among young people should be setting off warning klaxons everywhere, but these buffoons are just that: buffoons.
I'm just saying, let's see the receipts.
Jamie is the voice of reason as always.
When they stop calling me a Nazi, I'll stop thinking it about them being fascists. Except those who actually do believe in Maoism, like Anita Dunn.
The disheartening thing about this long overdue purge is the number of morons who hate Trump, and now Musk, more than they hate the corruption and waste. It goes along with hating Jews more than terrorism and mass murder.
But - because I don't want "my" side to behave like the other side, I would like to point out that this reasoning is what the left and the establishment right used on Trump supporters from at least the 2016 election on: 1. If there's smoke, there's fire, and 2. They wouldn't be defending him unless they knew he was guilty, because you don't have to defend the innocent - their innocence is all the defense they need.
I recall the first part, but not the second. My recollection was that there was no defense, that "everyone knows" Trump is guilty, along with anyone remotely associated with him (including any lawyers brave or foolish enough to try to defend him).
I too would like to see the receipts. I do not agree that just because the left used stupid arguments, the right should abandon the aggressive pursuit of fraud, or calling out whatever seems fraudulent on its face. The "Marquis of Queensbury" rule for Republicans is one of the big reasons we got into this mess in the first place. Full speed ahead! Let the left try to defend themselves.
I suspect all these "Poor government workers losing their jobs" stories being pushed by the media will not obtain the results they're looking for.
Every single "story" I've seen are all suburban Karens with strawberry blonde hair. To the point they all look alike to me. Is Trump starting with the redheads and working his way up to blonde's and brunettes?
Rich, you're admitting that the SS administration doesn't have legitimate birthdates on a large number or recipients. Is that really the argument you want to be making? Does that not raise any questions in your mind?
What to make of all the SS recipients between 115 and 149, or between 151 and 350? You have any explanation for those.
And the call that we are gutting the bureaucracy? So far the vast majority of layoffs are probationary employees.
I saw one on X, crying that she was fired from her job (to assess habitat conservation for species). Perhaps it's more complicated than it sounds, but it sounds like something that could be done faster and better with AI.
All of these probationary people going online and crying about being let go. Were there normally this many new employees each year or did the Biden administration go on some hiring bloat exercise to try to get as many people on the government payroll as possible before their term ended?
Me:
2. They wouldn't be defending him unless they knew he was guilty, because you don't have to defend the innocent - their innocence is all the defense they need.
boatbuilder:
I recall the first part, but not the second. My recollection was that there was no defense, that "everyone knows" Trump is guilty, along with anyone remotely associated with him
That's more or less what I meant - that to the left and establishment right, Trump supporters could not possibly be acting in good faith in defending him, because he was self-evidently guilty and therefore all who supported him, knowing that, must also have evil intent.
More than half of the wealthiest counties in America are around DC. Where does that wealth come from? Mining? Farming? Logging? Fisheries? None of the above. And yet, it does come from resource extraction.
It saddens me to be a wet blanket, but I have very carefully read multiple stories about the old people in the SSA database, and while some of them assume these people are receiving benefits, none of them explicitly say so. That would appear to be something it should be quite easy to check, and the fact that Musk has not said they are getting checks makes me suspect that most of them aren't.
Even if they aren't getting checks, and I agree most probably are not, having those numbers as active and living in the SS database still provides massive avenues for fraud. The Big 3 credit monitors all rely on that data being accurate, for instance. And then, identity theft by illegals. It's still a massive problem. No private company would be permitted to keep records that shoddy.
Waste and Abuse are to a large degree in the eye of the beholder. Fraud not so much. Interesting how they are never able to separate them out.
And I should add to boatbuilder - I wasn't trying to say we (meaning DOGE) should slow down or pull punches or in any way handicap ourselves in carrying out this important audit. And I absolutely think that, as I said, there's a cohort and potentially a large one of objectors who object because they're profiting from the current system.
I was only saying that I'm all in favor of Musk's and Trump's commitment to transparency and want to see it continue, in all areas. The left's hurt feelings when it's revealed that some of their pet projects are stupid mean nothing - the criterion is, does this spending benefit the US? And the (possible to probable) grifters' wailing and gnashing of teeth over the interruption of their grift is a feature, not a bug, as far as I'm concerned.
But they still own the media. And there will be those among the American people who can be persuaded by talking points such as we've heard here - "humanitarian aid programs" and "vital services" are Musk's targets, that sort of thing. So we need to keep seeing those receipts, so that the grift will be undeniable and the remedy embraced by as many Americans as possible. Think of it as an extension of "too big to rig."
Musk's DOGE touted slashing an $8 billion contract. It actually cut $8 million. ~ USA Today
So, their claimed savings were just off by a factor of 1,000, which is 100,000%?
That's a mere rounding error in the alternate reality in which Drago and MAGA currently exist.
It’s just the first discovered error. There will be plenty more. And they will be followed up by lies. That’s a lot of zeros to make an error with.
I’ve been wondering if Musk’s personal fluffer Drago was psychologically prepared to encounter COBOL. It is, after all, widespread, and the amount of legacy code must be simply enormous. But it’s quite unlike the modern systems programming or scripting languages Musk’s kids might know. I’ll bet a few of them had aneurisms on sight, and most of the rest will eventually develop cancer of the semicolon.
Interesting how they are never able to separate [waste, fraud, and abuse] out.
Oh, I don't know that it's time to use the word "never" yet. But even if the systems they're investigating are so poorly designed, maintained, and used as to be ultimately unauditable (that sounds strangely familiar...), I don't think it would follow from that that we couldn't or shouldn't infer fraud, rather than "just" "eye of the beholder" waste and abuse.
Waste and Abuse are to a large degree in the eye of the beholder. Fraud not so much. Interesting how they are never able to separate them out.
I'll give you an easy definition of fraud in this context. It ought to be illegal for any NGO that takes government funds to spend ANY money on ANYTHING except transparently reported salaries and expenses, and aid to individuals as specified in their charter or bylaws. And we are using NGO's to do the job of government WAY too much, by intentional and deliberate design.
No more commingling of tax dollars and other funds, then laundering them through a web of other NGO's to deliver kickbacks to favored politicians and their cronies. If they are winding down a defunct non-profit organization that took tax dollars, they can by God give it all back to the Treasury instead of "donating" it elsewhere.
No more using money taken from taxpayers to support a selected political party or cause that they may oppose.
No more tax dollars spent by unknown, unaccountable activists with hidden agendas and self-interests, rather than government employees accountable to the voters by way of the President.
But it’s quite unlike the modern systems programming or scripting languages Musk’s kids might know
Musk's "kids" are only the four rather young men that the Left was able to doxx (and threaten, and threaten their families).
There are a couple of hundred more, and their ages run into the 50's and 60's. I'm guessing that Musk has the wherewithal to find someone who can read COBOL.
Checking in with
The Contarian
It’s easy to save billions in taxpayer funds when everything is made up 🤣
When DOGE claims they’ve saved $55 billion, you might expect that number to at least match the total of their own receipts. It doesn’t. Their own documents only add up to about $16 billion.
Congress should probably ask Musk where this saved $55 billion is. Or maybe he’s trying off-load Twitter onto the US government?
Maybe Kakistocracy finds COBOL very difficult, but that doesn't mean everybody else does.
LLR-democratical Rich (Kak) simply continues to embarrass himself day after day after day. Its fun to watch him get slapped down repeatedly only to return time and again to his previously proffered and rejected talking points.
Rich's serial prediction / assessment failures appear to be driven by a general ignorance of every major topic area that presents itself on a typical political blog.
As a clear Harry Sisson-type, best suited for moron blogs where the lefties are unchallenged, Rich has become increasingly unhinged, in a LLR-democratical Chuck way.
Indeed, there are those that wonder if the many apparent similarities between Rich's and the departed-from-blog psycho Chuck's posts truly reveals something nefarious.
I will let others address that.
First of all, little coprophile, Musk hasn't saved anything. He has recommended savings. The cutting is done by the executive branch or congress. You do know how our republic works, don't you?
It is nice to see New Soviet Democraticals collapsing in support across the nation and seeing them, like Abacus Boy Rich, really believe that the answer is to take their failed policies, strategies and tactics and just push them to "11"!
Yeah! That's gotta work, right?!
LOL
The ‘kids’ could learn COBOL over a weekend if they need to…
tcrosse: "Maybe Kakistocracy finds COBOL very difficult, but that doesn't mean everybody else does."
Rich's COBOL ignorance was exposed fully on day 1 of this subject being raised. And Rich could have spent the intervening days better familiarizing himself with factual content.
But he is nothing more than a democratical NPC so that was never going to happen.
Ever.
At risk of an ACKTUALLY moment, I want to point out that Trump did not compare them to a disease, he said they were sick. The one can affect other people (being a disease), the other is a problem they have themselves (being sick), and seems to me more likely to make one feel sorry for them than to hate them.
What's really interesting, Rich, is that the same comment was posted on another site. So are you "Anonymous Coward," or did you steal something from "Anonymous Coward?"
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/19/its-easy-to-save-billions-in-taxpayer-funds-when-everything-is-made-up/
"Anonymous Coward says:
February 19, 2025 at 10:19 am
See, when DOGE claims they’ve saved $55 billion, you might expect that number to at least match the total of their own receipts. It doesn’t. Their own documents only add up to about $16 billion,
Congress should probably ask Musk where this saved $55 Billion is. Or maybe he’s trying offload Twitter on to the Federal government?"
Well, the name certainly fits...
The kleptocracy assures sustainable progress through redistributive change forcing insidious capital (e.g. retained earnings) losses in the domestic and foreign economies. Still, perceptions of affordable are... were empathetic and politically convenient in Democratic forms of governance. Excess murder, rape, and other queer orientations, too.
Kaki, I explained this yesterday. It's almost like you don't listen! Many mainframe computer programs are written in COBOL, and while COBOL uses words that look like English, they don't always mean what you might expect. But that is mostly irrelevant, because data are not stored in COBOL. Or C++, or FORTRAN, or Java, or any other programming language. They are stored in files, on magnetic tapes or hard drives. The files stored on mainframes use an IBM proprietary character code called EBCDIC, which is different than the ASCII code used by Windows, Apple and Linux systems. But translating it is very simple, for a computer, and once that is done, you can use Excel spreadsheets to process it. No COBOL needed.
"The ‘kids’ could learn COBOL over a weekend if they need to…"
Don't you believe it. Fortunately, you don't need to understand the programs to perform statistical queries against the data. They probably haven't even looked at any COBOL.
Lucille Ballers said...
"They are cutting needed services, necessary research, ...."
2/20/25, 8:17 AM
[I'd use italics, but I'm afraid to....] :-(
Nit-picky me just wants to point out that this is a classic example of the "begging the question" logic fallacy.
That is, "needed" and "necessary" are unproven assumptions tossed into the sentence.
Are these services and research *really* "needed" and necessary? ALL of them? Maybe just SOME of them? If not all, then to what extent, how many, are NOT "needed" and "necessary"?
If one accepts that not all are such, then why the objection to a careful review to find out which those are, and terminate them"? ...a review and evaluation that, to my understanding, has not been done since before Noah sailed the Ark? (Ok, that's an exaggeration for emphasis.) :- )
Like, maybe this:
https://tinyurl.com/2pa977ep
"Waste and Abuse are to a large degree in the eye of the beholder. Fraud not so much."
Your point is well taken. But I think that when we discover that the EPA gave two billion dollars to Stacey "Tank" Abrams, we can safely conclude that both fraud and abuse are present, and waste is what was planned. At best.
"Kaki, I explained this yesterday. It's almost like you don't listen!"
Now that we are seeing where his comments actually come from, it makes more sense. It's clear by his interactions here that he doesn't understand a single thing that he posts about.
"When DOGE claims they’ve saved $55 billion, you might expect that number to at least match the total of their own receipts. It doesn’t. Their own documents only add up to about $16 billion."
Reading a bit about this, it seems to be a bit about the total value of the contracts cancelled versus how much was left of the contract payments when cutoff. Working this through, I don't think this is the winning argument progressives think it is. DOGE only needs to point out the total value of all the programs cancelled was the amount they claimed, then admit much of that waste was already lost because it was spent prior to Trump's inauguration. And then note that the payments are no longer continuing and that DOGE will do what it can to claw back the payments made.
I think the majority of Americans will easily understand this, especially those that will ever care to know about the discrepancy in the first place. Especially since the discrepancies noted came from DOGE being transparent in the first place and people adding up DOGE's receipts. The notion that "DOGE claimed" is more of a narrative trick. DOGE also claimed by providing the receipts that they only saved the lower amount.
This is a Chicxulub Meteor dinosaur killer event. Adams, Bolton, Psaki, Rice, everyone who has taken USAID money is going to have to explain everything they did and will certainly have to explain how they turned a $250,000 salary into $15 million.
That will flow into the political consequences of that ngo spending. Who funneled money to color revolutions, who gave cash to terrorists, who paid for protestors. The earthquake as parted the veils, we can all see into the holy of holies, we can walk in the inner sanctum.
And Trump has no interest in giving anybody cover.
What intrigues me now is, why are the Democrats still going after Adams? You know he has a good deal of dirt on a lot of important people.
I can’t believe what this is making me feel now. When Beiden, the president of the US quietly whispers in public, “be a good democrat, Adams”.
I can see that the only way out may be to actually start killing some witnesses! And we are hearing that advocated now.
@Josephbleau: What intrigues me now is, why are the Democrats still going after Adams? You know he has a good deal of dirt on a lot of important people.
Trump used to be a NYC Democrat. He has the very recent Democrats RFK Jr. and Tulsi in his Cabinet. Today's Democrats are an entirely different beast than those who stuck to 1990s lefty standards.
Call it corruption or call it permanent TDS, but they've gone over the edge.
I presume the southernism, "Well, bless their hearts!" is still an acceptable denunciation of progressive leftist assholery, even if we can't say just how sick the bastards really are, exactly?
Post a Comment
Comments older than 2 days are always moderated. Newer comments may be unmoderated, but are still subject to a spam filter and may take a few hours to get released. Thanks for your contributions and your patience.