Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 16:05
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Our Government Is Experiencing a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly
Musk is moving fast and breaking important things
By Paul Krugman | Feb 17, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/our-government-is-experiencing-a
Last month SpaceX carried out a test launch of its in-development Starship rocket. Liftoff was achieved, but as the company later announced, “Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn.” In other words, it exploded.
It would be wrong to think of this explosion as a disaster; new products often experience failures during testing. That is, after all, why we test them. Still, the euphemistic language reeks of unwillingness to take responsibility and admit that things didn’t go as planned. But then again, what would you expect from a company owned by Elon Musk?
And here’s the thing: If a rocket blows up, you can build a new rocket and try again. “Move fast and break things” is sometimes an OK approach if the things in question are just hardware, which can be replaced. But what if the object that experiences “rapid unscheduled disassembly” is something whose continued functioning is crucial to people’s lives — say, something like the U.S. government?
This isn’t a hypothetical question: Musk, with backing from Donald Trump, is blowing up significant parts of the U.S. government as you read this. And we can already see the shape of multiple potential disasters.
The Muskenjugend — the mostly very young people Musk has hired to work at the Department of Government Efficiency, which isn’t actually a government department in any legal sense but which Trump has effectively given huge and probably unconstitutional power to remake federal agencies — generally seem to share three characteristics.
First, they all seem to be extreme right-wing ideologues: whenever journalists investigate the social media trail of one of Musk’s operatives, what they find is horrifying. For example, Marko Elez, who had access to the Treasury Department’s central payments system, had in the recent past advocated racism and eugenics.
Second, they don’t know anything about the government agencies they’re supposedly going to make more efficient. That’s understandable. The federal government has around 2 million workers, many — I would say the vast majority — performing important public services, in a huge variety of fields. You can’t parachute into a government agency and expect to know in a matter of days which if any programs and employees are dispensable.
But the third characteristic of the Muskenjugend is that, like Musk himself, they’re arrogant. They believe that they can parachute into agencies and quickly identify what should be cut.
So last week, when the Trump administration began laying off large numbers of probationary workers, the only real questions were how quickly it would become clear that essential government functions were being compromised and just how scary the damage would be.
And the answers were that the damage became obvious almost immediately, and some of it looks very scary indeed.
A word about language: the term “probationary workers” can sound as if we’re talking about problem cases, people who’ve had poor performance reviews or something. But all it means is employees who were hired relatively recently, usually within the past year, and as a result have weaker job protection than their more senior colleagues.
So what would be your worst nightmare about large, hastily announced job cuts? Maybe firing the people responsible for keeping our nuclear weapons secure? Sure enough, on Thursday night, according to CNN’s reporting, Trump officials fired more than 300 staffers at the National Nuclear Security Administration, apparently unaware that this agency oversees America’s nukes. (Maybe the name should have been a giveaway?)
The next day, realizing the enormity of the error, the agency tried to reinstate those workers — but was having trouble getting in touch, because the terminated workers had already been locked out of their government email acco
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Trump Is Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud: Federal Prisons Are Purposely Inhumane
By Akela Lacy | February 16, 2025, 6:30 a.m.
https://theintercept.com/2025/02/16/trump-pam-bondi-death-penalty-exec
utions-prisons/
Attorney General Pam Bondi issued last week several memos to all Department of Justice employees including one with the subject: “Reviving the Federal Death Penalty and Lifting the Moratorium on Federal Executions.” It detailed exactly how her agency will put into practice an executive order to restart federal executions that President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office.
https://theappeal.org/pam-bondi-attorney-general-memos/
https://www.justice.gov/ag/media/1388561/dl?inline
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-the-
death-penalty-and-protecting-public-safety/
The memo denounced the pause on federal executions under former President Joe Biden and claimed DOJ officials had neglected their jobs by upholding a moratorium on federal executions in place since 2021, which halted a killing spree launched by Trump in his first term. “The Department’s political leadership disregarded these important responsibilities and supplanted the will of the people with their own personal beliefs,” the memo read.
https://theintercept.com/series/out-for-blood/
While there is no evidence that the death penalty achieves its purported goal to deter crime, the Trump administration wants the federal government to direct substantial resources and dollars to carrying out more executions, more quickly. Through its executive actions and policy memos, the administration is also stating something that criminal justice and human rights advocates have long said: that conditions in many federal detention facilities are inhumane, and Trump wants to keep them that way.
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/13363/chapter/1
https://theintercept.com/2021/01/03/death-penalty-capital-punishment-c
ovid-abolition/
https://theintercept.com/2022/07/26/atlanta-prison-suicide-senate-inve
stigation/
In the January 20 executive order, Trump directed his attorney general to evaluate the conditions of confinement for the 37 people commuted from federal death row at the end of Biden’s term and “take all lawful and appropriate action to ensure that these offenders are imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.”
https://theintercept.com/2025/01/18/biden-federal-death-sentence-commu
tations/
The message is a direction to the federal government to use conditions of confinement as additional punishment — which is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, according to Miriam Gohara, a clinical professor of law at Yale University and a former federal public defender.
On top of that, it suggests that inhumane conditions in federal detention are the administration’s goal.
“The one thing that was clear from the order was that it sounded like the administration was going to try to influence placement of people, and try to do so under conditions that they called ‘monstrous’ in their order,” Gohara told The Intercept. Gohara spent over a decade representing clients sentenced to death in post-conviction litigation.
“Certainly, if I were leading the [Bureau of Prisons] or if I were working in the BOP, I wouldn’t want to suggest that there are any monstrous conditions in my facilities,” she said.
“That suggests that they’re actually encouraging the Bureau of Prisons to maintain monstrous conditions, or that they think they’re already monstrous conditions in the BOP somewhere, and that somebody could be put there. Which again, seems like a very odd thing for the executive to be saying about one of his agencies.”
The administration’s use of language describing federal detention as “monstrous” is on par with how Trump has spoken on criminal justice from the start, said death row attorney Dale Baich. He previously led the unit of the Arizona Federal Defender’s Office that represents people senten
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Hayden Davis exposes Trump and Melania for crypto insider trading alongside other crimes
By Jai Hamid for CryptoPolitan | Feb 17, 2025
https://cryptorank.io/news/feed/4529f-hayden-davis-exposes-trump-melan
ia
In a mind-blowing interview with Coffeezilla, Kelsier’s Hayden Davis, the self-proclaimed launch strategist behind multiple political meme coin launches, openly admitted to insider trading, sniper wallets, and market manipulation — implicating presidents Donald Trump and Javier Milei as well as First Lady Melania Trump.
He detailed how meme coins like LIBRA were rigged from the start, how insiders had pre-launch access to tokens, and how every major launch was nothing more than a calculated financial game. “This is an insiders’ game. It’s an unregulated casino,” Hayden said, confirming that early buyers at a private dinner in Washington, D.C., were given access to Trump’s token before the public.
“I thought some of these meme coins could turn into something real,” Hayden added. “But the reality is, it’s just a game. The people who know how to play win. The rest lose.” Mind you this is the guy who launched the $LIBRA token that wiped $4.6 billion from the market in six hours.
Trump’s meme coin was rigged from day one
Hayden shared that before Trump’s token launch, a small group of investors were granted exclusive pre-sale access at a valuation of $500 million. According to him, these buyers were let in before the contract address was made public, so that they could purchase at rock-bottom prices before the retail frenzy.
“They gave people special access to buy in before it launched,” Hayden said. “That’s what I was told.” When pressed on where this happened, he named Washington, D.C., as the location where the deal allegedly took place.
Melania’s token, Hayden admitted, followed the same playbook. He was directly involved in the launch and confirmed that his team sniped it. The goal, according to him, was to counteract external snipers, but in reality, it meant insiders once again took the best entry positions before the public.
“We weren’t the big sniper,” Hayden said. “That’s what we were trying to avoid.” But on-chain data tells a different story. A wallet tied to his operation received $1.5 million worth of Melania’s token from an address labeled ‘Melania D Liquidity 2.0.’ The tokens were then dumped, crushing the price and leaving retail investors with massive losses.
How sniping and insider deals keep the market rigged
More at https://cryptorank.io/news/feed/4529f-hayden-davis-exposes-trump-melan
ia
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Will I Still Get to Give My Elevator Pitch for the Rule of Law?
By Ken MacVey | Monday, Feb 17, 2025, 5:00AM
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2025/02/will-i-still-get-to-give
-my-elevator-pitch-for-the-rule-of-law.html
Consider: President Trump signs an executive order that purports to obliterate a provision of the 14th Amendment regarding birthright citizenship. He fires in violation of Congressional statute seventeen inspector generals who are responsible for auditing multiple federal agencies for fraud, waste, and wrongdoing. He pronounces on his website that CBS should lose its license with the FCC and 60 Minutes should be shut down because of a televised interview of candidate Kamala Harris was allegedly edited in her favor. The FCC, with its new chairman appointed by Trump, puts the matter of the interview on its docket. Private citizen Elon Musk, who has made billions from government and spent over a quarter of a billion on Trump’s presidential campaign, roams with his band of anonymous minions through federal headquarters to digitally siphon confidential information, including personal information on millions of people. Thereupon Musk announces that agencies, jobs and congressionally appropriated funding for programs are to be terminated, which they are. The Trump’s Administration acting US Attorney for the District of Columbia in a letter posted on X thanks Musk for identifying individuals for criminal investigation and vows that he is prepared to “chase them to the end of the Earth.”
Much more at https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2025/02/will-i-still-get-to-give
-my-elevator-pitch-for-the-rule-of-law.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Six Sentences
Cut out of Washington’s Farewell Address, they’re what we need to read right now.
By Alexis Coe | Feb 17, 2025 5:40 AM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/presidents-day-2025-holida
y-george-washington-history.html
In 1796, George Washington struck six pointed sentences from his Farewell Address. I’d largely forgotten about them—the final address contains enough wisdom to fill volumes—until, on a whim, I revisited the drafts. What I found was revelatory: a chilling prophecy of the constitutional crisis now threatening to engulf our nation. These excised lines from the Farewell Address serve not only as a warning but as a prescient prophecy of the political turmoil and factionalism that would later shape the nation’s history. They reveal Washington’s deep understanding of the fragile nature of democratic institutions and the ever-present threats of demagoguery and partisan strife. This Presidents Day, these rediscovered warnings serve not as a eulogy for our experiment in self-governance, but as a rallying cry for its reinvigoration.
“In Republics of narrow extent,” Washington cautioned in this purged passage, “it is not difficult for those who at any time hold the reins of Power, and command the ordinary public favor, to overturn the established Constitution, in favor of their own aggrandisement.” Washington offered the blueprint of the modern demagogue, a Cassandra-like prophecy of executive overreach and populist fervor. His words eerily prefigure the rise of Andrew Jackson’s “spoils system,” Gov. Huey Long’s Louisiana fiefdom, and our current era of autocracy amplified by social media. Washington, having spurned a crown himself, recognized the siren song that could bewitch even ostensibly democratic leaders, particularly in polities where checks on power are easily subverted.
“Partial combinations of men, who though not in Office, from birth, riches or other sources of distinction, have extraordinary influence & numerous adherents” would subvert the very foundations of the republic, Washington warned. To become a demagogue, a president would need more than a powerful political party; he’d depend on a cabal of powerful citizens—the wealthy puppet masters, media barons, and shadow influencers—who could provide the scaffolding for a president to dismantle democratic norms. The enablers of tyranny, Washington predicted, wouldn’t be public servants, but private citizens who thought nothing of trading constitutional principles for a seat at the table of power.
Washington, who transitioned seamlessly from general to president and back to private citizen, could easily imagine a demagogue giving in to the perilous temptation to use martial power as a political cudgel. “By debauching the military force, by surprising some commanding citadel, or by some other sudden & unforeseen movement, the fate of the Republic is decided,” he warned, intimating that the president could deploy troops for domestic political ends, quelling protests, rounding up people he deems undesirable, and undermining electoral processes.
But then, suddenly, there’s good news. Washington’s analysis in this excised section pivots to a cautious optimism about large republics—at a time when the United States territory extended only to the Mississippi River. “But in Republics of large extent, usurpations can scarcely make its way through these avenues,” Washington writes to “Friends & Fellow-Citizens,” in an address that was published in newspapers rather than delivered to Congress. “The powers and opportunities of resistance of a wide extended and numerous nation, defy the successful efforts of the ordinary military force, or of any Collections which wealth and patronage may call to their aid.” Echoing James Madison in Federalist No. 10, he places faith in size as democracy’s invisible shield. The American experiment, sprawling across half a continent, was to be a Gordian knot too complex for any would-be Alexander to slice through.
Notably, Washington’s emphasis on “resistance” suggests a populac
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
So I'm confused when you say "our culture". I don't feel I share culture with anyone whom I've never met, let alone spent any real time with.
And that's what's so quaint.
You obviously haven't run into anyone REALLY different bc if you did, you'd know.
You fit smack dab into a stereotype, SIX. A white Midwestern American male stereotype.
If you want to know along what lines I'll let you know.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
I don't give a shit about stupid opinions, wherever the source.
But by all means, knock yourself out if you're bored.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, is terrified:
Washington Post refuses to run $115,000 ad titled ‘Fire Elon Musk,’ report says
‘Who’s running this country: Donald Trump or Elon Musk,’ reads the advert, which was intended for Tuesday’s edition of the newspaper
By James Liddell | Monday 17 February 2025 10:46 GMT
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/washingt
on-post-musk-doge-ad-trump-b2699407.html
The Washington Post pulled out of running a $115,000 front and back page advert that called for President Donald Trump to “fire” Elon Musk, his Department of Government Efficiency head, according to a new report.
Members of Congress, political pundits and the public have watched the world’s richest man and his non-official advisory body, DOGE, tear through various government departments, as he attempts to slash bureaucracy and cut $2 trillion in federal spending.
Advocacy group Common Cause, in collaboration with the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund, signed an agreement for a scathing anti-Musk wrap advert for Tuesday’s edition of the newspaper, as well as a full page inside the paper, according to The Hill.
The newspaper containing the “Fire Elon Musk” wrap was meant to be delivered to subscribers at Congress, the Pentagon and the White House, per the outlet.
“Who’s running this country: Donald Trump or Elon Musk?,” the ad, which is still available on Common Cause’s website, reads, along with a cut-out of a laughing Musk and the White House.
It continues: “Since day one, Elon has created chaos and confusion and put our livelihoods at risk. And he is accountable to no one but himself. The Constitution only allows for one president at a time. Call Your Senators and tell them it’s time Donald Trump fire Elon Musk.”
A QR code at the bottom of the page directs readers to the link “Fire.Musk.org” along with a call for donations between $10 and $100 to help the organization hold “power accountable.”
On Monday, Musk took a swipe at the Southern Poverty Law Center in an X post addressing The Post’s refusal to run the ad. “The SPLC is yet another scam. No more mooching off the taxpayer for them,” he tweeted.
Common Cause President Virginia Kase Solomón said it was “a signed agreement” and the advert “didn’t raise any concerns that it would be something too inflammatory for them” before the artwork was sent, she told The Hill.
No money was exchanged as the advert didn’t run, she added.
Solomón questioned whether it was the relationship between Jeff Bezos, who attended Trump’s inauguration last month, and the president which meant the advert was pulled from the almost 150-year-old newspaper of record.
“Is it because we’re critical of what’s happening with Elon Musk? Is it only ok to run things in The Post now that won’t anger the president or won’t have him calling Jeff Bezos asking why this was allowed?,” she continued.
Solomón said that artwork was submitted to The Post last week and the group was subsequently told the advert could be inside the paper, but not the wrap.
The newspaper did not explain why it decided to axe the wrap ad, she added.
And while The Post considers advertising from all points of view, it has the right to require substantiation of facts. Advertisers are advised to obtain “the requisite permissions” when using the names or likenesses of individuals, the website reads.
The Common Cause president claimed that The Post sent the group an example advert from the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers of a large picture of the Trump flashing a thumbs up, paying homage to the president’s promise to “end the electric vehicle mandate on Day 1.”
“They gave us some sample art to show us what it would look like. It was a thank-you Donald Trump piece of art,” Solomón said.
“It just causes concern for us. Are they fearful of his reaction?”
Last week, Trump signed an executive order giving Musk even more power, requiring federal agencies to cooperate with DOGE cutting their staffing levels and
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Musk should be disqualified for responsible positions based on the names he gives his children. If he can't do that simple job right, he can't be trusted with more complicated decisions:
As previously stated, Musk has welcomed 13 children that we know of. He and his first wife, Justine Musk, welcomed six children together named Nevada (who tragically passed away at 10 weeks old), twins Griffan and Vivian, born in April 2004, and triplets Kai, Saxon, and Damian, born in Jan 2006.
Then, he and Grimes welcomed three children named X Æ A-Xii, born in May 2020, Exa Dark Sideræl, born in Dec 2021, and Techno Mechanicus. He and Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis also welcomed three children together: twins Azure and Strider, and another child, whose name has never been revealed, back in 2024. And now, he allegedly welcomed a 13th child with Clair.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/elon-musk-gave-one-word-163523012.
html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Government by the Billionaire Class for the Billionaire Class
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Your TDS is really flaring up today, huh?
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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