Tuesday Open Thread

8 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread”

1. Musk's lying POS DOGE buffoons are trying to cover up their incompetence.

   Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has repeatedly posted error-filled data that inflated its success at saving taxpayer money. But after a series of news reports called out those mistakes, the group changed its tactics.

   It began making its new mistakes harder to find, leaving its already secretive activities even less transparent than before.

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2. Our infamously transactional POTUS’s newfound enthusiasm for easy to hide cryptocurrency could come in handy today.

   Putin, Trump to speak today

   President Donald Trump will speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin today in a possible pivot point in efforts to end the war in Ukraine and an opportunity for Trump to continue reorienting American foreign policy.

   If someone is interested in tracking crypto market transactions today, they might find out what Trump’s current asking price is.

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3. ICE detains Colorado immigrant rights activist whose efforts to avoid deportation by hiding in church made headlines

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4. Electricity Demand is going to Skyrocket

   It's not 2% – 3%/year, think 20%/year for the next decade

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   1. That is not going to happen in the BHE service territory which already has the most expensive electricity in the state, and was just approved by the PUC to charge customers even more. 

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5. Incredibly, this is not from The Onion!  It's from The Bulwark.

   Chemtrail discontents

   The Trump administration is at risk of alienating a key constituency: chemtrail conspiracy theorists. These people, who believe that airplane condensation trails streaked across the sky are really chemicals being sprayed over the population for mind or weather control, have started to complain that nothing is being done about the “chemtrails,” even with Republicans in charge.

   Last week, former Saturday Night Live actor Jim Breuer posted videos on Instagram of the “chemtrails” he said were being sprayed over his Florida hotel.

   “I know the FAA knows who’s flying,” Breuer said. “I’m pretty sure the governor can figure out who’s flying and spraying, and creating these fake clouds in the sky.”

   Breuer’s videos inspired a host of other chemtrail-phobes to complain that Trump (despite employing the chemtrail-curious Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health and human services secretary) appears to have done nothing to rein in the chemtrails.

   “Mr President, with all due respect this is not winning,” one tweeted over the weekend.

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6. What's DOGE Doing? And Don't Rule out Russian Influence Operation. Emptywheel.

   CATO engaged in an interesting project: faced with all the uncertainty about what DOGE is up to, it attempted to lay out six possible models to explain what DOGE is doing.

   It offered these six possible models:

   1. DOGE is seeking to purge progressive influence within the federal government.
   2. DOGE is a scaled-up public version of Musk’s style of corporate restructuring applied to the federal government.
   3. DOGE is the first step of a public relations campaign to build popular support for spending cuts.
   4. DOGE is an essential component of a Trump administration legal challenge to expand the president’s power of impoundment.
   5. DOGE provides political cover for Congress to be even more fiscally irresponsible.
   6. DOGE is about self-interest and cronyism.

   DOGE has not been cost-cutting, though that has confused the good government types and libertarians for months. Rather, DOGE has been capacity-cutting, even while it conducts the most intrusive data dive into Americans this side of consumer profiling.

   I’m not saying a Russian intelligence operation is the only explanation for DOGE’s actions (again, I think a totalitarian plan is another missed possibility, though question why an aspiring totalitarian would want to destroy so much capability in advance of solidifying power).

   I’m saying that experts like those from CATO look at it and cannot tell what it is doing, even while ignoring evidence that its claimed goal — cost-cutting — is false. But no one has ruled out something far more sinister is hiding behind a cognitive (if evolving) model designed to look familiar.

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   1. as sinister (and as familiar) as it ever was 

      https://youtu.be/aGCdLKXNF3w?si=BTZFwkRg0WDBOGoa

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