The Sound of Teeth on Bone: Leopard Eating Leopards [UPDATE]
[NB: check the byline, thanks. Update at bottom of this post. /~Rayne]
You knew eventually there would be intraparty autophagy given the conflict that emerged between Trump and his DOGE leader.
The leopard that bought a social media platform to ensure Trump and his party were elected is ready to gnaw on their faces. They were uncritical of Musk’s use of his Nazi bar X to aid their party, wholly accepting the wretchedness published alongside right-wing propaganda bolstering their position.
Now they’re going to have to face the fact the richest man in the world — the one person who could buy the lot of them with the change he can earn in a single day — is utterly enraged with them all.
I can’t blame him for feeling this way, either. I can’t stand Musk but I can understand his point of view.
Imagine burning up hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps even billions, of personal capital by personally taking on Trump’s Project 2025 government elimination measures as leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The Tesla Takedown movement was in no small part a response to Musk slashing away at government without restraint.
Then the party he supported with his $44 billion dollar acquisition of Twitter completely trashed that sacrifice by increasing the budget deficit while trying to hide the $3.3 trillion increase from the public, extending the debt ceiling to pay for their bullshit including the massive expansion of ICE.
Gnaw away, Musk. You bought it, you broke it, you own it. Bon appetit!
The last time Musk threatened to launch a new political party in opposition to the GOP, Trump got pissy and made a counterthreat.
This time I would watch for more than an exchange of words. Tells about Musk’s seriousness would include:
• Establishment of one or more national PACs to fund the new party;
• Establishment of one or more state and/or national PACs to run campaigns against incumbent GOP congress members;
• Co-option of existing libertarian/GOP/conservative PACs for the same (think Russia’s dark money co-option of the National Rifle Association from 2012-2016);
• Creation of an umbrella organization and subset entities across all 50 states and the territories launching the new party presence;
• Recruitment of candidates who are willing to run under the new party banner.
Meanwhile, Musk could continue to use the dead bird app to support his efforts, this time against the GOP. It worked to get them elected, it could work against them as well. Not a lot of additional investment required, especially since Trump’s big fugly bill is so damned unpopular making weaponization of the bill against the GOP a piece of cake.
Musk was worth $363 billion dollars today, even after losing $4.38 billion since Friday. That’s $100 billion more than the next richest man, Jeff Bezos. This is the kind of money which can buy small nations — it’s already bought an American general election. A single good day’s gain in the stock market could easily yield more cash for campaign contributions than the contributions made in 2024:
Between January 2023 and April 2024, US political campaigns collected around $8.6 billion for the 2024 House, Senate, and presidential elections. Over 65% of that money, about $5.6 billion, came from political action committees (PACs).
(source: USA Facts)
The danger to the left should Musk make good his threat: a new political party aiming at taking out the GOP in thrall to their mob boss Trump may peel away some part of the Democratic Party.
Could be centrists (including the not-well-closeted racists, misogynists, and bigots) who feel threatened by the inclusiveness of those left of them.
Could be the gerontocracy within the Democratic Party who feel their death grip on power and relevance weakening.
Could be the horseshoe left which shares fewer ideals with progressives and centrists than the far right.
Whatever the case, the Democratic Party needs to stay clear of the leopards as they claw at each other; they need to offer a strong, clear vision of the future while working on the vulnerable states and districts.
North Carolina, for example, is now in play given Sen. Thom Tillis’s principled stance on the big fugly bill, choosing not to run for re-election instead of kowtowing to the GOP’s mob boss.
Let the leopards gnaw on each other. Stay clear, get busy.
~ ~ ~
Action Items:
• Check out Indivisible’s Stop The Cuts page, especially the Take Action Now section near the bottom of the page.
• Weak on federal budget terminology? See the federal budget glossary at National Priorities Project.
• Or simply keep up the pressure and contact your senators to tell them to vote NO on H.R. 1 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, recruit others to do the same. Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121 or use Resist.bot or 5Calls.
~ ~ ~
UPDATE — 8:30 AM ET —
Far more predictable than the weather. Somebody’s Depends are twisted about Musk’s threat.
Trump threatens to re-examine government support for Elon Musk’s companies as mogul trashes megabill
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-threatens-re-examine-government-support-elon-musks-companies-tra-rcna216156
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump threatened to sic the Department of Government Efficiency on Elon Musk’s businesses, saying in a Truth Social post shortly after midnight that there was “big money to be saved.”
“Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” Trump said in the post. “No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE.”
“Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this?” the president added.
A spokesperson for the Musk-backed America PAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the hours after Trump’s post, Musk reposted several graphics on X depicting a climbing national debt, which currently sits at more than $36 trillion, according to government data.
Emphasis mine. I am thinking of the aphorism, “I never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel,” antique in the digital age.
Musk can spill a lot more bits and pixels using X than Trump can with his personal social media platform.
Still amazing even after all of Trump’s previous tantrums that he believes it’s acceptable to weaponize government against an individual exercising their First Amendment rights, to benefit his personal and partisan agenda. Is this an official act? Debatable.
Whatever the case I’m buying popcorn futures this morning ahead of Round 3.
Trump is not taking this lying down. From Politico:
Trump is threatening Musk where he lives. Let the leopard face-eating continue!
I was flailing away at my update while you posted this comment. GMTA!
Heh.
This leads to an interesting possibility, if/when the Senate bill finally passes and heads back to the House and a conference committee. I can easily see some of the House folks moaning about the deficit (Hi Ron Johnson!) taking Trump’s hypothetical and working to make it a reality, as a way of earning favor with Trump.
This morning, he mentioned that he could look into denaturalizing and deporting Musk.
And, Mamdani isn’t safe from denaturalization and deportation, either.
He intends to crush all opposition, and with Trump, where there is a will, there is a way. He’s not sane and he’s drunk on power, and nobody has found a way to stop him. That’s a really bad combination.
If nothing else, Trump would tie up Mamdani is denaturalization proceedings, in hopes of making it hard to impossible to campaign. Something tells me, though, that if he did that, Mamdani would still win NYC’s mayoral race. Regardless, it will still chew up a lot of time and money, a litigation strategy at which Trump has fifty years of experience.
He’s got Miller whispering in his ear about immigrants.
Never underestimate the willingness of the neo-brown shirts to humiliate themselves.
With this Kakistocracy I am reminded of the Trojan War and the priest’s warning “Beware of Geeks bearing Grift”.
and Trop Jan (6) Whores
According to CNBC, Tesla shares are down 5% in pre-market trading. Responding to Trump’s threat to cut subsidies for Musk’s companies, Musk doubled down (still from CNBC): “On social media site X, Musk responded to a screenshot of Trump’s post with “I am literally saying CUT IT ALL. Now.””
Again according to CNBC (separate story), among the companies holding a quarterly call with analysts today is Tesla.
That could be quite the call. Depending on what the companies expect to say/be asked, these calls might be led by the CFO, or feature the head of a unit of particular interest because that’s where the questions will come from. On the other hand, sometimes it’s the CEO who takes the lead.
If Elon wants to bust heads in the WH, he might choose to be on that call. If so, it could be an epic leopard on leopard feast of face-eating. Tesla would take another hit, but he could really cause Trump pain at the same time. A message of “Wall Street, this idiot is coming for me today, but you could be next” would be heard loudly in all kinds of boardrooms. (See Bezos, Zuckerbery, Thiel, etc.)
“… A message of “Wall Street, this idiot is coming for me today, but you could be next” would be heard loudly in all kinds of boardrooms…”
Trump does that to his base: “They’re witch hunting me…this could be you.”
(As if the base has the ability to state, as Trump did with his T Tower condo, that their singlewides are 30,000 sq ft instead of the 10,000 sq foot reality.)
And also, as if his base all keep stolen national security documents stored in the bathrooms of their own private beach clubs.
And as the market opens, the TSLA drop begins. It opened down 5%, and within 3 minutes is down more than 7%
I know Musk hates Wikipedia, but he might want to use it
to familiarize himself with the fate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Khodorkovsky
How much is Musk’s panic over the EV subsidies as opposed to the state ban on AI regulation? Seems like Musk’s betting everything long-term on automating ground transportation. On one hand, that needs self-driving systems more than electric vehicles. On the other, long-term plans require survival to the long-run and Tesla is in trouble.
At this point, I think it’s personal. Musk has been willing to burn money when his ego is hurt (see his purchase of Twitter), and Trump has stomped all over it. Musk swallowed a lot of crap in order to run DOGE, and I think he’s ready to let it all back out to bring Trump down.
On one hand, I despise anything that makes Elon Musk so much as a penny!
On the other hand… automating ground transportation with electric vehicles, probably including a sane routing mechanism that treats customers like packets (in a good way.) If everyone accepted it the number of cars on the street would probably drop by 75%. What’s not to like? (And yes, I get that Musk is not terribly competent and might not have the necessary abilities to make this into reality, not to mention all the issues with the technology not being ready/trustworthy.)
Can I move to an alternate reality where Musk is a decent guy?
First you’d have to find one!
“automating ground transportation with electric vehicles, probably including a sane routing mechanism that treats customers like packets”
They’re called buses, elevated railway, light rail, and subways. Take a good look at what Paris has been doing to improve the city with the elimination of cars and increased greens. Musk can’t see these as successful approaches because he can’t figure out how to profit from them, dreaming up that stupid Hyperloop as a means to continue to make cars while “increasing packet throughput.”
In the Many Worlds theory, Musk is a decent guy but in another timeline. If you moved there you’d probably collapse that timeline by committing a paradox — if you could figure out how to jump universes. Good luck with that.
Musk would own the AI that handles routing decisions, both at the macro (bus routes along used routes) and micro (the decisions by self-driving vehicles) levels, licensed to cities for mass transportation and to drivers for their self-driving cars. Musk makes big gambles as a futurist and has won on them so far. He’s making bigger and bigger gambles, with stockholder money, that won’t always pay off, though.
But he can’t win these gambles without both the AI to make “data packets but on roads” work and the critical mass of cars that would use his AI. I think DOGE was both his ego at “fixing government” as well as his desire to get proprietary data to feed his own AI that others wouldn’t have.
So, yes, there is some ego here but the bigger question is what he’ll prioritize if he loses the subsidies and the ban on state AI regulations. If the subsidies are hte bigger deal to him, he’ll go after the GOP en masse. If the AI ban was the bigger deal, he’ll try to corner a few states to leverage up “uniform standards” based on what he’s able to do in small and easily-bribed markets.
Having been in both Paris and London recently, I can attest that the undergounds are fantastic. A train comes every 1, 3 minutes in both locations. The Paris fare passes are a better value than the London fare passes. The London fare passes top out at £8.90 per day. (Meaning you never pay more than £8.90 a day to ride anywhere in London). The Paris fare passes are all day, as much as you want to use them.
Above ground, in London at least, due to congested pricing, EVs are exempt. The result? All of the taxi cabs and Ubers are EV.
That works really well in cities, but not so much in the suburbs and even less in exurbs and in rural areas. Politically, it’s a non starter (pun intended) because 1)Republicans hate cities because they are run by “WOKE” Democrats, and 2) Republicans are not going to fund anything that doesn’t benefit either their constituents or the party’s benefactors, especially the energy extraction cabal.
Self-driving cars can be analogized to the Golden Dome, aka, Star Wars re-branded. If it isn’t 100% effective, it isn’t effective at all. The latest demo of Tesla’s auto-cabs – for invited guests only, that is, for fan-boys – was a mess. “Kids” run down, rear-end collisions, passengers dropped off in the middle of intersections, etc., etc.. To work, you would need to designate a subset of streets as “auto-drive only,” in effect creating a railway type system.
There is an episode of Silicon Valley (I believe in Season 1) where Jared gets in a self-driving car that ends up taking him to a freighter and to Peter Gregory’s private island that is completely automated.
Elon certainly didn’t invent the idea of using packet protocols for managing traffic. A friend made a concept demonstration of post-event traffic flow management from DC’s (then) Verizon Center around the 2007/2008 time-frame. Some of his approach started with Conway’s Game of Life (for all of you old MS-DOSers).
Fast forward to the current air traffic management systems being developed and deployed by the major players on the production and infrastructure side. Unfortunately for Elon, as chaotic as air transportation seems at times, even at its worst aviation has a lot of discipline, especially compared to the chaos of the current individual human-occupied ground transportation modules.
75% reduction in New York City, possibly. In Texas, try 10%. Or 5%. Automated traffic is just a pitiful attempt to reduce the damage caused by our failure to control urban (and suburban, and small town) sprawl and unfettered automotive bloating. I work at a small service company in a medium-sized town on the edge of Texas. We have 12 employees. Nine of them drive to work (alone) in four-door, full-size pickups, where ten of them transfer to five four-door, full-size company-owned pickups. Our office is about two miles from any major thoroughfares. We service over a hundred installations in a 150 mile radius. Not a lot of possible places for automation there, and, of course, Texas Macho would soundly defeat any efforts to do so. Same thing with electric vehicles. Until someone comes up with a ten minute recharge for 400 miles of travel, large chunks of the west, south & mid America are out of the discussion. But one can always hope.
60 Minutes had a segment on Waymo. They seem to have it mostly figured out when not being torched in LA. Tesla not so much. Don’t think suburban Americans are wired for cabs.
Suburban Americans are fine with Uber and Lyft. Which are sub-minimum-wage cabs.
Pick a suburb (don’t panic) and you just might have to pry the still pumping piston from their cold dead hands…?
Pick another and Eureka! you might have found what you’re looking for – packet, parcel or a person.
…but agree, lately there’s an uncanny stretch of indivisible def # 2 (Incapable of being divided without a remainder.) that just rounds up or down as if the remainder doesn’t count.
What really matters is if they all manage to run on time and not hit each other, right? ha ha
There was a creepy piece of fiction in the New Yorker a couple of years ago. Self-driving cabs but there was a free version and a pay version. The free version takes you where you want to go, but makes several stops at places where you have purchased things before and rewards taking the opportunity. It also has opinions about whether you should spend time with certain people, and teen hackers whose hacked free ride decides to lock the doors and lock the accelerator to 150 mph.
Back in the “good ole daze” when Elon and Trump were buds it was quietly speculated that the end of EV tax credits would net be good for Tesla only because it would hurt the rest of the EV pack more. Kind of who gets hurt the net least. Weird that way of thinking.
Now there is more renewable stuff at risk in the current Big Ugly that I believe impacts Musk more. Plus the food fight to date with Trump putting more of Elon’s government grift at risk.
But I imagine it’s also just a good ole narcissist food fight – or as Rayne aptly positions it – leopards eating faces.
Let them fight.
raising the debt is not a bug, it’s a feature: the debt becomes a rallying cry to further cut government programs and ‘socialism’. It’s the longest con in the republican playbook
And of course they’re eyeing up Social Security at the same time, wanting to crack that open for profiteering and/or debt reduction.
Making America Gross Again.
Thanks Rayne. When my father, a doctor early in his career, was killed in an accident one evening in the spring, he left a widow and six children, ranging in age from 6 months to 10 years. Far from an abstraction, Social Security was our reality: it was a light-green-colored check that came in the mail. Our check is what we “lived on”. Then, long ago, we were “among the least”. Now, I give gratefully, through taxes of course, to those who are.
I read your vision with some joy as I see the danger to be greater to the GOP than the democratic party. I read your vision with some doubtfulness as I don’t see anything really coming of it. Some have said that Elon has a revenge mentality as large as Trump’s, but other than flailing occasionally on social media, he hasn’t done anything thus far. He backed off pretty quickly in the first round of hostilities. If Elon really starts spending money and viable candidates really do spring up, it’ll be interesting. But it’s a long-term, multi-election-cycle project. Does he have the attention span, persistence, and interest to keep on it? If he does, I’d say that to start MAGA guarantees the GOP around 30-33% in most elections. I would hope the dems could get in the forties. Musk starts around the teens. Could he get the McMullins and Cheneys to buy in? Iffy at best. Musk has money, but he has a rep that is tarnished on both ends of the political spectrum. A lot of potential candidates may be interested in this so-called center party and the money it would theoretically have to spend (theoretical because the spigot could be turned off at any time), would they want to be associated with Musk?
LOL I don’t think the McMullins and Cheneys would do more than chuckle about this.
I don’t think we should forget that Musk was the single largest donor to the GOP during the last cycle to the tune of $263 million. I haven’t checked yet but I wouldn’t be surprised if this amount exceeded the total contributions during the same period of all the other US oligarchs combined.
McMullin and Cheney–agreed. Which is why I think this much ado about nothing.
“I don’t think we should forget that Musk was the single largest donor to the GOP during the last cycle to the tune of $263 million.” — good point. If that money dries up, that would hurt the GOP in what already looks to be a difficult election cycle. I’m not convinced it will dry up, but we’ll see.
If many of the small donors are those directly affected by cuts to services, the GOP is cutting off some of its reliable funding to which they aren’t usually held accountable.
The big donors expect specific performance for their contributions.
This is akin to watching two kaiju behemoths do battle, heedless of the destruction of everything around them. To be clear, they both want the huge tax cuts for the wealthy. Trump doesn’t care about debt and deficits, and Musk just wants to destroy the parts of government that work for ordinary people. I doubt he really cares about the debt either, he’s just using it as an argument to cut more and inflict more pain on those at the lower levels of society. Meanwhile, ordinary Americans are all at risk of becoming collateral damage in this fight.
The best possible outcome I can see here is that they destroy each other along with what the Republican Party has become and Democrats step into the breach, pick up the pieces, and restore some measure of sanity to our politics. We of course need to do whatever we can to help make that happen, but I find it hard to maintain any level of optimism. In my news feed, the very next article after one about Trump sending DOGE after Musk was one about cuts to USAID being likely to result in 14 million deaths over the next 5 years.
“Trump doesn’t care about debt and deficits”
Au contraire, mon ami. Debt and deficits are leverage Trump can and has used to extract performance.
“Musk just wants to destroy the parts of government that work for ordinary people.”
I don’t think Musk has a clue ordinary people exist except as means to an end — whatever his end is. He’s another narcissist intent on obtaining what he wants for his personal agenda, fuck all y’all or whatever the equivalent is in Afrikaans.
I will agree that Democrats will step into the breach once the kaiju (which I will henceforth use as slang for “monstrous narcissists) have finished their battle. But this time they need to do so not reflexively as they did after the 2008 financial crash, but with intent to build a new and better future.
FYI Fuck y’all in Afrikaans is: Fok julle almal.
[Thanks for reverting to your original email address with this comment. It may take some time for the system to recognize you, thanks for bearing with the auto-moderation. /~Rayne]
I think this is probably the best metaphor I’ve heard for what’s happening. The Leopards Eating People’s Faces metaphor is about regular voters who vote against their own interests. What’s happening here is different. These are two of the most powerful men in the world, both of whom are known to wield power both cruelly and recklessly, who are having a very public feud.
The other thing to note is that they aren’t making idle threats against each other. Elon has already bought Twitter and Presidency, so he can and would buy several Reps and Senators if he wanted to. Trump’s actions have already ensured the deaths of millions, and if you don’t think he’s willing or able to pull all funding from Musk’s companies, just look at Columbia and Harvard. Pulling funding from Musk’s companies is probably even legal (if done properly), because there’s a very good reason to do it: His companies are all run by an admitted drug user, who is wildly unstable and erratic, and whose popularity has already cratered.
The problem with buying a regular Senator (Dem or Rep) is that they don’t always, they don’t have to, do what you tell them. If you make your own party, the odds of being able to control anyone you elect are much greater. If other techbros buy in, any such party could end up with several of their own reps, and in a tight race, also end up with powerful levers, that is, one vote one way or another to promote or kill Dem or Rep initiatives. Maybe that’s Musk’s calculation. I’d be willing to bet he’s already had some of his technical people game it out.
It occurs to me that the difference between a two-year election cycle and a six-year one might well explain the Senate GOP’s markups of the OBBB. Most of them probably figure that the memory of the people will fade before they have to run again.
Problem I have is that there is such a small slice of people that think any of these guys are cool or likeable. I have seen on reddit women who breathless gush over how “handsome” Elon is (yeah, I don’t get it either) and he has a weird cult, but you don’t just need power, you need voters. Not just the voters who dress up in MAGA and flag paraphernalia but you need their neighbors who are a bit more normal.
Even if all that Elno does is to buy up the airtime to run ‘Saved by the Bell’ reruns 24/7 that means GOP reps won’t be able to get in.
As Rayne noted above, 263 M$ is a big hole to fill and it’s a cinch that Convict-1 / Krasnov / TACO won’t put his own skin in the game. It’s also worth noting clearly that Jackboot Barbie literally runs out of appropriated money this week, which is one more reason that the BFB has to be done this week. Not that this WH would follow the law anyhow, but it would add to the charge list later.
About deficits, even though the debt limit is a Congressional method to rein in Wilson’s spending (IIRC) and the Constitution only says that debts will be honored, debt requires interest payments / servicing and that number is over one trillion dollars by itself. This is not sustainable to spend that much dumping it into a rat hole. Might as well get power tools or a boat.
Is Musk creating any incentive for GOP congress members to vote against Trump’s bill? For me that is the only question that matters right now. “Fear of Trump” is the oft-cited reason for senators and congress folk adhering to the MAGA party line, but what exactly are they afraid of? How effectively can Trump mount primary challenges to them using only Truth Social, and without Elon’s backing both on X and in dollars?
I have no illusions about Musk’s altruistic motives for this drama. Musk has no altruistic motives. But without Musk, how much actual power does (constitutional lameduck) Trump really have? How many primary voters actually subscribe to Truth Social? Without Elon, where’s the money going to come from? It’s not like Trump is going to spend his own $$$–not even to get revenge on Lisa Murkowski.
Even though this puts a significant crimp in his style, I think Trump is resourceful enough to find other avenues of cash flow. He doesn’t limit himself to relying solely on individuals, as we know. But if he did, Bezos and Zuck seem like they may be willing enough to provide an assist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0kcet4aPpQ
“Pink Floyd – Money (Official Music Video)”
He’s reaching the end of his useful life, for them. They can see it, and that money flow will stop then.
“but what exactly are they afraid of? “.
I believe most all of them are afraid of the monster they created. If a member says no just once to Trump, he is liable to be Truthed. Then the magats start the death threats to them and their families. We have seen plenty of reports of GOPers and their wives living in constant fear of the unhinged Trump cult members.
Yes, Memory Hole, instigating physical fear certainly remains part of the Trump Terror Regime’s playbook, but his vilest threats (the ones that accuse people of “treason,” e.g.) tend to be directed at Democratic state lawmakers and judges who rule against his will. His coercion of GOP representatives generally involves promises to primary them. I believe what they fear most is being exiled from the MAGA tribe, which operates much more like a cult than a political party.
SL, of course Trump has other money sources. I thought you were going to bring up the Saudis, as well as his other (illegal) foreign donor “friends.” I still wonder if–even put together–they can or would match Musk.
Bezos and Zuck’s extremely public contributions seemed to me like responses to the pressure created by Musk’s donor status–that is, they were shamed into it, in the only form of shame this hegemonic culture recognizes. And of course they had to buy Trump’s favor for their businesses…admittedly, that might still result in more donations.
I realize that his wealth isn’t all “liquid” but if Elon is worth $363 billion he could donate $263 million almost 1400 times or once a year for 37+ years!
And that isn’t taking into account interest on his billions or increased stock value from investments or increased capital value of corporate holdings. Likely would extend that 37 year figure, possibly indefinitely.
Meanwhile, a back of the envelope calculation shows that $0.4 billion could provide basic solar electricity (light, phone or radio, small battery charging) for the 70% of those now without any access at RETAIL prices. More at http://solarray.blogspot.com/2024/11/basic-electricity-for-bottom-billon.html
Too bad Elon and the Broligarchs (my new band name) have zero imagination or interest.
Can money make up for cult psychology? Or: can you make a cult with just money? (Is the magical fusion given by a cult necessary?) Musk doesn’t have Trump’s feral smarts. Musk doesn’t seem to offer much of a target for projection—at the moment.
There is a voting segment of ‘muskian’ male libertarian futurist trolls. Outside of that, what could MAGA convert into, if it is needed to populate a viable third political force?
Steve Bannon warned against this bill. I wonder if Musk would “buy” Bannon’s help to make up for what you call feral smarts.
Personally, I think Musk demonstrated his ferality when he took over and purged the dead bird app.
ADDER: Well, maybe not…
https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-vs-steve-bannon-war-explodes-with-prison-and-deportation-threats/
“Imagine burning up hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps even billions, of personal capital by personally taking on Trump’s Project 2025 government elimination measures as leader of the Department of Government Efficiency”
“Tesler” will never be the same after Elmo’s foray into politics! Down $14 last I checked, but he also is on the hook for 288 million he supposedly contributed to Trump as well. And now as we hear Elmo wants to create a new political party and primary all the republicans who vote for the bill, while his best buddy looks for ways to deport him!
You couldn’t make this up!
Gosh, I wonder if Musk will give up drugs to be together and fit for his battle with Trump and the GOP?
I wonder if Trump will remember any of this tomorrow?
What the hell did they give Murkowski for her vote that they won’t claw back as soon as Fearless Leader scrawls on the bill with his sharpie?
At last, fwiw, Collins’s “concern” translated to action. But she will be up for reelection against a formidable opponent this time. And an awful lot of Mainers depend on Medicaid…
Murkowski herself essentially admits that they bought her off with Alaska-only opt-outs from the cruelest, vilest parts of a bill whose cruel, vile core she saw perfectly clearly. While it’s easy to say that her single vote may consign the rest of the nation to a future of rampant depredation and unhinged ICE raids extending into all walks of life, it is also true that the single votes of, say, Ron Johnson, “Coach” Tuberville, Lindsey Graham, Joni Ernst, and every other Republican who approved this pile of shit is responsible when disaster ensues.
I would hold JD Vance even more culpable, since he sold his soul to get on Trump’s ticket, and does not care whose lives he ruins as he pursues his one true god: ambition.
New re: SCOTUS and campaign finance
limits:Mark Joseph Stern from yesterday:
https://bsky.app/profile/mjsdc.bsky.social/post/3lstcdcodrc24
June 30, 2025 at 9:33 AM
This current post by Rayne was written on the
ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY of this post by Rayne:
Open Thread: Last Batch of SCOTUS Decisions https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/07/01/open-thread-last-batch-of-scotus-decisions/ July 1, 2024
A small conversation between Rayne and me in comments there:
A year later, I’m definitely having an even harder time with all this…
but it still feels good not to be alone.
THANKS to Everyone here. <3
harpie, It’s we who should be thanking YOU, and Rayne, and of course Marcy, for creating a space that allows the rest of us to commune–to use the rationalizing process of transmuting what are often profoundly emotional reactions (like panic; Rayne referenced personal terror; my own suffocating depression keeps rearing its head ) into the kind of words and ideas that generate constructive next steps. That feel like truly contributing.
EW* is where I feel the least alone. I continue to attend every protest I can, rallying my friends to join me, but protests aren’t available 24/7/365. EW is. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you…!
*EW the site, not EW the person ; )
100% affirm what Ginevra said above. Regardless of the horrors of the hour I can come here and ‘be with’ this community even if very much on the periphery. We commune here to metabolize as much as it is possible to, the thousand headed hydra-firehose of falsehoods and cruelties (to mix metaphors badly).
Thanks to everyone here, not the least the hard-working and dedicated core team, and the long-time contributors, the wise ones and the humorists…
And they already decided that anythign he wants to do before he’s president as well as during is legal.
Idjits.
Marcy wrote this at that time:
SCOTUS’ Republicans Allow Presidents to Use SEAL Team 6 To Execute Their Opponents https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/07/01/scotus-republicans-allow-presidents-to-abuse-seal-team-6/ July 1, 2024
I just want to repost my #J6TL comment thread from that post:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/07/01/scotus-republicans-allow-presidents-to-abuse-seal-team-6/#comment-1057860
SO many people.
SO much work.
ALL for naught.
How refreshing to watch and listen to Mamandi, part 1 https://bsky.app/profile/anildash.com/post/3lsw5k6wvik2p
and part 2
https://bsky.app/profile/anildash.com/post/3lsw5nl4xms2p
Really good point here.
Trump-Miller-Vought’s BBB will force $50 billion a year in cuts to Medicare. That’s another of those, we didn’t cut Medicare! fallacies, because other legislation will do directly what the BBB does indirectly.
But we’ll have National Secret Police to deport everyone they don’t like. Which is where all that money is going to end up.
Miller would say (he IS saying) that because immigrants are stealing social services, rounding them up and deporting them will pay for those cuts–and then some. The fact that this isn’t true, that it’s the opposite of the truth (which is that immigrants *pay into* Medicare but can’t receive it), has never stopped him before. I doubt it will now.
For Miller the cruelty is the point — it’d be cheaper and easier to deploy auditors to identify the immigrants “stealing” social services and then using established processes to locate and deport those who are deliberately breaking laws.
But nope, he needs an excuse to create and implement an American Schutzstaffel.
Oh, Miller isn’t all that unusual. All too often, that’s just the way the matzoh crumbles; into a half-baked cracker.
Reply to Mooserites July 4, 2025 at 2:39 pm
Of all the white supremacist MAGAs, Miller is the exception because he just pulled off creating his own American SS. Or did you not grok that?
I didn’t think I was making excuses for Miller. He is contemptible.
I’ve been Jewish my whole life, and watching us join in the bigotry is dismaying.
Reply to Mooserites
July 4, 2025 at 10:03 pm
I have long suspected some people have lost sight of what is monstrous and become what they thought they were fighting.
Maybe Miller and Laura Loomer could wed. I’m sure their superior genes will produce masterful offspring.
Best to you and LGM! I’ve been reading the site for 20 years or so.
…referencing the 2010 Statutory PayGo Act which should trigger automatic sequestration of non-exempt programs in response to the BBB carrying a deficit.
–>The covered cost of enacted legislation throughout the year is kept on two scorecards. If the net costs on the scorecards show a deficit, then sequestration cuts are ordered. The scorecards cover 5- and 10-year periods, respectively and are to be reviewed by OMB at the end of the session (Vought.)
By statute, Medicare sequestration is capped at 4% per annum.
The BBB comes runs at least $2.7 in deficits. A 4% sequestration would result in Medicare cuts totaling $500 billion, 2026-34. The reductions would be in benefit payouts to providers and “program integrity” spending.
Congress *could* choose to take action before the end of the year to block implementation of cuts, as it has done in the past. Unlike reconciliation, however, that would require 60 votes in the Senate and much grandstanding.
“We didn’t cut Medicare — Obama’s PAYGO did it! We were helpless to do otherwise.”
I find it amusing that google news sorted this article under “wildlife”…
Gotta’ love AI. *sigh*
Speaking of Google News…I look at my customized Google news feed each morning and I noticed the “Fact Check” section near the bottom disappeared recently. I rarely looked at that section but was glad it was there, mostly entries from Snopes and Politifact.
Anyway, today I got around to seeing what anybody was saying about that and it turns out that Google has indeed removed the Fact Check section from their news feeds, starting June 19. Their excuse: not enough people used it.
Hmmm….
There are alternative search engines to giggle.
I use DuckDuckGo.
FWIW, I’m referring to Giggle customized Newsfeed as opposed to an actual single-subject search.
Customized G newsfeed allows user exclusion of specific publications and I’ve specified that they exclude: CNN, Fox Business, MyNewsLA, NY Post, Newsweek, Outkick (an “anti-woke” sports site), Epoch Times, Wall St. Journal, Washington Examiner, Washington Times and Fox News. These filters work as advertised.
As far as the fact check section going missing on June 19, I do my own fact-checking otherwise, just curious that Alphabet Corporate chose to remove what used to be a default “feature”.
I still prefer not to feed the giggle, day or night, or get it wet.
Try this trick: enter search terms into Google, but add “-ai” (without the quote marks).
I get much better results this way, produce less CO2 footprint, and don’t have to worry about sketchy unanswered questions like how exactly did DuckDuckGo’s partnership with Russia’s Yandex work.
The results using same approach in Google News can be interesting, as you can see in the examples I shared via Mastodon.
https://mstdn.social/@raynetoday/114789789198758479
SCOTUSBlog rose to the top without AI, the fucking Presidential Prayer Team was the fourth entry when failing to exclude AI use.
UDM14: https://udm14.com/
It turns off the AI.
Also, if you’re using Firefox, you can turn off its AI.
type about:config in the address bar
go ahead
look for “chat” in the “preference” search bar
set “browser.ml.chat.enabled” to false (there’s toggle at the righthand end of the row)
Adding “-ai” to a search string works in DuckDuckGo as well.
DuckDuckGo has been my default for years.
I hate when people say “just Google it.” No, I will not.
Thanks all for the no-AI search tip, did not know that.
The two sides of the Make America Garbage Bill struck home in this post thread. The “Normative” and the “Prerogative”.
“I want to talk more about this reference to Fraenkel’s “The Dual State” in Justice Jackson’s CASA dissent.
Fraenkel describes two legal systems that operate simultaneously in Nazi Germany. Jackson mentions one. But there’s another: the “Normative” state. And it’s crucial to selling fascism. …”
https://bsky.app/profile/evanbernick.bsky.social/post/3lt2vmj7nvc2m
Adding to your comment
“Legal Sabotage: Ernst Fraenkel in Hitler’s Germany” by Douglas G. Morris
https://www.europenowjournal.org/2022/03/23/legal-sabotage-ernst-fraenkel-in-hitlers-germany-by-douglas-g-morris/
“The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship” – Ernst Fraenkel, 1941
https://ia601502.us.archive.org/26/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.13142/2015.13142.The-Dual-State.pdf
There was an Atlantic article about that a few months ago
The Felon Guy is surprised that HIS BILL will cut Medicaid.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/3/2331474/-Trump-reportedly-doesn-t-know-his-bill-slashes-Medicaid