Has Musk Worn Out His Welcome? (A: Yes)

 

Co-President South Afrikaner albatross Elon "Leon" Musk seems to be setting the stage for an exit from his historically destructive stint in government:

Elon Musk is reportedly set to leave his government role because he’s tired of the what he sees as a litany of vicious and unethical attacks from the left, according to a report from The Washington Post. [Ed.: "vicious and unethical": truthful]

It remains unclear when Musk will depart as head of the Department of Government Efficiency; his special government employee status will expire at the end of next month. A person familiar with his thinking told The Post that Musk thinks that his work at DOGE won’t be diminished because of his departure, noting that staffers have already established themselves across a slew of federal agencies.

But speculation of Musk’s possible departure comes as his influence in the administration appears to wane. The New York Times reported last week that the acting commissioner of the IRS was being replaced after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent complained that Musk had his preferred candidate installed without Bessent’s support. Musk has also annoyed other cabinet members by failing to coordinate with them in cost-cutting moves. 

Meanwhile, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives has said that Musk should leave his government role and once again focus his efforts on Tesla, arguing that the company is facing a “code red” moment.  

“Musk needs to leave the government, take a major step back on DOGE, and get back to being CEO of Tesla full-time,” Ives wrote to clients on Sunday, according to Bloomberg. “Tesla is Musk and Musk is Tesla....and anyone that thinks the brand damage Musk has inflicted is not a real thing, spend some time speaking to car buyers in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. You will think differently after those discussions.”

“Tesla has unfortunately become a political symbol globally of the Trump Administration/DOGE,” Ives added, going on to argue that the company faces “potentially 15 percent—20 percent permanent demand destruction for future Tesla buyers due to the brand damage Musk has created with DOGE.”...

The ketamine-fueled fascist with dreams of populating the Earth with his spawn can go back to running Tesla into the ground for all we care, just as he left Twitter a smoking ruin.  The brand, as long as "Leon" is involved, is in a death spiral, thanks to his embrace of the Malignant Fascist, his bizarre ideas and lack of empathy, and his destruction of government programs promoting health, science, and the general welfare.  His 100 day reign of terror has permanently altered the functioning of government, and not for the better.  He's another example, like the Malignant Fascist and his Clown Cabinet, of a completely unqualified and incompetent person with far more power than sense.

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

As if coffee drinkers needed another excuse to keep brewing their favorite cup, new research suggests that coffee is beneficial for gut health.

Known for its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, coffee has long been touted for its many health benefits. In fact, thousands of compounds are packed into every cup, helping to improve mental alertness, reduce inflammation, support heart health, and even ease post-workout pain. A recent study published in Nature Microbiology reveals a new benefit of coffee: It supports the growth of beneficial gut bacteria.  [snip]

The researchers found that coffee drinkers had high levels of one specific bacteria strain, L. asaccharolyticus. The results suggest that drinking coffee can have a positive effect on your gut by helping the growth of good bacteria — an exciting win for coffee drinkers.  [snip]

“It turns out that the microbiome in the gut is probably way more important than we even ever expected,” says Michael Caplan, MD, clinical professor at the University of Chicago and chief scientific officer at Endeavor Health. He explains that the beneficial bacteria in our gut are essential to our overall health, and having a diverse microbiome is crucial. A healthy gut can help prevent traveler’s diarrhea, antibiotic-induced diarrhea, and may even play a role in managing obesity, heart disease, and chemotherapy outcomes, according to Caplan.  [snip]

Dr. Chaplan points out that it’s actually not only the caffeine that boosts the beneficial bacteria, as even drinking decaf coffee has a positive effect on our gut. The key contributors are likely the polyphenols, including chlorogenic acid and quinic acid, found in coffee, which help boost the growth of this beneficial bacteria. Science suggests that polyphenols act like prebiotics. They feed and encourage the growth of beneficial gut bacteria...

We'll =slurp=  drink to that!

The bad:

Imagine if President Bill Clinton created a Strategic Beanie Baby Reserve, hoping the ugly dolls could someday pay down the national debt.

Or if President Joe Biden had created a Hunter Biden Paintings Asset Stockpile, encouraging investment in a commodity that just so happened to enrich his son.

Here on real world earth, we’re lucky enough to get the worst of both worlds, the inane and the corrupt, with President Donald Trump creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve as well as a Digital Asset Stockpile ― to hoard cryptocurrencies that are even more volatile and sketchy than Bitcoin.

Trump’s plan has sparked outrage across the political spectrum from those who actually do know how the economy and money work.

“There is no argument for why the government should be buying it and holding it,” said Jason Furman, a top economist in the Barack Obama White House.

“We’re never going to need any of these tokens because they don’t do anything,” said Peter Schiff, who runs Euro Pacific Capital Management. “They’re just used to gamble.”  [snip]

... Last September, he and his sons launched “World Liberty Financial,” a brokerage that lets the family make money buying and selling crypto.

That came not long after crypto backers began wooing him with pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago and six-, seven-, even eight-figure donations to the super PACs backing his effort to regain the White House. In all, the crypto industry spent $119 million, extracting a promise in September to make the United States the “crypto capital” of the world.

Then, three days before his inauguration, Trump took the corruption to whole new levels. Instead of divesting from businesses or placing them in a blind trust, as previous presidents have done, Trump created a quick, easy, impossible-to-track method for anyone to bribe him by purchasing some or lots of his very own crypto “coin.”  [snip]

The federal government’s imprimatur is an enormous gift to those trying to persuade Americans that crypto is not just an updated, more sophisticated Nigerian Prince email scam. What’s more, if the U.S. government is holding particular cryptocurrencies with the intention never to sell them, that helps set a floor price — which, of course, enriches those who already own them...  (our emphasis)

Who would have guessed that the lifelong grubbing grifter and lawless convicted felon would end up at the forefront of the crypto scam, giving him the way and the means to enrich himself without detection. Congratulations, America!  We officially live in a kleptocracy. 

The ugly:

Donald Trump’s policies could leave the US more vulnerable to dangerous synthetic drug trafficking from abroad, even as the administration has vowed to stop fentanyl from entering the country, former government officials say.

This week, Trump imposed tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China, ostensibly as a tactic to stem the flow of illicit drugs into the US.

Jim Crotty, the former Drug Enforcement Administration deputy chief of staff, called the approach “coercive” and said it has the potential to backfire. Federal funding cuts could also leave US borders more insecure, according to Enrique Roig, a former Department of State official who oversaw Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) portfolios and who has also worked with USAid.

US overdose deaths began to decrease significantly for the first time in 2023, after rising for decades. But Crotty notes this progress is fragile.

“We’re seeing this decrease in overdose deaths and everyone’s still trying to suss out exactly why. I don’t think now is the time that we want to stop any of those existing efforts because we know that at least some, or a combination of them, have been working,” Crotty said.

Roig agreed: “All this has to be working together in concert.”

Federal funding cuts could put the US behind when it comes to drug detection technology. The global drug supply has increasingly shifted towards highly potent synthetic substances such as fentanyl and newly emerging nitazenes. Often, these drugs arrive in the US in the form of powders or precursor chemicals that take up minimal space, and are difficult to detect by odor.

Roig says advanced drug detection technology is therefore vital, but Trump’s federal funding and staff cuts mean less money for the latest technology and equipment, and fewer people to install it... (our emphasis)

Another Trump/ DOGE triumph in the making!

QOTD -- Making Republicans Pay A Price

 

"... The angry townhalls are back. This time, voters are furious about the chaotic, clumsy, and counter-productive cuts from Elon Musk’s DOGE Commission.

"Voters find themselves disillusioned as townhalls in Georgia and across the country reveal the so-called populist they elected to cut prices is instead cutting their services, their government aid, and laying off their friends and neighbors. Some Republican members of Congress are complaining publicly; and many more are privately expressing their concerns to the White House.

"It’s early, but this is clear evidence of a grassroots backlash to Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s assault on our government. Democrats must define Trump’s presidency, push back on the cuts, and regain political momentum. [snip]

"Putting the world’s richest man, who also happens to be a giant attention magnet, in charge of making unpopular cuts was a big mistake. Trump is leading with his chin. And Democrats are about to land an uppercut." -- former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer, in "The Message Box" on Substack, telling us "How to Make the GOP Pay a Price for DOGE."  We've intentionally left out the "how to" part, so you need to check out Pfeiffer's four messaging strategies for Democrats to land that uppercut to the Malignant Fascist's jaw.  To the extent we can each amplify those strategies in the days ahead, Pfeiffer urges us to do so through our social media or personal interactions, grassroots style.

What is also desperately needed are competent, compelling messengers.  (This is where we say we envy parliamentary-style government, where you have "shadow" cabinet members and a "shadow" prime minister who speak in unified opposition. Sigh.)  We like what Reps. Jamie Raskin, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Jasmine Crockett are doing, as well as Sen. Chris Murphy and Elizabeth Warren, and Govs. JB Pritzker, Tim Walz, and Janet Mills, to name a few.  It would help if the DNC would take a few moments away from issuing multi-page memos that no one reads to coordinate something like a forceful resistance with consistent messengers and persistent messaging.

Dodgy Days In DC

 

Whole lotta dodgy going on.  Surprise, surprise!

Dodgy MF Saudi Golf Deal

The Oval Office meeting [in early February] convened by President Trump brought together the most important leaders in the world of professional golf: Jay Monahan, the top executive at the PGA Tour, and, via telephone, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the chairman of the Saudi Arabia-backed league known as LIV Golf. The stated goal was to figure out a way to eliminate roadblocks preventing the planned merger between the rival two groups.

But the gathering earlier this month said something even more important about the Trump administration itself. Mr. Trump was not simply using the power of his office to forge an agreement — something that presidents have done for centuries. In this case, Mr. Trump was pushing a merger that relates to his own family’s financial interests.

The Trump family is a LIV Golf business partner. The family has repeatedly hosted LIV tournaments at its golf venues, including one planned in April at the Trump National Doral in Miami for the fourth year in a row.

In other words, according to half a dozen former Justice Department prosecutors and government ethics lawyers, Mr. Trump’s participation in this discussion was a brazen conflict of interest — one of a series that have played out over the past few weeks, with a frequency unlike any presidency in modern times, even in the first Trump term...

Dodgy DOGE firings -- FDA

Food and Drug Administration employees reviewing Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink were fired over the weekend as part of a broader purge of the federal workforce, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.

The cuts included about 20 people in the FDA’s office of neurological and physical medicine devices, several of whom worked on Neuralink, according to the two sources, who asked not to be identified because of fear of professional repercussions. That division includes reviewers overseeing clinical-trial applications by Neuralink and other companies making so-called brain-computer interface devices, the sources said...

Dodgy DOGE firings -- Homeland Security

The Trump administration is preparing to fire hundreds of high-level Department of Homeland Security employees this week as part of a move to rid the country’s third-largest agency of people deemed to be misaligned with the administration’s goals, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

The sources said the Trump administration has a “centralized plan” and a list of people in high-level positions across every component of DHS who are to be targeted this week. 

The firings will come on top of hundreds of more general cuts that began across DHS on Friday night, which targeted the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Those firings were the latest in a governmentwide effort to reduce the federal workforce...

Dodgy DOGE firings -- Park Rangers 

The sweeping layoffs of thousands of federal employees ordered by the Trump administration have made their way to Pennsylvania.

On Friday, some employees at one of the nation's most historic sites found out they're losing their jobs.

It leaves some to wonder what the impact will be as unions speaking out against the firings say they're being done without just cause.

Unions representing National Park employees also say the layoffs will make things even worse at parks that are already understaffed...

"Reduce the federal workforce" is a euphemism for "making arbitrary cuts in personnel and programs to help pay for tax cuts for the billionaire oligarchs running the show."  In some cases, the value added is that you're eliminating threats to your business interests, or actively engaging in promoting those interests.  Or, that you're simply a soulless sadist who craves the approval of other soulless sadists. 

The MF's regime is now a full- fledged a klepto- kakistocracy.

QOTD -- Streamlining America's Collapse

 

Tom Ellison at the satire site McSweeney's writes in the voice of unelected President and man- baby Elon "Harry Bolz" Musk that "Here At DOGE, We've Streamlined Every Aspect Of America's Collapse."  Here's the conclusion:

Americans cry out for speed and efficiency!

For too long, our authoritarianism has been “creeping.”

Our oligarchy: “quasi.”

Our Nazis: “neo.”

But now, Americans will get what they want: a stripped-down, streamlined speed run of 1920s Germany meets Ex Machina.

I promise, America will soon be the Cybertruck of countries—uglier than you could have imagined, built for rich chuds, borderline inoperable, and on fire.

Please read the whole piece.  Once again, the humorists and comedians cut to the bone of what's happening to our country.