Happy Tariff Day to those who celebrate.
10% on China, 25% on Mexico and Canada.
Guess at what time on Friday Trump announced this…
Fun fact on the new tariffs: Trump has announced them…that is all.
As far as anyone can tell, he has done nothing else about this new tax. No paperwork, no collection mechanism, nothing.
Classic Trump.
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The loyalty tests begin.
WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (Reuters) - FBI employees were ordered on Sunday to answer a questionnaire about any work they may have done on criminal cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, stoking fear about a fresh round of firings at the law enforcement agency.
The list of questions in the memo, seen by Reuters, direct employees to give their job title, any role they played in the investigations into the Jan. 6 riot by supporters of President Donald Trump and whether they helped supervise such investigations.
Elon and a bunch of his Muskler Youth have invaded the US Treasury and taken control of the accounts payable system. They’ve plugged in their own servers and everything, so now their emails go out looking like Treasury Dept. official email accounts. This gives them access to the name, address and SSN of anyone who has every received received a check from the federal government. Like, say, a social security payment or a tax refund.
Is that you? Ever had a tax refund? Did you get that refund electronically? Congratulations, Musk now how access to all that PII and your bank account details.
Oh, and USAID - established by an act of Congress in 1961 - has been completely shut down. I guess each individual country who received assistance now has to come money-in-bag to Trump to get the aid turned back on. Assuming they aren’t too much of a shithole country, of course.
Here’s my theory: We are not going to get the predicted (including by me) falling out between Musk and Trump. This was all planned. Trump was running purely to stay out of jail; it’s not like he was particularly bothered about running the country first time around and he’s 8 years older now. He agreed with Musk that - in return for Musk bankrolling and social media engineering his re-election - Trump would let Musk have full run of the federal government.
And Musk is “moving fast, breaking stuff.”
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My SS payment is supposed to be DD to me later this month. It would be nice if that happened.
That’s up to Elon now.
And he’s a little high on his own supply right now.
As if Elon gets invited to parties he isn’t paying for.
CBS/Paramount about to settle with Trump on his $10 billion lawsuit for airing an interview with Kamala Harris on 60 minutes. Trump has threatened retaliation and they’re looking to settle. Since the election, this will make the third large media company to settle with Trump over his perceived grievances, following Disney/ABC paying him $16 million for announcing his civil liabilities re: being a sex offender and Meta chipping in an extra $22 million for cutting off his account following the January 6th coup attempt. I don’t think he’s gonna get tired of all the winning.
Part of the CBS settlement is for them to release the full, unedited interview footage to Trump. So we can look forward to “creatively” edited clips coming out, because if Trump loves anything (and that’s a big “if”) it’s punching down on the woman he beat in an election long after it is over.
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These are obviously out and out bribes, done in full public view. It should be scandalous, but it’s nowhere near the top of the list of insane shit happening at the moment.
Which reminds me, has anyone figured out why Elon is doing this? Other than his natural passion for lean and effective government, I mean. What is he trying to accomplish here? Does he believe with a smaller federal budget there’s more opportunity for tax cuts? Is it really that simplistic? For someone who literally exists on federal subsidies and federal contracts, slashing the federal budget seems to me a curious strategy. I’m aware that now that he has control of the spigot he can fuck with his competitors, but that would seemingly open him up to all sorts of legal and even criminal peril, even in this environment of total, naked judicial corruption. I just can’t understand why he’s doing this.
Also, I keep waiting for the board of one of the seven or eight major corporations of which he is nominally CEO to say, You know, that’s enough, pay attention to what we’re doing over here or we’ll find someone who will, but apparently that day will never arrive.
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I think this is it in a nutshell. He just likes fucking with people, and not just his competitors, but regular everyday Americans. He’s an anti-social bully. That’s what they do.
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As regards his vendetta against USAID, it was one of the tools that the US used to punish South Africa for apartheid.
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The NTSB has announced that it will no longer issue official communications via letter, email, press conference or website posting. They will issue official communications through - and only through - their Xitter account.
Plane crash problem solved!
I’m trying to see how it is even remotely legal to open up all our PII to an individual who has no official position, no official department and no official contract. If there’s a data breach from the Muskler Youth’s activities, nothing is going to insulate them from the class action lawsuits that will come piling in.
Breach? How about giveaway?
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Trump has immunity, so assuming that Musk is operating on Trump’s say-so, then Trump is in the clear. It’s going to take a Reed Richardsian stretch for SCOTUS to extend presidential immunity to his sugar daddy and his sugar daddy’s minions.
Of course, they’ve made class-action suits hard to file (although if ever there were a case for one, this would seem to be it). Imagine the comedy of forcing 100 million citizens to file suit individually.
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Oh, don’t worry, they’ll find a way. And, obviously, the people that eventually make this ruling will all be 35 years old.
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Sooo…uhhh…where are the Democrats during all this?
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