Trump / Musk (other than DOGE) Omnibus Thread

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How long before one of these MAGA cultists names their kid DOGE? You know it's going to happen if it hasn't already.
 
And 21 DOGE folks just quit because it's corrupt AF

Using fucking AI to determine if people lose their jobs or not? Yeah somehow I dont think that would be supported by most Americans
 
They aren't using AI. That's just another lie to make it seem less hateful. I think you'd rather have your job status determined by AI than the whims of Elon. It's actually the latter.

To be honest, I don't know why any professional news operation even cares about having reporters in the press pool. Press briefings are just 100% unadulterated bullshit right now, so what's the point of attending?
 
superrific said:
They aren't using AI. That's just another lie to make it seem less hateful. I think you'd rather have your job status determined by AI than the whims of Elon. It's actually the latter.

To be honest, I don't know why any professional news operation even cares about having reporters in the press pool. Press briefings are just 100% unadulterated bullshit right now, so what's the point of attending?
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I think both lead to the same end
 
nycfan said:


“… But now the delivery of therapeutic food assistance to nearly 400,000 severely malnourished children abroad is in doubt due to ongoing firings at USAID, two manufacturers of this product told me in interviews. The raw materials needed to make the product are sitting in warehouses, but the manufacturers say they’re uncertain whether to proceed, because they don’t know if the U.S. government still wants to buy the product—and they can’t be certain it will be shipped.

The product in question is called Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), a sterile, bureaucratic name that masks the horrific nature of its life-saving function. It is a sweet paste largely made of peanuts, milk, and vitamins. It’s designed for safe ingestion by young children inflicted with what’s known as “severe wasting,” meaning they’re suffering extreme, acute malnutrition or hovering on the edge of starving to death. It’s packaged in foil packets that don’t need refrigeration, making it suitable for delivery to areas inflicted by extreme deprivation.

“It’s the only treatment that can cure a severely malnourished child,” says Navyn Salem, the founder and CEO of Edesia Nutrition, which manufactures the product in Rhode Island. …”

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Back on the old IC ZZLP I had encouraged folks to donate to a UNICEF program to provide RUTF to prevent famine from becoming starvation — the stuff has been miraculous at keeping kids in horrific food shortages alive and at least subsisting (rather than literally starving to death).
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Gotta say, if one’s aspirations are Hitler-esque, starving 400,000 kids to death is a bangin’ start.
 
superrific said:
Probably, but that's not really what we mean by AI. I mean, you're not wrong. We're not disagreeing, I don't think. I just find the "we're using AI" bullshit to be especially pernicious.
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Agree. They’re trying to make it sound like the result of some in-depth analysis. I’d bet dollars to donuts 90% of their decisions come from simple cross references of voter registrations, political and charitable contributions and social media posts.
 
tallheel95 said:
Cont'd

"Some pundits on the left have tried to attack Musk by valorizing federal workers, like Just Security’s Nicholas Bednar (under “What the left is saying”), who argued, “Five bullet points describing one work week—a week that included a federal holiday—cannot capture the importance of the work performed by most federal employees.” This is an unnecessary claim, and probably untrue of many federal employees. The point isn’t that most federal workers’ jobs are so important and complex they can’t summarize their week in five bullet points — the point is that it’s ridiculous to demand millions of people to respond to a faceless email account to keep their jobs, while the person behind the plan bangs on across social media about what horrible, lazy, inefficient people they are.

Interestingly, liberals and anti-Trumpers aren’t the only ones making these arguments now; some conservatives have started standing up for the federal workforce. Chuck Ross, a pro-Trump columnist and writer, made the same points I did about how no self-respecting person would respond to this request. Conservative pundit Rick Moran argued “neither Musk nor Trump has the authority to request such a list or make continued employment in the federal government contingent on replying.” And David Marcus, one of the most reliably pro-Trump voices at Fox News, wrote that federal workers aren’t “billionaires or grifters,” adding that “the federal government’s problem is not allegedly lazy, middle class government employees, it’s corrupt wealthy politicians and their donors.”

Now those are some good arguments.

Musk, naturally, has begun to change his explanation for this exercise. It’s no longer about only keeping the most important employees or figuring out what federal employees are actually up to, but now purportedly a plot to discover federal workers who don’t exist. “Non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks,” Musk posted. “In other words, there is outright fraud.”

Even if this underlying premise were true, why send an email to two million people to figure it out? I presume there are much better, more efficient ways to figure out which federal employees are dead and still getting paid or, alternatively, entirely made up people. More importantly, I don’t think the premise is true. Some examples exist of the government wasting millions of dollars on “ghost” employees — like police and military in Afghanistan — but we already have oversight to catch that sort of thing. I suspect Musk’s assertion will go the same way as the claim that “billions of dollars” are being sent to 150-year-old people on Social Security, which Trump’s own Social Security Administrator recently clarified was wrong (though Trump continues to repeat it).

All of this leaves me dumbfounded. Musk is not an idiot. He’s not incompetent. Anyone pretending so is deluding themselves. So what’s he up to? My best guess is he is trying to force more people out — or look for an excuse for mass layoffs — since fewer employees took the “fork in the road” buyout offer than he apparently expected. As I said last week, Musk stands to benefit personally in a dozen different ways from a beleaguered, downsized federal workforce, which has always been what DOGE is really about.

He is too competent to truly believe he’s making the government more efficient right now. The Wall Street Journal officially estimated that DOGE will save the government roughly $2.6 billion over the next year; what are the odds that after all the future settlements, the rehiring of workers, the increased cost of hiring workers who feel these jobs are not secure and the eight months of severance we’re paying to 75,000 people who took the buyout offer, that this all ends up costing us money?

I honestly don’t know how long all of this will go on. Republicans in Congress are privately starting to worry, and who can blame them? ABC estimates these layoffs are impacting some 200,000 people. I suspect that means tens of millions of Americans now know someone who has lost their job due to these cuts. Some of them will have their lives ruined — they’ll lose homes, or get divorced, or have to scramble to find health insurance for their sick spouse. I know of one woman who was five months pregnant, working in the National Parks, and had to leave her temporary housing (provided by her job) to go apartment hunting — now unemployed in a rural area with limited opportunities and sparse housing. She was fired without cause or explanation as part of the DOGE cuts.

People are going to be pissed. Social media is replete with Trump voters asking why they or their family members lost their jobs. And those people are going to start demanding more responsibility from Congress. Eventually, Republicans and Democrats will have to do their jobs and control how these agencies are being run, how this money is being spent, and who gets to keep their jobs."
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Obviously there is a lot going on here. The fact that Musk is backtracking may tell you that they, DOGE, are realizing that this approach isn't working. That's fine. Dems probably hope the whole thing goes down in flames, to a point.

I'm just saying that, on its face, I see no issue with someone being asked to detail what they do as part of their daily/weekly activities. We've all probably had bad bosses. I know I have. I was in an entry level job, back in the 90's, at an up-and-coming company I really liked. My hiring manager quit and the guy that replaced him was garbage in every way imaginable. Total conman who came across as easy-going and fun, but was an absolute ahole. My thinking was "There's no way this guy lasts. I'm just going to keep my mouth shut and wait it out."

Within about a year, he got fired. I worked at the company for 10 more years.

I could see a lot of people, who truly want to work for the government, having the same approach. They'll play Elon's game, knowing he'll be gone by, what, 2026? I think that was the plan. Other than pride, why wouldn't you play the game? Do the 5 bullets. Make them sound as amazing as they possible can; maybe even exaggerate a little. Musk will be gone soon, anyway?
 
ZenMode said:
"I might spend an entire week working on an appellate brief. It can be very time consuming. I don’t know how I’d break that down into multiple bullet points. Sometimes I might be in trial for an entire week, where all I do is focus on that trial. I guess I could break that down in bullet points like: (1) I cross examined witness A; (2) I cross examined witness B; (3) I objected to the admission of evidence and presented an argument against its admissibility; (4) I cross examined witness C, etc."

There you go. Four of the five bullets are done just that fast.
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But no lawyer would think of those as separate tasks. And if I was in receipt of an email in which a lawyer tried to claim those as five separate things, I might normally think poorly of that lawyer. Under the circumstances, of course, I would recognize that there are no good answers to stupid questions and not worry about it, but the lawyer doesn't know that. Your idea here requires people to conceptualize their jobs in ways that make no sense for what you are actually doing.

Here's an analogy. RJ Davis is handed the ball. He spins it in his hand, bends his knees, lifts his arms up to his head, extends his arms while pushing up with his legs, and flicks the ball off his forefinger toward the basket. Five things, right? No, he shot a free throw.
 
ZenMode said:
"I might spend an entire week working on an appellate brief. It can be very time consuming. I don’t know how I’d break that down into multiple bullet points. Sometimes I might be in trial for an entire week, where all I do is focus on that trial. I guess I could break that down in bullet points like: (1) I cross examined witness A; (2) I cross examined witness B; (3) I objected to the admission of evidence and presented an argument against its admissibility; (4) I cross examined witness C, etc."

There you go. Four of the five bullets are done just that fast.
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Not on the week I worked on the appellate brief. And are those 4 bullet points re: the trial good enough?
 
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