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Elon Musk’s Fiji Mermaid

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 12, 2025

Assassination by innuendo

By now you’ve seen Tuesday’s bizarre press event in the Oval Office. The leader of the free world expounded at length on rooting out fraud and waste in the U.S. government while Donald Trump, his lieutenant, sat inert behind a large desk.

I don’t know what they teach in journalism schools these days, but insisting that political figures back up wild claims with checkable data and facts seems to have fallen out of the curriculum. After their shoddy work recently, headline writers at The New York Times this morning seem to have found a little backbone with Appearing With Trump, Musk Makes Broad Claims of Federal Fraud Without Proof:

The billionaire Elon Musk said in an extraordinary Oval Office appearance on Tuesday that he was providing maximum transparency in his government cost-cutting initiative, but offered no evidence for his sweeping claims that the federal bureaucracy had been corrupted by cheats and officials who had approved money for “fraudsters.”

[…]

Among Mr. Musk’s claims, which he offered without providing evidence, was that some officials at the now-gutted U.S. Agency for International Development had been taking “kickbacks.” He said that “quite a few people” in the bureaucracy somehow had “managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position,” without explaining how he had made that assessment. He later claimed that some recipients of Social Security checks were as old as 150.

As if those assertions were not fact-free enough, Musk claimed without evidence that he and his Muskovites are being “maximally transparent.”

In reality, Mr. Musk’s team is operating in deep secrecy: surprising federal employees by descending upon agencies and gaining access to sensitive data systems. Mr. Musk himself is a “special government employee,” which, the White House has said, means his financial disclosure filing will not be made public.

Musk and his DOGE team mean to “restore democracy” (whatever that means) and strangle bureaucracy in the bathtub (or something). Critics say he’s operating with unchecked power; dozens of lawsuits have been filed to stop him; judges have ordered halts to his activities; etc.

But what’s also unchecked for years now are political figures assassinating opponents by innuendo while reporters take dictation. Wild claim after wild claim unsupported by evidence. Whether it’s voter fraud or “stolen” elections or, in this case, allegations of “billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse” and “widespread corruption” uncovered, not by skilled forensic accountants, but by Muskovite coders, the claims go unchallenged by the Fourth Estate when the time to challenge them is when they are being made.

Make them put up or shut up. Demand proof that is proof, not simply innuendo piled upon innuendo. Even the Trump health care “plan” the White House delivered to “60 Minutes” anchor Lesley Stahl in 2020 was eyewash, a thick binder “filled with executive orders and congressional initiatives, but no comprehensive healthcare plan.”

In August 2023, Trump insisted he’d assembled “A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia” but never showed his cards.

Rudy Giuliani was disbarred in D.C. for making stolen election claims after the 2020 election, He showed off a thick binder of “evidence” that wasn’t.

Musk is simply the latest huckster to get away with this sort of carnival act, a Washington version of P.T. Barnum’s Fiji mermaid. If there’s something that needs stopping, it’s allowing these con men to spoon-feed the public BS unchallenged.

Let’s review:

A close friend used to have this joke he did where when someone made vaporous, unsupported statements like Trump’s, his stock response was, “Oh, yeah? Name five.”

Update: The $400 Billion Dollar Man is in “just asking questions” mode, kicking down.

The President, The Co-President and The Secretary of DOGE

Published by digby on February 11, 2025

Elon Musk, wearing a Dark MAGA hat, with his son in the Oval Office.

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yasharali.bsky.social) 2025-02-11T20:53:48.283Z
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1889427433922736393

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1889429801015894518

Reporters: But if there is a conflict of interest when it comes to you yourself, for instance, you’ve received billions of dollars in federal contracts.. Is there any sort of accountability check and balance in place that would provide any transparency for the American people?

Musk: If you see anything you say like, wait a second, Elon, that seems like maybe that’s, you know, there’s a conflict there. They’ll say it immediately.

That was one of the most surreal events I’ve ever seen. Trump was like an old, withered potted plant sitting next to him.

Where Is All This Going?

Published by digby on February 11, 2025

I would guess that we’re all in pretty much the same boat with that question right now. I don’t have any answers except to say that this is a serious crisis and it’s hard to see a way out. It’s overwhelming mostly because the entire Republican Party has signed on and they hold all the institutional power. (We’re about to find out if they at completely willing to castrate the judiciary as thoroughly as they castrated themselves.)

Josh Marshall addresses a couple of the big questions in his piece today. The first that’s commonly asked is whether or not this strategy of holding up the budget and/or the debt ceiling really makes any sense in light of the fact that the Republicans and the White House are all liars and we can almost bet on them reneging on any deal that’s made and not even attempt to make it look legitimate. Might makes right, right?

Marshall says the key is for Democrats to remember that it’s Trump who needs a deal not them. He offers a few ideas, such as very short term CRs to keep the issue on the front burner but makes it clear that they simply must not take ownership of this problem (a problem Trump does understand is his because, as you’ll recall, he begged the Congress to raise the debt ceiling before the inauguration.)

The second question he gets all the time is why “The Resistance” doesn’t seem to have materialized. He points out quite rightly that what really tripped Trump up in his first term was the quiet resistance groups that grew up all over the country even as the big demonstrations took most of the attention. And those groups are actually quite active right now. He notes:

[W]hile it hasn’t yet percolated up to DC journalists, something very dramatic started happening among rank and file Democrats roughly two weeks ago. It only started registering with elected Democrats in DC mid-last-week.

There is no doubt about it. People are alarmed and they are getting organized.

He also explains, quite astutely I think, that the dynamic was very different in 2017 because everyone, including Trump and the Republicans, thought his election was a fluke. Nobody expected him to win, they weren’t prepared and people thought that he could possibly be forced to resign or the law would take him out. Now, after two impeachment acquittals, an insurrection, a successful Big Lie, numerous failed prosecutions and a restoration it’s pretty clear that it’s not that easy. He writes:

The 2024 election was very, very different. It’s wrong to say that people voted for every last thing that is happening now or whatever he happened to say at one point or another on the campaign trail. That’s not how voting works. At least a quarter of the electorate votes with only the vaguest sense of what each candidate is proposing. But it is certainly true that almost everyone had a general sense of what kind of person Trump was and what kind of president he’d be. He’d already been President, after all. What’s more the entire campaign had been run with the clear understanding that Trump winning was a very real possibility. So people couldn’t vote for him thinking it was a throwaway vote with no consequence. He didn’t just slip through. It was a very close election. But he won a plurality if not a majority of the vote and he reclaimed the industrial midwest.

This led not only to a profound demoralization that Democrats are only now emerging from. It also made his presidency seem far less fragile than it had seemed when it was perceived (and to some degree was) an accident eight years ago. The logic of mass demonstrations and other kinds of performative resistance just doesn’t play the same way. People are also in the midst, very much the targets of a far-ranging shock and awe campaign from which they are only now after a couple weeks recovering their wits. So some of the difference people are noting isn’t just demoralization or giving up. It’s a rational response to a different set of circumstances. A few big hits won’t end this. This is for the long haul.

It’s depressing but it’s also just realistic. Trump is no longer the accidental president he was in the first term. He’s the undisputed head of the Republican party and all the near misses have given him the reputation of a Strongman who cannot be stopped. It’s going to take some different strategies and a commitment to sticking with the fight to thwart his worst impulses and end this assault on our values and principles. The opposition just has to put its head down, take one step at a time in as many different directions as possible and just not give up. What choice do we have?

“Maybe They’ll Be Russians Someday”

Published by digby on February 11, 2025

Vlad is thrilled

The White House is indicating that they are on the verge of getting some kind of a peace deal in Ukraine. There aren’t a lot of details but he said something today that gives us a big clue about what it might be like:

Trump discussed his administration’s effort to end the war in an interview with Fox News that aired Monday, ahead of a meeting tabled for this week between his vice president, JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“They (Ukraine) may make a deal, they may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday,” Trump said. He stressed that he also wanted to see a return on investment with US aid for Ukraine, again floating the idea of a trade for Kyiv’s rare earth minerals.

The US president’s comments will likely delight the Kremlin, which has illegally annexed four Ukrainian regions since launching its full-scale invasion and seeks Ukraine’s total submission.

“A significant part of Ukraine wants to become Russia, and the fact that it has already become Russia is (undeniable),” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday, when asked about Trump’s comments.

It’s always been obvious that Trump is going to attempt to take a deal that will allow Russia to keep a large portion of the country with no guarantee that they won’t take more. His comments today validate that assumption. ” They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday…”

The Trump-Musk co-presidency looks more and more like a division of labor. Musk is here to wreck the Federal government to favor the oligarchs and Trump’s buddies leaving Trump free to destroy US standing throughout the world with a bunch of lunatic demands designed to destroy the world order and replace it with some kind of American world domination. They’re both making a damned good run at it.

The Law Is For Losers

Published by digby on February 11, 2025

Trump’s accomplices are winners

It’s a criminal free-for-all:

Steve Bannon pleaded guilty to a state charge on Tuesday for his role in a plot to defraud donors to a nonprofit devoted to building a wall on the country’s southern border.

Bannon won’t serve time behind bars under the plea agreement, which was laid out during a hearing in a New York courtroom on Tuesday. In exchange for pleading guilty to one count of scheming to defraud in the first degree, he received a sentence of conditional discharge for three years. The sentence means he can’t serve as the director of any nonprofit in New York or raise money for charities with assets in the state. He was also forbidden from using donor data stemming from the scheme…

The Trump ally attended the hearing in his usual courtroom attire, a brown jacket and untucked black button-down shirt, over gray jeans. He was charged with two counts of money laundering in the second degree, two counts of conspiracy in the fourth degree, a scheme to defraud in the first degree and conspiracy in the fifth degree. Under the plea agreement, Bannon entered a guilty plea to just the first degree scheme to defraud charge. He also waived his right to appeal the case.

A federal grand jury indicted Bannon in a similar case in August 2020. That prosecution came to an abrupt halt when Bannon was pardoned by Mr. Trump in the final hours of his first term in office. Mr. Trump’s pardon authority extends to federal matters, meaning he is not able to pardon Bannon in this case, which is in a New York State court.  

He cheated MAGA true believers out of 15 million dollar. I guess since they don’t seem to mind we shouldn’t either? Ok then.

I think it’s pretty clear that no Trump associate is ever going to suffer any legal consequences going forward. Even the ones not known as an accomplice are immune if they make the right moves to lick his boots the way he likes them licked:

The Justice Department on Monday ordered federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, arguing in a remarkable departure from long-standing norms that the case was interfering with the mayor’s ability to aid the president’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

In a two-page memo obtained by The Associated Press, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told prosecutors in New York that they were “directed to dismiss” the bribery charges against Adams immediately.

Bove said the order was not based on the strength of evidence in the case, but rather because it had been brought too close to Adams reelection campaign and was distracting from the mayor’s efforts to assist in the Trump administration’s law-and-order priorities.

“The pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime,” Bove wrote.

There’s a method to the madness:

Biggest part of crooked Adams deal which is only barely being noted is that the charges aren't really dropped (not in the ordinary sense of the word). They're put on hold with the letter explicitly saying they'll be considered again after November. So Adams has ten months to perform for his freedom.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) 2025-02-11T14:25:14.836Z

I get the sense that he’s more than willing. Watch out NY. Things are about to get really crazy.

Why Trump Really Wants Canada

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 11, 2025

It’s Great and it’s White

Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas | SCTV | Great White North: Canadian Education

Deadline from Sunday:

“We lose $200 billion a year with Canada, and I’m not going to let that happen,” Trump said. “It’s too much. Why are we paying $200 billion a year, essentially in subsidy to Canada? Now, if they are a 51st state, I don’t mind doing it.”

The U.S. does not provide a $200 billion subsidy to Canada, but it appears that Trump was referring to the trade deficit with the country, which is not the same thing. In December, the goods and services trade deficit was $98.4 billion, per the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Hard to believe, but there are libraries filled with things Trump doesn’t know, eh?

In talking about annexation and tariffs, Trump seemed to be drawing his inspiration in part from 1995’s Michael Moore’s Canadian Bacon invasion satire and the Blame Canada themed South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut movie of 1999. 

I referenced this the other day at an event and got the sense that most people had never heard of it, but looking to be ahead of its time!www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aUt…

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes.bsky.social) 2025-02-11T03:01:24.092Z

What She Said

Published by digby on February 11, 2025

As usual, AOC says it plainly and clearly. But the party does appear to be coalescing into something of a plan even if the leadership is using language more suited to 2015 than 2025:

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) in a letter to colleagues Monday warned of the possibility of a “Trump shutdown” and reminded fellow senators that Democrats have the power to make or break any bill to fund the government past March 14.

Democrats in the Senate and House are looking more seriously at the looming funding deadline as an important point of leverage to slow or stop President Trump’s and Elon Musk’s freezing of federal payments, lockout of federal workers and plans to slash government spending by trillions of dollars.

Schumer wrote that Democrats want to avoid a shutdown and argued that if Congress fails to reach a government funding deal by the March 14 deadline, the fault would lie with Trump.

“Legislation in the Senate requires 60 votes and Senate Democrats will use our votes to help steady the ship for the American people in these turbulent times. It is incumbent on responsible Republicans to get serious and work in a bipartisan fashion to avoid a Trump Shutdown,” Schumer wrote.

Schumer released the letter a day after rank-and-file Democrats threatened to use a government shutdown as a last resort to stop Trump’s and Musk’s aggressive review of federal programs, which has resulted in layoffs, furloughs and a pause on broad swaths of federal funding.

We’ll see. This tactic is one of the only points of leverage the Democrats have and they need to deploy it. I wish I thought it was some kind of slam dunk but the truth is that it’s a long shot. On the other hand, how could a government shutdown be more disruptive and chaotic than what we’re living through right now? They’re already blowing the place up.

Who’s Going To Buy A Tesla?

Published by digby on February 11, 2025

JV Last answers a question I’ve wondered about recently. A year ago my neighborhood was inundated with Teslas. California is the biggest US market for EVs and they were everywhere on the westside of LA. It was downright weird. Suddenly, there aren’t so many. There are other EVs but not so many Teslas. Apparently, Tesla’s popularity is in the toilet all over the world.

Why? Elon Musk has alienated the very market that was in love with his cars:

Elon Musk has made himself very popular with men who drive gas-powered pickup trucks and have no intention of ever buying an EV. Meanwhile, he has made himself toxic to the kinds of people most likely to buy EVs in the coming years.

Let’s start with the trade pub Inside EVs, reporting on post-election Tesla sales:

[F]ull-year and January sales results from various markets around the world indicate a bleak picture for the Elon Musk-led electric vehicle company. Even as it added the Cybertruck to its lineup in large volumes last year—which should have unlocked more buyers in America’s expansive pickup truck field—Tesla is seeing serious declines in places where it once had a near-lock on electric sales.

Some numbers:

  • California leads the United States in EV sales. In 2024 EV sales of all non-Tesla brands increased by 1.4 percent in the state while Tesla sales declined by 11.6 percent. That’s a steep drop in America’s most important EV market.
  • Germany is Europe’s biggest car market and Tesla has been the German EV sales champ for some time. Last month Tesla sales in Germany dropped by 60 percent compared to a year ago. Not a typo.
  • In France, year-over-year Tesla sales dropped by 63 percent in January.
  • In the U.K. overall EV sales were up 7 percent in January compared to January 2024, but Tesla sales were down 8 percent.
  • In China, January’s Tesla sales were down by 11.5 percent year-over-year.

This isn’t rocket science: In late 2024 Elon Musk inserted himself into global politics. He was gleefully antagonistic. He played footsie with Nazis. He made it known that he positively hates the woke, educated, “elites.”

I have no idea what it will take to seriously put a dent in his fortune. I suppose he’ll try to choke off his competition through some kind of government taxation or something and old addle-brained Trump will go right along with him. And those government contracts are almost certainly going to continue to be extremely lucrative. But Tesla represents the bulk of his fortune and he’s destroying the brand among the very people who will want to buy it. The average MAGA voter in Bumfuck USA ,whose idea of a luxury car is a Ford Raptor, is not among them.

As Last says, driving a Tesla is becoming a scarlet letter and the rest of us should help make that happen. He compares it to driving a car with a big confederate flag bumper sticker. It makes a statement. And you can’t just peel it off.

My very liberal neighbor loves his Tesla and I asked him if he was having any qualms about owning one considering everything that’s happening. He said he loves it but that his next car will be a Lucid Air. He buys a new car every two or three years.

Nation State Of The Absurd

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 11, 2025

It’s come to this

Google tried to sanewash its map changes:

In a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Google said it would be complying with the name change as part of a long-standing practice of adhering to official government names. The move follows President Donald Trump’s executive order to rename the body of water and the federal Board on Geographic Names formally changing it Monday.

“We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources,” Google said.

But Google made deletions to its Calendar application as well. Among others, Black History Month is gone:

“Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries around the world,” the spokesperson said in an email. “We got feedback that some other events and countries were missing — and maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable,” the spokesperson added.

“Maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable”? In the age of AI? Really?

Here’s the really part:

Google has made numerous changes lately that align with an altered political environment in the U.S. The company recently began scrapping its diversity hiring goals, becoming the latest tech giant to change its approach to hiring and promotions following the election of President Donald Trump. One of Trump’s first acts as president after taking office in January was to sign an executive order ending the government’s DEI programs and putting federal officials overseeing those initiatives on leave.

Who’s Afraid Of A Constitutional Crisis?

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 11, 2025

Not monarchists

King’s Procession at the Coronation of Charles III and Camilla. Photo by Katie Chan (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Arshad Hasan from Democracy for America’s Campaign Academy (back in the day) told us straight away: You are not normal. Normal people do not spend their weekends learning to run political campaigns. Let me extend that: If you read this blog, you are not normal either. Since these are abnormal times, you are in the right place.

The lesson Arshad meant to convey was not to talk to normal people like you do to other political geeks. They don’t get worked up by things like, say, a constitutional crisis. Too removed from work, kids and shopping. Not even the collapse of the republic breaks through until tanks are blocking the streets or social security checks stop coming.

But for us, the crisis is here. In the course of moving fast and breaking things, Musk-Trump is headed to court(s) over its actions since January 20. At issue is whether the U.S. Supreme Court will sign off on executive overreach (so John Roberts can avoid being ignored) or defy King Donald and actually be ignored.

“We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at UC Berkeley tells The New York Times. “There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We never have seen anything like this.” He offered a partial list:

It will take some time, though perhaps only weeks, for a challenge to one of Mr. Trump’s actions to reach the Supreme Court. On Monday, a federal judge said the White House had defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, marking the first time a judge has expressly declared that the Trump administration is disobeying a judicial mandate.

It remains to be seen whether Mr. Trump would defy a ruling against him by the justices.

The vice president, at least, is eager to tell the court to take a long walk on a short pier.

Pamela Karlan, a law professor at Stanford, added that a crisis need not arise from clashes between the branches of the federal government.

“It’s a constitutional crisis when the president of the United States doesn’t care what the Constitution says regardless whether Congress or the courts resist a particular unconstitutional action,” she said. “Up until now, while presidents might engage in particular acts that were unconstitutional, I never had the sense that there was a president for whom the Constitution was essentially meaningless.”

Or solemn oaths to preserve, protect and defend it.

So long as there are not tanks in the streets or midnight arrests down the block, normal people will pretend everything is normal.

But it will be difficult to paint over Trump’s usurpation of power from the the legislative and judicial branches of government (many Americans cannot name) if Trump defies SCOTUS. Republicans in Congress are already supine in the face of blatant Musk-Trump lawlessness.

Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia, tells the Times, “the Supreme Court may find it hard to defend the laws Congress enacted against executive usurpation when the Republican-controlled Congress refuses to do the same.”

Even the normies may soon hear an apocryphal saying likely spoken already in the West Wing.

Not all presidents gave the court’s rulings the same respect. In 1832, President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce a Supreme Court decision arising from a clash between Georgia and the Cherokee Nation. A probably apocryphal but nonetheless potent comment is often attributed to Jackson about Chief Justice John Marshall: “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”

Even before this weekend, Mr. Vance has said that Mr. Trump should ignore the Supreme Court. In a 2021 interview, he said Mr. Trump should “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state” and “replace them with our people.”

It seems unlikely that Republicans suddenly snap out of their cult-trances and demand their power back from Musk-Trump. Democrats in the minority have limited ability to push back legislatively and little stomach for anything more dramatic. Even if Democrats pulled off some kind of attention-getting protest, the king and his henchmen would ignore them, as would normal people.

If things spiral even more out of control, the only force capable of stopping the collapse of republican government is mass public protest. But that will require large numbers of normal people to stop acting like normal people. Close to 90 million normal people stayed home last November. A tad over half of the ones engaged enough to cast ballots voted for monarchy.