Trumped! How to Dismantle a Democracy

[Trollheart]

(You can't see the brown on her tongue, but trust me, it's there)



The level of brown-tonguing, never mind brown-nosing, among the MAGA scum reached new levels when one enterprising congresswoman suggested the new president's birthday should be made a national holiday! According to Claudia Tenney (one would be tempted to say, ten(ney)uously connected to reality!) "no modern president has been so pivotal for our country." Well, I'd venture to suggest the first black president was more pivotal, to say nothing of a certain Kennedy boy, though how far Ms. Tenney's definition of "modern" goes I don't know. I suppose if she were to define it as 2024-2025, maybe she has a point. Can you just imagine getting a day off because it's Trump's birthday? Can you imagine the overblown, elaborate, self-satisfied celebrations? Congresswoman Tenney hails her leader as "the founder of America's Golden Age." Hmm. Always thought he was more on the orange side, myself.

The effort of course will fail - though with the current makeup of the two Houses you can never be sure - as, hopefully, will efforts by Congressman Andy Ogles (now there's a surely appropriate name for a Republican!) from Tennessee to give Trump a third term, and a demand from Representative Anna Paulina Luna (sure that's not a misspelling?) to deface Mount Rushmore by adding his ugly face to it. I think the other five presidents would walk off in protest!

Incidentally, the Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey , which, as you might expect, ranks the US presidents in terms of their achievements, does not agree with Congresswoman Tenney's assessment of her president. They have him at the very bottom of the list, and that's probably only because there are no minus positions. Think of it! Even Nixon, who had to resign to avoid impeachment, is higher on the list than him. He's at 35, while Biden is 14th, Regan is 16th and George W Bush is at 32. Even William Henry Harrison, who lasted all of 32 days in office before dying on the job, is at 41. Imagine that: a president with one full term and another (sadly) to go couldn't beat a dead guy who lasted less time in office than he already has in his second.

[Trollheart]

Deny, Obfuscate, Grossly Exaggerate

If Trump did indeed, at least symbolically (since I doubt he reads them, or can) remove the pages I noted from his dictionary, Elon Musk, the power-mad power behind the throne, surely ripped out the terms common sense, nuance and logic from his, as his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (the last word could easily be replaced with Eradication or Extermination) has been tearing through every federal department with all the subtlety of a lion savaging a gazelle on his native Serengeti. Tens of thousands of jobs  have been sut, with some employees challenged to justify their position. Failure to do so (with no legitimate criteria established) would, they were told, result in their being fired. As far as I can see, the Supreme Court stepped in (no doubt to the fury of the man who believes he controls them as vassals) and stopped this order, issued, let's remember, by a man who nobody elected, and whose position as a "special advisor", is nebulous, to say the least.

If there's one image everyone will remember, will associate with and is entirely consistent with the message of and methods used by DOGE, it's that fucking chainsaw that Musk gleefully brandished at the CPAC, like some caricature of the killer from a slasher movie. Nuance, as I say, means nothing to this man: crack a walnut with an atomic bomb, never mind a sledgehammer. Without looking into what people do in any given department, his idea seems to have been to fire anyone not white, not racist, anyone who showed or shows signs of being "disloyal" to the new administration, and anyone seen, in the immortal words of the Nazis, as "undesirable". Trump tried to make the case the the FAA were hiring people with mental problems, and while we all know that the federal government is, has to be stricter in its vetting of employees than the private sector, even giving someone a job in air traffic control who had the slightest mental issue would be tantamount to insanity. As usual with Trump though, it's shout shout shout till people just believe you in the hope that you'll shut the fuck up. Flood the field, as they say.

So what has DOGE done? Well, as I said above, that E could stand for many negative things, and another could be Embarrassing, as they have, not to put too fine a point on it, made quite the dog's dinner of their brief, forcing them in some cases to rehire people they had fired, in others to make humiliating admissions and climbdowns, and in others to attempt to hide their failures by deleting them from their files. First we have the frankly ridiculous assertion that US taxpayer dollars were funding, um, condoms for Hamas (or Gaza in general, they were never too clear on that, surprise surprise!) to the tune of $50 million. That was a straight-up lie, one of these pieces of disinformation thrown out to cause as much outrage as possible. No evidence whatsoever that any such programme was created, not to mention that according to USAID, no condoms were provided for any part of the Middle East in at least the last four years. And anyway, why would they? It's bizarre. But this is Truskworld, and we'll hear more as the days, weeks, months, and years go on.

There was the extremely embarrassing either clerical error or catastrophic maths miscalculation, where DOGE smirked they had cut an ICE programme (that's a programme by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, not a plan to take control of an iceberg and attack Greenland or anything)  which saved $8 billion, which later had to be revised to, um, $8 million. Big difference. Another contract, according to Reuters, who audited the list of so-called savings and cuts Musk's department said they had made, was counted at three times its value, turning a saving of $655 million into $1.8 billion. Again with the poor maths, guys! I thought you were all supposed to be super-nerds with savant-like powers of calculation! Rain man? More like puddle man! Oh, and they're also taking credit for savings made under previous administrations.

As for firing in a scattergun, even gatling gun approach, when you're facing a serious outbreak of the H5N1 virus, otherwise known as the dreaded bird flu, probably not a good idea to tell the people who are working on meeting that threat that they're no longer needed, and they can clear out their desks. Admittedly, it was the Department of Agriculture who fired them, but it's all being done under the same black umbrella of DOGE and the Trump administration. There have already been 68 cases of bird flu reported in humans, and the price of eggs has skyrocketed (can't make an omelette etc) so overall this does not seem to be best policy. The USDA agreed, belatedly admitting the firings had been a "mistake": "Although several positions supporting [bird flu efforts] were notified of their terminations over the weekend, we are working to swiftly rectify the situation and rescind those letters," a USDA spokesperson said in a statement. "USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service frontline positions are considered public safety positions, and we are continuing to hire the workforce necessary to ensure the safety and adequate supply of food to fulfill our statutory mission."

That's bad enough, but when you also fire the people responsible for keeping America safe from nuclear attack, you're talking a whole new level of stupidity and ignorance. In an almost black comedy, not only did the National Nuclear Safety Agency fire these people who are crucial to the task of ensuring no mushroom clouds appear over American cities, they did so in such a rapid, immediate and perfunctory way that they now find it hard to contact them, to ask them to come back. The NNSA explained, surely to the sound effects of a low horn (Wah-wahhh) that ""The termination letters for some NNSA probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel."

This is because once they were fired, these people lost access to their company email accounts, and nobody thought to get personal contact details for them. Now they're desperately trying to see if other employees, who remain at the agency, can contact these suddenly indispensable workers. Honestly, it would be fucking hilarious if it wasn't so serious. It's like something out of Veep! 405 jobs slashed at the DHS, including 130 in the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cyber interference and crime being the biggest growing threat to national security at this time) and another 200 at FEMA, which makes the prospect of another big hurricane even more frightening, when you consider the layoffs at the Weather Service.  With homelessness at an all-time high probably, the HUD has been told to expect staff reductions of up to fifty percent, while channeling Trump's disdain for those who have served, the Veterans Affairs Dept was also slashed, as was the US Forests Service, cos who needs those fucking trees, right?

Trump even "generously" offered to allow people to quit voluntarily, in order to get a few months' extra payment - presumably those who were fired get no severance package, pension or any sort of compensation - and up to this point over 75,000 people have decided to do this. However over 40 members of DOGE recently resigned on a matter of principle, saying they would not be responsible for dismantling crucially needed services.

These firings and so-called cuts have not gone unanswered or uncontested, and there are so far over sixty lawsuits disputing the legality of many of the firings, something Trump is wearily well used to, given all the lawsuits he filed as he desperately tried to cling on to power as his first term came to a violent end. This time, it's him and his new administration that is on the receiving end of these legal challenges, and they're only likely to increase.

Musk smarmily posted on his X platform "Have you tried turning the government off and on again?" If only we could: reboot the whole fucking election night and get it right this time. Maybe he should take that advice himself: might get his brain running, if there's not a fatal exception error going on in there. I know plenty of people would like to reboot him - right out of the USA.

One thing these two brainless cunts need to realise: smaller government may work, but you have to have some government! Well, until the black and red banners drop at the White House and the tanks start to roll through the streets of D.C., I guess.