I bet there’s a lot of gold paint on the inside.
It could be a solution.
ETA: Ninja’d.
Hahaha… this reminds me of an idea from a few years ago… I was tempted to create a second SDMB account called Jar Jar Yoda where I’d write everything in Jar Jars voice, but backwards… was way too hard to do though! Now chat gpt could have done all the work for me! Except of course that’s against the rules and I’d never break the rules.
When she was hired, I assumed that Susie Wiles was one of the few actually competent people in this administration.
Turns out I was wrong, because court filings have revealed that she told the Associated Press, IN WRITING, that they were being banned from accessing the White House or Air Force One specifically because Trump disapproves of the content they publish.
This is going to be one of the most open-and-shut First Amendment cases in American legal history.
Chief Justice Roberts and His Merry Band Of Traitors beg to differ.
Shots over the “bow” of the press. Let the merry band announce this one first so we’ll have a real good idea of how all the endless series of EO challenges are going to go.
This kind of confirms a suspicion (fear) that I had, which is that Trump won’t simply remove agency heads; he will go multiple strata deep into the various agencies – including the DoD – to entirely remake the culture in MAGAs image. There will be loyalty tests. I promise you that. Not only at the top, but at various layers/levels of the bureaucracy.
I honestly think that MAGA doesn’t necessarily care whether they’re popular enough to win the midterm elections. The way they’re setting this up, they’re trying to normalize a government that bypasses the Congress. They probably spent the last 4 years planning a MAGA presidency that would lose mid-term elections.
And, thanks to the current SCOUT majority, it doesn’t matter. The fact it’s the president putting it into place makes it legal, by definition.
He was nominated for th Air Force Joint Chief of Staff by Trump in his first term so I guess he didn’t notice.
Brown was elevated to Chairman JSC by Biden which might have been the poison pill.
Just in case you foolishly thought maybe, just maybe, the current disgrace in the Oval Office gives even one percent of one iota of a fuck about veterans, here’s the latest word on that from Military.com.
VA Crisis Line Employees Among Those Fired Amid Federal Workforce Purge
An unknown number of Department of Veterans Affairs employees at the department’s suicide crisis line and workers who manned the phones and completed administrative tasks for Vet Centers were among those fired last week in a purge of the federal government workforce.
More than 2% of the VA’s probationary workforce was dismissed effective immediately last week, with VA officials saying they were not in mission-critical positions.
But according to media reports, congressional lawmakers and union officials, several were employees of the Veterans Crisis Line, which provides support and services to suicidal veterans.
But, hey, no harm, no foul, huh?
At least two crisis line employees who were fired were told Wednesday they would be reinstated, according to Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who intervened on their behalf. But they had not been given access to their work accounts as of Wednesday afternoon, she added.
They’ve been reinstated, but they’re not allowed to do their job. That last bit is going to come back to bit these victims of this administration employees in the butt.
By the way, check this bit from that article:
One hotline worker, whose name was redacted in a widely circulated social media post that has been authenticated by Military.com, said she had worked for the federal government for nine years before going to work at the crisis line.
The employee, who also serves in the Air National Guard, was 12 days away from the end of her one-year probationary period when she was fired.
12 days.
The Supreme Court’s first ruling regarding this presidency was against Trump, you know.
On the DOGE checks (I’m betting this is a dupe, but I couldn’t find any)…
A meme in the magaverse is that DOGE are going to give all American citizens a check, many are saying on Feb 30th, for the money “saved” by DOGE. And the speculation is putting the size of such checks as high as $8,000.
I think we can all agree on the various silly things about this. That ostensibly the deficit was being cut, but instead we’ll have a dose of (additional) inflation. That obviously the math doesn’t work for a check in the thousands of dollars. And, most importantly, that we haven’t even seen if DOGE has actually saved money yet; sure they’ve fired people but what are the downstream effects of that? And what litigation is pending?
What I am wondering though, is if some kind of check for a token sum might be sent out, given how much of the base is talking about this. Trump would certainly love every american to have a piece of paper with his giant signature in their hands. But it is also pretty easy to tell their base, as we say in Jamaica, “soon come” i.e. keep waiting, indefinitely
It’s an entirely different kind of flying altogether.
It’s an entirely different kind of flying.
According to Krugman, we’ve clearly seen that Elon hasn’t saved any money yet:
Link Removed @ThelmaLou’s request.
…
Which brings me to DOGE — the Department of Government Efficiency — which acts like a federal agency although, legally, it isn’t; which is run by Elon Musk but claims that he isn’t in charge; and claims to have already saved taxpayers $55 billion, but has presented no evidence to back that claim.What DOGE did do last week was present a list of claimed savings from canceled contracts. The total savings claimed didn’t come anywhere near $55 billion, but never mind. Several news organizations, including Bloomberg, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have gone through that DOGE list, and found that it’s a steaming pile of, um, DOGEshit.
…
In the case of DOGE, it’s pretty clear that Musk is failing more or less comprehensively at his supposed task of saving money by eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. But he doesn’t want the public — or, more important, Donald Trump — to figure that out until he’s achieved his real objectives, which seem to involve taking effective control of large parts of the federal government — particularly those parts of the federal government that are trying to regulate his enterprises and those of his tech-bro buddies.
…
My bold.
Paul, you sly scamp… 
I can think of one more silly thing about it.
$5,000 for every person in the US would be 1.65 trillion. And cause massive inflation.
Let’s hope they do that.
@Alessan Go on.
btw when I wrote my previous message, I thought it was just a rumor; I didn’t realize both Musk and Trump have suggested it is likely to happen. That makes it much more likely that some sum of money is going to be doled out.
And as ThelmaLou points out, there isn’t really any saved money here; this will be extra debt.
I thought that Trump would collapse the US economy in this term, but never thought it could happen this quickly.
Liz Truss set a high bar to clear when it comes to causing severe damage to an economy quickly.
On a lighter note, here’s The Onion’s take on DOGE results so far:
Elon Musk, the leader of DOGE, claims the organization’s sweeping cuts have already saved the government $55 billion. The Onion examines the key facts and figures behind the Department Of Government Efficiency.
20,000: Free lunch sandwiches confiscated from schoolchildren’s mouths mid-bite
17: Cancer research breakthroughs successfully averted
45: Minutes per meeting spent looking at videos on Elon Musk’s phone
83: FAA employees left between you and a Boeing 747 crashing into your house
10%: Group discount on department fake ID order
13,000: Federal employees laid off via meme
500: Nut taps distributed
253: Number of scorned public servants currently writing manifestos
8: Times Elon Musk has tried to explain why the agency name is funny to Trump
No, the article doesn’t specify what those numbers stand for. Does it matter?