Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 21 Feb 25 - 09:58 AM

This is probably repeating something said above, but, from The Register:

National Science Foundation staff axed by Trump fear for US scientific future

An inside tale: Probation extended, tenure revoked, a scramble to merge research portfolios, and more

With the National Science Foundation cutting staff to comply with President Trump's order for sweeping federal government layoffs, concerns are growing over the impact on America's role in scientific and technological research.

And it's not just outside observers raising the alarm - both former and remaining NSF employees we spoke to expressed deep concerns following Tuesday's terminations. The cuts affected about 10 percent of the agency's workforce, with many blindsided by the move, which some say may have violated federal regulations.

The blessed Liz Truss (remember her?) was said to had a mantra, which she said she'd got from a businessman: Whenever entering a new job in charge of anybody, 10% of the staff are deadwood, and can be fired. That, and her total inability to realise she needed to learn what she was doing, worked out well for the UK when she became PM.

"And so it begins," said Ambassador Kosh.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 21 Feb 25 - 08:20 AM

Courtesy last week's Linux Weekly News:

From a Linux-related e-mail list:

I *am* very wary of Benevolent Entities, because we have too many very recent examples of companies "realigning priorities" when political winds shift. Programs and initiatives that have until recently been poster board examples of progress and benevolence are shuttered and defunded. I am concerned that we're only a couple of mood swings away from someone deciding that free
software should not be allowed to exist because it benefits America's foes. Many of us remember all too well when large tech giants treated Linux as a "cancer" to be opposed, and I can certainly see that idea easily re-entering some Big Brain in Charge.

It's started. From the Codeberg development forge blog:

Extreme right forces actively target members of our communities and discriminate based on ethnicity and gender, political background, sexual orientation, disabilities, nationality and faith. However diversity is an important asset in free/libre software communities and it is what makes our software great and development productive.

By targetting some of our most active translators, nicest designers, best developers and all other motivated contributors, they are hurting the free/libre software ecosystem as a whole.

Spherical bastards ....

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 21 Feb 25 - 08:01 AM

I see that Musk is now joining in the crowd throwing Zelenskyy to the wolves. Sickening bunch of arseholes.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 21 Feb 25 - 07:56 AM

> From the right, Viktor Orban over Hungary, from
> the left, Hugo Chavez and Venezuela.

Fascist left or fascist right, they're still fascists: different excuses background theory, same modus operandi, appeals to the same "hang 'em and flog 'em" constituency.

Fritz Zwicky, the astrophysicist, was well known for referring to his colleagues as being like neutron stars: "Spherical Bastards". When asked why, he said: "Whichever side you look at them from, they're still bastards."

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Feb 25 - 05:59 PM

I just watched ZERO DAY with DeNiro. Its pretty good but our current politics are worse.
Also the CONCLAVE is very good with the biggest surprise ending ever.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Feb 25 - 05:27 PM

Stephan Miller is an old school Nazi, Trump is a useful idiot Nazi, and Elon Musk is a kinder gentler SS Cyber Nazi.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Feb 25 - 05:11 PM

Stalin's Famine War in Ukraine, the Chernobyl disaster and
Putin's invasion of Ukraine using troops in black uniforms with no insignia are just some of the gifts that Russia has given them.

Don't forget the einstatgruppen of the German SS.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Feb 25 - 04:59 PM

Dave, how does one prepare for the worst case?
I saw this doom coming for 15 years. Being accused of being a doom monger is something one need not apologize when it becomes clear to you. The UK has a 3% inflation right now and is now allied with an Axis bad guy called the USA.

Resistence will take the form of field hearings, litigation, and spine finding moments inside the cage of fools.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 Feb 25 - 02:33 PM

Damn. They just approved Patel. Now real carnage will begin as far as the intelligence activities in the US and the ability of terrorists to come ashore and do their dirty work.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 Feb 25 - 02:14 PM

Another poem that speaks to our times (what goes around does come around!)

The Mask of Anarchy:
Written on the Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester It's long, but read it all.

For more about it from Wikipedia.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: robomatic
Date: 20 Feb 25 - 01:16 PM

The American election system is at present too widely distributed and too primitive to jury rig a country wide election. I hear you all shouting, so let me quickly add: Not everywhere, and of course we have to watch certain municipal areas and due to the 'setup' the U.S. Constitution did with the Electoral College, those States that swing.

I recommend the works of Anne Applebaum, She has made the recent worldwide attacks on democracy into a running subject with such readable works as:

Red Famine - Stalin's War on Ukraine
Twilight of Democracy
Gulag
and most recently:
Autocracy, Inc.

She was interviewed yesterday (Wednesday 19Feb2025) by.... Terry Gross, America's National Resource and current primary host of the public radio program Fresh Air.

One of the points I took to heart is that the techniques being used to undermine and eliminate democratic institutions are available and being used by both wings of political approach. From the right, Viktor Orban over Hungary, from the left, Hugo Chavez and Venezuela.

Pay attention to anything Masha Gessen writes or says. She is currently with the New Yorker but I believe she was originally from Ukraine. I might have written this elsewhere, but I had a long time Ukrainian friend who married and lived in the States; I used to do Winter camping and hiking, and she was one of my instructors. She was well read, had a great depth of history, and I waited too long to ask her opinion of the events of the last few years, only to find she had passed away.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Feb 25 - 11:33 AM

The quote that Putin should go to jail if not executed is by Mississippi Senator Wicker Republican, this should be enough for you to track any way you wish.


The Art of Extortion is the way Trump deals are made.
It is based on using either lies or legends to defame or harm others.
Media is anxious to usually print the legend.
Back in the J.Edgar Hoover days extortion based on secret information was his modus operendie. Dirt is Donald's favorite info but lies work just as well.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 20 Feb 25 - 11:13 AM

> When do they burn down the Reichstag?

FTFY, Hrothgar.

.... Hm: Is this nonsense the USA's version of the Cultural Revolution?

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Hrothgar
Date: 20 Feb 25 - 07:56 AM

When do we burn down the Reichstag?

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 20 Feb 25 - 07:39 AM

It is pretty obvious to anyone who can see past the end of their nose what is going to happen in 2 years and 4 years. The election results will either be tampered with by Musk's team of hackers or Trump will declare the elections null and void. Either way, I'm afraid you will be stuck with Trump or someone else like him for good. Hopefully public opinion will be that far against him by that time that there will be mass insurrection. Trump will call on the armed forces to restore order and, hopefully, the leaders of said forces will refuse to fire on the very people that they are there to protect. Sorry to be a doom monger. What you want to do about it is up to you folks over there but you need to be prepared for the worst case :-(

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 20 Feb 25 - 07:32 AM

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker sounds the alarm - are any Trump-voters listening? C&P here from FB as I’m aware that some of our members are reluctant to use FB…

"As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next?

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.”

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most."

Be afraid, America. Be very afraid.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 20 Feb 25 - 07:15 AM

Evidence that Trumpers are completely insane…Carla Sands on BBC Newsnight, claiming, in all seriousness, that “there are more people in jail in the U.K. for speaking their minds than in the whole of Russia”.

more people in jail in the UK for speaking their minds than in the whole of Russia!

WTF are those numb-nuts on?

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 20 Feb 25 - 01:35 AM

”Good newa: The Senate chairman of the defense committee has found his spine after Trump switched to support Russia and stand against NATO.”

Can we have a link to that?

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Feb 25 - 09:36 PM

Good newa: The Senate chairman of the defense committee has found his spine after Trump switched to support Russia and stand against NATO.

Hopefully more republicans will claim their spines which were checked in the cloakroom and forgotten for months on end.

The Republican Senator believes Putin should be jailed for life if not executed.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Feb 25 - 05:58 PM

Blame Ukraine and say they are a pain
Take the cash and leave the poor some ash
Build grand camps and take away their land
Its Trump and Elon's Nazi master plan

Fire everyone and hire cousin Bob
You know he's dumb and dresses like a slob
Deport all color and creed enemies
You know it is a final remedy

Its Trump and Musk's Nazi Fascist Deed

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Feb 25 - 04:44 PM

Musk hacked the election? Stilly say it ain't so

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Feb 25 - 11:29 AM

To whoever Richard Atkins is, Trump didn't get 50% of the vote. Unfortunately, so many people decided that "staying home" was the answer that by not voting, they voted.

This is what Putin wanted and this is what Netanyahu wanted. Why start to agree to a peace treaty and hostage exchange after the election? Because his work here is done. Irritate enough voters in Michigan and that state is lost (Biden should have thrown Israel under the bus, but for whatever reason, decided to stick with the old "Israel is our ally" policy). And the amount of social media meddling by Putin hasn't been revealed in this current administration because they don't care. Musk seems to have had access to voting systems and states are starting now to try to find out how, but GOP legislatures are pushing back.

It's depressing. We're working on it. Now go solve the problems from Brexit.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 19 Feb 25 - 10:56 AM

Hoooo .... Just been reading Nero's wikipedia entry, to see if the revisionist historians have decided that contemporary documentation was unduly harsh, and they haven't. It's all horribly resonant of today's hot mess: just as a taster, his first speech before the Senate (ghost-written by Seneca) included "eliminating the ills of the previous regime".

I'll leave it at that, and go wash my mind out.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Feb 25 - 10:50 AM

Oligarchs sometimes make highly publicized donations to make up for lost agencies or government funding to look as though they care.
Walmart did such things after the Katrina disaster.
I believe a billionaire's handout will never account for what government funding can do. People will learn this in a hurry while some will remain duped.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 19 Feb 25 - 10:11 AM

Apologies, Stilly, if that came over as abrupt. Firing off one's mouth from the hip is so terribly contageous; and Herself insists on not muting Burger Disgustus when he fails to resist the lure of the open mike, citing "know thine enemy".

I'll mention what de Pfeffel said about this once I remember what it was, unless someone else can remind us all first (possibly in the Ukraine thread). All I can now remember is that I was happily surprised.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Feb 25 - 10:03 AM

I wouldn't call this work a non issue. I wonder how dear it was to Senator Byrd who often compared the US to ancient Rome.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 19 Feb 25 - 07:02 AM

That's only the final part of that poem, Stilly, and misses the three-line paragraph breaks ("like the 'tercets' of the British Druids"). It begins:

I love liberty; I detest tyranny.
I have always been a patriotic Roman.
The Roman genius is Republican.

I am now, paradoxically, an Emperor.
As such, I exercise monarchical power.
The Republic has been suspended for three generations.

The Republic was torn by Civil War.
Augustus instituted the monarchical power.
It was an emergency measure only.

.... that may help searching. You got the core of it, but read both books for the context and the full flavour.

Hope that helps.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 19 Feb 25 - 05:37 AM

Aaaaww, go on then Dave - 400! ;-)

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 19 Feb 25 - 05:30 AM

and 399

Someone else can have 400 :-)

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 19 Feb 25 - 05:29 AM

Just as you thought he couldn't sink any lower

Here’s Why Trump May View Andrew Tate As An Ally

I suppose criminals and sexual predators need to stick togther

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 Feb 25 - 04:32 AM

I wonder how history will view Trump.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 19 Feb 25 - 02:35 AM

The Mango Mussolini now saying that Ukraine ‘should not have started the war’.

WTF?

Ukraine is fucked, and so is the US.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Richard Atkins
Date: 19 Feb 25 - 12:58 AM

Shame on the USA for voting for this president in the first place. He and Putin think It's fine to reap gains taking over other countries as Hitler did. God help Ukraine and not America under this convicted liar

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Feb 25 - 11:39 PM

Trump has fired all the employees of the JFK Presidential Library so the library is now closed. However, the Reagan and Nixon Libraries are untouched.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Feb 25 - 07:06 PM

There's no proof of any of that, it is a literary work by Robert Graves. This is a non-issue.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Feb 25 - 06:43 PM

Apparently, there is no proof that "let all the poisons in the mud hatch out" were I CLAUDIUS' last words but rather a theatrical addition in the broadcast spoken of earlier.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Feb 25 - 06:28 PM

With the firing of all the scientists under the claim that fraud and cost-cutting is the issue, science itself is being claimed as a fraud.
Scientists in the NIH, CDC, FDA, VA who save lives in a variety of ways are deemed frauds. Well, my friend, disease is not a fraud. Botulism and Listeria are not a fraud. Musk's teenage and 20-something hackers are not looking for fraud, do not know how to, and have purposely not found any.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: robomatic
Date: 18 Feb 25 - 05:47 PM

Neither can you, apparently.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Feb 25 - 05:04 PM

Wrong or right is not the issue but merely my perspective. Your research does go deeper.
If 'let all...' were the last words of Claudius as he lay poisoned or stabbed or both, it was not a living revenge he was stating but rather a vengeful curse that the State and murderous personal vendettas deserved.

Stephen Miller on CNN was repeatedly asked to calm down but could not set aside his 3rd Reich style rhetoric.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Feb 25 - 04:26 PM

And at risk of turning this into a poetry thread, but a friend reminded me of Yeats recently.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

There's nothing better than a really good poet to find a way to express righteous anger.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Feb 25 - 04:08 PM

That is a great quote, one that somehow I missed over the years of watching the old Claudius programs. I finally found the whole thing:

The frog-pool wanted a king.
Jove sent them Old King Log.
I have been as deaf and blind and wooden as a log.
The frog-pool wanted a king.
Let Jove now send them Young King Stork.
Caligula's chief fault: his stork-reign was too brief.
My chief fault: I have been far too benevolent.
I repaired the ruin my predecessors spread.
I reconciled Rome and the world to monarchy again.
Rome is fated to bow to another Caesar.
Let him be mad, bloody, capricious, wasteful, lustful.
King Stork shall prove again the nature of kings.
By dulling the blade of tyranny I fell into great error.
By whetting the same blade I might redeem that error.
Violent disorders call for violent remedies.
Yet I am, I must remember, Old King Log.
I shall float inertly in the stagnant pool.
Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 18 Feb 25 - 03:17 PM

> Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out
> is one of my favorite quotes of revenge. thanks MaJoC

FTFY.* Oh, and it wasn't revenge that Claudius had in mind, but a purging of the body politic to make room for a return of the Republic. Sadly, "making room" doesn't work in real life, and history is littered with counterexamples.

.... And here I was, about to suggest that Isildur is turning into a pale imitation of Mordor before our eyes .... Aside: One of the big spytech firms is called Palantir, presumably for a nontrivial reason.

* I used to get that wrong too, till I looked it up recently.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Feb 25 - 03:06 PM

Stephan 'Goebbels' Millar rudely went on CNN and accused the host and CNN of subterfuge and deliberate support of crimes and government waste when asked what Elon and Doge was doing. He actually began yelling and sounded more Hitleresque than usual.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Feb 25 - 02:58 PM

Another Musk coup for his company, leading (he hopes) to a lucrative government contract: Musk helped fire hundreds of FAA workers. Now, his SpaceX employees could fill the void
The move to bring in more experts within Musk’s circle follows the Trump administration’s decision to fire hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration personnel

A team from Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been drafted in to help overhaul the U.S. air traffic control systems.

The move to bring in more experts within Musk’s circle follows the Trump administration’s decision to fire hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration personnel.

SpaceX already holds billions in government contracts. Its staff visited Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Virginia Monday, according to Transport Secretary Sean Duffy, who said that President Donald Trump has “ordered” him to “deliver a new, world-class air traffic control system that will be the envy of the world.”

“Tomorrow, members of @elonmusk’s SpaceX team will be visiting the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in VA to get a firsthand look at the current system, learn what air traffic controllers like and dislike about their current tools, and envision how we can make a new, better, modern and safer system,” Duffy said in a post on X Sunday.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Helen
Date: 18 Feb 25 - 01:51 PM

Donuel, I don't think I have ever heard the full lyrics of Star Spangled Banner. I know I have heard the word "spangled" to describe drag queens' outfits, if that helps. :-D

"Reality Star Strangled Banner" is funny. I had been thinking about words rhyming with the song title. Spar, czar, scar, bizarre, tangled, mangled, jangled, spanner, hammer, etc and found a website for rhyming words.

Words That Rhyme With STAR

SRS, that article finally makes sense of why Musk, wearing his SuperDOGE cloak, targeted USAID from the start. No hesitation, just go for the jugular. He was covering his own back.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Feb 25 - 01:18 PM

Let all the evil in the mud hatch out
is one of my favorite quotes of revenge. thanks MaJoC

I did not know the Star Spangled Banner had the word 'Birthright' which is was Trump wants destroyed. I believe I have never used the word spangled in a sentence before now. Helen stay tuned for the Reality Star Strangled Banner headlines.

According to its former director, Social Security is very fragile and likely to have failures in a skeleton crew scenario.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: The Sandman
Date: 18 Feb 25 - 12:52 PM

Trump thinks he is a business man, he appears to be pragmatic, I agree he has an unpleasant bullying personality, and he is not a successful business man, companies associated with him have failed 6 times, I think his China import tax policy will fail.
But I am not in a position to bring about his Presidential downfall, so I am not going to waste too much mental energy on him

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Feb 25 - 12:20 PM

Found the article I referenced a while back - from Elon Musk’s Enemy, USAID, Was Investigating Starlink’s Contracts in Ukraine
The agency was in the midst of a probe into the billionaire's equipment at the time of Musk's assault.

Since coming into power, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has barraged USAID, the international aid agency that dispenses food and supplies to nations all over the world. It is likely that the agency will soon be shuttered and could be subsumed into the U.S. State Department. Now, new reporting shows USAID was actually investigating equipment from one of Musk’s companies at the time that he attacked the agency.

The Lever reported Tuesday that USAID’s inspector general was in the process of investigating its own public-private partnership between Musk’s Starlink and the Ukrainian government at the time that the billionaire’s DOGE crippled the agency. Publicly available information about that probe is still online. An announcement from last May reads: “The USAID Office of Inspector General, Inspections and Evaluations Division, is initiating an inspection of USAID’s oversight of Starlink satellite terminals provided to the Government of Ukraine. Our objectives are to determine how (1) the Government of Ukraine used the USAID-provided Starlink terminals, and (2) USAID monitored the Government of Ukraine’s use of USAID-provided Starlink terminals.”

Musk has called the agency “evil” and a “criminal organization,” though the fact that USAID was investigating the Starlink activities may suggest ulterior motivations for the billionaire’s vitriol. It’s unclear what the Starlink probe’s status is right now.

He's clearing out all of his critics, plain and simple.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 18 Feb 25 - 09:12 AM

Thanks for the Turkish proverb, BwM. Number Ten Downing Street, under de Pfeffel's misrule, deteriorated into the sort of eternal piss-up that'd shame a US frat house. And the bar steward still protests he was hard done by.

Meanwhile, back at the point, last week's New European featured an article by Matthew D'Ancona under the headling American Caesar. I've been thinking awhile that we've been through the reigns of Caligula and Claudius, and are now starting that of Nero. The entirety of the Old Man Log poem bears reading, including the sub-refrain "It was an emergency measure only" tolling like a funeral bell, but it ends:

Yet I am, I must remember, Old King Log.
I shall lie inertly in the stagnant pool.
Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud catch out.

       -- Robert Graves: Claudius the God

But I may be wrong: we may all be in for a time of Domitian.

Subject: RE: Convicted felon US 47th President/ Musk Coup
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 18 Feb 25 - 07:36 AM

”When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a sultan.
The palace becomes a circus.”

Ancient Turkish proverb…