This will be nice!

I don't believe it'll happen but can dream.

Trump Floats Giving DOGE Savings to Public, Defending Cost Cuts

Addressed earlier in the thread. Not happening. They're not saving anywhere near as much as they're reporting and to hit enough savings to get to 5k per adult you're looking at something in excess of 5 trillion in savings. We're currently at about 6 billion and that's probably being kind. Take 20% of that and we're sitting at about $6 per US adult.

I find the best way to fight inflation is to give people money that doesn't exist.

Thanks, I missed the earlier post. It's supposedly by "households that pay tax". Rough swag. 127M households, about 60% pay tax so say 76M

76M x target of $5k = $380B

The $380B is supposedly 20%, so that comes out to finding savings of $1.9T.

But yeah. I don't believe we'll find $1.9T in savings for a single fiscal year. So all hopium right now. But a guy can dream.

Dems just don't understand the way modern communication works. Why aren't there two-hundred elected Dems screaming on social media about Trump saying he's a king? This one is so easy and literally no risk.

If any Dem had stated that they were giving a 5k check, tomorrow, there would be post upon post, asking where 'their' money is, and when it never shows up it would be a never ending litany of screaming about where's the money (Dem) promised us?!

Dems need to go younger and hire folks who understand how communication works in 2025. The telegram lost its effectiveness some time ago

They spent the last few decades going with people who could raise the most money instead of people who could communicate with voters. So they're left with Hakeem Jeffries and other people who have no clue what to do.

There's a handful of Dems who can actually go on a podcast or something and seem normal talking politics. Obama, Bernie, Biden 15 years ago. Walz has a bit of it but they were scared to let him speak during the campaign. Pritzker is really good too but he'll never be part of the establishment since he doesn't care about raising money.

You'd think all this would cause them to change course but they aren't. They passed up on the guy who actually wins elections for DNC chair. Same group of losers lead the party. At this point I think they prefer being out of power because it's easier to raise money. God knows they aren't quiet about that part.

Would this strategy be more effective than when the Dems were screaming on social media that Trump was saying he would be a dictator on day one?


And then have his team come on the back and say this.


That was December 2023. We have seen this over and over and over. Criticism of the Dems's communication strategy are always welcome based on their general incompetence in this area. But it seems silly to blame them for not doing the things they have done in the past that a significant portion of their party chose then and still choose to reject. We know that if the Dems did as you ask, the right would say that Trump was obviously joking and just trolling the Dems. The Dems will be accuse of elitism and of being out of touch and we will move on to the next thing.

It reminds me of the recent conversations of the differences between how NFL fans and media speak about the NFL and how NBA fans and media speak on the NBA.

Does anyone know what's going on with MAGA and Fort Knox? Why is Trump talking about going to Fort Knox to make sure the gold is still there?

Despite some stories that support the claim of an annual audit, it's interesting that USA Today goes with 1974 being the last reported audit.
Elon Musk urges US check that gold isn't missing from Fort Knox


There's some thought that an actual audit, likely involving members of Congress being inside the vault(s) (as they were in '74) might be a precursor to changing the official valuation of the reserves. That would put several hundred million onto the Treasury books ... and isn't unprecedented. Same thing occurred in 1972.

I thought Jeremy Irons stole it all in Die Hard 3?

Nah, that was the Reserve Bank of New York, and it has gold reserves from multiple countries. They'd need to get Raylen Givens for a Justified movie to use Fort Knox

The amount of supposed savings is roughly worth a 75¢ coupon on a $100 grocery bill. So all the illegal shenanigans, and the goal to tear down these programs and let Musk have control via his AI algorithm with access to literal trillions of dollars worth of information for basically nothing, was sure worth it. I can't wait until that 4.5 trillion dollar tax cut is fully funded with more money from the bottom 95%. It should be the other way. Let's fund the government by taxing these guys and actually use it to lift people up instead of constantly beating them up.

A few things.

One we're in a different time. The 2024 election was a contest of Trump or Harris, maybe even a referendum on Biden, and Dems were never able to put the focus on Trump. In 2026, as with all midterms, the election will be a referendum on Trump. Defining him as the villain is about the only thing Dems should focus on for the next 18 months.

Two, Dems give up on messaging too quickly. They need to find something and repeat it for months or even years. That's what the GOP does, I mean we're still talking about Hillary and Obama. They never let anything go and that tells voters that those attacks must be important. Dems switch back and forth and that tells voters the attacks must not be as important.

Three, This is so simple for voters. Trump said it. He included a picture of himself wearing a crown. King is easier to understand for low-information voters than dictator on day one.

Finally, Dems just need to go on the attack in the social media age. They tend to wait to test for the best message, but by the time they have something the country has moved on to the next outrage. They need to attack at the same speed as the GOP. Throw out everything and then see what gains traction. I think this can, but if something else does instead, so be it.

A lot of that is because Schumer and Jeffries need to pushed out of leadership positions and Pelosi still has too much influence. They're all operating as if it's still politics from a different era. They have no idea how to operate as an opposition party and how to effectively message. There are plenty of candidates that could step up and get messages out that resonates with voters but the current group wants to maintain status quo.

Buh bye

That's why he's suddenly shown something resembling a spine lately. With this plus his upcoming book we're going to hear a lot from Mitch about how dangerous Trump is.

If everybody who disagrees with him leaves, it will give Trump a chance to replace these people with more cult members, making him more powerful.

Something like this is looking very likely. It sounds like there's going to be a shift in some spending priorities and some firings that will be sold as savings but the budget will get increased.

wrong thread but wild horses couldn't keep me from watching that

The problem is that no one took the Dems seriously on that because the party doesn't actually believe and/or doesn't care. Everything they said was empty.

Yeah, they aren't cutting the military budget it seems. Just an 8% cut to things they don't like and then taking that money and giving it to things they do like (going to guess Elon's companies get more welfare).

There are so many easy openings. I'd first say that going after Trump directly might be a waste of time. People have made up their minds on him. He also seems to be an afterthought in the administration this time around. I wonder if his mental state is worse than we thought. Almost everything is running through Elon and all the releases from Trump seem like they're written by some 25 year old groyper and not him. The guy is like 80 years old.

Elon is incredibly unpopular according to new polls. So is what he's doing. They should be absolutely hammering that point every chance they get. They should have a calculator online showing all the government handouts he's received over the years (it's in the hundreds of billions by now).

An unlikable rich guy who got rich off taxpayer handouts is an enormous gift that they will just flounder.

Fort Knox would be right off of Tate's Creek Road.

How about we start paying off the debt first? How can they claim they are concerned about massive deficits and the huge debt when all want to do is keep spending?

New polls out. Dems are still really unlikable but no longer being tied to Biden will help a lot.





Considering Bush and Trump tax cuts are responsible for about 1/3 of the debt and they're pushing through more tax cuts, they don't actually care.

I've yet to see a single person that claims to care about the debt, actually care about the debt when it comes down to it.

Can't get to Mars w/o massive spending!

(I swear, it's like we've turned into a game of Civ where everything is going to go to achieving a space victory, all else be damned.)

Polls today plus anecdotal evidence point to Trump losing support, which would be record breakingly early for an administration. An administration usually gets a pass for the first 100 days or so.

Is there any good to finding out about the gold in Fort Knox? Let's say they check and all the gold is gone. Doesn't the shit just completely hit the fan? What if 10% is gone, or 1%?

My first thought, of course, is that it's stupid based on who it's coming from. But thinking about it more, it seems actually interesting.

To me, stop the bleeding first by eliminating the Deficit (aka cut up our/kids' credit cards). And worry about Debt later.

Theoretically, this is what DOGE is trying to do with the target of $2T savings (that's approx our annual deficit number). If (and it's a big if) DOGE can do this, then IMO sure, let's celebrate and do a one-time reward for tax paying households.

But yeah, like I said ...

Quote:

So all hopium right now. But a guy can dream.

Well that idiot did claim he would fix everything within a week, soooooo that's a high bar ;)

I know it's a running joke but watching Elon do that interview at CPAC is pretty surprising. He's so fucking high during the whole thing. Even wore sunglasses to cover up the ketamine eyes. Wonder if turning the federal government over to a junkie will work out.

I think 25% or so of the country would support him even if he came into their home and personally raped them and their whole families but i it seems likely he will lose most of the other support within a year once his promises dont come true.

WaPo is reporting that Trump is going to fire the members of the postal board and take direct control of the postal service. This should be a huge conflict with Congress, but I expect the GOP will roll over yet again.

The Dems should have that picture of Elon holding a chainsaw while the IRS cans 6k people during tax time all over their feeds.

I wonder if Trump will increase the canadian tariffs in retaliation for them winning the 4 nations hockey tournament

And then you have the Republican budget proposal that cuts two trillion while providing 4.5 trillion in tax breaks and that will surely reduce the deficit...

Specifically, about tax cut extension vs DOGE (not tariffs etc.) ...

For the Trump tax cut extension, it's still in flux as the House & Senate are trying to figure it out, but from what I've read it is $4.6T over 10 years ... or simple rough est. of $460B per year.

For DOGE, the theoretical $2T in savings is a combination of multiple years (like Politico subscriptions) + also current fiscal year (payroll from terminations).

I don't know how the CBO or accountants will score it, but I believe to compare apples-to-apples, the $2T in savings will be "more" when extrapolated over 10 years.


FWIW, I know Musk has lowered expectations from $2T to $1T. I've not actually read that Trump agrees with that. So that's still a wide variance for now.

"savings"

Damn you Mikey ... go ahead and crush my dreams for a new RTX 5090 (and desktop)

Access to this page has been denied

Justin Trudeau made the best tweet after the game last night:

"You can’t take our country — and you can’t take our game."

The plan is to add trillions to the debt through tax cuts, so there's no paying down anything.

They did this during his last term as well, and the Secretary of Commerce along with Mitch McConnell went to inspect and verify it was there. It is just an easy target for conspiracy because they are so secretive about everything connected to the gold depository for security reasons.

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin Fort Knox trip photos released | CNN Politics

I'm so old I remember when the idea of one big bill was enough to shut down the government. Oh, well.

I'm wondering if an upcoming corporate giveaway/cost cutting measure is to weaken "Original Medicare" in order to push more people to Medicare Advantage. They can say they are cutting costs on Medicare, thus "saving money", and they can say if people don't like it, it's not really being taken away, they can move to an MA plan -- thus actually giving more money to corporations as more people move to them (and actually increasing overall spending, since the government spends more per person on MA plans).

Too nuanced?

dola

When even the leader of the French far-right objects to Bannon's Nazi salute...

Bannon is desperately trying to stay relevant within a movement he largely started. He's been constantly attacking Musk and the oligarchs Trump has surrounded himself with.

More bad polling for Trump today. A Gallup poll has his approval rating on the economy at just 42%. More than 10 points lower than Biden, Obama, and Bush after 30 days and lower than Clinton's 45% after 30 days.

Seeing the GA Rep getting booed at a town hall and people calling him on the carpet for Trump's King BS is heartening. I'm sure most of those people didn't vote for Trunp or aren't even from that district but a viral video's a viral video. Worked for Trump!

Not hard to find people to pay to show up.

Nor was that location a particularly difficult trip for idiots from relatively nearby villages. At this point Ga-7 is essentially as close to a 50/50 district as you could get (he only just reclaimed it after 4 years lost, having been moved out of his previous GA-6 seat) and the meeting was in the southernmost part of the district (i.e. closest to (D) strongholds)

This is not particular to Jon -- but I never understand how Tea Party protesters, etc. are natural, but anyone who demonstrates on the left is paid to show up and that this sentiment is just astroturfed.

Or.....hear me out.....people don't like the president to compare himself to a king nor do they like their elected reps to not condemn that behavior.

It is literally everything that goes against what this country was founded on. But I'm sure you're right, probably paid protesters.

Trump was historically unpopular his first term. Hes started his 2nd term off by doing unpopular stuff. It's not a shock that people are pissed.

CPAC feels like a perfect encapsulation of the conservative movement. A conference run by a closeted man who has spent must of his adult life groping unwilling men and then turning the show over to adulterers and freaks.

I do wonder what kind of support Elon has with traditional conservatives. I work with people who are conservative, but mostly in the church going nuclear family style of conservative. They despise Elon.

So will there be a rift if he continues to be the leader in the movement? You have a guy who mails his cum to random women on Twitter. Guys funded by Peter Thiel who has a harem of young boys he keeps. Like I don't think a lot of traditional conservative voters know what kind of freaks they have leading them now (or maybe they do and that's why you'll see some pushback).

There is so much "I don't care as long as black and brown people suffer" in the conservative movement that it is hard to say.

I don't fit that description BUT I also am not an Elon fan by history. But thus far? He's been (at least the front man for) the greatest thing I've seen happen to/with government probably in my entire lifetime. Makes it hard to complain even if I don't like (nor even trust much) the guy.

Congressman allegedly beat his spouse and police tried to cover it up.


US rep. investigated for alleged DC assault; police probe handling – NBC4 Washington

Really no sense if there really is significant upswelling of discontent from Republican voters, but good to see it wasn't just GA.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/con...ree-rcna193164
Oregon is probably no big deal to GOP but hopefully early warning signs in GA, WI and OK.

And have no doubt, he is not doing this out of the goodness of his heart, there is some payoff for him because he never does anything if that is not the case. Not to mention the fact that half the stuff he us saying is complete BS, like the SSA 80% fraud and 150 year olds getting benefits.

The payoff is billions and billions in corporate welfare he receives from taxpayers.

I would watch a new season of Justified every year for the rest of my life and die happy.

I literally named my cat Raylan and my dog Boyd.

(Edit to add bronkonick's original quote for context, since we've moved to a new page since I refreshed the browser.)

Another Buh Bye.

Don't know enough if this is good, okay, bad. In general, if a new President wants a new Chairman, I'd think that is okay. But replacing him with a "retired 3-star general" seems weird to me.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/u...-pentagon.html

Or we could say the dog whistling to racists, blames everything on DEI, felon, fired a decorated African-American, 4-star General and it had absolutely nothing to do with job performance.

Fired the woman and the black guy and kept all the white guys. Pretty clear message there.

Well the racism is alive and well. RFK Jr. claims black kids need to be "reparented" onto "wellness farms" to work as free labor.


“...every Black kid is now just standard put on Adderall. SSRIS. Benzos. Which are known to induce violence and those kids are gonna have a chance to go somewhere and get reared to live in a community…”

https://www.salon.com/2025/02/19/rfk...ions-in-camps/

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time\_...e_path=Mjg2NjY)

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I long ago had to give up caring why somebody did the right thing IF they did the right thing.

Hell, I don't believe there's a conservative bone in Trump's body -- never have -- but as long as he keeps doing good to great stuff, I don't have the luxury of giving a damn WHY.

Lotta true believers out there ain't never accomplished jack shit.

I’m amazed anyone wants to turn into a 2nd world country. Why did the US prosper in the 20th c? Strong government. Why do all of the “shithole” countries stay/become that way? Weak and/or corrupt governments. Solution for US? Tear down the government. Brilliant!

(I mean, Mexico, Central America, etc. Are RIGHT THERE. Just move a little south, get perfectly what you want.)

Too many brown people. Too scary for some to cope with any sort of diversity.

They don't want to turn into a second world country, they don't at all agree with you on the positives of government. The whole 'government is often the problem for which it pretends to the be the solution' thing. People just see the world differently.

And I would also say for pretty much any serious student of history, the general comparison being made is way, way more nuanced than you are making it out to be and there are a lot more factors involved.

I get what you are saying, but the "why" shouldn't be so I can line my pockets down the road, or get out of investigations into my business dealings.

If we can get four years that are as overall great as the opening month has been, I really don't much care if he fucks baby goats while standing on a pentagram.

Newsom asking for $40B.

That's a lot of moola for a state that has a bunch of really, rich people & businesses they can tax. I'm sure some of the request is totally legit, but yeah, I'd like them to come up with a "state disaster fund" and increase CA state-county-local taxes to pay for some-much of it. For context

Quote:

In the fiscal year of 2023, the state of California collected a total of 220.59 billion U.S. dollars in tax revenue, the highest of any state.

And, I'm sure Trump will bring up sanctuary cities thing as part of the negotiations.

Just a moment...

California is one of the biggest donors to the federal government in the union. The receive 10s of billions less than they put in.

This is gross. California has helped many other states recover from natural disasters. It's their turn to receive help from the rest of us.

Means testing states for disaster recovery aid? Of all the ideas out there that is one.

I assume you expect the state of Georgia and every other state to do the same?

EDIT: I forgot to add using the money California sends to D.C. that is redistributed other states when they have to deal with their own disasters.

Thanks for the pushback. I appreciate the opportunity to dig deeper

Below is a link that documents "balance of payments", essentially by state "Federal Spending - Federal Receipts" from 2015 to 2022

Balance of Payments Portal | Rockefeller Institute of Government

California's per capita stats are below, which does confirm that CA has consistently contributed more to Fed tax receipts than taken.


I don't personally like it. But I can see your point on fairness & equity.

So, I concede I was wrong

Even if you were right, you think it's a good idea to treat state requests for disaster aid/rebuilding funds as if they were independent country-states, dependent on their political affinities (or lack thereof) with whomever happens to be in the Oval Office? Really?

10 bucks says she was getting fingered at a Kid Rock concert 25 years ago. Possibly by Kid Rock...

Kid Rock reportedly splits from fiancée after being seen with Lauren Boebert | The Independent

Er, no?

I think where you may have gotten that impression is my statement below? If I agreed with it, I would have said "Trump should bring up ...". Instead, it was just something I read in another article that predicted it and, IMO, pretty likely.

Elon sends out an email this afternoon to every federal worker saying to summarize what they did last week by the end of Monday. He said in his tweet, but not the email, if they don't respond it's their resignation. How is this legal? This isn't one of his stupid corporations. Who is running the country? This shit just has to stop.

This is dumb for a guy who's going to spend a lot of time in front of federal judges.

With Elon’s “tell us what you accomplished last week or you’re fired” emails: I can confirm that he didn’t limit himself to the executive branch. He sent them to employees of the judicial branch as well.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 23, 2025

Trump gets away with more than anyone but I still think Elon is going to wear out his welcome with most everyone before too long even on the right.

Wife got a call about an hour ago from a girlfriend. She is on her way to pick up a third friend and take her out for drinks and wanted my wife to join them, which she is. Friend 3 was supposed to start a government job Monday and they told her today offer was rescinded.

I mean this to my core, I hope every person who voted for him suffers exponentially more than those who didn't and are having their lives ruined by this maddness.

We have 2 offers out to really strong candidates. They haven't been rescinded but they are on hold indefinitely. It sucks.

I haven't received the email yet but my boss says we're expecting it. DHA has said further guidance will come Monday morning. No one knows what the hell is going on. Are they going to fire our doctors if they don't respond? We're not at will employees.

The "what I did last week' email is insane. Why would anyone with halfway marketable skills put up with that?

That's what they want though. Whether they get away with firing or push people out by making their jobs unbearable, the goal is to destabilize the government and make it shitty so people lose confidence in it. Just like the game plan with public education.

I still do not believe there’ll be elections for president next time. With the emergency at the moment they’ll have to be suspended indefinitely.


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I'm a year short of 20 years federal service.

Kash Patel sent out an email instructing FBI folks to ignore Elon's email.

How fucked are we when Kash Patel is the voice of reason?

By the end of the 4 years, it will be a 3rd world country.

Our union had a response that's in line with how I feel. Elon doesn't have the authority to effectively act as anyone's supervisor nor can he direct the work of any federal employee. The union is asking OPM to rescind the email.

Looks like Elon borked the National Sex Offender Registry website.

This lady got kidnapped at an Idaho town hall by off duty police while the speaker mocked her.

Yeah, both sides.

Blocked

Disgusting how many people stood by and watched it happen.