Elon has fond great things for the country. We all owe him a debt of gratitude, especially if the pressure on Congress results in more cuts and the debt is finally brought under control.
Elon Musk Talk
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Last: 1 day ago by Assassin
I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 11, 2025
"If you don't have wrinkles, you haven't laughed enough" - Phillis Diller
If Elon doesn't buy Twitter then back Trump, I think Kamala wins and free speech as we have known it is gone. Horrendous results for the US just slightly downstream from there. We'd be jailing people over Twitter posts and memes, which in the US would cause great social unrest.historian said:
Elon has fond great things gif the country. We all owe him a debt of gratitude, especially if the pressure on Congress results in more cuts and the debt is finally brought under control.
I think Elon's efforts at DOGE were positive, even if it rooted out less waste/corruption than thought. There is value in that audit function no matter what.
I'm sure he got extremely frustrated by the procedures and bureaucracy in DC. He wants to actually shrink government and is worried about our long term fiscal status. He's one of the very few who actually cares about that. Trump has been a populist big government Republican since the jump. That's a conflict. It is what it is. Elon is a weird bird. Maybe on some uppers. He lost his ****. It happens. I'd guess he'll get some of the kinks ironed out and slowly tack back towards the Trumpian fold (though not ever squarely in it).
There are potentially serious concerns about the long-term safety of the @Space_Station. Some parts of it are simply getting too old and obviously that risk grows over time.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 13, 2025
Even though @SpaceX earns billions of dollars from transporting astronauts & cargo to the ISS, I… https://t.co/TcyUwcwHfE
"If you don't have wrinkles, you haven't laughed enough" - Phillis Diller
The same people who blame the West for everything also consider it a human rights violation to stop the rest of Earth from moving here 🤔
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 14, 2025
"If you don't have wrinkles, you haven't laughed enough" - Phillis Diller
"If you don't have wrinkles, you haven't laughed enough" - Phillis Diller
Elon overracted and made an arse of hisself and, to his credit, has apologized for it.FLBear5630 said:Is there ever a negative situation for this Administration??? You sure you aren't in marketing? Elon, Trump's self proclaimed BFF, not only said Donald was a hypocrite BUT on the Epstein list. That is a positive for this Administration????whiterock said:catastrophic misread.KaiBear said:Harrison Bergeron said:I doubt Musk will have much impact on the fate of the bill. The only folks obsessed with him are Democrats, and they would not vote for the bill regardless. And the Republicans who oppose the bill are the principled ones who could give two ****s about Musk's opinions. It will be more circle-jerk for the LWNJ TDSers like quash junior, but if the bill fails it will be for other reasons.KaiBear said:
Musk dumping a lot of truth on the internet.
Extremely damaging to Trump.
Tax bill is now dead.
All of our taxes increase. Republicans lose the midterms.
The bill is DOA.
Whatever slim chance it had is finished.
Becoming more and more convinced Musk did exactly what had to be done.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the Senate to cut more spending out of the bill.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the recissions bills to pass the House & Senate.
Everyone has seen what he's willing to spend in primaries & generals.
Everyone has seen what a third party does to GOP hopes in national elections (2 Clinton terms).
GOP leadership will be whipping members to cut harder, to prevent Elon from wading in against them, if not actually re-engage on the GOP side.
(it's usually conservative ideologues berating GOP establishment unwillingness to cut anything. When was the last time the GOP donor class weighed in so forcefully in support of budget cuts, government cuts, etc......?)
We should no be worried at what we are watching. This is the system finally starting to threaten to work the way it should work.
We have more than few here on both sides of the aisle who could take a lesson from that.
yep.Assassin said:The same people who blame the West for everything also consider it a human rights violation to stop the rest of Earth from moving here 🤔
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 14, 2025
Democrats have elevated to moral imperative a policy of letting muslims and brown peoples of all types flood across our border where they will be daily oppressed by Christian Nationalism and white supremacy.
Ironic in the extreme.
Until you say one thing that Trump has done wrong, and there are a lot to choose from, you have no credibility on calling balls and strikes on anything this Administration does.whiterock said:Elon overracted and made an arse of hisself and, to his credit, has apologized for it.FLBear5630 said:Is there ever a negative situation for this Administration??? You sure you aren't in marketing? Elon, Trump's self proclaimed BFF, not only said Donald was a hypocrite BUT on the Epstein list. That is a positive for this Administration????whiterock said:catastrophic misread.KaiBear said:Harrison Bergeron said:I doubt Musk will have much impact on the fate of the bill. The only folks obsessed with him are Democrats, and they would not vote for the bill regardless. And the Republicans who oppose the bill are the principled ones who could give two ****s about Musk's opinions. It will be more circle-jerk for the LWNJ TDSers like quash junior, but if the bill fails it will be for other reasons.KaiBear said:
Musk dumping a lot of truth on the internet.
Extremely damaging to Trump.
Tax bill is now dead.
All of our taxes increase. Republicans lose the midterms.
The bill is DOA.
Whatever slim chance it had is finished.
Becoming more and more convinced Musk did exactly what had to be done.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the Senate to cut more spending out of the bill.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the recissions bills to pass the House & Senate.
Everyone has seen what he's willing to spend in primaries & generals.
Everyone has seen what a third party does to GOP hopes in national elections (2 Clinton terms).
GOP leadership will be whipping members to cut harder, to prevent Elon from wading in against them, if not actually re-engage on the GOP side.
(it's usually conservative ideologues berating GOP establishment unwillingness to cut anything. When was the last time the GOP donor class weighed in so forcefully in support of budget cuts, government cuts, etc......?)
We should no be worried at what we are watching. This is the system finally starting to threaten to work the way it should work.
We have more than few here on both sides of the aisle who could take a lesson from that.
I find it hard to believe I am having to say this as I always believed you to be one of the more informed and impartial posters, but you have become a cheerleader for Donald. There is nothing he can do that is wrong, it is everyone else's fault or the definitions are changed. When it comes to Trump it is nothing but MAGA flag waving.
Reminder, if it wasn’t for Elon Musk saving free speech we wouldn’t have know about what happened in Iran.
— Ian Jaeger (@IanJaeger29) June 22, 2025
God bless Elon Musk. pic.twitter.com/pXaABW4Xjn
"If you don't have wrinkles, you haven't laughed enough" - Phillis Diller
The @Tesla_AI robotaxi launch begins in Austin this afternoon with customers paying a $4.20 flat fee!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 22, 2025
"If you don't have wrinkles, you haven't laughed enough" - Phillis Diller
Had to been done lol https://t.co/SnZ3afXXzB
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 22, 2025
"If you don't have wrinkles, you haven't laughed enough" - Phillis Diller
You guys stop attacking Teslas and dealerships?
There is no "rent" to pay here. The merit is in the substance of the commentary itself. Going ad hominem is subtraction not addition. If he is trying to do what he promised to do, and accomplishing much, why on earth would I nitpick him just so my praise would be more "worthy?" Isn't that just plain old selfishness? I have to do some harm to the Conservative agenda in order to further it?FLBear5630 said:Until you say one thing that Trump has done wrong, and there are a lot to choose from, you have no credibility on calling balls and strikes on anything this Administration does.whiterock said:Elon overracted and made an arse of hisself and, to his credit, has apologized for it.FLBear5630 said:Is there ever a negative situation for this Administration??? You sure you aren't in marketing? Elon, Trump's self proclaimed BFF, not only said Donald was a hypocrite BUT on the Epstein list. That is a positive for this Administration????whiterock said:catastrophic misread.KaiBear said:Harrison Bergeron said:I doubt Musk will have much impact on the fate of the bill. The only folks obsessed with him are Democrats, and they would not vote for the bill regardless. And the Republicans who oppose the bill are the principled ones who could give two ****s about Musk's opinions. It will be more circle-jerk for the LWNJ TDSers like quash junior, but if the bill fails it will be for other reasons.KaiBear said:
Musk dumping a lot of truth on the internet.
Extremely damaging to Trump.
Tax bill is now dead.
All of our taxes increase. Republicans lose the midterms.
The bill is DOA.
Whatever slim chance it had is finished.
Becoming more and more convinced Musk did exactly what had to be done.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the Senate to cut more spending out of the bill.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the recissions bills to pass the House & Senate.
Everyone has seen what he's willing to spend in primaries & generals.
Everyone has seen what a third party does to GOP hopes in national elections (2 Clinton terms).
GOP leadership will be whipping members to cut harder, to prevent Elon from wading in against them, if not actually re-engage on the GOP side.
(it's usually conservative ideologues berating GOP establishment unwillingness to cut anything. When was the last time the GOP donor class weighed in so forcefully in support of budget cuts, government cuts, etc......?)
We should no be worried at what we are watching. This is the system finally starting to threaten to work the way it should work.
We have more than few here on both sides of the aisle who could take a lesson from that.
The more one critiques, the more profound their praise? The more one praises, the more one is obligated to critique? Wouldn't that completely undermine completely the validity of the neverTrumper commentary which never once offers any credit and stoops to the silliest attacks imaginable?
I find it hard to believe I am having to say this as I always believed you to be one of the more informed and impartial posters, but you have become a cheerleader for Donald. There is nothing he can do that is wrong, it is everyone else's fault or the definitions are changed. When it comes to Trump it is nothing but MAGA flag waving.
More nonsense. You issue a never-ending stream of neverTrump nonsense. I point out the rectal-cranial inversion of it. Therefore I am a cheerleader? The veracity of my defense is predicated on the volume of my prior criticism of him? How does that work? I must be grandiloquent about my wife's cellulite in order to comment authoritatively on her manifest beauty in a dinner gown?
Do you walk around your office berating your employees just so they'll appreciate your praise a little more? No. Only a poor leader does that. In politics, you support your leaders until they are unsupportable. Then you replace them.
I mean, the shoddiness of the reasoning here is profound. Do you really believe that the Democrat who votes with you a single time is the best Republican of all, solely because of all the times he didn't vote with you? That John Fetterman once in a blue moon crossing the aisle in Churchillian "convictions of honour and good sense" makes him the ideal Republican leader? That's your argument in a nutshell.
Think harder!
Berating my employees? This is a message board, no one works for me. Trump has broken almost everyone of his campaign promises and MAGA tenants. You have changed the definition to fit what he has done every time. The latest having the US enter a foreign war in the middle east.whiterock said:There is no "rent" to pay here. The merit is in the substance of the commentary itself. Going ad hominem is subtraction not addition. If he is trying to do what he promised to do, and accomplishing much, why on earth would I nitpick him just so my praise would be more "worthy?" Isn't that just plain old selfishness? I have to do some harm to the Conservative agenda in order to further it?FLBear5630 said:Until you say one thing that Trump has done wrong, and there are a lot to choose from, you have no credibility on calling balls and strikes on anything this Administration does.whiterock said:Elon overracted and made an arse of hisself and, to his credit, has apologized for it.FLBear5630 said:Is there ever a negative situation for this Administration??? You sure you aren't in marketing? Elon, Trump's self proclaimed BFF, not only said Donald was a hypocrite BUT on the Epstein list. That is a positive for this Administration????whiterock said:catastrophic misread.KaiBear said:Harrison Bergeron said:I doubt Musk will have much impact on the fate of the bill. The only folks obsessed with him are Democrats, and they would not vote for the bill regardless. And the Republicans who oppose the bill are the principled ones who could give two ****s about Musk's opinions. It will be more circle-jerk for the LWNJ TDSers like quash junior, but if the bill fails it will be for other reasons.KaiBear said:
Musk dumping a lot of truth on the internet.
Extremely damaging to Trump.
Tax bill is now dead.
All of our taxes increase. Republicans lose the midterms.
The bill is DOA.
Whatever slim chance it had is finished.
Becoming more and more convinced Musk did exactly what had to be done.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the Senate to cut more spending out of the bill.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the recissions bills to pass the House & Senate.
Everyone has seen what he's willing to spend in primaries & generals.
Everyone has seen what a third party does to GOP hopes in national elections (2 Clinton terms).
GOP leadership will be whipping members to cut harder, to prevent Elon from wading in against them, if not actually re-engage on the GOP side.
(it's usually conservative ideologues berating GOP establishment unwillingness to cut anything. When was the last time the GOP donor class weighed in so forcefully in support of budget cuts, government cuts, etc......?)
We should no be worried at what we are watching. This is the system finally starting to threaten to work the way it should work.
We have more than few here on both sides of the aisle who could take a lesson from that.
The more one critiques, the more profound their praise? The more one praises, the more one is obligated to critique? Wouldn't that completely undermine completely the validity of the neverTrumper commentary which never once offers any credit and stoops to the silliest attacks imaginable?
I find it hard to believe I am having to say this as I always believed you to be one of the more informed and impartial posters, but you have become a cheerleader for Donald. There is nothing he can do that is wrong, it is everyone else's fault or the definitions are changed. When it comes to Trump it is nothing but MAGA flag waving.
More nonsense. You issue a never-ending stream of neverTrump nonsense. I point out the rectal-cranial inversion of it. Therefore I am a cheerleader? The veracity of my defense is predicated on the volume of my prior criticism of him? How does that work? I must be grandiloquent about my wife's cellulite in order to comment authoritatively on her manifest beauty in a dinner gown?
Do you walk around your office berating your employees just so they'll appreciate your praise a little more? No. Only a poor leader does that. In politics, you support your leaders until they are unsupportable. Then you replace them.
I mean, the shoddiness of the reasoning here is profound. Do you really believe that the Democrat who votes with you a single time is the best Republican of all, solely because of all the times he didn't vote with you? That John Fetterman once in a blue moon crossing the aisle in Churchillian "convictions of honour and good sense" makes him the ideal Republican leader? That's your argument in a nutshell.
Think harder!
We are now hearing on the radio about 60% uranium in trucks hidden in Iran, that must be found. How do you think that will happen? How do you search for truck load size payloads? You know the next thing will be US troops on the ground to find the uranium. Why? It must be found and you can't send Jewish troops into Iran. You going to be good with that and say Trump is still true to his MAGA believes that got him elected?
Good grief man. Your ability to do basic ontology has failed. Every time he has ever spoken about Iran, he has said "they must not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons." And now he has done that. What a great example of how your neverTrumpism has caused you to literally invert reality.FLBear5630 said:Berating my employees? This is a message board, no one works for me. Trump has broken almost everyone of his campaign promises and MAGA tenants. You have changed the definition to fit what he has done every time. The latest having the US enter a foreign war in the middle east.whiterock said:There is no "rent" to pay here. The merit is in the substance of the commentary itself. Going ad hominem is subtraction not addition. If he is trying to do what he promised to do, and accomplishing much, why on earth would I nitpick him just so my praise would be more "worthy?" Isn't that just plain old selfishness? I have to do some harm to the Conservative agenda in order to further it?FLBear5630 said:Until you say one thing that Trump has done wrong, and there are a lot to choose from, you have no credibility on calling balls and strikes on anything this Administration does.whiterock said:Elon overracted and made an arse of hisself and, to his credit, has apologized for it.FLBear5630 said:Is there ever a negative situation for this Administration??? You sure you aren't in marketing? Elon, Trump's self proclaimed BFF, not only said Donald was a hypocrite BUT on the Epstein list. That is a positive for this Administration????whiterock said:catastrophic misread.KaiBear said:Harrison Bergeron said:I doubt Musk will have much impact on the fate of the bill. The only folks obsessed with him are Democrats, and they would not vote for the bill regardless. And the Republicans who oppose the bill are the principled ones who could give two ****s about Musk's opinions. It will be more circle-jerk for the LWNJ TDSers like quash junior, but if the bill fails it will be for other reasons.KaiBear said:
Musk dumping a lot of truth on the internet.
Extremely damaging to Trump.
Tax bill is now dead.
All of our taxes increase. Republicans lose the midterms.
The bill is DOA.
Whatever slim chance it had is finished.
Becoming more and more convinced Musk did exactly what had to be done.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the Senate to cut more spending out of the bill.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the recissions bills to pass the House & Senate.
Everyone has seen what he's willing to spend in primaries & generals.
Everyone has seen what a third party does to GOP hopes in national elections (2 Clinton terms).
GOP leadership will be whipping members to cut harder, to prevent Elon from wading in against them, if not actually re-engage on the GOP side.
(it's usually conservative ideologues berating GOP establishment unwillingness to cut anything. When was the last time the GOP donor class weighed in so forcefully in support of budget cuts, government cuts, etc......?)
We should no be worried at what we are watching. This is the system finally starting to threaten to work the way it should work.
We have more than few here on both sides of the aisle who could take a lesson from that.
The more one critiques, the more profound their praise? The more one praises, the more one is obligated to critique? Wouldn't that completely undermine completely the validity of the neverTrumper commentary which never once offers any credit and stoops to the silliest attacks imaginable?
I find it hard to believe I am having to say this as I always believed you to be one of the more informed and impartial posters, but you have become a cheerleader for Donald. There is nothing he can do that is wrong, it is everyone else's fault or the definitions are changed. When it comes to Trump it is nothing but MAGA flag waving.
More nonsense. You issue a never-ending stream of neverTrump nonsense. I point out the rectal-cranial inversion of it. Therefore I am a cheerleader? The veracity of my defense is predicated on the volume of my prior criticism of him? How does that work? I must be grandiloquent about my wife's cellulite in order to comment authoritatively on her manifest beauty in a dinner gown?
Do you walk around your office berating your employees just so they'll appreciate your praise a little more? No. Only a poor leader does that. In politics, you support your leaders until they are unsupportable. Then you replace them.
I mean, the shoddiness of the reasoning here is profound. Do you really believe that the Democrat who votes with you a single time is the best Republican of all, solely because of all the times he didn't vote with you? That John Fetterman once in a blue moon crossing the aisle in Churchillian "convictions of honour and good sense" makes him the ideal Republican leader? That's your argument in a nutshell.
Think harder!
We are now hearing on the radio about 60% uranium in trucks hidden in Iran, that must be found. How do you think that will happen? How do you search for truck load size payloads? You know the next thing will be US troops on the ground to find the uranium. Why? It must be found and you can't send Jewish troops into Iran. You going to be good with that and say Trump is still true to his MAGA believes that got him elected?
Only to match your intellectual gymnastics to make his actions fit want you want to see, not necessarily what is really happening.whiterock said:Good grief man. Your ability to do basic ontology has failed. Every time he has ever spoken about Iran, he has said "they must not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons." And now he has done that. What a great example of how your neverTrumpism has caused you to literally invert reality.FLBear5630 said:Berating my employees? This is a message board, no one works for me. Trump has broken almost everyone of his campaign promises and MAGA tenants. You have changed the definition to fit what he has done every time. The latest having the US enter a foreign war in the middle east.whiterock said:There is no "rent" to pay here. The merit is in the substance of the commentary itself. Going ad hominem is subtraction not addition. If he is trying to do what he promised to do, and accomplishing much, why on earth would I nitpick him just so my praise would be more "worthy?" Isn't that just plain old selfishness? I have to do some harm to the Conservative agenda in order to further it?FLBear5630 said:Until you say one thing that Trump has done wrong, and there are a lot to choose from, you have no credibility on calling balls and strikes on anything this Administration does.whiterock said:Elon overracted and made an arse of hisself and, to his credit, has apologized for it.FLBear5630 said:Is there ever a negative situation for this Administration??? You sure you aren't in marketing? Elon, Trump's self proclaimed BFF, not only said Donald was a hypocrite BUT on the Epstein list. That is a positive for this Administration????whiterock said:catastrophic misread.KaiBear said:Harrison Bergeron said:I doubt Musk will have much impact on the fate of the bill. The only folks obsessed with him are Democrats, and they would not vote for the bill regardless. And the Republicans who oppose the bill are the principled ones who could give two ****s about Musk's opinions. It will be more circle-jerk for the LWNJ TDSers like quash junior, but if the bill fails it will be for other reasons.KaiBear said:
Musk dumping a lot of truth on the internet.
Extremely damaging to Trump.
Tax bill is now dead.
All of our taxes increase. Republicans lose the midterms.
The bill is DOA.
Whatever slim chance it had is finished.
Becoming more and more convinced Musk did exactly what had to be done.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the Senate to cut more spending out of the bill.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the recissions bills to pass the House & Senate.
Everyone has seen what he's willing to spend in primaries & generals.
Everyone has seen what a third party does to GOP hopes in national elections (2 Clinton terms).
GOP leadership will be whipping members to cut harder, to prevent Elon from wading in against them, if not actually re-engage on the GOP side.
(it's usually conservative ideologues berating GOP establishment unwillingness to cut anything. When was the last time the GOP donor class weighed in so forcefully in support of budget cuts, government cuts, etc......?)
We should no be worried at what we are watching. This is the system finally starting to threaten to work the way it should work.
We have more than few here on both sides of the aisle who could take a lesson from that.
The more one critiques, the more profound their praise? The more one praises, the more one is obligated to critique? Wouldn't that completely undermine completely the validity of the neverTrumper commentary which never once offers any credit and stoops to the silliest attacks imaginable?
I find it hard to believe I am having to say this as I always believed you to be one of the more informed and impartial posters, but you have become a cheerleader for Donald. There is nothing he can do that is wrong, it is everyone else's fault or the definitions are changed. When it comes to Trump it is nothing but MAGA flag waving.
More nonsense. You issue a never-ending stream of neverTrump nonsense. I point out the rectal-cranial inversion of it. Therefore I am a cheerleader? The veracity of my defense is predicated on the volume of my prior criticism of him? How does that work? I must be grandiloquent about my wife's cellulite in order to comment authoritatively on her manifest beauty in a dinner gown?
Do you walk around your office berating your employees just so they'll appreciate your praise a little more? No. Only a poor leader does that. In politics, you support your leaders until they are unsupportable. Then you replace them.
I mean, the shoddiness of the reasoning here is profound. Do you really believe that the Democrat who votes with you a single time is the best Republican of all, solely because of all the times he didn't vote with you? That John Fetterman once in a blue moon crossing the aisle in Churchillian "convictions of honour and good sense" makes him the ideal Republican leader? That's your argument in a nutshell.
Think harder!
We are now hearing on the radio about 60% uranium in trucks hidden in Iran, that must be found. How do you think that will happen? How do you search for truck load size payloads? You know the next thing will be US troops on the ground to find the uranium. Why? It must be found and you can't send Jewish troops into Iran. You going to be good with that and say Trump is still true to his MAGA believes that got him elected?
As I said on another thread, he deserves credit and congrats. He seems to have avoided mission creep, which is a huge positive and consistent with his campaign promises. If he does what he says, I will call it that way. If he doesn't and goes off doing whacky **** like the Musk DOGE fiasco I will call it. It doesn't matter to me one way or another, he is not my choice but he is better than Biden/Harris or Obama. Actually throw in Bush/Cheney, I was not fans of Cheney/Rumsfled...
There you go again. The Musk/DOGE program was not a fiasco. It identified hundreds billion dollars of waste/fraud/abuse and horribly defective business structures (particularly in the IT area). Shrinking the number of software platforms in an agency from dozens to ONE will save money and make organization more effective. Entire agencies were collapsed, saving further monies on overhead. Recissions packages are coming. The plan, the process, and the results are all rational, effective....yet another promise kept.FLBear5630 said:Only to match your intellectual gymnastics to make his actions fit want you want to see, not necessarily what is really happening.whiterock said:Good grief man. Your ability to do basic ontology has failed. Every time he has ever spoken about Iran, he has said "they must not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons." And now he has done that. What a great example of how your neverTrumpism has caused you to literally invert reality.FLBear5630 said:Berating my employees? This is a message board, no one works for me. Trump has broken almost everyone of his campaign promises and MAGA tenants. You have changed the definition to fit what he has done every time. The latest having the US enter a foreign war in the middle east.whiterock said:There is no "rent" to pay here. The merit is in the substance of the commentary itself. Going ad hominem is subtraction not addition. If he is trying to do what he promised to do, and accomplishing much, why on earth would I nitpick him just so my praise would be more "worthy?" Isn't that just plain old selfishness? I have to do some harm to the Conservative agenda in order to further it?FLBear5630 said:Until you say one thing that Trump has done wrong, and there are a lot to choose from, you have no credibility on calling balls and strikes on anything this Administration does.whiterock said:Elon overracted and made an arse of hisself and, to his credit, has apologized for it.FLBear5630 said:Is there ever a negative situation for this Administration??? You sure you aren't in marketing? Elon, Trump's self proclaimed BFF, not only said Donald was a hypocrite BUT on the Epstein list. That is a positive for this Administration????whiterock said:catastrophic misread.KaiBear said:Harrison Bergeron said:I doubt Musk will have much impact on the fate of the bill. The only folks obsessed with him are Democrats, and they would not vote for the bill regardless. And the Republicans who oppose the bill are the principled ones who could give two ****s about Musk's opinions. It will be more circle-jerk for the LWNJ TDSers like quash junior, but if the bill fails it will be for other reasons.KaiBear said:
Musk dumping a lot of truth on the internet.
Extremely damaging to Trump.
Tax bill is now dead.
All of our taxes increase. Republicans lose the midterms.
The bill is DOA.
Whatever slim chance it had is finished.
Becoming more and more convinced Musk did exactly what had to be done.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the Senate to cut more spending out of the bill.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the recissions bills to pass the House & Senate.
Everyone has seen what he's willing to spend in primaries & generals.
Everyone has seen what a third party does to GOP hopes in national elections (2 Clinton terms).
GOP leadership will be whipping members to cut harder, to prevent Elon from wading in against them, if not actually re-engage on the GOP side.
(it's usually conservative ideologues berating GOP establishment unwillingness to cut anything. When was the last time the GOP donor class weighed in so forcefully in support of budget cuts, government cuts, etc......?)
We should no be worried at what we are watching. This is the system finally starting to threaten to work the way it should work.
We have more than few here on both sides of the aisle who could take a lesson from that.
The more one critiques, the more profound their praise? The more one praises, the more one is obligated to critique? Wouldn't that completely undermine completely the validity of the neverTrumper commentary which never once offers any credit and stoops to the silliest attacks imaginable?
I find it hard to believe I am having to say this as I always believed you to be one of the more informed and impartial posters, but you have become a cheerleader for Donald. There is nothing he can do that is wrong, it is everyone else's fault or the definitions are changed. When it comes to Trump it is nothing but MAGA flag waving.
More nonsense. You issue a never-ending stream of neverTrump nonsense. I point out the rectal-cranial inversion of it. Therefore I am a cheerleader? The veracity of my defense is predicated on the volume of my prior criticism of him? How does that work? I must be grandiloquent about my wife's cellulite in order to comment authoritatively on her manifest beauty in a dinner gown?
Do you walk around your office berating your employees just so they'll appreciate your praise a little more? No. Only a poor leader does that. In politics, you support your leaders until they are unsupportable. Then you replace them.
I mean, the shoddiness of the reasoning here is profound. Do you really believe that the Democrat who votes with you a single time is the best Republican of all, solely because of all the times he didn't vote with you? That John Fetterman once in a blue moon crossing the aisle in Churchillian "convictions of honour and good sense" makes him the ideal Republican leader? That's your argument in a nutshell.
Think harder!
We are now hearing on the radio about 60% uranium in trucks hidden in Iran, that must be found. How do you think that will happen? How do you search for truck load size payloads? You know the next thing will be US troops on the ground to find the uranium. Why? It must be found and you can't send Jewish troops into Iran. You going to be good with that and say Trump is still true to his MAGA believes that got him elected?
As I said on another thread, he deserves credit and congrats. He seems to have avoided mission creep, which is a huge positive and consistent with his campaign promises. If he does what he says, I will call it that way. If he doesn't and goes off doing whacky **** like the Musk DOGE fiasco I will call it. It doesn't matter to me one way or another, he is not my choice but he is better than Biden/Harris or Obama. Actually throw in Bush/Cheney, I was not fans of Cheney/Rumsfled...
I mean, wake up. Just because you abhor the private sector concept of "move fast & break things" when trying to restructure a business does not mean the process itself was a disaster. It was in fact highly beneficial. Your problem is that it was done in a manner you find detestable. Ergo you cannot allow yourself to see any positives at all.
Would I have preferred that the savings were in the trillions rather than billions? Sure. But facts are facts. Taxpayers are better off today than they were a year ago, by hundreds of billions of dollars + obvious future savings on costs of running government. And it's not like we've got this beast down to bare bones. We CAN keep working the problem and making more improvements. So we take the win, and come back for more tomorrow.
Turn off the MSNBC.....
No it didn't! It identifed things Trump doesn't like, that doesn't make it fraud or abuse. Those are legal acts, if they were they would prosecute. They do not have 1 case that they can prosecute.whiterock said:There you go again. The Musk/DOGE program was not a fiasco. It identified hundreds billion dollars of waste/fraud/abuse and horribly defective business structures (particularly in the IT area). Shrinking the number of software platforms in an agency from dozens to ONE will save money and make organization more effective. Entire agencies were collapsed, saving further monies on overhead. Recissions packages are coming. The plan, the process, and the results are all rational, effective....yet another promise kept.FLBear5630 said:Only to match your intellectual gymnastics to make his actions fit want you want to see, not necessarily what is really happening.whiterock said:Good grief man. Your ability to do basic ontology has failed. Every time he has ever spoken about Iran, he has said "they must not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons." And now he has done that. What a great example of how your neverTrumpism has caused you to literally invert reality.FLBear5630 said:Berating my employees? This is a message board, no one works for me. Trump has broken almost everyone of his campaign promises and MAGA tenants. You have changed the definition to fit what he has done every time. The latest having the US enter a foreign war in the middle east.whiterock said:There is no "rent" to pay here. The merit is in the substance of the commentary itself. Going ad hominem is subtraction not addition. If he is trying to do what he promised to do, and accomplishing much, why on earth would I nitpick him just so my praise would be more "worthy?" Isn't that just plain old selfishness? I have to do some harm to the Conservative agenda in order to further it?FLBear5630 said:Until you say one thing that Trump has done wrong, and there are a lot to choose from, you have no credibility on calling balls and strikes on anything this Administration does.whiterock said:Elon overracted and made an arse of hisself and, to his credit, has apologized for it.FLBear5630 said:Is there ever a negative situation for this Administration??? You sure you aren't in marketing? Elon, Trump's self proclaimed BFF, not only said Donald was a hypocrite BUT on the Epstein list. That is a positive for this Administration????whiterock said:catastrophic misread.KaiBear said:Harrison Bergeron said:I doubt Musk will have much impact on the fate of the bill. The only folks obsessed with him are Democrats, and they would not vote for the bill regardless. And the Republicans who oppose the bill are the principled ones who could give two ****s about Musk's opinions. It will be more circle-jerk for the LWNJ TDSers like quash junior, but if the bill fails it will be for other reasons.KaiBear said:
Musk dumping a lot of truth on the internet.
Extremely damaging to Trump.
Tax bill is now dead.
All of our taxes increase. Republicans lose the midterms.
The bill is DOA.
Whatever slim chance it had is finished.
Becoming more and more convinced Musk did exactly what had to be done.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the Senate to cut more spending out of the bill.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the recissions bills to pass the House & Senate.
Everyone has seen what he's willing to spend in primaries & generals.
Everyone has seen what a third party does to GOP hopes in national elections (2 Clinton terms).
GOP leadership will be whipping members to cut harder, to prevent Elon from wading in against them, if not actually re-engage on the GOP side.
(it's usually conservative ideologues berating GOP establishment unwillingness to cut anything. When was the last time the GOP donor class weighed in so forcefully in support of budget cuts, government cuts, etc......?)
We should no be worried at what we are watching. This is the system finally starting to threaten to work the way it should work.
We have more than few here on both sides of the aisle who could take a lesson from that.
The more one critiques, the more profound their praise? The more one praises, the more one is obligated to critique? Wouldn't that completely undermine completely the validity of the neverTrumper commentary which never once offers any credit and stoops to the silliest attacks imaginable?
I find it hard to believe I am having to say this as I always believed you to be one of the more informed and impartial posters, but you have become a cheerleader for Donald. There is nothing he can do that is wrong, it is everyone else's fault or the definitions are changed. When it comes to Trump it is nothing but MAGA flag waving.
More nonsense. You issue a never-ending stream of neverTrump nonsense. I point out the rectal-cranial inversion of it. Therefore I am a cheerleader? The veracity of my defense is predicated on the volume of my prior criticism of him? How does that work? I must be grandiloquent about my wife's cellulite in order to comment authoritatively on her manifest beauty in a dinner gown?
Do you walk around your office berating your employees just so they'll appreciate your praise a little more? No. Only a poor leader does that. In politics, you support your leaders until they are unsupportable. Then you replace them.
I mean, the shoddiness of the reasoning here is profound. Do you really believe that the Democrat who votes with you a single time is the best Republican of all, solely because of all the times he didn't vote with you? That John Fetterman once in a blue moon crossing the aisle in Churchillian "convictions of honour and good sense" makes him the ideal Republican leader? That's your argument in a nutshell.
Think harder!
We are now hearing on the radio about 60% uranium in trucks hidden in Iran, that must be found. How do you think that will happen? How do you search for truck load size payloads? You know the next thing will be US troops on the ground to find the uranium. Why? It must be found and you can't send Jewish troops into Iran. You going to be good with that and say Trump is still true to his MAGA believes that got him elected?
As I said on another thread, he deserves credit and congrats. He seems to have avoided mission creep, which is a huge positive and consistent with his campaign promises. If he does what he says, I will call it that way. If he doesn't and goes off doing whacky **** like the Musk DOGE fiasco I will call it. It doesn't matter to me one way or another, he is not my choice but he is better than Biden/Harris or Obama. Actually throw in Bush/Cheney, I was not fans of Cheney/Rumsfled...
I mean, wake up. Just because you abhor the private sector concept of "move fast & break things" when trying to restructure a business does not mean the process itself was a disaster. It was in fact highly beneficial. Your problem is that it was done in a manner you find detestable. Ergo you cannot allow yourself to see any positives at all.
Would I have preferred that the savings were in the trillions rather than billions? Sure. But facts are facts. Taxpayers are better off today than they were a year ago, by hundreds of billions of dollars + obvious future savings on costs of running government. And it's not like we've got this beast down to bare bones. We CAN keep working the problem and making more improvements. So we take the win, and come back for more tomorrow.
Turn off the MSNBC.....
Waste?? They disagree with what Congress or past Administrations wanted to do? Stop the presses, no ***** You are putting what you and MAGA like and dislike as waste. Those are subjective decisions, not waste or abuse. Whether YOU or anyone on this Board agrees with studying something does not make it illegal, abuse or waste. The money was approved and went to do what it was said to do. Just because you don't agree with the hourly rates or the hours doesn't make it fraud! You are real lose with your terminology to make **** fit your world...
Who poured pi$$ in your Wheaties this morning? It's really gotten you off your game. Come back to us!FLBear5630 said:No it didn't!whiterock said:There you go again. The Musk/DOGE program was not a fiasco. It identified hundreds billion dollars of waste/fraud/abuse and horribly defective business structures (particularly in the IT area). Shrinking the number of software platforms in an agency from dozens to ONE will save money and make organization more effective. Entire agencies were collapsed, saving further monies on overhead. Recissions packages are coming. The plan, the process, and the results are all rational, effective....yet another promise kept.FLBear5630 said:Only to match your intellectual gymnastics to make his actions fit want you want to see, not necessarily what is really happening.whiterock said:Good grief man. Your ability to do basic ontology has failed. Every time he has ever spoken about Iran, he has said "they must not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons." And now he has done that. What a great example of how your neverTrumpism has caused you to literally invert reality.FLBear5630 said:Berating my employees? This is a message board, no one works for me. Trump has broken almost everyone of his campaign promises and MAGA tenants. You have changed the definition to fit what he has done every time. The latest having the US enter a foreign war in the middle east.whiterock said:There is no "rent" to pay here. The merit is in the substance of the commentary itself. Going ad hominem is subtraction not addition. If he is trying to do what he promised to do, and accomplishing much, why on earth would I nitpick him just so my praise would be more "worthy?" Isn't that just plain old selfishness? I have to do some harm to the Conservative agenda in order to further it?FLBear5630 said:Until you say one thing that Trump has done wrong, and there are a lot to choose from, you have no credibility on calling balls and strikes on anything this Administration does.whiterock said:Elon overracted and made an arse of hisself and, to his credit, has apologized for it.FLBear5630 said:Is there ever a negative situation for this Administration??? You sure you aren't in marketing? Elon, Trump's self proclaimed BFF, not only said Donald was a hypocrite BUT on the Epstein list. That is a positive for this Administration????whiterock said:
catastrophic misread.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the Senate to cut more spending out of the bill.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the recissions bills to pass the House & Senate.
Everyone has seen what he's willing to spend in primaries & generals.
Everyone has seen what a third party does to GOP hopes in national elections (2 Clinton terms).
GOP leadership will be whipping members to cut harder, to prevent Elon from wading in against them, if not actually re-engage on the GOP side.
(it's usually conservative ideologues berating GOP establishment unwillingness to cut anything. When was the last time the GOP donor class weighed in so forcefully in support of budget cuts, government cuts, etc......?)
We should no be worried at what we are watching. This is the system finally starting to threaten to work the way it should work.
We have more than few here on both sides of the aisle who could take a lesson from that.
The more one critiques, the more profound their praise? The more one praises, the more one is obligated to critique? Wouldn't that completely undermine completely the validity of the neverTrumper commentary which never once offers any credit and stoops to the silliest attacks imaginable?
I find it hard to believe I am having to say this as I always believed you to be one of the more informed and impartial posters, but you have become a cheerleader for Donald. There is nothing he can do that is wrong, it is everyone else's fault or the definitions are changed. When it comes to Trump it is nothing but MAGA flag waving.
More nonsense. You issue a never-ending stream of neverTrump nonsense. I point out the rectal-cranial inversion of it. Therefore I am a cheerleader? The veracity of my defense is predicated on the volume of my prior criticism of him? How does that work? I must be grandiloquent about my wife's cellulite in order to comment authoritatively on her manifest beauty in a dinner gown?
Do you walk around your office berating your employees just so they'll appreciate your praise a little more? No. Only a poor leader does that. In politics, you support your leaders until they are unsupportable. Then you replace them.
I mean, the shoddiness of the reasoning here is profound. Do you really believe that the Democrat who votes with you a single time is the best Republican of all, solely because of all the times he didn't vote with you? That John Fetterman once in a blue moon crossing the aisle in Churchillian "convictions of honour and good sense" makes him the ideal Republican leader? That's your argument in a nutshell.
Think harder!
We are now hearing on the radio about 60% uranium in trucks hidden in Iran, that must be found. How do you think that will happen? How do you search for truck load size payloads? You know the next thing will be US troops on the ground to find the uranium. Why? It must be found and you can't send Jewish troops into Iran. You going to be good with that and say Trump is still true to his MAGA believes that got him elected?
As I said on another thread, he deserves credit and congrats. He seems to have avoided mission creep, which is a huge positive and consistent with his campaign promises. If he does what he says, I will call it that way. If he doesn't and goes off doing whacky **** like the Musk DOGE fiasco I will call it. It doesn't matter to me one way or another, he is not my choice but he is better than Biden/Harris or Obama. Actually throw in Bush/Cheney, I was not fans of Cheney/Rumsfled...
I mean, wake up. Just because you abhor the private sector concept of "move fast & break things" when trying to restructure a business does not mean the process itself was a disaster. It was in fact highly beneficial. Your problem is that it was done in a manner you find detestable. Ergo you cannot allow yourself to see any positives at all.
Would I have preferred that the savings were in the trillions rather than billions? Sure. But facts are facts. Taxpayers are better off today than they were a year ago, by hundreds of billions of dollars + obvious future savings on costs of running government. And it's not like we've got this beast down to bare bones. We CAN keep working the problem and making more improvements. So we take the win, and come back for more tomorrow.
Turn off the MSNBC.....
Uh, yes, it did indeed identify hundreds of billions of dollars of direct spending cuts. Plus reductions in workforce. Plus efficiencies (like selling empty government buildings). ETC.... The true savings will likely end up exceeding $550B. I mean, if it doesn't...if nothing is happening.....if it's all smoke and mirrors that will have no impact on anything at all, then why are you so agitated? Just shrug & let it pass as politics of the day. Instead, you act as though your own ox has been gored.
It identifed things Trump doesn't like, that doesn't make it fraud or abuse.
It identified a long list of things that no reasonable person should like, wild wastes of money, employees not showing up for work, stadiums rented for staff parties, former admin shuffling money out the door as fast as possible, etc..
Those are legal acts, if they were they would prosecute. They do not have 1 case that they can prosecute.
Gotcha. How do you know they are NOT going to prosecute anything? The premise of your assertion here is that prosecution is announced the day after discovery of the problem. If that was happening, you would be screaming (this time with some justification) about politicization of the whole process. But that's not happening. The admin is being deliberate. They formed a DOJ task force to take referrals. DOGE has made dozens of referrals. Which will be investigated. Which will take months/years to complete.
Task Force: https://www.rvmnews.com/2025/03/doj-launches-news-task-force-to-go-after-the-fraudsters-doge-uncovers-watch/
Vote fraud: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5276489-musk-doge-voter-fraud/
SBA loan fraud: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/doj-threatens-to-prosecute-fraud-uncovered-by-doge/ar-AA1BY3CZ
....etc....
Waste??
Yes, renting out a stadium for a government office party is wasteful use of taxpayer dollars. So is sending monies to spread the LGBTQ abroad. And on and on and on.
They disagree with what Congress or past Administrations wanted to do? Stop the presses, no ***** You are putting what you and MAGA like and dislike as waste. Those are subjective decisions, not waste or abuse. Whether YOU or anyone on this Board agrees with studying something does not make it illegal, abuse or waste. The money was approved and went to do what it was said to do. Just because you don't agree with the hourly rates or the hours doesn't make it fraud! You are real lose with your terminology to make **** fit your world...
Congress delegates much of the decision-making process on spending to the Executive, with no real oversight. USAID monies have been used in ways that few reasonable persons would defend, yet here you are, a typically stable, phlegmatic fella now flecking spit all over his chin because someone dared to suggest that something might be amiss in a $6.5T budget $2T in deficit and then actually do something about it - auditing, cutting structure, reducing workforce, referring the worst discoveries for prosecutions, etc....
Who rented out a stadium? Would I do it? No. F-ing idiots...whiterock said:Who poured pi$$ in your Wheaties this morning? It's really gotten you off your game. Come back to us!FLBear5630 said:No it didn't!whiterock said:There you go again. The Musk/DOGE program was not a fiasco. It identified hundreds billion dollars of waste/fraud/abuse and horribly defective business structures (particularly in the IT area). Shrinking the number of software platforms in an agency from dozens to ONE will save money and make organization more effective. Entire agencies were collapsed, saving further monies on overhead. Recissions packages are coming. The plan, the process, and the results are all rational, effective....yet another promise kept.FLBear5630 said:Only to match your intellectual gymnastics to make his actions fit want you want to see, not necessarily what is really happening.whiterock said:Good grief man. Your ability to do basic ontology has failed. Every time he has ever spoken about Iran, he has said "they must not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons." And now he has done that. What a great example of how your neverTrumpism has caused you to literally invert reality.FLBear5630 said:Berating my employees? This is a message board, no one works for me. Trump has broken almost everyone of his campaign promises and MAGA tenants. You have changed the definition to fit what he has done every time. The latest having the US enter a foreign war in the middle east.whiterock said:There is no "rent" to pay here. The merit is in the substance of the commentary itself. Going ad hominem is subtraction not addition. If he is trying to do what he promised to do, and accomplishing much, why on earth would I nitpick him just so my praise would be more "worthy?" Isn't that just plain old selfishness? I have to do some harm to the Conservative agenda in order to further it?FLBear5630 said:Until you say one thing that Trump has done wrong, and there are a lot to choose from, you have no credibility on calling balls and strikes on anything this Administration does.whiterock said:Elon overracted and made an arse of hisself and, to his credit, has apologized for it.FLBear5630 said:Is there ever a negative situation for this Administration??? You sure you aren't in marketing? Elon, Trump's self proclaimed BFF, not only said Donald was a hypocrite BUT on the Epstein list. That is a positive for this Administration????whiterock said:
catastrophic misread.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the Senate to cut more spending out of the bill.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the recissions bills to pass the House & Senate.
Everyone has seen what he's willing to spend in primaries & generals.
Everyone has seen what a third party does to GOP hopes in national elections (2 Clinton terms).
GOP leadership will be whipping members to cut harder, to prevent Elon from wading in against them, if not actually re-engage on the GOP side.
(it's usually conservative ideologues berating GOP establishment unwillingness to cut anything. When was the last time the GOP donor class weighed in so forcefully in support of budget cuts, government cuts, etc......?)
We should no be worried at what we are watching. This is the system finally starting to threaten to work the way it should work.
We have more than few here on both sides of the aisle who could take a lesson from that.
The more one critiques, the more profound their praise? The more one praises, the more one is obligated to critique? Wouldn't that completely undermine completely the validity of the neverTrumper commentary which never once offers any credit and stoops to the silliest attacks imaginable?
I find it hard to believe I am having to say this as I always believed you to be one of the more informed and impartial posters, but you have become a cheerleader for Donald. There is nothing he can do that is wrong, it is everyone else's fault or the definitions are changed. When it comes to Trump it is nothing but MAGA flag waving.
More nonsense. You issue a never-ending stream of neverTrump nonsense. I point out the rectal-cranial inversion of it. Therefore I am a cheerleader? The veracity of my defense is predicated on the volume of my prior criticism of him? How does that work? I must be grandiloquent about my wife's cellulite in order to comment authoritatively on her manifest beauty in a dinner gown?
Do you walk around your office berating your employees just so they'll appreciate your praise a little more? No. Only a poor leader does that. In politics, you support your leaders until they are unsupportable. Then you replace them.
I mean, the shoddiness of the reasoning here is profound. Do you really believe that the Democrat who votes with you a single time is the best Republican of all, solely because of all the times he didn't vote with you? That John Fetterman once in a blue moon crossing the aisle in Churchillian "convictions of honour and good sense" makes him the ideal Republican leader? That's your argument in a nutshell.
Think harder!
We are now hearing on the radio about 60% uranium in trucks hidden in Iran, that must be found. How do you think that will happen? How do you search for truck load size payloads? You know the next thing will be US troops on the ground to find the uranium. Why? It must be found and you can't send Jewish troops into Iran. You going to be good with that and say Trump is still true to his MAGA believes that got him elected?
As I said on another thread, he deserves credit and congrats. He seems to have avoided mission creep, which is a huge positive and consistent with his campaign promises. If he does what he says, I will call it that way. If he doesn't and goes off doing whacky **** like the Musk DOGE fiasco I will call it. It doesn't matter to me one way or another, he is not my choice but he is better than Biden/Harris or Obama. Actually throw in Bush/Cheney, I was not fans of Cheney/Rumsfled...
I mean, wake up. Just because you abhor the private sector concept of "move fast & break things" when trying to restructure a business does not mean the process itself was a disaster. It was in fact highly beneficial. Your problem is that it was done in a manner you find detestable. Ergo you cannot allow yourself to see any positives at all.
Would I have preferred that the savings were in the trillions rather than billions? Sure. But facts are facts. Taxpayers are better off today than they were a year ago, by hundreds of billions of dollars + obvious future savings on costs of running government. And it's not like we've got this beast down to bare bones. We CAN keep working the problem and making more improvements. So we take the win, and come back for more tomorrow.
Turn off the MSNBC.....
Uh, yes, it did indeed identify hundreds of billions of dollars of direct spending cuts. Plus reductions in workforce. Plus efficiencies (like selling empty government buildings). ETC.... The true savings will likely end up exceeding $550B. I mean, if it doesn't...if nothing is happening.....if it's all smoke and mirrors that will have no impact on anything at all, then why are you so agitated? Just shrug & let it pass as politics of the day. Instead, you act as though your own ox has been gored.
It identifed things Trump doesn't like, that doesn't make it fraud or abuse.
It identified a long list of things that no reasonable person should like, wild wastes of money, employees not showing up for work, stadiums rented for staff parties, former admin shuffling money out the door as fast as possible, etc..
Those are legal acts, if they were they would prosecute. They do not have 1 case that they can prosecute.
Gotcha. How do you know they are NOT going to prosecute anything? The premise of your assertion here is that prosecution is announced the day after discovery of the problem. If that was happening, you would be screaming (this time with some justification) about politicization of the whole process. But that's not happening. The admin is being deliberate. They formed a DOJ task force to take referrals. DOGE has made dozens of referrals. Which will be investigated. Which will take months/years to complete.
Task Force: https://www.rvmnews.com/2025/03/doj-launches-news-task-force-to-go-after-the-fraudsters-doge-uncovers-watch/
Vote fraud: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5276489-musk-doge-voter-fraud/
SBA loan fraud: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/doj-threatens-to-prosecute-fraud-uncovered-by-doge/ar-AA1BY3CZ
....etc....
Waste??
Yes, renting out a stadium for a government office party is wasteful use of taxpayer dollars. So is sending monies to spread the LGBTQ abroad. And on and on and on.
They disagree with what Congress or past Administrations wanted to do? Stop the presses, no ***** You are putting what you and MAGA like and dislike as waste. Those are subjective decisions, not waste or abuse. Whether YOU or anyone on this Board agrees with studying something does not make it illegal, abuse or waste. The money was approved and went to do what it was said to do. Just because you don't agree with the hourly rates or the hours doesn't make it fraud! You are real lose with your terminology to make **** fit your world...
Congress delegates much of the decision-making process on spending to the Executive, with no real oversight. USAID monies have been used in ways that few reasonable persons would defend, yet here you are, a typically stable, phlegmatic fella now flecking spit all over his chin because someone dared to suggest that something might be amiss in a $6.5T budget $2T in deficit and then actually do something about it - auditing, cutting structure, reducing workforce, referring the worst discoveries for prosecutions, etc....
My only issue is framing everything as some malicious intent. It is not, these people when in power believe that is a good use of public funds, even USAID. Whether I do or not, is irrelevant. I think it is a waste and should have went to infrastructure.
Based on the submitted budget, I fear DOGE is a shell game to keep the eye looking one way while the hand is somewhere else...
the irony is sublime.......FLBear5630 said:Who rented out a stadium? Would I do it? No. F-ing idiots...whiterock said:Who poured pi$$ in your Wheaties this morning? It's really gotten you off your game. Come back to us!FLBear5630 said:No it didn't!whiterock said:There you go again. The Musk/DOGE program was not a fiasco. It identified hundreds billion dollars of waste/fraud/abuse and horribly defective business structures (particularly in the IT area). Shrinking the number of software platforms in an agency from dozens to ONE will save money and make organization more effective. Entire agencies were collapsed, saving further monies on overhead. Recissions packages are coming. The plan, the process, and the results are all rational, effective....yet another promise kept.FLBear5630 said:Only to match your intellectual gymnastics to make his actions fit want you want to see, not necessarily what is really happening.whiterock said:Good grief man. Your ability to do basic ontology has failed. Every time he has ever spoken about Iran, he has said "they must not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons." And now he has done that. What a great example of how your neverTrumpism has caused you to literally invert reality.FLBear5630 said:Berating my employees? This is a message board, no one works for me. Trump has broken almost everyone of his campaign promises and MAGA tenants. You have changed the definition to fit what he has done every time. The latest having the US enter a foreign war in the middle east.whiterock said:There is no "rent" to pay here. The merit is in the substance of the commentary itself. Going ad hominem is subtraction not addition. If he is trying to do what he promised to do, and accomplishing much, why on earth would I nitpick him just so my praise would be more "worthy?" Isn't that just plain old selfishness? I have to do some harm to the Conservative agenda in order to further it?FLBear5630 said:Until you say one thing that Trump has done wrong, and there are a lot to choose from, you have no credibility on calling balls and strikes on anything this Administration does.whiterock said:Elon overracted and made an arse of hisself and, to his credit, has apologized for it.FLBear5630 said:Is there ever a negative situation for this Administration??? You sure you aren't in marketing? Elon, Trump's self proclaimed BFF, not only said Donald was a hypocrite BUT on the Epstein list. That is a positive for this Administration????whiterock said:
catastrophic misread.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the Senate to cut more spending out of the bill.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the recissions bills to pass the House & Senate.
Everyone has seen what he's willing to spend in primaries & generals.
Everyone has seen what a third party does to GOP hopes in national elections (2 Clinton terms).
GOP leadership will be whipping members to cut harder, to prevent Elon from wading in against them, if not actually re-engage on the GOP side.
(it's usually conservative ideologues berating GOP establishment unwillingness to cut anything. When was the last time the GOP donor class weighed in so forcefully in support of budget cuts, government cuts, etc......?)
We should no be worried at what we are watching. This is the system finally starting to threaten to work the way it should work.
We have more than few here on both sides of the aisle who could take a lesson from that.
The more one critiques, the more profound their praise? The more one praises, the more one is obligated to critique? Wouldn't that completely undermine completely the validity of the neverTrumper commentary which never once offers any credit and stoops to the silliest attacks imaginable?
I find it hard to believe I am having to say this as I always believed you to be one of the more informed and impartial posters, but you have become a cheerleader for Donald. There is nothing he can do that is wrong, it is everyone else's fault or the definitions are changed. When it comes to Trump it is nothing but MAGA flag waving.
More nonsense. You issue a never-ending stream of neverTrump nonsense. I point out the rectal-cranial inversion of it. Therefore I am a cheerleader? The veracity of my defense is predicated on the volume of my prior criticism of him? How does that work? I must be grandiloquent about my wife's cellulite in order to comment authoritatively on her manifest beauty in a dinner gown?
Do you walk around your office berating your employees just so they'll appreciate your praise a little more? No. Only a poor leader does that. In politics, you support your leaders until they are unsupportable. Then you replace them.
I mean, the shoddiness of the reasoning here is profound. Do you really believe that the Democrat who votes with you a single time is the best Republican of all, solely because of all the times he didn't vote with you? That John Fetterman once in a blue moon crossing the aisle in Churchillian "convictions of honour and good sense" makes him the ideal Republican leader? That's your argument in a nutshell.
Think harder!
We are now hearing on the radio about 60% uranium in trucks hidden in Iran, that must be found. How do you think that will happen? How do you search for truck load size payloads? You know the next thing will be US troops on the ground to find the uranium. Why? It must be found and you can't send Jewish troops into Iran. You going to be good with that and say Trump is still true to his MAGA believes that got him elected?
As I said on another thread, he deserves credit and congrats. He seems to have avoided mission creep, which is a huge positive and consistent with his campaign promises. If he does what he says, I will call it that way. If he doesn't and goes off doing whacky **** like the Musk DOGE fiasco I will call it. It doesn't matter to me one way or another, he is not my choice but he is better than Biden/Harris or Obama. Actually throw in Bush/Cheney, I was not fans of Cheney/Rumsfled...
I mean, wake up. Just because you abhor the private sector concept of "move fast & break things" when trying to restructure a business does not mean the process itself was a disaster. It was in fact highly beneficial. Your problem is that it was done in a manner you find detestable. Ergo you cannot allow yourself to see any positives at all.
Would I have preferred that the savings were in the trillions rather than billions? Sure. But facts are facts. Taxpayers are better off today than they were a year ago, by hundreds of billions of dollars + obvious future savings on costs of running government. And it's not like we've got this beast down to bare bones. We CAN keep working the problem and making more improvements. So we take the win, and come back for more tomorrow.
Turn off the MSNBC.....
Uh, yes, it did indeed identify hundreds of billions of dollars of direct spending cuts. Plus reductions in workforce. Plus efficiencies (like selling empty government buildings). ETC.... The true savings will likely end up exceeding $550B. I mean, if it doesn't...if nothing is happening.....if it's all smoke and mirrors that will have no impact on anything at all, then why are you so agitated? Just shrug & let it pass as politics of the day. Instead, you act as though your own ox has been gored.
It identifed things Trump doesn't like, that doesn't make it fraud or abuse.
It identified a long list of things that no reasonable person should like, wild wastes of money, employees not showing up for work, stadiums rented for staff parties, former admin shuffling money out the door as fast as possible, etc..
Those are legal acts, if they were they would prosecute. They do not have 1 case that they can prosecute.
Gotcha. How do you know they are NOT going to prosecute anything? The premise of your assertion here is that prosecution is announced the day after discovery of the problem. If that was happening, you would be screaming (this time with some justification) about politicization of the whole process. But that's not happening. The admin is being deliberate. They formed a DOJ task force to take referrals. DOGE has made dozens of referrals. Which will be investigated. Which will take months/years to complete.
Task Force: https://www.rvmnews.com/2025/03/doj-launches-news-task-force-to-go-after-the-fraudsters-doge-uncovers-watch/
Vote fraud: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5276489-musk-doge-voter-fraud/
SBA loan fraud: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/doj-threatens-to-prosecute-fraud-uncovered-by-doge/ar-AA1BY3CZ
....etc....
Waste??
Yes, renting out a stadium for a government office party is wasteful use of taxpayer dollars. So is sending monies to spread the LGBTQ abroad. And on and on and on.
They disagree with what Congress or past Administrations wanted to do? Stop the presses, no ***** You are putting what you and MAGA like and dislike as waste. Those are subjective decisions, not waste or abuse. Whether YOU or anyone on this Board agrees with studying something does not make it illegal, abuse or waste. The money was approved and went to do what it was said to do. Just because you don't agree with the hourly rates or the hours doesn't make it fraud! You are real lose with your terminology to make **** fit your world...
Congress delegates much of the decision-making process on spending to the Executive, with no real oversight. USAID monies have been used in ways that few reasonable persons would defend, yet here you are, a typically stable, phlegmatic fella now flecking spit all over his chin because someone dared to suggest that something might be amiss in a $6.5T budget $2T in deficit and then actually do something about it - auditing, cutting structure, reducing workforce, referring the worst discoveries for prosecutions, etc....
My only issue is framing everything as some malicious intent. It is not, these people when in power believe that is a good use of public funds, even USAID. Whether I do or not, is irrelevant. I think it is a waste and should have went to infrastructure.
Based on the submitted budget, I fear DOGE is a shell game to keep the eye looking one way while the hand is somewhere else...
When you worked with the CIA, did you go into projects that did not turn out or ended up being wastes of time with the intent to be wasteful, fraudulent or malicious against the sitting Administration? Should you have been prosecuted for wasting Government funds when a new Administration found your activities wasteful?whiterock said:the irony is sublime.......FLBear5630 said:Who rented out a stadium? Would I do it? No. F-ing idiots...whiterock said:Who poured pi$$ in your Wheaties this morning? It's really gotten you off your game. Come back to us!FLBear5630 said:No it didn't!whiterock said:There you go again. The Musk/DOGE program was not a fiasco. It identified hundreds billion dollars of waste/fraud/abuse and horribly defective business structures (particularly in the IT area). Shrinking the number of software platforms in an agency from dozens to ONE will save money and make organization more effective. Entire agencies were collapsed, saving further monies on overhead. Recissions packages are coming. The plan, the process, and the results are all rational, effective....yet another promise kept.FLBear5630 said:Only to match your intellectual gymnastics to make his actions fit want you want to see, not necessarily what is really happening.whiterock said:Good grief man. Your ability to do basic ontology has failed. Every time he has ever spoken about Iran, he has said "they must not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons." And now he has done that. What a great example of how your neverTrumpism has caused you to literally invert reality.FLBear5630 said:Berating my employees? This is a message board, no one works for me. Trump has broken almost everyone of his campaign promises and MAGA tenants. You have changed the definition to fit what he has done every time. The latest having the US enter a foreign war in the middle east.whiterock said:There is no "rent" to pay here. The merit is in the substance of the commentary itself. Going ad hominem is subtraction not addition. If he is trying to do what he promised to do, and accomplishing much, why on earth would I nitpick him just so my praise would be more "worthy?" Isn't that just plain old selfishness? I have to do some harm to the Conservative agenda in order to further it?FLBear5630 said:Until you say one thing that Trump has done wrong, and there are a lot to choose from, you have no credibility on calling balls and strikes on anything this Administration does.whiterock said:Elon overracted and made an arse of hisself and, to his credit, has apologized for it.FLBear5630 said:Is there ever a negative situation for this Administration??? You sure you aren't in marketing? Elon, Trump's self proclaimed BFF, not only said Donald was a hypocrite BUT on the Epstein list. That is a positive for this Administration????whiterock said:
catastrophic misread.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the Senate to cut more spending out of the bill.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the recissions bills to pass the House & Senate.
Everyone has seen what he's willing to spend in primaries & generals.
Everyone has seen what a third party does to GOP hopes in national elections (2 Clinton terms).
GOP leadership will be whipping members to cut harder, to prevent Elon from wading in against them, if not actually re-engage on the GOP side.
(it's usually conservative ideologues berating GOP establishment unwillingness to cut anything. When was the last time the GOP donor class weighed in so forcefully in support of budget cuts, government cuts, etc......?)
We should no be worried at what we are watching. This is the system finally starting to threaten to work the way it should work.
We have more than few here on both sides of the aisle who could take a lesson from that.
The more one critiques, the more profound their praise? The more one praises, the more one is obligated to critique? Wouldn't that completely undermine completely the validity of the neverTrumper commentary which never once offers any credit and stoops to the silliest attacks imaginable?
I find it hard to believe I am having to say this as I always believed you to be one of the more informed and impartial posters, but you have become a cheerleader for Donald. There is nothing he can do that is wrong, it is everyone else's fault or the definitions are changed. When it comes to Trump it is nothing but MAGA flag waving.
More nonsense. You issue a never-ending stream of neverTrump nonsense. I point out the rectal-cranial inversion of it. Therefore I am a cheerleader? The veracity of my defense is predicated on the volume of my prior criticism of him? How does that work? I must be grandiloquent about my wife's cellulite in order to comment authoritatively on her manifest beauty in a dinner gown?
Do you walk around your office berating your employees just so they'll appreciate your praise a little more? No. Only a poor leader does that. In politics, you support your leaders until they are unsupportable. Then you replace them.
I mean, the shoddiness of the reasoning here is profound. Do you really believe that the Democrat who votes with you a single time is the best Republican of all, solely because of all the times he didn't vote with you? That John Fetterman once in a blue moon crossing the aisle in Churchillian "convictions of honour and good sense" makes him the ideal Republican leader? That's your argument in a nutshell.
Think harder!
We are now hearing on the radio about 60% uranium in trucks hidden in Iran, that must be found. How do you think that will happen? How do you search for truck load size payloads? You know the next thing will be US troops on the ground to find the uranium. Why? It must be found and you can't send Jewish troops into Iran. You going to be good with that and say Trump is still true to his MAGA believes that got him elected?
As I said on another thread, he deserves credit and congrats. He seems to have avoided mission creep, which is a huge positive and consistent with his campaign promises. If he does what he says, I will call it that way. If he doesn't and goes off doing whacky **** like the Musk DOGE fiasco I will call it. It doesn't matter to me one way or another, he is not my choice but he is better than Biden/Harris or Obama. Actually throw in Bush/Cheney, I was not fans of Cheney/Rumsfled...
I mean, wake up. Just because you abhor the private sector concept of "move fast & break things" when trying to restructure a business does not mean the process itself was a disaster. It was in fact highly beneficial. Your problem is that it was done in a manner you find detestable. Ergo you cannot allow yourself to see any positives at all.
Would I have preferred that the savings were in the trillions rather than billions? Sure. But facts are facts. Taxpayers are better off today than they were a year ago, by hundreds of billions of dollars + obvious future savings on costs of running government. And it's not like we've got this beast down to bare bones. We CAN keep working the problem and making more improvements. So we take the win, and come back for more tomorrow.
Turn off the MSNBC.....
Uh, yes, it did indeed identify hundreds of billions of dollars of direct spending cuts. Plus reductions in workforce. Plus efficiencies (like selling empty government buildings). ETC.... The true savings will likely end up exceeding $550B. I mean, if it doesn't...if nothing is happening.....if it's all smoke and mirrors that will have no impact on anything at all, then why are you so agitated? Just shrug & let it pass as politics of the day. Instead, you act as though your own ox has been gored.
It identifed things Trump doesn't like, that doesn't make it fraud or abuse.
It identified a long list of things that no reasonable person should like, wild wastes of money, employees not showing up for work, stadiums rented for staff parties, former admin shuffling money out the door as fast as possible, etc..
Those are legal acts, if they were they would prosecute. They do not have 1 case that they can prosecute.
Gotcha. How do you know they are NOT going to prosecute anything? The premise of your assertion here is that prosecution is announced the day after discovery of the problem. If that was happening, you would be screaming (this time with some justification) about politicization of the whole process. But that's not happening. The admin is being deliberate. They formed a DOJ task force to take referrals. DOGE has made dozens of referrals. Which will be investigated. Which will take months/years to complete.
Task Force: https://www.rvmnews.com/2025/03/doj-launches-news-task-force-to-go-after-the-fraudsters-doge-uncovers-watch/
Vote fraud: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5276489-musk-doge-voter-fraud/
SBA loan fraud: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/doj-threatens-to-prosecute-fraud-uncovered-by-doge/ar-AA1BY3CZ
....etc....
Waste??
Yes, renting out a stadium for a government office party is wasteful use of taxpayer dollars. So is sending monies to spread the LGBTQ abroad. And on and on and on.
They disagree with what Congress or past Administrations wanted to do? Stop the presses, no ***** You are putting what you and MAGA like and dislike as waste. Those are subjective decisions, not waste or abuse. Whether YOU or anyone on this Board agrees with studying something does not make it illegal, abuse or waste. The money was approved and went to do what it was said to do. Just because you don't agree with the hourly rates or the hours doesn't make it fraud! You are real lose with your terminology to make **** fit your world...
Congress delegates much of the decision-making process on spending to the Executive, with no real oversight. USAID monies have been used in ways that few reasonable persons would defend, yet here you are, a typically stable, phlegmatic fella now flecking spit all over his chin because someone dared to suggest that something might be amiss in a $6.5T budget $2T in deficit and then actually do something about it - auditing, cutting structure, reducing workforce, referring the worst discoveries for prosecutions, etc....
My only issue is framing everything as some malicious intent. It is not, these people when in power believe that is a good use of public funds, even USAID. Whether I do or not, is irrelevant. I think it is a waste and should have went to infrastructure.
Based on the submitted budget, I fear DOGE is a shell game to keep the eye looking one way while the hand is somewhere else...
People who have kids do need to have 3 kids to make up for those who have 0 or 1 kid or population will collapse https://t.co/Gx1N4sW59E
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 26, 2025
"If you don't have wrinkles, you haven't laughed enough" - Phillis Diller
The Mormons might take over here ... and/or the Amish.
Audits that cause arse-puckering are GOOD things, buddy, not bad. Very healthy for organizational dynamics.FLBear5630 said:When you worked with the CIA, did you go into projects that did not turn out or ended up being wastes of time with the intent to be wasteful, fraudulent or malicious against the sitting Administration?whiterock said:the irony is sublime.......FLBear5630 said:Who rented out a stadium? Would I do it? No. F-ing idiots...whiterock said:Who poured pi$$ in your Wheaties this morning? It's really gotten you off your game. Come back to us!FLBear5630 said:No it didn't!whiterock said:There you go again. The Musk/DOGE program was not a fiasco. It identified hundreds billion dollars of waste/fraud/abuse and horribly defective business structures (particularly in the IT area). Shrinking the number of software platforms in an agency from dozens to ONE will save money and make organization more effective. Entire agencies were collapsed, saving further monies on overhead. Recissions packages are coming. The plan, the process, and the results are all rational, effective....yet another promise kept.FLBear5630 said:
Only to match your intellectual gymnastics to make his actions fit want you want to see, not necessarily what is really happening.
As I said on another thread, he deserves credit and congrats. He seems to have avoided mission creep, which is a huge positive and consistent with his campaign promises. If he does what he says, I will call it that way. If he doesn't and goes off doing whacky **** like the Musk DOGE fiasco I will call it. It doesn't matter to me one way or another, he is not my choice but he is better than Biden/Harris or Obama. Actually throw in Bush/Cheney, I was not fans of Cheney/Rumsfled...
I mean, wake up. Just because you abhor the private sector concept of "move fast & break things" when trying to restructure a business does not mean the process itself was a disaster. It was in fact highly beneficial. Your problem is that it was done in a manner you find detestable. Ergo you cannot allow yourself to see any positives at all.
Would I have preferred that the savings were in the trillions rather than billions? Sure. But facts are facts. Taxpayers are better off today than they were a year ago, by hundreds of billions of dollars + obvious future savings on costs of running government. And it's not like we've got this beast down to bare bones. We CAN keep working the problem and making more improvements. So we take the win, and come back for more tomorrow.
Turn off the MSNBC.....
Uh, yes, it did indeed identify hundreds of billions of dollars of direct spending cuts. Plus reductions in workforce. Plus efficiencies (like selling empty government buildings). ETC.... The true savings will likely end up exceeding $550B. I mean, if it doesn't...if nothing is happening.....if it's all smoke and mirrors that will have no impact on anything at all, then why are you so agitated? Just shrug & let it pass as politics of the day. Instead, you act as though your own ox has been gored.
It identifed things Trump doesn't like, that doesn't make it fraud or abuse.
It identified a long list of things that no reasonable person should like, wild wastes of money, employees not showing up for work, stadiums rented for staff parties, former admin shuffling money out the door as fast as possible, etc..
Those are legal acts, if they were they would prosecute. They do not have 1 case that they can prosecute.
Gotcha. How do you know they are NOT going to prosecute anything? The premise of your assertion here is that prosecution is announced the day after discovery of the problem. If that was happening, you would be screaming (this time with some justification) about politicization of the whole process. But that's not happening. The admin is being deliberate. They formed a DOJ task force to take referrals. DOGE has made dozens of referrals. Which will be investigated. Which will take months/years to complete.
Task Force: https://www.rvmnews.com/2025/03/doj-launches-news-task-force-to-go-after-the-fraudsters-doge-uncovers-watch/
Vote fraud: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5276489-musk-doge-voter-fraud/
SBA loan fraud: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/doj-threatens-to-prosecute-fraud-uncovered-by-doge/ar-AA1BY3CZ
....etc....
Waste??
Yes, renting out a stadium for a government office party is wasteful use of taxpayer dollars. So is sending monies to spread the LGBTQ abroad. And on and on and on.
They disagree with what Congress or past Administrations wanted to do? Stop the presses, no ***** You are putting what you and MAGA like and dislike as waste. Those are subjective decisions, not waste or abuse. Whether YOU or anyone on this Board agrees with studying something does not make it illegal, abuse or waste. The money was approved and went to do what it was said to do. Just because you don't agree with the hourly rates or the hours doesn't make it fraud! You are real lose with your terminology to make **** fit your world...
Congress delegates much of the decision-making process on spending to the Executive, with no real oversight. USAID monies have been used in ways that few reasonable persons would defend, yet here you are, a typically stable, phlegmatic fella now flecking spit all over his chin because someone dared to suggest that something might be amiss in a $6.5T budget $2T in deficit and then actually do something about it - auditing, cutting structure, reducing workforce, referring the worst discoveries for prosecutions, etc....
My only issue is framing everything as some malicious intent. It is not, these people when in power believe that is a good use of public funds, even USAID. Whether I do or not, is irrelevant. I think it is a waste and should have went to infrastructure.
Based on the submitted budget, I fear DOGE is a shell game to keep the eye looking one way while the hand is somewhere else...
No. We had other concerns which had the beneficial side effect of fostering frugality. We terminated unproductive operations, because A) there werent' a ton of ops officers available, B) you can't cut corners and still call a clandestine operation a clandestine operation, and C) the risks of running an ineffective one were the same as running a good one. Further, we had formal evaluation processes for the quality of the product. So retaining an ineffective agent was not something that could be hidden. So an agent that didn't add anything new would be redirected, and if that didn't work out, would be terminated.
The Agency is not a terribly good example. The overseas stuff is run very lean with a far smaller staff than most would believe possible (which makes sense if you're trying to do things without being noticed.....). Same for budgets. You would be shocked at how little even the most sensitive human sources are paid. Most of the skullduggery happens in the analysis side of the house, an entirely WDC operation that just by its nature creates relationships all across the intel community. No wasted monies. Just "back channels" that allow any self-style "resistance" to communicate and leak and (etc.....) more so than in other agencies.
Should you have been prosecuted for wasting Government funds when a new Administration found your activities wasteful?
If they were wasteful, yes.
Is that a bad thing?....for civil servants to act with an abundance of caution for how a new administration with different ideas on things might react to what was done?
Wow, a prime number with 420 digits! pic.twitter.com/dLkl2YIFcN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 26, 2025
"If you don't have wrinkles, you haven't laughed enough" - Phillis Diller
whiterock said:Audits that cause arse-puckering are GOOD things, buddy, not bad. Very healthy for organizational dynamics.FLBear5630 said:When you worked with the CIA, did you go into projects that did not turn out or ended up being wastes of time with the intent to be wasteful, fraudulent or malicious against the sitting Administration?whiterock said:the irony is sublime.......FLBear5630 said:Who rented out a stadium? Would I do it? No. F-ing idiots...whiterock said:Who poured pi$$ in your Wheaties this morning? It's really gotten you off your game. Come back to us!FLBear5630 said:No it didn't!whiterock said:There you go again. The Musk/DOGE program was not a fiasco. It identified hundreds billion dollars of waste/fraud/abuse and horribly defective business structures (particularly in the IT area). Shrinking the number of software platforms in an agency from dozens to ONE will save money and make organization more effective. Entire agencies were collapsed, saving further monies on overhead. Recissions packages are coming. The plan, the process, and the results are all rational, effective....yet another promise kept.FLBear5630 said:
Only to match your intellectual gymnastics to make his actions fit want you want to see, not necessarily what is really happening.
As I said on another thread, he deserves credit and congrats. He seems to have avoided mission creep, which is a huge positive and consistent with his campaign promises. If he does what he says, I will call it that way. If he doesn't and goes off doing whacky **** like the Musk DOGE fiasco I will call it. It doesn't matter to me one way or another, he is not my choice but he is better than Biden/Harris or Obama. Actually throw in Bush/Cheney, I was not fans of Cheney/Rumsfled...
I mean, wake up. Just because you abhor the private sector concept of "move fast & break things" when trying to restructure a business does not mean the process itself was a disaster. It was in fact highly beneficial. Your problem is that it was done in a manner you find detestable. Ergo you cannot allow yourself to see any positives at all.
Would I have preferred that the savings were in the trillions rather than billions? Sure. But facts are facts. Taxpayers are better off today than they were a year ago, by hundreds of billions of dollars + obvious future savings on costs of running government. And it's not like we've got this beast down to bare bones. We CAN keep working the problem and making more improvements. So we take the win, and come back for more tomorrow.
Turn off the MSNBC.....
Uh, yes, it did indeed identify hundreds of billions of dollars of direct spending cuts. Plus reductions in workforce. Plus efficiencies (like selling empty government buildings). ETC.... The true savings will likely end up exceeding $550B. I mean, if it doesn't...if nothing is happening.....if it's all smoke and mirrors that will have no impact on anything at all, then why are you so agitated? Just shrug & let it pass as politics of the day. Instead, you act as though your own ox has been gored.
It identifed things Trump doesn't like, that doesn't make it fraud or abuse.
It identified a long list of things that no reasonable person should like, wild wastes of money, employees not showing up for work, stadiums rented for staff parties, former admin shuffling money out the door as fast as possible, etc..
Those are legal acts, if they were they would prosecute. They do not have 1 case that they can prosecute.
Gotcha. How do you know they are NOT going to prosecute anything? The premise of your assertion here is that prosecution is announced the day after discovery of the problem. If that was happening, you would be screaming (this time with some justification) about politicization of the whole process. But that's not happening. The admin is being deliberate. They formed a DOJ task force to take referrals. DOGE has made dozens of referrals. Which will be investigated. Which will take months/years to complete.
Task Force: https://www.rvmnews.com/2025/03/doj-launches-news-task-force-to-go-after-the-fraudsters-doge-uncovers-watch/
Vote fraud: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5276489-musk-doge-voter-fraud/
SBA loan fraud: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/doj-threatens-to-prosecute-fraud-uncovered-by-doge/ar-AA1BY3CZ
....etc....
Waste??
Yes, renting out a stadium for a government office party is wasteful use of taxpayer dollars. So is sending monies to spread the LGBTQ abroad. And on and on and on.
They disagree with what Congress or past Administrations wanted to do? Stop the presses, no ***** You are putting what you and MAGA like and dislike as waste. Those are subjective decisions, not waste or abuse. Whether YOU or anyone on this Board agrees with studying something does not make it illegal, abuse or waste. The money was approved and went to do what it was said to do. Just because you don't agree with the hourly rates or the hours doesn't make it fraud! You are real lose with your terminology to make **** fit your world...
Congress delegates much of the decision-making process on spending to the Executive, with no real oversight. USAID monies have been used in ways that few reasonable persons would defend, yet here you are, a typically stable, phlegmatic fella now flecking spit all over his chin because someone dared to suggest that something might be amiss in a $6.5T budget $2T in deficit and then actually do something about it - auditing, cutting structure, reducing workforce, referring the worst discoveries for prosecutions, etc....
My only issue is framing everything as some malicious intent. It is not, these people when in power believe that is a good use of public funds, even USAID. Whether I do or not, is irrelevant. I think it is a waste and should have went to infrastructure.
Based on the submitted budget, I fear DOGE is a shell game to keep the eye looking one way while the hand is somewhere else...
No. We had other concerns which had the beneficial side effect of fostering frugality. We terminated unproductive operations, because A) there werent' a ton of ops officers available, B) you can't cut corners and still call a clandestine operation a clandestine operation, and C) the risks of running an ineffective one were the same as running a good one. Further, we had formal evaluation processes for the quality of the product. So retaining an ineffective agent was not something that could be hidden. So an agent that didn't add anything new would be redirected, and if that didn't work out, would be terminated.
The Agency is not a terribly good example. The overseas stuff is run very lean with a far smaller staff than most would believe possible (which makes sense if you're trying to do things without being noticed.....). Same for budgets. You would be shocked at how little even the most sensitive human sources are paid. Most of the skullduggery happens in the analysis side of the house, an entirely WDC operation that just by its nature creates relationships all across the intel community. No wasted monies. Just "back channels" that allow any self-style "resistance" to communicate and leak and (etc.....) more so than in other agencies.
Should you have been prosecuted for wasting Government funds when a new Administration found your activities wasteful?
If they were wasteful, yes.
Is that a bad thing?....for civil servants to act with an abundance of caution for how a new administration with different ideas on things might react to what was done?
Oh, audits are occurring? Where? There has been no organizational analysis or metrics being used here at all. It is who Donald likes gets rewarded, who he doesn't gets the chainsaw.
Ass puckering? If your audits are ass puckering, what are you doing?
You didn't answer the question, how would you respond if they were coming after you for your actions? My question is, you did all that. You followed the rules given to you. And DOGE comes after you and even wants to prosecute because they don't agree. That is what is happening.
Why? Because I actually call things as they are?? If it is wasteful, I say so. If it is fraudulent, prosecute them.whiterock said:the irony is sublime.......FLBear5630 said:Who rented out a stadium? Would I do it? No. F-ing idiots...whiterock said:Who poured pi$$ in your Wheaties this morning? It's really gotten you off your game. Come back to us!FLBear5630 said:No it didn't!whiterock said:There you go again. The Musk/DOGE program was not a fiasco. It identified hundreds billion dollars of waste/fraud/abuse and horribly defective business structures (particularly in the IT area). Shrinking the number of software platforms in an agency from dozens to ONE will save money and make organization more effective. Entire agencies were collapsed, saving further monies on overhead. Recissions packages are coming. The plan, the process, and the results are all rational, effective....yet another promise kept.FLBear5630 said:Only to match your intellectual gymnastics to make his actions fit want you want to see, not necessarily what is really happening.whiterock said:Good grief man. Your ability to do basic ontology has failed. Every time he has ever spoken about Iran, he has said "they must not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons." And now he has done that. What a great example of how your neverTrumpism has caused you to literally invert reality.FLBear5630 said:Berating my employees? This is a message board, no one works for me. Trump has broken almost everyone of his campaign promises and MAGA tenants. You have changed the definition to fit what he has done every time. The latest having the US enter a foreign war in the middle east.whiterock said:There is no "rent" to pay here. The merit is in the substance of the commentary itself. Going ad hominem is subtraction not addition. If he is trying to do what he promised to do, and accomplishing much, why on earth would I nitpick him just so my praise would be more "worthy?" Isn't that just plain old selfishness? I have to do some harm to the Conservative agenda in order to further it?FLBear5630 said:Until you say one thing that Trump has done wrong, and there are a lot to choose from, you have no credibility on calling balls and strikes on anything this Administration does.whiterock said:Elon overracted and made an arse of hisself and, to his credit, has apologized for it.FLBear5630 said:Is there ever a negative situation for this Administration??? You sure you aren't in marketing? Elon, Trump's self proclaimed BFF, not only said Donald was a hypocrite BUT on the Epstein list. That is a positive for this Administration????whiterock said:
catastrophic misread.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the Senate to cut more spending out of the bill.
Elon's antics are going to make it easier for the recissions bills to pass the House & Senate.
Everyone has seen what he's willing to spend in primaries & generals.
Everyone has seen what a third party does to GOP hopes in national elections (2 Clinton terms).
GOP leadership will be whipping members to cut harder, to prevent Elon from wading in against them, if not actually re-engage on the GOP side.
(it's usually conservative ideologues berating GOP establishment unwillingness to cut anything. When was the last time the GOP donor class weighed in so forcefully in support of budget cuts, government cuts, etc......?)
We should no be worried at what we are watching. This is the system finally starting to threaten to work the way it should work.
We have more than few here on both sides of the aisle who could take a lesson from that.
The more one critiques, the more profound their praise? The more one praises, the more one is obligated to critique? Wouldn't that completely undermine completely the validity of the neverTrumper commentary which never once offers any credit and stoops to the silliest attacks imaginable?
I find it hard to believe I am having to say this as I always believed you to be one of the more informed and impartial posters, but you have become a cheerleader for Donald. There is nothing he can do that is wrong, it is everyone else's fault or the definitions are changed. When it comes to Trump it is nothing but MAGA flag waving.
More nonsense. You issue a never-ending stream of neverTrump nonsense. I point out the rectal-cranial inversion of it. Therefore I am a cheerleader? The veracity of my defense is predicated on the volume of my prior criticism of him? How does that work? I must be grandiloquent about my wife's cellulite in order to comment authoritatively on her manifest beauty in a dinner gown?
Do you walk around your office berating your employees just so they'll appreciate your praise a little more? No. Only a poor leader does that. In politics, you support your leaders until they are unsupportable. Then you replace them.
I mean, the shoddiness of the reasoning here is profound. Do you really believe that the Democrat who votes with you a single time is the best Republican of all, solely because of all the times he didn't vote with you? That John Fetterman once in a blue moon crossing the aisle in Churchillian "convictions of honour and good sense" makes him the ideal Republican leader? That's your argument in a nutshell.
Think harder!
We are now hearing on the radio about 60% uranium in trucks hidden in Iran, that must be found. How do you think that will happen? How do you search for truck load size payloads? You know the next thing will be US troops on the ground to find the uranium. Why? It must be found and you can't send Jewish troops into Iran. You going to be good with that and say Trump is still true to his MAGA believes that got him elected?
As I said on another thread, he deserves credit and congrats. He seems to have avoided mission creep, which is a huge positive and consistent with his campaign promises. If he does what he says, I will call it that way. If he doesn't and goes off doing whacky **** like the Musk DOGE fiasco I will call it. It doesn't matter to me one way or another, he is not my choice but he is better than Biden/Harris or Obama. Actually throw in Bush/Cheney, I was not fans of Cheney/Rumsfled...
I mean, wake up. Just because you abhor the private sector concept of "move fast & break things" when trying to restructure a business does not mean the process itself was a disaster. It was in fact highly beneficial. Your problem is that it was done in a manner you find detestable. Ergo you cannot allow yourself to see any positives at all.
Would I have preferred that the savings were in the trillions rather than billions? Sure. But facts are facts. Taxpayers are better off today than they were a year ago, by hundreds of billions of dollars + obvious future savings on costs of running government. And it's not like we've got this beast down to bare bones. We CAN keep working the problem and making more improvements. So we take the win, and come back for more tomorrow.
Turn off the MSNBC.....
Uh, yes, it did indeed identify hundreds of billions of dollars of direct spending cuts. Plus reductions in workforce. Plus efficiencies (like selling empty government buildings). ETC.... The true savings will likely end up exceeding $550B. I mean, if it doesn't...if nothing is happening.....if it's all smoke and mirrors that will have no impact on anything at all, then why are you so agitated? Just shrug & let it pass as politics of the day. Instead, you act as though your own ox has been gored.
It identifed things Trump doesn't like, that doesn't make it fraud or abuse.
It identified a long list of things that no reasonable person should like, wild wastes of money, employees not showing up for work, stadiums rented for staff parties, former admin shuffling money out the door as fast as possible, etc..
Those are legal acts, if they were they would prosecute. They do not have 1 case that they can prosecute.
Gotcha. How do you know they are NOT going to prosecute anything? The premise of your assertion here is that prosecution is announced the day after discovery of the problem. If that was happening, you would be screaming (this time with some justification) about politicization of the whole process. But that's not happening. The admin is being deliberate. They formed a DOJ task force to take referrals. DOGE has made dozens of referrals. Which will be investigated. Which will take months/years to complete.
Task Force: https://www.rvmnews.com/2025/03/doj-launches-news-task-force-to-go-after-the-fraudsters-doge-uncovers-watch/
Vote fraud: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5276489-musk-doge-voter-fraud/
SBA loan fraud: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/doj-threatens-to-prosecute-fraud-uncovered-by-doge/ar-AA1BY3CZ
....etc....
Waste??
Yes, renting out a stadium for a government office party is wasteful use of taxpayer dollars. So is sending monies to spread the LGBTQ abroad. And on and on and on.
They disagree with what Congress or past Administrations wanted to do? Stop the presses, no ***** You are putting what you and MAGA like and dislike as waste. Those are subjective decisions, not waste or abuse. Whether YOU or anyone on this Board agrees with studying something does not make it illegal, abuse or waste. The money was approved and went to do what it was said to do. Just because you don't agree with the hourly rates or the hours doesn't make it fraud! You are real lose with your terminology to make **** fit your world...
Congress delegates much of the decision-making process on spending to the Executive, with no real oversight. USAID monies have been used in ways that few reasonable persons would defend, yet here you are, a typically stable, phlegmatic fella now flecking spit all over his chin because someone dared to suggest that something might be amiss in a $6.5T budget $2T in deficit and then actually do something about it - auditing, cutting structure, reducing workforce, referring the worst discoveries for prosecutions, etc....
My only issue is framing everything as some malicious intent. It is not, these people when in power believe that is a good use of public funds, even USAID. Whether I do or not, is irrelevant. I think it is a waste and should have went to infrastructure.
Based on the submitted budget, I fear DOGE is a shell game to keep the eye looking one way while the hand is somewhere else...
I don't care whether it is Reagan, Clinton, Obama, Biden's Auto-Pen or Trump. Good is good and bad is bad. DOGE is a show, it is not turning into any real savings. They are cancelling discretionary spending, villianizing the staff, and reutilizing plus more. It is a shell game. How much savings have been realized, not tweeted or posted on X. But, real savings vs spending?
I have not seen one published report where an agency followed correct process and still DOGE went after them
Please provide proof of such things happening, or stop pretending just because Elon.
Please provide proof of such things happening, or stop pretending just because Elon.
You keep mixing waste, which is subjective with abuse, which is illegal.Oldbear83 said:
I have not seen one published report where an agency followed correct process and still DOGE went after them
Please provide proof of such things happening, or stop pretending just because Elon.
USAID was legally funded. It may be wasteful in your (and my) eyes, but that does not make it illegal. Nor is it to those that funded it. A DEA musical in Ireland, LGBTQ Advocacy group in Serbia or whatever ridiculous thing they came up with was legally funded and thought to be important to THAT Administration. It is not the people working at USAID, it is not people stuck with implementing some crackpot idea.
Trump wants to stop funding, more power to him. His discretion. Just don't take it out on the civil servants left that were just doing what they were told. It is not the individual items I am talking about, it is the process. The precedent, that will be used against real **** when the next idiot with an auto-pen gets in there.
Having civil servants work extra hard and diligently, KNOWING their decisions today will be reviewed by a future administration of an opposing party is a very good dynamic. It will give people incentives not to do things that put their shadows on the lines of propriety. Incentivize them to be above reproach.FLBear5630 said:whiterock said:Audits that cause arse-puckering are GOOD things, buddy, not bad. Very healthy for organizational dynamics.FLBear5630 said:When you worked with the CIA, did you go into projects that did not turn out or ended up being wastes of time with the intent to be wasteful, fraudulent or malicious against the sitting Administration?whiterock said:the irony is sublime.......FLBear5630 said:Who rented out a stadium? Would I do it? No. F-ing idiots...whiterock said:Who poured pi$$ in your Wheaties this morning? It's really gotten you off your game. Come back to us!FLBear5630 said:No it didn't!whiterock said:There you go again. The Musk/DOGE program was not a fiasco. It identified hundreds billion dollars of waste/fraud/abuse and horribly defective business structures (particularly in the IT area). Shrinking the number of software platforms in an agency from dozens to ONE will save money and make organization more effective. Entire agencies were collapsed, saving further monies on overhead. Recissions packages are coming. The plan, the process, and the results are all rational, effective....yet another promise kept.FLBear5630 said:
Only to match your intellectual gymnastics to make his actions fit want you want to see, not necessarily what is really happening.
As I said on another thread, he deserves credit and congrats. He seems to have avoided mission creep, which is a huge positive and consistent with his campaign promises. If he does what he says, I will call it that way. If he doesn't and goes off doing whacky **** like the Musk DOGE fiasco I will call it. It doesn't matter to me one way or another, he is not my choice but he is better than Biden/Harris or Obama. Actually throw in Bush/Cheney, I was not fans of Cheney/Rumsfled...
I mean, wake up. Just because you abhor the private sector concept of "move fast & break things" when trying to restructure a business does not mean the process itself was a disaster. It was in fact highly beneficial. Your problem is that it was done in a manner you find detestable. Ergo you cannot allow yourself to see any positives at all.
Would I have preferred that the savings were in the trillions rather than billions? Sure. But facts are facts. Taxpayers are better off today than they were a year ago, by hundreds of billions of dollars + obvious future savings on costs of running government. And it's not like we've got this beast down to bare bones. We CAN keep working the problem and making more improvements. So we take the win, and come back for more tomorrow.
Turn off the MSNBC.....
Uh, yes, it did indeed identify hundreds of billions of dollars of direct spending cuts. Plus reductions in workforce. Plus efficiencies (like selling empty government buildings). ETC.... The true savings will likely end up exceeding $550B. I mean, if it doesn't...if nothing is happening.....if it's all smoke and mirrors that will have no impact on anything at all, then why are you so agitated? Just shrug & let it pass as politics of the day. Instead, you act as though your own ox has been gored.
It identifed things Trump doesn't like, that doesn't make it fraud or abuse.
It identified a long list of things that no reasonable person should like, wild wastes of money, employees not showing up for work, stadiums rented for staff parties, former admin shuffling money out the door as fast as possible, etc..
Those are legal acts, if they were they would prosecute. They do not have 1 case that they can prosecute.
Gotcha. How do you know they are NOT going to prosecute anything? The premise of your assertion here is that prosecution is announced the day after discovery of the problem. If that was happening, you would be screaming (this time with some justification) about politicization of the whole process. But that's not happening. The admin is being deliberate. They formed a DOJ task force to take referrals. DOGE has made dozens of referrals. Which will be investigated. Which will take months/years to complete.
Task Force: https://www.rvmnews.com/2025/03/doj-launches-news-task-force-to-go-after-the-fraudsters-doge-uncovers-watch/
Vote fraud: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5276489-musk-doge-voter-fraud/
SBA loan fraud: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/doj-threatens-to-prosecute-fraud-uncovered-by-doge/ar-AA1BY3CZ
....etc....
Waste??
Yes, renting out a stadium for a government office party is wasteful use of taxpayer dollars. So is sending monies to spread the LGBTQ abroad. And on and on and on.
They disagree with what Congress or past Administrations wanted to do? Stop the presses, no ***** You are putting what you and MAGA like and dislike as waste. Those are subjective decisions, not waste or abuse. Whether YOU or anyone on this Board agrees with studying something does not make it illegal, abuse or waste. The money was approved and went to do what it was said to do. Just because you don't agree with the hourly rates or the hours doesn't make it fraud! You are real lose with your terminology to make **** fit your world...
Congress delegates much of the decision-making process on spending to the Executive, with no real oversight. USAID monies have been used in ways that few reasonable persons would defend, yet here you are, a typically stable, phlegmatic fella now flecking spit all over his chin because someone dared to suggest that something might be amiss in a $6.5T budget $2T in deficit and then actually do something about it - auditing, cutting structure, reducing workforce, referring the worst discoveries for prosecutions, etc....
My only issue is framing everything as some malicious intent. It is not, these people when in power believe that is a good use of public funds, even USAID. Whether I do or not, is irrelevant. I think it is a waste and should have went to infrastructure.
Based on the submitted budget, I fear DOGE is a shell game to keep the eye looking one way while the hand is somewhere else...
No. We had other concerns which had the beneficial side effect of fostering frugality. We terminated unproductive operations, because A) there werent' a ton of ops officers available, B) you can't cut corners and still call a clandestine operation a clandestine operation, and C) the risks of running an ineffective one were the same as running a good one. Further, we had formal evaluation processes for the quality of the product. So retaining an ineffective agent was not something that could be hidden. So an agent that didn't add anything new would be redirected, and if that didn't work out, would be terminated.
The Agency is not a terribly good example. The overseas stuff is run very lean with a far smaller staff than most would believe possible (which makes sense if you're trying to do things without being noticed.....). Same for budgets. You would be shocked at how little even the most sensitive human sources are paid. Most of the skullduggery happens in the analysis side of the house, an entirely WDC operation that just by its nature creates relationships all across the intel community. No wasted monies. Just "back channels" that allow any self-style "resistance" to communicate and leak and (etc.....) more so than in other agencies.
Should you have been prosecuted for wasting Government funds when a new Administration found your activities wasteful?
If they were wasteful, yes.
Is that a bad thing?....for civil servants to act with an abundance of caution for how a new administration with different ideas on things might react to what was done?
Oh, audits are occurring? Where? There has been no organizational analysis or metrics being used here at all. It is who Donald likes gets rewarded, who he doesn't gets the chainsaw.
Doge is most certainly an audit, of spends, of systems, of software of structure.
Ass puckering? If your audits are ass puckering, what are you doing?
Part of the beauty of audits is that they are supposed to make people do business every day knowing what they are doing is going to get audited. Good, regular, thorough audits positively impact organizational behavior.
You didn't answer the question, how would you respond if they were coming after you for your actions? My question is, you did all that.
No, I did not. I didn't do anything that wasn't budgeted. I paid my agents what they were supposed to be paid. I took targets to lunch. I gassed up my GOV. All together for a year the spend was a modest mid-range 5-digit number. That's it. Nothing there for them to find. Completely unlike the C/Admin officer at one of my posts, who issued a security contract to a US company without proper coordination (and in the strictest sense a violation of his legal standing to do so) and it was allowed to stand because we didn't want to make enemies. He retired after that post. Guess who hired him. Yep. You guessed it. The same security company he gave the fat contract to.......
You followed the rules given to you. And DOGE comes after you and even wants to prosecute because they don't agree. That is what is happening.
Uh, no. Doge is auditing everything. They're going to the central nervous system, the ERP system, and logging all the spends. And they've found some doozies.
Tell us why is there no outcry from 1 in 12 social security recipients about not getting paid? What would explain this? Any chance there were some undeserving recipients that have been cut off by Doge reforms?
Social Security payments down -7.3%
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) June 27, 2025
The largest decline in 50+ years. pic.twitter.com/2ErDeRvgfH
nobody is going after secretaries and bookkeepers. It's the appointed officials and senior career officials who were running amok, shoveling money out the door like it was snow on the driveway.FLBear5630 said:You keep mixing waste, which is subjective with abuse, which is illegal.Oldbear83 said:
I have not seen one published report where an agency followed correct process and still DOGE went after them
Please provide proof of such things happening, or stop pretending just because Elon.
USAID was legally funded. It may be wasteful in your (and my) eyes, but that does not make it illegal. Nor is it to those that funded it. A DEA musical in Ireland, LGBTQ Advocacy group in Serbia or whatever ridiculous thing they came up with was legally funded and thought to be important to THAT Administration. It is not the people working at USAID, it is not people stuck with implementing some crackpot idea.
Trump wants to stop funding, more power to him. His discretion. Just don't take it out on the civil servants left that were just doing what they were told. It is not the individual items I am talking about, it is the process. The precedent, that will be used against real **** when the next idiot with an auto-pen gets in there.
Have you ever been involved in a Federally funded project? To say that civil servants haven't had to be diligent is showing you really haven't. Every expenditure and every form has to be there and approved or no payment. The problem is a political one, not a worker error problem. The politicians keep approving silly **** and the civil servants are there to get done what the electeds tell them. I have no issue pulling funding or changing direction, I have a huge problem playing it off like it is some civil servant deep state that is to blame. Look in Congress and the Executive Branch, THAT is who to blame. The poor engineer who just did his job and is now DOGEed is the scape goat.whiterock said:Having civil servants work extra hard and diligently, KNOWING their decisions today will be reviewed by a future administration of an opposing party is a very good dynamic. It will give people incentives not to do things that put their shadows on the lines of propriety. Incentivize them to be above reproach.FLBear5630 said:whiterock said:Audits that cause arse-puckering are GOOD things, buddy, not bad. Very healthy for organizational dynamics.FLBear5630 said:When you worked with the CIA, did you go into projects that did not turn out or ended up being wastes of time with the intent to be wasteful, fraudulent or malicious against the sitting Administration?whiterock said:the irony is sublime.......FLBear5630 said:Who rented out a stadium? Would I do it? No. F-ing idiots...whiterock said:Who poured pi$$ in your Wheaties this morning? It's really gotten you off your game. Come back to us!FLBear5630 said:No it didn't!whiterock said:There you go again. The Musk/DOGE program was not a fiasco. It identified hundreds billion dollars of waste/fraud/abuse and horribly defective business structures (particularly in the IT area). Shrinking the number of software platforms in an agency from dozens to ONE will save money and make organization more effective. Entire agencies were collapsed, saving further monies on overhead. Recissions packages are coming. The plan, the process, and the results are all rational, effective....yet another promise kept.FLBear5630 said:
Only to match your intellectual gymnastics to make his actions fit want you want to see, not necessarily what is really happening.
As I said on another thread, he deserves credit and congrats. He seems to have avoided mission creep, which is a huge positive and consistent with his campaign promises. If he does what he says, I will call it that way. If he doesn't and goes off doing whacky **** like the Musk DOGE fiasco I will call it. It doesn't matter to me one way or another, he is not my choice but he is better than Biden/Harris or Obama. Actually throw in Bush/Cheney, I was not fans of Cheney/Rumsfled...
I mean, wake up. Just because you abhor the private sector concept of "move fast & break things" when trying to restructure a business does not mean the process itself was a disaster. It was in fact highly beneficial. Your problem is that it was done in a manner you find detestable. Ergo you cannot allow yourself to see any positives at all.
Would I have preferred that the savings were in the trillions rather than billions? Sure. But facts are facts. Taxpayers are better off today than they were a year ago, by hundreds of billions of dollars + obvious future savings on costs of running government. And it's not like we've got this beast down to bare bones. We CAN keep working the problem and making more improvements. So we take the win, and come back for more tomorrow.
Turn off the MSNBC.....
Uh, yes, it did indeed identify hundreds of billions of dollars of direct spending cuts. Plus reductions in workforce. Plus efficiencies (like selling empty government buildings). ETC.... The true savings will likely end up exceeding $550B. I mean, if it doesn't...if nothing is happening.....if it's all smoke and mirrors that will have no impact on anything at all, then why are you so agitated? Just shrug & let it pass as politics of the day. Instead, you act as though your own ox has been gored.
It identifed things Trump doesn't like, that doesn't make it fraud or abuse.
It identified a long list of things that no reasonable person should like, wild wastes of money, employees not showing up for work, stadiums rented for staff parties, former admin shuffling money out the door as fast as possible, etc..
Those are legal acts, if they were they would prosecute. They do not have 1 case that they can prosecute.
Gotcha. How do you know they are NOT going to prosecute anything? The premise of your assertion here is that prosecution is announced the day after discovery of the problem. If that was happening, you would be screaming (this time with some justification) about politicization of the whole process. But that's not happening. The admin is being deliberate. They formed a DOJ task force to take referrals. DOGE has made dozens of referrals. Which will be investigated. Which will take months/years to complete.
Task Force: https://www.rvmnews.com/2025/03/doj-launches-news-task-force-to-go-after-the-fraudsters-doge-uncovers-watch/
Vote fraud: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5276489-musk-doge-voter-fraud/
SBA loan fraud: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/doj-threatens-to-prosecute-fraud-uncovered-by-doge/ar-AA1BY3CZ
....etc....
Waste??
Yes, renting out a stadium for a government office party is wasteful use of taxpayer dollars. So is sending monies to spread the LGBTQ abroad. And on and on and on.
They disagree with what Congress or past Administrations wanted to do? Stop the presses, no ***** You are putting what you and MAGA like and dislike as waste. Those are subjective decisions, not waste or abuse. Whether YOU or anyone on this Board agrees with studying something does not make it illegal, abuse or waste. The money was approved and went to do what it was said to do. Just because you don't agree with the hourly rates or the hours doesn't make it fraud! You are real lose with your terminology to make **** fit your world...
Congress delegates much of the decision-making process on spending to the Executive, with no real oversight. USAID monies have been used in ways that few reasonable persons would defend, yet here you are, a typically stable, phlegmatic fella now flecking spit all over his chin because someone dared to suggest that something might be amiss in a $6.5T budget $2T in deficit and then actually do something about it - auditing, cutting structure, reducing workforce, referring the worst discoveries for prosecutions, etc....
My only issue is framing everything as some malicious intent. It is not, these people when in power believe that is a good use of public funds, even USAID. Whether I do or not, is irrelevant. I think it is a waste and should have went to infrastructure.
Based on the submitted budget, I fear DOGE is a shell game to keep the eye looking one way while the hand is somewhere else...
No. We had other concerns which had the beneficial side effect of fostering frugality. We terminated unproductive operations, because A) there werent' a ton of ops officers available, B) you can't cut corners and still call a clandestine operation a clandestine operation, and C) the risks of running an ineffective one were the same as running a good one. Further, we had formal evaluation processes for the quality of the product. So retaining an ineffective agent was not something that could be hidden. So an agent that didn't add anything new would be redirected, and if that didn't work out, would be terminated.
The Agency is not a terribly good example. The overseas stuff is run very lean with a far smaller staff than most would believe possible (which makes sense if you're trying to do things without being noticed.....). Same for budgets. You would be shocked at how little even the most sensitive human sources are paid. Most of the skullduggery happens in the analysis side of the house, an entirely WDC operation that just by its nature creates relationships all across the intel community. No wasted monies. Just "back channels" that allow any self-style "resistance" to communicate and leak and (etc.....) more so than in other agencies.
Should you have been prosecuted for wasting Government funds when a new Administration found your activities wasteful?
If they were wasteful, yes.
Is that a bad thing?....for civil servants to act with an abundance of caution for how a new administration with different ideas on things might react to what was done?
Oh, audits are occurring? Where? There has been no organizational analysis or metrics being used here at all. It is who Donald likes gets rewarded, who he doesn't gets the chainsaw.
Doge is most certainly an audit, of spends, of systems, of software of structure.
Ass puckering? If your audits are ass puckering, what are you doing?
Part of the beauty of audits is that they are supposed to make people do business every day knowing what they are doing is going to get audited. Good, regular, thorough audits positively impact organizational behavior.
You didn't answer the question, how would you respond if they were coming after you for your actions? My question is, you did all that.
No, I did not. I didn't do anything that wasn't budgeted. I paid my agents what they were supposed to be paid. I took targets to lunch. I gassed up my GOV. All together for a year the spend was a modest mid-range 5-digit number. That's it. Nothing there for them to find. Completely unlike the C/Admin officer at one of my posts, who issued a security contract to a US company without proper coordination (and in the strictest sense a violation of his legal standing to do so) and it was allowed to stand because we didn't want to make enemies. He retired after that post. Guess who hired him. Yep. You guessed it. The same security company he gave the fat contract to.......
You followed the rules given to you. And DOGE comes after you and even wants to prosecute because they don't agree. That is what is happening.
Uh, no. Doge is auditing everything. They're going to the central nervous system, the ERP system, and logging all the spends. And they've found some doozies.
Tell us why is there no outcry from 1 in 12 social security recipients about not getting paid? What would explain this? Any chance there were some undeserving recipients that have been cut off by Doge reforms?Social Security payments down -7.3%
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) June 27, 2025
The largest decline in 50+ years. pic.twitter.com/2ErDeRvgfH
First time that a car has delivered itself to its owner! https://t.co/xgZBRDaMiX
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2025
"If you don't have wrinkles, you haven't laughed enough" - Phillis Diller