Originally published at: Musk’s Little Green Men - TPM – Talking Points Memo
One of my and our central points of interest is the identity of these ‘Musk operatives’ who are actually doing these things we’re hearing about throughout the federal and especially the top administrative, federal agencies (OPM, OMB, GAO, etc.). Notably some of the best reporting on this is being done at Wired. That’s not surprising.…
Cool, so when this fustercluck is all over and Luke has served a goodly portion of his sentence, then perhaps he’ll get out before all his current computer skills are the equivalent of knowing how to pull a vacuum tube and take it down to the local supermarket to test it on one of those tube testing machines. 
I do worry about where all this is going, and I do recognize the risks we all face, but seriously - these dipshits are so high on their own supply right now that they’re floating and it’s simply not sustainable to keep breaking things at this pace.
Heck, I’m such an optimist that I actually believe that there are even going to be some nice side effects - e.g. as more and more of the Canadian provincial premiers announce their responses to TSF’s “Tarriffic Attacks”, they’re also diving into decisions about how to lower existing inter-provincial trade barriers that have been in place for years, and there are apparently also now serious discussions about extending current free trade agreements to essentially make Canada and other threatened nations full members of an “Extended European Community”. TSF has awakened some slumbering giants and I think it’ll take a bit of floundering about, but I see a realignment of world trade that will move much of what Canada & Mexico have been sending to the US to saner alternatives. As but a couple of examples, I can certainly see Canada replacing Russia’s Oil & Gas sales to Europe, a lot more coordination on securing the essentials for the final conversion to EV vehicles in the sane world and so on.
So either the U.S. will clean up this mess, or join the oligarch-controlled failed states. If the later, we here in Canada will welcome our saner brothers and sisters in partnership as the former US alliance breaks up and things move on to the next chapter in this absurdist comedy that is our current timeline… 
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“The best analogy I can provide is that there’s some person at your bank who could just change a setting and suddenly all your checks and payments would be rejected and your funds would be frozen. Now imagine if “you” is NIH or USAID or … well, Social Security.”
Too much of the hair-on-fire panic I’ve seen in user posts at TPM in the past 48 hours is completely over the top, if somewhat understandable. Let’s remember that we’re reacting to rumors, fragmentary truths, unconfirmed claims, confusing facts, and opaque reporting: “shock and awe” spewing from the same Internet firehose of sound-and-fury that rightwing chaos agents have harnessed for the past decade to frighten and demoralize their opposition.
The idea that Musk is going to lock the entire American population out of the US Treasury – including entitlements like Social Security and Medicare – seems like off-the-rails logic (IMNSHO) given that same population just toppled the entire government…over the price of eggs.
The same folks who just burned the whole place to the ground over higher grocery bills would hardly just yawn if their only source of income suddenly dropped precipitously or stopped altogether. That suddenly having having no money, no housing, no electricity, no running water, and no food wouldn’t result in an unprecedented firestorm of immediate (and violent!) in-the-street reaction from tens of millions who just revolted over “higher prices” is completely implausible.
Especially from a gang that’s now walked back both its “spending freeze” and refusal to recognize Black History – after only two weeks in – and probably, at this very moment, is scrambling for a face-saving way to claim victory on tariffs without actually imposing them.
I remember the real-life scenes of senior citizens chasing then-Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, Dan Rostenkowski, down a Chicago street – little old ladies threatening to smash the windshield of his car, into which aides had hastily locked him, with their walkers – for just proposing a (relatively-minor) change to Medicare.
Of course we’re facing real dangers and real challenges; there’s no denying that, but the idea these guys are going to existentially kneecap tens of millions of voters across America (many of them now heavily armed) after what electoral scream we just experienced strikes me as a dystopian-fantasy bridge too far.
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