Tag: Elon Musk

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Trumpenomics — The best way to save money is to waste it

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 12th, 2025

G. Elliot Morris, formerly one of the guiding geniuses behind the late, lamented 538 website, came up with this tidbit today: “According to the Hamilton Project data, the U.S. government has spent $2.17 trillion as of April 10, 2025, at 7:00 p.m. ET (the data, which comes from the Treasury, is updated in near-real-time). That is just shy of a 6% increase over spending on the same date in 2024 when the feds had spent “just” $2.05 trillion at this point in the year. This puts the US federal government on track to spend $8 trillion this year, barring other budget changes…”

As odd as that stat is in light of ElonTrump’s chainsaw ‘cost-cutting’ measures, it only tells a small part of the tale. In fact, trillions of dollars have been lost over the past two months to waste, fraud and abuse, and even though Trump had to scurry back on his “Liberation Day” tariffs in light of a potential total economic collapse, the wholesale destruction will continue.

The slashes to government programs, big and small, have been capricious, arbitrary, and often cruel. Thousands of on-going projects have been stopped in their tracks, even though the money for them had already been allocated and spent, meaning that money—hundreds of billions—has been thrown away. Just the ongoing research programs that just got torched alone were in the billions.

They’ve gutted thousands of departments by taking a very systematic and subtle approach: just fire anybody who a) is on probationary status and b) has a vowel or a consonant in their name. This meant every promising new hire who hadn’t been there two years yet, all temporary employees, and anyone who had just been promoted for doing a superior job but whose promotion came with probationary status. With no regard to capabilities or functions.

Courts have ordered thousands of employees unfired, and many of those returned to find their chairs, their desks, and their computers all gone, either trashed or dumped at fire sale prices.

Many of the most important (and popular) government programs, including the Department of Education, NOAA, NASA, Department of the Interior and Social Security are being gutted. That last one, which makes up about 10% of national economic income for the general public, is teetering and in danger of collapse. They want to privatize the Post Office, which means thousands of non-profitable rural post offices will close even as the price of sending a letter explodes ten-fold.

I’ve actually had right wingers whine that we wouldn’t be complaining if a Democrat did to the government what Trump is doing. Typical of MAGAts—they love to howl about what victims they are as they rape and bully everyone around them.

Fact is, Democrats DID cut government spending, and even balanced the budget. This was in Bill Clinton’s second term, with vice President Al Gore overseeing the government efficiency task force. It was called “Reinventing Government” It eliminated what Elaine Kamarck, administrator of the program, said was “more than 400,000 federal positions between 1993 and 2000 through a combination of voluntary departures, attrition and a relatively small number of layoffs.”

Hundreds of departments were merged or eliminated, and the savings were so great that the Clinton administration had the first (and last) balanced budget since 1968. The day George Bush Jr took office, newspapers and economists where rhapsodizing about “surpluses as far as the eye can see” and there was serious talk of retiring the national debt by 2010. Of course, Republican fiscal fecklessness and greed, serving the notion that the national treasury should be the plaything of the very rich, eliminated the surpluses and instead created record floods of red ink, which their propagandists assured the public was the result of “Democrat spending.” It was a lie, but it was repeated endlessly.

And Reinventing Government slid into the memory hole, partly because it didn’t support the fascist narrative, and partly because it worked exactly the way government was supposed to work: democratically, with decision-making and responsibility shared between Congress and the executive, and with time taken to determine what jobs and projects served a good purpose and which were just accumulated fat. It worked so well hardly anybody even noticed it.

So the next time some wankers moan in self pity that people just hate right wingers, it isn’t politics or factionalism; it’s disgust for greed, incompetence, capriciousness and viciousness. The Democrats used competence, honesty, and good faith. The difference is night and day. People don’t hate Trump and Musk for “saving money”; they hate them because they are hateful people who are destroying the country and selling it off for parts and at our expense.

Even though Trump had to back off on his massive tariffs folly, the damage is already nearly unrecoverable. Not just the incredible waste and incompetence of his “cost-cutting”; the extraneous damage inflicted.

The bond market is teetering. US bonds are the “safe haven” for investors during market crashes, something that New Deal economics took out of our lives which Reaganomics restored. Stocks tank, you invest in bonds and wait it out.

But bonds depend entirely on “The Full Faith and Credit” of the United States, and under this administration, nobody trusts that government. As far as good credit goes, the US might as well be Zimbabwe. And the bond market—nearly $30 trillion in size—relies entirely on trust in the US government.

You hear a lot about China owning a chunk of that, and it does: about $1.8 trillion. About 6%, more or less. A small but significant share. (Most of the bond market is money the US owes to itself).

Trump is going out of his way to antagonize and even insult the Chinese with his mindless bluster. If China tanks the bond market, they will take great economic damage. But the US would be ruined. It would take decades for the nation to recover, and it wouldn’t look anything like the US that we all enjoyed in the 20th century.

It’s clear Trump isn’t running the show: his plutocrats, including Musk, are. But they aren’t noticeably smarter or more competent, and often mistake greed for wisdom. Most of them have the compassion and knowledge of Charles Montgomery Burns, Homer Simpson’s boss. Two words: Howard Lutnick. And he’s not even the worst one: far from it. Trump’s Secretary of Education is talking about using that thinking computer thingie for educating the kids, what was it she called it? Oh, yes, “A-One.”

Hope she didn’t pick Hewlett-Packard for the computers. Everyone knows HP and A One are competitors.

Sheesh.

 

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The United States versus America — The time is coming to choose sides

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

February 19th, 2025

I picked up a follower on Blue Sky the other day (I must be in double digits by now!) whose page reveled in his love of country and patriotism. He had pictures of himself in uniform, along with pictures of wheat fields and sunsets and dogs and all the other things that make America special in the eyes of hyper-patriots.

Nothing to take offense to, but I was mildly curious. I’m skeptical of hyperpatriotism for the same reasons I’m skeptical of overt religiosity or guys who scream about “impure women” or whatever. All are signs of fundamentalism, a mental disorder I’m at best uncomfortable around. My writings and posts don’t attract such people, other than the ones who want to scream about what a degenerate I am. One of the nice things about Blue Sky is that people like that tend to weed themselves out in pretty short order.

But I was curious. What did my new-found friend think about events over the past month? I scrolled through his past few weeks of posts. Not one word about any current event: nothing about the abandonment of Ukraine, or a psychopathic South African billionaire and his pock-faced juvenile delinquents rummaging through all the national secrets and finances. Nothing about the immense damage Trump has already inflicted on the country, both domestically and in foreign affairs.

I didn’t block or mute the guy, but I did elect to not follow him back. (Some people think the number of followers they have validates them, and that’s fine. I measure my reach by the number of people I elect to follow BACK. This eliminates all the people who want to sell me land, drugs, or bitcoin, the illuminati, or who want to sex me all night long for the cost of a penicillin shot.)

The polls show that Trump’s popularity is dropping at over 2% a week, which in the ideologically rigid present state of public opinion represents a vast and momentous shit. His polls on the economy have dropped 12% in two weeks, even though the economy really hasn’t reacted to his policies. But many idiots still measure the economy by the price of eggs, which is like picking the Superbowl winner by which mound of corn a chicken pecks at first. And the price of eggs is skyrocketing as bird flu decimates the laying hens.

The malicious ineptitude of the TrumpenMusk regime is starting to percolate through all the propaganda from newspits like Newsmax or the Washington Post. All the redcap morons are starting to realize they really mean the stuff they said in Project 2025, and do hope to wipe out medicare and social security and shift ALL the tax burden to the lower class while they totally raid the entire nation’s wealth. Right now they just see it in them cutting programs that matter to them; day care, product safety regulations, conservation, etc. In short, all the millions of things government actually does because it’s far cheaper and more efficient than the private sector could possibly manage.

For many years, the right wing has promoted the silly notion that you are a patriot if you love America but want to get rid of the United States. Instead of “United States” of course they say “government” and they lie constantly about how the government is wasteful (it is, but so are corporations; but a lot of their operations are ‘proprietary’ and so they aren’t transparent or responsive to public interest, and unfortunately it’s been nearly 250 years since Americans had to deal with power centers that were unresponsive to the public interest.) Government is oppressive, evil, eats kittens, yada, yada, yada.

What they don’t understand (and are prevented from understanding) is that the United States, the thing that makes America special, IS the Constitution, and the government which it founded. The separation of powers, the mandated responsiveness to the people, the protection of the oppressed, the Bill of Rights – that is what the United States is. That is what the rest of the world envied. Not fields and dogs and sunsets, because every fucking country in the world has those, and some are prettier. Without the United States, America is just another patch of land filled with squabbling and destitute peasants, no better than most and worse than some.

The Constitution—the heart and soul of the United States—exists with the express purpose of using government to defend the people from the depredations of banks, aristocrats, and churches. While it has had an imperfect record with these, it worked well enough to make America the greatest of nations for a long, long time.

Trump and Musk are the vile faces of an evil consortium of fundamentalist churches, rapacious corporations, and vicious plutocrats—all the evils men like Jefferson and Madison wanted to free the citizenry from. The reason Trump and Musk are dismantling government isn’t to save the taxpayers money—they have zero interest in that, and quite the opposite, in fact. They want to create a power vacuum and fill it themselves, and put every public need on a “make it pay” basis. Instead of a not-for-profit service such as social security or medicare, they want to run it on a 30% markup, and regard the actual services as outlays that need to be minimized for the sake of profit.

We’re rapidly approaching a point where all the dog and sunset-loving cardboard patriots have to decide if they love a rapidly diminishing America, or want to fight for the United States.

I know which line they may cross: when they declare that they are no longer obliged to observe court rulings. That’s where I begin to advocate the overthrow of Musk and Trump by any means possible. At that point, they are outlaw, and enemies of the United States.

If people want to keep the America they love, they may well have to take up arms on behalf of the United States.

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Dogeball — What we expect is bad enough…

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 14th 2024

I think that for most people, the results of the election last month were like being four years in remission, going to your oncologist for a routine scan, only to get the bad news. It’s back, and it has metastasized.

We’re already seeing the plutocracy manipulate the idiot Trump into creating the most blatant kleptocracy in world history. Elon Musk is in charge of the utterly fraudulent “Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE.

Let me make a slight digression here: There was an elected office, “The Doge of Venice.” The office existed from 697 CE to 1797 CE. The holder ruled Venice in the name of the oligarchy, and not surprisingly, became fantastically corrupt. Each was elected for life by a council of 40 town aristocrats (the 40 thieves) but it got so bad that according to Wikipedia, “after 1268, the doge was constantly under strict surveillance: he had to wait for other officials to be present before opening dispatches from foreign powers; he was not allowed to possess any property in a foreign land.” That reduced, but far from eliminated the grift and graft that has made the word “Doge” synonymous with corruption. Musk is a stupid person’s idea of a genius, so it’s debatable as to his love of the word stems from arrogance or simple ignorance. “Dogecoin,” dodgy even by bitcoin standards, says it all, really.

So Elon wants to recommend all the agencies that oversee his particular endeavors be privatized (NASA would become a department of SpaceX) or simply eliminated altogether.

National defense would be overseen by Peter Hegseth, a drunk and (kindly phrased) a womanizer. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is meant to oversee Health and Human Services. While he was supposedly backed away from his anti-vax stances, his chosen pick for deputy wants to suspend polio vaccines while the government conducts a double-blind study of its safety and effectiveness. And of course Kennedy still believes the long-discredited conspiracy theory that vaccines cause autism.

Kelly Loeffler, a billionaire, and so reactionary even the voters of Georgia couldn’t stomach her, is meant to be head of the Small Business Administration.

Brooke Rollins, former head of the virulently right-wing America First Policy Institute is slated to run the Department of Agriculture. “Small farmers” controlling more than 100,000 acres line up here, please.

Scott Turner, former football player, is picked to run HUD. If single mothers can’t afford housing, they should become NFL players.

Scott Bessent, a hedge fund trader, would run the Treasury Department. Keep investigating those hedge fund traders, guys! I’m sure Scott’s behind you 100%.

Pam Bondi, a notorious election denier and Trump cheerleader will be the Attorney-General. She’ll be in charge of rounding up members of Congress who investigated Trump and any federal law enforcement officials who caused him even momentary discomfort.

The Education Department will be run by the head of a Pro Wrestling outfit. “Wrestling isn’t fake: science is fake.”

A billionaire will be running Commerce. There is absolutely no possibility he would use the position to feather his own nest, because vulture capitalists are nothing if not honest, decent people.

We won’t even bother with the rest of the billionaires (who will make up most of Trump’s cabinet, accurately reflecting America since most of the 330,000,000 people are also billionaires) or the collection of Faux News hosts, a job requirement of which is skillful and unconscionable lying.

It’s small wonder Trump wanted to eliminate FBI background checks (did I mention that Putin stooge Tulsi Gabbard will be running the FBI?) and provide greater ease in making unvetted recess appointments.

I wonder when Trump will change his title from President of the United States to Doge of America? Is America going to the Doge?

Our only real hope is that the sheer incompetence and malice of Trump will bring him down, hopefully by legal and peaceful means. Only an utterly daft fool believes life will improve for the average worker or student or child or retiree under this Duchy.

Over the past few days, there’s been something of a panic over drones spotted over New Jersey. (Was that too sharp a curve? Hey, guys, the essay is over here—I was going to spare you discussion of Matt Gaetz, or the felonious Ambassador to France, or what we’ve done to poor old Greece.)

Anyway, the drones. It reminds me a bit of the big Chinese balloon panic a couple of years back (somewhere I have a meme of a girl in a red vinyl minidress and MAGA cap, lying in a parking lot where she obviously fainted, being offered water by a concerned friend who is telling her, “It’s OK—Joe Biden made the bad balloons go away”). It’ll probably turn out to be something fairly innocuous, and the right wing will have to go looking for its next moral panic. (How about “Atheists are forcing children to abort themselves in the name of Satan”?)

But it cross my mind that if it was some concerted plan of attack, the next few months will be the ideal time. America is going to be in utter chaos as the Doge Trump era begins, both the intentional chaos of the plutocrats raping the country blind, and the unintentional chaos of the sheer incompetence we should expect. We may well be utterly paralyzed, unable to defend ourselves.

If enemies, either foreign or domestic ones not already taking power ever wanted to defeat America, they’ll never have a better chance.

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The Poison of the Plutocracy — America falling to the social evil it rebelled against

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 26th, 2024

 

In the past week, billionaire owners of two of America’s leading newspapers, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, forbade their respective editorial staffs from endorsing a candidate for President. Both publications have a long history of doing just that. If either owner hoped to avoid controversy, they were in for a rude shock.

Patrick Soon-Shiong, the South African-born billionaire owner of the Times, tried to explain his decision to Spectrum News, saying, “I think my fear is, if we chose either one, that it would just add to the division.” According to the Guardian, this “prompted the public resignations of multiple editorial writers, including a recent Pulitzer prize winner, Robert Greene, and the section’s widely respected editor, Mariel Garza, who said: ‘I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent.’

It also prompted the beginnings of a revolt among the paper’s subscribers, with nearly 2,000 of them cancelling their subscriptions for ‘editorial content’ reasons on Tuesday and Wednesday alone.”

And then two days later, Jeff Bezos did very nearly exactly the same thing with the Washington Post. While Bezos had maintained a general “hands-off” approach to the editorial stance of his newspaper, this move was widely seen as an indication that Bezos, whose other endeavors such as Blue Origin and Amazon, are heavily dependent on a good working relationship with the government, was acting out of fear of a possible Trump return. If, indeed, he did think that this move might curry favor with the erratic and vindictive Trump, he showed appallingly bad judgment. Former managing editor Martin Baron wrote of the decision, “This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty,[…] Trump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner @jeffbezos (and others).”

I suggested the Washington Post change its Bezos-generated motto from “Democracy Dies in the Darkness” to “I For One Welcome Our New Galactic Overlords.” [Kent Brockman, news anchor in “The Simpsons” during an invasion of galactic overlords]

They aren’t alone, of course. Australian fascist Rupert Murdoch has been pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into poisoning the well of American political discourse for five decades now. Canada recognized the danger of this vast right wing conspiracy machine and kicked him out, with the result that Canada isn’t in the terrible mess the US is today. And yes, much of our current trouble can be laid directly at the feet of Fox News.

Elon Musk bought up Twitter with the sole objective of having a platform for his crack-brained, erratic and irresponsible “philosophy” which is a poisonous blend of Ayn Rand, QAnon, MAGA, and Vladimir Putin.

It came to light this week, he had been having nice friendly secret phone conversations with Vladimir Putin, just as it’s come to light Donald Trump was. I can’t say I’m surprised. As with Trump, Elon, through SpaceX and Starlink, has a large number of defense and national-security contracts, and, as with Trump, I doubt Putin was calling just to discuss the differences between Russian and American heroic literature.

Indeed, we may have a new Axis power we have to fight. If it was Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo in the 1940s, it’s Putin, Trump and Musk now.

Imagine it’s 1938, and you’ve just learned that William Randolph Hearst and Henry Ford had been calling Hitler regularly for ‘friendly chats.’ See a possible problem there?

Billionaires, many far less visible than Bezos or Soon-Shiong, have been buying up media big and small for a couple of decades now, with devastating results. Many parts of America are in “news deserts” where local papers have vanished or been converted to local advertising sheets. Much of the radio is in the hands of repressive and even fascistic outfits like Clear Channel or Sinclair. All the major networks are mere appendages of massive international corporations who consider the news branch as mere items for generating profits and or creating a favorable political atmosphere for expansion of said profits.

We need to bring back the laws limiting the reach and scope of individuals over our media. Anti-trust laws need to break up the vast corporate conglomerates that control 95% of everything we hear, see, and believe.

And we need not-for-profit publicly owned corporations like the BBC and the CBC to provide us with news that isn’t designed to fit the preferences of billionaires. Because no matter how nice and democratic any given plutocrat might be as an individual, there inevitable comes a time when the needs of the plutocrat are no longer aligned with the needs of the rest of us, and that’s when we learn that plutocrats are not our friends.

America was founded on the notion that the people should be self-governing and free of the excesses of the churches and the aristocracy. It was a great idea. Time to return to that.

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Glass Onion — “You know a place where nothing is real”

Glass Onion

“You know a place where nothing is real”

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 28th 2022

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Ben Shapiro didn’t like Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. He wrote on Twatter, “We only find out about the actual murder we’re supposed to investigate full one hour and 10 minutes into the film, as well as an entirely new backstory,” he complained.

Well, Benny, if you’re going to set yourself up as a film critic, you really ought to know something about the genre of film you are reviewing. This is what’s called a “murder mystery” or a “whodunnit.” Misdirection is one of the main elements in such films. The viewer is led in one direction, and if the filmmaker is honest (and in this instance they are extremely honest) then all the clues that would lead the viewer to the right deductions are there in plain sight.

But the main thing that upset Benny, protector of the privileged and sneerer at the non-privileged, was that the movie very clearly parodized, nay, MOCKED a titan of finance/industry/tech. One of the main characters is a billionaire who has an entire corporate empire, with dozens of inventions and new concepts to his credit, widely regarded as a great genius and, in his own estimation, a “disruptor,” someone who challenges and eventually supplants societal norms and the status quo.

While there are several dozen such creatures roaming the American landscape, there was little doubt in Shapiro’s mind that the movie targeted one particular tech scion: Elon Musk. I won’t argue that bit. Main showrunner Rian Johnson has said that he saw his billionaire, Miles Bron (Edward Norton), as an amalgamation of three different real-life characters. A partner of Bron’s was cheated of the fame and fortune of the Alpha network of companies, something we learn she played a greater role in creating than did Bron. One of the characters even says she got “social networked.” So: elements of Zuckerberg there. Bron also makes reckless and idiotic decisions, needlessly shafting the people he might need most as allies, and committing very public and conspicuous crimes secure in the belief that he is above social consequences. Donald Trump, anyone?

But most people spotted Elon Musk as the real-life exemplar of Miles Bron.

I thought about it. Rian Johnson and his crew probably began writing the script for this movie when Musk was still a public hero and inventor, supposedly, of the Tesla electric vehicle, genius behind Space X, and mastermind of such future wonders as the Boring tunnels and the Hyperloop. The first disturbing elements that caused people to question his personality and judgment, such as the flamethrower giveaway or the smearing of the rescuer of those children trapped in a Thai cave, had just come out.

But it took a lot more time for Musk to self-immolate, to the point where the larger segment of society realized he wasn’t a genius, wasn’t a leader, isn’t even particularly stable.

Indeed, I’m reading a book now, a well-done hi-tech spy thriller called “Portals” by Douglas E. Richards. Tech-aware and sophisticated, it holds Musk as an ongoing brilliant tech leader who has brought the world such marvels as humanoid AI Tesla robots and mind implants (and Musk is actually supposedly working on the latter, but has nothing to show for it but some 1,500 dead lab animals to date). For all Richards’ obvious savvy and political and tech awareness, his 2022 book still presents Musk as a tech wizard and leader. And, of course, that’s how Ben Shapiro sees Musk. He’s offended that anyone could even question it.

But in the movie’s denouement, Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) says of Bron: “His dock doesn’t float. His wonder fuel is a disaster. His grasp of disruption theory is remedial at best. He didn’t design the puzzle boxes. He didn’t write the mystery. Et voilà! It all adds up. The key to this entire case! And it was staring me right in the face. Like everyone in the world, I assumed Miles Bron was a complicated genius. But why? Look into the clear center of this Glass Onion… Miles Bron is an idiot!”

In the face of the Twitter débacle, the face of Musk is revealed. He wasn’t self-made, but is the heir to an emerald mine. He didn’t invent Tesla—he bought it out. For Space X, he just hired the right people and threw money at them. He’s an entrepreneur, which in the minds of America’s Shapiros is akin to being a genius leader, but he is neither a genius nor a leader. His Boring company which supposedly could drill tunnels four times faster than anyone else also only drilled a tunnel one half the diameter, thus displacing the same amount of dirt in the same time. His underground freeway system for LA was ridiculous on the face of it. His Hyperloop, based on proof-of-concept projects from the 1840s, has gone nowhere. He has an evil reputation as a union buster and workforce abuser. He insisted, for no good reason, that people work in close quarters during the most deadly stage of the coronavirus pandemic. The freedom of speech he promised for Twitter turned out to be the usual libertarian/fascist bullshit, in which free speech is for the rich and powerful only. Fascists for Free Speech, I call it.

So yes, Bron could be any of dozens of such monsters of American capitalism, but he’s most clearly Elon Musk.

Shapiro no doubt was dismayed that the hangers-on, Bron’s friends “The Disruptors” each represented a segment of American capitalist society. Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom Jr) represented the commercial science segment, and was being pressured by Bron to sign off on an unproven and potentially hazardous new hydrogen-based energy substance called ‘Klear’. Clair Debella (Kathryn Hahn) was the political segment, a governor Bron gave a huge donation to in order to rush through a project for the first Klear power plant, Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson) was a past-her-prime supermodel using the fashion industry to promote Bron’s ‘coolness,’ and Duke Cody, (Dave Bautista) was a blogger who is an incel/right winger who promotes men’s rights. Jay and Cody help Bron fight ‘wokeness’ by being politically incorrect (Jay was in hot water for describing a cheap person as ‘Jewy’ (not to be confused with another right wing moron who recently described his Catholic self as ‘Jew-ish’) and Cody always carries a large, ornate pistol that he likes to fire off randomly. Both appeal to the MAGAt crowd, of course.

Cody is also a cuckold and gets slapped around by a domineering if diminuitive mother and, it’s hinted, lives with mummy. I’m wondering if his character was the main reason Shapiro got so offended.

Glass Onion, like another movie earlier this year called Don’t Look Up, offends all the right people. It offends the far right, and it offends the people who still cling to the belief that fantastically rich billionaires are somehow beneficial to society and that because they are rich, they must be of superior intelligence, wisdom and morals. Even as Musk, Trump, Bezos and all the rest of the ultra-rich crowd prove that if anything, the opposite is true.

Glass Onion is a wildly entertaining movie, a first-class Agatha Christie-style whodunnit, and above all, a searingly sharp-edged social satire that comes along at just the right time. You can see it for yourself on Netflix.

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Musk Rat Love — Elon’s Reign at Twitter is like a Marx Brothers Movie

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 18th 2022

www.zeppscommentaries.online

Well, Elon finally did something popular. He posted a tweet this afternoon, a poll, the sole question in which was, “Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.”

At last glance, with some 9 million votes cast, he was trailing badly, with Yes getting 58% of the vote. Now, it’s anybody’s guess as to whether that’s an actual legitimate count, and if Musk plans on honoring the results or not. He discarded one vote he lost badly on, blaming the overwhelming majority of votes on bots.

In any event, his aim isn’t to restore order in the wake of the chaos he has created. He wrote, “No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor.” Hmm. Has anyone thought of asking Jack Dorsey? Oh, wait. The former Twitter CEO is running a rival social media known as Nostr. He is professing puzzlement at Musk’s antics, but in private he has to be laughing his ass off, to coin an internet phrase.

Mind you, in just the last 24 hours, Musk banned accounts that promoted or even linked to rival social media sites. He wrote, “we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.” One interesting omission there: TikTok. They are the Yellow Peril Panic of the week in right wing circles, and it’s strange that Musk didn’t pander to them.

The EU wasn’t amused by all this, even if the rest of us were. Per Brad Reed at Raw Story: Éric Freyssinet, the deputy director of France’s Cyberspace Gendarmerie Command, warned Twitter CEO Elon Musk that his company could lose protections against both civil and criminal legal liabilities if it really enforces this policy.

“Any attempt to remove my tweets that link to my other social media accounts, not violating any law, would actually make Twitter an editorial media, and no longer a social media platform, with civil and criminal liability for *any* illegal content therein,” he explained.

Oh, dear. Just Kanye West’s posts about Jews would qualify as illegal content under EU rules. Hate speech is against the law in that civilized corner of the world. Even in the US, editorial media—papers, cable news networks and so forth, steer clear of libelous and/or defamatory content, or like some of the less disreputable outfits that dabbled in it last year, they could face ruinous lawsuits of, oh, say, $1.6 billion. I’m sure you can think of a few examples, and none of them sound very happy about those suits right now.

After that, Musk jaunted off to Qatar to watch the final of the World Cup, aka the Merde! Bowl. He got photographed with Jared Kushner and Qatari leaders, which brought to mind Mos Eisley spaceport from Star Wars. You know the one. “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” The only thing missing was The Former Guy.

Imagine you get a call tomorrow morning from some clerk at Twitter headquarters. “Musk just walked out! It’s bedlam! It’s chaos!” You might ask what Musk walking out had to do with the bedlam and chaos, since it’s a bit like saying the traffic light just turned red and that’s why there’s a full moon. The clerk, sobbing convulsively, screams “Save us, Obi-Wan! You’re our only hope.” (Yeah, I know, you start with one quote from that damn movie and it metastasizes…).

OK, snow’s ploughed, gifts are under the tree, wife just left you for a television repairman. You say, what the fuck? Demand an iron clad contract that says you get a few million for three months work no matter what, put on a firefighter’s gear, and wade in.

What would you do first?

I would do an instant reset. Undo every change that Musk made that still survived his mercurial moods. Invite every employee that Musk canned or forced out back, at the same pay, and with a promise for a fat bonus if at the end of your three month period, they had managed to right the ship. Bring back the voluntary council that Musk just canned earlier this week and tell them to get cracking on rules that were consistent and, even more importantly, able to be applied consistently. Hate speech, disinformation, doxxing and defamatory attacks would once again result in suspension.

Reset to last known version that worked. And then carefully build from there. If you have to move slowly and cautiously, so be it. We’ve seen what brash and impulsive rule looks like. It looks like the Qatari mens’ soccer team.

Musk should help to further degrade the cult-like faith people have that those who are rich and famous must therefore be wise and capable of strong leadership. Gawd knows America has no shortage of overprivileged libertarian cnuts that show, if anything that the exact opposite is true. Billionaires are not your buddy, and don’t care about your interests and needs. In fact, they’re sure that if they had, they wouldn’t be billionaires in the first place. Stop worshipping them.

In the meantime, keep watching Twitter. It’s the best Marx Brothers movie they’ve made in 75 years.

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