epaddon
20 hours ago
This Senator's defense of Sesame Street is brought to you by the letters B and S.

Everyone from Musk's young children to his ex-wives is named and described in the piece, some in ways clearly meant to provoke embarrassment. To be sure, there is no valid reason for any of these family members to be thrust into the public eye, and The Hill's framing makes it clear that this is in retaliation for Musk daring to take "an influential Washington role" in reforming the bureaucracy. It's the mobster tactic of winking and nodding while saying, "That's a nice family you've got there. It'd be a shame if anything were to happen to them."

I'd say the mainstream press should be ashamed of itself, but we all know its members possess no shame to offer. These "journalists" operate like ghoulish leeches, willing to publish anything to serve their political wants. There are no boundaries, and some news outlets sure seem to nudging others into committing physical attacks on Musk and his family.

That attitude extends to Democrat politicians as well, who have made "Elon Musk wasn't elected" a rallying cry, as if his appointment is somehow invalid while the unelected bureaucrats are unassailable. Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) recently ranted and raved that people need to use "every tool" to stop Musk.

A Warning Written for Tomorrow

January 18th, 2021.

The capital of the free world looked like a war zone.

Armed troops patrolled empty streets. Barriers rose like steel forests. And in a quiet corner of the White House, someone uploaded forty-five pages to the government website.

No ceremony. No press release. Just a document dropped into the digital void.

"The 1776 Report"

But Two days later, it vanished.

Scrubbed from official servers.

Dismissed as propaganda.

Lost in the chaos of transition.

And yet, something survived.

What most Americans never knew was that this wasn't just another government report. This was a diagnosis of what was killing the American spirit—and more importantly—a blueprint for its renewal.

Written not for 2021, but for this exact moment in 2025, as things begin to change.

"We have arrived at a point," it warned, "where the most influential part of our nation finds these old faith-based virtues dangerous, useless, or perhaps even laughable."

Simple words. Surgical precision. Like a doctor naming a disease everyone felt but no one would acknowledge.

But here's what made the report extraordinary:

it mapped the exact pressure points where renewal would begin.

Like a military assessment written for civilians like me.

A battle plan disguised as historical analysis.

"The facts of our founding," it declared, "are not partisan. They address the concerns of ALL Americans—every class, race, religion, and region. Properly understood, these facts resolve the concerns and fulfill the aspirations of our entire people."

Critics called this empty rhetoric in 2021.

They should have read more carefully.

Those weren't just words.

They were coordinates, marking exact points where American renewal would begin. //

The sun rises early in Washington. Its first rays catch marble columns that have watched over the capital for centuries. But something's different in these opening weeks of 2025. Something electric. Something unstoppable.

Inside those buildings and institutions being audited and gutted for the first time in forever, a forgotten report's prophecies are finally becoming reality.

Look closer.

The DS meeting its match in digital sunlight.

Critical Theory crumbling against hard truth.

Identity politics dissolving in the face of American renewal.

The clock struck 2 AM on Jan 21, 2025.
In Treasury's basement, fluorescent lights hummed above four young coders. Their screens cast blue light across government-issue desks, illuminating energy drink cans and agency badges. As their algorithms crawled through decades of payment data, one number kept growing: $17 billion in redundant programs. And counting.

"We're in," Akash Bobba messaged the team. "All of it."

Edward Coristine's code had already mapped three subsystems. Luke Farritor's algorithms were tracing payment flows across agencies. Ethan Shaotran's analysis revealed patterns that career officials didn't even know existed. By dawn, they would understand more about Treasury's operations than people who had worked there for decades.

This wasn't a hack. This wasn't a breach. This was authorized disruption.

While career bureaucrats prepared orientation packets and welcome memos, DOGE's team was already deep inside the payment systems. No committees. No approvals. No red tape. Just four coders with unprecedented access and algorithms ready to run.

"The beautiful thing about payment systems," noted a transition official watching their screens, "is that they don't lie. You can spin policy all day long, but money leaves a trail." //

By Inauguration Day, over 1,000 pre-vetted personnel stood ready—each armed with clear objectives, mapped legal authorities, and direct lines to support networks. This wasn't just staffing; it was a battle plan decades in the making.

"This is the new normal," Vice President JD Vance declared from his West Wing office, studying real-time data flows across agency systems. "He's having the time of his life," he added, referring to the President's relentless drive. "We've done more in two weeks than others did in years." //

For the permanent bureaucracy, this wasn't just change. It was an extinction-level event. Their power came from controlling who got paid, when they got paid, and what they got paid for. Now those controls were evaporating like dawn burning away darkness.

The pattern was devastating in its simplicity:

1. Map the money flows
2. Deploy aligned personnel
3. Expose the networks
4. Restructure the systems
   //

This isn't just reform. This isn't just change. This is American governance reimagined.

Congress illegally spent at least $516 billion in 2024 on programs for which there was no authorization. Yes, billion, with a "b." A stunning report by the Congressional Budget Office underscores the reason for the legal assault upon President Trump's right to audit payments by the Treasury Department.

In a report titled "Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2024," the CBO observes: "Historically, House and Senate rules restrict lawmakers from considering an appropriation if it lacks a current authorization." Nevertheless, "CBO estimates that $516 billion was appropriated for 2024 for activities with expired authorizations, which the agency identified for each House and Senate authorizing committee and appropriations subcommittee." That $516 billion in illegal payments cover "1,264 authorizations of appropriations that expired before the beginning of fiscal year 2024 and 251 authorizations of appropriations that were set to expire by the end of fiscal year 2024." The legal authority for some of these payments expired 40 — that's not a typo — years ago. //

Making this all the more intriguing is that it would seem that the President could stop those payments without worrying about violating the Impoundment Control Act as they are not legal appropriations by Congress's rules.

I will guarantee you that when DOGE really digs into this, they are going to find other ongoing illegal payments on a Biblical scale.

A team of scientists at Harvard University and a company called Carbon Engineering announced this week that they’ve figured out a low-cost, industrial-scale method of pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Needless to say, it sounds like an exciting technology, which would, as The Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer notes, “transform how humanity thinks about the problem of climate change.” //

The paper claims that companies will be able to remove a metric ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for as little as $94. The cost of averting less than one degree of warming by 2100, according to some, would have cost around $2 trillion every year for a century — which doesn’t include the economic toll it would extract from the world’s economy. //

For many environmentalists, all this will be welcome news. I doubt it will be for the politically motivated climate warriors, whose aim has always been social engineering in the cause of curbing capitalistic excesses. Even if decarbonization is successful, they will demand we continue to mandate inefficient renewable energies. They will demand tax dollars be used to prop up the clean-energy industry. They will continue to demand we ban fracking. They will continue to propose creating fabricated markets that artificially spike the cost of fossil fuels to pay for supposed negative externalities.

But, as a political matter, it’s going to be a lot more difficult to sell those policies when they can no longer claim the apocalypse is nigh.

During a Pennsylvania trip, Secret Service agents spotted a drone tracking Trump’s motorcade—they opened the moonroof and took it down with an electromagnetic gun.

Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Russ Vought has frozen all new funding to that agency. In a memo to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Vought, who was just confirmed as Office of Management and Budget Director, said, "This letter is to inform you that in the Third Quarter of Fiscal Year 2025, the Bureau is requesting $0."

Earlier, Vought had announced that he'd discovered the CFPB was sitting on a $711.6 million "reserve fund." //

The beauty of this move is that when Elizabeth Warren set up the CFPB, she attempted to insulate it from influence or management by either the Executive or Legislative branches. Contrary to other agencies that are managed by a group of directors who the president can remove, the CFPB had a single director who could only be removed for cause. The Supreme Court struck down that arrangement in 2020. She also had the CFPB draw funds directly from the Federal Reserve, bypassing the appropriation process. In the best "it isn't a tax" tradition of John Roberts's jurisprudence, that funding arrangement survived a Supreme Court challenge. This combination of events has led to a situation where one man, that would be Russ Vought, can do pretty much as he wishes because there is no Congressional oversight, and he can't be forced to spend money because there are no appropriations. //

This letter is to inform you that for the Third Quarter of Fiscal Year 2025, the Bureau is requesting $0.

During my review of the Bureau's finances, I have learned that the Bureau has a balance of $711,586,678.00 in the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Fund. By law, I must take account of this sum when determining the amount "reasonably necessary" for the Bureau to fulfill its statutory authorities.

I have determined that no additional funds are necessary to carry out the authorities of the Bureau for Fiscal Year 2025. The Bureau's current funds are more than sufficient — and are, in fact, excessive — to carry out its authorities in a manner that is consistent with the public interest.

When DOGE found empty fields in Treasury's payment system, they uncovered more than missing data.
They found a mechanism.

Simple things were left blank:

Payment categories

Payment rationales

Basic audit controls

The kind of fields any small business would require. The kind that let you track where money goes. The kind that stop a billion dollars of fraud. Every week.

Here's what Treasury didn't want exposed:

Over $100 billion flowing annually to accounts without Social Security numbers. No temporary ID numbers. No verification. Nothing.

When Musk asked Treasury officials how much was "unequivocal and obvious fraud," the answer revealed decades of corruption: HALF

Let that sink in.

$50 billion per YEAR.

A billion dollars every SINGLE week disappearing into accounts that shouldn't exist.

The kind of fraud that would shut down any bank in America.

The kind that would land any business owner in federal prison.

But Treasury had perfected its system:

Process payments

Ignore controls

Keep the machine running. //

Nineteen Democratic state attorneys general filed suit. Not about the fraud. Not about the waste. Not about billions vanishing into accounts without SSNs. But about "protecting" the Treasury Department from its own Secretary.

A judge in New York responded with something unprecedented: an ex parte order blocking Treasury officials from accessing their own department's data. No warning. No chance to respond. No opportunity to present evidence. Just a wall between the people elected to fix the system and the system itself.

Think about what that means: The Secretary of the Treasury—effectively the CFO of the United States government—legally barred from seeing how money moves through his own department. The people's appointee blocked from viewing the people's accounts. Young coders mapping the missing controls ordered to stop looking.

What he never bothers to explain is how state attorneys general have any standing to challenge the internal workflows of the Treasury Department, how auditing a system within the Treasury Department is beyond the power of the Treasury Department, how the Executive Branch can violate the separation of powers by carrying out an audit, or how DOGE's action is anything other than the epitome of the "Take Care Clause" which would seem to anyone without TDS to require laws to be obeyed.

It should be to no one's shock that the lead clown in this pathetic circus of TDS sufferers is Letitia James.

The complaint presents a veritable "parade of horribles" of things that "might" happen, which, even if true, fall in the "not your circus, not your monkey" category of complaints. //

This will turn out to be more performative than real. When a federal judge ordered a halt to Trump's spending freeze (see Biden Judge Puts Trump's Spending Freeze on Hold and Orders the Feeding Trough Opened), the administration essentially answered, "yeah, no."

Defendants do not read the Order to prevent the President or his advisors from communicating with federal agencies or the public about the President’s priorities regarding federal spending. Nor do Defendants construe the Order as enjoining the President’s Executive Orders, which are plainly lawful and unchallenged in this case. Further, Defendants do not read the Order as imposing compliance obligations on federal agencies that are not Defendants in this case. Defendants respectfully request that the Court notify Defendants if they have misunderstood the intended scope of the Court’s Order. //

We'll soon see how Attorney General Bondi responds to this nonsense and if she's willing to draw a line at this sort of judicial overreach. If she goes along with it, it effectively means that the President literally does not have the authority to give directions to the Executive Branch, and the Treasury Secretary cannot establish policies in his agency without getting the approval of some judge somewhere based on the complaint of random people. //

Lugger66
a day ago
As i said u might as well have a judge say DT cant be POTUS.
Truth is not only does this need to be slapped down they need to be punished. //

anon-adwq
a day ago
Treasury Secretary made the DOGE auditors employees of the Treasury. So the Judge's order now applies to people who do not exist ("outside auditors"). Game, set, match. Trump's team is well ahead of the flailing activist Democrat judges. They can scream into the wind. The common meme picture of the screaming Karen can be updated to wearing judicial robes. Gotta love it! //

PubliusCryptus
a day ago
This conflict is a make or break event. The Judiciary has been out of control for generations now and it must be forced back into its Constitutionally defined role. Judges who exceed their authority must be removed from the bench and prosecuted for abuse of their powers. Their abuse has been going on for so long and their hubris has reached such a level that I fear simply ignoring them will not solve this problem. Arrest and imprison them.

OSHA PEL
8-hour TWA
(ST) STEL
(C) Ceiling
Peak
NIOSH REL
Up to 10-hour TWA
(ST) STEL
(C) Ceiling
ACGIH TLV©
8-hour TWA
(ST) STEL
(C) Ceiling
CAL/OSHA PEL
8-hour TWA
(ST) STEL
(C) Ceiling
Peak
PEL-TWA
5000 ppm (9000 mg/m³)

The Simon–Ehrlich wager was a 1980 scientific wager between business professor Julian Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich, betting on a mutually agreed-upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade leading up to 1990. The widely followed contest originated in the pages of Social Science Quarterly, where Simon challenged Ehrlich to put his money where his mouth was. In response to Ehrlich's published claim that "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000", Simon offered to take that bet, or, more realistically, "to stake US$10,000 ... on my belief that the cost of non-government-controlled raw materials (including grain and oil) will not rise in the long run".

Simon challenged Ehrlich to choose any raw material he wanted and a date more than a year away, and he would wager on the inflation-adjusted prices decreasing as opposed to increasing. Ehrlich chose copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. The bet was formalized on September 29, 1980, with September 29, 1990, as the payoff date. Ehrlich lost the bet, as all five commodities that were bet on declined in price from 1980 through 1990, the wager period.

Almost 70 years ago, the U.S. State Department dispatched a new ambassador to a Southeast Asian nation. As often seemed to happen, the new U.S. official was no expert on the nation, its economy, or its culture. He did not speak the language. And his concerns were more geopolitical and career-oriented. //

Communism at the time of that ambassador’s appointment was the worst threat ever to global democracy. It had already taken over Eastern Europe, prompted the Korean War, and was inspiring guerrilla movements around the world, especially in Asia, where some colonial powers like France still reigned.

Using the American Revolution against Britain as his model for successful guerilla warfare, Ho Chi Minh was succeeding in ousting the French from Indochina, soon to become Vietnam.

It turns out, this story about the ignorant, bumbling new U.S. ambassador was all made up, total fiction. It was the plot of “The Ugly American,” a blockbuster 1958 novel that would shape the thinking of a future president and millions more through a successful movie starring some actor in his 30s named Marlon Brando.

The compelling book by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer was a longtime best-seller. It spoke to a deep-seated American fear, which survives to this day, that the world’s bad guys would be victorious because a naïve United States, geographically isolated from foreign trouble spots, failed to fully accept its responsibility to help other countries and thereby protect itself. //

During and long after World War I, the U.S. produced and sent millions of tons of food to feed war-torn Europe. That effort was spearheaded by an Iowa orphan and mining engineer named Herbert Hoover, who gained international fame.

He also served as Secretary of Commerce and, in 1928, became the first Quaker and last Cabinet member to win election as president.

The vast Marshall Plan to feed and rebuild Europe after World War II cemented a reputation for generosity in the minds of the world and ourselves and a dawning awareness that Americans had a strong self-interest in helping others.

As someone who read Ugly American at the time, I can say the psychological impact of that book was even stronger than the 1974 one for “Jaws,” which unleashed our inner fears of immense monsters just out of sight.

The warnings of Ugly American — that the U.S. had to be smarter abroad — so impressed first-term Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-MA) that he gave copies to every other senator. And then, two years later, he took those impressions with him into the White House with some lethal consequences. //

Just four months into his presidency, Kennedy reversed President Eisenhower’s policy of non-intervention in foreign conflicts. That had kept the U.S. out of fighting in Indochina and Egypt when France and Britain seized the Suez Canal.

Fatefully, in May 1961, Kennedy sent 500 troops to South Vietnam. They were just going to advise the local army, you understand, in its struggle against Communists infiltrating from North Vietnam. //

Fast forward to Afghanistan, 2001. The initial decision seemed reasonable for the U.S. and NATO allies to attack al Qaeda there and the Taliban, which had hosted terrorist training camps for the 9/11 attacks.

But then, once again, mission creep slipped in. //

Three hundred years before Christ, Alexander the Great could not pacify what became Afghanistan. Nor could the British in the 1800s. In 1989, the Soviets gave up their attempt after 10 years.

It took the U.S. and allies 20 years before they gave up and left in a humiliating 2021 withdrawal that Joe Biden's ineptness made worse than necessary.

The Western costs were 2,465 U.S. service fatalities, 1,144 allied and contractor deaths, and $2.3 trillion.

The Taliban won anyway.

Now, we return to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was active there. The goal of President Kennedy, who also founded the Peace Corps, was to unite scattered foreign aid programs in one semi-independent agency under the State Department to promote social and economic progress in other countries. //

There is no doubt, however, that some of the billions distributed by USAID have benefited many millions. The agency helped eradicate smallpox, stemmed the spread of AIDS in Africa, and provides treatments.

The mission was to make investments abroad that would encourage and ignite further progress. Not provide free lunches today but teach literacy so people could get better jobs tomorrow. Help provide clean water and teach better health care, especially for infants and children. Provide nutritional guidance. Improve agricultural methods to boost production and reduce erosion and pests. //

The fact is that although the U.S. is by far the world’s largest provider of foreign aid, such spending only runs around one percent of the total federal budget of $6.1 trillion; in Fiscal Year 2023, it was 1.2 percent. //

GBenton
a day ago
This is what I'm talking about, lol. They're so cooked.

The Swamp depended on both parties keeping secrets about how the Uniparty is a parasitic infection in our government.

But Trump isn't playing the game of going into government with a few hundred grand salary and suddenly being worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

He and Musk have F U money already.

And they are opening the books to a People's Audit (that sounds communistic, but I mean it in a populist sense), and they are gonna destroy these vampires with good old fashioned sunlight.

The Dems could tie him up in court, they could log jam in Congress, and they could use agencies to sandbag with noncompliance.

But they can't stop being exposed by sunlight when Musk controls the largest social media platform and the public is already super pissed off.

This is check mate, Dems.

Any move you make to resist makes you complicit to corruption.

Trump and Musk are not going for incremental reform, they are tearing down what the Uniparty has built over the past century.

Take that, Frankfurt School and Cloward Piven - THIS is how you collapse a corrupt system.

NavyVet GBenton
a day ago
Exposing the flood of illegal outflow is one thing. The next step is to uncover where it went.

Where did those tens of millions of accumulated small donations to ActBlue come from? Methinks these streams of illegal payments.

Now, if the democrats did not know, were innocent, they would be just as curious as us, and just as outraged. The fact that they are doing all they can to obstruct, prevent exposure, prevent scrutiny, tells us, they already know what we will find. They are guilty and they know it.

At this point, they would be wise to cut their losses, demand transparency along with us, and be happy that all they lost is the wellspring of our tax dollars. But they are not wise. By fighting exposure, they implicate themselves as knowing criminals.

RICO! RICO! RICO! You listening, Pam? RICO!

GBenton NavyVet
a day ago
Yes, and the bitch for the corrupt is that DOGE is bringing receipts.

The downside of the surveillance state they built is that it's now being used to expose their fraud.

Sorry, not sorry, lol.

Their Frankenstein monster is gonna destroy them.

anon-73eu GBenton
20 hours ago
I think I love that the most. Obama set up the Digital Dept that Trump is going to use to nail everyone of those idiots. And oh my, the RICO possibilities. (yeah had to clean up what I really wanted to write).

Obama 'What magic wand do you have?' to Trump on the economy in 2016.
Trump 'YOURS' on fixing everything else in 2025.

Immediately Dangerous to Life or Health Concentrations (IDLH)
CAS number: 124–38–9

NIOSH REL: 5,000 ppm (9,000 mg/m3) TWA,

30,000 ppm (54,000 mg/m3) STEL

Current OSHA PEL: 5,000 ppm (9,000 mg/m3) TWA

1989 OSHA PEL: 10,000 ppm (18,000 mg/m3) TWA,

30,000 ppm (54,000 mg/m3) STEL

Basis for original (SCP) IDLH: The chosen IDLH is based on the statements by ACGIH [1971] that a 30-minute exposure at 50,000 ppm produces signs of intoxication, and a few minutes of exposure at 70,000 ppm and 100,000 ppm produces unconsciousness [Flury and Zernik 1931]. AIHA [1971] reported that 100,000 ppm is the atmospheric concentration immediately dangerous to life. In addition, Hunter [1975] noted that exposure to 100,000 ppm for only a few minutes can cause loss of consciousness.