What can we do to change the minds of decision makers and people in general to actually do something about preparing for the forthcoming economic/energy crises (the ones after this one!)?
Everyone wants 'clean' government, but it also depends who's doing the cleaning, no ?
Suspect it's only going to get dirtier under Trump, Musk and all the other US Oligarchs.
Certainly don't think all those government records should be given to Musk.
Time will tell, I guess.
I think the main reason Trump and co want access to this stuff is so they can easily identify
the most lucrative snout in trough spots so family and friends can be precisely parachuted in to get the
best bits of the pie.
Overconfidence, not just expert overconfidence but general overconfidence,
is one of the most common illusions we experience. Stan Robinson
Acting FBI Director
Following the 2024 presidential election, the Trump transition team asked Driscoll to serve as Deputy Director of the FBI underneath Robert Kissane as acting director.[4] However, following the inauguration of Donald Trump in January 2025, Driscoll became acting director of the FBI because the White House website "incorrectly listed" him as acting director and Kissane as deputy director.[4] "Instead of fixing the error, the pair swapped their temporary FBI roles," according to The Wall Street Journal.[4]
On January 31, 2025, as part of a planned mass termination, widely described by media outlets as a "purge"[5][6][7] of federal law enforcement officials[8] under the second Trump administration, the FBI under Driscoll was ordered to fire eight senior executives and compile a list of potentially thousands of other employees involved in investigations stemming from the January 6 United States Capitol attack, closely linked to Donald Trump.[9][10][11][12] Driscoll said that the list of such employees included himself and acting deputy director Kissane.[13][14][15] The order came from Emil Bove, a former criminal defense attorney for Trump who became the Trump administration's acting Deputy Attorney General.[13][16] Driscoll refused to endorse the effort to purge agents and pushed back "so forcefully that some FBI officials feared he would be dismissed."[13][17] Driscoll was lauded in a message widely circulated among FBI personnel.[17]
So Trump has basically ordered the acting Director of the FBI to "purge" himself and he's refused. You couldn't make this up.
We must deal with reality or it will deal with us.
Fascinating to see how he fares with stalwarts of the US deep state such as the FBI, CIA, NSA and Pentagon.
If anybody knows where the bodies are buried they do and I can't see senior personnel handing over their service firearms and top secret files before meekly trudging off to the gulags.
They are all well versed in the dark arts of black ops, plausible deniability etc, I imagine conducted from very well defended silos and well prepared for push back. Trump and friends may be in for some unexpected surprises possibly including an outbreak of Russian Sudden Death Syndrome.
Overconfidence, not just expert overconfidence but general overconfidence,
is one of the most common illusions we experience. Stan Robinson
Potemkin Villager wrote: ↑14 Feb 2025, 11:48
Fascinating to see how he fares with stalwarts of the US deep state such as the FBI, CIA, NSA and Pentagon.
If anybody knows where the bodies are buried they do and I can't see senior personnel handing over their service firearms and top secret files before meekly trudging off to the gulags.
They are all well versed in the dark arts of black ops, plausible deniability etc, I imagine conducted from very well defended silos and well prepared for push back. Trump and friends may be in for some unexpected surprises possibly including an outbreak of Russian Sudden Death Syndrome.
And if trump does suffer a nasty accident, his supporters will no doubt claim that the "deep state" did him in, even it was later found to be a genuine accident.
"Installers and owners of emergency diesels must assume that they will have to run for a week or more"
The US fired employees from the agency which oversees the safety of the their nuclear weapons stockpile last week, and are now struggling to contact them to offer them their jobs back.
Crippling the US nuclear weapons stockpile is probably a very good way to get yourself impeached or more summarily removed as US president.
Mark wrote: ↑16 Feb 2025, 13:21
His plan seems to be to create massive disruption and confusion in all directions, all at once and then see what you're left with....
I'm not sure that it is as coherent as that.
Overconfidence, not just expert overconfidence but general overconfidence,
is one of the most common illusions we experience. Stan Robinson
One thing to consider is that Musk and other 'techbros' were doing exceptionally well out of the old regime - why are they cheering on Trump's MAGA vision? Law of averages, revision to the mean might suggest whatever emerges from the US a few years down the line will propel a *different* set of people to astronomical wealth?
I would have expected folk who became billionaires over the last couple decades would be a bit more small c conservative, avoid biting the hand that feeds them.
" During an Oval Office meeting this week, Donald Trump went off on a wild tangent about magnets, a topic that he's ranted incoherently about multiple times. But this time seemed different - the President seemed hyper fixated on a magnetic lift system on an aircraft carrier, and in spite of a lack of evidence, he claimed that the lift system doesn't work because magnets just never work properly. Just a year ago, Trump falsely claimed that magnets won't work if they get wet, so this may be a continuation of his false claim. Farron Cousins explains what happened."
Overconfidence, not just expert overconfidence but general overconfidence,
is one of the most common illusions we experience. Stan Robinson
clv101 wrote: ↑16 Feb 2025, 17:00
One thing to consider is that Musk and other 'techbros' were doing exceptionally well out of the old regime - why are they cheering on Trump's MAGA vision? Law of averages, revision to the mean might suggest whatever emerges from the US a few years down the line will propel a *different* set of people to astronomical wealth?
I would have expected folk who became billionaires over the last couple decades would be a bit more small c conservative, avoid biting the hand that feeds them.
All three of them are tens of billions of dollars richer since Trump won the election.
We must deal with reality or it will deal with us.
That's very short term thinking though, the convulsions of the old regime. And franky, when you're already worth tens even hundreds of billions it makes little difference.
Thing I don't really get is why today's billionaires aren't working as hard as they can to keep *this* show, the show that's treated them so well, on the road as long as possible. Big change is a massive risk if you're currently in the world's richest 1000 individuals.
clv101 wrote: ↑17 Feb 2025, 21:03
That's very short term thinking though, the convulsions of the old regime. And franky, when you're already worth tens even hundreds of billions it makes little difference.
Thing I don't really get is why today's billionaires aren't working as hard as they can to keep *this* show, the show that's treated them so well, on the road as long as possible. Big change is a massive risk if you're currently in the world's richest 1000 individuals.
They want more. Especially more power.
We must deal with reality or it will deal with us.
