Tag Archives: Elon Musk

New York Post: Elon Musk rips ‘moron’ Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro: ‘Dumber than a sack of bricks’

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It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and it’s always entertaining to see the mutts chewing on one another. “Dumber than a sack of bricks” applies equally to F’Elon Musk as well as to Peter Navarro.

Musk, 53, responded Tuesday to the trade adviser’s suggestion on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Monday that the Tesla boss was “not a car manufacturer” but “a car assembler,” pointing to the electric vehicle company’s importing of batteries and other key components to manufacture its cars. 

“Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false,” Musk wrote on X, adding in a subsequent post in which he tagged the “Re—d Finder”: “Tesla has the most American-made cars. Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks.”

Elon Musk rips ‘moron’ Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro: ‘Dumber than a sack of bricks’

Billionaire Elon Musk escalated his attacks against White House trade adviser Peter Navarro Tuesday, calling him a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks.”

https://nypost.com/2025/04/08/us-news/elon-musk-rips-moron-trump-trade-adviser-peter-navarro

Guardian: Doge’s attack on social security causing ‘complete, utter chaos’, staff says

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Understaffed agency sent into ‘death spiral’ as employees warn Musk-led cuts will lead to structural collapse

Office closures, staffing and service cuts, and policy changes at the Social Security Administration (SSA) have caused “complete, utter chaos” and are threatening to send the agency into a “death spiral”, according to workers at the agency.

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The SSA website has crashed several times this month. Wired reported Doge staff want to migrate all social security data and rewrite code in months, which could cause system collapse and further outages.

The agency plans to eliminate the jobs of 7,000 workers at the agency through voluntary buyouts, resignations or firings, though the union representing SSA employees anticipate even more firings beyond cutting staff to 50,000 workers.

Acting commissioner Leland Dudek has acknowledged to staff that Doge are making the decisions at the agency. Musk, Donald Trump and others have claimed action is being taken to tackle widespread fraud at the agency.

Dudek was appointed acting commissioner after he reportedly secretly shared information with Doge staff. He has threatened to shut down the agency in response to a court order barring Doge from accessing the data.

Doge’s attack on social security causing ‘complete, utter chaos’, staff says

Understaffed agency sent into ‘death spiral’ as employees warn Musk-led cuts will lead to structural collapse

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/06/musk-doge-social-security

New York Times: The Message Pete Hegseth Sends the Troops

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Last week’s shocking report that Mr. Hegseth shared sensitive information about a yet-to-be-launched air attack in Yemen on an unclassified messaging app is now straining the limits of his credibility as an everyman — and his fitness to lead the American military’s 2.1 million service members.

Americans stationed across the globe know if they violate similar security protocols, they can expect swift reprimand, the loss of security clearance and perhaps a court-martial. In his first departmentwide message on Jan. 25, Mr. Hegseth told troops he was a firm believer in holding everyone to account. “Our standards will be high, uncompromising, and clear,” he wrote. Now those same operational security standards don’t appear to apply to him. What message is sent to American troops if that imbalance continues?

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For now, the affair raises profound questions about whether Mr. Hegseth can handle an actual national security crisis, after he’s managed to blunder into such a major unforced error.

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It’s difficult to imagine that two of his recent predecessors, Jim Mattis and Lloyd J. Austin III, who retired six ranks above Mr. Hegseth as four-star generals, would have copy and pasted such details onto a publicly available app. It’s not that either man flawlessly executed the role of defense secretary, but at least they were accountable…. Mr. Hegseth, so far, hasn’t shown that he is willing to admit any fault. Instead, he has taken a defiant tone, attacking Mr. Goldberg’s credibility and arguing that “nobody was texting war plans.”

Opinion | The Message Pete Hegseth Sends the Troops – The New York Times

The Guardian: Republicans are quietly trying to disenfranchise millions of voters

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The so-called Save Act would strip millions of their access to the vote and make the process harder for everyone else

One such piece of legislation is the so-called Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or Save Act, which would require Americans seeking to register or re-register to vote to prove US citizenship. This dangerous bill would in effect strip millions of Americans of their access to the vote, while making the voting process more difficult and burdensome for everyone else. Rather than make our elections more secure, the Save Act would disenfranchise millions based on nothing but a series of debunked conspiracy theories.

Republicans are quietly trying to disenfranchise millions of voters | Alexis Anderson-Reed

The so-called Save Act would strip millions of their access to the vote and make the process harder for everyone else

Republicans are quietly trying to disenfranchise millions of voters | Alexis Anderson-Reed | The Guardian

Guardian: Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous

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Thanks to Trump’s administration, the US could soon have to fight wars to get things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking

The American vice-president, JD Vance, visited a US base in Greenland for three hours on Friday, along with his wife. National security adviser Mike Waltz and his wife also went along. Fresh from using an unsafe social media platform to carry out an entirely unnecessary group chat in which they leaked sensitive data about an ongoing military attack to a reporter, and thereby allegedly breaking the law, Waltz and Vance perhaps hoped to change the subject by tagging along on a trip that was initially billed as Vance’s wife watching a dogsled race.

The overall context was Trump’s persistent claim that America must take Greenland, which is an autonomous region of Denmark. The original plan had been that Usha Vance would visit Greenlanders, apparently on the logic that the second lady would be an effective animatrice of colonial subjection; but none of them wanted to see her, and Greenland’s businesses refused to serve as a backdrop to photo ops or even to serve the uninvited Americans. So, instead, the US couples made a very quick visit to Pituffik space base.

At the base, in the far north of the island, the US visitors had pictures taken of themselves and ate lunch with servicemen and women. They treated the base as the backdrop to a press conference where they could say things they already thought; nothing was experienced, nothing was learned, nothing sensible was said. Vance, who never left the base, and has never before visited Greenland, was quite sure how Greenlanders should live. He made a political appeal to Greenlanders, none of whom was present, or anywhere near him. He claimed that Denmark was not protecting the security of Greenlanders in the Arctic, and that the US would. Greenland should therefore join the US.

It takes some patience to unwind all of the nonsense here.

Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous | Timothy Snyder

Thanks to Trump’s administration, the US could soon have to fight wars to get things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking, says professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University

Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous | Timothy Snyder | The Guardian

CBS News: Wisconsin Supreme Court race won by Democrat-backed Susan Crawford

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Up yours, Musk! Take your money and shove it!

You and your corrupt cronies flushed $81,000,000 down Wisconsin sewers, and you still don’t own a judge on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Wisconsin voters have a lot more brains and integrity than you give them credit for, certainly a lot more than you have.

Susan Crawford, who was endorsed by the Democratic Party, won the closely-watched Wisconsin Supreme Court race Tuesday night in what was the most expensive judicial election in American history. 

What would have normally been a sleepy nonpartisan judicial race turned into an expensive battle between Crawford, a Dane County judge, and Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, who was endorsed by the Republican Party. The campaigns and their supporters have spent more than $81 million, attracting endorsements and campaign appearances from Elon Musk, Vermont Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders and other national political figures.

With 70% of the vote in, Crawford led Schimel by 55% to 44%, a margin of about 189,000 votes. 

Wisconsin Supreme Court race won by Democrat-backed Susan Crawford

Christian Post: Elon Musk thanks pastor for invoking ‘hedge of protection’ around him

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‘I think we’re going to need divine protection, frankly’

SpaceX CEO and DOGE chief Elon Musk thanked a pastor who publicly prayed for him during a large town hall in Wisconsin.

The pastor, who remains unidentified as of Monday, asked for divine protection amid what he framed as Musk and President Donald Trump’s battle against evil.

Elon Musk thanks pastor for invoking ‘hedge of protection’ around him

SpaceX CEO and DOGE chief Elon Musk thanked a pastor who publicly prayed for him during a large town hall in Wisconsin

Elon Musk thanks pastor for invoking ‘hedge of protection’ | Politics

The Atlantic: The Hungarian Model

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MAGA conservatives love Viktor Orbán. But he’s left his country corrupt, stagnant, and impoverished.

But the nationalist kitsch and tourist traps hide a different reality. Once widely perceived to be the wealthiest country in Central Europe (“the happiest barrack in the socialist camp,” as it was known during the Cold War), and later the Central European country that foreign investors liked most, Hungary is now one of the poorest countries, and possibly the poorest, in the European Union. Industrial production is falling year-over-year. Productivity is close to the lowest in the region. Unemployment is creeping upward. Despite the ruling party’s loud talk about traditional values, the population is shrinking. Perhaps that’s because young people don’t want to have children in a place where two-thirds of the citizens describe the national education system as “bad,” and where hospital departments are closing because so many doctors have moved abroad. Maybe talented people don’t want to stay in a country perceived as the most corrupt in the EU for three years in a row. Even the Index of Economic Freedom—which is published by the Heritage Foundation, the MAGA-affiliated think tank that produced Project 2025—puts Hungary at the bottom of the EU in its rankings of government integrity.

Tourists in central Budapest don’t see this decline. But neither, apparently, does the American right. 

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What is this Hungarian model they so admire? Mostly, it has nothing to do with modern statecraft. Instead it’s a very old, very familiar blueprint for autocratic takeover, one that has been deployed by right-wing and left-wing leaders alike, from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Hugo Chávez. After being elected to a second term in 2010, Orbán slowly replaced civil servants with loyalists; used economic pressure and regulation to destroy the free press; robbed universities of their independence, and shut one of them down; politicized the court system; and repeatedly changed the constitution to give himself electoral advantages. During the coronavirus pandemic he gave himself emergency powers, which he has kept ever since. He has aligned himself openly with Russia and China, serving as a mouthpiece for Russian foreign policy at EU meetings and allowing opaque Chinese investments in his country.

Orbán’s Hungary Could Be America’s Future – The Atlantic

Business Insider: 17 Teslas destroyed following blaze at Rome dealership

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A fire broke out at a Tesla dealership in Rome early on Monday, destroying 17 cars and damaging the building, firefighters told Business Insider.

Emergency services were called to the site in Torre Angela at about 4:30 a.m. local time, they said.

No injuries have been reported and investigators haven’t specified the cause of the fire, adding investigators were looking into multiple causes, including possible malice.

Possible malice?

Imagine that!

17 Teslas destroyed following blaze at Rome dealership

17 Teslas destroyed following blaze at Rome dealership

Mediaite: MAGA Influencer Says She’s Selling Her Tesla Because ‘Vindictive’ Elon Musk Slashed Their Child’s Support 60%

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The Daily Mail reported the 26-year-old watched the company load up the $100,000 black Model S in Manhattan on Saturday.

“I’m selling it because I need to make up for the 60 percent cut that Elon made to our son’s child support,” she said.

St. Clair was asked why she believed Musk reduced her child support and whether she viewed the move as “vindictive.”

“Yeah, that’s his modus operandi, when women speak out,” she added.

St. Clair added she had not spoken to Musk since Feb. 13 and pointed to the Tesla stock price as evidence “I’m not the only one who is cleaning up after his messes.”

MAGA Influencer Says She’s Selling Her Tesla Because ‘Vindictive’ Elon Musk Slashed Their Child’s Support 60%

St. Clair made news when she proclaimed Musk fathered a child she gave birth to last fall. She asked for privacy but has continued to generate headlines since.

MAGA Influencer Sells Tesla After Musk Cut Her Child Support