There's really not a single rational explanation for what DOGE is doing to USAID than that fully recruited Russian (or Hungarian or Chinese) agents are deliberately destroying all goodwill US has around the world.
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this is incredibly silly and historically uninformed. Republicans have hated non-military US foreign aid for 65 years. One Senator during the Cold War, Otto Passman of LA, said in 1963 that his great passion in life was "kicking the shit" out of the foreign aid program (including USAID).
I can't speak to what happened in 1963, but in my lengthy professional experience, Republicans have consistently funded and defended USAID before this. Including defying the Trump Administration to build back in traditional budgets in the last go round.
You are correct, and what’s happening represents the ascendance of an ideological faction that has previously been marginalized. Positions that used to be considered insane or radical are now driving policy making, and that is dangerous and novel. But it’s not a Russian conspiracy.
Well, policies that would be the same if we were under an occupying power. So explain it how you will, the collapse of our government services and total withdrawal of foreign assistance benefits no one but adversaries like China and Russia.
I would disagree. This is a historically, unprecedented self mutilation by a declining hegemon, but it isn’t without ideological coherence. Dismantling the modern administrative state is a domestic ideological project, not a foreign project, though it’s advocates have foreign allies.
It’s a deliberate and IMO illegal land grab! Their foreign buddies with gold cards or Elon himself will buy up the land pennies on the dollar that these farmers will be quickly losing. They will make the farmers sell their land quick. Nothing more, nothing less! Wrecking lives and don’t care!
Actually, it's cruel & inhumane seeing as how said person (no real man behaves so abominably!) could SOLVE WORLD HUNGER & STILL BE THE RICHEST PERSON IN THE WORLD!! It's plain evil & beneath contempt.
Exactly! Nobody voted for the drug addict, Musk. He needs to be in rehab, not in the WH raw-doggin' our fed govt. DOGE doesn’t add up. Programmers not accountants, usurping congressional power, no security clearances, use of private servers, data harvesting, and massive conflicts of interest.
Yes. And the most rational explanation for DOGE's domestic economic terrorism (along with Hegseth & Patel) is they want to stoke outrage and get people protesting in the streets so the J6 militia chuds can ensure violence happens, let them declare martial law, and end elections forever.
So I guess the question is are they attempting to act rationally or are they just too ignorant to understand what they're doing? And who is whispering in their ear about why they should do these things?
According to the WH that would be Amy Gleason. Though somehow I think not. I just hope the judge hails her into court to explain why she and *her* agency should not be held in contempt.
We ALL know it's the drug addict with too much $$/time on his hands. We know this. This motherfucker is lawless rn. They've LOST in court more than once already, but nothing happens b/c there is NOT ONE BODY that can enforce court orders against Musk & tЯump. US Marshalls report to Pam Bondi now.
My question is:
Is Trump doing this because he’s been so smoothly groomed by Putin to think they’ll be equal partners who’ll go halvsies on the spoils of world domination?
B/c, if that’s the case, Trump’s in for a rude awakening; Putin will pull the rug out from under him & take it all for himself
This cutting jobs and all the shit that they doing is not to balance the budget you’re gonna run up the deficit because after all the cutting that you’re doing none of that money is gonna go to pay down a debt. In fact it’s gonna add $2 trillion to the debt putting people to work they have mortgages
To fund a tax payment for millionaires and billionaires, and Indian adding to the deficit if these low life pieces of shit would pay their first year we wouldn’t have a deficit shame for what they’re doing. Donald Trump is a traitor in a Russian agent. The truth will come out.
At some point the Dems have to figure out how to quickly convey to Americans who think the Mueller report cleared Trump that it did NOT clear Trump and he is acting exactly like a KGB asset would. The problem is so many people took away the wrong message from the Mueller report
@emptywheel.bsky.social Yes 🇺🇸 has just lost the 2ndColdWar, having won the 1st. It’s admitted now that Trump has been a 🇷🇺n asset for ~38yrs & his destruction, partially repaired under Biden, is renewed, advancing the irredentist aims of Putin. Just as 🇷🇺 after their defeat ,🇺🇸 will never be the same.
Don’t discount simple, old-fashioned white supremacy. When the average American thinks about aid to starving and war-stricken people around the world, they are not picturing starving white kids.
@BenRossTransit @emptywheel.bsky.social Or then, there is no rational explanation, period. And the irrational explanation is that some folks just cannot stand it when people do something that helps other people without getting something in return in an immediate, transactional fashion. In their […]
I think there's a nonzero chance that some actually have freebased enough of their own farts for so long that they actually believe their own ideological stink.
Like, full-on Great Leap Forward-level rejection of objective reality in favor of party doctrine.
Americans think we spend too much on foreign aid. They think we spend 25% of our Federal Budget on it. They’d prefer we only spent 10%. The USAID budget is less than 1%. We’re a bunch of idiots. 🤦🏻
The fallout will be Russia and China swooping in to "rescue" countries that are in trouble, for the cost of setting up bases and (ironically) for resource deals, like the U.S. just did to Ukraine.
Putin, Musk, and Trump don't all have quite the same goals, but they do align a lot more than they don't. The destruction of the federal government of the United States is where they line up the most.
That is exactly what’s happening. The are trying to destroy us in every way possible. We have to fight back, or many of us will die of their policies anyway.
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Made sense to me.
That’s some bleak, dystopian shit.
and I think that explanation has a lot going for it
Is Trump doing this because he’s been so smoothly groomed by Putin to think they’ll be equal partners who’ll go halvsies on the spoils of world domination?
B/c, if that’s the case, Trump’s in for a rude awakening; Putin will pull the rug out from under him & take it all for himself
Like, full-on Great Leap Forward-level rejection of objective reality in favor of party doctrine.
Private Equity wants to wet its beak.