Baffled European

Tag: ICE lies

  • Nothing’s gonna stop us now

    I was thinking of writing something about the imminent start of World War III, but it has been postponed for 14 days. Maybe in that time the disorganised mess of US government structures will have sorted themselves out.

    Instead, let’s look at another setback for engineer extraordinaire Elon Musk. The latest test of Starship resulted in a spectacular explosion on the test stand. Not only was the rocket destroyed, but most of the test facility as well. I guess Musk won’t be going to Mars in 2026.

    SpaceX aren’t even trying their “partial success” story for when a rocket blows up. This time it’s a “serious anomaly”.

    Unsurprisingly, morale among SpaceX employees is rock bottom. It’s not just the run of failures, but also the poor working conditions and dissatisfaction with Musk’s foray into extremist politics. Many engineers have left this year, even when considering the high personnel churn at Musk’s companies. A wall of NDAs is in place to stop people from talking, but that just makes things worse.

    It’s amazing just how things are unravelling for Musk. In the past you could look at Tesla and SpaceX and they were undeniable achievements. No matter what you might have thought of him personally, he delivered. Now it looks like all of it was built on sand. There’s no culture, no institutional knowledge in his companies, they are just hollow shells. This slow-motion implosion is spectacular in its own way.

  • The cost of paranoia

    Moody’s lowered the credit rating for the USA last week. They had concerns about the federal deficit. Those concerns have been justified with the new budget proposal, which will raise the deficit by almost $4trillion.

    The headline policies are predictable: a massive giveaway to the president’s friends and clients, to be partly funded by destroying Medicaid. Destroying education, science, research etc are all part of it as well. The Golden Dome makes its appearance with $25bn as a first payment in what is expected to cost $175bn in total. It’s a waste of money, but go ahead.

    What is astonishing is the amount of money they want to spend on racism. ICE will receive $50bn to build a network of concentration camps for up to 200,000 inmates as part of the mania against “illegal immigrants” and anybody else who gets in their way.

    There will be another $30bn to turn ICE into a massive secret police force. This is for hiring, transport and infrastructure, again purely for the perceived necessity to remove undesirables.

    Best of all is a provision that would prevent judicial oversight of what the government is up to. It removes any penalty for the government ignoring an injunction or a contempt charge. Nice.

    This was passed by Republicans. Their great leader told them it would be “ultimate treason” to reject it. It still needs to be passed by the Senate. It’ll be interesting to see how much they accept.

  • Fox government

    I gotta get me a fix of Pete Hegseth. The latest disaster is that another jet has fallen off the USS Truman. That’s three now, meaning that they have transformed approximately $200m worth of aircraft into wrecks fit only for seeding coral in less than three months. That’s not counting the damage done to a merchant ship that the aircraft carrier accidentally collided with.

    There are obviously problems onboard, and these didn’t start in January, with the accession of the new regime. On the other hand, Hegseth extended the tour of the USS Truman, rather than calling it back home to find out what was going on. He’s got other stuff to do: those books won’t burn themselves.

    Usual rule applies: each dollar they waste on vanity and incompetence is one dollar less they can use for evil stuff.

    With any luck, we will see more vanity and incompetence. The godfather has appointed Janine Pirro to be the new Attorney General of Washington DC. She is another former Fox News host, taking the number of alumni now to 39 in the administration. Like Hegseth, she’s also an alcoholic, so she’ll fit in well.

    Her greatest hit was the lies she told about Dominion Voting Systems, claiming they fraudulently awarded Biden the election. The company sued, winning $800m in damages. This, alongside her rabid, unswerving loyalty to the president, is what got her the job.

    He always picks the best people.

  • Vladimir, STOP!

    The Art Of The Deal. A book that was not written, or even read, by the man named as its author. Despite this, he enjoys a reputation for being a deal-maker. People must be listening to what he says about his great business successes and believing him.

    A notorious boast was about achieving peace in Ukraine within 24 hours. Three months in and the USA has finally negotiated a peace deal. They have found the best way to do this is to only talk to Russia and agree a modern-day Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, but not secret.

    A senior Russian general was blown up in a car bomb in Moscow earlier today, which is presumably Ukraine’s answer to the proceedings.

    The EU and NATO have also rejected the terms. This is what happens when you don’t include all major stakeholders in the negotiations. So it is a non-starter and a big waste of everybody’s time.

    What next? Presumably, the USA will abandon the whole process and blame Ukraine, the EU, the woke mind virus or anything. The result is that we are exactly where we were before the master negotiator took over, but that the USA has now made itself look extremely foolish in front of the whole world. It has alienated its friends and allies, while demonstrating its weakness to everybody else.

    Maybe they will have more luck with the trade war they have started with China. Useless, they are, utterly useless.