Elon Musk visited Donald Trump in the Oval Office yesterday and was a total disgrace.
Elon, who was in all black, wearing a black T-shirt and a black MAGA hat, said he was “open” and “honest” in his work finding waste and fraud in federal spending.
When asked about his lie that $50 million was spent on condoms for Gaza, Elon said, “Some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. Nobody’s going to bat 1.000.” A good example of “some” of the things he says that are incorrect is his statement that DOGE was “open” and “honest.”
Before you tell a lie, like Elon’s condom bullshit, you can easily look up the facts, like when Elon lied about the last budget and claimed it included $300 billion for a football stadium in Washington DC, Congress would get a 40 percent pay increase, or that it funded bioweapons labs. Elon could have looked all this shit up before posting about it on his platform X/Twitter…over 100 times within 24 hours.
Unfortunately, we can’t fact-check Elon’s claims that the federal bureaucracy had been corrupted by cheats and officials who had approved money for “fraudsters.”
We can’t fact-check his claim that officials at USAID were taking “kickbacks.”
We can’t fact-check his claim that some officials “managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position.”
We can’t fact-check his claim that some people were receiving Social Security benefits at the age of 150.
We can’t fact-check his statement, “There are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position.”
The reason we can’t fact-check any of that is because Elon didn’t provide any proof of his claims and DOGE is operating in secret. There is no transparency with DOGE. None, nada, zip, zip, zippity-doo-dah, none.
Here’s a case of irony: The employee Musk claims made millions off the government had to file a financial disclosure form. Elon does not because Trump designated him a “special employee.” So just as we can’t see Trump’s tax returns, we can’t see Elon’s either.
When asked about the conflict of interest of him scouring billion-dollar contracts while his company Space X has billion-dollar contracts with the government, he said, “First of all, I’m not the one filing the contract. It’s the people at SpaceX or something.” As Sarah Marshall said in the great film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, “bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.” It’s still a conflict of interest, even if he’s not lying.
Elon said, “I don’t know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization. He also said, “We are actually trying to be as transparent as possible,” and then some more crap came out of his mouth when he said, “So all of our actions are maximally transparent.”
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
Without exhibiting any self-awareness, Elon said the bureaucracy is an “unelected, fourth, unconstitutional branch of government, which has, in a lot of ways, currently, more power than any elected representative. That might be the only thing Elon said that is true other than when he said, “There are boogers in my ears.” We’ll get to that.
Elon also lacked self-awareness when he said this bureaucracy “does not match the will of the people.” That’s true because nobody voted for Elon.
A lot of Elon/Trump defenders say we did vote for Elon because Trump said Elon was going to find government waste if he won the election. What Trump did NOT say was that Elon would fire people himself, cut government spending himself, gain access to all our financial information, or hire Nazis to help (which he has rehired after momentarily firing him).
Elon also really really really really really lacked all fucking self-awareness when he said, “The goal is to “restore democracy. If the bureaucracy’s in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?”
People like Musk and Trump don’t know the meaning of words like “democracy.” When they say “democracy,” they mean fascism. When they say “patriot,” they mean traitor beholden to Vladimir Putin, whom Trump surprised with a phone call today because it’s two days before Valentine’s. And when Trump says “vegetable,” he means ketchup.
Every MAGAt who defends Elon’s claims is too stupid to realize they don’t see any evidence of his claims. A few days ago, an Elon-defending MAGAt asked me, “What do you have against transparency?”. Again, total lack of awareness. People who defend Elon and Trump take them at their word, which is bizarre because they’re both huge sack-of-shit liars.
Trump and Elon talk about fraud and theft in the federal government while taxpayers are paying millions for Trump to sleep in his own bed at his bedbug-ridden golf resorts. Remember when Trump tried to host an international summit at one of his golf clubs? If you believe that was the best venue in the nation for a G7 summit, then let me sell you some golf club memberships and some bridges.
The only person who didn’t lie to the press in the Oval Office yesterday was Elon’s booger-mining kid, named X. At one point, X, who is Elon’s 11th child, stuck his fingers in his father’s ears…the same fingers he was picking his nose with. Trump seemed very uncomfortable with the kid in the room, probably because he’s jealous that X has at least outgrown his diapers. X can probably also hold a water bottle with one hand.
Elon wants to cut funding to feed children living in poverty, but his little trust-fund baby has so much White privilege that he gets to pick his nose in the Oval Office because his dad has so much White Privilege that he’s not required to wear a suit and tie in the Oval and instead can come dressed as a Bond villain.
Now there will have to be DNA experts to figure out which boogers under the Resolute Desk belong to Little X…and which belong to Trump.
February 10, 1961 Pirate radio ship The Voice of Nuclear Disarmament, a pirate radio station, began operation offshore of Great Britain. It was run by John Hasted, a physicist, a musician, and a radio expert in World War II. He was active with mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell in the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament, a group that practiced Gandhian an nonviolent civil disobedience.
February 10, 1964 Bob Dylan’s ”The Times They Are A-Changin’” was released. The album’s title song captured the emerging, principally generational gap in American culture concerning war and racism. Come mothers and fathers Throughout the land And don’t criticize What you can’t understand Your sons and your daughters Are beyond your command Your old road is Rapidly agin’ watch video (1964) the lyrics
February 10, 2003 Iraq acceded to U-2 surveillance flights over its territory, meeting a key demand by U.N. inspectors searching for banned weapons of mass destruction (WMD) there.The 60 weapons inspectors in Baghdad and Mosul were under the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), led by Hans Blix, and the International Atomic Energy Agency under Mohamed El Baradei. The U.N. had destroyed all of Iraq’s banned weapons by 1994, as well as production and development facilities later, though Saddam Hussein expelled the U.N. representatives in 1998. U-2 spy plane. Hans Blix gives his report at the UN as Mohamed El Baradei listens. The economic and trade embargo during the inter-war period prevented resumption of the weapons programs. CIA and other intelligence estimates, however, insisted upon the existence of WMDs in Iraq. None have ever been found.
We ask for peace. We, at the bound O life, are weary of the round In search of Truth. We know the quest Is not for us, the vision blest Is meant for other eyes. Uncrowned, We go, with heads bowed to the ground, And old hands, gnarled and hard and browned. Let us forget the past unrest,— We ask for peace.
Our strainéd ears are deaf,—no sound May reach them more; no sight may wound Our worn-out eyes. We gave our best, And, while we totter down the West, Unto that last, that open mound,— We ask for peace.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 8, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
I do not care for sleep, I’ll wait awhile For Love to come out of the darkness, wait For laughter, gifted with the frequent fate Of dusk-lit hope, to touch me with the smile Of moon and star and joy of that last mile Before I reach the sea. The ships are late And mayhap laden with the precious freight Dawn brings from Life’s eternal summer isle.
And should I find the sweeter fruits of dream— The oranges of love and mating song— I’ll laugh so true the morn will gayly seem Endless and ships full laden with a throng Of beauty, dreams and loves will come to me Out of the surge of yonder silver sea.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 9, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
(From A: I got a big laugh, thinking about how dumb the Republicans are being about such things, especially due to actual human biology at conception.)
Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for February 07, 2025
So, we’ve always had nicknames for our doggies. We’ve had: Sparkinator, Chrissinator, Corkinator; Sparky-Larky, Missy Chrissy, Corky-Lorky; also Sparkasaur, and Corkisaur (Missy Chrissy was too good to be a dinosaur.) (Also, they each knew all their names.) Now there is Ollie, and while I tend to let Ollinator slip out now and then, I don’t think I care for it, somehow. DH always used the “saur” suffix, while I did the “-nator” one. I think I like Ollisaur, and am working on using it, but how about some feedback from the crew here at Playtime? Any other Ollie-name suggestion will be considered, as well. Thanks for whatever you can do! 🐕🦺 🌞
Scottie's Playtime 