NeuroTypical

I am not sure this is conventional wisdom. Dude. Bro. TravelEarlOfSandy. Fam. They could have written it like this: "Now, all the idiots (and holy crap are there a lot of idiots) are going to scream bloody murder about how federal workers can't get fired. The scummy slimy left-wing politicians, and their disgusting worthless evil media outlets are gonna be pushing this notion 24/7, and half of you are gonna believe it because you live in an echo chamber and you're too dumb to think for yourself." But they didn't. They just called it 'conventional wisdom' as a civil and non-insulting nod to all of that, and went on to give their principled response to it. You're gonna fault them for being nice?

You could spend a half an hour on the worthy and noble activity of listening to Rush Limbaugh telling the story of the first Thanksgiving.

"Don't let the perfect get in the way of the good enough." In other words, they're trying to change how the government functions. If they succeed, it's a success - even if they don't change all of the ways that all of the government functions.

I always appreciate a question like this. Self-check hypocrisy buffers are useful things for folks who want to open their mouths and have what flows out be useful for something besides making the grass greener. I think I started being a musk fan somewhere around 2015-ish, the first time I sat in a Tesla. The more I learned, the more it looked like dude was succeeding at doing things better than the existing car manufacturers, despite the nasty suppressive efforts of the existing car manufacturers. I've always been a fan of the little guy. When I watched my first SpaceX booster landing in 2015, I thought it was the greatest thing I had seen from humans in the 21st century. So yeah, upwards of a decade of appreciating the crap out of the guy. Dude donated to Hillary in 2015, and supported her/bashed Trump in 2016. So yeah, I pass the hypocrisy check by one year.

Hooray hooray for today's opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, written by Elon and Vivek. I'm long out of school and hate reading long things like I'm doing homework, but this is worth the effort: ----------------------------------- Our nation was founded on the basic idea that the people we elect run the government. That isn’t how America functions today. Most legal edicts aren’t laws enacted by Congress but “rules and regulations” promulgated by unelected bureaucrats—tens of thousands of them each year. Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections. This is antidemocratic and antithetical to the Founders’ vision. It imposes massive direct and indirect costs on taxpayers. Thankfully, we have a historic opportunity to solve the problem. On Nov. 5, voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it. President Trump has asked the two of us to lead a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to cut the federal government down to size. The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long. That’s why we’re doing things differently. We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees. Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’ll cut costs. We are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America. This team will work in the new administration closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget. The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings. We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws. Our North Star for reform will be the U.S. Constitution, with a focus on two critical Supreme Court rulings issued during President Biden’s tenure. In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022), the justices held that agencies can’t impose regulations dealing with major economic or policy questions unless Congress specifically authorizes them to do so. In Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), the court overturned the Chevron doctrine and held that federal courts should no longer defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of the law or their own rulemaking authority. Together, these cases suggest that a plethora of current federal regulations exceed the authority Congress has granted under the law. DOGE will work with legal experts embedded in government agencies, aided by advanced technology, to apply these rulings to federal regulations enacted by such agencies. DOGE will present this list of regulations to President Trump, who can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission. This would liberate individuals and businesses from illicit regulations never passed by Congress and stimulate the U.S. economy. When the president nullifies thousands of such regulations, critics will allege executive overreach. In fact, it will be correcting the executive overreach of thousands of regulations promulgated by administrative fiat that were never authorized by Congress. The president owes lawmaking deference to Congress, not to bureaucrats deep within federal agencies. The use of executive orders to substitute for lawmaking by adding burdensome new rules is a constitutional affront, but the use of executive orders to roll back regulations that wrongly bypassed Congress is legitimate and necessary to comply with the Supreme Court’s recent mandates. And after those regulations are fully rescinded, a future president couldn’t simply flip the switch and revive them but would instead have to ask Congress to do so. A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy. DOGE intends to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions. The number of federal employees to cut should be at least proportionate to the number of federal regulations that are nullified: Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited. Employees whose positions are eliminated deserve to be treated with respect, and DOGE’s goal is to help support their transition into the private sector. The president can use existing laws to give them incentives for early retirement and to make voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit. Conventional wisdom holds that statutory civil-service protections stop the president or even his political appointees from firing federal workers. The purpose of these protections is to protect employees from political retaliation. But the statute allows for “reductions in force” that don’t target specific employees. The statute further empowers the president to “prescribe rules governing the competitive service.” That power is broad. Previous presidents have used it to amend the civil service rules by executive order, and the Supreme Court has held—in Franklin v. Massachusetts (1992) and Collins v. Yellen (2021) that they weren’t constrained by the Administrative Procedures Act when they did so. With this authority, Mr. Trump can implement any number of “rules governing the competitive service” that would curtail administrative overgrowth, from large-scale firings to relocation of federal agencies out of the Washington area. Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home. Finally, we are focused on delivering cost savings for taxpayers. Skeptics question how much federal spending DOGE can tame through executive action alone. They point to the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which stops the president from ceasing expenditures authorized by Congress. Mr. Trump has previously suggested this statute is unconstitutional, and we believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question. But even without relying on that view, DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood. The federal government’s procurement process is also badly broken. Many federal contracts have gone unexamined for years. Large-scale audits conducted during a temporary suspension of payments would yield significant savings. The Pentagon recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the agency’s leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent. Critics claim that we can’t meaningfully close the federal deficit without taking aim at entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which require Congress to shrink. But this deflects attention from the sheer magnitude of waste, fraud and abuse that nearly all taxpayers wish to end—and that DOGE aims to address by identifying pinpoint executive actions that would result in immediate savings for taxpayers. With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government. We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail. Now is the moment for decisive action. Our top goal for DOGE is to eliminate the need for its existence by July 4, 2026—the expiration date we have set for our project. There is no better birthday gift to our nation on its 250th anniversary than to deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud.

Yeah, true about Target. And lol yeah I had forgotten the pharm stocks. Here's Dow Jones' Pharm stock index: But yeah, the S&P 500 is following the trend.

Well, to be fair, everybody's stock looks like this right now: It's not because of anything any particular company did, it's because Trump got elected.

Other than it makes the gun shoot when you don't want it to, it's a good safety switch? I wonder what a similar situation might look like with the seat belts of a car. It works fine until you try to take it off, and then it ejects you through the windshield? I mean, if it works reliably as a trigger, then maybe you can use it to shoot the thing instead of pulling the trigger. I'm absolutely not an engineer. If I tried to build a gun, that's the sort of 'feature' I'd end up with. (Don't listen to me. I've been a anti-safety-snob ever since getting my Glock. If you want something to come out of the barrel, pull the trigger. If you don't want something coming out the barrel, don't pull the trigger. Extra switches and knobs and functions and things are just things that get in the way of what needs to be the easiest operation it can be. Folks who like safeties would probably like a bluetooth app that connects to your gun and readies it for use.)

From the WSJ: A lot comes down to what the House Ethics probe found: It's also sort of a big question on whether dude resigned to "pursue the AG nomination", or if he resigned because of what's in the report.

The senate can refuse to confirm the Gaetz nomination, telling the whole world "We decided not to confirm because the guy is a sleazy scumbag with serious allegations of criminal sexual misconduct hanging over him. Send us someone else, please."

Yep, sounds like everyone was following the rules, and he considered asking them to change the rules, decided against it, and conceded. Good for him. Nobody likes a sore loser. "But they cheated last week, so I should win today!" = stuff 6 year olds say.

Are the elections officials following the documented process? Does the process specify a recount is taking all of the ballots previously allowed to be counted, and counting them again? If so, I'm strongly opposed to "changing the rules" in the middle of the process. It's what Gore and Broward county were trying to do in 2000. It's like something we're all supposed to learn in our first games of Uno with grandma - you don't change the rules in the middle of a game. Not sure if that's what was happening, but if that's what Hovde declined to try when he conceded, then kudos to him for having integrity.

I get it. My dad was a printer-proofreader, from a long line of printers. My ancestors ran print shops and published small-town newspapers. Then computers and dot-matrix printers showed up, and the entire industry collapsed. Replaced, as my dad said, with a dumb high school kid and the F7 button. Just like the horse and buggy industry, buggy-whip manufacturers and all, collapsed after automobiles. Or how the cast iron stove industry collapsed after federal regulations demanded efficiency improvements. Or the incandescent light bulb industry with flourescents and LEDs. Or the Kodak/FotoMarts with digital media. I mean, you can still buy buggy whips and cast iron stoves. We got an actual polaroid photo taken of us at a cousin's wedding and sat there and taught the children as the photo developed. But yeah, the only reason the us post office is still around, is govt never shrinks or adapts, especially if the constitution itself says "The Congress shall have Power ... To establish Post Offices". If using FedExor whatever is a hit to your art, maybe consider a boost like sealing a letter with a wax seal?

Doge wish-list from a WSJ opinion piece with which I about 50% agree: The federal government has around three million civilian employees, with an average salary of $106,000. Dr. Anthony Fauci made $481,000 in 2022. There’s room to cut. Mr. Trump has said he may close the Education Department and move its function to the states. Good start. Federal Trade Commission: Toss. The current FTC under Lina Khan has a worse record than the Chicago White Sox. The FTC already splits antitrust cases with the Justice Department, so move a few pro-consumer-competition lawyers there and then shutter. Federal Communications Commission: Toss. The FCC caused the dot-com boom and bust. Net neutrality killed broadband in Europe yet was still reinstated here under the Biden administration. Spectrum auctions are why we overpay for cell service. Three economists in a back room can create and maintain a set of rules to keep access competitive. Securities and Exchange Commission: Toss. The SEC missed the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, allowed crypto and SPAC pump-and-dumps, and missed the FTX fiasco. Free trading requires setting and enforcing simple rules. U.S. Department of Agriculture: Toss. This will finally end corn subsidies for Iowa. We can move food-stamp administrators and funding to states. Federal Reserve: Shrink. The central bank missed Bidenflation. Dart throwers could do better than its 400 Ph.D.s. Cut its funding. Defense Department: Squeeze. Reallocate spending to drones, ships and defense systems such as Patriot missiles. Antimissile defenses can be a giant export business. U.S. Postal Service: Toss. End its monopoly on first- and third-class mail. Go private. Amazon trucks already come to most neighborhoods every day. Others to toss: Fracking happened despite the Energy Department. Do we need it? Trump tariffs will curtail imports, so we can shrink the Export-Import Bank by at least half. Close the Small Business Administration. And what does the Commerce Department even do? Even more to toss: Labor Department—union puppets. Transportation Department—its mileage and electric-vehicle mandates killed Detroit, although Mr. Musk may want to run the department himself. Environmental Protection Agency—reduce its carbon footprint. Housing and Urban Development—it isn’t the ’70s anymore. Interior—outsource parks to Disney. Veterans Affairs—can’t they use the same hospitals as the rest of us, no matter who pays?

AI is nothing if not terrifyingly fast. It also both understands and doesn't understand English at the same time. The prompt was "Give me a stick figure cartoon character named 'Miss Perception' drawn by a fountain pen" Absolutely, @zil could do better than this:

[Ordinarily, Zil would reply to a question like this with a quick fountain pen sketch of someone named "Miss Perception". But since Zil is the one posing the question, we're left with forcing AI to come up with an image instead. Sorry.]

I overheard a sad progressive the other day being sad about the Trump election. One of the reasons he was sad, was because Trump would deport and curtail immigration, which, he said, "is the only way we can continue to grow as a nation". He's not wrong. It's just that it's his fault. Birth control, same-sex marriage, no-fault divorces, normalizing abortion as birth control, all the pushing for a 'living wage' to be paid to younger unmarried workers. All of 'em progressive/liberal initiatives, most of 'em fought through and eventually destroyed conservative resistance to become just the way things are done now. I understand falling replacement rates are a global phenomenon. I wonder how much of it globally can also be blamed on a similar list.

In case anyone needs to be slightly more hip and cool than they currently are: Doge? Nah. Dogecoin? Nah. Doge? Nah. Always remember, Doge started here: Some top tier Doge right there, I tells ya.

It obviously worried some folks...

Heh. Adopting the rainbow in June (at least in the US) is largely due to the overwhelming acceptance of LGBT stuff, partnered with new generations entering the workforce who demand social justice messaging from business. We fight back and forth about the notion of 'go woke go broke', and we keep laughing at Disney for getting the balance wrong, but yep, it's certainly here to stay. It's absolutely endemic for places where most folks are gen Y or younger. Behold - the popular Marvel heroes battle game - with their June update celebrating love and designating certain characters as allies that earn you extra bonuses: Any way, you won't find a car wash or a windshield place like the one in Colorado Springs in any other populated place in the state. We're about the only red city left in the state, and we're not ashamed. I drive north to Denver for lunch with someone and go to the ice cream place with a warning sign saying "no haters allowed" and lots of pride flags and whatnot. Standard blue city, and they're not ashamed.

As far as the actual topic goes: The person who picked the spot for my ward building (then a tiny branch) was a German immigrant who had been in the hitler youth. He remembered watching the Americans cross the bridge into his town. My father was a WWII vet, who also remembered crossing that bridge into that town. They didn't meet until years later in Salt Lake. I grew up on stories from about how happy the German people were after hitler died and the war ended. My dad personally witnessed how happy they were - moreso than the allied forces in some cases. Can you imagine trying to be LDS in a nation run by nazis? They tell me that culturally it reached a point where a third of the country was deemed the enemy, a third of the country tried to eliminate the enemy, and a third sat back and did nothing. That was how everyone knew that things had gone too far, but by then it was too late to do anything about it internally. So there you are, a Mormon. Must not become the first third, or the second third, but you also are commanded to do good and can't be the third part either. Just keep your head down and survive. For poking your head up will get it removed from your body.

I still think there are things we might be able to learn from Māori style of issue discussion. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8Lm6yYy/ (I’m only about half joking. Hakas never turn violent. Ppl seem to get along fine with their opponents afterwords.)

The B.H Roberts foundation is a pretty interesting bunch of folks. In a lot of ways, it's the younger generation LDS folks, to whom the us GenXers have passed the apologetic torch. Here's another one of their publications from their more culturally-focused online apologetic outreach-to-the-younguns project, Mormonr: I'm glad to see the next generation rocking their testimonies in culturally mainstream ways.

Businesses with a social media presence can be wise to ban political speech. If you're not specifically targeting a certain demographic of customer via their politics, the only result will be ticking off a segment of your customer base. Now in the military friendly happily red county where I live, there are absolutely businesses that virtue signal this or that set of politics. A local car wash has "freedom" in it's name, lots of American flags, and it's own radio station playing traditional Christmas music and various patriotic stuff. There's a windshield replacement place I hear on the radio that advertises how gun friendly they are and talk smack about woke. Thirdhour used to not permit talk of politics. The folks at mormondialogue continue to ban it. Yeah, anger isn't the only threshold someone can cross before discussing issues becomes a waste of time. I'd add fear to the list. Actually, it seems like fear and anger often o hand in hand in talking religion and politics.

It's a video of a woman doing a standard kettlebell exercise where you lay on the floor, hold up the kettlebell with one hand, and then stand up while holding it aloft. Except she's not holding a kettlebell, she's holding another woman. (By the way, this is an amazing exercise, and one way to measure your individual fitness level. I found it a good idea to start just holding my empty hand up in the air, and once I could do a set, then I grabbed a weight.)