My Bullets For Mr. Musk, Plus
A few links I'll probably never write about, plus music
My Bullets For Mr. Musk
Can I get arrested for saying that? Anyway, I sent my work summary into the co-president at hr@opm.gov under the subject line, “Bullet Points.” You can too!
Elon Musk
Ass't President
Office of Personnel Management
Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. Musk:
I wrote an essay on how DEI means giving qualified people opportunities from which they would be otherwise excluded due to bigotry and structural disadvantages. DEI, like Soylent Green, is people.
I wrote an essay on how attacking language, such as eliminating references to transgender people (who are people), and erasing the history of Black people and other minorities (also people), is part of a White Supremacist and Christian Nationalist effort to informally resegregate the U..S.
I wrote an essay about how you and your co-president and your various lickspittles and dogsbodies have smashed the metaphorical mirrors which previously reflected the massive corruption of our democracy by corporations and, well, oligarchs like you, as something innocuous, revealing you and they to be truly grotesque, predatory parasites.
I wrote an essay about how people can sort the tsunami of horrible stuff you and your lickspittles and dogsbodies are doing into manageable categories so as to not feel so overwhelmed.
I wrote an essay on how Luigi Mangione has transformed the public discourse about our predatory health care "system" and the insurance companies which profit from defrauding the government and their customers.
I hope this meets your approval. It's been a busy week! I think I deserve a raise.
Regards,
Weldon Berger
I’m anticipating an “atta boy” reply any time now. I have seen many great responses sent in to the OPM address, including this one from the inimitable Jon Schwarz.
A few links I’ll probably not write about
Although you never know. I might. I probably will, some of them. Yeah, I will.
A couple of stories from ProPublica, one covering a Trump executive order which will shift the entire cost of dealing with the destructive impacts of global warming from the government and the corporate perpetrators to society at large, meaning everybody but the government and the perpetrators, and the other about how Trump appointed a guy who ran a massive real estate tax avoidance scheme as a senior advisor to the Government Services Administration, which manages all federal properties.
Just as Texas and New Mexico are dealing with a burgeoning measles outbreak, the head of the Louisiana Department of Health has announced that they’re ending the “paternalistic” practice of promoting vaccinations, including childhood vaccinations against stuff like, well, measles, and all-age vaccinations against influenza and other respiratory diseases.
Axios, which is one of the worst ideas ever from several of the worst journalists ever, so I debase myself here, has a handy little chart showing how much per capita states receive from or return to the federal government. Only 14 states return more than they get, most of them blue states.
My own blue state, Hawai’i, is one of the biggest per capita beneficiaries of federal largesse, mostly because we have so much military action and so much poverty.
Here’s one I probably will write about (and indirectly already have) from Maureen Tkacik at The American Prospect about the current regime’s plot to complete the ongoing privatization of Medicare and other federally-funded healthcare programs. Tkacik is among the best healthcare/healthcare industry writers around.
I’m a big fan of trying to understand how style and image reflect and impact reality, and this comprehensive story from Carolina Miranda in The Washington Post on the Trump regime’s aesthetics is revelatory. I highly recommend it, and I think the link will get you past the paywall.
As regular readers will know, I’m a big fan of cartoonist Eli Valley. During the 2015 Republican primary season, he created a cartoon featuring the then-frontrunners talking about admitting Syrian refugees from the hell we helped unleash there, but substituting the word “Jewish” for “Syrian.” Coming as it did nearly 10 years before the current regime began advancing their own dehumanizing, eliminationist rhetoric toward immigrants and citizens whom they want to cast out from our society, it hits pretty hard.
Music
Goat Girl, Below The Waste, “ride around;”
She Drew The Gun, Howl, “Howl;”
Not a lot of music today, but what there is is good, according to me.
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The Eli Valley cartoon really does hit hard, showing clearly that the GOP was already the party of Trump before it became the Party of Trump. Jeb Bush, the "moderate Republican who still has conservative principles; he promised immigration reform, spoke fluent Spanish, (and) mentioned his wife's Mexican origins" when he declare his candidacy! Chris Christie, the guy who "thought Obama deserved credit for his help in the disaster relief in New Jersey" after Hurricane Sandy and shook hands with him! Ben Carson, the man who took an oath as a neurosurgeon to "do no harm"! The less said about Carly, Ted and Mario the better.
Happily, some pushback to Musk's flailing about is occurring. Probably not your intention but the comment on Mangione implies approval of his action. People who sign up for Medicare Advantage programs are suckers and much has been published to that effect. I guess they don't read.