Null And Void

It seems the hits from the now defunct Biden Administration keep on coming. The latest hit?

It appears that almost every document bearing Joe Biden’s signature was signed using an autopen. How many of those documents signed by autopen were done without the knowledge or consent of President Biden? If that was the case, then that could render all Presidential actions take during the Biden Administration “null and void”.

Remember when House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) revealed his discussion with Biden when Biden couldn't recall signing the executive order halting LNG exports? Now we know why — he probably didn't. The real question is: Who did? Who was running the country while Biden was not all there?

The use of the presidential autopen dates back to the 1950s, and there's been much debate about its legality. In 2013, Barack Obama became the first president to sign a bill into law using an autopen. He was vacationing in Hawaii at the time. His office relied on a 30-page memo from President George W. Bush's legal team asserting that the president's presence was not required as long as said president had authorized the signature.

What's not clear, in the case of Biden, is who was running the autopen and whether Biden was aware it was happening.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is demanding that the Department of Justice investigate whether Biden's obvious cognitive decline allowed unelected bureaucrats to essentially run the government without presidential oversight. If this is true — and let's be honest, all signs point to yes — every executive order, every pardon, and every official action taken under Biden's name could be constitutionally void.

--snip--

The evidence is overwhelming. We know that Biden's handlers desperately tried to prevent anyone from meeting with him one-on-one. Even Democratic insiders admit the truth. DNC fundraiser Lindy Li recently spilled the beans and acknowledged that Biden wasn't running the show; his staff, his wife, and Hunter were.

Thanks to the Heritage Foundation's investigation, we now have proof that Biden's signature was automated throughout his presidency — which raises serious questions about whether he was aware of what was being signed in his name at all. The Oversight Project rightfully points out that since Biden revoked Trump's executive privilege, we can easily determine who controlled the autopen and what safeguards, if any, were in place.

Talk about a constitutional crisis. If the autopen signed documents were indeed doe without the knowledge or consent to the President, then every single one of those documents would be fraudulent and therefore, illegal and unenforceable. They would be null and void.

What would the fallout be if it is found that this is indeed the case? For one thing, the pardons ‘granted’ by Biden that covered his family and various friends would disappear. Everyone covered by those pardons would no longer be immune and could face criminal charges and prosecution.

Every single instance would need to be investigated and if found to be fraudulent, nullified. Those guilty must be identified and prosecuted.

As one commenter asks:

“Other than being criminal actions, could some of them also be considered treasonous?”

Indeed.

Friday Funny - Potholes And Robbing Banks In Maine

The follwing also applies to New Hampshire and Vermont.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a busy few days here at The Gulch. One of the things that have kept me busy is an addition to the WP Feline Contingent.

As regular readers know we lost one of our cats – Bailey – a little over a month ago. Our remaining cat, one of the original members if the WP Feline Contingent, is Pip and she’s 17 years old. She was never a ‘lone’ cat, always having other cats around, so she wasn’t doing well by herself. This past Friday I made a trip to one of the Humane Society homes here in the Lakes Region. After spending a couple of hours one of the cats sheltered there chose me to take her to her new home.

She’s a sweet cat, about 7 years old, and she seems to get along with Pip now that she’s been here for a couple of days. I wish I could post a picture of her – Zoey – but Blogger is still broken and I can’t post any new photos. It won’t even let me upload them. (Blogger has been particularly unhelpful.)

All I can say for sure is that Pip has not been wandering around the house calling out for Bailey since Zoey arrived.

==+++++==

Only $1 billion?

DOGE says it has generated almost $1 billion in savings from Department of Education cuts.

Earlier this week, DOGE launched an “Agency Efficiency Leaderboard” that ranks government agencies based on how much wasteful funding has been cut.

The Department of Education is currently ranked in first place.

Campus Reform reported that DOGE has canceled nearly $900 million in contracts and training grants at the Department of Education.

This includes “over $600 million in grants to institutions and nonprofits that were using taxpayer funds to train teachers and education agencies on divisive ideologies” such as critical race theory (CRT) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), according to a press release from the department.

I keep hearing arguments that Congress should be the ones making the cuts, but anyone who has been around a while knows Congress would make token cuts at best and take years to do so. That would still leave us with multi-trillion dollar deficits and the graft, corruption, and expansion of bureaucracy jobs would continue apace. We’re at a point where the drastic measures being undertaken by DOGE are necessary because the government cannot continue to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need.

Is it going to hurt people, particularly government employees? Yes, without a doubt. But there’s no such thing as guaranteed jobs, whether you are talking about government or private business. It will be worse if we don’t take these measures because when it collapses, everyone will lose their jobs.

==+++++==

When my son BeezleBub was still in high school over a decade ago, our school system did away with Home Economics and greatly cut back on Shop (now called ‘Tech Ed’). That was a mistake.

I know when I was in Junior High School - it wasn’t ‘Middle School’ back then – Shop was mandatory for boys and Home Ec for girls. My school suggested that boys and girls take both classes, they being far ahead of other school systems around the country.

Now it seems that some schools have realized that doing away with them was a bad idea and they’re bringing them back. This WSJ article talks about schools now reviving Shop Class as “a hedge against AI future.”

In America’s most surprising cutting-edge classes, students pursue hands-on work with wood, metals and machinery, getting a jump on lucrative old-school careers.

School districts around the U.S. are spending tens of millions of dollars to expand and revamp high-school shop classes for the 21st century. They are betting on the future of manual skills overlooked in the digital age, offering vocational-education classes that school officials say give students a broader view of career prospects with or without college.

With higher-education costs soaring and white-collar workers under threat by generative AI, the timing couldn’t be better.

In a suburb of Madison, Wis., Middleton High School completed a $90 million campus overhaul in 2022 that included new technical-education facilities. The school’s shop classes, for years tucked away in a back corridor, are now on display. Fishbowl-style glass walls show off the new manufacturing lab, equipped with computer-controlled machine tools and robotic arms.

It makes perfect sense. For the past few generations kids have been told the only way to get ahead was to get a college education. They were lied to. That didn’t stop students from going deep into debt going to college chasing degrees that, in the end, didn’t help them get ahead. It did leave them owing a lot of money and helped enrich our institutions of higher learning. It also left the trades hurting as fewer and fewer young adults were entering the trades. Today that appears to be changing. I am certainly seeing that here in my part of New Hampshire.

Something else that also seems to be reappearing here is Home Economics class, renamed Family and Consumer Science Class.

There’s mathematics, nutrition, applied science, teamwork, budgeting, problem solving and hygiene — and if they’re lucky, the students in Tiffany Dube’s class will also get a tasty batch of cookies. All of the above are on offer in her Family and Consumer Science class, taught at Laconia Middle School for the first time since the building opened in 2008.

Budgetary pressures kept the class from appearing on student schedules until this year, when a convergence of factors created an opening. The middle school was unable to fill a couple of exploratory teaching positions, which left some extra money on the table for salaries. Dube, an experienced teacher who has a passion for family and consumer science, reached out to Principal Aaron Hayward, who was receptive to the idea. He found an equally enthusiastic response from Superintendent Bob Champlin and the school board.

“When I applied, I really just threw it out there. I wasn’t thinking it was going to work,” Dube said. Instead, she was hired mid-year, developed a curriculum that blends personal finance with cooking and kitchen safety, and career exploration. She’s hoping to add sewing and other practical skills in the future.

While family and consumer science might have been seen in a previous generation as appropriate for future homemakers, Dube said the skills learned in the class would be useful to any future adult.

It used to be that when most students graduated from high school they knew most of what they needed to be an adult. Once Home Economics and Shop went away, that was no longer true. Hopefully the return of such classes will help make young adults better prepared for the adult world.

==+++++==

From Gateway Pundit comes this discussion by Elon Musk about the “Non-profit grift that George Soros has been running on the U.S. Government and taxpayers.”

Considering George Soros was allegedly one of the members of WRBA (Whoever is Running the Biden Administration) who saddled us with Biden and the awful policies that burdened us all, crippled our domestic energy production and hurt the economy certainly explains a lot.

==+++++==

Stacy McCain is asking the needed question, that question being “Why are the media blaming Trump?”

==+++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it’s been really cold but is going to be in the 50’s by Friday, we’ve been working on cutting back the snow banks because we know winter is nowhere near over, and Monday is raising its ugly head...again.

Not What It Appears To Be?

I think we’ve all seen the meltdown in the White House between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. I have seen portions of the video, read the opinions of people across the political spectrum, and I haven’t an effin’ clue as to what really triggered this debacle.

First, I am going to say that I fully support Ukraine in its efforts to defend itself against Russia. The Russians are not the ‘injured’ party in this war of aggression. I believe Russia is the aggressor and that Putin is trying to “get the Old Gang back together”...whether they want to or not.

With that out of the way, I have to wonder if this whole kerfuffle was for real, is a disinformation operation, a miscalculation by either Trump or Zelenskyy, both, or something instigated by the Russians. The timing of this seems awfully convenient.

Goodness knows the comments and opinions are all over the place, with some laying the blame entirely on Trump, on Zelenskyy, or the fact that Mercury is in retrograde. (Is that really a thing?)

Is Trump right that the only way this war is going to end is through diplomacy? Is Zelenskyy right that there must be security guarantees regarding any possible diplomatic solution because Russia can’t be trusted? Is allowing Ukraine to join NATO a plus or a minus? Can Ukraine make Russia continuing its war against Ukraine untenable, at least for Putin?

I don’t think Putin saw one possible outcome of his Special Military Operation being both Finland and Sweden deciding they would be better off joining NATO, just the opposite of what he wanted. Europe is becoming more united in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Russian economy is in rought shape, statements from the Kremlin notwithstanding. And on top of that Kaliningrad may be getting some ideas about separating itself from Russia.

It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

Friday Funny - I'll Tell You The Story

A fellow I've known for almost 40 years has been telling us stories on TV on two different TV stations up here in New Hampshire. For the past 25 years he's been plying his trade on the local ABC station - WMUR. Before that he was on New Hampshire's PBS station - WENH. The fellow, one Fritz Weatherbee, is a raconteur with a lengthy list of stories, true and mostly true. His humor is dry, typical of Yankee humor, and his stories are always entertaining.

This past Monday Fritz pulled the plug, retiring at the age of 88. I figured that at least this once I would put one of his stories up for the Friday Funny, in this case the one dealing with town names in New Hampshire that sometimes confuse people. I'll let him "tell the story." While not nearly humorous as many of his stories, it does give you a feeling for the man's style.

Thoughts On A Sunday

With the somewhat (relatively) warmer and sunnier weather I am having to deal with something that I haven’t seen in a number of years, that being ice dams. It’s been a problem over the past few days here at The Gulch and I’m seeing some water from the melting snow on the roof infiltrating under the shingles and into the interior of the house. That’s not good. I know this has been a problem here in the past but well before I moved here in 2018. So I have been taking some action to reduce the probability of further ice damming and trying to reduce or remove the existing ice dam. I only have one place on the roof where it’s taking place, that being along the junction where the house roof and garage roof meet. It’s the same place the WP Parents had problems with ice dams in the past. Hopefully between making sure the gutter along the roof doesn’t freeze up and being able to get some ice melt roof tablets up where they’re needed I should be able to deal with this issue. I do have to pick up another bucket of roof tablets at the local Lowes. (They have 49 in stock as of noon, when I am writing this.) I’ll be heading out shortly to pick some up after I toss a couple of more up into the problem area.

Hopefully this will take care of the problem.

==+++++==

From the “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department comes this bit of foolishness, this time from the UK. It looks like the UK is going to make the same mistake as the LA Fire Department and focus their firefighter recruitment efforts to DEI rather than capability.

Britain’s fire service is too male and too white, a report has claimed.

The report, which was commissioned by the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC), found that the fire service was “institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic”.

--snip--

The review said: “The common ‘image’ of a firefighter is, for the most part, of a white heterosexual male turning out in a fire engine to fight fires… The diversity of the service needs to be much more reflective of the communities it serves and the wide range of services it delivers.

“Whilst progress has been made, the pace has been slow and progressive action has been applied inconsistently. Too many people are still being let down,” it added.

Paul Embery, a former executive council member of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), told The Telegraph that fire chiefs should focus on putting out fires rather than “manipulating the workforce demographic”.

He said: “Public services should of course ensure that individuals from all backgrounds are able to join their ranks and prejudice must be tackled where it exists.”

“But when they set arbitrary targets for recruitment, it crosses over into social engineering.”

“There are all sorts of reasons why particular groups might not enter certain trades – there are, for example, few male midwives and hardly any female refuse collectors.”

Mr Embery added: “Most of the time it has little to do with prejudice. Some individuals and groups are attracted to jobs that hold little appeal for others – that’s just a fact of life.”

“We should stop fixating on manipulating the workforce demographic in certain public services and concentrate more on ensuring that these services perform better for the public.”

I’m sorry, but there are some professions where equity has no place. Firefighting is one of them. Ability counts, not race or gender. Equality of opportunity makes perfect sense. Equality of outcome – equity - can kill people. That’s where this is headed, as much as I hate to say it. Let’s just hope that not to many will need to die or sections of a city will need to burn to the ground before DEI is ejected from professions like firefighting.

==+++++==

Seeing this on Instapundit was serendipitous as the WP Niece and I had actually been discussing this topic during our day yesterday, ‘this’ being the increasing overregulation within Europe.

My employer does a lot of business in the EU and the UK and the level of regulations has been increasing at an accelerating pace, particularly environmental regulations. I deal with those, at least when it comes to the electronic and optical components, and have done so since 2006 when it was only something called RoHS – Restrictions on Hazardous Substances – that was aimed primarily electrical and electronic equipment and the substances they contained. The original regulations were aimed at six substances - lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chrome, PBB’s (Polybrominated Biphenyls) and PBDE’s (Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers) which are both fire retardants used in plastics. Since then four others have been added which doesn’t really add all that much in the way of a burden.

If it had stopped there it wouldn’t be an issue, but since then environmental regulations have spread to cover darned near everything and it is becoming more difficult and more expensive to keep up. I have to wonder if it will reach the point where it is no longer possible to do business in the EU or the UK because of the cost and shrinking profit margins.

I know I am being overwhelmed because while I do deal with environmental regulations across the world as part of my job, it is limited to what I covered above. If I have to cover every one, particularly for items which are out of my usual range of responsibility, that’s all I will be doing. I won’t have time for anything else. I know I won’t be the only one in that position. It doesn’t bode well for Europe if this increasing overregulation ends up killing their economy.

==+++++==

I was wrong.

I stated the story about DEI being instituted in the UK fire departments was from the “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department which usually means it’s the stupidest thing I’ve come across this past week. But it turns out the governor of the state of Wisconsin has done something just as stupid, if not stupider.

Wisconsin Gov. Evers Wants to Change ‘Mother’ to ‘Inseminated Person’

I know the Left wants to change language to make it impossible to offend anyone...or impossible to dissent against all the ‘wonderful’ ideas they want to impose upon everyone. (‘1984’ anyone?) There is nothing wrong with the present terms but this Leftist drone wants to do away with them ‘because’.

Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers wants the state law to drop “mother” and use “inseminated person” instead.

I. Am. Fuming.

The bill also changes “paternity” to “parentage” and “father” to “parent.”

In cases of surrogacy, “mother” is now “parent” or “person” “who gave birth to the child.”

It’s not “biological” mother or father…it’s “natural parent.”

STOP. ERASING. FEMALES.

It is not just on those pages that cases of artificial insemination are discussed.

The changes are throughout the bill. I understand the changes regarding marriage since same-sex couples can have a legal union.

This bill also erases males.

Only females can carry and birth a human being. Only a male can impregnate the female.

The only thing I am going to add to this is Read The Whole Thing.

==+++++==

This one is fun and may be a way to decide which federal government employees will be retained and which will be RIF’d.

“I mean, if you can’t name five things you accomplished in a 40 hour work week, then you aren’t providing any value.”

I file a status report of the things I’ve accomplished during the work week at the end of every week. Lots of times I have 5 things I’ve done before Monday has come to a close.

==+++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the temps are actually above freezing, will be again on Monday, and the ice dams will continue to grow.

A Visit, A Discussion, and A Definition

I had a visit from the younger WP Niece today, something I’d been looking forward to for some time. She’s been a reader of this blog and has, on more than one occasion, texted me about one post or another. While we don’t always agree on one political viewpoint or another, we do agree on many others. Part of the problem has been that we’ve tried having discussions electronically and we have found that really doesn’t work all that well, at least not for us. Face-to-face discussions always work better for us and lead to far fewer misunderstandings and the ability to debate things both profound and trivial without the inherent lag of electronic communications and inability to hear or see nuances that escape us when all we have to go by are words on a screen.

One thing that was mentioned was how many people will use labels for people they disagree with without actually understanding the meaning of those labels. One of those that are thrown about when describing Trump is ‘fascist’. Most of those using that term haven’t a friggin’ clue what that word means or what it entails. But they’ve heard others use it and so they do too.

What triggered me to write about this topic rather than some other topic? This picture. (Sorry, I still can’t embed pictures as Blogger is still ‘broken’ and I can’t seem to get any help fixing the problem.)

Do those calling Trump a fascist even know what the definition of fascism is? I’m making a SWAG here, but I’m guessing a large majority of them don’t. So here’s one definition from the American Heritage Dictionary:

A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

Does that really sound like the Trump Administration? It sounds more like the Biden Administration to me. If it’s Trump, then he’s doing it all wrong.

Friday Funny - Anatoly The Gym Cleaner

Thoughts On A Sunday

I will admit some disappointment that there wasn’t more new snow on the ground when I got up this morning. I expected to see somewhere between 4 and 6 inches. However, it was closer to 3 inches, hence my disappointment. But Mother Nature follows her own rules and by the time I was imbibing in my second cup of coffee a couple of hours later there was another 2 inches on the ground. It appears that when I got up there was a lull in the snowfall so I thought it was pretty much over and the only thing we had to look forward to was some sleet that was forecast to follow later in the morning and through the afternoon.

Like many others up here in New Hampshire, we had thought the below normal snowfall and warmer than normal temperatures in late December and into mid-January were what we would be seeing throughout the rest of the winter. We were wrong. Not that we’re upset now that we’re experiencing a more ‘normal’ winter with cold temps and regular snow. Quite the contrary.

While we haven’t experienced any big storms to this point, we have seen snow about every 3 or 4 days in amounts running between 2 and 5 inches. We did have one storm that dropped about 8 inches about a week ago, but that’s been the exception. Not that I’m looking for a big storm. They can be ‘exciting’ but they are also more difficult to dig out from afterwards. The smaller storms every few days make it easy to get everything shoveled out, usually taking time but a lot less effort to take care of the snow.

There’s still a month to go before the Spring Equinox and we can see big storms well into April up here. In fact, we had one of out biggest storms of last winter in April, a big Nor’easter that dropped a lot of heavy snow and caused widespread power outages. The Gulch was without power for almost 2 days, but at least we had the Official Weekend Pundit Generator to rely on to keep the lights on and the heat running. I’m hoping we won’t need to do so this winter, but it is ready just in case.

==+++++==

I covered the electric school bus debacle in Maine two weeks ago, but it seems there are more repercussions to this major fail.

As one commenter so aptly put it:

A lot of comments on electric vehicles and winter performance, but that's really not the point. If the $365k buses worked just as well as a conventional $150k school bus it's still not the point. The point is they made the buying decision based on the fact that they were electric instead of on performance requirements (with safety margins), reliability, and lifecycle costs.

If the bus couldn't handle the worst route on the worst day at the end of its 10 or 15 year service life, with plenty to spare, and at a lower cost than other options, it should have never been considered.

A bus failure in the middle of winter is something that does happen now and then. But if your entire bus fleet - electric bus fleet – can leave students stranded in sub-zero weather or during a snowfall, you are endangering those kids due to a decision made based on ‘feelz’ and not facts. I have to echo the sentiment of other commenters that the folks who made the decision to buy these buses should be fired or removed from office.

==+++++==

I have a feeling this topic is going to have long legs, the topic being DOGE and what it has been exposing. I have a feeling we’ve seen only the tip of the proverbial financial iceberg and that, in the end, a lot of people are going to be investigated and in some cases imprisoned for their misappropriation of funds.

When Americans learn that their tax dollars are going to fund egregious projects around the world, it lays a foundation for the public relations framework needed by the Trump administration to bring American public opinion along on the necessary journey of restructuring the government. It makes people’s blood boil. And it sets the tone for the effectiveness, and need for, the entire Trump efficiency program, even though the spending in absolute monetary terms on these insane USAID projects is fairly minor compared to the overall $6.9 trillion federal budget.

--snip--

Trump recognizes, as Ronald Reagan did, the importance of galvanizing American public opinion as an integral part of carrying out his agenda. By inflaming the public, he puts pressure on the craven Congress to go along with his efforts to enact sweeping changes that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to achieve.

No doubt when Musk sets his genius young elves to work applying their AI algorithms on the Department of Health and Human Services and the Defense Department’s budget data, they will find waste so massive that it dwarfs that of USAID’s $40 billion annual outlay. But it’s a bit harder for the public to grasp the wastefulness of the government paying many times the price that it should be paying for anti-aircraft missiles, say, or ineffective vaccines. From a public relations standpoint, it’s much easier to see the lunacy of the US taxpayer shelling out $2.5 million for an electric vehicle project in Vietnam or $1.5 million to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in Serbian workplaces.

Cleaning the Augean Stables of government spending is truly a Herculean task, but I think DOGE as it is constituted now is up to the task. It is something that is long overdue as we can’t keep running multi-trillion dollar budget deficits every year. (Thanks Joe/WRBA!)

That some of the first federal employees being let go are those who are newer employees, with many of them still within their probationary periods, is something that makes sense. They can be laid off for any reason with little or no recourse. Will there be some disruptions because of these layoffs? Sure there will, but that’s no reason to not shed employees from bloated agencies, bureaus, and departments. If we hand it over to Congress as many Democrats had suggested, any workforce reductions will be token amounts so the Democrats can claim they’ve gotten something done. But we don’t need a 5% or 10% reduction in the federal workforce. We need to see 30%, 40%, or even 50%, even if it means shuttering some of those federal agencies, bureaus, and departments which serve no purpose other than spending money the government doesn’t have on things that aren’t needed.

Some people think it it can’t possibly be done, but Javier Milei, President of Argentina, has done just that, cutting the size or Argentina’s government by 50% and seeing a revitalization of his country’s economy as the government deficit spending has been cut to zero. Even if we can’t reach that level of cuts, every dollar saved counts.

==+++++==

Hmm, I have to wonder if this has anything to do with Trump and his “DOGEs of War” going over the books in every government office?

It seems the housing market in the DC area is seeing a “massive sell-off”.

The most expensive housing markets in the US, the burbs of DC, is suddenly taking a beating. The moochers, the looters, the criminals are fleeing in a major housing sell off.

“Of the top seven wealthiest counties in America, 4 of them are suburbs of Washington DC. These counties have no major industries of note other than the federal government, lobbying the federal government and selling things to the federal government.”

--snip--

“This is a major reason why the vast majority of Americans have zero sympathy for defunded NGOs, terminated federal employees, cut-off journalists and suddenly irrelevant lobbyists.”

They are running scared...

Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

Take a look at the postings and listings for properties in the Washington DC area. It’s the rats deserting a sinking ship.

Good riddance.

==+++++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the sleet is slowing increasing, there’s still plenty of snow to move, and where folks from Massachusetts will be spending this coming week since it’s the February vacation down in the Pay State.

DOGE Isn't New

We have been hearing the laments and cries of outrage from the Democrats and the embedded Left in government, with some claiming what Trump is doing via the Department Of Government Efficiency is illegal and doesn’t have the power to do what it’s been doing. Nor are Trump’s actions based upon DOGE’s findings. But they are wrong...and they have Barack Obama to thank for that.

Obama created the United States Digital Service (USDS) in 2014. It was meant as a bureaucratic patch job to fix the Obamacare website meltdown.

Fast forward to 2025. Trump rebrands it to DOGE (Unites States DOGE Service). Keeps the acronym, keeps the funding, but gives it a whole new mission: Find the Receipts.

Legally untouchable because it was already fully funded and operational. Trump evokes 5 USC 3161, which allows him to create temporary hiring authorities. DOGE teams get embedded inside every single federal agency. Each team consists of a lawyer, HR rep, a zoomer nerd, and an investigator. They report to DOGE, not the agency they’re embedded in.

But wait, there’s more! Trump invokes 44 USC Chapter 35, which governs federal IT and cybersecurity oversight. Since USDS was originally an IT oversight body, DOGE now has full access to all federal data systems. Yes, that’s right. All of them.

The Democrats keep thinking Trump is an idiot, but that persona they see is more like a costume an actor dons to play a role, and he shows them what they expect to see. But Trump was smart. He understands the mistakes he made during his first term and didn’t want to repeat them. This time he made plans well in advance, put together teams to bring those plans to fruition and to so constitutionally. That USDS was repurposed, it was still well within its original charter. Trump used The Won’s own creation against the Democrats.

One commenter wrapped it up perfectly:

The same people who scream fascism if the government tries to check the trash of a house of a suspected child molester will cheerfully give that same government the right to inspect the trash if they think the house is using plastic straws rather than paper ones in the name of fighting global warming.

Their only argument is "but it's different when we do it, because we're the good people."

I have to agree. If it were Kamala Harris doing this they’d be all for it and would do their best to shield their friends, family, and campaign donors from such investigations.

Friday Funny (Yet Another Saturday Edition) - Can I Clean Here?

If you're familiar with Anatoly the Gym Janitor you'll get this one.