The Perfect Moment

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

As we watch the fireworks and the dizzying dismantling of the overgrown, twisted brambles of the deep state, a thought keeps coming up in all our groups and chats: Why hasn’t this happened before?

People have asked why Reagan didn’t do this, even…

Guys, this literally happened the earliest it could. The absolutely earliest it could.

Look, when FDR set the train rolling for the strangling of liberty and the ever-increasing state and power of the state over America — Did he think he’d keep that power forever? Was his plan never to die? Or did he actually think that an all intrusive, overarching government poking its nose into everything would bring about paradise? Who knows? Who cares? But it is a puzzle. Well, since he loved the Soviet Union maybe he really did think it would bring about paradise. — he did it by subsidizing friendly press, subsidizing artists and writers to write laudatory things about his progressive state, and in general by stopping the mouths of anyone who might have denounced the process with wads of cash. (Note I’ve gathered this from a lot of places, including biographies of artists and writers at the time. It was all task forces this and groups of development that, but ultimately it was propaganda, subsidized by the US government. For the most basic understanding of how bizarrely dirty FDR — progressive saint — was, read The Forgotten Man, by Amity Shlaes.)

As we know that boondoggle, the flowing of government bribes to those that supported it has gone on. And I don’t think we’ve seen the half of it, yet. USAID was the easiest to get a lot of fraud in, and they kind of volunteered for it by defying orders. But I will bet you they’re not the worst. The outrageous waste and misuse of taxpayers money is going to keep getting discovered. For at least a year, maybe more. Maybe all four years, if we’re lucky and win 26.

It’s all through. We’ve wondered for years and years how come the left was overflowing with money for all its pet causes, able to spend millions, year after year, on movies that went nowhere; able to produce TV no one wanted to watch, able to have entire publishing companies publish books no one wanted to read; able to have magazines, and newspapers, and glossy, beautiful displays that sold less and less every year.

Meanwhile, the right was scrambling and scrounging, fighting for every sale, for every subscriber. Now, sure, that made us better at our jobs, because we were always looking for an edge, for the ability to get ahead. BUT still, it seemed so strange, particularly since 2000 when, with the internet, we had some visibility into how much they actually sold, how many people actually watched them, and then… Well, we assumed someone was financing them. Lefty billionaires, perhaps. Or perhaps foreign countries.

Now we know. We were paying for it, us. Even the infamous Tides Foundation, George Soros’ toy was being financed from our taxes, via USAID.

The thing is there was no way to know it until recently. Do you know why the left is so upset at Elon’s ‘kids’, the computer geniuses running DOGE’s searches on the corrupt and constipated bowels of our government? Because they have the tech — yes, AI assisted — for the first time in the last forever, to find the fraud and waste.

You see, the fraud and waste is threaded all through, with a few hostage-puppy legitimate charity and helping of the helpless salted through so you couldn’t touch the fraud without the entire captive press jumping in tandem like trained monkeys.

And do you really think Reagan could have looked into it while stopping the left’s game to give it all away to the Soviet Union? Do you?

He did an end run on the poisonous press by talking directly to the people on TV but that was the extent of his reach. The press still had full mind share on the press and entertainment. They could have stopped any attempts to turn off the money spigot.

And meanwhile, of course, we got Clinton, and GWB who couldn’t fend off an Enquirer attack, and then Obama whom the propaganda apparatus practically canonized.

…. Look, guys, it took an uptick of dissent. It took Rush Limbaugh, against all odds managing to become popular and widely heard. It took the internet’s growth starting in 2001. It took us scribblers desperately flinging low-paid words into various sites. It took blogs, and Facebook (I have the facebook jail with oak leaves cluster decoration so many times) and yes Twitter, and those of us willing to dance right up the suspension and banishment, and yeah, sometimes going too far.

It took the ridiculous presidency of whoever was running Joe Biden. It took their tone-deaf of every possible extreme left cause hatched in out-of-touch universities. It took their showing the American people not only didn’t they have our best interests at heart, but they hated us and wanted us to die.

And then it took us miraculously beating the fraud and electing Trump. All of us, including the Amish who came in at the last moment to save the day.

Now, at this moment, with distrust of government finally deservedly built up, with the AI tools ready, with Elon resenting every penny spent that doesn’t go to getting humans to Mars, with Trump furious at being cheated out of his legitimate win in 2020…

Here we are.

In this perfect storm for the deep state, this perfect moment in history.

This is happening the earliest it could happen.

It’s been a long time getting here, but now it’s happening. And it’s glorious.

We might still lose, of course, but I doubt it. The tide has turned. And in this perfect moment, we’re winning.

We have a chance — all we ever wanted was a chance — of restoring the republic.

Because this is the right time. We have the right tools.

Even us who are just killing false narratives, encouraging people in the trenches, making sense of it all.

Let’s get to work.

285 thoughts on “The Perfect Moment”

  1. It took four years to turn Trump 1.0 into Trump 2.0
    Except… it really took 78 Years to make Trump 2.0.

    Just like most authors take years to become “overnight successes.”

    Thank G-d we have lived long enough to make it through the Long Night of the Crazy Years; the Dawn of the Restoration of the Republic is a beautiful thing to see.

    Liked by 3 people

    2. Indeed as Instapundit says the left chose the form of their destructor. And honestly to start Trump was a threat similar to the Giant Stay Puft Marshmallow man. But the Clinton controlled side got the 2018 midterm boost and started to go insane against Trump. Then in the 2020 primaries Bernie was looking like the winner as the rest of the field was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (and Biden had less appeal than Rachel Ziegler). They realized that Bernie would go down in flames in a fashion reminiscent of George McGovern or Walter Mondale. So they got most of the Dwarves to leave the field (by various bribes of positions or favors) and with a little Jiggery Pokery managed to get Biden to win. At that point they then realized that their candidate would merely lose in a slightly less spectacular form than Bernie would. Having succumbed to full on stage 3 TDS they “fortified” the election taking advantage of the COVID issues (which played into Trumps weakness he is allegedly seriously germophobic) and a little bit of the good old Graveyard voter shift (literally) and voila a Biden presidency. They then proceeded to move on to TDS Stage 4 and impeach a non sitting president AND throw every form of lawfare they could at Trump and his supporters.

      If instead they had let Bernie lose (with likely a better electoral vote showing than either McGovern or Mondale) the radical left would have slid out of favor for an election or two having once again learned you can’t win by running far left. Trump would have had some wins and likely inflation and the economy wouldn’t have been as bad, but it would still be ugly due to the ongoing shutdowns. When Trump’s term ends the Rino/Surrender Monkey uniparty wing of the Republicans cleans out all those nasty populists. They bravely lose 2024 to Governor “Fiddle while LA burns” Brylcreem (or Whitmer or Hochul) and the Lefts march through the world continues with a boot stomping on the face of free people if not forever for a long while (I’m talking like If This Goes On by RAH long). Instead, they managed to step on their own crank (quite a feat given its diminutive size) and now they have a renewed Populist Republican party slowly purging itself of the RINOs. They’re own fate is to have a 26 year old nobody who lusts after Greta Thunberg as second in charge and to have their future determined by the likes of AOC’s Squad (who make McGovern look like Barry Goldwater)

      There is an old Christmas song called Adam Lay Ybounden that has this as one of its verses

      And all was for an apple, An apple that he took. As clerkes finden written in their book. Ne had the apple taken been, Ne had never our lady A been heavené queen. Blessed be the time That apple taken was, Therefore we moun singen, Deo gracias!

      We find ourselves in a similar odd contradictory state. Without the 2020 cheat and the nonsense prosecutions that proceeded therefrom we wouldn’t have Trump 2.0 and DOGE. We’d just be a slightly less annoying form of the UK or the EU

      So I say

      Blessed be the time that election stolen was, Therefore we must sing. Deo Gratias !!!

      Liked by 2 people

      1. For we are in the Internet age, where times run faster. So instead of 40 years in the desert we had 4 years to learn the lessons needed. And maybe, just maybe we can pull the U.S. out of this muck, and in doing so help show the rest of the world that Freedom of the individual, as scary as it is, raises the boats for all. It’s not just the US that needs the lesson, ALL of mankind needs to grow up and get out of this adolescent stage, buckle down and be the adults needed to get to the stars.

        Liked by 2 people

      2. Indeed … my irreverent and flippant side thinks to the lines in the Exultet:
        “O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!”

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Being a Protestant of Congregationalist/Baptist/Presbyterian bent that is sadly left out of our various liturgies (such as they are, I had often joked “I belong to no organized religion, I am a Congregationalist”. Sort of a Martin Padway point of view…

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      3. There is a lengthy prayer in the Catholic Easter Vigil liturgy, known as the Exultet, which refers to the “happy fault” (in Latin, “felix culpa”) and “necessary sin of Adam that gained for us so great a Redeemer”.

        Liked by 1 person

        2. It is would seem likely that Adam lay Ybounden comes out of that tradition but over time got moved to Christmastide.

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  2. The Leftoids chose the form of their destructor. 0bama P.O.ed Trump at the WH Press Dinner, Trump decided then to run and undo 0bama’s legacy. It took the AG/SecState/forgot of California to tell Elon on Twitter “F*#k Elon Musk” and he “Message Received”, bought Twitter, stopped a lot of the censoring, moved his companies to Texas, got another “F. You” from a leftoid judge and unincorporated from Delaware and made many others do similar, and got his attention. I am surprised he has not found a funnel from USAID et al to Twitter back in the days of 2/3rd more people working there.
    2020 made Trump that much better. Gave him time to slough off the ones nominally on his side not helping/actively blocking him (Hello Pence, Cheney, et al) and time to bring Musk into the fold, and get his lawyers looking at what could be done fastest, and bestest. Let him know who he could trust, and who to bring closer in to the fold (did any of us here think we’d be happy to see RFK Jr. and/or Tulsi put in positions of power by a Republican?)
    Gave us Biden because the Dems were not willing to run Bernie
    And most of all, gave us whomever ran Biden and their overreach to open more eyes wide. Gave time for a tall gay guy to convince Amish to get involved.
    Took time . . . too much, maybe, certainly for some, but they tried to rush turning up the frog’s water temp and the frog jumped, and decided to get back at the “cooks”(crooks).

    Liked by 5 people

      1. The Twitter Files opened his eyes but I don’t think a direct funnel was there for him to see. Maybe he suspected, or just the other works with the Feds were enough to spur him on. Maybe at the time he correlated it with that collaboration with the Deep State.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. I’ve seen several places (CTH among others) that state that USAID is pretty much a front for the CIA. AFAIK, if there was something going on that would hurt Americans, USAID or one of the other agencies would have been happy to fund it.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Musk has stated on X that the reason why USAID was picked as the initial target was because it was the department that was the most openly defiant of Trump.

            That probably suggested to DOGE that it was likely a – if not the – focal point for much of the “resistance” that the Dems had planned.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. As it turned out. The major funding of the resistance.

              Oops.

              USAID was damned if they did what they did, or if they complied. If they had not been defiantly vocal, the usual suspects would have had more money initially. As it is bye-bye funding.

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              1. They’re low-hanging fruit.

                No one seems to be wondering if these are training exercises for, say, DoD and Medicare.

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    2. Indeed the Delaware judge messing with Tesla, the idiot California Secretary of State, The FAA, Fish and Game and others delaying his Martian dream with Starship pissed him off. But what I think made him vindictive was the fact that he has a son that is being transed. Honestly I find Mr, Musk’s personal life to be a bit odd. But he does seem to love and care for his children. And that I think is the straw that broke the camels back. I think he is on a vendetta to make sure no one else suffers that pain. From an emotional point of view the left have essentially failed to protect Bruce Wayne’s parents and the DOGEman is out to get them. A Shiba Inu is not quite as inherently scary as a bat but I think those on the left may soon find it more so.

      Liked by 6 people

      1. His personal life is because he took Heinlein seriously. ALL OF HEINLEIN including the free love stuff. And the love of kids.
        I’m okay if that’s how he wants to live. It’s not for me.

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        1. I don’t agree with a lot of the things people do, but they have the right to do so as long as it doesn’t impact the rights of other people. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with them, you want to be stupid in my eyes, that’s on you. That also means I have the right to think however I want. You want to punch my face because I disagree with you on your delusions, just remember some of us punch back and others carry concealed. Your choice. By the way punching people in the face is assault, punching you back is self defense. Unless you live in a Democrat controlled state/city. My only advice is move before the Democrats rape and murder your children.

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    3. Meanwhile, a bunch of gamers ask the gaming press if maybe male game reviewers having sex with a female game developer might be a bit of a conflict of interest? And instead of issuing a boilerplate, “Yeah, there might be something there. We’ll look into it and pretend to do something about it.” response, pretty much the *entire* video game industry – from publications to big game developers – responds by calling video game players literally every negative stereo-type of the male video gamer.

      That *forced* a lot of people wide awake who would have otherwise been very content to continue slumbering. And once they were awake, they started scrutinizing other aspects of the culture, and realizing just how far things had gone.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. My youngest nephew was told by some wokester to “Learn about the situation” or some such when he didn’t believe the push about someone being canceled in his little world (possibly music related but he’s done some game design stuff too so it might have been Gamergate adjacent) . . . so he did, and found that there was no evidence the guy did what was claimed, the company dropping him literally said “We know he didn’t do this, but we have to distance ourselves in this social environment” and that opened his eyes to “What else am I being told is just as wrong?” I don’t know if he voted in 2020, but he certainly voted Trump in ’24.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. Yes. Their interview of him was just a month or two before Twitter banned them. And IIRC, word was that his at the time latest ex-, who he was still on good terms with him, is a fan of the Bee, and made him aware of the ban.

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  3. I do believe that God looks out for children, drunks, and the United States of America. Musk buys Twitter, Trump turns his head, the Amish fly Trump banners from their buggies.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. I live in Lancaster County, PA. home of MANY Amish. At first I thought the buggies with Trump banners was a Photoshop thing; by and large the Plain Folk don’t even go in for ‘bumper stickers’. And then I saw one; No Shit Sherlock!, there it was. The operators of Biden had clearly gone Too Far!

      Liked by 4 people

      1. The wife and I go to Lancaster every six weeks or so to buy meat and such, I’d seen Trump banners on many of the “English” houses but the first time I saw a Trump banner flying from a buggy was shocking.

        Not long before the election, I had a conversation with an Amish man (about the Epistle of Saint James as it happens) and we ended by agreeing that we Christians had better hang together or we would all hang separately. Being an RC myself, and knowing the history, it was …. Interesting.

        Liked by 4 people

    2. Indeed these last few years have piled coincidence on coincidence in ways that boggle imagination and probability. I would accuse the Author of sloppy plotting except I do not have (quite) that much hubris. I am no where wise enough to know what the Author is up to, at this point I have to just sit back and see where the story goes. I have to say I am enjoying the most recent Chapters more than the preceding 3-4.

      Liked by 2 people

        3. Indeed He does. However, I could use a few less plot twists that are verging on (to coin a phrase) Deus Ex Machina. I am getting WAY to old for this stuff.

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  6. Honestly, I wonder now how much popular culture reflected in mainstream publishing, in entertainment media like movies and TV series was actually bought and paid for by USAID and other slush funds over the last couple of decades. So many readers and movie fans walking away from the finished products, products which are not really all that popular, even though professional reviewers insist shrilly that they are the greatest thing since sliced bread…

    I mean – just look at the colossal gap between the professional critics and the general audience on things like Rotten Tomatoes. The critics sneer at the movies the audience loves, and the general audience despises the movies the critics adore. Look at the sales/readership for indy books by authors making a tidy living from their books – authors you might or might not have heard of, while the establishment publishing industry is crashing, and giving huge advances to politicians whose books will never sell.

    Yes, there’s been massive corruption going on, and now we are about to see the receipts and the 8×10 glossy photographic proof…

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Interesting thought on that…. We used to have clearly identifiable fashions and styles that changes, roughly decade to decade. Since 2000 it’s been… the same. I haven’t really updated my personal or professional wardrobe other than to accommodate for gaining weight and moving south, and nothing in my closet is dated.

      When you look at the movies, the rapid loss of creativity, the strong lean to safe bets…

      The scariest thing to people with a shaky grasp on power is change. Because it means they might lose power. They want to keep everything the same, static, controlled. We used to know this, by merely looking at Cuba of 1960 and Cuba of 1990, or the Norks.

      But it’s been happening to us…

      And the only place in the arts and fashion I saw a rapid explosion in creativity was in indie publishing, which was outside their grasp, and in internet culture & memes, also beyond their grasp…

      Makes me think.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I’m not sure what I think about it, but RFK has been confirmed with Yertle the Turtle voting no. Isn’t it interesting that Senators who know that a bunch of geniuses, who read 2000 year old burnt papyrus scrolls for fun, are right now going through the government spending whilst another person has helpfully provided a tool to allow anyone to link all the money laundering chain together thereby unlocking. …. everything are voting in favor of a candidate that their corporate owners are against.

        Truly, the times they are a changin.

        If they now vote against Patel, we will know that Epstein’s list is what they really fear since that’s what they will have defended. Perhaps we’ll find out where the boys are.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I still wear flannel shirts and Jeans, Hey you can wear a tie with a flannel shirt. I have no style never have, never will.

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          1. Though our place is microscopic compared to a working ranch, (13 acres vs hundreds/thousands), “Basic rancher” best fits my style. Dropped the wide brimmed hat in favor of a ball cap. Stihl for home, American flag for town.

            Boots when weather/working conditions require, Sketchers when not.

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      3. Will add two categories, other than size, for clothing replacement: Wear out and I’m tired of it. A third, is I need something for funerals (even that “do I really?”). All rare. Why rare? I hate, despise, loath, (have I gotten my point across?) shopping.

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      4. My personal, “I hates it, my precious,” fashion thing is, “distressed,” clothing. Why in God’s green earth are people paying good money for clothes which have been deliberately sloppily manufactured?

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    2. “It was a true case of American blind justice, and the judge wasn’t going to look at the 24 8×10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one meant.”

      First thing that sprung to mind with your comment, and actually kind of apt.

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      2. It was “27 8 x 10 color glossy photographs with circles and arrows…”

        You got to get the details right. You still get stuck in Group W, though.

        “They got a building down in New York City called Whitehall Street where ya go and get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and seeee-lected.”

        Liked by 1 person

        2. The building called Whitehall Street has ceased to be! it’s expired and gone to meet its maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘it to the perch it’d be pushing up the daisies! ‘its metabolic processes are now ‘istory! it’s off the twig! it’s kicked the bucket, It’s  shuffled off  its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!!   it’s been replaced by a rather ugly building, not that the old Whitehall street was a looker, but blech.

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        3. Although I prefer Steve Goodman’s (RIP) original version, Arlo did pretty good with “City of New Orleans”. (Well, so did Willie, but the best version I ever heard was a radio broadcast of a concert in SF, where Steve played with Lester Flatt on mandolin.)

          Saw Goodman a couple times at college shows in the ’70s. I’ve been known to sing “Chicken Cordon Blues”, seriously off key.

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      1. Jobs report revision has eliminated all the Biden “gains.” It’s not necessary for DoL to actually lie, but in this case I suspect they did. A lot of my economic models make more sense now and It’s more reason to use as little government data as,possible. I don’t think we’re China, yet, but we were well on our way. All the headline numbers are crap.

        I have been wondering where the money came from to pump up the “magnificent Seven” whilst all the rest of the markets were blah. Did the extremely well paid and well benefited NGO people who also had access to insider information provide the “pump?” All the world wonders

        Had to write that last three times. WPDE.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I’m seeing what we all expected: the economic news that was being slanted as favorably as possible is now being presented the other way.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Bit harder to see if one has a job, or is retired. But actually be someone looking for a job, or know someone close, like your children or grandchildren, looking for work, then the reported numbers are revealed as total pulled from the ass BS. This is for every work sector. “Hiring” too often translates to “Accepting job applications”, not “Actually has job to offer”.

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            1. It is an open secret that most companies engage in “ghost jobs” posting these days, especially for low-level and/or entry-level positions.

              This is for several reasons-

              1-It lets them look like they’re growing and expanding, which looks good to the shareholders and investors. After all, if they weren’t hiring, would they be posting applications for jobs?
              2-It lets them subtly “drop hints” to current employees that if they start getting mouthy or demanding in any way, the company can always hire someone even more desperate to fill their position.
              3-It builds up a pool of applicants that are desperate for jobs that they can hire if they need to let go of people that are making “too much” money and outsourcing to somewhere looks bad.

              The optimistic numbers is that at least half of the job postings on Indeed and LinkedIn are ghost jobs.

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    4. Uh huh. Saw the new Captain America movie is only getting 54% from the critics on Rotten Tomatoes despite the leads genuflecting to progressive dogma. Does the relatively low rating mean it’s good, or it’s so bad even the critics can’t stand it?

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      1. I’d bet on the latter; even the critics can’t stomach some things. Regardless, 70+ years have taught me that the best way to evaluate a movie or book is to read what the critics have to say and invert it; the exceptions are few and far between. I suspect the critics would have fawned over “Highlander II”. Or “The Sorceress”.

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        1. I have no idea what The Sorceress is, but I am old enough to remember the Highlander I/II reviews, and the critics were mildly dismissive of the first and hated the second one worse than I do (the return of Ramirez is totally illogical but it leads to a handful of mildly funny moments). Rule of thumb: from sometime in the 1940s/1950s to about the first X-Men movie, the vast, vast majority of scifi-horror-fantasy films generally got reviews that were more negative than they strictly deserved, with no credit for the handful of things the less-good ones might have gotten right.

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          1. The Sorceress dates from sometime in the early ’70s. Like Highlander II it had a pretty good cast (I understand Sean Connery publicly said being in H II was the worst mistake he ever made), and was possibly the worst movie I’ve ever seen; even the movie adaptation of the Kalevala was better.🤢

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      2. I’m thinking that the lead was so very noisy about how it’s super duper woke to warn people.

        He’s a known friendly-to-conservatives, and he’s under contract.

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            1. Shame if true.

              It’s somewhat spectacular just how quickly the MCU fell apart after Endgame. It’s been floundering for a while now, and seems a disjointed mess. And I’m fairly confident that most of that can’t be blamed on the mess that Jonathan Majors may or may not have made of his personal life. The fact that Disney seems to pull a bait and switch with at least half of the stuff they release these days isn’t helping (“Oh, you wanted to watch a series about Cap’s two sidekicks? Instead, we’re going to spend most of our time focusing on John Walker, and show Cap’s sidekicks being jerks to Walker while also busting that Zemo guy out of prison for… reasons…”).

              I finally sat down to start watching Moon Knight the other day (I’m no longer a D+ subscriber, but was house sitting for someone who is). I’d been looking forward to it for quite a while. But I got so tired of the lead cringing through every scene that I turned it off halfway through the second episode (right after his wife – who has a *completely* different name than Marc Specter’s love interest in the comics – showed up). I was there to see Moon Knight, a guy who has more than a passing resemblance to Batman. Instead I was watching a guy who seemed as if he was afraid of his own shadow (let along all of the crazy stuff suddenly turning up), with just the barest tease of the tough guy hero at the end of the first episode.

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        1. WSJ gave it a, “Not the best, not too bad,” review.
          Pointing out that the “Red Hulk,” is from the 2008 movie, so don’t read anything into mind-controlled President transforming into big red monster (and wreaking havoc in Wasnington).

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          1. ?

            So far as I know, this is the first appearance of the Red Hulk.

            His human alter-ego has been in multiple movies, though, under different actors I think Ford is the third actor to play Ross. And yes, one of the Hulk movies was his first appearance. In the comics, he’s the father of Bruce’s canonical long-time love interest, Betty (who is Red She-Hulk…).

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    8. 8×10 color glossy photographs, with the circles and arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one, explaining what each one is, to be used as evidence against them.

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  7. “And do you really think Reagan could have looked into it while stopping the left’s game to give it all away to the Soviet Union? Do you?”

    No. He had to take the USSR down. What would be the point of cleaning our house with an enemy like that still at our throat? I’m sure he wanted to clean house properly but let’s face it, the USSR was the bigger fish that needed frying. And he fried it.

    For that he deserves his place in history. He gave us hope, a chance to breathe, here at home. But most importantly he helped take down the Soviet Union. Without that, even DOGE wouldn’t be able to help us now.

    Requiescat in pace, sir. :salute:

    Liked by 3 people

      2. So, with normal historical confusion, one clan runs restaurants, the other makes movies and has play parks

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        1. It’s Clan Ranald of MacDonald a sept of the MacDonalds. They and The Glengarry MacDonnells, another sept of MacDonald, remained true to their faith and laws and rose for their lawful king.

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          1. $SPOUSE is a Campbell. Glencoe was a “battle”, and contradictory nouns ain’t going to make for restful sleep. :)

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  9. Everything in His timing. I don’t pretend to understand the details.

    “Yeah though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death…” As much as I’d like to run through the Valley, that’s not how He works.

    I’m rejoicing every single day.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. If you’re going through hell, keep on goin’. Don’t slow down; if you’re scared don’t show it. You might get out ‘fore the devil even knows you’re there.

      That song is 13 years old?!? Where does the time go?

      Liked by 1 person

  10. Has anybody noticed that all the demonstrations are suddenly so much smaller? That’s not because they’ve lost their constituency. It was always small. It’s because they’ve lost the funding for professional demonstrators and rioters. No more pallets of bricks deposited in the street for rioters’ convenience. I posted something on LinkedIn a few days ago and attracted a bunch of trolls calling me names. Out of the kindness of my heart, I pointed out to them that the cancel culture is over, and they’re just whistling past its graveyard. http://frank-hood.com/2025/02/12/trolling-considered-harmful-and-stupid/

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  11. Look, when Dick Cheney arranged a government job for his politically-minded daughter at USAID, he was not sending her away to a nunnery, nor off to do charitable works to try and make up for his sins. He did the opposite of pushing her out of the IC world, positioning her right at the deniable edge where she would have the most freedom of action to learn to move big obfuscated money around without getting buried and publicly forgotten in the fully covert world, a job where she could learn how government really works that would also enable her to proceed into politics, either as a staffer or elected.

    I am not even remotely adjacent to that stuff, and even I knew USAID and World Bank are both just giant slush funds intimidate with the US IC. Their playing so much in the domestically puddles is what’s the real surprise – I always thought they’d have MI6 do US stuff while they did UK stuff, at each others direction, but doing this with only a couple NGO cutouts is really just crappy tradecraft.

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  13. Reagan had a job to do in taking down the USSR, and he did it quite well. He, combined with JPII and Catholic Church, waged a splendid little war for the hearts, minds, and souls, of those stuck behind the Iron Curtain. It was unfortunate that we were saddled with a Deep State squish like Bush afterwards. But it took the over-reaches of the Bushes, Clintons, and Obama to get us Trump 1.0. And he pleasantly surprised me and seemed to learn A LOT in his first term. That term scared the Deep State enough that they openly frauded to get the puppet FICUS in, and then went after Trump and his inner circle with lawfare (which still continues) when it appeared he wasn’t going to just fade away.

    Trump 2.0 had to learn how things worked first hand to be able to truly change things. He came at problems from a completely different angle than any other US politician since before I was born. In some instances, like the Abraham Accords, it worked well. But he needed that experience. And he needed the experience of “losing” in 2020, and the ensuing lawfare that followed, to hone him into such a nimble leader now. He wouldn’t have been able to accomplish half as much as he has in 3 weeks, had he won in ’20. He would have settled for a deal, and the Deep State would have continued under the radar. That Brandon was so openly being manipulated and obviously not in charge really opened up the eyes of much of the public. And without that public shift I don’t think the fraud could have been overcome in ’24.

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    1. What amazes astounds and awes me is that the DOGE team evidently had the whole system mapped out at a 30,000 ft level before beginning, combat dived right into the knot in the middle of the tangle and spread out from there, and are continuing to map at the roadside level, nimbly responding to roadblocks in one direction to keep the project moving in another direction. When did all the work meetings formulating these plans and contingencies happen? This had to take months if not years. A thousand people, I saw somewhere, to hire and prepare, HOW DID THEY KEEP IT SECRET? I used to be a project manager; I was nothing. What we are observing these weeks is greatness, competence to a pronish degree.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Right?

        The left’s backlash against “these kids“? OMG! I am in awe of “these kids“!

        I’m not sure Reagan era DOGE equivalent could have done much. Probably the worst thing the fraud apparatus could have done was to put record keeping into computers (although would be a glaring “something is rotten here”). Imagine going through paper and film files? Even the old tape and 8″ floppy’s. Even now. Musk has pointed out, there are agencies using 3 1/2″ disks for storage, and sneaker nets. (Can understand sneaker nets for security, but 3 1/2″ drives? OMG, again.)

        What is all this outrage for on auditing? Congress sure hasn’t done their job (of coarse they are getting kickbacks. That is next.) Counties are required to have audits (I had a job for 12 years that makes it easier for counties to get auditors out of their hair faster. County over other departments, state, and federal, auditors.) Someone also needs to auditing state agencies.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Probably has something to do with it being easier to hide malware in the nooks and crannies of a USB stick. And of course, it’s way easier and less pointy to hide a USB stick than an equivalent amount of data storage on 3.5 “floppy” disks. 😬😬😬😏

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        2. Back when I worked for thr Army, I was introduced to a system that used 8″ disks. That’s right, floppies the size of dinner plates. It was a bit dates, though, even then.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. In the Air Force, we had punch cards. In 1887. I mean 1987. I assume that has long since been upgraded, but it’s only an assumption.

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  14. Semi retired guy here, supplementing retirement by playing gigs. I have friends who are also musicians who are so dyed in the wool left, that their arguments now are…

    the funding examples given by doge are just made up bs. If you’re looking for fraud, you would use accountants, not programmers. But Musk and Trump are not the people to do it. Fraud is their main game.

    and

    I filled my car with gas yesterday, and the price was $3.66 a gallon. .75 more than a month ago.I wrote these words a month ago, in short order, we will payong more for everything.

    There is no evidence that can be presented to them that will sway them.

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    2. Some of the Leftroid media are positively giddy over the fact that there was inflation last month. “Trump-Flation!” they crow, ignoring the facts:

      1. Biden was still Pretendent for 2/3 of January.
      2. There will be inflation for several more months, at least. That’s not ‘Trump-Flation’, that’s our national BidenFlation hangover.
      3. Even if Trump manages to eliminate inflation, the damage is done. Most of those prices are never going back to where they were before BidenFlation. That’s not how inflation works.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. They literally went from whining about people complaining about the price of eggs to blaming Trump for the price of eggs and smugly asking why people weren’t blaming him (two days into his Presidency!).

        They don’t care about truth, only about how best to hang blame on the people they hate.

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        1. “two days” ????

          Pretty sure they were blaming President Trump and Vance, on everything, as soon as they were sworn in.

          JIC sarcasm is now off.

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          1. Yes, but they kept it vague-ish then. And tried to say it was because what Trump did four years before. The egg thing was literally “he’s been in office two days, it’s his fault.”

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    3. Plenty of programmers with accounting knowledge. How do they think financial software, banks, software companies and Wall Street exist?

      Understanding basic accounting is an adult skill that should be taught no later than middle/high school. 50 years of DOE has taken it’s toll.

      If you are smart enough to be on Musk’s team, spotting fraud, reading financials and balancing books is like childs play.

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      1. I wrote accounting software for 12 years. Governmental Cost Accounting software, where every penny, every overhead, must be accounted for somewhere. Did I set it up? No.

        Boss started it in COBOL on IBM System/34, migrating it to DOS, early/mid-’90s, then early windows, finally to “current” Windows and SQL. Went off of COBOL when migrated to Windows (I think, before my tenure).

        Did I understand what was happening and why? 100%

        When I went to change careers I had intended to go the accounting route … Because (for me) Accounting is EASY (programming is a whole lot more fun, but cannot always call it “easy”).

        As is what DOGE is doing. They aren’t looking at traditional accounting fraud, they are looking at WHERE payments went and how much. Whether those payments are actually illegal is a different step. That the payments probably should have been illegal, is a whole different category.

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        1. I’m a former IT guy. No matter how I explain this (DOGE) to them, their TDS is stronger than the force. There is no reasoning with them.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. Yep!

            “WHERE payments went and how much. Whether those payments are actually illegal is a different step. That the payments probably should have been illegal, is a whole different category.“

            –

            There is a reason why a lot of my support (there was no support department, just us coders to answer questions) answers were “I can tell you the different ways to get answers, where all the answer numbers will agree, and why. I cannot tell you if the numbers belong where they were entered into. That is the question for your department head, and the county controller. I can tell you how to reverse entry and how that will track and why, once someone declares the entry invalid.” Usually accompanied by “I am not an accountant.” But even if I had been, an entry being valid VS invalid was different from county to county and state to state. (Example of state to state. CA and OR are fiscal* costs so overhead numbers could be estimated percentages reconciled somewhere else in the county. WA is real costs, which means the overhead for 7% SS, actual insurance, and other employee costs*, were added as separate records for the hours per employee worked costs.)

            (* Might not have the correct terminology. Exact list of costs that might apply, I forget. It has been 8+ years.)

            Realistically, the above applies whether or not the software is doing any type of financial accounting, tracking seedling status software, or volume, statistics, and type of biomass of a timberstand. All 3 types of software I have worked on. I understood the concepts, but I wasn’t the one making the decisions on whether otherwise valid data entries were legal entries or not, nor should I have been.

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  15. It’s the Internet guys.

    Without a cheap, developed, mostly open form of person to person communication, this moment would have never happened.

    Thank God, the Blob couldn’t stuff the genie back in the bottle.

    Liked by 2 people

      1. True.

        But without the internet, Musk would have never made his first fortune in time to fund the others.

        We would have never been able to share information about the Diamond Princess and the metric shit tons of information regarding the origins of Covid and the mRNA cripple shots. Nor all the shenanigans going on with BLM, etc…

        Plus having information networks not dependent on mass media, we were able to expose the lies and compare notes in real time.

        I will admit Trump 45/47 worked out much better than Trump 45-46 as far as the timing. The Left thought they were safe to take off the masks that hid the crazy…

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        1. Cliches become cliches because they’re raw truth. “The pen is mightier than the sword” comes to mind, and the informational firehose that’s the Internet is simply the latest iteration of the pen.

          Next up, direct controllable neural links to that firehose… 😉

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I never cease to find it amusing that “the pen is mightier than the sword” was coined by the same chap who originated what has been distilled down to “It was a dark and stormy night.”

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            1. Bulwer-Lytton? I didn’t know that; thanks!

              I used to faithfully follow the Bulwer-Lytton awards; I saved a couple of the best ones from the mid-80s.😆

              Liked by 1 person

      3. Sarah

        Way back in BC Larry Pournelle use to puzzle about the money that business had invested in small computers without any obvious gains in productivity.

        One of his speculations was that each small computer had allowed its operator to become a “form creator” – without any linking except by accident to the products of other form creators.

        So tough luck with things like auditing

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  16. Sorry to disagree but AI is not the magic bullet that makes this possible … once the data was in a database it was always possible to search it for fraud …

    the problem has always been the people with DB access never WANTED to search for fraud …

    its only because the DOGE kids are outsiders that the searches are being done …

    sure having an AI might make some of the searches easier … but not by much … if you can formutale a qestion to ask the AI you can formulate a search query against a database to find your answers … now if the data is across multiple systems (which I’m sure is the case) it just a question of getting all the data in one place (i.e. 1 db server with multiple databases) so you can search across different databases to find connections …

    AI might make the searches faster … but who cares if it takes 10 minutes or 10 hours … once the results are looked at the mess is exposed …

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      1. Speed, surprise, and violence of action.

        The foundation of defense is attack. (The best defense is a good offense.)

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      3. finding a past fraud in 1 day vs 3 days doesn’t really make any difference in my mind … (am a computer person as well and searching for data consistancies or discrepencies is my daily grind, slow is great faster is slightly greater) … unless someone deletes the data once you have a snapshot of the data the speed is nice but not required …

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        1. In a one-off, sure.

          But this isn’t a one-off. This is an intention to audit every department. That alone will take a while. The longer it takes, the more the possibility that someone in the Deep State figures out away to stop DOGE.

          Time is of the essence.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. And !I’m Strassel at WSJ is reporting the biggest obstacle may well be Republican Senators, who all think cutting waste is great….so .ong as it’s not their pet projects and earmarks.

            Liked by 1 person

    2. AI is helpful, but most financial data is stored in RDBMS (databases) and can be queried by SQL statements.

      AI helps to generates some queries, summarize the documention and logs that goes with the data and quickly answer the some questions. It can also help generate the graphs of relationship between the organizations and the individuals in question.

      The team probably went in with a good idea of the nature of the systems/software they would be dealing with. Top notch people that are prepared can kick some serious donkey.

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        1. in this case most of it is … maybe not the Government Retirement system … but everything else …

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          1. No, it really isn’t.

            401k contributions for example? That is a badly formatted text file. Every contribution. For everyone.

            That this hasn’t exploded yet is evidence of miracles.

            Liked by 1 person

              1. Not joking.

                I am not surprised, even if I could not list specifics.

                It is extremely expensive upgrading software from legacy systems. Hardware is cheap in comparison.

                We know where the money has not been going.

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                    1. Ah I found the thing I was drawing from (not something I can link).

                      ISAM tables. And these can’t be upgraded because the tech details have been written into the law.

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            2. “DOS is dead!”

              This is what I was being told ’96 – ’02. You know, when I was still coding for DOS. Heck my husband was still using a DOS based system when he retired in 2012 for his work. Intermec and Symbol didn’t start making obsolete their DOS based hardware until about then (you think MS DOS was a PIA, Symbol took it to a whole new level, and Intermec wasn’t far behind). A lot of my CS graduating ’89 classmates ended up on legacy mainframe non-SQL based systems well into the 2010’s (or later). It is a form of job security. But OMG if you have to go look for work. Puts a horrible spin on “not current” despite working experience even if you kept up the book learning and extra coding on the side.

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            3. I saw an article a few days ago on Social Security’s computing setup. Sounds like it’s one of the worst kludges around, in multiple languages (I would not be surprised if some Fortran II snuck in the mix) on several different platforms.

              The home computers all run the same operating system, have essentially the same configuration, and they still throw surprises at me. SS is a few orders of magnitude worse.

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              1. I can tell you the Army’s parts system used to run on COBOL. I forget the name of the hotshot German (yes, German – name started with “S,” and it’s really well-known) corp contracted to replace it, but I think they failed.

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                1. I know how hard it is. Prior to my last job, what I’ve done was relatively simple small systems, both rewrite completely, strip repair and rewrite, plus additions, and write from scratch. They all have challenges. These however were relatively small data sets and small set of users.

                  My last job the process to incorporate existing data from prior systems, add tweaks to programs to customize for specific client (mostly custom forms) was pretty straight forward. Hardest part was training users. I know this is unusual. Company was involved in upgrading many of a county cost accounting systems while another company was installing software for something else. Where the cost accounting system was installed remotely on county servers. Access configured and installed by county IT. Training days scheduled. The other system installation? Had people there every weekday for months. Company I worked for also was unusual that program changes and upgrades didn’t take months, *usually; with one **exception, no “formal releases”. Once system was installed programs could go out as soon as a change was made.

                  (* Annual conference changes those went on a list. Some items were on the list for years. Some requests required **interface changes, which were on a whole different scale.)

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                2. I’m guessing SAP. Wiki expands the acronym to Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung (system analysis & program development).

                  One of the department’s software guys used to work for Southwest Airlines. That was all in COBOL, but the work at HP was in Fortran 77 (I think) on minicomputers. I had enough Fortran (IV and for reasons, II) to be able to read it, but it’s not a language I would want to pick up. (Nor COBOL. Had brief exposure to it in high school in 1970. Shudders.)

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                  1. It was SAP. They came in and announced to our parts guys that the system they’d used for years was worthless, that all their expertise was useless because SAP was developing a completely new system and they ought to be grateful.

                    As a way to get buy-in from the guys that could have helped them, it sucked. Like a Hoover.

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                    1. As memory serves, one of the CEOs HP was burning through in the early Aughts had come from SAP. Faint memory (I was retired and any HP stock had since been liquidated) says it was a short, unhappy tenure.

                      I found over the years that German [fill in the blank] can be good, but they tend to overestimate the goodness and get too arrogant about it. (The exceptions where they aren’t arrogant can be delightful, but…)

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                    2. The major ASIC semiconductor manufacturer I was at in the 90s converted to SAP. The whole thing was characterized by “You can’t do that in SAP – you have to change how you run the company to accommodate the accounting system.”

                      I am convinced all that effort for so little return was a major contributor to the fact that it is long gone with nary a trace left in the world.

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                    3. “You can’t do that in SAP – you have to change how you run the company to accommodate the accounting system.”

                      Then they tried that on DoD and found out that most of the process was dictated by Congress in appropriations and other laws, so it wasn’t changing, and their software wasn’t that flexible without a thorough rewrite.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    4. SAP was one of the competitors, and/or co-programs fed by the cost accounting system (CAMS) I worked on. The argument for SAP was (is still, guessing) “our people can add our twists to the system”. They definitely could not with CAMS. Even had one potential client who wanted a payment to be downloaded to the CAMS and the payment “automatically” broken down into the various cost centers appropriately. Doable, but a cost to add it to the system, they’d have to identify how each payment broke down by percentages. Believe it or not, the cost wasn’t the problem.

                      SAP usually was county wide. But the CAMS was by department: Public Works (Roads and Vehicles), Facilities, Engineering, and in California – Utilities (a lot of failed water/power utilities that counties now have to administer), and the subsystems (inventory, Project, etc., tracking) that each need. Sometimes one installation for multiple departments, sometimes one installation. Oh the tirades, against SAP, I used to listen too from users who had to use both.

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                    5. The Big Lie from the Germans (heh) turned out to be “Yes, your existing system, which you based on something you once bought outright and then invested all this time customizing, accommodates your business processes, but look at all the programmers you have on payroll to maintain and keep it running. SAP is backed by legions of German programmers, and all you have to do it install it!

                      So install it they did, and lo, it did not work for other than basic stuff. “Oh, you can customize that screen, here’s the programming documentation pallet, or you can pay us, or a contractor.” And in the end there were more programmers on payroll customizing SAP than had been maintaining the original accounting system, which was likely the point for some of the EVPs on the accounting side of the house.

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                    6. Ah, dealing with German programmers. It had its fun moments (including nearly getting fired after I made a bleak, dark joke after Yet Another Setback, but mercifully the customer’s head guy had a similar sense of humor. Saved.)

                      Fun bit: This was when computers either had the ISA bus or the EISA bus.

                      American: ISA ==> Eye-sah
                      EISA ==> Eee-sah
                      German: ISA ==> Eee-sah
                      EISA ==> Eye-sah
                      See the problem?

                      It had been 31 years since I had my high school German, but that saved me and the others on the team from much confusion. Vielen Dank’ Herr Hoch!

                      (Still, purchasing anything in Bavaria was via point and pay.)

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                  1. SAP.

                    I wasn’t a parts guy, but I worked with them (think retired irritable NCOs). Hearing the SAP guys tell them, smugly, that 20 or so years of learning all,the work-arounds and tricks to make the system work was wasted effort because the system was crap and they ought to be grateful it was *all* going to be replaced irritated me.

                    And of course, their input on how to make the new system better wasn’t needed, either.

                    Right there I figured it was going to be a disaster.

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                    2. It isn’t. Until the rulebook governing it switches from GAAP to the Congressional Record.

                      “Instead, You sent us a Congress! Good God, Sir! Was that fair??”:

                      I find myself much in sympathy with Mr Adams.

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              2. “If builders built buildings the way programmers write code, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.”

                Only now, you have AIs writing their own code based on what the programmers wrote plus the data they choose to feed it.

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                1. Coding? Do they mean copy what you found somewhere that’s kinda close, then fiddle with it until you get it to work, then go on to the next bit while “forgetting” do write up any docuemntation?

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                  1. Do not get me started. I am the poor sucker who came behind and had to change that code.

                    Even had on case where the coder was “available” (contractor). Response was “Oh, found that online and made it work!” Coder had no clue on how it all worked. No. Clue. At. All. By the time I was done fixing it, there was at least three screen full of comments what it was, diagramming structures, how it worked, and how I twisted it to solve the problems. Not being generous to the next coder. I was likely to be the next coder to dig into that code. I didn’t want to research it again. But even if I wasn’t going to be the next coder, didn’t want someone taking my name in vain like I did to the coder who created the mess. At least I could say I tried (did this when I retired. Not the above, but still. Not that anyone read it. I tried.)

                    Liked by 1 person

                    1. Then there was the poor coder who was given code by his supervisor and could not understand why it did not work.

                      Of course, the idiot supervisor just said “it’s good code” so it should work.

                      Note, it was code that depended on a variable being “given a value” and the idiot supervisor didn’t “realize” that.

                      Oh, I got involved because the kid asked me for help because the kid’s supervisor wasn’t a help.

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                    2. Believe it or not, that’s one of my most common use cases for chatgpt. “This isn’t working. Here is the error code. Here is the input. Trace what is happening and find the fault”

                      Because I’m not poring over multi-thousand lines of code. Not gonna, can’t make me.

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                    3. Way too many coders have the default idea that not documenting means job security. “You don’t have time to make my code work? Well, here’s my hourly rate.”

                      Liked by 1 person

                    4. Most the time the coders were long gone. The couple of times they weren’t (contractors) that is exactly what they wanted. Wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction. Not that I couldn’t figure it out. I could. But to get an answer back “Just slapped it in, put in the hooks, and it worked”? Really? Not that I didn’t pull a few algorithms out of the internet too, but I documented the heck out it.

                      The only time I came close to pulling the stunt of “I figured it out, you can too” was when the caller was ignoring my free advice. 1) Have you read my notes, user documentation, and code documentation? (Of coarse not.) 2) Call the manager of the specific subdivision, the buying company let go. Seriously, the answer was “No. Not happening.” They wouldn’t take no thank you for an answer. I gave a ridiculously high hourly rate (for ’96 and the rural local area in question), which included door to door, both ways, travel time (4 hours) + expenses. I guess they figured it out.

                      Also, kind of suspected they’d made the mistake of compiling with the newest development tool release. Which broke the code in a lot of interesting ways. There was NO fixing that short of rewriting the affected code in another tool, which was most the program … All my notes said “Do NOT use tool version beyond X. This ability that this code is using is considered a not compile bug.” Why the code was written that way had requirements best explained by the manager they would not consult with.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    5. Documentation in coding: because when I have to deal with this again in 6 months, I won’t remember a damned thing.

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                    6. The problem being that when you are in the heat of coding, it looks all self-evident. The best time to comment code is two weeks after writing it.

                      And then there’s the sage advice to debug only code, not comments. Comments can be misleading, even wrong.

                      The best one was the comment to flip a flag to turn something on. No mention which way was on and which off.

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                    7. All this reminds me of the last program I worked on (totally different level, I was working with programmers to create the program needed).

                      The need was to transfer data from the customer service side into COBRA. Simple substitution, just “This data goes in this field.”

                      I quit mid project, sent my manager all the data, contact names, progress, etc. Got a phone call from him 6 months later. Some savant in Corporate thought it was a great idea to fire the entire client facing team, and this manager was tasked with automating everything 300 people had been doing manually.

                      Payroll, COBRA, FSA, Retirement, etc. I asked him about the program we’d been working on, and it had been abandoned the minute I walked out.

                      I told him to go back through his emails.

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                  2. Don’t know what they mean, but what I mean is take the undocumented code that doesn’t handle this unexpected (by whoever designed and built it — sometimes that’s me) behavior and what data / business rules changed, understand what it’s doing and why it’s doing it for this entity (business, govt, etc.) objectives, document that, make the change, make sure it works, document what I did, and the test cases I used, and then get it reviewed, put into a release, and deployed.

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                    1. “by whoever designed and built it — sometimes that’s me“

                      –

                      Me? Guilty? Oh heck … Yes. Translation. Why I documented the heck out of code. Not just others’ code that was “this is clever, now how do I change it?” Most my career was “I wrote it. I have to maintain it. Years after I wrote it.” This means if it was something that the development tool wouldn’t do straight forward, it got documented. I avoided “clever”. Clever just got me into trouble.

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                    2. Screw elegant coding. Use it like legos: combine the simple tools and functions in interesting ways. It’s not pretty, but it works, it’s easy to puzzle out later, and we’re at the point where system resources mean the end user is unlikely to notice anything.

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      2. WPDE this deleting on random backspace has got to go.

        I bet none of the DOGE kids had ever dealt with packed Hexadecimal EPCIDEC files created by 60 year old COBOL programs by programmers long dead, leaving no documentation.

        It’s been 40 years since I wrote serious code (BAL baby) but maybe it’s like riding a bike and I could raise the average age of the DOGE folks by some significant margin. Hmm…

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    3. AI might make the searches faster … but who cares if it takes 10 minutes or 10 hours … once the results are looked at the mess is exposed …

      In forensic accounting and fraud cases, time is always critical. You work as fast and accurately as you humanly can with the best tools your employer can afford.

      Do not ask me how I know or whom I work for… :P

      Liked by 2 people

      2. The longer it takes, the more time they have to hide their crimes. Which is why Trump’s first move was to lock the criminals out of the buildings. And why Mad Maxine was so apoplectic about it.

        Liked by 2 people

      3. the timing is critical sure … but in forensic accounting and fraud cases the destruction of data is a very real danger … again once a snapshot of the data is pulled speed is no longer needed … and by speed I mean searching in seconds vs minutes … AI only searches fast if its been TRAINED on your data … that training can takes weeks/months …

        give me a dataset and a blank AI (i.e. not trained) … I can guarantee that a good data analyst find tons of stuff long before the AI is finished training …

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        1. “AI only searches fast if its been TRAINED on your data … that training can takes weeks/months …”

          Not strictly true anymore. Language models have gotten good enough at in-context learning that you can feed information about your database into the prompt and get an off-the-shelf model to produce half-decent queries for you.

          I don’t know if that’s what DOGE is doing, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s something similar.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I don’t think they’ve done anything elaborate yet, never mind magical. The notion that someone would pierce the citadel never occurred to the swamp so they never hardened the data. in fact, much of this is public information and could have been gotten at by anyone at any time. Constitutional requirements for the basket, and the foul.

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          2. WPDE again.

            In fact, the real scandal is that it’s all available and was never looked at. What DOGE did was trigger the cascade, that and deal with some real time payments, but that’s mostly finding the scofflaws, the real data were always there.

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            1. Yeah, I’m having a hard time disentangling the AI hype (basically, search + summarization + a dash of query/API stuff) from “Well, this is the first time someone from the outside looked at these files.” I haven’t looked into it, but we’re getting to the point where using language models for some of this stuff is plausible, mainly as an interface to other tools.

              There’s also some conflation between what Data Republican’s tool dug up and what DOGE has been doing, not that it matters all that much.

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              1. Don’t work too hard on proving “it’s not AI” – as the latest buzzword, “AI” is basically equal to “witchcraft” to most GS- people, so they are breaking out their holy union-card talismans and thinking really hard about taking that fork buyout so they are no longer there when their boss’s “creative” efforts get found.

                “Generally Acceptyed Accounting Principles” and Forensic Accounting” are just budget-weenie blah-blah and not nearly as scary.

                Put the skeer on ‘em, and keep ‘em running skeered.

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                1. “Generally Acceptyed Accounting Principles”…

                  It is not widely known that Ensign Checkov was trained as an accountant…

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          3. A lot of people saying “AI can’t do X” are basing their……. knowledge…… on using stuff from free-tier websites, or that was state of the art a year or two ago.

            They may as well be telling us how trains are impossible because if humans travel faster than 15mph they will be asphyxiate. But they have no conception of how far behind they are while they spout off.

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              1. Yeah, I’m rather looking forward to “AI sales pitch meets the beyond a reasonable doubt burden” when they try to bring criminal charges and have to explain how the AI made it’s decision.

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          4. Also keep in mind that Tesla has one of, if not the, largest AI systems in existence. If they need training cycles, they have them in spades.

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        2. Pointing an LLM at a massive pile of data it wasn’t trained on and telling it to find interesting things is well within its effective usecases and has been for a long time.

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          1. find interesting things ? doesn’t work like that and you know it … “interesting things” needs to be defined and if you can define the “interesting things” you can write a sql query to do the same thing …

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            1. Tell me when you can run an SQL query which reads a PDF, distills the information contained in it, and explains what the parts described within do.

              Until then perhaps you should be quiet instead of declaring your vast ignorance to the world.

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              1. lighten up francis … you know I was I was specifically talking about running against a database … you must be a joy to work with …

                Like

          2. Musk pprobably had someone training the AI equivalent as soon as he was asked to handle DOGE. He had months before and after the election to get the data he needed.

            Liked by 1 person

  17. Let us not forget that the Democrats shot themselves in the foot by repudiating their senile puppet when his senility became too obvious, only to replace him with a cackling shrew who was even less popular with the voters than Hillary *spit* Clinton was. Kamala Harris had got NO votes in the “Democratic” (democratic, my foot!) primaries and caucuses, and was widely disliked.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Not somuch less popular than HRC, but far less -feared-. Opponents genuinely fear crossing HRC. Harris was as intimidating as a farting hamster.

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      1. My theory on the main reason she burned through so many staffers is they eventually cold not prevent themselves from bursting out laughing when she spoke.

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    1. OK, I initially misread that as an attempt to write laws that would automatically convert EOs to laws, and thought “Well, that would violate the Constitution”. Then I read it again, and looked at the link. All good ideas, and they may have more chance of passage that you think. EOs are “fix this now”, while the good ones are followed up by legislation, and we can probably get most past the Senate Dem filibusters.

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      1. ”…past the Senate Dem filibusters.”

        They are budget related, so they can go through budget reconciliation, thus needing only a simple majority vote in the Senate to pass.

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        1. Correct, for the ones that are budget-related. All weren’t, but IIRC the process the filibuster can still be made moot by perseverence.

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          1. Correct, for the ones that the parliamentarians of the House and Senate say are budget-related.

            Critical distinction; there were several bills under Trump 1 and Bribem that had pressure put on the parliamentarians to rule one way or the other.

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                1. Obi-Wan was just a liar.

                  The best part of Sir Alec Guinness’ performance in the very first movie was the bit in his desert little house where Luke asks him how his father died – watch Obi-Wan’s eyes. He does a really great shifty-eyed bit before he launches into his story. I don’t know if George Lucas gave him direction that the line was a lie, and Lucas didn’t yet have any inkling of an idea that he was going to make Vader actually be Luke’s father (Lawrence Kasdan came up with that bit when they were working on revisions to Leigh Brackett’s initial script), but Guinness clearly performs it as Obi-Wan knowingly lying to the kid.

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          2. “All weren’t [budget-related…”

            Actually, I believe I was incorrect on that. They do seem to be budget-related, in that what’s being done in every case I’ve looked at is to shut off funding for the item in question (males in female sports, for instance). And since according to what Johnson said yesterday in a video (press release?) the House, which has control of the budget, will be firmly behind Trump’s initiatives, unlike during Trump 1.0. That should moot most of the lawsuits, which are almost all “You can’t do that! That’s up to Congress!” crap.

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            1. The lawsuits will be from the Senate section; if it’s declared “not reconciliation” they have to be allowed to filibuster. I do look forward to a requirement to physically “hold the floor”.

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            2. Budget related, but executive branch gets to determine timing of payments. Thus order seems to be:

              1. Find the questionable contract, grant, payment.
              2. Determine if paid.
                • If not paid, see if can be suspended then cancelled.
                • If paid, see what it will take to claw back the money.
              3. Turn over to Trump to deal with congress to do what is needed.
              4. Publicize. Mock. Publicize.
              5. Congress reverses.

              You know. What federal auditors and congressional oversight are suppose to be doing. But there are none of the former, and the latter are siphoning off the money.

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  19. This morning I had an amusing moment. I’ve been getting a lot of spam calls lately, either related to Medicare “open season,” or other Medicare probable fraud. Yes, I answer, with “Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening,” which throws the bot. Then I talk to the human, usually trying to be decent.

    This morning, though, I took a different tack.

    “Hello?” (Boiler shop sounds in the background)

    “Good Morning.”

    “Good morning. My name is Melissa (note Indian accent) and I am calling from Pain Management Services. How are you?”

    “Why are you calling me? I don’t apparently pain management issues. And you know, DOGE is going to start auditing Medicare and Medica-“

    (Click).

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Answering the phone in Klingon can be amusing.

      Been using this schtick for years. Works pretty good. -One- time, the caller said “That’s not bad Klingon.” and hung up.

      Pity no one ever created a synthlang for Kzinti. Two or more arguing supposedly sounds like a catfight with atomics.

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      1. For those who want to try the home game, the standard polite Klingon greeting is nuqneH (nukh-nekh), literally “What do you want?”

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    2. I’ve been getting a lot of “You responded to a survey on physical abuse …” The first time I responded with “What the F*?” Actually used the F word over the phone. Then I used “BS” and hung up. Second time it was “This is elderly abuse. BS. Do not call again!” Would not have answered an unknown number except I was expecting a call from an unknown number.

      Like

      1. Hmm, spam phone calls have dropped off the past week. Whereinhell are/were(?) they getting their money from? Asking for a friend.

        We’ve been using Caller ID and the answering machine for several years. I almost fell for a phishing scam (bad day, I was tired), but bailed before disaster. The (indian) SOB called the next day. That one, I answered and told him to F-off. (Original call was supposedly from Dish TV, courtesy spoofing the ID tag.)

        Most of my spam is email, and gets filtered to the junk folder. Haven’t had a phishing one in a few weeks, either. (“your email inbox has more than 5Gb in it. Click here to solve”. Reading the message headers is pretty informative… It’s amazing how many of those boxes go to a Google-hosted account.)

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        1. Spam emails are a PIA. I keep my spam folder cleared out because never know when I need to be watching for a legit email that goes to spam and shouldn’t.

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          1. Yeah, the junk folder (Thunderbird’s term) gets checked regularly. I had very low spam emails until I joined a couple of Google groups after I got my ham radio license. I’ve had that email address long enough that there’s no way I’d drop it, so I try to have the spam filters set reasonably well.

            (Wondering why a diabetic outfit keeps sending me spam. I wonder if there’s been a bit of a HIPAA violation somewhere. I’m pre-diabetic now, was type II, but I don’t recall mentioning it anywhere with my email address exposed.)

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            1. Technically I have 2 emails. One, the “older one”, is a pass through email these days. PIA when I have to go check that site for emails that go to junk that shouldn’t.

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        2. My spam folder for email doesn’t get very big (I clear it every day). What I get is the constant phone calls. Since I only allow the phone to ring for people in my contacts list, I clear at least a dozen of those every day of the week. They leave voicemails, too, some of which I have to listen to just to make sure.

          I thought this was going to end after the election. But it picked right up again, but now with the scammers telling me I owe back taxes (I very definitely don’t), and they can help.

          I think that what happened is that the Medicare recipient database got to them, because it started right after I had to sign up. My age demographic is a prime target for this kind of scam.

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    5. Ah. I’m not getting those yet. I’m getting the “let us help you with your back taxes” scams.

      It’s just not amusing enough for me to answer those calls. It’s annoying enough to have to listen to the start of the voice mails to make sure I can delete them.

      Liked by 1 person

    6. I get 2 or 3 salescritter calls a day. Usually they don’t leave messages on the machine. If I actually answer the phone I say something like “Yo” and then…wait. Again, usually nobody responds and after 10-20 seconds the call-bot hangs up.

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  20. The Dems won 2020 by blaming Trump for a disease. Yes, it’s that crazy, but Covid caused bad things to happen, Trump was President, so everything bad that happened was his fault. That discouraged a R vote for every D vote it encouraged. If they had just ignored him after that, NOT sent their lawyer minions on missions to destroy him on tissue-thin charges, NOT tried to impeach him based on his “peacefully and patriotically” speech, we probably would have President K, The First Minority Woman President Everybody Cheer Or Else by now. But every time they threw a grandma in prison for walking into a public building, every time they inflated a paperwork error into felony charges, every R (and quite a few D) voters looked and said, “I’m next.” I hope it is decades or more before another D gets elected as President. It will take that long to clean it up.

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        1. Buddhist monks can get pretty radical. Remember that the whole “burn yourself alive in protest” was started by Buddhist monks in Vietnam…

          During the Sengoku Jidai in Japan, there was an entire fortress full of Buddhists who were basically a *massive* group of organized bandits.

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      2. You can really thank the PA Dept. of Agriculture and the PA State Police for radicalizing the Amish. PA DoA has a beef with folks who produce and sell raw milk, and there are quite a few farmers in Lancaster County who are refusing to knuckle under to the DoA’s demands…but the only one they sic’d a PSP SWAT Team on was the one Amish farmer who was a thorn in their side. With incredibly flimsy justification, I might add.

        The DoJ stepped in it and screwed themselves when the farmer and the greater Amish community petitioned them for redress and asked them to interveine in the situation, and the DoJ declined to do so stating that the PA DoA and PSP “acted appropriately given the situation.” Because a full-on SWAT Raid, complete with holding women and children at gunpoint, is an entirely appropriate response to a member of the most peaceful demographic in the country allegedly committing a food safety violation. And then all but admitting that they knew it was excessive but were determined to make an example out of him.

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        1. Sigh. Oregon east of the Cascades, and to a lesser extent, in the southern half west-side tend to be pretty conservative. Most of the Good Idea Fairy stuff comes from the NW section, and with vote-fraud-by-mail (enacted in the 1990s), if the Donks/Left want to win an issue, they’re going to. In the flyover counties, it’s like an occupying force. Pretty much literally during the Covid KKKrackdown under Despicable Kate Brown as governor. Not that the unfortunately named Tina Kotek is much better, and the Donks have supermajorities in both houses.

          Which is why the Greater Idaho movement is around. State of Jefferson sank, but there’s a (slim) chance of G-I happening. (I suspect that Idaho would go further to the right if it did…)

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          1. Poor JohnS and I are stuck in the middle of liberal. Me in Eugene (no hope here, even if house isn’t “in” the city). JohnS is further south in the valley, out of Cottage Grove. I suspect Cottage Grove is a more sane section of Lane county, but IDK.

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            1. Slightly.

              One of the things that helped me pick Cottage Grove was that the vole totals for 2016 were on line. In that election, our 2 precincts voted very slightly in favor of Trump. Something like 25 more votes out of 4000 or so. Moved up here in 2019.

              And in a pretty evenly divided polity, one might expect a fair amount of tolerance for one’s opposite numbers, and so it has appeared to be. Local contentious issue is how to handle the homeless, which I think is much more complex than a small city can hope to address well.

              I do like the town. It’s grown about 2000 in population since we moved here. The teenagers are polite, and the cops have time to help with lost dogs.

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              1. ” Local contentious issue is how to handle the homeless, which I think is much more complex than a small city can hope to address well.”

                What? Don’t just ship them up to Eugene? (Kidding, kind of.)

                Springfield is a little bit bigger than Cottage Grove. They solved the majority of the homeless problem by disallowing begging on the streets, or parking lots, and actually enforcing “no camping” in parks, on public right of ways, etc. Note, the rules are not penalizing the beggars, but those who stop and donate. Doesn’t eliminate the homeless altogether, but a lot better than Eugene.

                Liked by 1 person

    2. The Democrats did not win in 2020. The election was overturned by massive fraud. Look at the numbers — 25 million more ‘votes’ were counted than in either the 2016 OR 2024 elections. Trump got 60% of the vote in 2020, Biden got 61%. Where were all those Biden voters last November? Dead. Of course, they were dead when they voted for Biden in 2020, too. In Pennsylvania alone, the Democrats conjured up 766,000 mail-in ballots from nowhere. 1.8 million were sent out, but almost 2.6 million were counted.

      When President Trump gets the federal government’s long-overdue enema well underway, his next priority should be a forensic audit of every state’s elections. Find all the fraud and hoist it up in public. Pay particular attention to all those Kalifornia districts where the Republican candidates were way ahead on November 6, but they kept ‘counting votes’ for another month until the Democrats ‘won’.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Don’t forget that Trump TRIED a forensic audit in 2017. Look up the 2017 Election Commission.

        Unfortunately, the Constitution is pretty clear that states control their elections, and that SCOTUS said so when all the blue states and a number of purple ones (see NH Senate race that was swung by 5000 obviously invalid votes) refused to allow the commission access.

        Hopefully we have a different SCOTUS and a different climate… but it wasn’t that Trump didn’t try.

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        1. Trump would not be taking any control of the elections away from the states, merely investigating exactly how they were conducted. And referring any clear violations of state election laws to the state Attorney Generals for action. Or inaction, which would demonstrate their complicity in the fraud.

          Dig up all the dirt and spread it out in the light. Let The People see what has been done in our names.

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          1. Again, if the governor says No, and the courts back them up, you won’t have the data. And the courts were doing that.

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            1. Correct. Trump’s commission asked the states for data relating to the voter rolls. Nearly all of the states – including the red ones – said, “Nope, no voter fraud here! There’s nothing for you to look at!” and declined to provide the requested data.

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              1. It will take either an act of congress/senate. Or grassroots from within each state. Nothing says it can’t be financed from without any state.

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                1. Judicial Watch and True The Vote have had some luck with civil lawsuits. Actual enforcement of the judgements has been a harder task, and, of course, without in person voting, paper ballots, and enforced voter id, on actual election day is still needed.

                  Liked by 1 person

      1. One reason Kameltoe got the nod is that the black churches, etc. provided a lot of ground game. If they didn’t keep her, they’d lose them, but a lot of them eweren’t exactly on board with the LGBTQ2+ whatever. Neither were Hispanics, at least not here.

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  21. There’s the Churchill quote (or supposed quote):
    “The Americans can be counted on to do the right thing, once all the other options have been exhausted.”

    Liked by 1 person

  22. The thing is there was no way to know it until recently. Do you know why the left is so upset at Elon’s ‘kids’, the computer geniuses running DOGE’s searches on the corrupt and constipated bowels of our government? Because they have the tech — yes, AI assisted — for the first time in the last forever, to find the fraud and waste.

    Young, so no long trail of stuff to lose, or be blackmailed about.

    And don’t have to have nearly as many of them, because the technology makes it work better.

    Oh, and they work in technology, so they should be aware that subverting the security system (be able to blackmail the folks responsible for doing stuff) is a primary security risk.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Allegedly, one of them created a subscription-only Substack, charged something like $1k per month or $10k per year for access… and left it blank. Because he KNEW that the Leftoids would be so desperate to dig up dirt on him that they’d pay any price to get access to anything they thought they could use against him. So he not only trolled the shit out of them, he apparently made well over six figures doing so.

      Liked by 3 people

      2. He didn’t put up one article containing nothing but a link to the official “Never Gonna Give You Up” music video? Because that would’ve been glorious. Imagine paying a thousand dollars for the privilege of being rickrolled…

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  26. 2001 seems a curious choice for the start of the internet. Perhaps it’s personal.

    90’s we had a wire running from our provider next door to our building, Late 80’s we had some sort of dialup connection for email and ftp and I assume we could use a browser Mosaic/navigator but not a whole lot to see.

    Baen had web subscriptions in 99 and in 99/2000 I wrote a email to blizzard pointing out that Australia using South Korea? as a server was dumb as our internet went from Sydney to California then back across the Pacific to South Korea.

    But yea the internet grew rapidly over that timeframe.

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  30. I’ve always thought that the story of Diogenes was rather hyperbolic. He could probably have found a plentitude of honest men, wandering the streets of Athens with his lantern.

    But, faced with the Leviathan of a Federal government that was still mostly paper based, Reagan would have needed to find well over a million honest (and highly intelligent) men, without the benefit of a miraculous lantern. Then convinced them to spend days on end poring over literal mountains of paper to ferret out the threads of corruption and wastage.

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    1. Yup. Trump’s big advantage this time around is automation. Reagan would have been forced to have people handling nearly every step of the process. DOGE can provide raw data to the computers, and let those computers reduce the data to an understandable format.

      Liked by 1 person

  31. We wanted it to be earlier, oh so much did we want it to be earlier.

    The problem is that until the Soviet Union fell, anything that went after the fundamental structure of the US Deep State would have been inviting an attack while these structures were dismantled and our attention was distracted.

    It’s not going to happen now, because the loop needed to exploit this is so much wider than the loop of going after that various government agencies that are sinecures at best, money-laundering fronts at worst.

    And Trump also has the wind in his sails of a lot of people that can’t admit in public that they thought the last four to six years (minimum) were full of Barbara Streisand that destroyed everything they cared about, or so brutally damaged it that it’s on life support.

    But better now than never, and better this chaos than insurrection or an actual war to resolve things.

    Liked by 1 person

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