In what sense is this guy a genius?
Elon Musk formed a political action committee whose primary purpose is to intimidate Republican congressional representatives into being even more obsequious than they were already inclined to be. But along the way he’s throwing money into other key races here and there, including Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race.
Actually, this is one of his first efforts — and he didn’t waste any time messing it up. His organization ran a typical attack ad on Democrat-backed candidate Susan Crawford (she’s soft on crime, they claim) using the wrong picture of Crawford. The photo is of Susan P. Crawford, a Harvard law professor.
So, the organization Musk put together isn’t even competent enough to simply get the right picture.
This comes on the heels of Musk’s bumbling around in the Federal bureaucracy. Musk slashed agencies willy-nilly, then scrambled to try to undo his errors. He eliminated an office whose job it was to manage nuclear weapons without having a clue about what they did or the implications of shutting them down, then quickly tried to rehire those he had just fired.
According to the AP story: “The DOGE people are coming in with absolutely no knowledge of what these departments are responsible for,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, referencing Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team. “They don’t seem to realize that it’s actually the department of nuclear weapons more than it is the Department of Energy.”
This seems to be an extension of the Silicon Valley notion of “move fast and break things.” I know that sounds edgy and “disruptive,” but it’s also just stupid. I know that learning how things work takes time and patience. I know that “implementing reforms” sounds so much less exciting than “move fast and break things.” But the former is what adults do and the latter is how children act.
Musk is no genius. He’s an idiot and a mean-spirited one at that.
YSDA stands for:
Free speech.
The rule of law.
Reason.
Tolerance.
Pluralism.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
Now that is funny. I’d like to think Elon was personally responsible for the wrong woman’s picture. It fits his sense of humor. “Ligma Johnson”?
Federal debt is 36.5 trillion. If we’re all patient it will all magically work out. Check out usdebtclock.org – they added a DOGE clock!
It may already be too late to save the sinking ship but I’m glad Elon is trying. If it doesn’t work out China will welcome him with open arms.
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And what Musk is doing with the Federal workforce won’t make a dent in that debt. The numbers of Federal workers are the same as they were in 1969. You could cut 25% of Federal workers and not cut the budget by even one percent.
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Typical American attitude- if you can’t hit the home run why try at all? Look up Kaizen.
Reducing staff is only a small part of what will happen, I think. But we’ll see. Believe it or not I can’t see into the future.
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And it also has cost consequences on the other side. Where are all those now unemployed people going to work? How will they pay their mortgage? Get health insurance? How will the local economies be effected? Those mass firings don’t make economic sense. Musk and Trump don’t have experience in this realm and they are doing significant damage. Oh, and curious to know how you feel about Musk’s billions in federal money. Should that go away? Should he police himself? That would be a big money saver right off the bat and heck, he can take it, much better than the people who he is firing that are living paycheck to paycheck.
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Yep. There is nothing good about Elon Musk’s involvement in this. He should go back to messing up his own businesses.
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I encourage readers to listen to Musk speak – more than just news sound bites, listen to a whole interview like at CPAC. This is important for Trump too, because the media sane-washes both of these people in the news. You read a news story and hear a 3 second clip, and it can seem semi-rational. But if you hear either speak at length it gets clearer and clearer, the longer you listen, that they are not smart (and that’s being generous).
Musk is remarkably inarticulate and does not instill confidence. It’s public knowledge that he does drugs, and it makes me wonder how many – and which – drugs he’s on.
Obviously, being a good public speaker isn’t a prerequisite for being smart. But not being able to minimally articulate reasoning is kind of a big red flag. He mostly just says words, no logical context or reasoning, just catch phrases and lies, and conspiracy theories. Perfectly suited to trolling on Twitter, but not appropriate for important work.
Note that the companies “he runs” are not being run by him at all while he plays this game in DC. So is he smart, or does he simply own things? Great formula: get seed money from rich dad, be in the right place at the right time during a technological paradigm shift, buy things that increase in value, be rich, delude yourself into thinking you’re smart.
(Note that the richest people in history generally have something in common: they were in the right place at the right time to profit from a new paradigm-shifting technology that none of them invented themselves)
(Note too, that since this blog post was published, 21 experienced DOGE staff resigned en masse, writing a warning letter that mentioned the incompetence of the political ideologues that are managing this effort)
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Yes! Watch Musk speak at length! Please!
He’s been on Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman several times, 2 to 3 hours each. I especially recommend the 2018 Rogan where he was disheveled and Tesla was still on the razor’s edge of being a success or failure.
Rollie I know you won’t do it but cmon Dave don’t you want to know what you’re talking about?
Elon isn’t really known for being exceptionally smart per se (although yes smarter than average). He’s a learning machine and a process expert. His 5 point algorithm came out of the mistakes they made at Tesla and SpaceX.
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If I’m wrong about life after death and I go down below, my deepest level of hell will be spending three hours listening to Joe Rogan. A thin level above will be three hours stuck with Rachel Maddow.
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A “learning machine and a process expert” wouldn’t have approached DOGE’s task at all like Musk has. Someone really good at learning would have taken some time to learn what people do in their jobs before firing term. A process expert would show the American people what process and plan his team was following to responsibly achieve a goal on behalf of the American people.
I’m happy to hear that Musk’s 2018 interview was interesting. He sounded like an 8th grader at CPAC, with the repeated goofy talk about how important it is to have “fun” during the DOGE effort. At in his AfD speech he sounded like a dolt.
And there’s not even enough time to talk about all his idiotic social media posts. For example, despite the fact that Musk was issued a private pilot certificate in 2002, he claimed that planes should travel in straight lines in order to cast some sort of conspiracy shadow in response to another post. Needless to say, there are a whole bunch of normal reasons that a plane may not take a straight-line route to its destination.
Perhaps he was once smart and the drug use has caught up with him these days?
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In other words, wear your ignorance like a warm blanket.
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Lol, and he’s proven himself over and over in the years since then to be a liar and hypocrite of the worst order. Remember when he faced criticism for allowing Russians to spread disinformation using his Starlink satellites shortly after they invaded invaded Ukraine? He defended it by saying he was a “free speech absolutist.” He made the same claim when he purchased Twitter as an excuse for allowing Trump and numerous right-wing trolls banned for hatespeech and misinformation back onto the site. And now he’s gone on to ban or censor hundreds of accounts that criticize him or express liberal viewpoints. (While also tweaking the Twitter algorithm to push his tweets to the top of everyone’s feeds after he was upset Biden’s Super Bowl Tweet last year got more reactions than his).
One Eye is a fitting name for someone who frequently expresses such myopic views.
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So, the little jab at One Eye here was allowed because it was a clever way of making a legitimate point (which you can agree with or not) about myopic views. But let me issue a general warning to readers to stay away from personal attacks.
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Source – https://jonathanturley.org/2025/02/25/harvard-polling-majority-supports-doge-measures-to-reduce-the-size-of-government/
Harvard/CAPS Harris Poll:
“What was interesting amid the ongoing judicial and legislative fight is that 83% of voters preferred cutting government spending to raising taxes.
Some 77% also supported a broad review of government spending. A massive 70% believe government spending is rife with waste and fraud and 69% support cutting spending by $1 trillion.
Sixty percent of voters said that DOGE is carrying out the need of the government to make significant cuts.”
Picking something trivial as proof of someone’s stupidity ain’t exactly a demonstration of intelligence.
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I don’t think summarily firing people who are in charge of nuclear weapons safety is trivial. And if you can’t get something as truly trivial as picking the picture of the candidate you’re trashing right, what does that say?
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What’s the precept of Americans that believe aliens are among us, or Democrats are a satanic pedophile cult? Just because most Americans (by this poll) think government spending is rife with waste and fraud doesn’t make it true. Note that there has been a decades long propaganda campaign to instill this belief in the public, and lo and behold, it’s never been proven that there’s widespread waste and fraud.
There are reasonable approaches to cutting spending. Haphazard gimmickry like these idiots are doing isn’t it.
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Our own Bill Proxmire contributed to this long-held perception with his “Golden Fleece Awards.”
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I just never understood all the complaining about paying taxes. I’m not rich, but I pay my taxes without complaint because I feel I get alot out of that money (roads, bridges, lights) and I want to help people less fortunate. I would like to see savings in places like health care and pharmaceuticals. Why in the world we pay more than the rest of the world and have worse outcomes does need to be addressed, but firing federal employees isn’t going to get to the bottom of that problem. In fact, it’s just going to create a bunch more problems.
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He wasn’t wrong, just impotent.
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