I love his reaction here




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...is having the last laugh.

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I'm not opposed to having a Department of Government Efficiency. Nor am I adamantly opposed to the idea that Musk and Ramaswamy might run it. They wouldn't be my top choices, but I might very well invite their input.

What very much does concern me is that this exercise - with the stated, non-trivial aim of cutting $2 trillion - is NOT a government agency. Rather, it's yet another exercise in privatizing legitimate government activities and bypassing Congress.

It's an open door to corruption and a direct attack on democracy.

If Trump wants to do this, or if those who claim to be fiscal conservatives in Congress want to do this, then create the agency and let's make sure the people running it go through a tough vetting process.

I think one of the most disappointing things

Germany’s government on Monday accused Elon Musk of trying to influence the country’s upcoming election, set for February, after he wrote an opinion piece for a German newspaper over the weekend doubling down on his support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

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“It is indeed the case that Elon Musk is trying to influence the federal election,” deputy government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann told reporters, in reference to Musk’s posts backing the AfD on X, the social media site he owns, as well as the opinion piece.

Musk expressed his support for the AfD earlier this month, writing on X that “Only the AfD can save Germany” — an assertion dismissed by the country’s leader, Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Musk’s German-language op-ed, published online Saturday by Welt am Sonntag, prompted the resignation of the newspaper’s opinion editor in protest.



In it, Musk wrote that the AfD was the “last spark of hope for this country” and praised the populist party’s approach to regulation, taxes and market deregulation. His article ran just eight weeks before Germany’s early election, set for Feb. 23 following the collapse of the country’s coalition government in early November.
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Musk — an acolyte and confidant of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has appointed the tech billionaire to lead a new commission focused on government efficiency — was free to express his opinion, Hoffmann said in comments to reporters Monday. “After all, freedom of opinion also covers the greatest nonsense,” she said.
The AfD has soared in popularity since its founding in 2013, largely due to its anti-migration and antiestablishment stance. The party has been designated by Germany’s domestic intelligence service as a “suspected extremist” organization, while its regional branches in three of Germany’s 16 states are classified as “confirmed right-wing extremist.”

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Polls this month show the AfD in second position behind the conservative alliance of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU), at around 20 percent and 31 percent respectively, but all Germany’s political parties have ruled out forming a coalition with the AfD.
In the opinion piece, Musk argued that his “significant investments” in Germany, namely Tesla’s first “gigafactory” in Europe, allow him to speak out about Europe’s largest economy — and he also questioned the AfD’s “far-right” label.
“Portraying the AfD as far-right is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Come on!” Musk wrote.

Friedrich Merz — the chancellor candidate for the CDU/CSU alliance, who is widely expected to become Germany’s next leader — criticized the op-ed as “intrusive and presumptuous.”

“I cannot recall, in the history of Western democracies, that there has been a comparable case of interference in the electoral campaign of a friendly country,” Merz told the Funke media group Sunday.
Lars Klingbeil, the leader of Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) party, compared Musk to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Both want to influence our elections and are deliberately supporting the AfD, the enemies of democracy. They want Germany to be weakened and plunge into chaos,” he said, according to Funke reports.

The accusations of election interference come on the heels of warnings from Germany’s domestic intelligence services, which last month said other states could attempt to influence the February election by means of disinformation, cyberattacks, espionage and sabotage. Cyberattacks by Russia pose a particular threat, officials said.

Musk’s article ignited discord even within Welt’s editorial office, with opinion editor Eva Marie Kogel resigning in protest.
“Today an article by Elon Musk appeared in Welt am Sonntag. I handed in my resignation yesterday after the article went to print,” she wrote on X.
Since acquiring the platform formerly known as Twitter in 2022, Musk has increasingly used it to promote his right-wing political views to his more than 200 million followers. During and since the 2024 U.S. presidential election, he has used X to align himself with Trump’s positions on crime, immigration and the economy.
Musk has also used X to express support for some of the most prominent and polarizing figures of the right. He often posts about his support for Argentine President Javier Milei and was invited to a live online appearance with former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.

Truth slowly coming out.

He should resign today.


“Dr. Kevin Cannard, a Parkinson’s disease expert at Walter Reed Medical Center, met with Dr. Kevin O’Connor, and two others at the White House residence clinic on Jan. 17, according to the records, which emerge as questions continue to swirl about the 81-year-old president’s mental health in the wake of his debate debacle last week with former President Trump.

Dr. John E. Atwood, a cardiologist are Walter Reed, was also in the 5 P.M. meeting, the White House visitor logs show.“

It is bad enough that virtually every Senate Republican remains mute in the face of President-elect Donald Trump’s gusher of threats (most prominently, to prosecute opponents), lies (good for Time magazine to fact check its Person of the Year!) and absurdly unfit nominees. Unsurprisingly, docile Republicans raise no fuss over the conflicts of interest and self-dealing already evident in the transition. But that is not the worst of it.


Frankly, far too many Democrats have been overly solicitous of the incoming Trump team. Consider Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) praising vaccine conspiracist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In addition, a batch of them are embracing Trump’s proposed “Department of Government Efficiency” run by his billionaire cronies. While platitudes from Democrats about finding “common ground” may draw praise in some quarters, normalization of Trump’s personnel and agenda is as premature as it is unwise. Why not wait to see what he does? Why sustain the fiction that a president bent on tearing down government institutions and spreading conspiracies is an ordinary president?
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Most problematic to me are the troubling decisions of legacy media owners. We saw the pattern starting with The Post’s and the Los Angeles Times’s refusal to endorse a presidential candidate, followed by MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski’s trek to Mar-a-Lago and then the spectacle of legacy and new media owners (including Post owner Jeff Bezos) kicking in $1 million each for the Trump inauguration. The widely panned ABC News defamation settlement might have been the worst instance of capitulation in the history of major defamation litigation. (In a whole other category of awful: the new, patently absurd L.A. Times “bias meter,” a sort of trigger warning for readers who cannot figure out which way a Times opinion columnist leans, and the constant owner-meddling.)
Decisions like these don’t mollify Trump; they invite further abuse. (Sure enough, Trump is now threatening to sue the Des Moines Register over a poll he didn’t like.) Media owners paying cold, hard cash to an incoming president (whether by settlement or donation) mars their organizations’ independence and gives rise to suspicion that those outlets will pull their punches. The last thing news organizations should do is give the appearance of “pay to play.”


I can do no better in reaffirming journalistic standards that seem quaint these days than to reiterate The Post’s own “Seven Principles for the Conduct of a Newspaper,” published by Post owner Eugene Meyer in 1935:

The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained.
The newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it, concerning the important affairs of America and the world.
As a disseminator of the news, the paper shall observe the decencies that are obligatory upon a private gentleman.
What it prints shall be fit reading for the young as well as for the old.
The newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.
In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public good.
The newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs and public men.

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If a news organization offers up financial tribute or shies from endorsing an opponent, readers and viewers have every right to question its impartiality, aggressiveness and spine.
The sort of behavior we have witnessed from many legacy outlets will not help win back audiences who have lost faith in them. (Progressives are horrified; right-wingers will never patronize them.) Maintaining financial and personal distance from the president, whom news organizations are obligated to investigate and hold accountable, should not be difficult.

If people in positions of public trust, whether in elected office or in media, do not demonstrate — in deed and word — sufficient courage, fidelity to democracy and resistance to authoritarian manipulation, we will tip into a kakistocracy without much of a fight. Sadly, the past few weeks have not been encouraging.

Just spent 10 minutes on line and did all the wife's Christmas shopping, I may not like a lot of things about the era we're currently in but not having to go out to stores to shop anymore is wonderful! csb/

USA Rugby's bronze medalist and social media star, Ilhona Maher. Rugby is really having its moment in the US. Kind of the polar opposite of the flabby girl last time. Yay or nay?

This article is something that I have been saying would occur for the last 4 years. The issue you have is such a large contingent of republicans and the population that are 100% behind Trump. However the brand will never appeal to large mass group and will always tend to shy away from the moderates. Thus just like the election 4 years ago, and the midterms 2 years ago, Republicans will likely underperform again. However to get Trump out of the party will be extremely costly, because we know he will not go quietly.