ELMO IS IN CHARGE

Yesterday, Dilbert effectively handed control of the U.S. government over to the world’s richest Unreconstructed Afrikaner Shithead. The executive order accomplishing this is titled, “Implementing The President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative.”

In it, Elmo’s Children’s Brigade of Teenage Mutant Basement Dwellers becomes effectively a force of Commissars in charge of operations. A “DOGE Team” will be sent to every governmental unit, where they will supervise operations, holding final approval authority for all decisions regarding hiring new personnel. I quote: “Hiring Approval. Each Agency Head shall develop a data-driven plan, in consultation with its DOGE Team Lead, to ensure new career appointment hires are in highest-need areas. This hiring plan shall include that new career appointment hiring decisions shall be made in consultation with the agency’s DOGE Team Lead, consistent with applicable law. The agency shall not fill any vacancies for career appointments that the DOGE Team Lead assesses should not be filled, unless the Agency Head determines the positions should be filled. Each DOGE Team Lead shall provide the United States DOGE Service (USDS) Administrator with a monthly hiring report for the agency. Within 240 days of the date of this order, the USDS Administrator shall submit a report to the President regarding implementation of this order, including a recommendation as to whether any of its provisions should be extended, modified, or terminated.”

At this point, all 43 previous Presidents no longer with us rolled over in their graves. On the Ninth Level of Hell, Richard Nixon was toasted by his fellow conspirators for finally losing his position as Greatest Threat to the Republic Ever.

And who might the United States DOGE Service (USDS) Administrator be? I am sure you will be unsurprised that it’s - wait for it... drumroll... Elmo!

The EO lays out a government downsizing plan in which only one new government employee can be hired for every four who leave service. It places creation and implementation of the overall plan for the downsizing in the hands of DOGE, which is to say, Elmo.

How he intends to run the government while planning and supervising the Mars Colonization Project is a question unanswered and likely unanswerable.

Did you notice that what has happened is exactly what the MAGAts predicted would happen in “Sleepy Joe’s” second term, when he was so incomptent an overseer would be placed in charge? Further proof that with these guys, It. Is. Always. Projection.

At least Julius Caesar had considerable experience in leading successful military campaigns and managing important government agencies before he launched his coup against the Roman Republic. In our case, we get the Teenage Mutant Antisocial Basement Dwellers, supported by the Confederacy of Illiterate Traitors. We can’t even get as high as a Confederacy of Dunces.

No, we get a takeover artist, who has never been “Chief Engineer” of anything, a conman who used his dodgy family’s dodgy fortune in dodgy Blood Diamonds and dodgier Conflict Gems to buy the companies he now leads, all of which were created by people who did know what they were doing (unlike him) and were then forced out so that he could claim the fame. His expertise lies in hiring people who make exploding rockets and cars that explode when they aren’t running into people and other objects in their failed “self driving” mode, and making all that seem really edgy, the perfect distillation of “Move Fast And Break Things.”

Welcome to the world of Stalin’s incompetent Commissars and Mao’s children’s brigades of Red Guards. Remind me again - how did those two major experiments in advancing humanity work out?

As Josh Marshall put it, “We’re in dystopian quasi-science fiction territory here.”

The cataract of corruption, exacerbated by the fact the people “approving” governmental actions have no understanding of what the agencies they are in control of actually do or what the purpose of government is, will become a flood.

So far, Dilbert has: fired the head of the Office of Government Ethics, who had just recently begun his five-year term; fired the head of the whistleblower-protecting Office of Special Counsel (who was at least temporarily reinstated by a federal judge); ended enforcement of the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the law banning bribery of foreign officials; fired a Biden-appointed member of the bipartisan Merit Systems Protection Board, the agency that ensures other agencies properly remove/discipline employees in accordance with due process protections; shut down the federal bribery case against NYC Mayor Eric Adams.

That last is very important, because it demonstrates how the corruption of all levels of government will be accomplished.

Adams was indicted was indicted in late September for allegedly doing favors for the Turkish government as payback for illegal campaign donations and travel perks. Monday night, Dilbert announced he had ordered the Department of (In)Justice to drop all charges in the case. That was followed by a directive from his former defense attorney, Emil Bove - now Deputy Attorney General - to the no-longer Sovereign District of New York US Attorney’s office, to drop all charges without reference to the ability to prosecute them successfully, two months before Adams was set to go to trial. The order claimed the indictment “restricted” Adams’ capacity to address “illegal immigration and violent crime.”

In return, the mayor called all his commissioners and department heads to a meeting where he told them no one will make disparaging remarks about Dilbert, and that all agencies will cooperate with the Dilbert Pogrom and do anything else required of them by Dilbert, who now has effective control of the city in America that hates him the most, having known him the longest. In return, he told the commissioners and agency heads they can trust that he will make sure the city doesn’t get federal grants pulled by Dilbert. Adams’ continued subservience is guaranteed by the final wording of the order, which leaves open the possibility he could be charged again if he doesn’t go along with the program.

Noah Schactman wrote about this in Rolling Stone: “The deal to spring Eric Adams caps a broad effort to functionally legalize bribery and covert foreign influence.”

Also, last week, in one of her first moves as Sttorney General, Pam Bondi guaranteed that federal investigations like the one that exposed the Russian $10 million subversion of right wing influencers during the 2024 election will no longer happen when she ordered prosecutors to dramatically scale back investigations of violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. If this policy had been in place earliers, Senator Bob Menendez would not have been charged for receiving all those gold bars in exchange for doing favors for the Egyptian government. Ditto the one involving Rep. Henry Cuellar who allegedly took $600,000 to covertly do the business of Azerbaijan.

Speaking of foreign influence, bear in mind that the majority of Elmo’s business affairs are now conducted in China with the approval of President Xi, and that he has met regularly with Vladimir Putin. As a private citizen, there are no enforceable rules demanding Elmo reveal what was said and agreed to in any of his meetings with foreign leaders who hold his economic future in their hands. Also that he is deeply involved in supporting right wing political parties in Europe.

There’s also the fact that Elmo’s new position has allowed him to get rid of federal aviation regulators who imposed constraints on SpaceX for safety violations, while his attacks on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which resulted in it being effectively shut down, while engaging in a plan with Visa to make his social platform X a major financial operation that now won’t have to worry about any investigations of illegal activity by the CFPB. That’s not to mentionan SEC lawsuit to force him to pay fines up to $150 million for having violated federal securities law. There’s also 11 federal agencies that have now had their operations restricted, that had more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions into Elmo’s companies, or the NLRB’s investigation of 24 violations of federal labor law resulting from his union-busting activities at Space-X and Tesla.

And all that is topped off by Karoline Leavitt stating last week, “If Elon Musk comes across a conflict of interest with the contracts and the funding that DOGE is overseeing, then Elon will excuse himself from those contracts.” The idea that Elmo gets to be the only businessman or government official in the country who can self-police his own conflicts of interest is as hilarious as the fact he will not be required to publicly file a financial disclosure form. Actually, it’s not very funny at all. But one can laugh at the idea Maladministration II was serious when they said all that. They don’t care if they are violating laws when they do all this, since they have no care or respect for the rule of law.

The fact Elmo is the richest man in the world also guarantees that it is he - not Dilbert - who is really in control (ownership) of the Republican Party; he can bankroll a primary challenge to any of the spineless blobs in the Senate and House - and any other office in any other level of government anywhere - from his couch change. This “power of the purse” guarantees their continued surrender of independent authority and their support for any move he makes.

As for Dilbert - now that he has surrendered the powers of office - expect to see him out on one or the other of his shitty duffing courses, busy hacking and duffing and cheating his fellow players, three days a week (at minimum) from here on. On the other days he’ll be performing for the hayseeds, “Making America Great Again.”

Rick Wilson described yesterday’s scene in the Oval Office perfectly: “A picture really does speak louder than words, and yesterday’s Oval Office briefing by President Elon Musk proved it in spades. There he was, in the most exclusive office in D.C., simultaneously manhandling the press while having one of his 11 spawn babysat by some poor subordinate. If Michelangelo were around, this tableau would be on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel - commissioned by a Medici who wanted to show off his power over the Pope.”

And if you go to the DOGE web page to check out all the listings of fraud and abuse the Teenage Mutant Ninja Antisocial Basement Dwellers have found, as Elmo told everyone to do yesterday, you find nothing there. Literally, a black page. Nothing.

As George Orwell wrote presciently 80-plus years ago, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

We have to stand against this, and to do that, you need the information you find here at That’s Another Fine Mess. Getting it is a full-time job on top of my other full-time job. Your support as a paid subscriber makes the work possible. It’s only $7/mnth or $70/year.

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