Chaos Monkeys

We've become the United States of Havoc

The Right have been squawking about reducing the size of the Federal government for decades ("I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.")

For the last 11 days, the chaos monkeys in the White House have been attempting to do just that — Twitter style.

Grandpa gets the headlines for abruptly freezing all discretionary Federal spending and illegally firing Inspector Generals and other officials who are tasked with making government run smoothly (and rooting out corruption). And just to torture the country a little more, most of these moves have been occurring in the middle of the night.

Meanwhile, the wealthiest man in the world is spamming rank and file Federal employees with threatening emails and ultimatums, all designed to make them want to quit before they are fired.

The problem is: the Federal government is not a business. It cannot be run like one, and we certainly shouldn't be using Xitter as a model. Radically reducing the government workforce can have deadly consequences.

We're not saying that inducing the head of the FAA to resign on January 20, withholding funds, and harassing the rest of the workforce is the reason for Wednesday's deadly midair collision at National Airport -- but it can't have helped. And blaming the disaster on Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and DEI policies is almost too stupid even for MAGA.

Karoli, Aliza, and I tried to tackle a little of this week's chaos, which included Washington's newest reality show, "Are You Incompetent Enough to Be In Trump's Cabinet?" And a discussion on whether the loyal opposition is putting up enough of a fight (they started to show some life this week - but is it enough?)

Aliza was in the minority on this one, but will have more to say about it next week.

Listen to the audio version of the podcast here:

Updates to the News Resources List

Michael de Adder cartoon about Jim Acosta’s CNN departure

Our media continues to fail us by obeying in advance. This week, CNN management dared Jim Acosta to quit by moving his show to a graveyard shift (even though he was getting the best ratings on their schedule). Acosta promptly launched his own newsletter on Substack. It’s new - but we expect good things from him.

Elon Musk is not just the world’s wealthiest individual - he’s proving to be the most dangerous, too. Judd Legum of Popular Information has added a new publication to his stable: Musk Watch - written by Caleb Ecarma - is dedicated to keeping tabs on Elon, his businesses, and his machinations around the globe.

We also added a new section on political messaging. I know I need to learn a lot more about this. I figure I’m not alone.

One Last Thing

The Gulf of America: The empty space between Trump’s Ears

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