How did Musk get so rich, anyway?

The Feds lavished money on him.

Over the years, Musk and his businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits, often at critical moments, a Washington Post analysis has found, helping seed the growth that has made him the world’s richest person.

The payments stretch back more than 20 years. Shortly after becoming CEO of a cash-strapped Tesla in 2008, Musk fought hard to secure a low-interest loan from the Energy Department, according to two people directly involved with the process,holding daily briefings with company executives about the paperwork and spending hours with a government loan officer.

…

DOGE, which stands for Department of

Erm…whose tits are those?

Every 63 year woman I know goes on chat shows dressed like this. pic.twitter.com/jmRDfH8PIA

— Gay Not Queer (@Gaynotqueer1) February 24, 2025

He looks as if the tits are anchors pulling him forward, so that he can’t for the life of him stand up straight. He’s tilted awkwardly forward, and struggling not to topple. His shoulders are hunched, his arms look as if they don’t belong to him, it’s obvious his bum is sticking out, the skirt is wrinkled, his legs and feet look even more as if they don’t belong to him. The bangs are ridiculous. The jacket is too tight, and wrinkled like the skirt. The nail polish looks stupid and ugly. The lipstick … Read the rest

BBC “LGBT & Identity Reporter” reports:

An American who wanted to be formally recognised as non-binary in the UK has been told by the Court of Appeal their gender identity does not legally exist in this country.

So much drivel in that one sentence. What is it to be “formally recognized”? What is “non-binary”? What is genner idenniny? What kind of damn fool goes to court to demand to be “recognized” as something nonsensical?

The Beeb includes a winsome photo of him. Wannabe winsome anyway. Pronounced head tilt, so that we’ll perceive his Special Idenniny instantly. He has head-tilt genner, aka broken neck genner.

Ryan Castellucci previously lost a High Court challenge to have their gender recorded as non-binary

Nope.

More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”

“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”

The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or

Trump regime people are quarreling over who can be most absurd.

Donald Trump has stepped in to defend Elon Musk from a mounting backlash in his own administration after some cabinet members told US federal workers to ignore the billionaire entrepreneur’s demand that they write an email justifying their work.

…

Newly confirmed cabinet officials, including the FBI director, Kash Patel, and Tulsi Gabbard, the national intelligence director, told underlings not to comply with a weekend order from Musk for all staff to send an email detailing their past week’s work by midnight on Monday or face termination.

Uh oh uh oh – if underlings can just disobey Musk then what’s next?

With his wealthiest and most high-profile lieutenant threatened

Never mind, at least Russia is happy. (Same article; part 2.)

Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, acknowledged what he said were “constructive changes” in the US position on the conflict. US allies in Europe on the 15-member council – France, Britain, Denmark, Greece and Slovenia – abstained from the vote.

Ya “constructive changes” to side with Russia instead of Ukraine and most of Europe.

The UK’s ambassador to the UN, Barbara Woodward, said after the vote that while London shared the “ambition to find a lasting end to this war”, there should be “no equivalence between Russia and Ukraine in how this council refers to this war”.

She added the UK regretted “our proposals making these points clear were

Yeah sometimes you don’t want “balance.” Some things are worse than other things, and there’s no need to take a more “balanced” view of the matter.

Kremlin welcomes ‘more balanced’ US stance on Ukraine after UN vote

Or to put it more honestly, Kremlin welcomes pro-Kremlin stance on Ukraine after UN vote. What the invaders call “balance” is in fact pro-invasion. No doubt the Nazis would have welcomed a more “balanced” stance on genocide; no doubt slaveowners in Georgia and Alabama would have welcome a more “balanced” stance on enslavement.

Moscow praises Washington for siding with it at UN, as European countries abstain in sign of deepening rift with US.

Good Washington [pat pat pat] Good boy [pat pat pat]… Read the rest

Well, they’re getting one thing right. Only one, but it’s That one.

Stonewall could be forced to cut up to half of its staff after President Trump’s decision to freeze foreign aid, The Times understands. Workers at the LGBTQ+ charity were told on Thursday that restructuring would take place, and that only roles with dedicated funding would be safe.

Simon Blake, the chief executive of Stonewall, made the announcement in an office-wide Teams call, which was said to have left its 114 staff “shellshocked”.

Sources said they believed up to half of the workforce could be made redundant in the move, which they were told would “secure the future of Stonewall for the long term as a significant LGBTQ+

There aren’t enough planks in the world to measure how thick Ash Sarkar is.

Feeling like a queen this morning ngl pic.twitter.com/zujEOnt44G

— Venice Allan (@roseveniceallan) February 23, 2025

And I’ll tell you the sort of classic example of this, which I’ll go into some detail, you know that whole can a woman have a penis thing. [compliant host says yes] Right [hands up in dramatic gesture] fuuuucckkkin hell, can a woman have a penis – overnight it became theeeee preferred line of questioning for basically every political interviewer on British television – and I wondered where had this come from – like where had this line of questioning emerged from.

Golly gee, yes, where on earth could such a … Read the rest

The scorching shame of it.

The United States voted with Russia, North Korea, Belarus and 14 other Moscow-friendly countries Monday on a resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine and calling for its occupied territory to be returned that passed overwhelmingly in the U.N. General Assembly.

The stench will never go away.

The U.S. delegation also abstained on its own separate resolution that called simply for a negotiated end to the war after European-sponsored amendments inserting new anti-Russian language also passed the 193-member body by a wide margin.

No anti-Russian language for us, no sirree. We love our Vlad.

… Read the rest

Mike Bendzela asks:

I’m toying with a semi-autobiographical piece that I would like to publish at 3 Quarks Daily. It’s a “what-if” look at a kinda-effeminate boy (me) who grew up in the 1960s and what would happen if he were transplanted into the present with its trans mania: Would he be allowed to grow up to be a normal gay male adult?

I suspect many of these young “trans girls” are effeminate gay boys so full of internalized homophobia that they would do anything (with the support of parents and churches, of course) to avoid the dreaded fate of growing up to be gay.

I’m wondering if there are any clear, citable instances of young gay boys who were … Read the rest

Doc Stock is on fire here:

When a doctor announces to colleagues that he wishes henceforth to be known as the opposite sex, it seems he is offered a new GMC number to go with the new name and pronouns, wiping out his past. Wes Streeting has raised concerns that this could be hiding the adverse findings of any previous disciplinaries from the public, supposed to be traceable via the same number.

In other words that’s part of the purpose of the GMC number, so it should be obvious that it should stay the same throughout a doctor’s career regardless of adjectival changes.

The health secretary’s point about safeguarding is so blindingly obvious you’d think it might have been

I was going to run with this but then I paused. It could be fake. I think it might be fake. It’s just that little bit too much.

It’s that very last bit that overdoes it. Asking them to limit their own concerns to one day out of three or four a week so that he can feel happy is just that little bit too much. Just that little bit too Wally Smith, if you remember him.… Read the rest

USAID still being wiped off the map.

The Trump administration said Sunday that it was placing all but a fraction of staffers at the U.S. Agency for International Development on leave worldwide and eliminating at least 1,600 U.S.-based jobs.

The move was the latest and one of the biggest steps yet toward what President Donald Trump and cost-cutting ally Elon Musk say is their goal of gutting the six-decade-old aid and development agency in a broader campaign to slash the size of the federal government.

The move comes after a federal judge on Friday allowed the administration to move forward with its plan to pull thousands of USAID staffers off the job in the United States and around

How lucky for Musk that he just happens to be in a position to fire federal employees at will.

Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team is eliminating jobs at the vehicle safety agency that oversees his Tesla Inc., regulates the autonomous vehicles he says represents its future and has launched investigations into deadly crashes involving the Texas-based company’s cars.

Deadly crashes are the price we pay for other people having dangerous cars. Aren’t we lucky?

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has cut a “modest” amount of positions at the agency, which is tasked with ensuring safety on U.S. roads, it said in a statement Saturday.

The loss of three of the seven members of the specialized unit overseeing autonomous vehicles

It turns out Trump doesn’t actually have the power to do what he’s doing. It looks as if nobody’s going to stop him all the same. I have to wonder why there are no enforcement mechanisms built in to all these rules and limits.

President Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday that seeks greater authority over regulatory agencies that Congress established as independent from direct White House control, part of a broader bid to centralize a president’s power over the government.

If Congress established the regulatory agencies as independent from direct White House control then Trump should be unable to get greater authority over them. Why are there no guardrails?

The order requires independent agencies to submit their proposed

Oh come ON.

How trans rights took over Scottish politics — and aren’t going away

Henceforth, no medical diagnosis would be needed and a person would be required to “live in” their acquired identity for only three months before becoming eligible for a GRC. The age at which such certificates could be gained would also be lowered to 16. In effect, a person could “self-identify” as a man or a woman as they saw fit and the system, the nuts and bolts of officialdom, would accept this as a manifestation of their true selves. The proposals would “make the lives of trans people in this country that little bit better and easier”, Sturgeon said, “and I think that is something

Crude boy asks crude question, makes crude threat.

Elon Musk said Saturday that federal employees must detail their accomplishments at work or risk losing their jobs, the latest move by the Trump administration to overhaul the government that prompted confusion among the workforce.

“Consistent with President [Trump’s] instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” Musk posted on X.

The email created confusion across the federal government. One senior government official said some federal employees started checking with their own legal advisers about how best to respond. One Justice Department official sent out an email asking their staff members to

Twitter summary:

Maine Governor Defies Trump on Transgender Sports Ban

Last updated 21 minutes ago

Maine Governor Janet Mills has publicly opposed an executive order by President Donald Trump that aims to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports. The dispute escalated after Governor Mills challenged Trump’s threat to cut federal funding to Maine, leading to a commitment to legal action. This confrontation has sparked a broader conversation on transgender rights in sports, highlighted by social media reactions from various figures, including a notable appearance of Mills at a drag show in Portland, which has stirred both support and criticism.

This story is a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time. Grok can make mistakes, verify its

Adam Serwer in the Atlantic:

Much of the chaos, lawlessness, and destruction of the past few weeks can be understood as part of the administration’s central ideological project: restoring America’s traditional hierarchies of race and gender. Call it the “Great Resegregation.”

Since taking office, Trump has rescinded decades-old orders ensuring equal opportunity in government contracts and vowed to purge DEI from the federal government, intending to lay off any federal worker whose job they associate with DEI. Yesterday evening, Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q Brown, and replaced him with a lower ranking white official, a retired three-star Air Force officer named Dan Caine. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had previously