This headline would never have been approved by the NYTimes…
The Chaos Monkeys Have Already Taken Over the Zoo open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug…— Julia Coronado (@jc-econ.bsky.social) December 20, 2024 at 1:24 PM
Paul Krugman’s Substack is a font of inspiration:
… I have an embarrassing admission to make. I thought that Muskaswamy’s obvious problems with getting DOGE going would have inspired, not humility — never that — but at least a bit of caution. That is, I imagined that Musk would by now have at least an inkling of two things.
First, finding big-ticket examples of government waste is hard, because the government mostly spends money on things people want…
Second, you shouldn’t trust claims about the budget coming from Some Guy on the Internet. You might have imagined that the world’s richest man could have a couple of fact-checkers on retainer to help ensure that he isn’t making clearly stupid assertions. But nooo.
In a barrage of posts on X Musk pushed misinformation about a more or less routine, place-holding bill that was basically a way to keep the ship of state afloat until Trump takes charge. Maybe this was in part a power play, an attempt to make Republicans in Congress show fealty to a man who clearly imagines that he’s the real president — and Trump, by meekly endorsing Musk’s position, did in fact convey the impression that Musk is leading the guy who is supposed to be in charge by the nose. But this political theater will have real consequences, for America, for Trump, and for Musk himself…
Beyond the specifics, my guess is that antics like the potential shutdown will do much more damage to the Musk/Trump administration than they realize. (There’s also this other guy — JV Dance or something? — but he clearly doesn’t matter.)
First, since the election financial markets have clearly been betting that Trump will do very little of what he promised during the campaign — that we won’t really have a trade war, just some minor trade skirmishes, that we’ll have symbolic deportations rather than a mass roundup of immigrants, and so on. Markets have, in effect, discounted the disastrous consequences that would follow if Trump honored his own promises.
But a government shutdown in response to completely false claims about what’s in an innocuous short-term funding measure suggests that the peddlers of misinformation are high on their own supply. Trump may really believe that foreigners will pay tariffs, that U.S. trade deficits subsidize the rest of the world, that there’s a reserve army of American workers available to fill the gaps deportation would create. I don’t want to put too much weight on the latest market fluctuations, but it is starting to look as if investors are questioning their own complacency…
How will these voters react if, as seems all too likely, the second Trump administration is instead marked by rolling chaos?
Anyway, it’s pretty remarkable. Inauguration Day is still a month away, yet the chaos monkeys have already taken over.
I suspect this is mostly on Chief Chaos Monkey & reputed ketamine abuser Elon Musk. Forget the ‘Occupy Mars’ distraction, Elon’s spiritual t-shirt reads LOOKIT ME! I BREAK SHIT! Josh Marshall:
… Trump wanted congressional Republicans to arrange for him a smooth path to January 20th, and actually a bit past January 20th. (He didn’t want high-stakes crisis stuff waiting for him on day one.) And they did that. That was the plan. Then Elon Musk barged in and blew the whole thing up. Precisely why he did this or whether there was a particular reason isn’t even totally clear. Maybe it was just impulse or a desire to show who was calling the shots. Next, Trump and Johnson were forced to cobble together a clean-up plan because the government is about to run out of funds and shut down before Christmas. They did that and Trump demanded House Republicans vote for it. He was more explicit than he normally has to be about the repercussions for anyone who defied him. And then 38 of them defied him. And now the whole thing is dead in the water.
Did those 38 defy Elon Musk? I don’t think so. It doesn’t seem like he stated any real preference one way or another. He just blew things up and left.
In a way it’s very Trumpy. Musk’s the chaos agent. But it’s his chaos. Everyone has to react to him. Including Donald Trump.
Musk was born in South Africa, but in his heart he’s ‘English’ — a soutpiel. He’s always been able to avoid consequences by fleeing his latest homeland, like his Canadian Nazi grandparents before him, and he obviously expects to decamp to New Zealand or Monaco or Dubai or Mars if (when) things go badly for his current stint as Acting Pretend President. I keep thinking that it was a mad British oligarch who sparked the first American revolution…
War for Ukraine Day 1,032: Another Day Another Russian War Crime – Targeting the Oncology Hospital in Kherson
KatKapCC
A++ post title, Anne Laurie.
Jeffro
Hopefully the better snooze media columnists will follow Krugman’s lead. There are other markets out there, other ways to be heard.
Also, I’m glad that 38 Rs defied the orange moron. He IS a lame duck, after all. Maybe it’s starting to dawn on them?
Jamelle Bouie, from his newsletter:
tobie
Great post and the reference to soutpiel–a word I did not know before–was the chef’s kiss.
Jeffro
also, I see that Lara Trump is “removing her name for consideration” for the FL Senate appointment?
DeSantis ISN’T picking her?
Another strong sign that it’s dawning on the GOP: there will indeed be a day past trump
KatKapCC
@Jeffro: She wants to focus on her music career.
Har har.
MagdaInBlack
@KatKapCC: It’s perfect. ( and not just because I call them that)
RevRick
@tobie: “There was shrinkage!” George Costanza.
WaterGirl
Wow, new low. Tonight we got our first child porn spam attempt on Balloon Juice. Trump truly has unleashed and enabled the worst of the worst.
kalakal
@KatKapCC: A 21st Century Florence Foster Jenkins*
*In vocal talent if not in character
Nukular Biskits
Question for Anne:
Where the hell did you learn the word “soutpiel”? LOL!
I’m adding that one to my vocabulary.
kalakal
@WaterGirl: Ugh. Vile
tobie
@RevRick: Ha! The water in the Atlantic is cold, I hear. You and I must have had the same TV habits in the 1990s.
RevRick
@Jeffro: We has learning.
RevRick
@tobie: I grew up in Connecticut. Went swimming off Cape Cod, Maine, and, coldest of all, Jackson Lake in Grand Teton National Park. And yes, Festivus.
UncleEbeneezer
@RevRick: It’s hard to imagine anything colder than The Atlantic…until you try glacial water.
Bill Arnold
Just a note: Chaos Monkey became a thing in tech roughly 2010, thanks to Netflix. (It shortly became the Simian Army.)
Chaos Monkey is responsible for randomly terminating instances in production to ensure that engineers implement their services to be resilient to instance failures.
Where an “instance” is a virtual computer, and a new replacment one can be spun up easily.
Suzanne
Neighborhood Facebook pages are a cesspool. We had some unexpected snow this afternoon/early evening, and many of the roads are sheets of ice. After Mr. Suzanne watched three drivers lose control on our hill and slide to the bottom, I posted a warning about the street, and advised that others use alternates instead. Someone else responded that one of the alternates was also bad, so I — tongue somewhat in cheek — responded, “Okay, everyone stay home!”. A neighbor then seriously posted that they got stuck behind a driver doing a pizza delivery because someone was lazy and decided to stay home, and told me to shut up. Like, are we now thinking it’s prudent to drive on icy roads?
About a half hour after this exchange, another driver came down the hill and slid into a telephone pole.
Denali5
@Suzanne: But I thought you had a future in politics!
KatKapCC
@UncleEbeneezer: Ah, but at least in the summer the Atlantic can warm up a bit. The Pacific anywhere from the central coast of CA and northward remains frigid even during the hottest periods.
Spanky
@Suzanne: I miss Pittsburgh winters.
//
I had to negotiate Potomac Avenue when sent to pick up a couple of aunts (living separately) on winter Sundays.
Eta that was back in the 70s when winters were colder.
Jay
@Suzanne:
Teh stupid, it burns.
I guess they have never heard of the annual meeting of the Summer Tire Club.
Suzanne
@Denali5: I like most dogs more than I like most people.
I have negative zero aspirations to public office, LOL. Like, it actively sounds terrible.
Suzanne
@Spanky: If you’re talking about Potomac Avenue in Dormont, I live just a few blocks away. These hills are no joke, especially right now, covered in ice.
“Stay home and don’t drive on icy roads” is a controversial statement in the Year of Our Lord 2024, who knew.
Dan B
@Jeffro: There’s speculation that some dirt on Lara Trump would be revealed if she ran for Senator.
Barbara
@UncleEbeneezer: The Athabasca River flows north into the Arctic Ocean — my husband and daughter went rafting and swam in wetsuits and she still recalls it as the coldest she has ever been. Lake Superior is also pretty darned cold.
Barbara
@Suzanne: We knew at least 8 different ways to get home if we needed to avoid various hills. Know more than a few people including me who spun out of control going down a steep hill on icy roads — really scarier than going up a hill.
WTFGhost
I feel obligated to point out the individual pictured appears to be an ape, not a monkey – easy tell, monkeys have tails, apes don’t.
JaySinWA
Meanwhile in Texas, somebody decided to ask where is Kay Granger. She didn’t stand for re-election, but apparently checked out early.
Once chair of Appropriations, She announced she was stepping down in March.
With all the talk about how narrow the R House majority was, I don’t recall anyone noting her absence. Ditto with talk of old presidents and Democrats.
Her replacement will be coming in January 3, and the House is probably wound down for the year, but amazing how a member can be gone for 6 months without any real notice when every vote counted.
RevRick
@UncleEbeneezer: Jackson Lake is fed by snowmelt. I managed to get knee deep and my calf muscles started cramping.
geg6
@Suzanne:
I think everyone was caught off guard with the snow today. There were accidents all over the place here in Beaver County. All the weather reports had predicted only a dusting here and the real snow only in the ridges and more mountainous areas to the east. Bad call all around.
Dan B
@Suzanne: When Satby came to visit she was surprised that Seattle had so many hills. When it snows the city sorta shuts down. Since it doesn’t snow often, like once every other year, there are few snowplows. Our street is never plowed. Imagine if that happened in Pittsburgh.
BlueGuitarist
@JaySinWA:
member of Congress disappears for half a year and no one notices was not on my 2024 bingo card.
SiubhanDuinne
@JaySinWA:
Totally going by memory here, but I seem to recall that Kay Granger was the sole Representative (and I think also the only woman) in the otherwise all-Senate/all-male CoDel to Moscow a few years ago on the Fourth of July.
Suzanne
@Barbara: Same. I have mapped out which are the best ways to get around the neighborhood and how to access important stuff like the grocery store. But…. the best thing to do is not go anywhere unless it is a dire need!
It had been snowing for about ten minutes before someone made the first complaint that the snowplows hadn’t gotten to our neighborhood yet.
Suzanne
@Dan B: I think our snow removal is very reasonable. Honestly, the complaining is utterly disproportionate, IMO.
@Dan B: SuzMom grew up in Seattle and she talks about her elementary school being at the top of a huge hill, and having to walk up it every day. She was surprised by Pittsburgh, and all the “death stairs”.
MagdaInBlack
@Suzanne: Makes it easy to identify the trump voters. Always the first to bitch. (in my experience)
Martin
@UncleEbeneezer: The Atlantic is warm – pulls water up from the gulf. Try swimming in the Pacific – pulling water down from the arctic.
JaySinWA
and first to call for defunding the inadequate public service.
Jackie
Per RawStory TCFG is threatening war with Panama if they don’t give us back the Canal (for some reason I can’t link)
Am I missing something? Why is TCFG throwing a tantrum about the Panama Canal?
ETA The answer may lie in his (un)Truth Social link, but I ain’t clicking…
BlueGuitarist
@SiubhanDuinne:
Accurate memory!
RaflW
@JaySinWA: Oh, Ft. Worth. My college stomping grounds (and where at the tender age of 18 1/2 I realized I was definitely not a Republican). I was just looking at the map of Kay’s 12th District and of course White Settlement is pretty much square in the middle.
And yes, the name is in reference to white settlers – who displaced indigenous people in the area in the 1840s.
bbleh
One thing (among many) I like about Krugman is that he knows a LOT, which gives him the confidence both to keep his assertions within the bounds of his knowledge (vs. exaggerating or mostly speculating, as many do) and to minimize the use of (in his case mostly unnecessary) qualifiers and hedge-words.
I’m also happy he’s free of whatever explicit and implicit constraints The FNYT put on him. More like this, please!
@Jeffro: as to Senator Lara, the whole thing STINKS of Sour Grapes. “Oh I never wanted that!” Uh-huh, okay, well I guess we’re all agreed then.
BlueGuitarist
@Jackie:
other poo flinging monkeys are getting more attention, so more poo flinging?
Politico says “Trump accused Panama of charging U.S. vessels exorbitant rates to pass through the critical waterway.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/21/trump-panama-canal-00195820
Urza
@Jackie: The proper response from Panama would be that unlike him they actually follow and honor contracts and expect their partners to as well. And shouldn’t rate be posted? Probably something like tonnage or ship size or something that everyone pays the same.
dmsilev
@Jackie: I think large parts of his brain are stuck in the 1970s and 80s, and giving sovereignty of the canal to Panama was a political controversy back then.
RevRick
Annie Laurie has a great post, and I helped derail it. Sorry.
It all does suggest a shaky start to Trump, part deux. Elon big foots the guy he was pulling for with big bucks. Trump does a pathetic “it was my idea first”, and then adds a hare-brained idea to that one, forgetting that any deal will require a 2/3 majority in the House, and hence Democrats.
That guy thought he could boss around the GOP caucus, but even if he could, Democrats would never give him the carte blanche he was asking for. It didn’t even get a bare majority. Ouch. Not a good start.
I take this as a hopeful sign. I am convinced that That Guy is a God-damned fascist (and I am speaking theologically), but stepping on a rake even before assuming office has got to be the first in the annals of the Republic. Plenty of Presidents have stepped on rakes, but I can’t think of one who did so before taking the oath.
So, the thing he wanted to avoid above all else is the thing he will have to deal with less than two months in. Adopting a budget in March. And needing Democratic votes in the House won’t make it any easier.
John Revolta
@Jackie: ISTR Ivanka had a number of questionable real estate deals going down there
RevRick
@Martin: The Labrador current flows south to Cape Cod.
Another Scott
@WTFGhost: Well actually… (made me look):
NPR.org:
Macaque:
(Emphasis added.)
;-)
Life, and human naming of all the variations, is complicated!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Geminid
This morning’s Politico Playbook had a lot of reporting on last night’s vote. A section talked about what was cut out of the CR after Musk’s intervention. One item:
So veteran Democratic lawmaker Rosa DeLauro is blowing the whistle. Playbook describes the letter she released yesterday:
I’m not sure where DeLauro sent that letter, but when Musk saw it he snarled like a hit hyena:
I also ran into this story in Saudi-based Al Arabiya. They cover U.S. politics some, and Elon Musk always seems to be big news in the Middle East.
The Al Arabia story has a picture of Rep. Delauro addressing the House earlier this year. She’s still doing that thing with her hair where she colors a swath in front. It looked like a sapphire blue this time.
RevRick
@Geminid: A lot of his posts about DiLauro center around her appearance… and the posts are vile. And of course, he minions got in on the act, so he liked their posts.
Barbara
@Jackie: Does he plan to take back the new canal that the US neither owned nor built?
Another Scott
@Geminid: She’s ranking member on Appropriations. Sensible people with business with the US Government don’t often pick fights with such folks. But Melon thinks that such trifles don’t apply to him…
[ obligatory Jimmy Cliff song (3:12) ]
Best wishes,
Scott.
RevRick
The man who plowed his vehicle into the crowd at the Christkindlesmarkt in Magdeburg was a Saudi doctor who emigrated to Germany and renounced Islam. He became a big fan of AfD and, surprise, surprise, Elon Musk.
My grandfather grew up in Magdeburg and my great grandmother lived there until her death in 1944… during an allied bombing raid.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: I wish people realized how expensive snow removal is, and how many miles of roads there are in cities. I tell people here that they wouldn’t want to pay the taxes that would be required to plow all the roads the couple of times a winter it snows enough to need a plow. We couldn’t get to them all before it melted away!
KatKapCC
@Jackie: Throwing tantrums is his favorite hobby, aside from making money, taking other people’s money, thinking about money, and who fucking knows, maybe eating money.
mvr
@RevRick
@UncleEbeneezer: I remember diving into the Tillamook River one warm January day. When I did that I forgot how to breath.
Geminid
@RevRick: Musk has whole legions of “flying monkeys.” I saw Will Stancil get mobbed by them one time when he said something critical about Musk. All these males kept coming out of nowhere to pile insults upon the hapless Stancil. I actually felt sorry for the guy, which surprised me a little.
More seriously, I hope special measures are being taken to protect Rep. DeLauro. There are a lot of crazy people with guns out there and I expect some of them are Musk fans. He really has a wide following
BlueGuitarist
Timothy Snyder has a short post about calling
the government led by Musk & trump, w/rfk jr
“The Mump Regime”
”The rest of oligarchical cabinet will weaken government by law through incompetence, spite, or avarice. But RFK Jr. will break society by making us sick.”
https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-mump-regime
the hyperlink at “spite” goes back to Snyder’s earlier essay on the cabinet appointment announcements, “decapitation strike”
scav
At least Bowerick Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged had the intellectual oomph to insult the universe in alphabetical order. The muskpuppet convict is just randomly spewing insults and threats of becoming the 51st state. Are they all going to become the 51st? I think Alaska would be a little miffed at that.
Eta. Amend to Muskpuppet in Chief going forward?
mvr
@bbleh: Krugman was one of the first to call Bush the lesser a liar in a big newspaper in the early aughts. He, Doonesbury and this place, along with the Great Orange Satan kept me somewhat sane during that decade.
Urza
@RevRick: I really need someone to explain to me the non-whites who embrace racism as if they were white. I don’t know about Germany but do they not experience any racism to remind them why its wrong.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Geminid:
Anybody from any source piling on Stancil, aka 3rd rate Yglesias, isn’t a bad thing.
Soprano2
@Geminid: No kidding. I was listening to an episode of Bill Maher’s show; he talked about Musk as if he’s an engineering genius! I think a lot of people don’t realize Musk didn’t invent anything. He specializes in buying things other people created.
M31
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
lol ouch
Omnes Omnibus
@Urza: Someone is always ready to sell out for the right price.
Chetan Murthy
@Urza: I’d suggest that this is just endemic to the nature of caste systems. The dominant caste will induce a stratification of the castes beneath it, By causing those in lower castes to attempt to emulate the dominant caste In its Racism towards those beneath. What I mean is concretely, What I mean is, concretely, South Asians like me Behave in racist waysTowards black peopleAnd other non-whites As a way of trying to fit in with white people. And this repeats all over Society.
From what little I have read about this ex-Muslim Saudi doctor in Germany, he was a little off his rocker also.
MobiusKlein
@JaySinWA:
I imagine the folks who knew – the Rs – didn’t want anything to get in the way of the Biden Is Old message. If they admitted their house was out of order, it would have dulled it all.
And the Ds = dunno. Maybe 435 people is too many to manage counting?
Chetan Murthy
@MobiusKlein: my belief is the Democrats didn’t raise the issue because …. ” bipartisanship”. There’s no way that they would go for the throat, they’re just not built that way.
frosty
@UncleEbeneezer: Meh, the Atlantic off of Florida is a warm bath. Try the Pacific where the current comes down from Alaska.
@KatKapCC: Northern California? I was in Del Mar and San Diego at OB!!
Gretchen
@Barbara: My Cleveland-born mother complained bitterly about moving to Pittsburgh and « all those stupid hills » and watching my dad skid up and down them. She was relieved to move back to the Great Lakes states.
When I went to grad school in Chicago, I didn’t know what people new to the Midwest meant when they marveled « It’s so FLAT! » . The earth is supposed to be flat, isn’t it? I figured it out when we moved to Omaha, which also has those « stupid hills » and favors ice over rain or snow.
Jay
Hard to say if it’s nice or not nice,
Imagine that you don’t show up for work for 6 months, still get paid, that’s nice,
and either nobody notices, (says something about the quality of your work and the value of your position),
or the few people who do notice, don’t say anything, probably because they are just happy you are gone.
Martin
@Jackie: The ports there are run by a Hong Kong company. This is likely related to China’s Peru port expansion and their general move to run/influence ports around the world. From what I understand China is only a major investor in about a dozen of them, but the US relies on friendly ports of call around the world and has valid interest to ensure that China (or Russia, etc.) don’t have undue influence.
This is just performative outrage so people think he’s tough. Biden would have expressed concerns through diplomatic channels rather than give the public impression he’s a lunatic.
Chris T.
@mvr:
There’s a physical reaction to being dropped into very cold water, wherein your heart races and you involuntarily gasp for air. You can train to control it to some degree but it’s just a natural reaction (that kills people!). See details in wikipedia.
TBone
@RevRick: that’s a very personal connection. I’m very sorry that you are subjected to this heinous, vile phenom in such a personal way. I can barely stand it and can’t imagine how I’d deal with it right now if I were in your shoes. Prolly, I would spontaneously combust from impotent rage. I’m almost there already.
rikyrah
@WaterGirl:
👀👀👀😲😲😲
Betty
@Suzanne: No matter where you go, there is always one jackass who shows up.
Betty
@KatKapCC: Speaking of eating money, how about the Jeff Bezos $600,000 wedding? Such an obscenity!
BellyCat
Stealing that band name.
(BTW: Superior Court accepted the appeal!)
WereBear
@Suzanne: Of course. Who hasn’t played cupboard roulette?
Baud
@Betty:
The claim is $600 million, not $600 thousand.
$600,000 is pretty reasonable for someone of his ilk.
Professor Bigfoot
@Chetan Murthy: It’s this.
Most people don’t understand that neither the Italians nor the Irish were considered “white” during their immigration waves.
They BECAME why by seizing on anti-Blackness.
This is why we have the stereotypes of the “beefy Irish beat cop” and the “wily Italian detective.” American police culture was born in antebellum slave patrols and is carried in police union halls today; and the best way to show your anti-Blackness is to become a cop.
Note also that today, the two “white” ethnicities most antithetical to Black people are Italian and Irish.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
I ♥️ Colombo.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: I usually think of Frank Furillo, “Pizza Man.”
(I think you and I are both old enough to remember Captain Furillo… ;)
pluky
@Another Scott: Taxonomy, cladistics, and phylogenetics, oh my!
Another Scott
@Jay: Every roll call vote in the House is recorded and one can easily find out who voted and who didn’t.
E.g. GovTrack.us117th Congress :
There’s nothing in the Constitution that says Representatives have to be there and vote. It’s up to their constituents to demand effective representation.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
mvr
@Chris T.: Thanks for the link. So what I had was the “diving reflex” as they call it. Cold water on the face makes one hold one’s breath.
cmorenc
@dmsilev:
Not just Trump, but the whole MAGA movement is about nostalgia for a hazy synthesis of the 1980s Reagan Presidency and the glory glow of victorious post-WW2 1950s USA, before uppity people began disrupting Pleasantville with subversive avant-garde activities.
Miss Bianca
@BlueGuitarist: Hey, Snyder likes “Mump” as a moniker for the Musk/Trump regime! *preens self’s feather’s smugly*.
ETA: Although I thought O2 had a fair point when he said that mumps, as a perfectly respectable disease, might well feel insulted.