Elon Musk said DOGE made a mistake by cutting USAID’s Ebola prevention but it had been “restored.”
That’s not true, current and former officials told me and @johnphudson.bsky.social.
“There have been no efforts to ‘turn on’” Ebola prevention, said Nidhi Bouri, who oversaw team until January.— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond.bsky.social) February 26, 2025 at 6:41 PM
Who are you gonna believe, every responsible expert, or God-Emperor Musk? Per the Washington Post, “Musk says DOGE ‘restored’ Ebola prevention effort. Officials say that’s not true”: [gift link]
… Hours after Musk asserted that USAID had restored its Ebola prevention efforts, the agency informed several organizations working with the U.S. government to prevent the spread of the virus overseas that their contracts had been terminated, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation. The organizations — which included UNICEF, which had been working with USAID on Ebola prevention in Uganda and other countries — were among thousands of organizations affected by the Trump administration’s move to cancel foreign-assistance contracts on Wednesday…
Last month’s Ebola outbreak has now receded, but some former U.S. officials say that’s in part because of past investments in prevention efforts that helped position Uganda to respond — and that other countries remain far more vulnerable.
Bouri said her former USAID team of 60 people working on disease-response had been cut to about six staffers as of earlier this week. She called the recent USAID response to Uganda’s Ebola outbreak a “one-off,” far diminished from “the full suite” of activities that the agency historically would mount, such as ramping up efforts to monitor whether the disease had spread to neighboring countries…
The good news — don’t panic (yet) — the latest outbreak in Uganda is under control, and it doesn’t seem to have spread beyond the original cluster. On the other hand:
So – I've actually led Ebola outbreak response at @USAID.
This is bunk from Elon. They have laid off most of the experts, they're bankrupting most of the partner orgs, have withdrawn from WHO, and muzzled CDC.
What's left is a fig-leaf effort to cover their asses politically. https://t.co/496aRBXYnM
— Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social (@JeremyKonyndyk) February 26, 2025
I led USAID's response to the 2014-15 outbreak in West Africa.
Also went to Congo with WHO to assess response at peak of the 2019 outbreak (under Trump 1).
Those were both robust USG ops.
That capacity has now been wrecked.https://t.co/dsDhOZiUBT pic.twitter.com/rkV4O8GVMj
— Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social (@JeremyKonyndyk) February 26, 2025
Normally there would be:
– resources rapidly pushed to partners & host govt
– robust interagency (USAID/CDC/DOD) teams deployed to field, backstopped by Ops Centers in DC and Atlanta
– real-time operational cooperation and info-sharing with WHOBut not this time.
Some limited resources have gone to partners, but things that would normally move in hours or days took weeks this time.
And meanwhile the huge wave of global program cancellations today (in violation of a court order) is crippling partner orgs’ response capacity.
Most experts and operations staff at USAID have been pushed out.
USAID’s ops centers have been shut down (the main ops centers were in USAID’s Reagan Building HQ, which Elon has now leased to DHS).
USAID’s capacity to deploy response teams is totally broken.
…even as WHO is the lead on int'l support to the Ugandan govt.
WHO is really good at this – in large part because of USG investments in their emergency capacity over the past decade.
But Trump has withdrawn the US from WHO and cut off support. https://t.co/59qpZpz9EP pic.twitter.com/nVRX2dtXah
— Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social (@JeremyKonyndyk) February 26, 2025
Bottom line: Elon's vendetta against USAID and the federal workforce is shredding all of the systems that the USG has built up to protect the US homeland against global outbreak risks.
Scrambling to recall a few staff and issue some belated funding is just window dressing.
/end— Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social (@JeremyKonyndyk) February 26, 2025
Remember in 2014 when Obama handled an Ebola outbreak responsibly and Republicans said that the opposite was true and the MSM were an echo chamber for their lies and when Dems protested journalists said they were just doing their jobs? Hmm, interesting.
bsky.app/profile/news…— 40% Chickpeas (@chickpea7.bsky.social) February 26, 2025 at 3:36 PM
If you read the replies to Mr. Konyndyk’s thread [which I do not recommend]: Africa’s a long way away. Those people aren’t, y’know, like us. Why should *we* be responsible for the whole world’s healthcare?…
That mf stood in that meeting and announced an “oopsie” regarding Ebola prevention and the mfs in that room giggled about it. Know why? They see Ebola as a Black disease and didn’t really see it as a grave mistake.
— MrsBundrige (@mrsbundrige.bsky.social) February 27, 2025 at 3:23 PM
TS
The drama from the GOP when President Obama was in office & one ebola case was found in the US
How their stupidity does change from one time to another
SiubhanDuinne
@TS:
And yet they remain eternally stupid.
Phylllis
@TS: Yep. That 40% Chickpeas post is right on the money. I remember the local & national news was literally ‘all Ebola all the time’ over one case in the US in the run-up to the midterm elections. Literally the day after the elections, not one word about Ebola.
Shalimar
It sucks that they’re so bad at disease prevention, but it’s also terrible that our resident business genius is really horrible managing budgets too. People will die, and we will also as a bonus spend 100 times more trying to save them than it would have cost for prevention now.
Shalimar
Also, too, for the millionth time in the last 5 weeks, if Russia or China wanted to design a program for destroying the United States and you gave them total control of the government for 90 days, they wouldn’t have even tried anything as effective as what Elon Musk has managed to do. He really is a genius at fucking things up.
scav
Funny thing with the real world as compared with computers. You break things, you can’t just roll back.
Asparagus Aspersions
I live in Europe and work in the international sector, so I am surrounded by people who are absolutely flabbergasted/shocked/horrified by what the US represents only month into this maldadministration. It is very, very different from the first time around.
I’ve been calling my mostly-useless Republican congressman’s office weekly (to his credit, a staffer has answered the phone every time I’ve called) and I’ve left voicemails with my Democratic senators. Yesterday, for the first time, I reached a staffer in one of my Dem senator’s offices. I told her I wanted to offer the perspective of an overseas voter. I said that despite everything, up until now the US has been considered a country that stands by its commitments, regardless of who is in office. And even in T’s first term, we were not considered a totally unreliable ally, just one that had to be “handled”.
It’s completely different now. Every year my sector has received US government grants. We spend the money, and then receive the payment. It’s never been a problem, because this is money that has already been appropriated. Now we can’t rely on the US to pay the money that it’s already awarded us. Obviously, there will be no new money coming but more importantly, we’ve budgeted for projects (environmental, social, educational) that will be scaled back at best, and canceled at worst. My friend’s non-profit was awarded a huge USAID grant last year for women’s education in a number of African countries. Everything was put into place and then, poof, from one day to the next, nothing. A year’s work down the drain, not to mention the employees who lost their jobs and the women who won’t get the schooling they were counting on.
Anyway, I told the Senate staffer that I have been sitting in meetings for the last month where people discuss how US can’t be relied on to pay its commitments, how it can no longer be considered stable, nor can it be considered friendly, or even neutral. The view from over here is basically that the US is an out-of-control autocracy somewhere between Hungary and Russia.
This is heartbreaking. I’ve lived in France for close to 20 years. Being American is a huge part of my identity. For me, living in another country really threw into relief what I appreciated about my home country, at the same time that I absorbed the culture and perspectives of my new country. As I mentioned, my workplace is extremely international. Of course, everyone is very shaken by what’s happening in the US, but the Americans are not only shaken, we are sad. Angry, and also grieving, as we’ve watched in real time the shift in people’s attitudes as they go from surprise and disbelief to fear and disdain with regards to the US.
The staffer and I had a fairly lengthy conversation. She thanked me for offering my view from abroad, took took my number, asked me a few questions, and encouraged me to keep calling. It was heartening to speak with her.
Then I called my Republic congressman’s office and had my normal conversation with John the 22-year old staffer. He promised to pass on my concerns, as he does every week. John doesn’t care how the rest of the world sees us, so I didn’t bother hammering that home, I just emphasized how much damage this administration was doing to the district’s constituents.
eclare
Whee! Measles, ebola, Bobby Brainworm must be so happy.
Maybe ask his birds of prey what to do? Supplements?
eclare
@Asparagus Aspersions:
Thank you for your perspective. That is so depressing.
JoyceH
I figured all along that we’d have at least one pandemic during Trump’s term, but geez, we could easily have several running at once this time. A person in Louisiana is hospitalized with bird flu, and nobody from the US is over in Africa studying this new and unidentified hemorrhagic fever. Some of the known hemorrhagic fevers have a fatality rate of fifty percent and they’re all highly contagious. And speaking of highly contagious, the measles isn’t through with us yet either. Wondering if I should just quarantine in place until 2029.
Princess
@TS: The news media aren’t stupid. They and their owners know exactly what they are doing.
in other news, someone in the previous thread noted that the annual US meeting to set the flu strain cocktail for next year’s flu vaccine has been cancelled. It needs six month’s of production time. So either a) the US copies some other country or b) no flu vaccine in the US next year. I think some people with a lot of power have decided the US and the world would do better with a drastically lower population.
Princess
@Princess: Okay, I was curious — the WHO makes an annual recommendation of which strains to include and in Canada at least, they go with that and buy vaccines from big multinational companies, most based in Europe. So maybe the US does not need this particular meeting?
eclare
@Princess:
Here’s hoping.
different-church-lady
I think the larger problem is that the country has gone insane.
Betty Cracker
@Asparagus Aspersions: Thanks for sharing your view from abroad. When the election results became clear 11/5, we all knew the fall-out would be bad. But I am stunned by the scale of the catastrophe — so much destruction so quickly.
I don’t know if we’ll ever recover. Frankly, I doubt it. But I feel strongly that the only path to recover would require unambiguous accountability for the vandals at every level and structural change to prevent recurrence.
Mai Naem mobil
Mai Naem mobil
@eclare: only the supplements his wife is hawking.
Mai Naem mobil
@different-church-lady: not just gone insane but unable to get back to sane because of misinformation/disinformation. I’ve come to the conclusion that the internet is on balance a bad thing. Whatever positive there is/was there, there’s a more negative aspect. We didn’t need information at our fingertips. We were getting it just fine from tv, radio and regular media before the internet. And the payment stuff – google pay, apple pay etc We had visa and mastercard. We had mail order catalogs. We didn’t need Amazon prime 7 hour delivery. Sorry to sound like a luddite but this misinformation stuff is driving me batty. People have no common sense and no critical thinking skills.
JoyceH
Saw a post on Bluesky saying that RFK missed the most important lesson of LBJ’s career – try not to get any kids killed if your name rhymes with “how many kids did you kill today?”
WereBear
@Princess: Sure, we can go begging to Europe. That’s what a world power does!
My sarcasm because they are going to make us Third World if it kills them, even though it will. Along with so many others.
Same people who brag about how rich people come here for treatment. Not anymore.
Geminid
Westchester Democrat Tom Watson posted news on the upcoming NY21 special election. That’s the seat held by Elise Stefanik. She’s waiting until April to resign her seat and becpme UN ambassador. Special elections to fill Matt Gaetz’s and Michael Waltz’ seats will be held April 1.
NY21 Democrats picked 48 year-old dairy farmer Blake Gendeben to run, and he’s raising money:
This was from election analyst Jacob Rubashkin, reposted by Tom Watson, guitarwatson.bsky.social.
Ed. Rubashkin said six Repulicans want their nomination. In the case of special elections New York allows district commitees composed of various county and local party chairmen to select a candidate.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: Maybe the late start will give Gendeben an edge, but that’s an awfully Trumpy district. Ditto the Florida 1st and 6th. If any of those flip, we’d be looking at a wave in the midterms, IMO. But I hope people don’t get discouraged if Repubs hold all three seats in the upcoming specials. Those are very tough nuts to crack.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Betty Cracker: We’ll never come back to where we were in the late 20th century, I’m sure. Thanks to the Trumpists, America’s time of “greatness” is now over. But something will rise from the wreckage – a far less exceptional nation, sadder but hopefully wiser.
But that won’t happen until the Trumpists are rotting in prisons or graves.
Ten years ago, I was thinking and saying that within twenty years’ time, either the Republican Party or the United States would be destroyed.
And here we are.
Matt McIrvin
@Asparagus Aspersions: That horror you are feeling is what Republicans mean when they throw around words like “strength” and “respect”. They want a world that regards the United States with pants-shitting fear, like a family under the thumb of an abusive dad who might murder them at any moment.
WereBear
I don’t blame the Internet, which after all is merely Gutenberg II, Electric Booglaloo. We decided that eventually turned out great, but it broke Christianity into warring halves, and we got the Enlightenment. (This is a Western Trajectory Only.)
Back in the day we weren’t informed. It was much more difficult to find out things with alternative weeklies and fanzines of all kinds and books. It was about people reading, and the effects of novels on the ladies’ good character because their imaginations make their wombs wander or something.
Having good books didn’t protect anyone from the bad ones except a reapplication of “learning shit from shinola” on any information that comes across. Goethe was blamed for depressed young men jumping off bridges of denied love.
Some people can’t handle the power of their own brains, they fear developing an imagination, but the movies worked like books for them. I think we have functional illiterates who can read, but don’t.
They find out the entire world through television which created one kind of problem, and now there are so many channels there is no way to keep up with the fertile imaginations of conspiracy who have been hard at work since Darwin blew up their world.
They still want to believe in magic. Everything is our fault. If they control us so we all wish, it would have.
They operate on what they want. They are deranged.
Mai Naem mobil
Anybody else notice that Orange Fartcloud is almost always sitting in his ‘pressers.’ During 1.0 he used to do a lot of the stupid one or two question on his way to the noisy helicopter. Granted I don’t watch the news a lot but I haven’t seen any clips of him even returning to the WH or leaving the WH to go to his golf courses. I’m kind of thinking he can’t stand for extended periods of time or walk long distances. He used the golf cart for golf so golf doesn’t mean a whole lot.
WereBear
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: The Republican Party destroyed itself already, and it’s never cleaned up a mess in its life.
We will be the only ones left to clean up the mess, as usual. Likewise, we have to clean up the mess in our own party. No one else will.
There will be a disaster but let the first one be the sudden collapse of their “illusion of leadership.”
Which is hanging by a thread. It’s holding up a lot of clueless heads.
Baud
@WereBear:
QFT
Balconesfault
I’m guessing that Bezos is going to have to go after the news division next if they keep providing evidence that the “free market” DOGE team is actually a crew of arsonists who have no clue how difficult it will be to rebuild what they burned down, much less build it back “better”.
Not even Mark Thiessen can put enough lipstick on this pig.
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: Everybody wants to go to the indulgent grandma’s house, but all the toys are broken, no snacks, and they still haven’t fixed that wavy thing on the television.
To me, MAGA is that girlfriend who wants a wedding so much she gets engaged to that clown. And demands that I be happy for her.
I can see the train wreck coming, but she has convinced herself otherwise. But she will distort her world to keep that dream alive.
That’s what happened to MAGA. And they got treated badly on the honeymoon. Who will bail and who will double down?
WereBear
The world they grew up in, then stopped growing up.
We stopped raising children that way, and the world improved. Maybe this all started with Dr. Spock, and his radical notions of listening to children and treating them with love.
Today’s US fundie regards this as fruit of the devil, and I guess there’s a reason his cake is so good.
Baud
According to Reddit, the conservatives won in Ontario because the three left of center parties spilt the vote.
Matt McIrvin
@WereBear: Maybe we stopped raising children that way, but they didn’t, and they’ve been blaming everything wrong with the world since 1960 on liberals not beating their children.
I’ve mentioned it before, but once I saw a newspaper op-ed blaming Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait on his being raised by liberal parents who didn’t spank. (As far as I can tell, the extreme opposite was true–he was raised by someone who subjected him to horrible abuse–but it sounds almost absurd to even look into the matter.)
Betty Cracker
@Mai Naem mobil: He definitely looks more enfeebled in the clips I’ve seen, which is admittedly few (got enough trauma in my life already without voluntarily adding to it). If the sumbitch lives for another year and a half or so, he’ll turn 80 in office. Will that magic number be enough for the media to give him the OLD treatment? Probably not since he’s a Repub.
Geminid
I don’t expect Democrats to flip either Florida seat, but NY21 could be close. Somone said that Conor Lamb flipped a Trump+19 Pennsylvania district in a 2017 special election. I have not verified the “Trump+19” part of this, but I think the excesses of this Trump administrztion could hit New Yorkers differently than it does Floridians. And District 21 Republicans are not helping their cause by leaving the playing field open to Gendeben.
I’m not sure why they are. I hope this is due to a combination of overconfidence and bitter infighting. Rubashkin linked to a piece of his about the 6 hopefuls and that could shed some light on the matter, but the election site he and two other guys run is subscription only.
Maybe local news sites have reporting on the Republican nomination contest.
David_C
@Asparagus Aspersions: Thank you for calling. I manage to fall into 2 buckets – federal worker and member of the biomedical research community, and both are in crisis modes. Every grant, every R&D contract we manage and every potential grantee or contractor is in trouble and we don’t know how many of us will left to manage the increasing paperwork we are facing. We can’t hire fellows or summer students and the organizations we fund are putting holds on admitting grad students and are in bunker mode. Funding goes to red as well as blue states, and those red states love to show off their advanced research hospitals.
Biotech and pharma (I’ve done both) rely on discoveries made in basic research – new pathways and products, as well as scientists trained in labs receiving NIH grants. It’s like shutting down the defense plants in our war against cancer and infectious disease, not to mention the complex inflammatory pathways that underlie many chronic illnesses.
Democrats have our back, but the Republicans who did are strangely silent and the administration is out to destroy us.
/rant
ETA: Most of us are packing stuff up and leaving critical information so those who are left can carry on.
Matt McIrvin
@Balconesfault: Trump’s voters will go to their graves believing that the cuts that personally hurt them were the only ones that were a bad idea–DOGE was almost entirely cutting waste, fraud and abuse but they went too far in just this one instance.
Jeffro
@Geminid: Geminid, did you see that Winsome-Sears now has two primary challengers for the VA Gov nomination? Hoo boy
Betty Cracker
@WereBear: I like the wedding analogy. Have experienced that with friends/relatives before. “No, don’t do it! JFC, can’t you see all the red flags?”
Nope. They don’t see it. And they resent YOU for pointing it out.
Same dynamic is in play with a cult, which is probably the closest to what this phenomenon actually is. Before some asshole in The Villages tore it off in 2021, I used to have a bumper sticker on my car that said, “No really, HE LOST, and you’re in a cult.” Now he won, but they’re still in a cult.
Rusty
I was warned not to read the responses to the Ebola post, but I couldn’t resist. Yikes, the level of dilusion, stupidity, self-centeredness and racism is so disheartening. Trump could resign tomorrow but all those folks will remain, voting to keep wrecking everything out of their deep ignorance, continuing to be fed the worst garbage by the right wing. Yes, we have always had the crazies, but they seem to have reached critical mass and include, and are funded, by a cohort of the extraordinary wealthy. It’s going to be a long, tough fight back to anything that looks even a little ok. One step at a time I guess.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I’ll think of them when they get rid of Social Security and Medicare.
Betty Cracker
@David_C:
Well put. I’m so sorry you and your colleagues are under attack by these sociopaths. You’re doing heroic, lifesaving work, and you don’t deserve any of this shit. You deserve our THANKS, and you certainly have mine.
Geminid
@Jeffro: I heard about that. It sounds like three people fighting over a ticket for the Titanic.
WereBear
@Matt McIrvin: Those would be the double down ones.
I cheer the laws blocking this action, but people are sent packing and nothing is being done about that, either.
When will the “nice people” understand?
They won’t stop. They can only be stopped.
We now know even serial killers can cool it when the hunt heats up. That’s why the Republican house would stay quiet and vote for him.
Let the brave ones do it… only there aren’t any in the Republican party anymore.
Ksmiami
@Mai Naem mobil: clearly these idiots haven’t read The Hot Zone by Robin Cook…
Betty Cracker
Via TPM, here’s a link to a Durango Herald story about another chickenshit Repub operative running away from angry constituents. This time, the chicken was a regional director for Rep. Jeff Hurd (R-CO). She arrived at a library for a scheduled event with the League of Women Voters, saw the crowd and bolted without making an appearance.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
True. But they’re also very self centered. So maybe they’ll stay home if they feel discouraged about their personal situation.
Jeffro
@Geminid: LaRock and Chase are just as nuts, so that’s exciting.
Unfortunately, every GOP candidate from now until the end of time is going to not only be pro-trump but also pro-Musk, as in “please Elon won’t you drop a couple mil on my race for ____?”
Rusty
@Matt McIrvin: The rampant self centeredness of America is taking its toll. Civics 101, I don’t have enough votes for what I want, and you don’t have enough votes for what you want, but if we agree to vote for each other’s projects, we both get something we want. It’s the sausage making of politics, but it works. But we have a group that wants what they want, and screw everyone else. An absolute rejection of the social compact where we all end up doing better. No, it’s all about me, and screw you.
WereBear
@Ksmiami: Yes, indeed. Indelible.
WereBear
@Rusty: A lot of them are getting another crash course in How Gov Works. But the farmers didn’t learn LAST time.
That’s where the doomsday cult angle comes in. There were people waiting on hillsides the FOURTH time Miller got the Rapture wrong.
AM in NC
@David_C: I used to work at the UNC School of Pharmacy (in communications) and I was shocked at how much research done at the university was then spun out to private corps to do the development work.
Want next-gen medications? Stop harming NIH and university funding. The PhRMA corporations don’t do much basic foundational research because there are too many dead ends.
It is just so enraging to be lead by malicious idiots.
Ksmiami
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: me too. The Republican Party has been and is a mortal threat to the country. I predict we become several different nations – ah well,
AM in NC
@Betty Cracker: My new car magnet says “Have the Day You Voted For!” surrounded by stars and rainbows.
If MAGAs get mad at it, then they actually know they voted for shit. Kill them with kindness (or at least passive-aggression that mind-fucks them).
Baud
@AM in NC:
Heh.
Betty Cracker
Also from TPM, a quote:
Chris Coons!
WereBear
@AM in NC: Love it. Also Betty Cracker’s bumper sticker.
Our town is mostly blue, but there’s a world outside of it that is not.
oldgold
The world’s richest man is not just effing up the treatment of Ebola, he is also greatly compromising the treatment of tuberculosis.
John Green of NYT:
“Essentially ALL TB programs funded by the U.S. Government were officially terminated last night. Horrifyingly, that includes the Global Drug Facility that coordinates the vast majority of TB treatment and tests purchased globally. Shuttering the GDF will stop TB treatment for the entire planet.”
“Most countries pay for their own drugs and tests, but the GDF is the underlying infrastructure that makes it all possible, and shutting it down stops treatment for millions of people and will spell their death. I know we’re accustomed to catastrophes. This is a different level of catastrophe.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
There goes Musk admitting he made a mistake again in politics and to the Right. They are going to kill him at some point.
TBone
BREAKING: Scam Alert!
Just received a text from “EZ Pass” toll collection oufit (phishing scam) trying to get me to follow link and pay money to a scam account.
Don’t fall for this one!
Happy Blackout Day!
Jeffg166
@different-church-lady:
A third of the country has always and will always be insane. Even when the chaos hits them it will be the “government’s” fault not the felon’s.
Conservatism can’t fail it can only be failed.
Matt McIrvin
@TBone: I’ve been getting those for weeks! EZPass’s website has warnings about it, emphasizing that they’ll never text you like that.
MartyIL
@Matt McIrvin: Nicely stated. I feel the same way, but maybe under the abusive father that is a mob boss
Baud
@TBone:
I saw a video about that scam the other day.
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Admitting he made a mistake but then just lying about how it’s fixed.
Geminid
@Geminid: So I checked out the Adirondack Explorer for news on the NY21 Republican nomination contest. I did not see any, but I found this:
Another story had no political aspect but was still interesting:
The Adirondack Explorer is published in the town of Saranac Lake. Right now it carries a lot of skiing news, also Adirondack Park and conservation news.
Baud
@Geminid:
Always interesting how they sugar coat the news so as not to offend Trump voters.
A while back, I saw a local Alabama news article that was about Medicaid expansion but that avoided using the words Obamacare or Affordable Care Act.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s why our disrespect for them is our most important tool.
TBone
@Matt McIrvin: thank you, this is the first I have encountered any info about any such EZ Pass malarkey, glad my skeptic sniffer is working first thing in the A.M. I appreciate your confirmation!
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: EZPass is tied to our joint account and I have the only account there.
So Mrs. B got one of those emails yesterday.
We laughed, she deleted, we move on. <wink emoji>
TBone
NOT. ONE. PENNY.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: you chose well !!!
David_C
@Betty Cracker: Thank you, Betty. 🙂
On the bright side, the (late) “5 things I did” guidance from HHS showed some welcome pushback.
TBone
@Baud: send it to any trusting gullibles you may know. If any, which I highly doubt, hahaha!
Princess
@Baud: This is true. And they are virtually interchangeable. It is so stupid.
Matt McIrvin
@MartyIL: The mob boss aesthetic is just abusive father writ large, and we make them into folk heroes of a sort, I think in part because people equate their kind of unbridled brutality with strength and masculinity. The movies play it up and throw in the superficial “honor” and “respect” bullshit (and even when they’re trying to subvert that, many viewers probably don’t take it that way).
Trump openly admires mob bosses and has of course been mobbed-up to some degree for his whole career.
Matt McIrvin
@TBone: Of course it’s a general rule that whenever you get an unsolicited text or email warning, purporting to be from some organization you know, about an unpaid bill and giving you a link to click, you should not click that link: instead, go through the usual separate channels to take a look at your account and see if anything is up. Since governments and companies actually do sometimes have bill alert and “pay by text” services, it’s too easy to get scammed.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Just wait until X gets into financial services.
Geminid
@Jeffro: I’ll be rooting for Amanda Chase. That dingbat is capable of dragging the entire Republican House of Delegates slate into the Dismal Swamp.
TONYG
@scav: That’s right. But our “tech geniuses” are pretty incompetent at rolling back screw-ups in computer systems too. (See last summer’s Microsoft/CrowdStrike debacle for details.)
Suzanne
@Geminid: Here’s info on PA-17, which is the district that was represented by Conor Lamb and now is repped by Chris DeLuzio.
I have no idea why anyone thinks that it went for Trump. That district voted for HRC, Biden, and Harris.
ETA: It has been electing Dem reps since 2003. There has been an assertion that it is gerrymandered for Republicans, and that is not accurate.
Geminid
@Baud: It’s just a headline. I expect news sites like this to be neutral in presentatiion. They’re not gonna editorialize, just present the content and let their readers make up their own minds. That’s what I like about the CBS Radio news.
Geminid
@Suzanne: Maybe the district won by Conor Lamb in the 2017 special election differed substantially from the 17th CD as redrawn in 2018.
sherparick
@TS:
@Shalimar: We are now a full blown kakistocracy, the rule of the worse.
Suzanne
@Geminid: Nope. The district that became obsolete and got redrawn was also pretty blue. Obama, Obama, Clinton, Biden. Also for Wolf, Casey, Fetterman, Shapiro.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: Apparently there’s a right wing theory that Obama gets “royalties” from the AC
ETA: They judge others by what they would do
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: The lesson of Trump 2016 should be “never root for the dingbat to win the primary.” You never know what insanity will catch fire.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Betty Cracker: I plan on donating to all three candidates for Congressional special election, as well as the Wisconsin judicial seat. Also plan on bugging anyone I know in NY-21 to go vote, not my district, but I can see what’s being done that I can help with as I m in NY. We can’t win if we don’t try.
Booger
@Jeffro: OMG, “Trump in Heels?” Didn’t Chase notice Trump is already in heels?
Why don’t these people ever go away?
Geminid
@Suzanne: I’m not so sure. This is from an NPR article dated March 14, 2018 on the PA18 special election thst Conor Lamb won:
Court ordered redistricting had substantially alterd tge dustrict by the time Lamb ran for relectiin that Novemember.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t think you’ve seen Amanda Chase very much..She won’t be bad candidate, she’ll be a horrible candidate.
You may not have seen much of Abigail Spanberger either, but she is a formidable candidate especially for this state. Spanberger may have a nice smile, but she’s ruthless.
Scamp Dog
@Princess: I think you’re absolutely right about powerful people wanting a smaller population. They’re likely to be wrong that it works out well for them, but they have the power to get in the way of solutions for climate change and infectious diseases, and they will get their way for the four years of the Trump administration.
“Oh, but my billions mean I can hire my own security personnel“ starts failing when the economy crashes and the companies that make you a billionaire collapse with the rest of the economy.
TBone
@Matt McIrvin: yes indeed, good rule if thumb! ALWAYS check the checkers, do not trust – verify FIRST.
Ramona
@Mai Naem mobil: Please, please, please! I hope this happens!
different-church-lady
@WereBear: The new part is the feedback and stimulation. Books don’t have follower counts or feeds or comments.
different-church-lady
@Balconesfault: They don’t seem to be bothering with the lipstick anymore.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Suzanne: thank you!
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Geminid: thank you for mentioning Spanberger, she s another person I am kicking some cash to. In the end my small efforts may amount to nothing but I have to try.
Geminid
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: I’m really looking forward to November. Dems lost some close House of Delegate races in 2023. I think we’ll pick those up and more. This is a bad political climate for Virginia Republicans.
And like I said, Abigail Spanberger is a strong candidate. She will have a substantial war chest too.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: The first time I mentioned Donald Trump on my old blog, it was dismissing him as an absurd joke candidate (I don’t think that was in 2016; I think it was 2012, when he made noises about running but didn’t officially start a campaign).
I do know Spanberger–my sister lives in her former district and I’ve thrown her some money occasionally.
Matt McIrvin
@Scamp Dog: Very rich people want to have a lot of slaves but not to have to pay unconditionally for anyone else’s well-being. So general misery benefits them in this regard.
It also usually cuts demand for their goods and services, but beyond some point of IGMFY you either don’t care or you treat that as some inscrutable natural phenomenon.
LAC
@Balconesfault: well, with a steady hand and a clear mirror, I bet theissen can manage.
Quiltingfool
@TBone: Heh! I got that toll scam in a text message this week! It stated I didn’t pay a toll in January, no specific day. I was to send $3.99 or warrants would be issued! In caps and in red. Whoo, I’m scared now!
There ARE no toll roads where I live, well, there is a toll bridge but it’s been around for years and I’ve never used it. And it costs more than 3.99. The closest toll roads are in Oklahoma and we haven’t visited family there for several years (thankfully).
It’s about the stupidest scam I’ve seen in awhile.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Just watch this race. Like me and others here, you are part of the Northern Virginia Diaspora. If you are interested in politics, you can learn something from a competitive statewide race in your old homeland.
Glidwrith
@Professor Bigfoot: I got one earlier this week. Yesterday, though, was from a dead person.
suzanne
@Geminid: You can read about the history of the district before the redraw in that Wiki article I linked (here it is again). It had about 35,000 more registered Dems than Republicans, though the Rep previous to Lamb was GOP. So he flipped it. But it wasn’t a Trump-voting district ever. It voted for the Democrats in every statewide race from 2008-2020, when the redraw happened.
But this idea that it was gerrymandered for the GOP has taken hold, and it isn’t accurate. I’m not sure if it’s just an error, or if it’s a retcon. I don’t know why anyone wants to try to burnish the memory of the political career of Conor Lamb, who was fairly conservative for a Dem, served two terms and then left political life after losing the Senate primary.
ETA: Probably a reporter just got it innocently wrong and then everybody ran with it?
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: When I lived in NoVa, it was so long ago that it was *deep* red state territory (at least the part where I lived was).
Matt McIrvin
(I’m also wondering how much Republicans can do to disrupt elections in blue and purple states: I think the upcoming midterm cycle would be a great one for the Democrats except that we might not have anything resembling free and fair elections. States that depend on vote by mail could be shut down by the mail shutting down. And they can try to impose draconian voter-eligibility regulations nationwide, sow violence to keep people in on Election Day, etc.)
Aziz, light!
@Betty Cracker: The more that Trump declines, the more that Musk will be the deciderer.
An alarming prospect for the nation.
Aziz, light!
If Trump dies in office, will Vance evict Elon, or tell him to keep up the good work? They want the same oligarchy.
Matt McIrvin
@Scamp Dog: In this regard, infectious diseases worry me more than climate change–because it feels to me like the US has already abdicated responsibility for climate solutions and the whole world knows it–they’re going to move ahead with or without us, so the problem is mostly direct emissions from the US and those aren’t as big a fraction of the world’s as they used to be; but the world is still very dependent on US institutions for disease treatment and prevention.
Anyway
Virginia is so dependent on MIC /DOC/Federal monies and has large numbers of employees in those sectors that I think the state elections should be a gimme for Dems. Jersey, however – I worry about that.
Geminid
@suzanne: That NPR reporter seemed pretty certain about Trump’s margin of victory in 2016. But there are other articles on this special election because it was s big story at the time. I just grabbed NPR’s first.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: …Anyway, I just have zero confidence that experience from pre-2025 elections will apply anywhere, even in blue states. I would not be *that* surprised if Republicans just mysteriously win in a massive landslide everywhere, or if some avalanche of crises happens that make it impossible for most people to vote. It feels like we’re heading for the kind of world in which the ruling party gets 99.8% majorities and the other 0.2% of people disappear.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Well, that could turn out to true. This race will still be worth watching though, and not just through the occasional update on national news feeds. I think it’s gonna be fun.
Jeffro
I think it’s their egos and inability to find any other line of work, plus the lack of serious recruiting efforts on the part of the GOP.
It’s kind of shocking because ol’ Smiling Glenn Youngkin showed them the playbook: get a congenial unknown who’s willing to run around the state saying essentially nothing and avoiding his own party’s crazies while flying the party colors in a new and novel way (ie, red fleece vest).
But instead they’ll get to choose between LaRock, Chase, and Winsome-Sears. My bet (based on absolutely nothing but my gut) is that LaRock wins the nom.
Jeffro
I agree with you about Spanberger, but it’s clear that having Musk as the GOP’s multi-level sugar daddy is going to have an effect on races all across the country.
By November, the Musk-driven blowback on the GOP should be pretty intense, though.
Geminid
@Jeffro: I’ll be interested to see if much outside money is invested in the Republican candidate, especially once the primary is over in June. Republicans might divert their contributions to New Jersey.
New Jersey has a competitive Democratic primary for governor this year. Reps. Mikie Sherrill and blog favorite Josh Gottheimer are two of the candidates.
Jeffro
The rank-and-file might divert their donations.
For billionaires, $10M or $20M is chump change.
Geminid
@Jeffro: We’ll see. I don’t think there’s enough money out there to drag Winsome Sears across the finish in first place, not this year. As for Amanda Chase, fugedaboutit.
I will be nterested ito see who spends what in the Republican primary. And whether that wimp Youngkin stands by his Lieutenant Governor.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Scamp Dog: My dad used to tell people concerned about society collapse
“Buy spam. Money, gold will be useless.”
It is obviously true when contemplated. Too many billionaires haven’t done the thinking though.
Kayla Rudbek
@Matt McIrvin:
@TBone: I have also been getting these texts for weeks. The tipoff for me that these are fake was the format of the number they were using (not your ten-digit US number).