Thursday Open Thread

18 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

1. The Daily Star cover is brilliant.  tiny hands is called Putin's Poodle.  https://www.frontpages.com/daily-star/

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2. Anyone notice the Musk habit of carrying around a small child at very inappropriate times? Are they human shields? Does he think carrying around a child makes him less a target of the assassins’ bullet?

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   1. It's only the little ones who will go willingly with him.  

       

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   2. I think it's more likely marketing. He wants whiteys to reproduce, saying stuff like "population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming." Having a kid with him might also be an attempt at humanizing his image, like a dude trolling for dates by taking a puppy with him to the park.

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3. Lots of data about conservation attitudes in the west.

   https://www.coloradocollege.edu/other/stateoftherockies/conservationinthewest/2025.html

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4. Gov Polis gets a feature in Politico. Nothing surprising in it that I see. Polis doing Polis things.

   https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/20/doge-jared-polis-criticism-021299

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5. The coming disaster in health care: 

   CPR: Health leaders warn of devastating impacts if Republicans slash Medicaid funding

   Health leaders warned of potentially devastating impacts of deep cuts at a press event Wednesday in Denver. Those include Coloradans losing access to health care; hospitals, especially in rural areas, clinics and community health centers closing; and increased costs across the health system, including for people who aren’t enrolled in Medicaid….

   “Medicaid cuts of any kind, and especially those that would be as significant as the ones we're hearing about in Congress, would be devastating not just to patients, but also to the people who deliver their care,” said Jeff Tieman, president and CEO of the Colorado Hospital Association.   

   He said it would mean that people lose coverage and access, the hospitals would have to close down services, some hospitals would close and medical staff would be laid off.  

   “We cannot afford that. We can't afford it right now. We can't afford it ever,” Tieman said “Medicaid is a lifeline and it is crucial to the success, frankly, of our entire state.”

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   1. Would you expect health leaders to say anything different? It's just more Democrat hysteria.

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      1. Damn right.  Instead, let's listen to people who don't know anything about healthcare.

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      2. Let's hope you need medical services that are unavailable to you, Qaren.

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      3. How's your math, Pear? 

         Nationally, about one in five people have Medicaid, In Colorado, over a million people are getting health care from Medicaid.  

         Medicaid accounts for a fifth of health care spending and more than half of spending for long-term care, per health nonprofit KFF.

         Feds currently spent $871.7 billion, and the cuts being talked about are somewhere between 5-10% (Trump said at one point nothing will come from Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security.  Now, he says he backs the House proposal, cutting $880 billion over 10 years).  Colorado gets about $8 billion per year from the feds and the state spend is about $4 billion per year.  if Colorado loses 10%, that's about $880 million. If that money isn't being paid into the health care system of Colorado, what do you think happens? 

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         1. If you’re our dumber-than-a-box-of-Boeberts Pear what you’re undoubtedly thinking is that the fewer poor sick folks we provide healthcare for the healthier the rest of us will all become.

            Surely, Dr. RFK Jr has published those study findings already?

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         2. I have some doubt that PP will read the information you have provided, but, I am quite sure that even if he does he will not understand it and even if he does he won’t believe it is true and even if he does he won’t actually give a shit. As long as it owns the libs.

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      4. Just you wait there Pear-shaped Vietnam Vet – cuts to service are already happening to the VA system in Colorado, and I'm sure your favorite PCP and pharmacy could be on the list right now….

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6. Trump's Acted like a Monarch and Now Declared Himself a King.

   We need to fight back as effectively as possible

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7. Putin's Poodles have access to NSA cumputers. What could possibly go wrong. Long, concerning quote from Josh Marshall at TPM.

   I don’t like to think in conspiratorial ways. But DOGE currently has far deeper and far more extensive access to U.S. government computer systems — and is far deeper into the national security space — than is conceivably necessary for anything related to their notional brief and goals. I don’t just mean this about the front-facing notional goals of making the federal government “efficient.” I mean it as well in the most sinister versions of the group’s goals — hollowing out the federal bureaucracy, destroying oversight agencies which pose threats to Musk’s business interests, building centralized command and control over budgets, employment, personal data, etc., etc.

   WIRED is now reporting that two DOGE operatives, including the 19-year-old Edward Coristine (aka “Big Balls”), have gained access to the computer systems of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the agency charged with the defense of the federal government’s civilian computer networks as well as helping to organize the defense of the country’s critical infrastructure.

   I don’t know what the goal is here. I could speculate. But it would just be speculation. But it’s way more than just the version of the story that we’re now hearing. Atlantic has this piece describing the level and scope of access in similar terms.

   I want to re-emphasize the point I made on Tuesday about the continued use of as few as seven or eight early-20s operatives to manage the initial landings/break-ins at these various agencies, which involve gaining access to systems as disparate as NIH medical research labs and high-stakes national-security computer networks. Coristine, one of the DOGErs in question here, is 19 years old and his only “experience” for any of this is a brief internship at Musk’s Neurolink company. This is someone who got this level of access long before any kind of serious security background check could be completed. In Coristine’s case, he owns a “company” called Tesla.Sexy LLC, which reportedly controls Russian-registered web domains. He briefly worked at a competitor known for hiring “reformed” black hat hackers and was later fired from that company for sharing confidential company data with a competitor firm. It seems like an understatement to say that this does not appear to be a trustworthy person to entrust with this level of access to critical data systems and command-and-control systems across the U.S. government. I return to the point I made in that Tuesday post: the only conceivable reason you give these assignments to someone like this guy is that he’s loyal and willing to do things that other people won’t.

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   1. The additional point is a more generic and interpretive one. There’s no question Elon Musk is driving this train. Trump has licensed it. He is approving what happens after the fact. I have no doubt he’s enjoying the pain he’s seeing inflicted. And a good bit of it overlaps with the goals of his existing entourage. But Musk is driving this train and I don’t think anyone really knows entirely where he’s going.

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8. Huzzah, Kash Patel's been confirmed at FBI. Vote was 51-49, Rs Murkowski and Susan Collins voting no. Great fun ahead!

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