DOGE LIVES ON

I've been featuring Elon Musk the past couple of days, and start off with him again because this was his farewell moment in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump this morning.  He is wearing a black Make American Great Again cap. 

Earlier today, the New York Times reported:

As Elon Musk entered President Trump’s orbit, he told people he was taking so much ketamine that it was affecting his bladder. He was also taking Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, and he traveled with a daily medication box of about 20 pills.  At the same time, he faced an increasingly turbulent family life.

If you're barred from reading the NYT, try the Guardian version.  This newspaper indicated:

Popular podcaster and public intellectual Sam Harris, who publicly ended his friendship with Musk, wrote in a January newsletter: “There is something seriously wrong with his moral compass, if not his perception of reality.”  

From Wikipedia:

Samuel Benjamin Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an American philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and podcast host. His work touches on a range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, determinism, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics, philosophy of mind, politics, terrorism, and artificial intelligence. Harris came to prominence for his criticism of religion, and he is known as one of the "Four Horsemen" of New Atheism, along with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett.^[2][3][4]

Spend an hour with these Four Horsemen.  Part 2 of this discussion.  I referenced Harris quite a bit in my chapter on  religion in SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity.  

The End of Faith by Sam Harris was particularly influential.  Harris was a Stanford undergrad when he got so interested in spiritual insights without the use of drugs, that when a sophomore, he left school to study meditation in India and Nepal.

He returned to earn a B.S. in Philosophy in 2000, wrote this book immediately after 9/11/2001, and went on to gain a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from UCLA.  To quote him on his point that religion contains bad ideas:  one of the most perverse misuses of intelligence we have ever devised.

So back to DOGE, the staff will remain.  Who will run the effort?

Musk's efforts at the cost-cutting initiative will be carried forward by Trump, his Cabinet secretaries as well as DOGE appointees, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday.

"The DOGE leaders are each and every member of the President's cabinet -- and the president himself -- who is wholeheartedly committed to cutting waste, fraud and abuse from our government," Ms Leavitt said.

Actually, three candidates have been mentioned to head DOGE:

• Even though he is running for Governor of Ohio in the 2026 election, Vivek Ramaswamy is still considered to be the favorite.
• Amy Gleason, currently the acting administrator of DOGE, could just step up.
• Russell Vought is currently director of the Office of Management and Budget and key figure behind Project 2025.  He is has a self-proclaimed vision to shrink government.

And if you still haven't figured out why Musk is many times pictured with this dog, I explained the link in my posting of 24November2024.  It is a Shiba Inu dog from Japan called Kabosu. From that article:

Read the story of how dog was intentionally misspelled to doge, and how it became associated with Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency.  Kabosu passed away in May of this year at the age of 18. 

14-year old Faizan Zaki of Plano, Texas won the 100th Spelling Bee. 

• He correctly spelled éclaircissement to emerge victorious.  Never heard of it and is a noun meaning enlightenment. 
• Was runner-up last year.  
• Spent 5-6 hours daily and 7-8 hours on weekends scanning a dictionary for words he didn't recognize, writing them down.
• That routine, he said, was more enjoyment for him than practice, something he has been doing for 6 years.
• Next, he'll try the International Mathematical Olympiad.

The National Hurricane Season begins on June 1, but the East Pacific already has a tropical storm, named Alvin, as the first real ocean storm.  Not expected to do much, and will head for Baja without becoming a hurricane.

For the record, here are some graphics.

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