Musk’s boys don’t know Cobol; Robert Reich accuses MSM of being wishy-washy about the coup; Paul Krugman on the Trump administration suppressing health information; Connie Willis on Trump’s “massacre” of attorneys who resigned rather than drop charges against Eric Adams.
First, a possible explanation for that bizarre claim by Musk that he’d found 150-year-old Social Security recipients.
Facebook post by Christopher Rowe, 14 Feb 2025:
Most of Musk’s stuff is done out of simple hatred and naked ambition, but one shouldn’t overlook the great percentage that comes from simple incompetence. (This isn’t even to get started on his hypocrisy, such as implementing drug testing on federal employees who’ve never had them imposed under any administration–the guy has bragged about doing hallucinogens and smoked pot during an interview). These people have done more to spit on the US in six weeks than Andrew “Trail of Tears” Jackson did in eight years.
Well… this is plausible, about Musk’s kids, despite being computer programmers, are likely uninformed about older computer languages. They’re young. Anything to substantiate this? Let’s Google. OK, here’s this.
Daily Kos, 14 Feb 2025: Nope. There are no 150-year-olds on Social Security. It’s COBOL!
Reports say that his group at DOGE is made up of fairly young people. What those kids don’t realize is that Social Security uses VERY OLD computers. They’re programmed with an old version of the programming language COBOL.
A bit of history. On May 20, 1875 a bunch of countries got together to create the International Bureau of Weight and Measures which established uniform standards of mass and length. Later on, the Bureau established rules for dates as well. The dates standard used a starting date of May 20 1875 to honor the creation of the Bureau.
Old versions of COBOL use that date as a baseline. Social Security’s computers use that old version. Dates are stored as the number of days AFTER May 20 1875.
So what happens if Social Security doesn’t know a birthdate? That field is empty in its records. Thus that person appears to have a birthday of May 20 1875—about 150 years ago.
That’s why the crack team of youngsters Musk uses found 150-year-old people in Social Security getting benefits. It’s all really as simple—and as stupid—as that.
You’d think that those bright MAGAheads would notice that ALL those 150 year olds have THE SAME BIRTHDAY: May 20, 1875.
But they didn’t. Genius Elon Musk didn’t. And, of course, STABLE GENIUS Donald Trump didn’t either.
Sigh.
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As I’ve noted, for all that conservatives rail against main-stream-media, leftists (which these days means realists), as often accuse msm of being too wishy-washy and falsely ‘balanced.’
Robert Reich, 14 Feb 2025: Say what this is: a coup.
I want to talk today about the media’s coverage of the Trump-Vance-Musk coup.
I’m not referring to coverage by the bonkers right-wing media of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and its imitators.
I’m referring to the U.S. mainstream media — The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, National Public Radio — and the mainstream media abroad, such as the BBC and The Guardian.
By not calling it a coup, the mainstream media is failing to communicate the gravity of what is occurring.
Yesterday’s opinion by The New York Times’ editorial board offers a pathetic example. It concedes that Trump and his top associates “are stress-testing the Constitution, and the nation, to a degree not seen since the Civil War” but then asks: “Are we in a constitutional crisis yet?” and answers that what Trump is doing “should be taken as a flashing warning sign.”
Warning sign?
Elon Musk’s meddling into the machinery of government is a part of the coup. Musk and his muskrats have no legal right to break into the federal payments system or any of the other sensitive data systems they’re invading, for which they continue to gather computer code.
It goes on.
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The Trump administration is suppressing information.
Paul Krugman, 14 Feb 2025: Lies, Damned Lies and Trumpflation, subtitled “Big worries — and some investment advice”
We currently have a major outbreak of bird flu, with serious concerns that it may already have spread to humans. Normally we’d be learning about the evolving risks from the CDC’s flagship research publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. But Donald Trump’s appointees have politicized the historically independent report, telling it what and what not to cover. And the agency is already suppressing reports on bird flu.
Much more, of course.
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Connie Willis, 15 Feb 2025: Trump Outdoes Nixon at Saturday Night Massacring
This is about all those attorneys resigning rather than dropping charges against Eric Adams.
–The story so far: Asst. AG Emil Bove demanded that NY federal attorneys drop all charges against Mayor Eric Adams, Danielle Sassoon refused and resigned after writing a scathing resignation letter, then the next in command, Scotten, did, too, followed by five other attorneys. Bove then put all the attorneys in a room and said if they didn’t do it within an hour, they were all fired. According to reports, he lectured the public integrity lawyers about leadership and loyalty and was combative and condescending.
–The collective hostage taking worked, and Ed Sullian and Antoinette Bacon ended up signing the order. (Remember those names–they’re now going to be famous, just like Robert Bork was when he did Nixon’s bidding in the first Saturday Night Massacre.)
