Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

February 8, 1950: The East German State Security Service (SSD), which everyone called the Stasi, was officially founded by law. It spied on its own citizens on a massive scale. It was considerably more pro-active and extensive than even the Gestapo. The ratio for the Stasi was one secret policeman per 166 East Germans. When the regular informers are added, these ratios become much higher: In the Stasi's case, there would have been at least one spy watching every 50 citizens! The CIA learned much, especially from their Nazi pal Reinhard Gehlen who was later stationed in West Germany.



The monitor piece of the ZO-31 reminds me of the monitors used in the Severance TV series.

Here's a huge collection of wicked Stasi Surveillance Equipment.


Feb 8, 1968: PLANET OF THE APES premiered.





He'll forever be linked to Woody Allen, but his best performance was as Warren LaSalle, the deputy mayor in THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123. R.I.P. Tony Roberts, October 22, 1939 - Feb 7, 2025.


Variety


Feb 8, 1998: the X-Files episode "Chinga", written by Chris Carter & Stephen King, aired.




"Day one of the Golden Age". This photo needs to be in the Smithsonian.




The Purge continues.

LOL, still confused are ya...


National Archives Workers Unsure If Marco Rubio Has Secretly Been Their Boss for Weeks

NARA is the agency that referred President Trump to the Justice Department and then the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago.

Shogan was not the Archivist director at the time the referral was made, however, she was an opponent of transparency and public access to classified historical records. She systematically defunded efforts to reduce over classification and increase declassification. Also, she showed a terrible bias against conservatives as was revealed (24,000 comments!) during her confirmation hearing. Good riddance.

Sergio Gorokhovsky is the current Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office.




Photos by Kirsten Shaw, Lead Station Support at Rothera Research Station, Antarctica. A British Antarctic Survey base on the Antarctic Peninsula, located at Rothera Point, Adelaide Island.




Would you be surprised if I told you the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was created by the Dems?

As for Musk and usurpation, attorney and activist Tom Renz explained in a lengthy thread that the Trump administration planned carefully for this effort. Trump took an existing agency from the Obama era that focused on software development and tasked it instead to do a deep data dive on federal spending. He then made Musk a partner to the US DOGE Service to facilitate the effort.

The USDS was an Obamacare office created to make government software better. They were essentially software development for the bureaucracy. Trump renamed the United States Digital Service (USDS) the United States DOGE Service which even kept the acronym the same. Ha. Not only did repurposing an appropriate existing department allow Trump to ensure there was funding for DOGE without having to fight with Congress - he also ensured its legality.

Trump also ordered that DOGE teams be hired in every administrative branch agency. These teams are to include a team lead, a lawyer, an HR person, and an engineer. These teams work for USDS (DOGE) but work with and within various agencies. While all this is part of a "software modernization initiative," looking at the software and how things are managed is a great way to find out where there is waste - particularly when part of the mandate it to ensure efficiency.

The last part of the EO is all important boilerplate. Trump orders all agencies to support the DOGE initiative, disclaims any other prior EOs that could interfere with this order, and makes a conflict of laws statement. This was further insulation to make this harder for political opponents to fight in court.

How was Trump able to do this? The Daily Wire's Luke Rosiak did a deep dive of his own and discovered that Trump has Joe Biden to thank. Trump largely ignored the previous iteration of USDS, assuming its work revolved around its ostensible mission of improving exec-branch information technology. Instead, it became a beehive for left-wing activists, and Biden reversed Trump's action to protect it from political interference once in office.

Oh, and even better - it has an ObamaCare angle, too!

Obama’s incompetent rollout of ObamaCare necessitated the creation of USDS to rescue his bureaucrats from the debacle they created. They sought out younger experts for that rescue, while exempting them from the red tape that applies to other agencies. They then left them alone rather than strictly proscribe the work to the declared USDS mission.


A DOGE Origin Story

Note, the Tom Renz thread linked above has an easier, shorter breakdown of DOGE foxy move, OR even better his Substack blog.

The overarching lesson is to limit executive power — and to eliminate unaccountable agencies. Had Democrats never passed ObamaCare, they wouldn’t be in this disaster now, watching Republicans use their machinery to dismantle their corrupt grift one agency and department at a time. Perhaps all Americans will learn a lesson about the wisdom of limited powers, checks and balances, and the virtues of federalism from this swamp-draining exercise. Once the former beneficiaries of the grift fall silent, of course.

Pentagon purging: SecDef Pete Hegseth tosses out more news outlets: CNN, the Washington Post, the Hill, the War Zone.
IN: the Washington Examiner, Newsmax, the Free Press, and the Daily Caller.


Well, if DOGE pans out this calls for a...

USA #1 on this day in 1981: Kool & The Gang - Celebration



UK #1 on this day in 1972: T. Rex - Telegram Sam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbwVkZ8L8d8


Meta torrented over 81.7TB of pirated books to train AI...


Meta Pirates

LLM = Leech Like Mad. And don't seed either.


How many years, decades has this been knowingly going on? FIVE EYES has it all.


DROPSAFE blog by Alex Muffett.