DOGE BALL
DOGE Boy: Hey, Dude, did you see the latest court ruling saying DOGE is pretty much a government agency, so all our files and emails will be public records and whimperers and whiners will be able to FOIA our stuff? So let’s delete this email string when we’re done.
DOGE Dude: Way ahead of you kid, been deleting all morning. Some of my emails make Elon’s X feed look tame.
DOGE Boy: Elon said we wouldn’t have to hassle with regular government regulations and watchdogs so we would pretty much have free rein. Can he get us out of that court thing?
DOGE Dude: Ha, haven’t seen much of Elon lately. His rockets are blowing up, X is a money pit, Tesla is tanking, he’s lost like $100 billion. He still has enough money to buy a suit, though. That black t-shirt thing was so Steve Jobs wannabe. But he did get Trump to buy a Tesla. The guy hates electric cars, promised to ban them and never drives. Man, he’s got him on a leash, right?
DOGE Boy: Sort of. Did you see the tools in the Cabinet barked at Elon and Trump backed them up – sort of tossed Elon under the cyber truck – god those are ugly.
DOGE Dude: Well, we didn’t help much with the whole “fake news” on how much we “saved.” Claims we uncovered and slashed $100 billion of waste, fraud, abuse was shot down like a Space X rocket. We might have a legit $10 billion. I don’t remember being warned about fact-checkers, we were just told to hit big numbers.
DOGE Boy: We told ‘em from the start we aren’t accountants, just data miners using a little better version of Google Search to find crap on the hit list and cross it out and make a brag post on the website. Then the website got hacked, impressive skills on those guys, sort of jealous.
DOGE Dude: Yeah, it was a bit embarrassing to fire then hire back all those nuke bomb folks. Weird job titles in government. But they only had to hire back people in what, ten departments when someone found out their jobs were “critical” or something. Bird flu, air traffic controllers, ag department, 9/11 survivor program, scientists, heath folks. Opps. Same with listing all the offices in DC for sale, then deleting them all, then posting some.
DOGE Boy: And the deal with the Park Service was a mess. Fire 1,000 permanents and hire 7,000 temps? I’m not an accountant, but that doesn’t seem to add up. Oh well, all those parks are in the West, so they can just get some cowboys to like, put a sign on the Grand Canyon: “Don’t Fall In.” Ha, ha.
DOGE Dude: Good one. Remember to delete that for sure. Not our problem now. About a 100 lawsuits will sort all that out. Maybe we should be called FLEA – Full Lawyer Employment Act.
DOGE Boy: But we won’t get credit for anything by then. Did you see the new budget resolution doesn’t have a nickel in “savings” from us? Just $1.6 trillion of same old same old from the Biden Administration.
DOGE Dude: Didn’t touch the big stuff either. The whole budget is like $6.8 trillion, with more than half going to Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Interest and Defense.
DOGE Boy: Makes even our high-end estimate of $50 billion in cuts look like a rounding error, if we can actually get there. Then members of Congress start bitching and Elon rolls over and reinstates staff or programs we cut.
DOGE Dude: Wait until they turn us loose on those big-ticket items.
DOGE Boy: You know, I’m going to bail on tackling Social Security and Medicare. No way I’m touching that $2.3 trillion treasure chest. Those old folks are getting nasty about cutting their monthly payments and government healthcare, especially since their 401(k) retirement accounts are sinking. And it’s not just the liberals. Even the fire-eating-right-wing Trump lovers love Socialized Medicine when they hit 65. Including my parents. Said if I had anything to do with any changes to either program they will make me pay the premiums to put them on my health insurance and make me pay the co-pays. Then they will spend my inheritance or give it only to my sister and drop me out of the will – that’s two houses and a boat, so no thanks. Hands off over here.
DOGE Dude: That’s nothing compared to what my family said about Medicaid. Grandma, sweetest woman on the planet, is in a real nice assisted living/care thing that’s paid for by Medicaid. I did not know that until I got an email from the whole family saying if that gets cut, Grandma is moving in with me, not them. That would drain my bank account and crimp my style, if you know what I mean.
DOGE Boy: At least they didn’t threaten to beat you up.
DOGE Dude: Whoa, violence? Is someone trashing a Tesla dealership?
DOGE Boy: No. My uncle. Big guy. Veteran. When I got this job his whole American Legion post sent congrats. Now, after cutting the VA and especially medical and hospitals, they’re all pissed. My uncle has some ongoing medical issues and his clinic could get hit. Already his favorite nurse, a vet herself, got fired. If it gets worse, he said, and I quote: “I will hunt down your little punk ass and serve you knuckle sandwiches until they knock some sense into you or knock out all your teeth.”
DOGE Dude: But getting beat to a pulp is a one-day deal. How about my partner the special education teacher? Death stares, total silence, plans to spend the summer with “a close friend from grad school” because of killing the Dept. of Education section that pays for special ed.
DOGE Boy: Hey, that Ed. Dept. handles my student loans, which I’m making big payments on thanks to this six-figure government salary. I was thinking of putting in for loan forgiveness for working in the public sector.
DOGE Dude: Good luck. Those VA nurses making less then you and getting laid off will probably barely still qualify and will still have to pay for loans even if they get fired.
DOGE Boy: Another no go for me is the Pentagon. Big money there, more than a trillion a year that they know about. An old guy told me the last Pentagon audit took 1,600 real accountants years and they didn’t find everything and just gave up.
DOGE Dude: That’s a scary place. Real soldiers. Imagine getting put in a room with a bunch of generals who are old and mean and when we say, “bummer, gramps, that program is toast,” they bring in a crew of Navy Seals and Recon Marines “for a little private chat with you boys, and we do mean boys,” then go out and lock the door. I’ll pass.
DOGE Boy: They don’t even have to do that. That building is huge. Just give us the wrong directions and we will be literally going in circles. We would need an air tag, GIS, navigation apps and a search and rescue team just to get out of the building.
DOGE Dude: Not going in to start with. Hey, you know the worst part of this gig? Since I’m now a “government employee” everyone I know asks me what’s going on with inflation, price of eggs, tariffs, stock market, recession, depression, paper straws, immigration, education, healthcare, Canada and Mexico, foreign aid, Panama and Greenland, renewable energy, DEI, free speech, Putin, Ukraine, NATO, Gaza, spending freezes, fascism, the list goes on and on. What do you say to those questions?
DOGE Boy: I just tell them it’s too much to keep track of and I can’t keep up, but he has the attention span of a squirrel on meth and the …
AUTO DELETE!! AUTO DELETE!!! AUTO DELETE!!!
Jon Klusmire of Bishop is wishing his computer had an auto delete function.
