Seems to me that Utah, given its large LDS population, while conservative politically would be an imperfect fit for many MAGA policies.
My understanding is that early Mormons were persecuted and that’s why they moved west and settled in Utah, and to this day are sympathetic with other groups subject to discrimination. Although the church itself has a mixed record of tolerance. Individual Mormons I’ve met seem to be of the “live and let live” mindset. Also, historically some Mormons moved to Mexico, so there’s something of a bond there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_colonies_in_Mexico And many Mormons go abroad on missions, gaining from personal experience a more factual and nuanced view of the world outside the USA, compared to the stereotypical “low information voter”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_missionary From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Chuck Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2025 9:05 AM To: af@af.afmug.com Cc: af@af.afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] DOGE website (www.doge.gov) Images shown as part of a history lesson is far different from posting colors. They only allow colors from tribes, states and nations to be posted. I support the proposed law. Do you really want MAGA and KKK flags to be allowed? Sent from my iPhone On Feb 15, 2025, at 7:11 PM, Bill Prince <part15...@gmail.com <mailto:part15...@gmail.com> > wrote: Just saw this. https://www.yahoo.com/news/utah-law-allow-nazi-confederate-160556024.html Scratch Utah from the places I want to visit. bp <part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com> On 2/15/2025 4:55 PM, Jason McKemie wrote: I guess you could call the executives that ran ENRON "turnaround artists" as well, I want that sort of behavior far away from my government though. I've heard the argument many times that our institutions will provide the guardrails to keep our democracy healthy. They can't do their job if they no longer exist or are gutted. Hopefully the judicial branch will provide some resistance to this nonsense, but we're going to be staring down the barrel of a constitutional crisis if the current administration just ignores judgements they don't like. I'm all for getting rid of bureaucratic bloat and waste, that's not what this is though. On Sat, Feb 15, 2025, 6:42 PM Chuck <ch...@go-mtc.com <mailto:ch...@go-mtc.com> > wrote: When large publically traded companies are on the rocks they bring in a new CEO to turn things around, sometimes parting it out. Our nation is the largest publicly owned business on the planet. It has some turn around artists at the helm. Sit back and watch the show. Some good may come of all of this. Highly entertaining at the least. The republic is very likely to survive and could actually benefit from a good house cleaning, Sent from my iPhone On Feb 15, 2025, at 6:17 PM, Jason McKemie <j.mcke...@veloxinetbroadband.com <mailto:j.mcke...@veloxinetbroadband.com> > wrote: This seems about par for the course with these guys. Scary stuff. I love how this administration uses the term "maximally transparent", or some derivation thereof everywhere they can. I guess if you say it enough, it must be true, right? On Sat, Feb 15, 2025 at 5:59 PM Ken Hohhof <khoh...@kwom.com <mailto:khoh...@kwom.com> > wrote: https://www.wired.com/story/doge-website-is-just-one-big-x-ad/ DOGE’s Website Is Just One Big X Ad The source code for the new Department of Government Efficiency’s “official US government website” points to X as its primary source of authority, while sharing links to the site sends users to x.com <http://x.com> . At a press conference in the Oval Office <https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/12/tech/elon-musk-x-oval-office/index.html> this week, Elon Musk promised the actions of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) <https://www.wired.com/tag/doge/> project would be “maximally transparent,” thanks to information posted to its website. At the time of his comment, the DOGE website was empty <https://bsky.app/profile/joncooper-us.bsky.social/post/3lhwsmk4iac2u> . However, when the site finally came online Thursday morning, it turned out to be little more than a glorified feed of posts from the official DOGE account on Musk’s own X platform, raising new questions about Musk’s conflicts of interest in running DOGE <https://www.npr.org/2025/02/12/nx-s1-5293382/x-elon-musk-doge-cfpb> . DOGE.gov claims to be an “official website of the United States government,” but rather than giving detailed breakdowns of the cost savings and efficiencies Musk claims his project is making, the homepage of the site just replicated posts from the DOGE account on X. A WIRED review of the page’s source code shows that the promotion of Musk’s own platform went deeper than replicating the posts on the homepage. The source code shows that the site’s canonical tags <https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization> direct search engines to x.com <http://x.com> rather than DOGE.gov. A canonical tag is a snippet of code that tells search engines what the authoritative version of a website is. It is typically used by sites with multiple pages as a search engine optimization tactic, to avoid their search ranking being diluted. In DOGE’s case, however, the code is informing search engines that when people search for content found on DOGE.gov, they should not show those pages in search results, but should instead display the posts on X. “It is promoting the X account as the main source, with the website secondary,” Declan Chidlow, a web developer <https://vale.rocks/> , tells WIRED. “This isn't usually how things are handled, and it indicates that the X account is taking priority over the actual website itself.” Advertisement All the other US government websites WIRED checked used their own homepage in their canonical tags, including the official White House website. Additionally, when sharing the DOGE website on mobile devices, the source code creates a link to the DOGE X account rather than the website itself. “It seems that the DOGE website is secondary, and they are prodding people in the direction of the X account everywhere they can,” Chidlow adds. Alongside the homepage feed of X posts, a section of Doge.gov labeled “Savings” now appears. So far the page is empty except for a single line that reads: “Receipts coming soon, no later than Valentine's day,” followed by a heart emoji <https://www.wired.com/story/heart-emoji-lost-all-meaning/> . A section entitled “Workforce” features some bar charts showing how many people work in each government agency, with the information coming from data gathered by the Office of Personnel Management in March 2024. A disclaimer at the bottom of the page reads: “This is DOGE's effort to create a comprehensive, government-wide org chart. This is an enormous effort, and there are likely some errors or omissions. We will continue to strive for maximum accuracy over time.” Another section, entitled “Regulations,” features what DOGE calls the “Unconstitutionality Index,” which it describes as “the number of agency rules created by unelected bureaucrats for each law passed by Congress in 2024.” The charts in this section are also based on data previously collected by US government agencies. Doge.gov also links to a Forbes article from last month that was written by Clyde Wayne Crews, a member of the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that pushed climate change disinformation <https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/heartland-institute-leak-exposes-strategies-of-climate-attack-machine/> and questioned the links between tobacco and lung cancer <https://www.tobaccotactics.org/article/heartland-institute/> . It is also a major advocate for privatizing government departments <https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/in-shift-key-climate-denialist-group-heartland-institute-pivots-to-policy/> . The site also features a “Join” page which allows prospective DOGE employees to apply for roles including “software engineers, InfoSec engineers, and other technology professionals.” As well as requesting a Github account and résumé, the form asks visitors to “provide 2-3 bullet points showcasing exceptional ability.” The website does not list a developer, but on Wednesday, web application security expert Sam Curry outlined in a thread on X <https://x.com/samwcyo/status/1889527715029557607> how he was able to identify the developer of the site as DOGE employee Kyle Shutt. Curry claims he was able to link a Cloudflare account ID found in the site’s source code to Shutt, who used the same account when developing Musk’s America PAC <https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-america-pac-election-denial-community-x/> website. On Thursday, Drop Site News <https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/doge-fema-funding-access-social-security-numbers> reported, citing sources within FEMA, that Shutt had gained access to the agency’s proprietary software controlling payments. Earlier this week, Business Insider reported <https://www.businessinsider.com/doge-staff-list-white-house-2025-2> that Shutt, who recently worked at an AI interviewing software company, was listed as one of 30 people working for DOGE. Neither Shutt, DOGE, nor the White House responded to requests for comment. -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
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