Summary
DOGE staffers Tyler Hassen and Bryton Shang tried pressuring the Bureau of Reclamation to open a California water pump to aid Los Angeles during January’s wildfires, though the system couldn’t reach the city.
When denied, they flew there to do it themselves but failed due to maintenance and access restrictions.
Critics called DOGE a “slapstick operation of 20-somethings they’re seeing as whiz kids but have zero knowledge.”
Trump later ordered dam releases, flooding farmland. Critics called DOGE’s actions reckless and uninformed.
I wish I had the confidence of a DOGE tech bro even for a week.
First, the power was off due to planned maintenance. Second, Shang wasn’t an official federal employee yet, meaning he couldn’t access the pump. Hassen couldn’t do it either, CNN reports, because he had to fly back before the power would be restored.
“They didn’t get their photo op,” an unnamed source with knowledge of the incident told CNN, adding it represented “what DOGE has been this entire time — this slapstick operation of 20-somethings they’re seeing as whiz kids but have zero knowledge.”
lol that’s amazing levels of incompetence.
Who paid for the flights? American tax dollars or Elon, because it was poorly planned and inefficient which goes against the ideology of DOGE
Anyihing where Trump or Musk are involved there’s incompetence.
I wish someone would put me in a room with these losers
No shit. Little boys would be crying for their mamas.
Yelling at various department managers and threatening to call Musk might work for the agencies they’ve gutted, but yeah fucking with any fire department during an active wildfire…I don’t care who you are, you’re gonna have a bad time. Possibly shovel related.
They weren’t fucking with the fire department. They were trying to open massive water pumps (incapable of delivering water anywhere near the fires mind you) that have the capacity to flood entire towns. If you or I did that we’d be facing terrorism charges.
Got it, thank you for bringing context. The image of a shit shovel to the face was just too satisfying to ignore.
Reminder: pronounce DOGE as “doggy” to deny them legitimacy
Yes! I always talk about Musk’s Doggy-Department.
I’ve been pronouncing it “doogie” because it makes it seem as silly as it is
I like your approach. It certainly makes me think of how all the people involved are like way too young.
I’m going to keep going with “doggy” because it reinforces to me how the decision making is on par with toddler logic
Or just DGE like it would be if it were an actual bureau, DOGE is what they want because it minimizes legitimacy of government itself.
Always have been
Ya know when you’re a teenager and you have these delusions of grandure, and think the world would work just fine if you were allowed to run it, because these “Stupid Adults don’t know ANYTHING!”
That’s DOGE
“Stupid Adults don’t know ANYTHING!”
I mean… these are adults.
Only if you look at their chronological age and not their behavior.
All I’m saying is is that I could have absolutely have done a better job as a teenager then these fuckwits.
Fucking morons.
Bout sums it up.
These idiots actually thought the only reason the fires were still burning is because someone hasn’t opened up a faucet yet, and that no one else but them have thought of it.
If DOGE was a movie, it would be Sausage Party.
These Doggy stooges are sooooo freaking annoying.
There needs to be more articles like this that calls them out by name. It’s easy to name Trump and Musk, but call out the cronies too!
Too much credit is given to Trump, which means that if Trump leaves office people will think everything is fixed despite all the other people who steer Trump towards his worst impulses will still be around wreaking havoc.
Trump is 90% a figurehead for the shitty conservatives who wrote Project 2025. He didn’t come up with most of this stuff, he is just going along with it. The 10% of the time things are his idea are fucking terrible too, but he definitely doesn’t deserve most of the credit.
Yeah but it’s MAGA’s weird adoration of Trump that makes this all possible. Also Trump did say he wasn’t going to do Project 2025 during the campaign. People either believed this (despite him being convicted of 34 counts of fraud) or actually wanted Project 2025.
There will always be ghouls that will want to do these kinds of things. But what needs to happen is for voters to learn that bad things happen when you vote for someone like Trump who enables this kind of thing.
Also Trump did say he wasn’t going to do Project 2025 during the campaign. P
Add it to the over 30,000 lies he’s already documented to have told.
Also Trump did say he wasn’t going to do Project 2025 during the campaign.
Nobody has any intention of building a wall.
- said Walter Ulbricht, head of state of the GDR in 1961, two months before he ordered to build the Berlin Wall.
A couple of terms that need to be resurrected and put into common use during this MAGA Occupation:
Imagine Bryton and Tyler showing up at your workplace in the middle of a crisis to take selfies and tweet about how they fixed your problems.
Remember how Musk talked about some absurd submarine design to safe the schoolkids that got trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand, like 7 years ago?
Should have been warning sign for everyone who supported any of his businesses and political positions after that.
It feels like the plot of an episode of Parks and Rec, but like, stupider, and not funny at all
F*cking idiots.
Fucking idiots.
Fucking dumbasses.
Fucking dipshits.
Fucking fucks.
Fuckity fuck-fuck
Dicking dicks.
I’m telling mom
Most of us, raised by Hollywood, imagine critical infrastructure has guards and ID checks. Keys. Guys with machine guns. The last 10 years, it’s pretty clear the major controls are just that no one tries. “I’m from DOGE” is going to be the penetration tester’s go-to social engineering hack for the next four years. Just walk in, press the Big Red Button, and leave.
This instance shows that it is, in fact, how that works, at least in part:
Shang wasn’t an official federal employee yet, meaning he couldn’t access the pump.
No credentials, no access. Most infrastructure like this has physical security like fencing, padlocks, steel doors, and so on. I don’t know if there’s a break-in alarm, but even if not, they’d still have to figure out how to access the pumps and turn them on. They’re probably computer-controlled, so you’d have to get access to the computer system. I’m sure you could override it on the PLC, or just plain hotwire it, but that takes a whole new set of skills.
I would not be the least surprised if the sum total of the “l33t h4x0r skills” of these teenagers boils down to knowing the least bit about whatever the latest Javascript frontend framework is, combined with some LLM to help them with it…this is what happens when a whole lot of idiots think that being young == being tech-savvy.
People hand the tech decisions over to complete morons with no understanding and so much Dunning-Kruger that they not only don’t know shit about something like PLCs, and may not have even heard of them, they’ll be too fucking arrogant to ask people that DO know, because, gosh, they might be OLD (i.e., > 30 years old) or something.
“Move Fast and Break Things” for government translates to…
Move fast to give billionaires gigantic tax cuts and break Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Move (money to cronies and debtors) fast, break things (people).
“oh no. I’m a princeton grad. I’m rich. I work for Elon and Trump. I have authority over everyone here” kind of mentality.
I’ve got some bad news for you…
If it is locked, the key is usually nearby, and it’s usually the cheapest, least secure, possible lock to buy.
While probably true, morons like these two would be unlikely to get past even those measures.
So to protect critical infrastructure, when someone says “I’m from DOGE,” the correct reply is “Off you fuck.”
“And I’m from SchruteBuckCoin, we are currently outperforming you in multiple metrics.”
Uncensor your fucking shit for the love of fuck
Fucking idiots
Fixed it for you
The fucking idiots were not just wasting water, they were depleting the reservoirs. That water will be sorely missed in the dry season.
This was all by design. It’s meant to fuck over this year’s harvest and drive food prices up.
You get it.
I’m semi convinced this is a setup to justify a Canadian invasion to acquire water in the summer
Can’t fucking wait for real life Water Wars
Water Wars are the first wars of climate change and they are already happening/brewing.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/30/what-caused-deadly-afghan-iran-border-clashes-what-happens-next
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_the_State_of_Palestine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_over_Water_(Jordan_river)
https://zambianobserver.com/zambia-and-drc-disputed-territories-of-lake-tanganyika-since-colonial-era/
I would reiterate a point I have made several times that Trump has taken actions a number of times that seem to me to not be a great idea for agriculture. That’s a little surprising, since agriculture is normally a Republican stronghold.
