I caused a lot of consternation with my conservative and libertarian friends in the 1990s and early 2000s by saying that Bill Gates was human scum. but they didn't get it because he was appealing to their prejudices. Now he's sucking up to the progressive left, but the truth is he hasn't changed a bit. Sociopaths like this simply embrace whowever will put them ahead in one moment, and then later embrace a different group that put them ahead in the next. Every side loves a "redemption story" of a wealthy / famous / powerful person "switching" to their side.
I've got a spoiler alert for the Elon Musk fans: exact same thing. If you look at the way he actually structures and runs his businesses he is 100% woke progressive to the very core of his being. He hasn't made a single dime of profit that wasn't from the government since PayPal.
UPDATE: We could argue about Tesla's recent quarterly results where they turned a profit by doing a pump-and-dump of Bitcoin. This was enabled by Fed / government fiscal policy during the pandemic so I'd still call it government, but you could argue otherwise.
Don’t worry!
His “very smart people” are totally right about things this time when it comes to trade.
There is zero - I repeat, zero - moral difference between the people who pushed for "experimenting" with lockdowns because "we have to do something!" and the people who push for "experimenting" with trade wars because "we have to do something!"
Musk is out.
Musk put himself in a corner where he can't rip into Trump and he has to play nice probably at least through the midterms, but just look at the guy's face and watch him refuse to give a straight answer here. He put a lot on the line with endorsing Trump and starting DOGE, and Trump absolutely stabbed him in the back. Trump's supporters will blame congress, but Trump has very openly and loudly endorsed all of the DOGE-defying moves that congress has made, and has viciously attacked the one congressman (Thomas Massie) who has stood against it.
The reason is simple: Trump cares about trophies. Cutting the budget is not a trophy. DOGE trying to take a chainsaw to government was a trophy, but as soon as DOGE became more of Musk's than Trump's trophy, Trump stopped caring about it because congress offered him a Big, Beautiful Bill as a trophy instead. Just like the FBI offered the opportunity to build a Big, Beautiful new headquarters building for them (Trump loves buildings!). ...
As comedy slowly slides into unfunny wokeness hell, the last comedian standing (assuming he doesn't drop dead first, I mean just look at the guy; he's a trainwreck) will be Doug Stanhope. He closed out his recent special "The Dying of the Last Breed" with this bit on how important it is that we be able to make fun of anything. Because making fun.
Language warning, duh.
Preliminary Q2 numbers for Argentina are in. This is still subject to adjustment but so far their preliminaries have been pretty accurate under the Milei administration.
Slashing spending works. Trump and Bessent are very optimistically projecting economic growth of 3% doing the opposite of what Milei is doing to deliver 7.6% - and climbing!
