Elon Musk...human? - Political

[sfbm21]

spot on.

[Hektor]

22 minutes ago, Parsad said:

He will go wherever the wind is beneath his sails.

 

22 minutes ago, Parsad said:

Elon is in it for Elon.

 

No surprise. I posted this under Charter. The article delves a little into the conflict of interest Elon has.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-26/elon-musk-s-starlink-gets-gop-backing-for-42-billion-broadband-program

 

GOP Wants Musk’s Starlink to Get a Cut of $42 Billion Biden Internet Plan

[73 Reds]

41 minutes ago, Parsad said:

 

For now!  He will go wherever the wind is beneath his sails.  Remember, it was gigafactories in China previously.  Then move everything to Texas.  Originally, it was Canada that he's giving a big fuck you to now! 

 

Elon is in it for Elon...not Trump, not the USA, no one!  The saving humanity shit is to move his agenda forward...some of that is exciting, some of that is God damn scary!  Cheers!

Thing is, I don't care about his motivations, only his results.   As long as he is not breaking any laws, all the power to him.  Some folks (not you) get too caught up in personality types which are highly irrelevant when otherwise positive influence can be of great benefit.  As a society we're well past the point of positive role models; social media has pretty much ended that.  So what's left are accomplishments.  

[Hektor]

And he isn't going anywhere, I guess

 

From the cabinet meeting today

 

“Is anybody unhappy with Elon?” Trump asks. “If you are, we’ll throw him out of here.” Nervous laughter ripples through the room as the cabinet members start to clap.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02/26/us/trump-musk-news

[cubsfan]

15 minutes ago, Hektor said:

And he isn't going anywhere, I guess

 

From the cabinet meeting today

 

“Is anybody unhappy with Elon?” Trump asks. “If you are, we’ll throw him out of here.” Nervous laughter ripples through the room as the cabinet members start to clap.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02/26/us/trump-musk-news

 

Ha, ha - who hates the President more than The NY Times - no one!

[Hektor]

4 minutes ago, cubsfan said:

Ha, ha - who hates the President more than The NY Times - no one!

Hear it from the horses mouth. Listening to the video, I think he said "If you are, we’ll throw them out of here", meaning the secretaries, not "throw him" meaning Musk.

 

 

[cubsfan]

19 minutes ago, Hektor said:

Hear it from the horses mouth. Listening to the video, I think he said "If you are, we’ll throw them out of here", meaning the secretaries, not "throw him" meaning Musk.

 

 

 

 

I have NO idea where you are going with this. Who cares what the cabinent thinks.

It's non of their business.  Musk works at the direction and solely for the President.

 

All that matters is that Musk is in charge, he works directly for the President and will be fired 

only by the President.

 

What exactly is your point?

[DooDiligence]

2 hours ago, Parsad said:

 

For now!  He will go wherever the wind is beneath his sails.  Remember, it was gigafactories in China previously.  Then move everything to Texas.  Originally, it was Canada that he's giving a big fuck you to now! 

 

Elon is in it for Elon...not Trump, not the USA, no one!  The saving humanity shit is to move his agenda forward...some of that is exciting, some of that is God damn scary!  Cheers!

 

Does anybody really give a shit about going to Mars. I know I don't. I hear it's a hell of a lot less comfortable than a Ko Chang beach bungalow.

[Hektor]

1 hour ago, cubsfan said:

I have NO idea where you are going with this.

I am going nowhere and will leave it here. Since NY Times was mentioned, I wanted to see if there was a video of the meeting. When I found one, I thought I'll share it here.

[John Hjorth]

1 hour ago, Hektor said:

Hear it from the horses mouth. Listening to the video, I think he said "If you are, we’ll throw them out of here", meaning the secretaries, not "throw him" meaning Musk.

 

 

 

Thank you for sharing that video, Hektor [ @Hektor ],

 

Very nice indeed to get things covered and what is facts clear cut to the bone.

 

And by the way, now we're at it : The video also in the beginning contains the basic explanation from Mr. Musk of what this e-mail to all the public servants really is about. It's certainly not not what the main stream media have reported. I wonder if any of them even have tried to reach out to him, for comment, explanation or elaboration.

 

It's basically one of the first things one recommend to do as advisor or management consultant, if you in the employeé handbook find a line about it's not OK to jump a colleague in the pretty dark space behind the copy machine, and the place is vast and need a spring cleaning.

 

It certainly tells me a lot about how careful we all have to be with our sources for what we are dragging in here on CofB&F.

 

So I'm happy that you led me to the video, Hektor [ @Hektor ].

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

I hope one day a fellow American CofB&F member will explain to me how the US administrations payroll system is built and stuctured. I imagine it must be from the stone age, well almost, - at least from a time now long gone. Off topic - and that'll have to be another day, in another topic.

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 07:45 PM by John Hjorth

[Hektor]

2 minutes ago, John Hjorth said:

So I'm happy that you led me to the video, Hektor [ @Hektor ].

[tnathan]

I think what a lot of the arguments miss is that the only way to make a real dent in the budget is some combination of cuts to (1) Defense (2) Social Security and (3) Healthcare. So Elon can claim to be making great progress, but nothing he cuts outside of these areas actually matters. Good luck to him cutting #2 and #3 above -- these are a lot more complex than simply saying "we are getting rid of DEI programs". If he does start to cut #2 and #3 people are going to have serious problems with him. 

[cubsfan]

2 hours ago, Hektor said:

Hear it from the horses mouth. Listening to the video, I think he said "If you are, we’ll throw them out of here", meaning the secretaries, not "throw him" meaning Musk.

 

 

 

@Hektor Thanks for the video Hector. The whole thing is excellent and anyone that wants to understand DOGE should listen to it. 

[cubsfan]

10 minutes ago, tnathan said:

I think what a lot of the arguments miss is that the only way to make a real dent in the budget is some combination of cuts to (1) Defense (2) Social Security and (3) Healthcare. So Elon can claim to be making great progress, but nothing he cuts outside of these areas actually matters. Good luck to him cutting #2 and #3 above -- these are a lot more complex than simply saying "we are getting rid of DEI programs". If he does start to cut #2 and #3 people are going to have serious problems with him. 

 

Well - you have a direct contradiction if you listen to the video. He still thinks he can cut $1T.

 

That is an aggressive, but worthy goal. 

[Hektor]

9 minutes ago, cubsfan said:

Hektor Thanks for the video Hector. The whole thing is excellent and anyone that wants to understand DOGE should listen to it. 

[Saluki]

All these "cuts" are performance theater, nothing more. It's red meat for the angry and ignorant. 

 

Since we are all investors here, assume you have two stocks and one is a 13% position and another is 0.01%, and you need to raise cash.  You don't touch the big one which loses money, but you cut the smaller one, which pays a huge dividend. How are you doing?   The big one is defense, 13% of spending. The second one is CFPB which had a budget of $800mm and returned $20bln to consumers since 2011.  The math isn't mathing. 

 

If you think government is wasteful because the workers "don't do anything" then how is paying them for 9 months and telling them they don't have to work going to improve that productivity issue? 

 

[KFRCanuk]

1 minute ago, Saluki said:

All these "cuts" are performance theater, nothing more. It's red meat for the angry and ignorant. 

 

Since we are all investors here, assume you have two stocks and one is a 13% position and another is 0.01%, and you need to raise cash.  You don't touch the big one which loses money, but you cut the smaller one, which pays a huge dividend. How are you doing?   The big one is defense, 13% of spending. The second one is CFPB which had a budget of $800mm and returned $20bln to consumers since 2011.  The math isn't mathing. 

 

If you think government is wasteful because the workers "don't do anything" then how is paying them for 9 months and telling them they don't have to work going to improve that productivity issue? 

 

 

It seems that the Harper Government tried to constructively rein in spending across the Canadian Government. It does not sound like it continued.

 

Canadian DOGE? How Canada SUCCEEDED Where DOGE is FAILING

 

 

 

I would think that having strong auditor generals and continuous improvement programs would be something that a majority of Canadians would support.

 

 

 

[cubsfan]

Gotta love what Elon is doing with DOGE.....

the naysayers will piss and moan, while the public cheers. 

 

https://doge.gov/savings

 

 

 

 

[tnathan]

1 hour ago, cubsfan said:

 

Well - you have a direct contradiction if you listen to the video. He still thinks he can cut $1T.

 

That is an aggressive, but worthy goal. 

Just do the math...you can get to a trillion if you cut the very large line items, which are military, healthcare, social security / unemployment. You're not getting there by cutting small parts of everything else. When they start trying to cut social security let's see what happens

[cubsfan]

8 minutes ago, tnathan said:

Just do the math...you can get to a trillion if you cut the very large line items, which are military, healthcare, social security / unemployment. You're not getting there by cutting small parts of everything else. When they start trying to cut social security let's see what happens

 

I'm looking forward to exactly that. If you believe Mr Musk, there is vast amounts of waste/fraud, etc -- in addition to unneeded overhead, etc.  

 

I'm not betting on anything in terms of a "number" - I'm simply delighted the current government is committed to cutting the deficit.  I've no doubt this will be

a difficult tightrope to walk between tax cuts & budget cuts.

Edited Wednesday at 10:05 PM by cubsfan

[Parsad]

4 hours ago, 73 Reds said:

Thing is, I don't care about his motivations, only his results.   As long as he is not breaking any laws, all the power to him.  Some folks (not you) get too caught up in personality types which are highly irrelevant when otherwise positive influence can be of great benefit.  As a society we're well past the point of positive role models; social media has pretty much ended that.  So what's left are accomplishments.  

 

Well, we don't know if he is breaking any laws.  Every bit of oversight has been fired, removed or works for the Trump administration.  Buffett talks about his three traits in people he hires...brains, energy and integrity...if they have the first two, but the third one is missing, don't waste your time.  Cheers!

[John Hjorth]

Somehow, I just waited for you to 'arrive' here in this topic, @Saluki! 

 

[Kind of internal joke between @Saluki and me, here.]

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

If one layoffs people with a [perhaps long] notice, while firing them, one naturally demand them to loyally do their job as if they were not laid off, within their notice period, because they are paid for doing so. Everything else is just crazy and stupid. In short, you're just a petty, shitty employer, public or private, doesen't really mattter, if you don't do your best to furnish the fired employee with the written statement, that the layoff wasen't caused of personal performance, and the handover of tasks to others was approached in an appropriate and constructive way.

 

I have seen such bad things happen to many people, especially getting layed-off in owner-controlled businesses, my favorite business then to pull some strings at another client in need of somebody with these actual qualifications, without beeing pushy, just shortly presenting an opportuninity.

 

Creating one contact - two people who come to appreciate you! - so, it's not a Win-Win, it more like a WIn-Win-Win. It's easy to do, by phone, but it has to be sincere, and honest.

[73 Reds]

1 minute ago, Parsad said:

 

Well, we don't know if he is breaking any laws.  Every bit of oversight has been fired, removed or works for the Trump administration.  Buffett talks about his three traits in people he hires...brains, energy and integrity...if they have the first two, but the third one is missing, don't waste your time.  Cheers!

But just bear in mind that Elon doesn't have to be doing anything for DOGE or the US government so it all depends on how integrity is defined.

[Parsad]

3 hours ago, cubsfan said:

 

 

I have NO idea where you are going with this. Who cares what the cabinent thinks.

It's non of their business.  Musk works at the direction and solely for the President.

 

All that matters is that Musk is in charge, he works directly for the President and will be fired 

only by the President.

 

What exactly is your point?

 

Point is you didn't believe the NY Times.  This deterioration in what we trust as news and what we qualify as news has become plainly apparent.  There is a measles outbreak in Texas, with one child dead, and the head of the government on health doesn't believe in vaccines.  Fiction has become fact!  Cheers!

[Parsad]

2 hours ago, tnathan said:

I think what a lot of the arguments miss is that the only way to make a real dent in the budget is some combination of cuts to (1) Defense (2) Social Security and (3) Healthcare. So Elon can claim to be making great progress, but nothing he cuts outside of these areas actually matters. Good luck to him cutting #2 and #3 above -- these are a lot more complex than simply saying "we are getting rid of DEI programs". If he does start to cut #2 and #3 people are going to have serious problems with him. 

 

+1!  Cheers!