POG Politics Thread Version 3
Come on in! Since Dustin is taking his ball and going home, it's time to start a new politics thread.
Mild suggestion that, rather than a miraculous and unexplained quadrupling of value over several months, this is simply fraud.
Law of Parsimony
The company, post-buyout, is not publicly traded, so their financials are not publicly available, but
(deal w/ the paywall how you will) has the best info I've seen so far:
A group of seven Wall Street banks including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays and MUFG have sold almost all the $12.5bn of loans Musk used to finance his takeover of Twitter in 2022. The lenders had been saddled with the debt while Musk sought to turn around X’s operations as equity investors repriced their stakes in the platform at dramatic discounts.
Investor interest in the loans improved in the weeks following Trump’s election victory in November, given the billionaire’s proximity to the new administration as a confidant to the president and the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) intent on cutting government red tape.
It also improved after Musk gave a 25 per cent stake in his artificial intelligence start-up xAI to investors in the social media company early last year. xAI has obtained a valuation of $45bn, and the novel arrangement has provided new security to X’s lenders and boosted the platform’s valuation.
So the rebound is due to (1) perceived nepotism & (2) Musk's infusion of outside working capital - this has placed the company, reportedly, in a position back where it was when Musk first bought it and then immediately tanked it - at least sufficiently so for the big lenders to finally offload their bad debt.
Given that its continued investorship includes Andreessen Horowitz, this bit also seems worthy of mentioning:
Beyond advertising, X is expanding its efforts to diversify into new revenue streams and become what Musk has dubbed “the everything app”. Chief executive Linda Yaccarino announced in January that the company would later this year launch X Money, a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payment service, with Visa as its first partner.
It is also working closely with xAI to integrate its AI technology into the platform, on Monday launching the latest version of its AI chatbot Grok 3 for premium subscribers. X plans to wield the AI technology developed by xAI to boost its ads offering and products, according to one person familiar with the matter.
"Everything app"... where I have heard that before? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat
Democrats wonder why their approval rating is 27%... Listen to Chris Murphy on Jon Stewart. He makes Gavin Newsom sound like Shakespeare. Missions sets and Action sets? lololol
This boat is adrift!
Great analogy by Stewart - when the Knicks are losing, they look to the fans at halftime and say "your turn".
We don't need talking points for the people to carry around, what the hell was that?
Only decent thing Murphy said was that Dems ****ed up when they marginalized Bernie in 2016. They broke democracy in Nevada. Trump is simply feeding off its carrion.
"We viewed Bernie as the outlier threat". Translation: **** what the people want, it's us or Cheeto
If I was Jon, I would not have shown the same restraint. Terrible.
Our Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion was randomly fired today for no specific reason. Not a good time to be an out-of-work DEI Director imo.
kinda like being a concentration camp supervisor in 1947
Trump just keeps delivering. What a difference from the last administration!
(Apologies for initially posting this in the pub)
it's nice to hear the white Republican men I play poker with hate on trump and musk.
If there's anything worse than a Republican, it has to be a white Republican. I bet he's not even gay or trans.
I wonder what Cooper Flagg's politics are.
i can't tell if they voted for him or not. but I think people should complain, and more than compalin, for people they voted for. I mean supposedly we should be holding our civil servants accountable.
if I held my nose and voted for kamala, just because I thought trump was worse, you bet your ass i'd be complaining about Kamala.
and they're hating because trump and musk are idiots and scammers!
they are flabbergasted by Tesla stock situation, and social security situation, and tarrifs, and on and on
lololololol
From flop to favorite.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris is the preferred 2028 option by a wide margin, according to a survey of Democratic voters released Friday.
The failed 2024 presidential nominee received 36% support from Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent voters in the early 2028 primary poll conducted by Morning Consult.
Harris, 60, has a stunning double-digit lead over her closest potential competitor, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who garnered just 10% support from his party.
do you mean with Tesla? that Elon is cooking the books, and getting away with it. that the cars have so many problems, but the company is valued so high.
also, I was rewatching star trek discovery from like 6 years ago or whenever it was, and they were listing great people like Einstein, cochram(who invented warp drive), ELON MUSK lmao, and other star trek heroes
Cooking the books??? Cars have so many problems???
They make the #1 selling car in the world!
i can't tell if they voted for him or not. but I think people should complain, and more than compalin, for people they voted for. I mean supposedly we should be holding our civil servants accountable. if I held my nose and voted for kamala, just because I thought trump was worse, you bet your ass i'd be complaining about Kamala. and they're hating because trump and musk are idi
I guess "no right to complain" isn't quite right, but seriously, what are they complaining about? Trump is doing just about everything he campaigned on. He said he would do the tariffs! If you voted for him, you voted for that! As far as LOL Tesla stock goes, that's just dumbass Elon ruining his brand, which is still stupidly overvalued.
can't people just leave those Nazi cars alone?
btw, my neighbor has a bumper sticker on her Tesla "anti Elon Tesla club" lmao wth
lol they do complain a lot about the market
meanwhile they're rich AF
Elon literally said this would happen. Trump voters should be happy.
Amp Reads the News: CNN dot com 03-22-2025
Pentagon scrambles to make Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ a reality
From Golden Showers to a Golden Dome, this golden boy with a golden toilet in his golden years has a golden opportunity to be bitten by a golden retriever.
US deploys a second destroyer near southern border as Trump ramps up immigration crackdown
Two months and we've already invaded ourselves? Nothing good is called a Destroyer. The best thing I can think of is the Kiss album with God of Thunder on it, a five-star classic as Kiss albums go. It was a big thing for me as a kid in the nineteen hundred and seventies, learning the difference between the marketing of a thing and the reality of that thing, and Gene Simmons was a brutal teacher.
Seth Rogen knows he can handle weed better than most
It's a learned skill.
Hindu priest jumps out of fire. Pope Francis Sits in hospital chapel. The week in photos.
Look at this mother****er.
Meanwhile, the Pope merely has to sit to make headlines. There's levels to this.
North Korea unveils new 10,000-home showpiece residential district
This guy just keeps delivering!!
I wish I could get all my news like that
