32 Comments

Thank you so much Jim!! Thank you for always putting things so clearly, and simply, that they're easy to share with doubtful people. Your messages are so impactful.

Expand full comment

Elon Musk is just another rich SOB cheating and betraying his way to wealth. He and Trump deserve one another. Unfortunately for us, we do not deserve either. dickg

Expand full comment

What a lovely couple they make. They must have "just fallen in love" because they have so much in common. Two of the meanest, ugliest, greediest creatures on the planet. Betrayal is inevitable. Let's hope the divorce comes before they can do much more harm together. Keep it coming, Jim!

Expand full comment

You are the master of the understatement.

Expand full comment

The two bloated egos is a spot on assessment of these two fascists. It seems that to me that to be a really “good” fascist an inflated ego is indeed mandatory.

Expand full comment

Both Musk and Trump are malignantly narcissistic and sociological. The narcissium accounts for the boundless need for attention and with neon arrogance believing they can jump into others'

minds and do all of their thinking for them. The ruthless disregard for any fairness or moral considerations involved in their interactions with any foe or friend, any agency good or bad, any extant entity betrays any concept of conscience and belies their every promise made. This, psychopathological. Their direction is always non-determinable since their compass has no needle. The only emotional experience they experience is the schadenfreude glee of winning, and betrayal heightens that evIl cackle. Both would betray the other in like drama.

Expand full comment

Superb comment.

Expand full comment

Re: Who bilks first? They'll have to wait for2nd or 3rd. Their first priority is bilking the USA.

Expand full comment

So true, Robert. The question is, how do they get away with it? Why are so many people so easy to bilk? We are reminded of a song from "Fiddler on the Roof" (If I were a rich man), with a line that goes: "If you're rich, they think you really know".

Expand full comment

Thanks as always for your insight into issues that too often “fly under the radar“

Expand full comment

Thank you for writing details that some how I've missed. I'm referencing the huge subsidies available and accepted even while we taxpayers are paying him for space and defense needs of the federal government. Stunning!

Expand full comment

This is the new TARP.

Expand full comment

If government were a bordello, EM would be its best client and the Apricot Anti-Christ would be the madame.

Expand full comment

You are extremely close to describing it!

Expand full comment

This makes me take a second and third look at the SpaceX effort which has been presented as a long-term effort to get recoverable and reusable rockets going. Whatever the pretentions for going to Mars or becoming a multiplanetary species SpaceX may have, it seems to have had some success with a claimed three hundred plus orbital rocket booster recoveries in the past several years, more or less keeping attempts by other organizations both public and private in obeyance.

With an occasional glitch or RUD, the recoveries seem more or less work. How much of that happened because of heavy subsidizing by transfers from other funds or stealth of other kinds? As a community we deserve to have a clear idea from Spacex about what is going on if there is one to be had.

Cordially, Dr. Peter Deutsch, an inquisitive retiree with a fifty-plus year-old Ph.D. in physics.

Expand full comment

I'd like to add the word 'to' to my original comment to make it hang together. Specifically. I wanted the first sentence of the second paragraph to read: ' With an occasional glitch or RUD, the recoveries seem more or less to work.' Cordially, Peter Deutsch, Ph.D.

Expand full comment

Additionally, I want to say that beside any motivations Musk may have, the apparently successful enterprise of recovering and reusing boosters, especially boosters for orbital rockets, has implications both realized and latent beyond his individual motivations. Actually, the successes here are not in originating the use of recoverable boosters but in further developing and extending their uses: In an earlier time, Space Shuttles used solid rocket boosters employed in previous launches. Cordially, Peter Deutsch, Ph. D.

Expand full comment

We are not scientists, but it seems to us that no matter what Musk does, and no matter how scientific-sounding his language, at the end of the day it is all about him and his profits.

Expand full comment

so effectively stated, as usual!

Expand full comment

I really did not know about Musk's hogging from the public purse. THANKS FOR GETTING THIS INFORMATION OUT THERE.

Expand full comment

The ugly face of corporate ruthlessness at the taxpayers expense.Both Trump and Tesla come from the same corporate trough.

Expand full comment

Has anyone seen the meme of a Tesla truck next to a stainless steel swing top trashcan? Lol! It's the perfect comparison. A rolling trashcan!

Expand full comment

They will turn on each other and behind their backs. It is revealing how much aid and help both men received to get to where they are and how they refuse to acknowledge it let alone make it possible for other people to get the same aid and help. After seeing how both behave it is not surprising.

Expand full comment

Great insight Jim. These two narcissists are so hungry for attention, one is bound to screw the other anytime now.

Expand full comment