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@sj_zero "and Elon gets to look to his primary market of EV customers like he's sticking it to orange man"

That fails as long as X is still "NAZI SPEECH 24X7!!!" Plus he can't undo his DOGE accomplishments like terminating the USAID grifting, regime change, etc. etc., and DOGE continues their work without him in his usual set things up and let them work for a while style.

USAID is a big one, and one they're ramping up the pressure on by claiming it's already killed 300K people/children, and that Musk will in due course exceed the body count of Lenin, Mao, or Stalin ... or maybe all combined.

Doesn't have to change your thesis, though, that's sunk costs for Musk, whereas the new stuff for Trump we're theorizing is of great value. Especially in adding pressure to get with the rescission bills.

But the surface appearance ... none of this is out of character for either, and the financial ruin of the US is as I keep pointing out an existential threat to Musk's Mar's ambitions. For that matter, he had no choice but to enter the political arena sooner or later so SpaceX won't be stolen from him.

@sj_zero You go to war with the army you have, and that can be very messy. Especially so in "our democracy."

Our opinions of these easily swayed people doesn't matter as long as they do what's right ... except of course the point is they're not that sort of people at all.

Unless they have an epiphany, or something more like a sincere religious conversion, not necessarily even people you want to share a foxhole with. Maybe; depends on how dire things get, depends on what makes them wishy-washy today and how that might change.

And we can take a step back to what this is ostensibly about. Rand Paul's math is not wrong, "mandatory" spending, legally so plus interest on the national debt, must be pared down or things will get ugly, and probably soon. Maybe, we've been saying that since the 1970s, so.... I need to do the math to compare situations vs. my sense the acceleration in spending in unprecedented, say, post-FDR. And I know of no quick fixes like Reagan's tax rate cuts which brought in much more revenue plus a big FICA hike.

And that's in the remit of a reconciliation bill like the BBB, which you can do only once a year, although Social Security is off limits. Equally, no Congressional at least will to do recessions of the remaining two trillion left, and military spending can't be cut much after so much neglect and need to actually defend the US proper plus critical roles like keeping the sea lanes open. We have a lot of magazines to fill/re-fill, and it's genocidally criminal not to create the Golden Dome.

But see for example the Medicaid mess ... we have Senators like Hawley terrified of touching it at all, we have in the current BBB I've read a freezing of a Blue state scam that taxes providers because that gets Federal reimbursement, we have scads of illegals getting benefits from it (I suppose better than filling up emergency rooms for routine stuff, assuming that also doesn't happen or is part of it all).

I don't get the slightest sense Trump cares about the budget, including its fiscal dominance (that is, the Fed and Treasury Department are not in the driver's seat at all, are only trying to stave off disaster (plus, yes, we can assume there's plenty of profitable opportunities to be had in chaos like this, along with grave dangers for all players)). I suppose he hopes we'll grow our way out of it, which is not out of the question.

Bleah.