Elon Musk is demonstrating live online how to make small fortune owning a social media company – start with a HUGE one.  Making the rookie mistake of believing you can cut your way to success, Musk has wrought havoc at Twitter since acquiring it, firing half of the staff, making unreasonable demands of remaining employees, and slashing costs, even the ones that keep the platform running.  In addition to these mistakes, he’s run off billions of advertising dollars with TFG-like behavior and erratic decision making.  His full on MAGA management style and allowing white supremacists and hate merchants back on the platform has driven millions of normal people away.  Add that to banning any journalist who dares publicly criticize him, Twitter has become the North Korean photonegative of the the company he spent $44 billion to buy.

His most recent accomplishments are stopping paying the rent in some offices, closing data centers, and even firing janitorial staff, forcing employees to bring their own toilet paper to work.  He’s demanding that employees sleep at the office, and continues to run the company by online polls where millions of bots infest his platform, obviously voting in favor of his worst ideas, like allowing TFG back on.

Like others, I kept thinking that Musk is some kind of evil genius with a long-term plan to remake Twitter into a new payment platform.  It’s become apparent that this was either a pipe dream or a myth – he’s now facing a serious turnaround situation with no apparent skills to actually lead a turnaround.  Add his sociopathic behavior to this situation and he’s only making matters worse, not better.  To fund all this, he’s been dumping his Tesla stock which has contributed to its price plummeting 70% in 2022.  To be fair, blue chip and tech stocks have been pounded this year, but Musk’s goofy behavior and selling has greatly displeased investors.

All this is to say that behavior of companies’ senior management matters and the being wealthy doesn’t necessarily mean you’re smart.  This multi-billion dollar soap opera is far from over, and it remains to be seen if Musk is going to be one of the surviving members of the cast.

Trumpists can never defend their support of the criminal sitting in the Oval Office without bringing up 2 subjects: 1) What about Hillary, and 2) The economy is booming.  The problem is that both answers are bullshit.  The whole Hillary thing is a simple dodge that Trump and his sycophants use on a daily basis to deflect attention away from the damage he is inflicting with the deepening constitutional crisis of his own making; but what about the economy?  True, the stock market (at least the S&P) touched an all time high on Friday, a whopping $2.00 over the previous high attained in January of this year.  The Dow remains about $1,000 below its January high.  Never hesitant to give himself credit for something, Trump tweeted this just as John McCain passed away:

Trump’s narcissistic personality disorder aside, is the economy really booming?  The answer depends on where you actually sit.  For those who received unnecessary tax cuts that are now overheating the economy, exploding the national debt, and kicking off inflation, yes, they are receiving a windfall that they are using for stock buybacks and acquiring more personal goods.  For those who are on the other end, not so much.  Wages have been stagnated since Reagan.  42% of Americans earn below $15 per hour.  One third of Americans earn less than $12.  The minimum wage has stagnated at $7.25 since 2009.  Wages are only rising at 2.9% per year, and inflation is now outpacing increases in wages.  Interest rates are rising to keep the economy from overheating further, and debt rates are increasing because of the supply of more and more federal debt.  To make matters worse, healthcare costs are rising 20% this year, credit card debt is now over $1 trillion, and student loan debt is burdening a huge part of the next generation of Americans.

In short, the economy is NOT booming for working classes of Americans.  The income gap is widening, and anger is increasing as Republicans in Congress and state houses step up their efforts to destroy the healthcare system, defund public schools, refuse to raise the minimum wage, keep the homeless in the streets, refuse to fund infrastructure, refuse to fix our voting system, ignore Russian interference in our lives, ignore the opioid crisis, refuse to reform the immigration system, jail children on the border, and pile on the national debt by spending over $700 billion a year on defense (not counting military retirement and healthcare) while slashing taxes. Pile on top of that Trump’s idiotic trade war based on lies that’s destroying jobs and kicking off hyper-inflation is some sectors, and you have a volatile combination that is unsustainable.

Conservative leaders all over the country pledging fealty to His Orangeness do so at their own peril.  However, we can begin to fix this only if normal people show up at the polls and vote.  If we do that, then we can declare an end to this long national nightmare and rebuild our much damaged society.

There is a place for anger, and THIS is it.