Elon Musk. Twitter. Babylon Bee.

[Robert]

X has now been valued at $44 billion again. Seems Musk turned it around.

[mike]

Three years ago.

[temporal1]

Three years ago.
https://x.com

If memory serves, it was Twitter banning the BB that motivated Eelon to buy Twitter. This topic started in 2022.
Thus the subject line. i knew nothing about Eelon then. Nothing about Twitter. Little about BB. X didn’t exist. no pun intended.

Funny how things go. Even very big things.

[mike]

Three years ago.
https://x.com

If memory serves, it was Twitter banning the BB that motivated Eelon to buy Twitter. This topic started in 2022.
Thus the subject line. i knew nothing about Eelon then. Nothing about Twitter. Little about BB. X didn’t exist. no pun intended.

Funny how things go. Even very big things.

That's the story anyway. But it does seem to help explain how the country got where it is today. We're seeing what is in many ways a well-deserved backlash.

[temporal1]

Three years ago.
https://x.com

If memory serves, it was Twitter banning the BB that motivated Eelon to buy Twitter. This topic started in 2022.
Thus the subject line. i knew nothing about Eelon then. Nothing about Twitter. Little about BB. X didn’t exist. no pun intended.

Funny how things go. Even very big things.

That's the story anyway. But it does seem to help explain how the country got where it is today. We're seeing what is in many ways a well-deserved backlash.

Every human endeavor needs accountability, no exceptions, not even churches.
There is no “once+done” when humans are involved. Scriptures warn. But humans LOVE the idea of “once+done”.

[temporal1]

i guess this opinion video can go here. Tesla vandalism

Disclaimer:
Doc Rich is a young man who votes, with opiniins. He’s sold on Trump, i don’t agree with him on all things, i enjoy his views.
He’s married with a young daughter, he believes he is Christian. i appreciate that, i believe he’s sincere.

He sees things much more from a sports pov than i. i think that’s something best avoided in politics, but, i understand where he’s coming from. It’s what he knows.

He’s talking about vandalism of Teslas and several other aggressive bad behaviors (toward conservatives) going on.
At about 9min .. there’s one Tesla case of a number in the Seattle area, which hasn’t recovered from the Summer of 2020.

In my (blue) area, in 2016, people, including businesses, kept quiet about Trump, not wanting to be hassled or vandalized.
Swatting. Looks like this will continue. Maybe worsen.

Doc Rich / It's So Much Worse Than You Think... / 14min


The Tesla vandalism thing reminds me of the Luigi Mangione case. Some support his choice to murder!
i think all this is a bad turn. Encouraging heinous crime. What could go wrong??!!

Brian Thompson Murder
viewtopic.php?t=7399

[temporal1]

i haven’t listened to Van Hall, LFR Family in quite awhile.
He’s becoming a bit more sophisticated, now coaching (podcasters, i guess). nice.
He’s married with pretty grown children, i think. He believes he’s a Christian.

LFR Family / “DEMS are INSANE, Coordinated Att*cks on Teslas MUST STOP” / -13min


i think most people have a lot in common. things are rough right now, but, i’m hopeful. truth is becoming self-evident.
keep rejecting the CNN-MSNBC-mentality. be alert to how it’s insideous, sneaking into “everything”.
then, do better.

Harassment, vandalism, sabotage, violence, screaming, can be rejected.
Those are “lowest common denominator” tactics. g r o s s

From another topic:

Does that explain why he did better with minorities including Hispanic men, black men, and women than any Republican in recent history?

i’m not sure why i began listening to these DIVERSE conservative-leaning folks a few years ago. From leaders like THOMAS SOWELL, to ordinary ones, like LFR Family and Doc Rich, Ben Shapiro, etc. .. i was interested in what everyday (conservative-leaning) voters were thinking.

i had no idea what was about to happen. i’m encouraged.

[temporal1]

i wanted to add:

.. i’m not sure why i began listening to these DIVERSE conservative-leaning folks a few years ago. From leaders like THOMAS SOWELL, to ordinary ones, like LFR Family and Doc Rich, Ben Shapiro, etc. .. i was interested in what everyday (conservative-leaning) voters were thinking. i listened for content. [which means looking past wild graphics, poor headlines, imperfect language, etc.]

In the past, those things were signs of awful tabloids. i had no problem ignoring them.
Things have changed. Now it’s required to look beyond the superficial, to find CONTENT.

Things KEEP changing. Count on it. No once+done. Scriptures warn!

Now i see MANY new podcasters (word has gotten out msm is done). For now, i’m avoiding these. It takes time to feel confident any source, EVEN OPINIONS, are ok. i see lots of content from India. That makes sense. High population, ambitious, tech-savvy. BUYER BEWARE, of course.

It’s funny how things go. For me, rarely as i imagined.
i advise my grown children, “1) Be prepared for the unexpected. 2) Keep in mind, the unexpected isn’t ‘always worse’,
sometimes the unexpected is better than you imagined”. Leave room for good things, too, esp so you don’t miss them!

[JimFoxvog]

A reasonable suspicion:
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/is-t ... -for-china

Friends,

There are two huge national security questions at the heart of the Trump regime.

The first is whether Elon Musk is working, at least in part, for China’s Xi Jinping. Consider:

(1) China is the location of Musk’s largest Tesla factory in the world, in which China invested $2.8 billion. The state-of-the-art facility was built in Shanghai with special permission from the Chinese government and now accounts for more than half of Tesla’s global deliveries.

(2) China is the world’s biggest market for Teslas and is the only electronic vehicle market where Tesla sales are continuing to grow.

(3) Chinese investors have been funneling money into Musk’s other businesses.

(4) China is a hotbed of other technologies that Musk would like to get his hands on.

(5) In 2022, Musk told the Financial Times that China should be given some control over Taiwan by making a “special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable.”

(6) In 2023, at a tech conference, he called Taiwan “an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China” and compared the Taiwan-China situation to Hawaii and the United States.

(7) On X, the social platform he owns, Musk has long used his account to praise China, encouraging more people to visit the country.

(8) One of the Pentagon’s biggest worries is that China has developed a suite of weapons capable of attacking U.S. military and non-military satellites.

(9) The Pentagon now relies heavily on Musk’s SpaceX Starlink satellite communications network for military personnel to transmit data worldwide.

(10) SpaceX launches most of the Pentagon’s military satellites on its Falcon 9 rockets, which take off from launchpads SpaceX has set up at military bases in Florida and California.

(11) SpaceX has become so valuable to the Pentagon that the Chinese government has said it considers SpaceX to be an extension of the U.S. military.

(12) The Pentagon has hired Musk’s SpaceX to build it a new constellation of low-earth orbit satellites to spy on China, Russia, and other threats.

(13) Perceived missile threats from China — nuclear weapons or hypersonic missiles or cruise missiles — have led Trump to sign an executive order instructing the Pentagon to start work on “Golden Dome,” a space-based missile defense system, in which Musk’s SpaceX would almost surely be involved for rocket launches, satellite structures, and space-based data communications systems.

(14) Musk and his SpaceX have repeatedly failed to comply with federal reporting protocols aimed at protecting U.S. secrets, including by not providing some details of his meetings with foreign leaders — leading to at least three federal reviews, including one by the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General and another by the Air Force and the Pentagon’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security.

So … is Musk working for Trump, for the United States, for China, or for himself — or for all of the above?

The question of Musk’s allegiance becomes more weighty by the day.

This morning, for example, he met with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Pentagon brass. According to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, the meeting had been arranged at Musk’s request to give Musk details about America’s preparations for war with China — the most sensitive and secret information anyone can receive.

It appears that after the scheduled meeting and its subject matter were reported yesterday, the meeting mysteriously morphed into something more innocent. Apparently, Trump decided Musk shouldn’t be briefed on war preparations with China.

Musk arrived shortly before 9 a.m. and left about 90 minutes later. When a reporter asked what Hegseth and Musk discussed, Musk shot back: “Why should I tell you?” Trump and Hegseth deny China was even mentioned.

The underlying question is whether Musk can be trusted.

Not even his position in the Trump regime is clear. Congress has not confirmed him for any role. He hasn’t been “vetted” by the FBI, as are all senior appointments. His finances haven’t been reviewed by anyone; they certainly haven’t been made public. He hasn’t even taken the oath of office, pledging his allegiance to the United States and the Constitution.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention Musk’s connection to Putin. According to The Wall Street Journal, Musk has been in regular contact with the Russian president —a close partner of China, which has supported Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

[Ken]

(2) China is the world’s biggest market for Teslas and is the only electronic vehicle market where Tesla sales are continuing to grow.

Even this is no longer true. Tesla sales are down 49% year-over-year in China as well.

From last week's Fortune Mag: https://fortune.com/2025/03/09/tesla-ch ... mpetition/

It’s almost unthinkable, but Tesla Inc., the company that comes to mind when most people think about electric vehicles, may have had its best days in China, the world’s biggest and most advanced EV market.

Elon Musk’s automaker has been backsliding in China for the past five consecutive months on a year-on-year basis, according to data from the country’s Passenger Car Association. Tesla’s shipments plunged 49% in February from a year earlier to just 30,688 vehicles, the lowest monthly figure since way back in July 2022, when it shipped just 28,217 EVs — and that was in the middle of Covid.

The reason has less to do with politics and more to do with the fact that Tesla is getting is butt kicked by local Chinese car companies like BYD and others...

But look at BYD Co. The company, which stopped making cars powered entirely by internal combustion engines in March 2022, has a market share heading toward 15%. It sold more than 318,000 fully electric and hybrid passenger vehicles last month, up 161% year-on-year. The Shenzhen-based carmaker also notched another record month for overseas sales, which hit 67,025 units.

Its success is a major reason why Tesla is losing.

While Tesla sales in other parts of the world are cratering as Musk wades deeper into politics many find unsavory — sales in Germany plunged 76% to only 1,429 cars last month, even as overall EV registrations jumped — in China, disappointing shipments have more to do with a narrow and dated lineup, particularly in the face of up-to-date and more exciting offerings from BYD and others.