lol only the CEO/owner ever brings ideas as raw, silly and unstresstested as these to banks when trying to line up money. dear lord. https://t.co/rm8hzF8lvc
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 29, 2022
bankers: still fucking morons pic.twitter.com/9dlIpkebOH
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) April 29, 2022
i can't say i'm an expert at running a social platform. but i've watched how its done for many years and i've been in the 'how the fuck do we monetize this media thing' space for much longer. these are the ideas you get in the first hour of the first bull session. not that easy.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 29, 2022
2/ As long as we’re on this topic, it’s worth noting that the things that make a lot of people like Twitter are closely tied to its lack of profitability. Not saying there’s no way to square that circle. But it’s hard. One of the key reasons Twitter doesn’t make money …
3/ is that it simply lost or was late to a race that was mostly won by Facebook and the Google ad ecosystem. But there’s something more specific. Twitter doesn’t have a lot of ads. You ever notice that? I certainly have. That’s a problem for Twitter. The other thing …
4/ is that while Twitter also spoils the “free speech” model by actually running things by engagement centered algorithms, it makes it much easier to opt out of than Facebook and Instagram do. As a user I love that. But that cuts hard against the prevailing …
5/ profitability models of social networks. To a significant degree they’re letting you opt out of the business model. My point here isn’t that Twitter can’t be profitable. My point is that it’s very complicated. The reason the current and past managements haven’t figured it …
6/ out yet isn’t that they’re idiots as Musk seems to think. Here’s what it reminds me of. Over the course of its history TPM has been ad based, then membership based and also sorts of different mixes along the way. Over the years when someone didn’t like the ads or didn’t …
7/ like something about the membership fees they’d write in and say something like, you’re missing the obvious thing: merchandize. You should fund this thing by selling shirts and mugs and other TPM products. This is sort of like telling a family of ten that they …
8/ don’t need to have money troubles when there are so many aluminum cans out there just waiting to be collected together and taken to the recycling center for real cash money. These suggestions were always well meaning but they were always examples that the suggester …
9/ had zero idea about anything tied to the mechanics and business realities of digital publishing. The kind of bright idea you get when you have zero idea what you’re talking about. When Musk is telling banks he has an idea to charge for embedding tweets, that’s …
10/ basically the platform equivalent of saying just sell shirts. It’s when you not only have no good ideas or any idea what you’re talking about but no one has even walked you through the cliche bad ideas.
* As long as there are other white guys with money to rip off…
to be fair, i think the bankers maybe aren't morons if they went into the deal assuming they'd get to own tesla by the time it's all said and done
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) April 29, 2022
And to be clear, my point here isn't "Oh, he's harmless." It's that when you watch what he says it's clear he hasn't the faintest idea what or who he's talking about with really any of this stuff. Bandwagoning really is the best way to see it.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 29, 2022
Eunicecycle
Josh’s example reminded me of when I was in the nonprofit community raising funds. Board members always had great ideas-“Let’s have a gala!” “Let’s do a raffle!” and my all time favorite “Let’s do a golf outing!” All well-meaning but with zero consideration if how much work events require or how they make money.
bjacques
A guy who thinks he invented the subway (Hyperloop) will certainly think he can make Twitter profitable where others have failed, as if he’s Alexander The Great cutting the Gordian Knot.
John Revolta
Wait, so Musk isn’t putting his own money into this? What kind of idiot would give him money to take over Twitter and almost certainly run it into the ground? His fanbois think he’s got some magic touch, sure, but actual business people?
senyordave
I know it might only cost him about 12 cents, but I did my part and cancelled my Twitter account yesterday. I think there might be more than a little pushback on some of his ideas to save money/ make money.
zhena gogolia
@Eunicecycle: I was on a board of a gallery and we attended their excruciating $300 a plate gala because I thought it was my duty. At the next meeting I asked how much went to the gallery so I could claim it on my taxes. They hemmed and hawed but basically the answer was zero.
burnspbesq
When you’ve become a billionaire selling poorly made, overpriced cars full of vaporware to cultists, it’s not surprising that your self-belief would be a bit … excessive.
germy
dm
@John Revolta: Paraphrasing the article Josh Marshall links to, he’s getting something like a $13 billion loan with hot air as collateral, and a $12.5 billion loan with Tesla stock as collateral (I may have those numbers mixed up) and the rest is “his own money” (though I have heard rumors that some of that “own money” may be coming from people like Peter Thiel).
Another Scott
@John Revolta: Some. As always, there’s leverage involved.
Forbes:
It still seems hinky to me. The fact that the stock price hasn’t bumped up seems like a bad sign too.
BusinessInsider – Twitter’s week from hell: Elon Musk throws the company’s future into doubt with a record leveraged buyout that has employees bracing for big job cuts and a C-suite bloodbath
Another BI story says more clearly:
Counter.Social looks interesting…
Cheers,
Scott.
Feathers
@zhena gogolia: Non-profits can be such a mess. My father is on the board of a local multi-church social support charity. He periodically has to shoot down people who want to have the charity build and run its own daycare center. He points out that they can provide four times the number of kids daycare by subsidizing tuition at local centers. Also that parents can find something closer in their neighborhood, rather than being tied to a single location. They get very miffed, because they clearly want “built new daycare center” on their LinkedIn profile for their social climb/non profit career building. Ugh. In so many ways it’s worse than the corporate world.
I like that Josh Marshall is calling Elon Elmo.
gene108
Every loan a bank gives is a risk.
Every loan a person takes is a risk.
Risk tolerance isn’t an exact science, and I think a very personal choice that varies greatly from person to person.
As much as we try to make risk taking rational, with things like credit scores, due diligence, etc., at its core risk taking is irrational.
debbie
Elon’s starved for attention. Period.
MagdaInBlack
@germy: .” dumb surface level guy” from the 1st tweet pretty much sums up my opinion of him. He’s a needy creeper too.
karen marie
@senyordave: It didn’t cost Musk anything. He doesn’t own it yet.
burnspbesq
@gene108:
It’s a tell that the most rigorous risk manager in the universe, Goldman Sachs, is nowhere near this fiasco-in-the-making.
Ohio Mom
@Eunicecycle: In my mispent youth, I ran a community arts center and later was involved in a handful of non-profits in various capacities. Your comment and the others in this thread on nonprofit fundraising are giving me bad flashbacks.
Don’t forget the “It will be great publicity!” Like you can pay a bill with publicity.
Ohio Mom
@Feathers: Oh yeah, been there, every little arts group always wants their own building. The unlucky ones get their wish come true.
PaulB
Twitter was already going to struggle with employees leaving. Announcing job and pay cuts before you’ve even taken over the company is not going to help.
Financial, technical, personnel … I don’t see a good outcome for Musk or for Twitter with this acquisition.
Ken
They could loan me twelve billion dollars, and they’d have a foot in the door with a man with a twelve billion dollar business.
Obviously they’d be on the “it’s the bank’s problem” side of the old saying, but the Musk deal wouldn’t be that different.
dm
Reading that article Josh Marshall linked to, Musk plans to pay interest on his loan by slashing salaries, firing the executives, dumping the paid board, and not having to worry about stock options. Also, charging Balloon Juice for embedded tweets (well, that will take care of the loading-on-iPad problem).
With Twitter, he’s not tackling climate change by jump-starting the electric car industry, he’s not putting humanity on the road to outer space, so he may find it hard to convince people to work for him by being part of an important and thrilling vision.
I’ll have to talk to my company’s HR people to see how many Twitter resumes have come across the transom in the past couple of weeks (probably not many, we’re on the wrong coast, but still).
Kent
@John Revolta: He’s borrowing the money. But likely securing it with his Tesla holdings. So if he defaults the bankers own part of Tesla.
debbie
@PaulB:
I remember groups like KKR saying this very same thing back in the 1980s.
gene108
@burnspbesq:
But Tesla makes good looking stylish electric cars.
I think that’s their biggest contribution to EV’s. Taking the EV from some boring eco-box and getting people to realize EV’s can be fun and exiting.
Ken
“And here’s the bill from the publicist,” hmm? One of our local homeless charities is pretty good at doing fundraising and getting the cashflow right. Their last big event was bowling, and the top prize was a T-shirt.
NotMax
The only thing about Twitter more inflated than the price being bandied about are perceptions of the breadth and reach of its influence and the cocksure validity of the content.
For those who may have missed it this morning, where Twitter falls in the hierarchy of popularity/membership for such services.
Eunicecycle
@zhena gogolia: now that shouldn’t happen. If at least 50% isn’t going to the cause the event should not happen. The 990 of that organization would be interesting!
John Revolta
@Another Scott: @dm: Well then, I guess he’s maybe one-third less of an idiot than I thought. Maybe. Still, I won’t be surprised if the whole deal falls through either.
phdesmond
here’s the WaPo link for live coverage of tonight’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
(nothing’s happening yet, of course.)
Steeplejack
A commenter on Twitter made the point that the banks may okay the loans because (a) they’ll probably get most of their money back and (b) they don’t want to be blocked out of future Tesla business.
Eunicecycle
@Ohio Mom: you know, I loved both the causes I worked for and for the most part enjoyed the work. But I don’t miss it now that I’m retired.
Another Scott
@NotMax: Twitter has power because politicians and news people pay attention to it. It’s not the numbers, it’s the audience.
I remember the Tennis Channel bragging about the income of their viewers (while they were trying to bump up ad revenue before they were sold). It’s the same thing. Morning Joe; Politico; etc., etc.
As long as you can claim the right people are on your platform, lots of other things are possible.
Cheers,
Scott.
zhena gogolia
@Eunicecycle: it was pretty ragged
zhena gogolia
@phdesmond: who’s doing the comedy? Let me guess, there’ll be jokes about Biden being old.
oatler
“Twitter? (hic) Why not?”
phdesmond
@zhena gogolia:
the emcee will be Trevor Noah.
Alison Rose ???
Maybe this is something others have seen a hundred times, but I only just yesterday saw someone refer to him as Elongated Muskrat. It made my fucking week.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Trevor Noah ?
Almost Retired
I once had an employment law case against SpaceX, which is HQ’d relatively near my office in the South Bay section of Los Angeles.
It was hard to build a case, because the place was a borderline cult, centering on Elon. Even ex-employees were uncooperative in the “I must have done something wrong, or I’d still be there” sense. Battered spouses with a severance package and an NDA.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if the workdays opened with chanting and incense. I would imagine the fever has broken somewhat by now, but the experience soured me on taking on any more SpaceX employees as clients. Which is probably their point….
gene108
@NotMax:
Twitters strength isn’t in its number of users.
It’s the ability of a Tweet to get amplified by the media, and by others on the internet.
Facebook posts rarely make the evening news. Tweets by the famous and powerful are much more likely to find their way there.
gene108
@Almost Retired:
Maybe SpaceX devotion to Elon is due to the limited number of places an aspiring spaceship engineer can go in their field?
Steeplejack
@Alison Rose ???:
“Apartheid Clyde,” per rapper Azealia Banks.
Wapiti
@zhena gogolia: I remember bake sales fundraisers as a kid. My mom would ask what the price of the cakes would be, then pointedly just donate that money and opt out of buying ingredients and baking. I’m not sure that made her popular. I’m not sure she cared.
Another Scott
@Almost Retired: If it’s any consolation, I think history tells us that it’s common that companies with “charismatic leaders” often fail shortly after that leader leaves the scene.
Doesn’t make what you went through with them less disturbing though, I agree.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@Another Scott
Ouroboros weeps.
Geminid
This weekend Ohio Republicans were treated to some out-of-state talent. Matt Gaetz and Marjorie T. Green appeared with J.D. Vance this afternoon at Lorie’s Roadhouse, 20 miles north of Cincinnati. The crowd was described as “rowdy.”
Meanwhile, Ted Cruz has been barnstorming the state with Josh Mandel. They hit Kettering yesterday, Toledo and Columbus today, and are finishing now at the Solid Rock Church in Lebanon. Cruz and Mandel share a common bond. No one else can stand either one of them.
Bex
@Feathers: I think we should call him Elmo like we called Bernie Wilmer.
Almost Retired
@gene108: That is undoubtedly true.
Another Scott
@gene108: Part of it is that, I’m sure.
Part of it is them actually doing something, with lots of government money, that NASA has wanted for a long time – reusable rockets that have the potential to cut the cost of lifting stuff into space.
As always, the pioneers usually aren’t the ones who succeed, but they lay the foundation and help eliminate ways that don’t work. Technology and control electronics and sensors gets better over time. SpaceX has been in the right place at the right time.
But it’s a tiny market (relatively speaking). There were something like 40M aircraft flights a year (pre-COVID). SpaceX launching rockets a few times a month is impressive, but it’s a tiny, tiny market. What are they going to do after they fill up their Starlink slots??
Cheers,
Scott.
JMS
I’m astounded that someone would use an example of a lowly $45k a year making product manager for effect. We make a lot more than that and do a lot more than that. But okay. In my experience everyone else wants to do the product manager’s job and thinks they can do it from the CEO down. It’s fun at times to be sure, but that doesn’t mean everyone’s good at it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The thing is Musk has to know about the tight labor market from Tesla. This all comes across as some kind stock manipulation scheme from Musk, that or he’s on some pretty good meds.
CaseyL
I really hate these entitled pricks who ruin whatever they touch just because they’re bored or unfulfilled or whatever.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Bex: That should keep the paid pro-Elmo trolls from swarming the blog!
Elmo can stuff it!
SiubhanDuinne
Forgive me if this has already been mentioned. Naomi Judd died today, age 76. I’m not even a country music fan, but for some reason this news chews me up. RIP.
Geminid
@Geminid: Ohio 11th CD candidate Nina Turner brought in Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison for a campaign breakfast this morning. Marianne Williamson appeared with Turner last week at a church event.
Turner is challenging Representative Shontel Brown in a rematch of last year’s bitter special election primary. With President Biden’s endorsement under her belt, Brown is getting help from local talent. The “special guest” at Brown’s GOTV event in Lakewood this morning was Congressman Tim Ryan.
burnspbesq
@gene108:
There’s a good looking, stylish electric car in my driveway. It’s not a Tesla. It will stay with any Tesla off the line, leave any Tesla in the dust on a winding road, and it’s put together like a bank vault.
Obvious Russian Troll
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I think you’re crediting Musk with an awareness he doesn’t actually have. He thinks he can just work around it.
Tenar Arha
For many mostly unrelated reasons I deleted the app off my phone this week. But though I haven’t deleted my account, I requested my archive. And meanwhile, I had to block the guy yesterday or today bc he’s simultaneously clearly an idiot, an a-hole, an instigator, & a dangerous misinformation spreader & disinformation creator. And that’s just his obsessive narcissistic *lookatme-* effect on the platform.
I also get vibes like he’s playing in someone else’s sandbox, but he’s going to wreck it all—by design or by accident. What does it matter to him if he undermines or wrecks the place? How many key employees do you think updated their resumes & started job searches this week, just in case? How much bullsh*t & fighting has he spread this week, probably wo any consequence to him, but degrading Twitter’s value & starting dog piles on his future employees & making the company more vulnerable if the deal doesn’t go through?
I almost wish we weren’t talking about it here, while I’m glad that at least I can talk about it here…it’s like that guy is incurable toenail fungus or kudzu.
ETA And I know I’m not the only one sensing a soupçon of what Thiel put Gawker through too.
debbie
@Geminid:
I wonder if Gibbons was expecting Squirrel Head to show up for him the same way as Cruz did for Mandel. Ha, ha loser, you lost.
The political ads are getting ridiculous. I think there were seven in a row during the local news. As much as I hate to say it, I’ll miss their sniping at each other.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
Whoa, hadn’t heard that. Thanks for letting us know.
In addition to the Judds’ five Grammys, Naomi won one for co-writing “Love Can Build a Bridge.”
The Judds were already scheduled to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame tomorrow.
burnspbesq
@burnspbesq:
And it’s $30k less than a Model S Plaid.
Geminid
@debbie: I read that Gibbons lent his campaign $16 million. I don’t he’s going to get that money back. Maybe he can tell his friends, “I just peaked too soon.”
Robert Sneddon
Replace them. Starlink satellites are built cheap (for space hardware) to live fast and die young, in low orbits that decay after a few years causing the satellites to re-enter and burn up. It’s the same with the other internet satellite constellations like OneWeb and Bezos’ recently announced project.
As for “few times a month” it used to be that a dozen launches a year by all the space-going nations on the planet was a big thing, now three launches a month by a single organisation is business-as-usual and barely worth noticing. That includes manned launches too, not just hardware.
The bad news for launch companies is that the hardware is lasting longer in orbit and needs replacing less often — geosync satellites used to have a lifespan of ten to fifteen years before their tech aged out and/or they ran out of stationkeeping fuel and had to be retired and replaced. New-generation satellites have lighter sparkly bits resulting in more capacity for stationkeeping fuel and they tend to use very efficient ion thrusters rather than traditional liquid hypergolics or monpropellants. Modern birds are expected to last on station for twenty years and more with software updates keeping their tech from ageing out and allowing them to be repurposed as commercial conditions on the ground change.
kindness
Elon seems to think he can run Twitter with algorithms & a few supervisors, not the teams Twitter uses now. Why do I keep thinking he’s going to run off all the real talent there and end up with a right wing cess pool as a media site?
NotMax
@Robert Sneddon
“2% … 6% … 10% …. Do not turn off satellite during update.”
;)
dnfree
@Wapiti: I’m thinking your mother should have been donating the sale price if she wanted to make the equivalent donation. For instance, if a donated baked good cost $1 to make and sold for $3, by your mom not donating, she saved $1 and the school lost $3. In reality, she could have donated $4 (what she saved by not baking plus what the contribution would have brought in). She still saved the labor and the cost of baking if any.
debbie
@Geminid:
He got cocky. He was sure, as a businessman, he’d get the TFG endorsement
Speaking of Vance he’s gone full-blown wingnut:
JanieM
@dnfree:
Maybe I’m misreading one or the other of you, but that’s what I read @Wapiti: to mean by this:
Then again, what if the ingredients cost $5 (plus labor) and the cakes were only selling for $3? All the more reason to donate the cost of the ingredients and save the trouble of baking
ETA: That last was meant lightheartedly…. there’s always the social aspect of a bake sale or fundraiser, but some of us aren’t all that social. :-)
randy khan
@Eunicecycle:
I’m on two nonprofit boards and have been the treasurer of both organizations, and you’re right about fundraising being complicated. For one organization, the gala weekend basically makes its money from the people who sign up as patrons (that is, the people who pay more than the sticker price for the events) and from the auction/fundraising appeal. Everything else more or less breaks even, despite years of effort trying to make money in other ways. The other has a couple of events (yes, including a golf tournament) that make money, but they’re all a lot of work and require the professional development staff’s close attention, and that organization basically has been trying for five years to replace another big event that no longer was working.
Geminid
@debbie: Well, that’s low. If Vance wins on Tuesday I hope he and Ryan have multiple debates. The contrast in personality will be much to Ryan’s advantage. Vance comes across as a hypocrite and a crook. Ryan seems sincere, a big guy with a big heart.
debbie
@Geminid:
Me too, but I bet Vance either backs out or only agrees to one debate.
Ken
@debbie: I’m moderately sure the fentanyl panic was before the pandemic, about three years ago. So it wasn’t Biden, it was the guy before him — Obama.
tokyokie
I have had nothing but contempt for Elmo since his toxic and thoroughly unnecessary involvement in the rescue of those Thai kids trapped in a cave a few years ago. Elmo saw an opportunity for international publicity, so he had his engineers quickly throw together a minisub for the rescue operation. The British/South African diver/cave explorer facilitating the rescue asked Elmo not to ship his toy to Thailand because it wouldn’t work. Elmo, being a boy genius billionaire, sent it over anyway along with a couple of techs. The submarine was neither small nor flexible enough to pass through the caves, and the guy running the operation declined to use it. Whereupon Elmo accused the diver of being a pedophile. This guy, acting as a volunteer, put together a successful effort to rescue the kids and their coach, although one Thai SEAL died during the operation and a second died a year later of an infection he contracted in the caves. And the thanks he got was to be loudly labeled a pervert by an asshole with a lot of money. The diver sued Elmo in British court, but lost at trial. Elmo’s actions showed that he didn’t give a shit about the kids’ safety, just the publicity he received from inserting himself into the news story. More people have died as a result of Elmo’s driverless car technology than did in the caves in Thailand, but the sociopath isn’t the one who will be burdened the rest of his life with the accusation of being a pedophile.
Kay
@Geminid:
I hope Ryan asks him about his fake anti-opiate abuse nonprofit, which Vance announced in a sanctimonious and preachy NYTimes editorial back when he was the toast of the town for fancy people, hired his law school buddy to run, and then abandoned. The nonprofit produced “a survey” and two Tweets.
Kay
@Geminid:
Ryan could also ask him about labor unions, which would be a genuinely interesting question to pose to the fake populist. Ryan (who has a long, long pro labor record) would be nuts to not to use it. Absolutely fair game. Let’s hear what Thiel’s ventriloquist dummy is permitted to say about unions. He’ll have to be very careful. He must sound weepy about the plight of the working man while also parroting his donors.
Another Scott
@Wapiti: When I’m elected Benevolent Tyrant bake sales and fundraisers by school kids will be abolished. I remember being roped in to selling a bunch of garbage out of a cardboard suitcase as a boy scout and hating every second of it. And later having to buy a bunch of gigantically overpriced popcorn and candy bars.
Around here in NoVA, the public schools have kids raise money for band or theatre or crew or … And the girl scouts camp out in front of the grocery stores and Lowe’s to try to increase their sales.
I get it, these organizations need money. But roping kids into doing it is horrible. Let kids be kids and especially don’t have them raising money for schools. Especially not in one of the richest districts in the country.
I, too, typically give the GS a $20 if I see them. We don’t need the calories or the cholesterol. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@tokyokie: +1
Well said.
Cheers,
Scott.
JanieM
@Another Scott: Totally with you on that. I hated being made to sell things as a school kid, and later having the navigate situations where my kids were expected to sell things for sports teams they were on.
Another Scott
@Ken: Just about any time I hear about an opiate overdose these days, it’s still blamed on fentanyl.
Biden recently announced a plan to attack the problem.
It looks like opiod overdose rates took off around 2010 and haven’t really stopped increasing (at least in that graph which ends in 2019).
Fentanyl is a ‘factor’ in 53% of opioid overdose deaths.
Cheers,
Scott.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
Last two presidential elections, Ohio voted for the hypocritical crook by large margins.
Soprano2
@Another Scott: If you don’t work at it that’s what happens with any company. The company my sister built had no sales people because she was the sales person. They had to build a sales force from scratch in a 20 year old company. It almost didn’t survive that.
Geminid
@James E Powell: I know this. Eight points each time. So what is your point?
Dan B
@burnspbesq: What make is your EV? My partner loves Teslas but I’ve seen far better values and continue to work on him. He wants a Tesla Y because of ease of loading stuff in the back. He’s loading “stuff” in his aging pickup once per season so renting a truck for a day seems far more sensible than paying a $20,000++ premium on the most popular EV on the market. Sigh…
Another Scott
@Dan B: I assume he’s talking about his VW ID.4 that he’s mentioned a few times.
Cheers,
Scott.
StringOnAStick
@Another Scott: Fentanyl is reportedly cheap and easy to make, and highly concentrated. The last thing is what makes it so dangerous because it doesn’t take much to be a fatal overdose. I commonly see stories of people being busted selling fake prescription opiods that are half fentanyl; we’re near rural R areas so opiod and meth using is high.
I asked a researcher where the fentanyl was coming from; at the time a lot was coming from China. I don’t know where the main source is now but since it’s so concentrated it can be moved in small amounts.
NotMax
@Dan B
As it doesn’t look like he’s present, he announced a while back it’s a VW.
burnspbesq
@Dan B:
Taycan rear-wheel-drive sedan. The least expensive version, but still every inch a Porsche.
I used to have a VW ID.4, which a year ago was the best value in the US EV market, and is still a perfectly good car, but it’s been surpassed by the Hyundai Ioniq5.
It is utterly incomprehensible to me why VW doesn’t sell the ID.3 in this market. They are leaving a big segment to inferior products from Chevy and Nissan.
gene108
@Another Scott:
I remember when tackling the opioid epidemic was a major topic in the 2016 Presidential election. Hillary talked about plans to combat it. The TFG won and the media lost interest in opioid addiction.
gene108
@StringOnAStick:
Fentanyl is legal. It can’t be banned outright. I’ve been given it for hospital procedures that require sedation, which allows me to be awake.
I wonder how much harder this makes it to interdict illegal fentanyl shipments.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
That Vance looking like a hypocritical crook won’t hurt his appeal to Ohio voters.
rikyrah
@SiubhanDuinne:
RIP???
rikyrah
@kindness:
MySpace anyone?
ceece
@Dan B:
I have a Nissan Leaf hatchback, still running well at 11 years old. The batteries back then weren’t all that great, so the range is low by today’s standards, but the cargo capacity of that thing is amazing.
alex in fl
A few people here have commented that they think Elon is dumb. Far from it, Elon has a touch of the genius in him…..but……the very success he has had makes him think that he can do ANYTHING/EVERYTHING at the same high level . Imagine his legacy if he put all of his energy into SpaceX, Tesla and Starlink. He is still youngish but to act a fool running an unprofitable social media outlet is a bad fit for his skill set.
Geminid
James E. Powell: I don’t think Vance will have the appeal that Trump had. This will be a different race.