By Bob Gaydos

SpaceX, SpaceX, SpaceX, SpaceX, Musk, SpaceX, Tesla, SpaceX, SpaceX, trillion, Musk, SpaceX …

If you had even a fleeting awareness of media reporting on the stock market for the past week or so, you could not escape learning that Elon Musk was offering what turned out to be a record-breaking IPO, allowing all the world to buy stock in his out-of-this world company, SpaceX.

You would also have learned that Musk would retain control of 80 percent of the shares of the newly traded company and, oh yeah, that the rush to buy shares and the resulting valuation increase in his company had made the South African billionaire, the world’s first trillionaire.

The world’s richest man just got much richer.

Shares for SpaceX were initially offered at $135, closed at $161 on the first day and have risen and fallen in the week since the offering as all the financial “experts” try to figure out if this is a really good investment or not.

That’s not what this is about. This is about what the world’s richest man — the world’s first trillionaire — plans to do with his unprecedented wealth.

Take it to Mars. Or the Moon. Or, preferably, both.

Because, apparently, there’s nothing a trillion dollars could do to make life on Earth better, even simply more livable, for millions of earthlings in need of food, clean water, a decent place to live, good health care and a basic education.

No, the man born into wealth and possessing a gift for buying other people’s excellent ideas and turning them into the promise of progress, albeit apparently unfortunately delayed by other people’s short-sightedness, wants to create a colony on Mars and permanent habitats (domed condos?) on the Moon for those who won’t live long enough for the trip to Mars.

Swell.

Just what we need. A dream of a better life on another planet, presumably populated by residents of Musk’s choosing, which is to say, all white. Maybe even all conceived by him, the father of 15 right here on Earth.

He also wants to put energy stations in space to handle the load for the coming AI revolution, which holds the promise of creating a perfect society by eliminating millions of jobs on Earth for those who actually still have access to food, water, health care, etc. And, not to forget the military, Musk wants to boost the payloads of his Starship rocket to be able to transport military personnel and materials anywhere on earth in less than an hour. Just like Amazon. Make war more efficient for the highest bidder.

I don’t get it, but I can’t say I’m surprised. After all, it was Musk whom Donald Trump turned to when he wanted to eliminate tens of thousands of federal jobs, eliminate food and health programs in the United States and elsewhere on the planet and in general snoop around in everybody’s life.

Doge, they called it. Department of Government Efficiency. Musk failed at that. Somehow, his young geniuses couldn’t manage to follow the law while they set about destroying people’s lives. Trump fired him. But, heck, even driverless vehicles have problems sometimes, right? What’s the big deal? We’ll figure it out. He just needs a few billion more to work out the kinks.

It stinks. Yet billions are pouring into Musk’s new publicly traded company because no one apparently wants to miss out on the promise of profit, if not the actual thing. Spending billions to improve the lot and lives of people in Third World countries is apparently not an attractive investment. Tossing a few billion at Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, etc.? Forget about it. Even their own members of Congress wouldn’t buy into that.

The thing is, Musk could do both. He could take care of the many needs on Earth and still go to Mars with a pit stop on the Moon. Maybe there’s something in the genes of the super rich — at least some of them — that allows entitlement to smother gratitude. Giving back is not in the vocabulary. Heck, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, number two richest person on Earth, felt the need to buy the Washington Post, one of the nation’s most respected newspapers, and turn it into a hollow shell of its reputation because he didn’t like what it said about his rich friends.

Musk, of course, is entitled to do as he wishes with his money, within the law. But his new publicly traded SpaceX will allow the richest man on the planet to do as he wishes with a lot of other people’s money as well. I’m not sure a lot of people have thought through the return on their investment.

By Bob Gaydos

Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton settled their differences.

“May you live in interesting times.”

He keeps saying this, my friend. Over lunch. On the phone. “May you live in interesting times.”

It doesn’t help. Not when the current interpretation of “interesting” vacillates among “chaotic,” “disturbing,” “infuriating,” and “frightening.”

First of all, a lot of us (including me) have been blaming the Chinese for this bit of wisdom generally regarded as a curse. Not so, Google’s artificial intelligence informs me. (Glad it’s good for something useful.)

Direct quote from Google search: “The phrase ‘May you live in interesting times’ is often attributed as a Chinese curse, but it’s actually an English expression of unclear origin. It’s likely the phrase was misattributed as a Chinese saying, possibly by British politician Sir Austen Chamberlain in the 1930s. The phrase itself, ‘live in interesting times,’ can be traced back to the late 19th century in British political circles.”

So that’s that on the quote. The times, alas, are still with us and currently amount to two super-wealthy sociopaths swapping threats and insults with each other via social media in an apparent attempt to control the world.

I don’t really have a favorite in the cat fight between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. I don’t really find it entertaining. I just want them both to lose. That’s the only positive outcome I can see, but I can’t yet imagine how it comes about.

What I can say is that this was inevitable. Two spoiled little rich boys used to getting whatever they want who don’t give a damn about anyone else, totally lacking in impulse control and mostly in the dark about proper social behavior. Plus, they’re racist and bigoted. And liars. And cheats. And millions of Americans admired them and thought it was a wonderful idea to put them in charge of our country and our lives.

Interesting indeed.

What is interesting right now is watching to see if any Republican in Congress takes sides in this fight. Who represents the greatest threat to their continued presence in Congress? After all, that’s pretty much all they care about these days.

I would think Trump does because he’s got the MAGAnuts behind him. Musk has the money to threaten their reelection, but Trump still has the cult of personality going for him and the voters behind it. Elon is definitely damaging the golden boy’s image, but is anyone really surprised that Trump is in the Epstein files?

But is this any way to run a country? Is this any way to make America great again? An old man with declining mental capacities, sitting in the Oval Office and insulting world leaders who come to visit with him. A Nazi-saluting, richest man in the world, who may well have stolen the last presidential election for the man he is currently insinuating raped young girls.

Some choice.

Once upon a time, “gentlemen” settled differences of opinion without involving the rest of the world. Aaron Burr, at the time the vice president of the United States, finally got fed up with the opinions and statements of Alexander Hamilton, some of which were published in newspapers, and challenged his longtime political rival to a duel. Let’s settle this.

Pistols at the Weehawken Dueling Grounds.  Apparently, kind of like the Meadowlands of the day. On July 11, 1804, Hamilton was mortally wounded and died the next day. Burr was charged with murder, but eventually acquitted. He was later also acquitted of treason charges, but his reputation was shattered and his political career was over.

Interesting times.

By Bob Gaydos

Trump’s TruthSocial post

Boy, you take a couple days off from the news to do some weeding and cleaning up and it’s almost impossible to know where to start catching up on the craziness.

I guess the logical place to start is with my reading about Trump posting on his official social media page that Joe Biden was actually killed in 2020 and it’s been a robot parading around impersonating him ever since.

I had to go back and read that a couple of times just to be sure. Hard to top this one. Trump even repeated the revelation verbally to other real people later on. I guess the robot must have malfunctioned in that debate with Trump.

Qanon, where the story originated a few years back, must be thrilled, but I am at a loss for words.

I mean, you might as well have told me that the other stable genius and apparent no longer co-president Elon Musk was hooked on drugs and that he ran his whole DOGE scam while in a Ketamine cloud.

No way? Really? The guy who wants to single-handedly repopulate the Earth with as many willing partners as possible? The guy who recruited Steven Miller’s wife away from the White House to be his, umm assistant? The guy who bumped the Treasury Secretary in the hallway of the White House (not that he didn’t deserve it) and showed up for work the next day with a black left eye? That guy?

So Trump actually fired him because he found out Musk had no idea how government works and wasn’t actually saving any money in the budget? Oh, and the drugs story in the New York Times.

Well heck, turns out attention to detail hasn’t actually been a major requirement in this Oval Office. I also learned that Tulsi Gabbard, Director of Intelligence, is contemplating providing Fox News style daily briefings in the Oval Office instead of the normal written reports that every other president has always received. Apparently Trump “doesn’t read.” He’s actually only made 14 daily briefings since he took office. He’s golfed more than that. Shocking.

It’s probably safe to say that those daily reports did  not include mention of Sen.  Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, telling a constituent at a Town Hall meeting not to worry about someone dying because their Medicaid had been cut off because, “We are all going to die.” Touching.

The report also probably wouldn’t mention that Bobby Kennedy Junior over at the Health Department issued a report labeled Make America Healthy Again (MAHA, got it? ) that was written entirely by AI because all the researchers and scientists in the department have been fired. Also, it was totally false.

It seems actual scientists and doctors read the report and said none of the studies and reports, etc., listed in MAHA existed. Phony, like Bobby. C’mon, really?

The last surprise was a big one. Ukraine managed to pull off a massive drone attack inside Russia and destroy or disable about 40 strategic bombers as they sat at airfields. One-third of the Russian bomber fleet. No injuries for Ukraine. Huge. A plan a year in the making.

The big surprise? U.S. intelligence agencies knew nothing about it. That’s the kind of thing that’s not supposed to surprise them. Trump‘s response was that it wasn’t fair for Ukraine to attack those planes because they were “just sitting there not bothering anyone.” He said it would have been different if they were attacking someone in combat. “It’s like hitting someone who’s already down,” he said.

Keen sense of warfare there. Also, a strong suggestion of where his sympathies lie. Zelensky had this ace in the hole the whole time, including in his White House visit. Ukraine didn’t trust the U.S. with this big secret. Now the world knows.

It was just a couple of days off. This can’t survive.