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Interesting assessment of the likely rationale behind Musk deciding to spend nearly half a billion dollars on the election and what the Republican loss may be costing him.

Too subtle for my TDS brain I'm afraid, OME. It's beyond recovery.

That's right. My initial understanding was that he was trying to prevent that in future and ensure that his execrable taste in fake Louis IV gold decorations lived on, but apparently he can't go that far.

Vance, unfortunately. At least until the end of the term.

I wasn’t entirely right. Apparently a future president can still make internal changes so the ornaments and chandeliers can go. It mainly means the basic structure and historic character of the spaces needs to be preserved. His proclamation could also be challenged in court before it’s ratified.

Trump has just declared the Oval Office and Cabinet Room to be national monuments which means they have to be preserved and can’t be altered. He obviously wants to make sure that no future president can get rid of his gold ornaments and chandeliers. There’s no end to this moron’s vanity. The document still has to be ratified by Congress but no doubt that will be a formality.

I think the ballroom construction is probably too advanced to make it easy to change now, and certainly by time the Democrats would be able to do anything about. He will probably get his arch too unless the courts step in and stop it. The judge, Tanya Chutkin, is definitely not a Trump fan so that might happen.

On a positive note, yesterday's election results showed that democracy is not completely dead in the US and that the electoral system works despite huge sums of money being spent and plenty of vicious politicking. That's encouraging. Even so, a lot of the vote was a widespread vote against Trump rather than a vote for the Democrats, even by the democrats themselves. But at least now there's an opportunity to stop the ship from sinking totally. It's going to be a hard road to get things back on track and sort out the many problems, so I hope the new Congress and Senate can show a bit of leadership. They've got three months to get themselves organised, set a sensible and balanced agenda and then implement it. Hopefully the cooler heads can keep things on track and the hotheads under control. There's plenty of potential for it all to come unstuck, but at least they're off to a good start.

He said that four democrats had already called him after the election - two senators and three congressmen, and there were two more calls waiting. My guess is the actual number of calls was zero.

Tariffs are generally are intended to make imported goods more expensive to favour local manufacturers who are competing with those same goods. It's the country imposing the tariffs that pays them. Seems like a dumb idea to me except maybe in special circumstances.

No tax on tips and overtime expire in December2028 but tax breaks for the rich don't expire. That's not good. Finding waste and fraud in government is a perennial aim of all parties but DOGE was a complete financial and moral failure. What he wanted tariffs to do was punish countries he thought were taking advantage of the USA because he didn't understand how trade worked. By nature, he's pathologically opposed to cooperation for mutual gain.

You're right. He's been a roaring success based on those measures. I was thinking more about what might have been seen as good in terms of his official job, the one he never understood and still doesn't.

The only good thing I think Trump has done is stop uncontrolled migration across the border. Everything else has been a disaster for the country and the world.

Even though the new crowd won't be sworn in for a while, it looks like a pretty decisive result so a lot of the current Republicans in the House and Senate will start to mentally abandon the leaking Trump ship and may be a bit more willing to stick their heads above the parapet. Mike Johnson's future as Trump's doormat might also be a bit more shaky.

Rubio will have to do a lot of work to make people forget his dismal performance to date and nobody likes Vance because he's a shape-shifting zealot.

Trump and the GOP are not having a good day so far, but I wonder what they're plotting.

I've asked it to do engineering calculations. It's pretty good but it's like having a graduate engineer working for you. You've got to check what it's telling you but it's still impressive.

It's smarter than me. I couldn't even understand your simple instruction.

I think that’s very likely but Trump also sees Putin as the gold standard for the type of political leader he wants to be and wants to do business with, and is frustrated by being pushed to impose sanctions instead, and has someone in Zelensky who stubbornly won’t give him what he wants and was responsible for him being impeached.

Hope you make a bit of money on this palatial residence one day.

The Russians are obviously well aware of how they've played Trump for the fool that he is. The other point is that the 300,000 tonnes very likely hasn't cost them anything. It's highly unlikely to be additional production, but more likely just the fuel they were intending to produce anyway and would have shipped to the market using their shadow fleet. Now it will just go out in a different tanker with a receipt from the US government to make it look legitimate. Not only that, it's not even going to the US. It's going to the world market, which means the small quantity involved will make even less difference to fuel prices anywhere. Trump will pay them $4 billion and effectively get nothing in return except maybe a thank you note from Putin for his birthday present. The Russians must be very happy with this deal.

This is the Russian perspective on Trump's diesel deal:

They will just pay Trump to sell them pardons.

Works for me too, although I don't have an account. I sometimes click on the links that Red posts but generally try to avoid FB as much as possible.

A report I saw said that Musk came up with the idea and suggested it to Trump who thought it was a great idea, so someone pressed the off switch. Apparently the system still hasn’t been fully restored.