It's a weird sensation to stick to this as someone so far away, but I feel plain proud of all the Ukrainian forces that made this happen so successfully.
The money is not their main driving goal, they know, or realize that Trump can shaft them on the payments.
What they do think they'll gain is to be seen as a legal force to be reckoned with.
It does not matter if their legal strategy is a twisted mess of lies and wrong assumptions, they see trump controlling the courts and any win he is given by a corrupt judge reflects on them as a pure win on the case.
And that is something they can wear as a badge while he is in office.
They also just bet on this regime sticking around for a long time so they can clutch to their status for quite a while, perhaps it leads to some lucrative advisory contracts down the line.
I have seen a few places now where devices drop randomly if they're two "hops" over from a gateway.
It always appears to be that the missing device thinks it is meshed in but the device it meshes with is saying nah, too far I can't understand you.
Adding a mains powered zigbee gateway or device solves it promptly.
The thing is, the few more liberal elite are already afraid of the top kicking downwards so they will not stick out their necks... the rest of the elite is trying to join the plundering of the loot.
And the plebs? They're being kept preoccupied by the lies and fake conflicts, and overwhelmed by their financial situation that traps them in a cycle of working as many jobs they can to keep a roof over their heads...
Until mass layoffs cause a plebian army with plenty of time on their hands no uprising will gain traction.
I am leaning a bit towards it being smoke and mirrors...
Musk needs a way out to save his tesla stocks, in his political doge role he was so unpopular that it torched his Tesla value, his chance to become the first trillionaire is diminished ...
So, being visibly critical of, and exiting doge over, a new tax bill might give him some brownie points in the eyes of the public (or so he hopes) and he'll launch some propaganda how Tesla is so good for the environment again to get people back on board.
But besides that, he already accomplished what he set out to do, used doge to dig up all sorta of data, twist systems where needed for trumps later goals/plans, and with his help and the stolen data elon made sure lawsuits against him and his companies were silenced.
This was his slightly subtle plan to do.
Whatever the doge department was supposed to stand/work for was not important at all, just look at the real numbers of its accomplishments.... All in all just about zero, since current contracts just run out their time and or get paid out anyway, they just won't get renewed.
So they're basically shouting "doge saved 50million now by not signing a new contract in 2 years time" Which isn't really a current saving at all, is it?
Meanwhile he'll be chummy with Trump, if only to make sure "people won't ever need to vote again", but that role does not require public appearances from elon.
$2 billion to Trump Academy 2.0 ... $1 billion in a jar somewhere that no one remembers and is slowly being siphoned off into trumps personal slush fund.
Ah okay, so everything the US does will be contested and taken away, check.
The Great American Island, where non-diseased eggs cost $3 a piece and smog colors she skies yellow.
Where ports send empty freighters back and forth to appear busy.
Where the lower class are enslaved to corporations feeding the rich.
Where criminals weaponize the lawbook to punish the poor.
The place where most sickness does not exist, people just keel over.
The Island the world leaves behind.
China will gladly be the economic decider, Russia the oppressive world police.
And the US the petulant child blaming everyone else.
Yeah well the thing is:
If no one enforces the judiciary's edicts, but they all say aye to whatever trump's new decree of the day is then Judicial is just standing there foot in mouth ...
Declare their opposition to -your new laws- illegal, while being sure there is no force to stop you making the courts submissive to your new king's laws.
He accomplished all he set out to do, with one caveat, because he stood in the bad limelight his image and monetary value took a serious nosedive.
This last part is why he now is standing in the back, yet leering around the room wherever the president is.
The one thing he was aspiring towards did receive a huge blow, he was racing to become the world's first trillionaire.
And it might just be a setback that he can catch up with, but for now he does need to focus to try and crank all his stocks back up...
I am not familiar with any of the tipping laws, but what prevents an employer (now) to withhold the tipping jar from employee's wages, especially now, under the norm of non taxed, in effect non official, incomes?
So, before one would get (income+tips) - taxes; and now only Income - Taxes because on paper the tips don't exist?
I do not want it, but in a way I would have schadenfreude if in the most polluting areas of the US (at least) severe localized smog appears, like in China the last decade...
It's so strange, Trump goes there as President Of The United States ... and returns only with personal gifts, planes & contracts to build Trump golf centers over there and whatever else ...
But is empty handed when needing to show what his trip achieved specifically for the USA....
He needs as much propaganda (read lies) to stay standing...
For example when he decides to nuke Ukraine because he can't conquer it, he must have the Russian population convinced it was because of defending/retribution for a nuclear attack by the west.
The only way to do that is to minimize information coming from outside.
Look at random interviews with Russian people on the countryside and some in the cities, they are deeply brainwashed and indoctrinated from only hearing state messaging about how the west is outright evil.
Those people are unable to revolt.
"The tax cuts alone would pile on the nation's $36 trillion debt"
...So we will destroy beneficial programs and do the tax cuts anyway.
It reads as:
"I stabbed myself in the stomach with a huge knife, but I realize that was not quite a good thing to do so I will shoot off my own knees to make it hurt somewhere else".
Start calling it what it is, a razzia.