News Story of the Day: Tesla shares are cratering 12% on Friday after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused CEO Elon Musk with fraud, arguing that the billionaire made several “false and misleading” tweets about taking the car company private.
Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018
Many Wall Street analysts believe Musk will have to resign.
At the time of this writing, the Tesla stock is down $36.27, or 11.79 percent, to $271.25 a share. This is way down from its 52-week high of nearly $400.
Chart of the Day: Are you still bullish on the U.S. stock market this year? Here are the total returns of various asset classes so far this year (courtesy of MarketWatch):
Illustration of the Day: Did you hear about Bill Clinton’s stance on the FBI potentially investigating a sexually assault from 36 years ago?
Quote of the Day: The spectacle that was the Ford-Kavanaugh hearings was all about one thing: power. The Democrats wanted to ensure the opposition didn’t get their way, while the Republicans wanted to enhance their power. That’s it. The Democrats didn’t care about Ford and the GOP, understanding the farcical nature of politics, just wanted to save face.
Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire, had some interesting analysis:
The hearing was bound to be a spectacle from inception, largely because Republicans had no idea what the purpose of the hearing was. Democrats, by contrast, knew precisely the purpose of the hearing: to let Ford tell her story, then challenge Republicans to call her a liar by voting for Kavanaugh. The Democrats wanted the hearing to become a liar/not-liar binary decision. They succeeded in that task because Republicans, wanting to avoid charges of sexism, decided to treat Ford with kid gloves and avoid setting an agenda.
Republicans should have made clear their position from the outset: an allegation, no matter how credible, cannot kill a man’s career without a shred of corroborative evidence. Then they should have asked specific questions designed to elicit the fact that Ford has provided no corroborating evidence. They should have called all the witnesses she mentioned to deny on record that they recall such a party (particularly Mark Judge, whom they spoke with but who was not subpoenaed). They should have asked her whether she could lock down location or date — something that could help them corroborate her statements. Such questions would have represented the only reason for having a hearing in the first place: we already knew of her account in writing, and nothing markedly changed from that account. Democrats wanted her to testify so they could obscure her lack of corroborating evidence with emotion. Republicans allowed her to do just that.
Republicans seemed to follow two political paths: first, they attempted to prove that Democratic activity on this score was politically motivated, which is true but insufficient; and second, that Ford’s memory was chock-filled with holes, which was also true but insufficient.
Tweet of the Day: Is this the state of U.S. politics? If you navigate through Twitter all day, then this is what life is truly like. However, if you live outside of the Internet, then it’s pretty normal and decent. Nevertheless, this is one interesting tweet that has received a lot of backlash:
Divorce your Republican husbands.
— Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) September 28, 2018
Video of the Day: CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin is at it again making an embarrassment of himself. A few weeks ago, he claimed that Antifa is an organization made up of black people. Now he is paranoid that the country is more racist and sexist than we tend to believe. CNN needs to take a hiatus and restructure the network to hire some sane individuals. Here is the clip:
As far as Ford’s accusation why has no criminal complaint be filed to date?
Especially with no statute of limitation in Maryland;
I’m sorry, I forgot; it is merely a farce!