Answers at the bottom.
ANSWERS 🕺🎉🤸♀️
1. Nicki Minaj. At a Michigan event on October 25, Trump told the crowd, “I looked at one hell of a beautiful ass before — Nicki Minaj. That’s hard to miss.” Minaj, who’s a Trump fan, traveled to the event with Trump and was in the crowd. Trump asked her to stand up, which she did. Before Minaj, Trump had mostly been complimenting men’s body parts. We don’t know what’s wrong with him, either.
2. A public golf course. Trump wants to convert the East Potomac public golf course into a fancy championship venue able to host major tournaments. That means many locals who pay $17 to $48 for a round of golf—which is cheap—would end up priced out. Trump is basically trying to turn a public course for regular folks into a private one for rich people. But there are problems. As ever with Trump, there are legal challenges, and a federal judge recently ripped Justice Dept. lawyers for shoddy work and possible unethical behavior. The beleaguered golf course could end up like the Kennedy Center, closed out of spite and incompetence so that nobody can use it.
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3. “It’s a shithouse country.” Of course, it’s not. Norway is a beautiful and civilized nation boasting some of the world’s highest living standards. But Trump is continually pissed he can’t win a Nobel Prize, and the Nobel Committee is based in Oslo, so by extension the whole country sucks. The Norwegians had fun with it. The nation’s tourism agency created an online brochure highlighting “some of the world’s best shithouses.” Some are stunning. Click that link—it’s worth a look!
4. The Cheesecake Factory. And we expect everybody who pays even a little bit of attention to the news to get this one right! The media paid way too much attention to this little beef, which Obama probably triggered on purpose. At a recent Democratic rally, he trashed Trump’s gaudy renovations at the White House as “looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.” (Saddam had a taste for over-the-top gold everything.) Trump bashed Obama back and it got dumber from there. A few days later, Obama pointed out that Trump put more effort into rebutting his joke than getting inflation down. He could have added: Without earning a single laugh.
[12 Trump election swindles to watch for]
5. Elon Musk. The billionaire has spent at least $168 million helping the ethically challenged Paxton battle Democrat James Talarico for the prized Senate seat. Paxton could still lose, but Musk’s sunk costs would only amount to 0.018% of his net worth. That’s the same portion as somebody earning $100,000 per year donating $18 to a campaign. Billionaires get to call the shots these days because of the 2010 Supreme Court decision allowing people to give unlimited amounts of money to political causes. Musk has extensive business operations in Texas and no doubt wants final say on regulatory issues and other matters affecting his companies. Citizens should have a say, dontcha think?
6. Democrats. Reporting by the New York Times explained how Alaska’s Democratic Senate candidate, Mary Peltola, and a bunch of party allies found a guy named Dan Sullivan to run in the Senate race as a nonpartisan candidate, to create confusion and possibly take votes away from the incumbent Republican senator, who is also Dan Sullivan. Republicans are aghast because election cheating is only for Republicans! Trump’s Justice Dept. is suing to prevent Peltola from taking the seat if she wins. But it might not end up that big a deal. First of all, it’s not illegal for a like-named candidate to run, for any reason, no matter who recruited him. And Sen. Sullivan is clearly marked on the ballot as the “incumbent” and the “Republican.” There’s a good chance Peltola could win, so we could have some fun litigation to watch as Trump’s B team lawyers try to prove there was a crime when there wasn’t.
7. Author a newspaper commentary. An October 25 Wall Street Journal commentary with the byline Mitch McConnell castigated Trump for sucking up to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and throwing Ukraine under the bus. Excellent take. But did the Kentucky senator write it? Or was it an aide or AI agent? The last public sighting of the 84-year-old McConnell was in mid-September, and he seemed frail bordering on zombielike. So who knows who’s signing his name these days.
8. North Korea. Stealing crypto is one of the biggest sources of revenue for the rogue nation, and it’s good at it. The $6.3 billion hack is the biggest ever and it’s rocking the crypto industry. Binance froze customer accounts and prevented withdrawals, but said it will cover all customer losses from its own funds. It may also be able to recoup roughly half of the pilfered assets. The hack makes one wonder if Binance or any other private-sector entity, or group of entities, could hack North Korea back as retribution. What could happen if you counterhack a nuclear power? 🤔
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9. May never be profitable. Here’s the exact language from Anthropic’s S-1 registration statement: “We have a history of net losses and may not generate sufficient revenue to achieve or sustain profitability in the future.” Companies going public are basically required to say stuff like that, and investors may not care when the IPO hits around mid-November, since Anthropic is still in growth mode. But Anthropic will be a huge public company enmeshed in the nation’s AI infrastructure. At some point, its profitability glidepath will serve as a proxy for the whole AI industry.
10. Modest losses lately. A selloff in AI-related stocks has shaved 8% off the tech-heavy Nasdaq index since it last peaked on October 6. The broader S&P 500 index is down 3%. A correction would be a 10% drop and a bear market a 20% drop. Investors are worried that massive investments in AI are hurting profitability at some established companies, driving some valuations lower. A huge longer-term rally remains intact, however, with the Nasdaq up 99% during the last three years. We’ll cover the AI stock situation in our next edition of Market Intel.
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