Monday, April 25, 2022
Did the Confederacy Oppose the Rule of Law?
State V The Slave Will 1834, My G, G Grandfather Wins
Today is Confederate Memorial Day in Alabama. Most Americans believe the War and Southern history are synonymous, so much so that to many, the War has come to define the South. If you are reading this post and have followed the Abbeville Institute for any length of time, you know that our mission to “explore what is true and valuable in the Southern tradition” captures the four-hundred plus years of Southern history and the Southern tradition, a rich mosaic of people, place, and culture.
The War occupies an important part of that tradition, and for those who despise the traditional South, it offers an opportunity for “academics” to link “racism” and “injustice” to those that respect and even admire Confederate heroes and ancestors. You see, to these people, the Southern tradition is racism and white supremacy. In the process, these “scholars” create a false dichotomy of “righteous” and anti-racist Northerners with “evil” and racist Southerners.
More @ The Abbeville Institute
Analysis: Elon Musk’s $44 billion buyout offer
Musk will pay $54.20 a share for Twitter. That represents a 38 percent premium to the stock's closing price the day before Musk disclosed he had purchased a nine percent stake in the company. Perhaps even more importantly, it is a 53 percent premium to where the shares were trading at the end of February, before Musk started building his stake.
When the transaction is closed, probably sometime later this year, Twitter will become a privately held company, wholly owned by Musk. Musk walks away with full control of the social media company, and shareholders walk away with $54.20 per share.
The Twitter board's decision to accept Musk's $54.20 offer came as a surprise to many. Initially, the board rebuffed Musk, adopting a poison pill that would have made a hostile takeover impossible. Some Wall Street analysts said the offer was too low despite the hefty premium, in part because shares had traded as high as $73 back in August.
There were also lots of doubts about whether Musk could finance his offer. He is purportedly the world's wealthiest man, with a net worth somewhere around $300 billion. Much of that, however, is not liquid. Most of his wealth consists of shares of Tesla and stakes in his other companies. Selling tens of billions of Tesla stock to buy Twitter might alienate or anger the auto company's investors.
This view very likely underestimated one of Musk's finest abilities: securing funding. Investors around the world are eager to invest in Musk's projects, and bankers are eager to arrange the deals. Just last week, Musk's Boring Company—which aims to eliminate traffic by digging high speed underground tunnels—raised $675 million at a $5.675 billion valuation. Crunchbase reports that the company has raised a total of $900 million. Musk's other company, Space X, raised $1.5 billion last year and is said to be the third most valuable private company, with a valuation of $100 billion, after two Chinese companies, Shanghai-based TikTok owner Byte Dance and Hangzhou-based Ant Group.
As we explained on April 14, “[I]t is apparent that Musk can raise the money to get this done. Tesla’s valuation alone gives him nearly unlimited buying power."
So it was not all that surprising that the banks lined up to fund his bid, led by Morgan Stanley. Most of the banks providing $25.5 billion in funding even went along with Musk's penchant for numerical pot jokes by signing commitment letters on April 20 or 4/20. Musk himself will supply $21 billion of his own money and back $12.5 billion of that loan with Tesla stock. The rest of the debt will be backed by the assets of Twitter itself. So banks are providing $25.5 billion, but only $13 billion is at risk on Twitter. That's a 20-percent loan to value ratio—meaning the banks are not taking a lot of debt and would not lose any more unless Musk loses around $33 billion.
As an aside, although no one else stepped forward to invest alongside Musk, now that he has the approval of Twitter's board for the transaction, he may be able to find other equity investors. This is no longer a hostile takeover situation. It's a signed and sealed deal that could put a private equity or sovereign wealth investor alongside Musk. If Musk can raise $900 million to bore tunnels, he can probably come up with a few investors to kick in a billion or two for Twitter.
The financing was the masterstroke that forced the board's hand. With the money in place, the board had an obligation to take the bid seriously. No other bidder had stepped forward in the past three weeks or so since it became clear that Twitter was in play. What's more, the rest of the market had become very volatile. Watching shares of Netflix plunge and drag down Disney may have shaken board members. Shares of Facebook's Meta are down 44 percent year to date. So are Pinterest shares. Snap shares are down 34 percent. It was no doubt hard for management to convince the board that it had a path to a higher share price than what Musk was offering, especially since Musk walking away would almost certainly send the shares back down to at least where they were before his involvement.
Think of it this way. That high Twitter valuation from last summer came at a time when the "stay at home" stocks were riding high. With Disney shares near $190, a $75 price for Twitter does not seem unreasonable. With Disney down at $120 a share, that kind of valuation for Twitter looks crazy.
We will find out on Thursday whether the company's latest quarterly results played a role. On Wall Street, many assume that the company will disclose not only a bad quarter but lower-than-expected guidance for the year to come. That would certainly have pushed the board to accept Musk's bid. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said Twitter’s earnings “likely will not be rainbows and smiles thus putting further pressure on the company around this game of high stakes poker with the Musk bid looming.”
For Musk, on the other hand, it was rockets, stars, and hearts, as he tweeted out: "🚀💫♥️ Yesss!!! ♥️💫🚀"
~~– Alex Marlow & John Carney
Breitbart News Network
Sunday, April 24, 2022
How America Became La La Land
America these last 14 months resembles a dystopia. It is becoming partly the world of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and partly the poet Homer's land of the Lotus-Eaters.
Nothing seems to be working. And no one in control seems to care.
The once secure border of 2020 vanished. Two-million people have crossed the southern border illegally in the last 12 months. Millions more are on the way.
The Biden Administration unilaterally and simply destroyed existing immigration law.
More @ Townhall
1788. China to Make Electric Tumbrils
We—I, and my spousal unit, Violeta—pulled into DC after a conventionally miserable flight from Guadalajara in seats apparently designed for dwarves with our feet almost in our pockets and Delta trying to sell us beer at seven dollars a can. I didn’t get it. If you can sell watery brew at seven balloonishly inflating greenbacks a can, why do you need an airline?
The occasion was a visit to a woman with whom I immediately became involved, though with Violeta’s permission. She weighs seven and a half pounds and has a smile that would make a dead man weep. This may have little geopolitical importance, though.
Anyway, the proud father celebrated having produced, or coproduced, a baby who probably deserves a world run by psychiatrically less fascinating adults, by taking about a dozen of us to Fogo da Something, a Brazilian restaurant on Pennsylvania across from the Trump Hotel. This costs $64 a head for all the meat and salad bar you could eat, desserts and drinks extra, so with tip you can crawl out, stuffed and economically depleted, for about $90. Salad bar good, desserts swell, meat tasteless. You can do better for a sixth the price at La Carreta, down the lake from us in Mexico.
More @ The Saker
My visit to the mound today
Confederate Mound Oak Woods Cemeter
I took my visit to the mound today, in Oakwood Cemetery, Hallowed ground for 6k plus, gone but not forgotten men from long ago. This was my greeting at the gate.
When people are not allowed to pay homage to the dead, society, ceases to exist.
"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."~~ George S. Patton
Is this how it ends? Disrespect for our dead?
Your Northern Copperhead Friend
~~Greg
GROWING UP ON THE FARM IN THE 1900s By: Milton Schrader 90-year-old Korean war veteran
Farm life was different than it is now as we had no electricity or running water. When nature called, we had to go to an outside toilet which consisted of a small building 5 x 4 with two holes to sit on.
Imagine now going to an outside toilet with temperatures 20 below zero and snowing. We had a cookstove that used corn cobs, wood, or coal to cook our food. We had a heating stove manufactured by a company called "Warm Morning" which used coal to heat our rooms in the winter. Farming was done with horses during the early depression years of the dirty '30s which took considerable time and effort. Banks closed one after the other in 1929. Many lost most of their savings, which resulted in many families going hungry.
More @ Old Houses Farms and Country Photography
Friday, April 22, 2022
Daily Battles: We All Fight Them
It’s been a week of battle against the woke, a big corporation and the garden. As far as the garden goes, there’s one thing I never would have believed that my wife and I would find as a common interest in our lives and that’s a garden. But the world is different than it was in 1982 when we met. Now, the garden is as much a part of defending my family from catastrophe as the willingness and ability to engage a threat physically. They are, in many respects, identical. It takes physical force to plant, weed and defend the garden from hungry mammals, bugs and weeds; physical exertion to harvest, prepare and preserve.
More @ TL Davis
Judicial Tyranny vs. Our Rights
We are now living in a tyranny of lawyers and the federal court system. Liberal lawyers bring politically motivated suits and then defend SCOTUS decisions based on precedent rather than contractual words. They have succeeded in eliminating many of the protections our founders guaranteed to us in the Constitution.
There are several ways to implement total change in a country’s system of government. Sudden change by revolution, while often effective, destroys the infrastructure, causes widespread suffering, and increases the risk of human fatalities. Much more effective is a gradual change from within, that is, creating a domestic insurgency that is initially subtle and inconspicuous. Successful insurgencies begin by providing necessities of life to a target population that serves as concealment when political and military operations are initiated. The process of undermining a legitimate government usually requires years, but socialists are patient. They understand how to brainwash vulnerable citizens into accepting the necessity for collectivist change.
More @ Dr.Dan's Freedom Forum