Msg ID:
2732632 |
Bezos and Musk agree— you actual Biden voters are Useful Idiots +2/-4
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Author:Shooting Shark
6/16/2022 3:44:49 PM
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The two richest men in the world appear to have teamed up against a common adversary.
© Provided by TheStreetMusk and Bezos Agree on Who Is Responsible for Inflation
It's rare to see Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos agree on things.
The former is the richest man in the world with an estimated fortune of $209 billion as of June 14, according to Bloomberg Billionaire Index.
The second is the second richest man on the planet. His fortune is estimated at $126 billion.
Musk and Bezos clash in particular in the conquest of space via their respective companies SpaceX and Blue Origin.
The two men also have so far had different styles. Musk is a brawler and a go-getter. Nothing animates him but to provoke controversies. He answers tit for tat and does not back down from any opponent. In addition, Musk loves to fight his fights in public, on the social network Twitter which he is also in the process of acquiring.
Bezos was known for his discretion and very rarely displayed his opinions. The founder of Amazon (AMZN) - Get Amazon.com Inc. Report has often ignored the attacks of politicians, in particular ex-president Donald Trump who had made Bezos and Amazon his favorite targets.
The Two Billionaires Agree Now on Different Topics
But recently, the two tech tycoons seem to have put aside their differences and their bickering on important topics. Last month, they agreed, as we reported, on a private sector solution to help solve San Francisco's homeless problem.
"Convert Twitter SF HQ to homeless shelter since no one shows up anyway," Bezos tweeted to Musk on April April 9. He referred to a similar solution Amazon implemented in Seattle.
"Great idea," Musk responded.
Bezos has since become a bit more active on Twitter and seems to be copying Musk. Indeed, the mogul has been interacting for a few days with his 4.3 million followers and gives his opinion on various subjects. Above all, he has become more combative in the face of politicians and in particular President Joe Biden, whom he has not stopped criticizing in recent days.
"The newly created Disinformation Board should review this tweet, or maybe they need to form a new Non Sequitur Board instead," Bezos commented after Biden said on May 13 that to bring down inflation wealthiest corporations should pay their fare share.
"Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection," Bezos added.
The next day, Bezos criticized the Biden administration as the president sought to take credit for deficit reduction. The former Amazon boss couldn't swallow this and pointed out that Democrats were trying to pump more stimulus into the economy as prices soared.
"In fact, the administration tried hard to inject even more stimulus into an already over-heated, inflationary economy and only Manchin saved them from themselves. Inflation is a regressive tax that most hurts the least affluent. Misdirection doesn’t help the country," Bezos wrote on May 15.
The Government Is the Problem
Bezos doesn't seem to want to stop anymore. He seems to like this new Biden opponent suit that Musk also likes to wear. While consumers are still faced with inflation at its highest for more than 40 years, the two billionaires have just identified a culprit.
For Musk and Bezos, it was the stimulus to help consumers at the time of the pandemic that caused the inflation. Basically, the responsible culprit for the surge of your recent grocery store receipts is the federal government.
"Look, a squirrel! This is the White House’s statement about my recent tweets. They understandably want to muddy the topic," Bezos attacked on May 16. "They know inflation hurts the neediest the most. But unions aren’t causing inflation and neither are wealthy people."
"Remember the Administration tried their best to add another $3.5 TRILLION to federal spending. They failed, but if they had succeeded, inflation would be even higher than it is today, and inflation today is at a 40 year high."
Asked hours later about Bezos' criticism, Musk seemed to agree with his billionaire peer.
"The honest reason inflation is that the government printed a zillion amount of more money than it had," the serial entrepreneur said during a video appearance at the All-In Summit in Miami Beach, according to a video posted on Twitter.
"I think @JeffBezos is mostly wrong in his recent attack on the @JoeBiden Admin. It is perfectly reasonable to believe, as I do and @POTUS asserts, that we should raise taxes to reduce demand to contain inflation and that the increases should be as progressive as possible," former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, now a Harvard professor, commented. Summers has been warning about the increasing risk of recession.
Musk and Bezos have in common that they are involved in two companies -- Tesla and Amazon -- that are anti-union. But the Biden administration is pushing for a revival of unionism in big companies and thus supporting employees who try to form unions.
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Msg ID:
2732634 |
You have zero credibility +3/-1
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Author:bladeslap
6/16/2022 3:47:05 PM
Reply to: 2732632
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You still believe in pizza gate and that the world is flat. No one takes you seriously. |
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Msg ID:
2732648 |
I really wish you were correct Buddha +6/-4
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Author:Shooting Shark
6/16/2022 4:28:17 PM
Reply to: 2732634
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But you know you're wrong
you just won't admit it
Trump is your constant excuse
for actually voting for this fake
Creepy Joe?!?
Joe is why many con-men escape justice
the "conned" have a hard time admitting
they have actually bought a time-share in Tahiti
and no,
the deal really isn't as advertised
( and VERY EXpENSIVE!!!!)
Such are you silly Libz!
BTw Howz your 401K doing Buddha? Creepy Joe sez youre up about 20%
"on his watch" is that true?
Cmon Buddha
Nurse Cratchet says you may never be cured
more Valium and electroshock therapy
"repatterning" they say.
looks like a scene from the movie
"A Clockwork Orange"
( way before your time,Buddha)
But I digress.
Here I am
sitting by your bedside
protecting you in this TDS asylum
waiting for your next Trump convulsion
do I can call the night nurse
and up your meds!
( I don't want you to swallow your tongue!)
admitting you have a problem
is the first step of recovery
You can do it Buddha !
even Dinesh DSousa's 2000 Mules
would tell you you're a
Useful idiot!!
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Msg ID:
2732863 |
I really wish you were correct Buddha +3/-0
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Author:TheCrow
6/18/2022 5:46:58 PM
Reply to: 2732648
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even Dinesh DSousa's 2000 Mules would tell you you're a Useful idiot!!
Once upon a time... No, Trumpist logic isn't even rational enough for a fairy tale.
Biden touched a girl's hair! He's a sexual attacker?
Trump has dozens of sexual aggression accusations. He brags about it- "grab'em by the ......" but he gets a pass?
His first wife accused him publicly of marital rape for, what? Ten? Fifteen years? Backed off when he started moving at the presidency and, it is suggested, a mention was made a possible interuption in child support payments.
Trump solicited election corruption in a recorded conversation.
When Trump ran in 2016 I contemplated voting for him in preference to Hillary. But I'm no hypocrite, had I voted for either I could never post here. So I gave money and worked for another candidate, who has since proven top be not much better (if any) than The Donald.
Until 2020, Trump's inaction which led to a deadly epidemic, record unemployment and the strongest economic contraction since the Great Depression (deny any of that, TrumpeRINO frog boys) until that tragic year in America's history, I could have voted for Trump. Never ever now.
A new documentary from Trump allies makes the latest case the election was stolen, but the group behind the claim has been assailed even by some on the hard right.
Former President Donald J. Trump speaking at a screening of “2000 Mules” at Mar-a-Lago on May 4.Credit...D'Souza Media
- Published May 29, 2022Updated June 8, 2022
PALM BEACH, Fla. — Votes switched by Venezuelan software. Voting machines hacked by the Chinese. Checking for telltale bamboo fibers that might prove ballots had been flown in from Asia. After the 2020 election, Donald J. Trump and his allies cycled through a raft of explanations for what they claimed was the fraud that stole his rightful re-election as president, all of them debunked.
Yet on a recent evening at his Mar-a-Lago resort, there was Mr. Trump showcasing his latest election conspiracy theory, one he has been advancing for months at rallies for his favored midterm candidates.
The basic pitch is that an army of left-wing operatives stuffed drop boxes with absentee ballots — a new spin on an old allegation that voter-fraud activists call “ballot trafficking.” And while MAGA-world luminaries like Rudolph W. Giuliani, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and the MyPillow founder Mike Lindell filled the gilded ballroom, the former president called out two lesser-known figures sitting up front — the stars of “2000 Mules,” a documentary film promoting that ballot-trafficking theory and premiering at Mar-a-Lago that night.
“These people are true patriots,” Mr. Trump said, gesturing from the podium to the pair — a Tea Party veteran from Texas, Catherine Engelbrecht, and Gregg Phillips, her full-bearded sidekick, a longtime Republican operative — and imploring them to “stand up.”
The Mar-a-Lago “2000 Mules” screening earlier this month.Credit...Alexandra Berzon/The New York Times
Donald Trump and his allies are pushing the conspiracy theory covered in “2000 Mules.”Credit...Alexandra Berzon/The New York Times
While the early primaries have delivered a mixed verdict on the former president’s endorsements and stolen-election obsessions, polling nonetheless shows that a majority of Republicans believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen, even though vote fraud is exceedingly rare. Mr. Trump and his allies hope “2000 Mules,” now playing at several hundred theaters, will win over doubters among establishment Republicans.
Ms. Engelbrecht, the founder of True the Vote, a group that has spent years warning of the dangers of voter fraud, has criticized the earlier narratives of the 2020 election as unhelpful. “What they were putting out there was a lot of misinformation that just wasn’t true,” she said in a recent interview. “People want to believe the conspiracies in some ways.” Their film, she maintains, offers a more-serious theory.
Catherine Engelbrecht, center, founder and president of True the Vote.Credit...Michael F. McElroy for The New York Times
Yet a close look at the documentary shows that it, too, is based on arguments that fall apart under scrutiny.
The film, directed by the conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, is based in part on an erroneous premise: that getting paid to deliver other people’s ballots is illegal not just in states like Pennsylvania and Georgia where True the Vote centered its research and where third-party delivery of ballots is not allowed in most cases, but in every state.
What’s more, the film claims, but never shows in its footage, that individual “mules” stuffed drop box after drop box. (Mr. Phillips said such footage exists, but Mr. D’Souza said it wasn’t included because “it’s not easy to tell from the images themselves that it is the same person.”) Those claims are purportedly backed up by tracking cellphone data, but the film’s methods of analysis have been pilloried in numerous fact-checks. (True the Vote declined to offer tangible proof — Mr. Phillips calls his methodology a “trade secret.”)
More broadly, Ms. Engelbrecht has said that the surge of mail-in voting in 2020 was part of a Marxist plot, aided by billionaires including George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg, to disrupt American elections, rather than a legitimate response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr. Phillips, whose firm OpSec does data analysis for True the Vote, is perhaps best known for making a fantastical claim in 2017 that more than three million illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 election, which was amplified by Mr. Trump but never backed up with evidence. Mr. Phillips is also an adviser to Get Georgia Right, a political action committee that received $500,000 from Mr. Trump’s Save America PAC this past March 25, the day after Mr. Phillips and Ms. Engelbrecht advanced their 2020 vote-fraud theories to a legislative committee in Wisconsin. Mr. Phillips said he had “received zero money” from Get Georgia Right, which backed Mr. Trump’s favored and failed governor-primary candidate, David Perdue.
Gregg Phillips, right, at the “2000 Mules” screening at Mar-a-Lago.Credit...Alexandra Berzon/The New York Times
Mr. Phillips and Ms. Engelbrecht have become controversial even within the hard-right firmament. They are embroiled in litigation with True the Vote’s largest donor, and Ms. Engelbrecht has feuded with Cleta Mitchell, a leading Trump ally and elections lawyer. John Fund, a prominent conservative journalist who was once a booster of Ms. Engelbrecht, has implored donors to shun her, according to videotape provided to The New York Times by Documented, a nonprofit news site.
“I would not give her a penny,” Mr. Fund said at a meeting of members of the Council for National Policy, a secretive group of right-wing leaders, in the summer of 2020. “She’s a good person who’s been led astray. Don’t do it.”
But Ms. Engelbrecht found support from Salem Media Group, which distributes right-wing talk radio and podcasts, including one hosted by Mr. D’Souza, who was pardoned by Mr. Trump after being convicted of campaign finance fraud. After meeting with Mr. Phillips and Ms. Engelbrecht, Salem Media spent $1.5 million to make the film and $3 million to market it, according to Mr. D’Souza. An elaborate and shadowy film set, with giant screens and flashing lights, was built to show Ms. Engelbrecht and Mr. Phillips conducting their cellphone-data analysis.
Directed by the conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, “2000 Mules” is based on an erroneous central premise: that getting paid to deliver other people’s ballots is illegal in every state.Credit...Shannon Finney/Getty Images
The group has not presented any evidence that the ballots themselves — as opposed to their delivery — were improper. “I want to make very clear that we’re not suggesting that the ballots that were cast were illegal ballots. What we’re saying is that the process was abused,” Ms. Engelbrecht said in Wisconsin. In an interview, she backtracked, but when asked to provide evidence of improper votes, she only pointed to previous accusations unrelated to the 2020 general election.
A repeated contention of the documentary is that getting paid to deliver other peoples’ ballots is illegal in every state. Mr. D’Souza emailed The New York Times a citation to a federal statute that outlaws getting paid to vote — and does not discuss delivering other people’s ballots. Hans von Spakovsky, a Heritage Foundation fellow, appears in the movie agreeing that the practice is outlawed nationwide, but in 2019 he wrote that it was “perfectly legal” in some states for “political guns-for-hire” to collect ballots. (Asked about the discrepancy, Mr. von Spakovsky said he believed the practice is illegal based on federal law.)
The swing states where Mr. Phillips and Ms. Engelbrecht focused their research do ban the delivery of ballots on behalf of others, with some exceptions. But elections officers in 16 other states surveyed by The Times said their states did not prohibit people getting paid to deliver a ballot. Some of those states limit how many ballots an individual can deliver, or bar campaigns from doing so.
Mr. Phillips and Ms. Engelbrecht’s case is largely built on cellphone data. A report created by the group includes an appendix that claims to list “IMEI” numbers of the tracked devices — 15-digit codes unique to each cellphone. But each entry on the list is a 20-character string of numbers and letters followed by a lot of x’s. Mr. Phillips said new IDs had been created “to obfuscate the numbers.”
The same report says the group “purchased 25 terabytes of cellphone signal data emitted by devices” in the Milwaukee area in a two-week period before the 2020 election. They claim to have isolated 107 unique devices that made “20 or more visits to drop boxes” and “multiple visits to nongovernmental organizations” that were involved in get out the vote efforts.
A number of researchers have said that while cellphone data is fairly precise, it cannot determine if someone is depositing ballots in a drop box or just passing by the area.
“It’s really, really hard to assign even what side of the street you’re on when you’re using this kind of data,” said Paul Schmitt, a research scientist and professor at the University of Southern California.
The Trump Investigations
Card 1 of 8
Numerous inquiries. Since Donald J. Trump left office, the former president has been facing civil and criminal investigations across the country into his business dealings and political activities. Here is a look at the notable inquiries:
Westchester County criminal investigation. The district attorney’s office in Westchester County, N.Y., appears to be focused at least in part on whether the Trump Organization misled local officials about the value of a golf course, Trump National Golf Club Westchester, to reduce its taxes.
True the Vote focuses on Democrats, but in 2019 the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee vowed to be more aggressive in its use of the same practice of collecting mail-in ballots. In fact, one of the few specific allegations of vote fraud cited in the film concerns a North Carolina Republican operative who was facing ballot-tampering and obstruction-of-justice charges when >he died last month. The case led state elections officials to order the first redo of a federal election because of fraud allegations.
As True the Vote’s funding faltered in recent years, it found new adversaries among old friends. During an elections panel hosted by the Council for National Policy in the summer of 2020, Mr. Fund, a former member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, said Ms. Engelbrecht had “hooked up with the wrong associates” and “gone astray.”
Ms. Mitchell, the elections lawyer and leading vote-fraud activist in her own right, was sitting next to Mr. Fund and nodding through his comments. “It’s true,” she said after he finished.
John Fund, a prominent conservative journalist who was once a booster of Ms. Engelbrecht, has now implored donors to shun her.Credit...Tibor Illyes/EPA, via Shutterstock
Ms. Mitchell once represented Ms. Engelbrecht in a dispute with the I.R.S. over allegations that it was targeting conservative groups. Ms. Engelbrecht said that Ms. Mitchell has been “on a rampage against me” since she fired Ms. Mitchell in 2017.
She believed the I.R.S. litigation had been “a great fund-raising vehicle” for Ms. Mitchell “and her associates. I wanted to win the case and move on and not be a cottage industry.”
Ms. Mitchell, in a text, said that her legal team spent years doing “all the heavy lifting,” but was fired after issuing a public statement, which had been standard practice. “Problem is that Catherine hates it if anyone else deals with reporters,” she said.
Soon after the 2020 election, with its funding faltering in recent years, True the Vote got a windfall $2.5 million donation from Fred Eshelman, a North Carolina entrepreneur seeking evidence to overturn the election. But the effort sputtered and Mr. Eshelman sued, claiming he had been swindled.
He lost an initial round in Texas court and is now appealing. The suit alleges Ms. Engelbrecht and Mr. Phillips were in a romantic relationship and violated Texas law related to conflicts of interest, since True the Vote directed a “substantial portion” of Mr. Eshelman’s funds to OpSec.
Asked about a personal relationship, Ms. Engelbrecht said, “You know, Gregg and I have actually talked about this and how we would answer this question. And the best answer that I think either of us are going to give is, it is totally unrelated and unimportant.”
True the Vote’s eventual focus on ballot trafficking was inspired by an Arizona investigation into ballot collection in the 2020 primary that led to indictments.
But True the Vote’s efforts have prompted little action from law enforcement. Last year, after True the Vote circulated its research in Georgia, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said the cell data turned over, which tracked people to within 100 feet, was insufficient to act on.
“What has not been provided is any other kind of evidence that ties these cellphones to ballot harvesting,” the bureau said in a letter. “For example, there are no statements of witnesses and no names of any potential defendants to interview.” It added that while the group had said it had “a source” who could validate such findings, “despite repeated requests that source has not been provided.”
Correction:
June 1, 2022
An earlier version of this article misstated the location of Fred Eshelman, who donated $2.5 million to True the Vote. He is in North Carolina, not Texas.
Danny Hakim is an investigative reporter. He has been a European economics correspondent and bureau chief in Albany and Detroit. He was also a lead reporter on the team awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. @dannyhakim • Facebook
Alexandra Berzon is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for the Politics desk, focused on elections systems and voting. She was previously an investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal and covered the gambling industry and workplace safety. @alexandraberzon
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Msg ID:
2732704 |
You have zero credibility (NT) +1/-2
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Author:observer II
6/17/2022 8:24:34 AM
Reply to: 2732634
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Msg ID:
2732705 |
You have zero credibility, I love it when you talk dirty +2/-2
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Author:observer II
6/17/2022 8:27:51 AM
Reply to: 2732634
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So tell me something budha, creepy joe says the economy is good.
Do you agree with that?
I mean, you're living the same nightmare the rest of us are.
Joes approval ratings continue to plummet. Worst ever
And we won't even mention his sidekick who's disapproval ratings don't even make the chart.
And remember, you voted for both of them. Joe has set the bar so low, it will never be broken.
So do you think the economy is good? |
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