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Fri, 06/09/2024 - 10:00
He paid his taxes late. They threw the book at him. I fully expect that they are going to throw him in jail for doing something that millions of Americans do every year and simply pay fines and interest. But this is Hunter Biden not an ordinary American and they were planning to expose every sordid detail of his descent into addiction hell in order to embarrass him and his family, especially his father. Meanwhile, Donald Trump walks free and will likely never see the inside of a jail cell. If you think that makes sense you must be a member of the Trump cult.
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Fri, 06/09/2024 - 08:30
The stock price of Trump’s media company Truth Social continues its plunge. It’s downright spectacular: Shares of former President Donald J. Trump’s social media company have fallen so much that his onetime $6 billion stake is now worth about $2 billion. The stock price of Trump Media & Technology Group, closed Wednesday at $16.98, and is down more than 74 percent from the high-water mark it hit after Trump Media’s merger in March with a publicly traded shell company. Mr. Trump is the single largest shareholder of Trump Media, the parent company of Truth Social, owning 115 million shares — a roughly 60 percent stake. The slide in the share price has accelerated over the past few weeks as the presidential campaign has heated up and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, has narrowly overtaken Mr. Trump in most national polls. Shares of Trump Media often have risen and fallen in tandem with investor perception of how Mr. Trump is doing in the presidential race. The stock is also falling in advance of a pivotal date — the expiration of a contractual lockup that has precluded Mr.
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Fri, 06/09/2024 - 07:00
Maaaybe…. The indictment of Russian agents bankrolling a bunch of very heavy hitting right wing “influencers” says those influencer had no idea what was going on and they all insist they were “victims” (who were being paid as much as 400k a month to make some videos.) The Daily Beast story summarizes it as well as anyone: Several right-wing American influencers described themselves as “victims” after the Justice Department accused a company they worked with of being a front for a covert Russian influence campaign. Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Dave Rubin all released statements Wednesday after prosecutors claimed a Tennessee-based firm—identified in multiple media reports as Tenet Media—was secretly funded and directed by Russian state media employees. The company, which lists Pool, Johnson, Rubin, and others as its “talent,” published English-language videos online with content that is “often consistent” with the Kremlin’s aim of “amplifying U.S. domestic divisions” to undermine American opposition to Russian interests like its war in Ukraine, prosecutors say.
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Fri, 06/09/2024 - 05:30
This is kind of depressing but it’s important. Dan Pfeiffer took a look at the gender gap and it’s a large as ever. But the younger men of Gen Z are far more likely to vote for Trump this year than they were in 2020. And it’s a problem. If the current numbers hold, Trump will win the election: In the NBC News Stay Tuned poll of Gen Z: The sample of men under 30 is too small to get a real picture of why. In focus groups of young men who previously supported Democrats but are open to voting for Trump in 2024 many cite dissatisfaction with the economy, tremendous cynicism with politics, distrust of institutions, and a sense of being left behind or undervalued by our current culture. Young men are Trump’s top target in this race. That’s why his convention featured a wife beating MMA fighter introducing him and he entered the stage to the tune of “it’s a man’s world.” Trump’s campaign advisers explicitly target young men — of all races.
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Fri, 06/09/2024 - 04:58
The Pearls and Irritations platform, with its commitment to fact-driven critique, exemplifies dissent as a profound act of civic engagement. Immanuel Kant, the renowned Enlightenment philosopher, offered a powerful defence of this kind of loyal, evidence-based dissent. Kant argued that the free public use of reason is essential for societal progress. The mission of Pearls Continue reading »
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Fri, 06/09/2024 - 04:56
Commissioner Paul Brereton said one thing to his top NACC colleagues and another to the Attorney-General. EXCLUSIVE The head of the National Anti-Corruption Commission Paul Brereton made misleading statements to Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus over his management of conflicts of interest regarding the Robodebt referrals. A three-page official letter from Brereton to Dreyfus, released by the Continue reading »
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Fri, 06/09/2024 - 04:54
On 22 August, China commemorated the 120th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping’s birth. The third Plenary Session of the Communist Party of China in 1978 marked the beginning of China’s reform and opening-up under the leadership of Deng. His reforms transformed China from one of the poorest countries to the world’s second-largest economy. China’s gross domestic Continue reading »
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Fri, 06/09/2024 - 04:51
Political and economic pressures are rising in Papua New Guinea (PNG), with escalating social tensions suggesting a need for focused regional support. Critics argue that given ongoing civil unrest, political instability with Rainbo Paita’s challenge to Prime Minister James Marape and substantial economic challenges such as a stagnating minimum wage and increasing poverty, financial aid Continue reading »
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Fri, 06/09/2024 - 04:16
Mike Barnicle had a viral clip on Morning Joe today about the media refusing to report on Trump as he really is: Greg Sargent went deeper on this subject today, referencing Barnicle and pointing out that we are simply not seeing the kind of coverage of Trump’s obvious unfitness that we saw about Joe Biden just a couple of months ago. It’s not that nobody ever says anything about this. But it’s almost in passing, as if it’s not the central story of the campaign. We have a man who is manifestly incapable of being president and we know it. And it’s much worse than it was in 2016 because nobody was sure at the time whether it was an act. It’s not an act. The media failure this time is completely inexcusable. Sargent writes:  I’ve taken 10 prominent headlines on stand-alone stories that ran about Biden’s age before he dropped out. I’ve rewritten them (links to the originals are included) around Trump’s mental unfitness.
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Fri, 06/09/2024 - 03:30
We wonder how it can be that Donald Trump is running even with Kamala Harris even after all we know about him and his demented performance on the stump? There are tens of millions of people who are just like him. Like Senator Ron Johnson who is a multi-millionaire. This still disorients me even after all this time. I thought it was just a fringe.