Fogbow

AndyinPA wrote: ↑Wed Jul 17, 2024 12:10 pm I'm starting to wonder if his motive was no more than to get famous. We try to use shooters' names as little as possible after one of these. But tied to tfg, that's not the case. Also, suicide by cop, although I think that's less likely, given what we know so far. He had a family, a job, graduated from high school with high honors, and just in May graduated from the community college with a degree as a tech engineer.

Chip stocks fall further after Trump’s remarks on Taiwan defence
Semiconductor and related tech shares hit hard by former US president’s calls for Taipei to pay for US protection

Jack Simpson
Thu 18 Jul 2024 11.50 CEST

The stocks of some of the world’s largest chipmakers have fallen further after comments by Donald Trump that Taiwan, which is central to the global industry, should pay for its own defences against China.

Shares in semiconductor and related tech companies had already plunged on Wednesday after the former president’s comments, as well as a report that suggested Joe Biden’s administration was considering the strictest controls on the trade of chips to China.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, fell by 2.4% on Thursday. That followed a 7% fall the previous day, when Trump questioned why the US was acting as Taiwan’s “insurance” when, he claimed, it had taken away America’s chip business.

On Wednesday, the US’s tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index had its worst day since December 2022, falling 2.8%, after an unconfirmed Bloomberg report suggested Biden was considering introducing the most severe restrictions on companies if they continued to give China access to semiconductor technology.

It said the US president was considering whether to impose a measure called the foreign direct product rule, which would allow the US to impose controls on foreign-made products that use even tiny amounts of US technology.


https://www.theguardian.com/business/ar ... iconductor

The Audacity of Elon Musk’s $180 Million Pledge to Elect Donald Trump
Musk says he’ll give $45 million a month to a Super PAC that promotes a practice he has actively undermined.

JUDD LEGUM AND REBECCA CROSBY
2 HOURS AGO

This story was originally published on Judd Legum’s Substack, Popular Information, to which you can subscribe here.

Billionaire Elon Musk has pledged to give $45 million a month to a Super PAC that’s encouraging swing-state supporters of former President Donald Trump to vote absentee, a practice Musk has publicly described as “insane,” “too risky,” and a recipe for “large-scale fraud.”

Trump has advanced a variety of wild conspiracy theories to falsely claim that he won the 2020 presidential election. One of his favorites is the false claim that supporters of President Joe Biden had stuffed dropboxes with falsified absentee ballots. Right-wing polemicist Dinesh D’Souza created a 90-minute documentary, 2000 Mules, devoted to the baseless allegation about absentee ballots. D’Souza’s documentary was so shoddy that its distributor, Salem Media Group, ultimately pulled the film from the market and issued an apology.

Numerous studies have found that voting by mail is “safe and secure.” A database maintained by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which supports restrictions on mail-in voting, reported “1,200 cases of vote fraud of all forms” from 2000 to 2020. Of those cases, “204 involved the fraudulent use of absentee ballots.” This amounts to “one case [of fraud using mail-in ballots] per state every six or seven years,” or “about 0.00006 percent of total votes cast.”

Nevertheless, for months, Musk has used X to spread misinformation about absentee ballots to his nearly 190 million followers. Here’s a sampling:

• On January 8, Musk wrote that it was “insane” that you can “mail in your ballot” in the United States. The same day, he said the government should require “in-person voting” on a single day, with few exceptions, “like other countries do.”
  
  On February 2, Musk asserted that the Biden campaign was involved in a scheme to submit a massive number of fake absentee ballots.
  
  On February 5, Musk said that absentee ballots are used for widespread fraud because the nature of absentee ballots made “fraud traceability impossible.”
  
  On May 9, Musk falsely claimed that “widespread voting by mail” was “not allowed before the scamdemic” and now “proving fraud [is] almost impossible.”
  
  On July 9, Musk said that we “should mandate paper ballots and in-person voting only” because “anything mailed in is too risky.” In another post the same day, Musk said that “[m]ail-in and drop box ballots should not be allowed” because they facilitate “large-scale fraud.”

Musk’s X account has become the social media equivalent of 2000 Mules, grasping to justify Trump’s lies about the last presidential election. Musk’s diatribes against absentee voting have occurred as Trump and Musk are reportedly “developing a friendly rapport and talk on the phone several times a month as the election nears.”

A recent FEC decision means that America PAC, which is focusing on canvassing to increase absentee voting in swing states, can coordinate directly with the Trump campaign.

As a result, it’s not entirely surprising that, on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Musk would be donating $45 million a month to a Super PAC supporting Trump’s campaign. (Musk previously pledged not to donate to Trump or Biden.) The contributions to America PAC, which was formed in May, would make Musk the biggest financial backer of Trump in 2024 and one of the largest political donors of all time.




https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... ee-voting/

bill_g wrote: ↑Tue Jul 16, 2024 11:00 pm ... and while we're on the topic of the Trump target practice, I got a bunch of windshield time today which meant listening to a lot of NPR radio and a lot of experts. This one reporter pointed out the shooter was outside a distance perimeter. I don't recall the exact number, but it was something like 400 yards. The Secret Service was responsible for the first 400 yards around the President. Beyond that fell on local LEO. And that's where the shooter was. So, it was the local team that dropped the ball, not the national team, despite their efforts to fuck it up entirely when they almost tossed DJT off the stage like a sack of wheat.

MN-Skeptic wrote: ↑Thu Jul 18, 2024 10:33 pm Trump just walked on to the stage at the RNC convention, and that white patch over his ear is just so goofy looking! It’s what your 6-year old might use to patch you up. It looks SO DUMB!

Trump: Elon Musk gives me $45 million a month. We have to make life good for people like him.

Dr. Ken wrote: ↑Sat Jul 20, 2024 8:20 pm What?

Brendan Duke
@Brendan_Duke

Trump's "No Tax on Tips" idea is just another scam.

When you look at the fine print of Ted Cruz's bill enacting it--it would give NO tax cut to someone making $28,000.

But hedge fund managers, lawyers etc can convert their fees into "tips" and get giant tax breaks.

MN-Skeptic wrote: ↑Sun Jul 21, 2024 2:53 pm So now Trump is the oldest person to run for U.S. President. Time to start hammering on his age and his mental ability now and in the coming four years.