Billionaire sleeze

 

Just go ahead and kill it, Jeff

He keeps firing people at a once great newspaper.  It's as though he has to ruin its reputation before taking it down.

So, then you cut a third of the staff?  And fire all the photographers?

And abandon your international reporters?

Jeff Bezos is putting the final nail in the WaPo coffin

 What a shame.  From its glory days to irrelevance, the is on its last leg.

Amazon clarification

 

No threat necessary...

Perhaps Bezos doesn't have the balls.

UPDATE 03:08 pm:

As if.

UPDATE 04:12 pm:

Alexa - inviting a spy into your home

 

"And you can't opt out."

The once great Washington Post

 

Jeff Bezos knows kissing the ring works

 

Bending the knee - Part whatever

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 1/6/25:

Filming on the Melania bio-pic began last month and will be directed by Brett Ratner. It is based of her autobiography ‘Melania’, which was released earlier this year. Ratner has been out of work for the last 10 years since Warner Brothers cut all ties with him after he was accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct, including actors Natasha Hensridge and Olivia Munn.

  Meidas Touch

UPDATE 01/07/2025:

Oh, we are in a new era, for sure.

UPDATE 01/10/2025:

I never noticed before that Mark Zuckerberg is painting his face orange, too.  Is this new?

The million dollar club

One million gets you six tickets to the inauguration and a dinner with Trump. Or something like that. Obviously, that's not what Altman is really buying.

Bezos and Zuckerberg have both also contributed $1 million to the inauguration fund.  

Watch for Google and other corporations to donate their million soon.

Thing is, the fund has to name its donors and the amounts they give, but it doesn't have to say how it spends the money.  An accounting for Trump's first inauguration leaves some question as to where the money went.  We know some of it was improperly spent, because Trump had to pay a settlement to the District of Columbia for funneling donations to the Trump Hotel.

Where do you think all the money is going?

But what will one BILLION get you?

President-elect Donald Trump vowed Tuesday that people or companies who invest at least $1 billion in the U.S. will get “fully expedited approvals and permits.”

Trump said in a post on Truth Social that environmental approvals are included as part of that investment incentive.

“Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!” Trump wrote.

  CNBC

Yes, America - indeed the earth's environment - is for sale.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Destroying the Washington Post

The Post's tag line: Democracy dies in darkness.

And owner Jeff Bezos is drawing the shutters.

"We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates," Will Lewis wrote in an opinion piece published on the paper's website. He referenced the paper's policy in the decades prior to 1976, when, following the Watergate scandal that the Post broke, it endorsed Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter. The last time the Post did not endorse a presidential candidate in the general election was 1988, according to a search of its archives.

[...]

[Editorial page editor, David] Shipley had approved an editorial endorsement for Harris that was being drafted earlier this month, according to three people with direct knowledge. He told colleagues the decision to endorse was being reviewed by the paper's billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos. That's the owner's prerogative and is a common practice.

[...]

Colleagues were said to be "shocked" and uniformly negative. Editor-at-large Robert Kagan, who has been highly critical of Trump as autocratic, told NPR he had resigned from the editorial board as a consequence.

Former Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron, who led the newsroom to acclaim during Trump's presidency, denounced the decision starkly.

"This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty," Baron said in a statement to NPR. "Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners). History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage."

The Washington Post Guild, which represents newsroom employees and other staff, posted a message on X saying it was concerned about management's interference in the journalism, considering that the editorial board already had drafted a statement of support for Harris.

[...]

[M]ore than 1,600 digital subscriptions had been cancelled less than four hours after the news broke, according to internal correspondence reviewed by NPR. The furor at the Post was such that its chief tech officer directed engineers to block questions about its decision on the paper's own AI site search, according to internal correspondence reviewed by NPR.

[...]

The Post's investigative team has routinely reported on wrongdoing and allegations of illegality by Trump and his associates. The editorial board, which is operated apart from the newsroom, has repeatedly declared that Trump's actions in office and his rhetoric as a candidate have rendered him unfit for office.

[...]

A similar decision by Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong led this week to the resignations of the paper's editorials editor and two editorial board members. Soon-Shiong said that he had asked the editorial board to draft a "factual analysis" of Trump and Harris' policies and plans. In her resignation letter, editorials editor Mariel Garza said the decision made the paper look “craven and hypocritical,” given its past reporting and editorials on Trump.

[...]

In his memoir, Collision of Power, Baron wrote that then-Publisher Fred Ryan did not want to make an endorsement in the 2016 race pitting Trump against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Then-Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt considered resigning. Bezos's reply at the time: "Why wouldn't we make an endorsement?"

  NPR

Why, indeed.

Donald Trump [...] met with executives at Blue Origin—the space company owned and operated by Jeff Bezos.

[...]

The meeting comes on the same day that The Washington Post—also owned by Jeff Bezos—killed a presidential endorsement of Kamala Harris written by The Post’s editorial board. The paper reported that Bezos himself had nixed the endorsement.

[...]

Blue Origin has struggled for relevance in the fight to reach space. The company has become Bezos’ primary preoccupation since he stepped down from day-to-day management of Amazon in 2021.

[...]

The Post is in a fight for relevance with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal—as well as many new media competitors in D.C.—but Bezos is in a much bigger fight for relevance: the fight for space, where he has long been losing to Elon Musk, the founder of Space X and one of only two men in the world who are richer than him.

  Daily Beast

And Musk has Trump's endorsement and ear. In fact, Trump is touting putting Musk in his cabinet.

The Post endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, writing then that Trump had “shown himself to be bigoted, ignorant, deceitful, narcissistic, vengeful, petty, misogynistic, fiscally reckless, intellectually lazy, contemptuous of democracy and enamored of America’s enemies. As president, he would pose a grave danger to the nation and the world.”

Bezos suffered for that forthright stance after Trump won the presidency. The Trump administration awarded a $10 billion cloud computing defense contract to Microsoft rather than Amazon in a move that was widely seen as politically motivated and was later canceled by the Biden administration.

The Post’s absentee proprietor does not, it appears, wish to be put in such a situation again.

Bezos' excuse: People don't trust the media and endorsements don't affect the outcome of elections.

Sure, Jeff.

Also, there's no transaction happening here.

Sure, Jeff.

I didn't think much about Bezos' decision, to be honest, but when I heard someone commenting that this is how fascism takes root, it jolted me. Because it's true. When corporations pre-emptively align with authoritarian types - and that's what Bezos' decision did - it's the beginning of the end of democracy.

UPDATE 01:01 pm:

Profiles in courage.

Philanthropy today

Indeed.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Who does he think he is?

I don't think multi-billionaires who famously treat employees like scum should be talking about the economy.  Especially if it's to tell people to strap in for a recession.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

LOL

You never know.

Should be interesting

Hell yes

Rare sighting: A businessman with a conscience

Owned by a man richer than God

Capitalism at its finest

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Lifestyles of the rich and famous

That's odd.  I thought Bezos was Trump's nemesis.  What are all the Trump gang doing there?

Senator Mitt Romney, who was the keynote speaker at the Alfalfa dinner, was also spotted

[...]

Bezos invited his high-flying friends to his home after they attended the annual, exclusive Alafalfa Club Dinner in DC.

[...]

The group had attended the Alfalfa Club dinner, a club that holds an annual black tie banquet and political roast on the last Saturday of January every year. The event is only open to the 200 members of the club and has an invitation system. The exclusive event is not open to the press.

[...]

Guests arrived in elegant suits and floor-length dresses for the swanky affair Saturday evening, but Bezos and his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez were nowhere to be seen at the entrance to the 11-bedroom, 25-bathroom grand mansion.

  Daily Mail

What? Did they turn on the spy cameras and go to the basement monitoring room?

While several presidents have been members and former presidents including George W Bush and Barack Obama spoke at the Alfalfa banquets in the past, Donald Trump is yet to be invited.

Oh my.

I don't know if this guy is with Kellyanne, but he's not her husband George.

Roy Blunt was there. And Fed chair Jerome Powell. As was Ben Stiller, who was a guest of Mitt Romney.  Strange bedfellows.

Elaine Chao went, apparently without her husband, Mitch the Bitch McConnell.

You can get a fuller accounting in the article here.

On Friday federal prosecutors in Manhattan revealed they have evidence indicating that Bezos' girlfriend Sanchez provided dirty text messages with Bezos to her brother that he then sold to the National Enquirer for an explosive story on the Amazon founder's affair.

[...]

The Enquirer claims that Michael Sanchez was their source for the bombshell story that revealed Bezos' affair, while Michael Sanchez denies he had anything to do with it.

[...]

Prosecutors have obtained documents including a May 10, 2018 text message sent from the phone of Bezos' girlfriend Lauren Sanchez to her brother Michael Sanchez, containing her intimates texts with Bezos, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Journal said it had reviewed the text messages as well as a $200,000 payment Michael Sanchez received from the Enquirer under an October 2018 contract.

How is she still his girlfriend?

Prosecutors obtained the documents in an ongoing investigation into Bezos' allegation that the Enquirer tried to extort him by threatening to publish his nude pictures, as well as whether his phone was hacked. Bezos himself has long pushed the suggestion that Saudi Arabia was involved as the Enquirer's source.

Is that what she told him?

In addition to the photo and text-leaking scandal, Bezos' investigators said this week that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia had sent malicious code in a WhatsApp message that compromised the cell phone of Bezos.

Whatever.

So what was the $200,000 contract for?

Saudis accused of hacking Jeff Bezos

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.