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How To Attract Advertisers – Not
Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 Billion. If he is lucky, he might be able to sell his renamed social media platform for $44 million. Advertisers started flocking away from his renamed social media platform (X), after he endorsed an antisemitic tweet. He tried to win them back by going to Israel and meeting with Netanyahu. I guess it did not work and he vented in an interview yesterday.
If someone is going to blackmail me with advertising or money go f**k yourself. Go. F**k. Yourself. Is that clear? Hey Bob, (Bob Iger – Disney CEO) if you’re in the audience, that’s how I feel.”
He did try to dig himself out.
“I mean, look, I’m sorry for that … post. It was foolish of me. Of the 30,000 it might be literally the worst and dumbest post I’ve ever done. And I’ve tried my best to clarify six ways from Sunday, but you know at least I think it’ll be obvious that in fact far from being antisemitic, I’m in fact philosemitic.”
Philosemitic? It is a word. Elon, no matter how you want to sugarcoat it, the level of antisemitic posts has risen substantially since you took over. You need to do something about or your platform will crash and burn. Maybe even the $44 million selling price tag is too high.
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Claims Not Responsible
Sourced from CNN website – Fulton County Sheriff’s Office
Trump is currently in the midst of appealing gag orders with both the January 6 case and the Trump Org, case in New York. While the gag orders have been removed, awaiting the rulings, Trump has mercilessly attacked the key players in both cases, such as Jack Smith as well as the judge and law clerk in the New York case.
Trump’s lawyers, in the New York case are claiming,
“At base, the disturbing behavior engaged in by anonymous, third-party actors towards the judge and Principal Law Clerk publicly presiding over an extremely polarizing and high-profile trial merits appropriate security measures.”
But, they add,
“However, none of the contemptible dross reflected in those messages can be attributed to President Trump or his counsel. Nor have President Trump or his counsel ever made a statement referencing the Principal Law Clerk’s religion, appearance, or private activities.”
That is like saying that Trump’s ‘come to Washington, it will be wild’ tweet just before January 6, played no role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. That is like saying Hitler had no role in the November 1938 Kristallnacht (night of broken glass) riots in Germany. That is just like saying Trump and Fox entertainment had no role in leading a segment of the population to not take Covid seriously. that is like… You get the picture. Trump will lose this appeal, as well he should.
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Xodus
Last week, Elon Musk endorsed an antisemitic post on his Twitter (will not call it ‘X”) platform. The backlash was immediate. Advertisers flocked away from the site. To rehabilitate his image, Musk went to Israel this week. He met with Netanyahu and toured a kibbutz that had been attacked on October 7.
However, things are getting worse for Musk, on twitter. Advertisers are not just leaving Twitter, they are not even tweeting on twitter. No Twitter no tweet. Advertisers such as Disney, Paramount and Sony Pictures have gone dark since the Musk endorsement. As a specific example, the ‘Stephen Colbert Show’ was a major user of the Twitter platform. Colbert had to cancel his shows this week due to a ruptured appendix. He announced it on Threads but not on Twitter.
As one Social Media Platform expert put it,
“Every day, more brands are waking up to the reality that Twitter is dead and X is a cesspool. The global town square is now dispersed across many different platforms, and increasingly the most relevant conversations are taking place elsewhere.”
With rockets exploding and Twitter imploding, Musk is in for a rough ride.
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Boooo!
Sourced from Yahoo News
Last weekend was the final weekend of the NCAA football regular season. It is the weekend where rivalry games are held. One example would be the heated rivalry game between Michigan and Ohio State, where Michigan won for the third year in a row and now Buckeye fans are calling for the firing of the Ohio State Coach. Ohio State coach Ryan Day gets paid $9 million a year. Ohio State has a great team, but they can’t beat the hated Wolverines. But I digress.
Another rivalry game last weekend was between the Clemson Tigers and the South Carolina Gamecocks. The game was played at the Gamecocks’ home field. The University of South Carolina is the alma mater of former South Carolina Governor and current Republican Presidential candidate Nikki Hayley. Donald Trump attended the game. the picture above is of Trump entering the stadium, being met by a round of Boos. He also went on the field during the halftime show where he was greeted by cheers but also by a lusty round of boos. Fitting.
A review was published, the next day, in South Carolina’s ‘The State’ newspaper. Isaac Bailey, who wrote the review described the rivalry game, itself, as a quasi-religious holiday that now carries the stench of Trump attending it. He did not stop there.
“The University of South Carolina should be ashamed. But it is apparently run by cowards comfortable bending the knee to an obviously-compromised governor, and an even more compromised presidential candidate who inspired a violent attack at the heart of our democracy just a couple years ago. Whoever signed off on that pathetic Trump parade should be fired, though I suspect given how far we’ve fallen from any sense of decency, they may have already received a raise.”
Bailey went on to call Trump a coward for showing up at the game but refusing to debate with Hailey. Not a good night for Trump.
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Only The Best People
Attribution to Mediate.
Keith Olbermann, when he had a show on MSNBC, closed off his show by having a ‘Worst Person In The world’ segment. His favourite targets would usually be Fox entertainment personalities, including Bill O’Reilly (Billo). It is too bad he no longer he has that show. Because there are two ideal candidates today.
Donald Trump when he was running for and then became President in 2016 said he would surround himself with only the best people. we all know how that went. Here are two such ‘best’ people.
The person above is Jason Miller He has been on Staff with Trump during his time as President and for both his 2020 and 2024 Presidential campaigns. He used to be a guest commentator on CNN until he was booted off due to sexual abuse allegations. He had a relationship with A.J. Delgado who was a Trump advisor and spokeswoman during the 2016 campaign. They produced a child. Delgado recently filed a lawsuit claiming that Miller subjected her to a,
“a cycle of sexual coercion, rape, sexual assault, abuse, battery, sexual harassment, and sex trafficking.”
The lawsuit mentions that Miller got her drunk at a strip club (the very best people) and took her to a hotel room where he had sex with her without her consent. The couple have had legal battles over custody and child support issues over the past few years. Miller has been finding ‘nefarious’ ways of reducing/avoiding child support payments. Delgado has indicated she has already received death threats since filing the lawsuit.
“To reporters contacting me about Jason Miller, I am not responding because I have already received one threat on my life today, in addition to others. This is what happens when you speak up against thugs, so I am not surprised, but it is still alarming.”
The best people. Of course. But then there is long term Trump ally, Roger Stone. Stone was pardoned by Trump before serving any time in jail Stone was caught on tape, prior to the 2020 election, boasting about strategies to overturn the 2020 election should Trump lose. Recently, Stone tweeted a response to a Casey DeSantis tweet, about her campaignin for her husband Ron DeSantis,
“SeeUNextTuesday”
Notice the capital letters. Misogyny at its extreme. Only the best.
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Scary Shift Right
Do you know who this is? As a typical North American, I did not, until a couple of days ago. This is Geert Wilders. He just led his far-right Party For Freedom Party to victory in the Dutch election. His party won 37 of 150 seats. This means that his party will need to find coalitions with other center right parties to form 76 seat majority. The following is a quote from Wilders,
“We will make sure that the Netherlands will be for the Dutch people again. We will restrict the asylum tsunami and migration.”
Does that sound familiar. Wilders victory follows on the heels of far-right populist Javier Milei who just swept to victory, in Argentina. Wilders has promised the following. He wants a binding referendum on leaving the EU. NEXIT instead of BREXIT. How is that going for you Britain? He wants to pull out of climate obligations and he wants to drastically reduce immigrations. He wants to stop funding Ukraine. He wants to ban the Koran and he wants to shut down mosques. It is fair to say that his game plan was taken from the Donald Trump Boris Johnson playbook.
Given that Wilders needs 39 more seats to get a majority coalition he will have to moderate some of his promises. However, his win is definitely not in isolation.
Italy has far-right Georgia Meloni as its leader. Hungary has Victor Orban, a favourite of Tucker Carlson. Farright parties have made increasing strides in France, (Marine Le Pen winning 41% of the popular vote), Finland (True Finns party), Austria and Germany. Even last night, Dublin, Ireland was thrown into chaos by riots lead by far-right nationalists after the stabbing of three children and a teacher.
The main impetus in all these countries, as well as, the US seems to be immigration, along with a bundle of other grievances. The phrase ‘it can’t happen here’ is being replaced by ‘it is happening here’. This should be a wake-up call for all those who think that Trump has no prayer in winning the 2024 election.
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Jumping The Gun
Yesterday morning, there was an explosion at the Rainbow Bridge. Out of an abundance of caution, four bridges were shutdown and the Toronto-New York train was put on hold. The end result was that two people (man and woman) were killed in a fiery explosion. No explosives were found. It is still a mystery as to why the car, directed to a secondary checkpoint, suddenly sped up to 80 mph, resulting in impact and total obliteration of the vehicle.
When the event occurred, I started flipping through the cable news channels to get more information. CNN and MSNBC were both saying that the cause of the explosion was unknown. A terrorist attack could not be ruled out, given the American Thanksgiving weekend and the fact that there were security concerns. Fair enough. I flipped to Fox entertainment and the crawler underneath had ‘terrorist attack’. For goodness sake.
John Roberts, a talking head at Fox, a Canadian, probably more known for being on MuchMusic, long ago, stated,
“Is this foreign-born terrorism? Is it domestic terrorism? We don’t know.”
Presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, went on Fox and proclaimed,
“I have been sounding the alarm bell about the northern border for a long time. This is a mounting crisis. We’re ignoring it.”
It was not limited to just Fox though. Both Kari Lake and Ted Cruz stated on social media that this was a terrorist attack and laid the blame directly on Joe Biden.
Needless to say, right-wing media and the right-wing, in general, jumped the gun. This is just a small example of how the right distorts and misleads. Once they are called on it, they just move on to other distortions. The sad part is their distortion machine seems to be working. Many Americans still believe the 2020 election was rigged and stolen. Many believe that January 6 was a peaceful protest. Even now, Donald Trump is leading in many polls.
All I got, for today.
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Far From Over
Attribution to TUBS
A month ago, Hamas fighters entered Israel, killed 1,200 people and took a number of hostages. Sources indicate that there are approximately 240 hostages. Israel retaliated by first bombing and then entering Gaza. This has resulted in 12,000 Gaza inhabitants dead and major portions of Gaza in ruins.
The goal of Hamas is the destruction of Israel. Israel, in return, will not end this incursion into Gaza, until Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel. Condemnation of the Israeli incursion grows as more images of the death and destruction in Gaza come out. Hamas has hundreds of miles of tunnels in Gaza which they have used for military operations against Israel. Israel claims to have evidence of Hamas tunnels and underground operations under hospitals. Total clusterf@#k.
There is optimism this week. In the next few hours/days high-stake negotiations will hopefully result in the release of 50 hostages (women/children) currently held by Hamas. In return, Israel will release approximately 150 prisoners and will halt military operations for four or five days. Israel indicates that they will add one extra day for every ten additional hostages released.
Israel says that they will resume military operations once this temporary hold expires. Israel says operations will continue until the Hamas threat is eliminated.
Families of those 50 hostages released will be overjoyed. The hostages released will be traumatized for the rest of their lives by what they have endured during their capture and the days following. While there is a sense of celebration for the 50 hostages to be released, 190 hostages remain. The hell for them and their families will continue. As we enter the holiday season, their future remains uncertain. Even for the 50 to be released. As of this chirp, the release is said to be imminent. Snags could still occur.
The sad fact remains. This is far from over.
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First Time Ever
Attribution to Kabelleger / David Gubler
This is a picture of a train plowing through snow, in Norway. Edmontonians will not see such a scene in Edmonton this year. This may be the first time in recorded history that Edmonton has had no snow cover, at all, throughout November. Ever. Who needs winter boots when you live in tropical Edmonton?
Each year for the last 20 years in Edmonton, just the one geographical location, I have seen the changes brought about by climate change. I have been planting my gardens a bit earlier, shutting them down a bit later. I have been enjoying my deck, in shorts, in October and now mid-November. I have stated indoors more often, in Summer. Not because of the cold but because of all the generated forest fire smoke exploding through Western Canada. Air conditioners were not needed here, at one time. They are now. Our glaciers in the mountain are shrinking.
This is just my experience, in one location. My story can be recounted by billions, throughout the world.
But we have the climate-change deniers who scoff at our experiences and keep saying that the weather is normal. Things will be ok. These are the exact same people who say that Trump is normal, and the world will be ok if he becomes President again.
All I got.