Another Billionaire Blasts Into Space — Thanks Taxpayers!

July 20, 2021

Another billionaire shot himself into space again today, Jeff Bezos, asshole-founder of Amazon, tripped out this time, rocketing into space and returning 11 minutes later — it wasn’t a real-hero time (BuzzFeed): ‘But what really captured everyone’s attention was the interesting shape of the rocket. It has inspired a lot of jokes and drawn comparisons to the 1999 Austin Powers movie, The Spy Who Shagged Me — and all the jokes are pretty NSFW.‘

Yuk:

Bezos is a douchebag and way-not Richard Branson:

According to a report last month from ProPublica on the rich and taxes:

Consider Bezos’ 2007, one of the years he paid zero in federal income taxes.
Amazon’s stock more than doubled. Bezos’ fortune leapt $3.8 billion, according to Forbes, whose wealth estimates are widely cited.
How did a person enjoying that sort of wealth explosion end up paying no income tax?

In that year, Bezos, who filed his taxes jointly with his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, reported a paltry (for him) $46 million in income, largely from interest and dividend payments on outside investments.
He was able to offset every penny he earned with losses from side investments and various deductions, like interest expenses on debts and the vague catchall category of “other expenses.”

Yeah, ‘other expenses,’ like a penis-shaped rocket

Enough of that asshole — this story kind of whacked me because I’ve never thought about the ‘nuclear football‘ and T-Rump dumb-ass people:

Background via CNN:

The review was largely precipitated by congressional concerns following the events of January 6 on Capitol Hill, when rioters came within 100 feet of then-Vice President Mike Pence and the military aide accompanying him carrying the backup “football,” according to several defense officials.
“We took into consideration a variety of factors, including but not limited to congressional interest, when deciding to initiate this project,” Department of Defense Inspector General spokesperson Dwrena Allen told CNN.
“I’m not aware that such an assessment has ever been done before,” Stephen Schwartz, a nonresident senior fellow at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, told CNN.
“A violent domestic insurrection was almost certainly not part of the DOD and Secret Service threat matrix until six months ago, and it’s the only recent known event putting the ‘football’ in significant potential danger to provoke this level of concern.”
,,,
The military officer was able to maintain control of the backup “football” while he was with Pence at all times on January 6, a defense official said.
When the rioters got close to Pence, Trump was at the White House. Even if the rioters had gotten hold of it, they could not have used any of the information because of the security controls on the system, the official said.
A previous incident had occurred with the president’s “football” in 2017, during Trump’s state visit to China.
During that trip, a scuffle broke out between Chinese and US officials inside the Great Hall of the People. It included the military aide carrying the nuclear suitcase, though the satchel was never compromised.
While the “football” wasn’t compromised in either incident, both of them raise the question of whether the policies and procedures around the suitcase are effective and secure.

And considering T-Rump and his people, that some nightmarish shit there. Despite our current situation, we did manage to dodge a bullet to the national brain during the T-Rump four years…

(Illustration out front: New Yorker cartoon by Bruce Eric Kaplan, found here)

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