DOING THE AFTERMATH: Rightwing Republican Power Players in Ground-Zero Arizona

Races are heating up for the August 2 Primary Election

‘Don’ of a new era: the rise of Peter Thiel as a US rightwing power player

The Paypal Mafia’s lynchpin is putting his vast tech fortune to work for candidates aligned to Trump’s agenda in the midterms

(Peter Thiel holds hundred dollar bills as he speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 Conference in Miami. Photograph: Marco Bello)

 

Edward Helmore

the Guardian |

"The Paypal Mafia’s lynchpin is putting his vast tech fortune to work for candidates aligned to Trump’s agenda in the midterms. As the Republican party primaries play out across the US, the most sought after endorsement is still that of former president Donald Trump. But when it comes to the most vital part of any American campaign – money – another figure is emerging on the right of US politics who is becoming equally significant.

Peter Thiel, the PayPal founder and former CEO referred to as the “don” of the original PayPal Mafia, a group that included Elon Musk, is establishing himself as a serious power player in American rightwing politics by wielding the power of his vast fortune.

Thiel, styled as a billionaire venture capitalist and tech entrepreneur, plowed more than $10m into a super Pac backing Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance, winner of the Republican primary for an open US Senate seat in Ohio.

In August, Thiel’s backing will be tested again after shoveling $13.5m into supporting former employee Blake Masters in the competitive Republican primary for a US Senate seat in Arizona.

In both cases, Thiel put his money – his fortune is said to be in the region of $6bn – to work behind candidates aligned with Trump’s rightwing agenda in 2022 midterm elections...[  ] By some estimates, Thiel has donated $25m to 15 other 2022 candidates for the House and Senate towing the Trump election fraud line.

Earlier this year Thiel stepped down from the board of Meta, where he was an early investor, and a long-serving adviser to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “He wanted to avoid being a distraction for Facebook,” according to a person close to Thiel. With his resignation effective this month, the source told Forbes Thiel “thinks that the Republican Party can advance the Trump agenda and he wants to do what he can to support that”. . .

NOTE: In 2003, he co-founded Palantir Technologies, a firm to assist US intelligence agencies with counter-terrorism operations. Last week, Palantir and global commodities trader Trafigura announced a new target market to track carbon emissions for the oil, gas, refined metals and concentrates sector. BP is among its customers, Reuters reported.

--- Thiel’s libertarian credentials, and perhaps in part his political motivation, were publicly established in 2016 when he funded an invasion of privacy lawsuit filed by Terry Bollea, known more popularly as wrestler Hulk Hogan, that bankrupted the news website Gawker. Gawker had outed Thiel in 2007...[  ] Blake Masters, the 35-year-old Republican US senate candidate for Arizona, has suggested he would use the same tactics after the Arizona Mirror wrote that the candidate opposes abortion rights and “wants to allow states to ban contraception use”. Masters denies those positions. . .

. . .

Moira Weigel, a professor of communications at Northeastern University and a founding editor of Logic magazine, argued in the New Republic last year that Thiel does not really matter: “What matters about him is whom he connects.”

At the moment, Thiel is busy connecting some of the most rightwing politicians in recent US history."

>

Why Trump endorsed Blake Masters in Arizona

(Screenshot: Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle)

 

Alayna Treene, author of Axios Sneak Peek

Axios | 2022-06-03T00:16:56.381985Z

 

"Former President Trump endorsed election-denying venture capitalist Blake Masters in the Republican Senate primary in Arizona on Thursday after souring on two of his rivals.

Why it matters: In addition to being crucial for determining which party holds the Senate next year, Arizona has been ground zero for election conspiracy theories ever since President Biden eked out his 10,000-vote victory there in 2020.

• All three Senate candidates — Masters, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, and businessman Jim Lamon — have vied for Trump's support in hopes it would give them the same critical edge J.D. Vance in Ohio and Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania enjoyed in the weeks after Trump's endorsements.

Context: Masters — a populist who has embraced a national abortion ban and argued the gender pay gap is a "left-wing narrative" — is far more conservative than most Republican senators.

• He's also backed by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who has endorsed GOP firebrands like Sen. Josh Hawley (who celebrated Trump's endorsement of Masters on Thursday) and Vance.
• If he were to win the Aug. 2 primary, and subsequently a general election race against incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Masters would enter Congress as a hard-right, anti-institution MAGA-libertarian eager to take on Big Tech and illegal immigration.

Behind the scenes: Trump, who relishes being a kingmaker and wants to be involved in every race, quickly took a liking to Masters, sources familiar with the matter tell Axios. . .

The other side: Trump didn't click with businessman Jim Lamon after they met in person at Mar-a-Lago, two sources familiar with their meeting told Axios.

• Trump thought Lamon, who pushed his business bonafides, talked about himself too much, one of the sources said. He felt Lamon's attempts to compare himself to Trump were "off-putting," a third source explained to Axios.
• Meanwhile, Trump felt Brnovich was "weak" on claims of 2020 election fraud as attorney general — and made those feelings known in his endorsement message, calling him "such a disappointment." (Lamon was not mentioned in the endorsement). . .

What they're saying: “There is no candidate in this race who has fought harder to support the America First movement than me," Lamon said in a statement following Trump's endorsement.

• "As a staunch supporter of President Trump’s America First policies, I am especially disappointed in his endorsement, but I don’t think Arizonans will nominate someone whose candidacy is a wholly owned subsidiary of a Big Tech, California billionaire, and who spent the majority of his adult life living and working in Silicon Valley until just a few years ago."
• “Brnovich intends to fight and win this Primary Election and we look forward to working with President Trump to defeat Mark Kelly this fall," said Brandon Urness, Brnovich's campaign manager.

Read more >> https://www.axios.com/2022/06/03/trump-endorsement-blake-masters-arizona-senate-primary

RELATED CONTENT.....................................................................................................................

Politics

Trump Backs Venture Capitalist Masters in Arizona Senate Primary

• Ex-president’s endorsement could sway outcome in GOP contest
• Fall race against Democrat Kelly could decide Senate control

By Laura Litvan and Mark Niquette

June 2, 2022, 8:12 PM UTC

". . .The former president also cited Masters’s background and said he’s “a great modern-day thinker.”

Tucker Carlson Calls Him the Future of the GOP. First He ... - Politico

www.politico.com › blake-masters-thiel-arizona-senate-profile-00034781

Blake Masters is running on a hard-line nationalist agenda to reshape the Republican Party. But can the Peter Thiel protégé make it to the ...
Duration: 0:51
Posted: 7 days ago

 

TOP STORIES.............................

 

Trump endorses Blake Masters in Arizona’s crowded, divisive GOP Senate primary

Fox News 13 hours ago

Trump endorses Blake Masters in Arizona GOP Senate primary

CNN 11 hours ago

Trump endorses Masters in Arizona Senate GOP primary

The Hill 14 hours ago

UGLY TRUTHS DESERVE STRONG SHOCKING TERMS >> "Thoughts and Prayers for The Dead", Anyone?

Intro: ". . .there’s also a danger that our vocabulary for extreme events so closely resembles our vocabulary for less extreme ones that it turns the harrowing into the humdrum and numbs us. We should be more aware of that than we are. We should take greater care than we do.

Do such endlessly, reflexively repeated phrases as “school shooting,” “mass shooting,” “active shooter” and “gunman” shortchange the horror of the circumstances and become some ignorable admixture of white noise and crime-procedural cant?

My worry about that is why, earlier in this newsletter, I used “blood bath,” “massacre,” “slaughtered.”

Ugly truths call for ugly terms.

Gov. Greg Abbott Has a Lot of Nerve

By Frank Bruni Contributing Opinion Writer

June 2, 2022

nytimes.com |

"Are we to give Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas points for not attending the National Rifle Association convention in Houston last weekend? You know, the one that began just three days after an 18-year-old with an AR-15-style rifle slaughtered 19 children and two teachers in an elementary school less than 300 miles away?

Abbott canceled his scheduled appearance — but did speak to the gun-worshiping gathering remotely, with prerecorded remarks. This is known as hedging your bets. And this, in the Republican Party of 2022, is what passes for tact.

Ever since the Uvalde massacre, I’ve been watching Abbott and listening to him and looking for some small hint — for any evanescent glimmer — of misgiving about all that he has done on his watch and with his signature to glorify guns, to fetishize guns, to make sure that Texans can obtain guns easily and carry them proudly and be free, free, free!

Granted, he hasn’t made the sorts of defiant, strident pro-gun statements that Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has, but then Cruz is the prince of provocation. It’s his brand. He’s proud of it.

And Abbott hasn’t been as perversely tone-deaf as his party’s orange overlord, Donald Trump, who stuck to his plan to speak at the N.R.A. convention, marinated in the crowd’s adulation and — my favorite part — held forth on the topic of mental health. Because that’s Trump’s forte? Because he embodies it? There’s no kinship between rhetoric and reality when he takes the stage. And that estrangement characterizes much of the Republican Party today.

Certainly, it applies to Abbott. His most impassioned, pained moment after the elementary-school blood bath came on the same day as his Wizard-of-Oz convention appearance, when he declared at a news conference in Uvalde: “I am livid about what happened.”

Livid! But he wasn’t talking about the killings per se. About the pileup of tiny corpses. He was talking about the slow response of law enforcement officers on the scene that day, about his initial misimpression that they’d acted more heroically and about his out-of-the-gate praise of them along those lines.

“The information I was given turned out, in part, to be inaccurate, and I am absolutely livid about that,” he said. Yes, Governor Abbott, that’s the most infuriating aspect of — and salient takeaway from — this ordeal.

He has no right whatsoever to be livid. He forfeited it when, less than a year ago, he signed a law that gives Texans the green light to carry handguns without a license or training. He forfeited it when he signed a law that allows hotel guests in Texas to store their firearms in their rooms.

He forfeited it by signing law after law sending the message to Texans that what they should fear most isn’t all the killing done by guns but big, bad federal restrictions that might affect how quickly they can get their hands on more guns or how many places they can brandish those guns or how much caution they must muster around those guns.

> He forfeited it when, less than two months ago, he cut more than $200 million from the Texas commission that oversees mental health services in the state, which, according to the 2022 State of Mental Health in America report, ranks fourth in the nation in terms of the prevalence of mental illness, but last in access to mental health care.

Unbowed by that distinction, Abbott spoke after the massacre about the importance of dealing with mental illness.

Other Republican leaders spoke about arming teachers and essentially turning schools into fortresses — which, I’m sure, would be wonderfully conducive to learning.

What Abbott didn’t speak about was reducing the glut — and regulating the types — of deadly firearms in a broken country that stands out, not so coincidentally, for both how many guns it contains and the number of people killed by them yearly.

I’m livid about that.

Abbott and other Republican leaders claimed to have heavy hearts. What they should have is haunted consciences. What they do have is a lot of nerve. . ."

For the Love of Sentences........................................................

Maybe prose can make a difference? I’ll start with a few of the best passages about the Uvalde horror.

Here’s Bret Stephens in The Times: “The United States seems to have a not-so-secret death cult that believes that the angry god known as the Second Amendment must be periodically propitiated through ritual child sacrifice.” (Thanks to Scott Howie of Glenview, Ill., and Randy Komisarek of Tucson, Ariz., among others, for nominating this.)

Also in The Times, Maureen Dowd: “We’ve become a country of cowards, so terrified of the unholy power of gun worship that no sacrifice of young blood is too great to appease it.” (Sylvie Kimche, Manhattan, and Marc Etter, Detroit)

. . ...........................................................................If America were not afraid to know itself, we could more readily accept that gun-rights advocates are enthralled with violent sorrow. .....................................................................................................................................

 

 

 

PROMISES PROMISES PROMISES: What is The City of Mesa Newsroom Missing to Pre-Bunk History

Saying is Believing (or so they say)..... Trying to get ahead of a very entrenched generations-old history of discrimination doesn't somehow make it 'go away' with cheap promises that the City will do somethings

As part of Together Mesa, the City will develop a collection of curated content to showcase and amplify the diverse voices of our communities. Other future Together Mesa projects will include WHAT??? a Community Learning Series and a multicultural Spotify music playlist

Mesa Launches Together Mesa Initiative

May 19, 2022 at 10:26 am
     

"Mesa is home to over 500 thousand people of different races, places of origins, faiths, identities and abilities, per the U.S. Census.

Today, Mesa launched its Together Mesa initiative to advance equity, inclusion and accessibility in Mesa. This citywide effort aims to increase citizen engagement while fostering awareness and understanding of the City's growing population.

 "We live in a diverse city with rich history and a wide spectrum of cultural backgrounds and perspectives that make us who we are," said Mayor John Giles.

 

"Together Mesa reaffirms our commitment to prioritize issues of equity, inclusion and accessibility for all. Sharing our similarities and embracing what makes us unique deepens our understanding of each other and strengthens our community, overall." 

"Mesa has such rich diversity. We value and embrace our community by celebrating the people, communities, cultures and perspectives that help to make Mesa special," said Andrea Alicoate, Diversity & Special Projects Manager.

 

"Efforts like Together Mesa are a testament to the commitment of our City to welcome all people living, working and visiting our vibrant city. Together we are all Mesa." 

 

These offerings provide an opportunity to learn directly from community members and delve into the diverse experiences and perspectives that make up our city.

"Together Mesa encourages all of us to be active members of our city by sharing our experiences and knowledge," said Mesa Human Relations Advisory Board Chair Ron Williams. "When we listen to different experiences from our own, we gain a broader perspective of our community."

To learn more about Together Mesa, please visit www.mesaaz.gov/togethermesa.

TODAY'S LEXICON: Weather Metaphors

What's the weather?

1 .....................................................................................................................................

Jamie Dimon Says JPMorgan Is Bracing Itself for Economic ‘Hurricane’

• Says Fed actions, war in Europe create unprecedented challenge
• Still too soon to say how intense the storm will be, CEO says

WATCH: Dimon speaks about the outlook for the economy.

BySally Bakewell and Steve Dickson

June 1, 2022, 2:54 PM UTCUpdated onJune 1, 2022, 3:31 PM UTC

"Jamie Dimon warned investors to prepare for an economic “hurricane” as the economy struggles against an unprecedented combination of challenges, including tightening monetary policy and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

“That hurricane is right out there down the road coming our way,” the chief executive officer said at a conference sponsored by Alliance Bernstein Holdings Wednesday. “We don’t know if it’s a minor one or Superstorm Sandy. You better brace yourself.” 

2.......................................................................................................................................................

El-Erian: Beware a global economy with little fires everywhere

reporterwings

The rich world has shown impressive unity in helping Ukraine counter the Russian invasion. It now needs to demonstrate the same level of resolve to protect the wellbeing of its own citizens and of the world in the face of mounting economic and financial challenges.

Policymakers must aim to ensure that the many economic fires fuelled elsewhere by the Ukraine conflict do not end up causing a second devastating inferno that destroys the lives or livelihoods of many of the world’s most vulnerable people.

Mohamed El-Erian is chief economic adviser at Allianz. He served as chair of Barack Obama’s Global Development Council and is a former deputy director at the IMF.

© Project Syndicate

Beware a Global Economy with Little Fires Everywhere

May 13, 2022Mohamed A. El-Erian

Project Syndicate | 2022-05-13T11:55Z

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Look Who's Back!

O YAY!! The first teaser for the new “Pinocchio” was unveiled Tuesday and faithfully re-creates some of the most beloved scenes from the 1940 animated feature. Tom Hanks stars as Geppetto, the humble woodcarver who yearns for his marionette, Pinocchio (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), to become a real boy.

 

Entertainment

Tom Hanks' Wish Comes True In Upcoming Disney's Live-Action 'Pinocchio'

The new version also stars Cynthia Erivo, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Luke Evans. It premieres Sept. 8.

By Curtis M. Wong

Senior Culture Reporter, HuffPost

HuffPost

 

May. 31, 2022, 02:30 PM EDT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tom Hanks as Geppetto in Disney's live-action reimagining of "Pinocchio."

Disney

Disney is giving yet another of its animated classics the live-action treatment with the release of a reimagined “Pinocchio” later this year.

As the Blue Fairy, Cynthia Erivo puts a chilling spin on “When You Wish Upon a Star” ― arguably the most beloved Disney song of all time ― and brings Pinocchio to life.

Catch the teaser for “Pinocchio” below.

The new “Pinocchio,” which hits Disney+ on Sept. 8, is directed by Robert Zemeckis

previously worked with Hanks on “Forrest Gump” and “Cast Away.”

The film’s starry cast also features Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Jiminy Cricket, Luke Evans as the villainous Coachman, and Lorraine Bracco as Sofia the Seagull, a newly written character.

Appearing on the “D23 Inside Disney” podcast last year, Evans said his character was among those that had been “dramatically enhanced” for the 2022 version of “Pinocchio