I spoke to McConnell for about 20 minutes this morning.
He said we should end the war with Iran, quit giving aid to Israel, stop spying on Americans without a warrant, and he’s really sorry about how my primary turned out.
This country owes a helluva lot to Dolly Parton, Melinda French Gates, and Taylor Swift, who’ve put their money where their mouth is to give back to this country. That’s what it means to be patriotic, MAGA.
Last year, Microsoft made $101 billion in profits, got a $12.5 billion tax break from Trump & paid its CEO $96 million.
This year, it’s raising the price of an Xbox by $150 & eliminating 3,200 jobs.
Please don’t tell me corporate tax breaks create jobs. It never trickles down.
By David Abbruzzes:
This Australian's reply to Trump's rant about “NATO not being there for America” is perfect.
"Mate. You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street tonight. A country where 40% of adults can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. A country where insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage.
You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail.
Your life expectancy is going backwards. You're the only developed nation where that's happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker's stock to your mates.
Your minimum wage hasn't moved in 15 years. You've got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack you.
And you’ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, paedophile protecting, porn star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again.
And you're calling Greenland poorly run?
Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no.
'NATO wasn't there when we needed them." When exactly was that, champ? September 11? Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU. Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU. Australia wasn't even in NATO and we still showed up. For 20 years.
And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess.
So maybe before you start calling other countries poorly run, have a look at your own backyard, you spray-tanned aluminium siding salesman. The only thing poorly run in this picture is your f----- mouth."
Very well stated.
A young woman named MacKenzie Tuttle graduated from Princeton in 1992 with a degree in English. One of her professors was Toni Morrison, who later described her as one of the finest creative writing students she had ever taught.
After graduation, MacKenzie took a job at the New York investment firm D. E. Shaw. There she met a colleague named Jeff Bezos, who had an ambitious idea: selling books on the internet.
She didn’t laugh at the idea.
They married in 1993, and the following year drove across the country to the Seattle area to build what would become Amazon.
In the beginning, there was no global empire.
There was a garage.
MacKenzie handled accounting, wrote business materials, answered customer emails and phone calls, and packed orders alongside Jeff. Like many startups, everyone did whatever needed to be done.
As Amazon grew, MacKenzie stepped away from day-to-day operations to raise their four children while continuing to pursue her own passion for writing.
Her debut novel, The Testing of Luther Albright, won the American Book Award. She later published a second novel and quietly built a respected literary career.
Meanwhile, the story of Amazon became one of the most famous business stories ever told.
Jeff Bezos became one of the world’s most recognizable entrepreneurs.
MacKenzie’s role was rarely part of the public narrative.
She never seemed interested in changing that.
What many people don’t know is that she also knew financial hardship.
Her family filed for bankruptcy while she was still a student, and she has spoken about the kindness of people who helped her through difficult times—acts of generosity she never forgot.
In 2019, after her divorce, MacKenzie Scott received approximately 4% of Amazon’s shares.
Almost immediately, she made a decision that surprised the world.
She signed the Giving Pledge, promising to donate the majority of her wealth during her lifetime.
Then she did something even more unusual.
Instead of building a massive public foundation or attaching her name to buildings, she began giving away billions of dollars through large, unrestricted grants.
Universities.
Food banks.
Housing organizations.
Rural communities.
Women’s health initiatives.
Tribal colleges.
Climate organizations.
Small nonprofits that had never imagined receiving gifts of that size.
Many recipients reportedly thought the phone calls were scams.
They weren’t.
Since 2019, MacKenzie Scott has donated tens of billions of dollars to thousands of organizations, making her one of the most significant philanthropists of the modern era.
Despite giving away enormous sums, her fortune has remained substantial because of Amazon’s continued growth.
The woman who once packed Amazon’s first orders is now helping fund opportunities for millions of people she will probably never meet.
She never asked for buildings in her name.
She never demanded headlines.
Sometimes the greatest legacy isn’t the company you help build.
It’s what you choose to do with the success that follows.