90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Visage à trois #201

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Widow: Florida Microsoft exec’s killing wasn’t random

Kirsten Bridegan’s life was turned upside down when her husband was killed in what she, and police, believe was a targeted attack.

Jared Bridegan, 33, was a father of four — two younger girls with Kirsten and a set of twins from a previous marriage — and worked as an executive at Microsoft.

On Feb. 16, Jared dropped off his elder kids at their mother’s Jacksonville Beach home, police said. He was driving home with his 2-year-old daughter in the back seat when detectives say he potentially spotted a tire on the road and pulled over.

Jared Bridegan was shot and killed as he exited his car, police said. His daughter, still in the back seat, witnessed the murder.

It has been more than two months, and there are still no arrests in the case.

In newly released security video from days after Jared’s murder, a suspicious person was spotted outside his home in the bottom of the screen.

“I was putting my daughter to bed, and I got a notification on my watch that said ‘person in the driveway’. So after I finished tucking her in, I went and grabbed my phone and clicked on the notification, and it showed me this clip,” Kirsten said.

Unfortunately, the quality of the video is blurry, so police haven’t been able to identify the person.

Police, however, are looking for a dark blue truck seen near or around the time that Jared was killed.

Kirsten says there have been a lot of tips called in about trucks fitting the description of the vehicle, but that the actual one has not been found yet.

The killing was “too specific” to be random, she said.

“You know, that was his normal route every time he was coming home from dropping off the kids at their mom’s house. And it’s the only spot on that route that does not have cameras directly pointed there. So it’s too specific to be...

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #372

Billionaire Cat Fight: Jeff Bezos Trolled After Knocking Elon Musk’s China Connections

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has been getting mercilessly trolled on Twitter after he wondered aloud if billionaire Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform could potentially give the Chinese government leverage over free speech.

Following news that Twitter agreed to Elon Musk’s offer to buy the company and take it private, Bezos retweeted a post from New York Times reporter Mike Forsythe citing Musk’s multitude of not-so-secret dealings in China.

“Apropos of something: Tesla’s second-biggest market in 2021 was China (after the US). Chinese battery makers are major suppliers for Tesla’s EVs. After 2009, when China banned Twitter, the government there had almost no leverage over the platform. That may have just changed,” tweeted Forsythe.

Bezos said in response, “Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?”

While it is certainly no secret that Musk has dangerously set his sights on the Chinese market — Peter Schweizer profiled it in his book Red-Handed while Breitbart News has reported on it multiple times — Jeff Bezos criticizing him for it is probably the most pot-calling-the-kettle-black moment in billionaire history. Not only did his platform, Amazon, censor critical reviews of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s book, a Foxconn factory in China was using child labor for manufacturing Echo and Kindle devices. As Breitbart News reported:

Over 1,000 students, as young as 16, were drafted from schools, hired by the factory as “interns,” and pressured to work overnight and weekend shifts for meager salaries. Chinese labor laws allow 16-year-olds to work, but not during either night or overtime shifts.

Student laborers said their work had nothing to do with their studies in school, the ostensible reason they were sent to the factories as “interns.” Nevertheless, their teachers told those who complained, also paid by the factory, that their grades and scholarship applications might suffer if they refused to work.

Critics of Bezos did not let the billionaire off the hook for his own rank and file hypocrisy.

After enough criticism and hot takes, Bezos answered his own question and defended Musk.

“My own answer to this question is probably not,” tweeted Bezos. “The more likely outcome in this regard is complexity in China for Tesla, rather than censorship at Twitter.”

“But we’ll see. Musk is extremely good at...