If amzn wants to maintain its market-cap... I'd stfu already. If Trump see's the writing on the wall as November draws closer.... watch out below. If I was a PM... no effing way I'd be long Amazon going into this election. Its soooooo obvious. Popcorn anyone?
Trump so weak & disrespected, dictators making power grab moves while he's still president in anticipation of his defeat in Nov. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/05/politics/strongmen-world-order-trump-election-intl/index.html Strongmen rush to remake the world order as Trump faces potential election defeat It is no coincidence that Putin and Xi have cemented their grip on cherished goals, as the clock runs down on Trump's first, and possibly only, term in office. This past week, in a referendum on constitutional revisions so predictable that copies were on sale before the vote, Putin has effectively been made President for life, as Xi has moved equally ruthlessly, taking control of Hong Kong through a new national security law, while telling US allies Canada, Australia and the UK to keep out of China's internal affairs.
%% I don't agree with Pres Trumps polite phone call telling gov/seattle state that feds could clean up that socialist mess/trespassers.Wonder if they ''blame Bush/LOL'' Just had a life injury + death in Seattle. Tresspassers were blocking the interstate/one is a dead duck so to speak.Killed by a jag[ car not the cat][Fox news]
The greater dangers are the citizens, and representatives, that put this Constitutional and Democratic threat into office, and enabled him to stay in office. Pardon the long sentence: These half-wits pledged allegiance to The Flag, and to The Constitution almost daily, for a great portion of their lives; yet the minute a lying, slum lord, racist, ran-businesses-into-the-ground-many-times over, reality tv show host, raises the White Power flag, and whispers sweet nothings into their ears ... they immediately switched their allegiance to this fat ass imbecile, and dropped to their knees, forthwith; and said, as best they could, with their mouths full, "damn: The Constitution, The Rule of Law, Democracy, and Separation of Powers."
and now we here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-10-billion-cloud-contract-award-to-microsoft Pentagon Moves to Split Cloud Deal Between Microsoft, Amazon The Pentagon scrapped a $10 billion cloud-computing contract awarded in 2019 to Microsoft Corp. after several years of wrangling between the government and some of the biggest U.S. tech companies over the deal, indicating it plans to divide the work between Microsoft and rival Amazon.com Inc. instead. “With the shifting technology environment, it has become clear that the JEDI Cloud contract, which has long been delayed, no longer meets the requirements to fill the DoD’s capability gaps,” the Defense Department said in a statement Tuesday. The project, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure and intended as a sole-source contract, had been fiercely disputed from the start. Instead, the Pentagon announced plans for a “multi-vendor” project and said it “intends to seek proposals from a limited number of sources, namely Microsoft and Amazon Web Services,” the only two companies it deems capable of meeting its requirements. It said other vendors will be considered if they can show they meet the contract terms. Amazon extended gains on the news, rising 4.7% to $3,675.74 at the close in the biggest jump since Nov. 4. Microsoft was little changed at $277.66. Amazon applauded the Pentagon’s decision, saying in a statement that the award “was the result of outside influence that has no place in government procurement.” Microsoft said it understood and respected the decision to drop the contract because the Defense Department would have faced a prolonged court battle. “The security of the United States is more important than any single contract, and we know that Microsoft will do well when the nation does well,” Microsoft said in a blog post. The Pentagon scrapped a $10 billion cloud-computing contract awarded in 2019 to Microsoft Corp. after several years of wrangling between the government and some of the biggest U.S. tech companies over the deal, indicating it plans to divide the work between Microsoft and rival Amazon.com Inc. instead. Naomi Nix reports on “Balance of Power.”Source: Bloomberg) The future of the JEDI cloud program was thrown into doubt earlier this year when Pentagon officials said they may scrap the contract if the U.S. Court of Federal Claims declined to dismiss Amazon’s claims that political interference from former President Donald Trump cost the company the lucrative cloud deal. In April, Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith rejected requests by the government and Microsoft to dismiss part of Amazon’s lawsuit, allowing the litigation to continue. The new cloud contract, dubbed the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability, will be awarded to multiple vendors for a period of five years. The Defense Department said it hasn’t yet determined a maximum award amount for the replacement cloud project, but expects it to be in the billions of dollars. Microsoft and Amazon won’t be awarded the deal automatically and will have to submit proposals on how they will satisfy the government’s requirements, according to the Pentagon. Among the requirements the Defense Department is planning to impose are the ability to handle sensitive data at multiple classification levels, global availability of cloud services in tactical environments and enhanced cyber security controls, according to a Pentagon fact sheet. The prospect of endless litigation wasn’t the driving force behind the Pentagon’s change, said Acting Chief Information Officer John Sherman in a telephone interview. “This is really about mission need,” he said. “Because JEDI was conceived over three and a half years ago, we have moved to a different place” in terms of cloud advances. Amazon and Microsoft were notified Tuesday of the new strategy through the Justice Department, which has been defending the Defense Department’s position. “We don’t have agreement yet” with them, although the initial feedback indicated “nothing negative,” Sherman said. Sherman said that he will be reaching out to Oracle Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google to outline the new plan. “The door remains wide open for the next three and a half months as we conduct market research” on additional competitors and whether they can meet the requirements. The original contract, with its JEDI acronym, was intended to evoke “Star Wars” imagery. That project, valued at as much as $10 billion over a decade, was intended to serve as the primary data repository for military services worldwide. The Defense Department has said it’s adopting commercial cloud services, in which computing power and storage are hosted in remote data centers run by outside companies, to give it a tactical edge on the battlefield and strengthen its use of emerging technologies. The Pentagon’s dissolution of the JEDI contract and implementation of a new cloud project offers one of the clearest public validations that Microsoft and Amazon remain the leaders in the cloud services market for the federal government. When Microsoft won the JEDI contract, it was seen as sign the company was catching up to Amazon, with some analysts touting it as possibly “the largest cloud contract award in history.” Instead of a 10-yr contract, the Pentagon is shifting its contracting strategy to an initial three-year “indefinite order, indefinite quantity” period in which Microsoft, Amazon and possibly others would compete for a still undetermined number of specific “task orders.” The three-year period, which might start in early 2022, would be followed by two, one-year task order option periods. The Pentagon plans to release a new solicitation in October and make an award next year, Sherman said. Legal Wrangling Over the years, the contract had invited scrutiny from major tech companies, lawmakers and the White House. The Pentagon’s decision to award the deal to a sole provider, rather than breaking it up into several subcontracts, prompted vigorous behind-the-scenes lobbying and a public relations campaign by rivals to unseat Amazon, which was seen as the original front-runner when the cloud contract competition was unveiled in 2018. In September 2020, Oracle Corp. lost an appeal of a lawsuit challenging its exclusion from the procurement. The software maker alleged the Pentagon’s contract requirements were overly narrow and that the competition was fatally tainted by conflicts of interest involving Amazon. Oracle’s lawsuit claims that Amazon offered two former Pentagon employees jobs at the company while they were working on the contract. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a lower court ruling that Oracle wasn’t harmed by any errors the Pentagon made in developing the contract proposal because it wouldn’t have qualified for the contract anyway. Oracle has appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, which hasn’t decided whether to review the case. Bezos as ‘Enemy’ After Microsoft’s upset victory in October 2019, Amazon Web Services filed a lawsuit asserting that the Defense Department ignored Amazon’s superior technology and awarded the contract to Microsoft despite its “key failures” to comply with requirements. The Pentagon made those errors because of improper interference by Trump, who considered Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos -- who also owns the Washington Post -- his “political enemy,” according to Amazon’s lawsuit. The Defense Department denied that politics influenced its decision to award Microsoft the deal. Amazon’s lawsuit relied on a laundry list of comments and actions by Trump and the Defense Department that the e-commerce giant claims shows the Pentagon bowed to political pressure when it awarded the deal to Microsoft. In one case, Amazon cites claims in a book by ex-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s former speechwriter, Guy Snodgrass. He said Trump told Mattis in the summer of 2018 to “screw Amazon” by locking it out of the bid. Mattis didn’t do what Trump asked, Snodgrass wrote. The company also pointed to Trump’s comments during a news conference in July 2019, when he openly questioned whether the JEDI contract was being competitively bid, citing complaints from Microsoft, Oracle and International Business Machines Corp. To bolster its case, Amazon asked the court to let it question Trump, former Defense Secretaries Mattis and Mark Esper and Dana Deasy, who was the Pentagon’s chief information officer. Judge Campbell-Smith has yet to issue a ruling on that motion. In April 2020, the Defense Department’s inspector general said there was no evidence that the Pentagon’s decision to award the deal to Microsoft was the result of interference from Trump, though it said its probe was curtailed by White House officials. The watchdog also cleared the project of conflict of interest allegations involving Amazon. As the legal and regulatory battles over JEDI dragged on, the Defense Department stressed that it has more than a dozen other cloud projects, including partnerships with Oracle, Amazon, General Dynamics Information Technology and Microsoft.
Trump's new 'low-profile' attorney served as general counsel for a parking-garage company: report Former president Donald Trump's newest attorney, Alina Habba, previously served as general counsel for a parking-garage company. Habba, who is part of a four-person firm with offices near Trump's Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, this week filed a $100 million lawsuit on the former president's behalf, against the New York Times and his niece, Mary Trump. The Washington Post reported Thursday that Habba, "a low-profile attorney," does not list media law among her specialties. In addition to Bedminster, her Habba Madaio and Associates firm has offices in the same Manhattan building that houses Centerpark, the parking garage company where she once served as general counsel.