Be Clare-ful Minister for Education Jason Clare established himself as a strong media performer during the election campaign, delivering the better zingers and attack lines against the Coalition. So perhaps that’s why he got a smidge careless with his posting during a visit to the Sunrise studios last Friday, when his team posted a behind-the-scenes pic that featured notes with the login details for Seven’s computers. On the primitive technology available to us in the bunker, we could make out that they were login details but not the actual details — but out of an abundance of caution Clare has deleted the post.
The Price is contested Senator Jacinta Price is in a feud with budding cultural theorist Peter FitzSimons. After their interview in The Sydney Morning Herald, she got on the phone with The Australian (which we have the dimmest suspicion might be her go-to on these matters…) to complain that he was “rude and condescending” and that he accused her of “giving a voice to racists” (a question she says was cut from the published interview).
Fitz, for his part, called Price’s assessment of the interview “nonsense”, saying it was an entirely cordial chat with nary a raised voice. We’re in no position to judge the veracity of either take, except to say we’d be shocked to find out that a guy who transcribes, verbatim, questions like the following (to Grace Tame) would edit much out:
You seem to have reinvented the whole Australian of the Year position. We have had ambassadors and advocates, but you are no less than an activist! You no sooner got the biggest gong the government hands out than you started banging on it before banging on them, to push your cause to end sexual abuse in this country?
Pillow talk MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell may be the world’s worst advertisement for quitting crack cocaine. Since the “power of prayer” liberated him from his various vices in 2009, he’s not only made a pillow that’s rated an “F” by America’s Better Business Bureau, he’s also thrown himself into MAGA’s nutbaggery — promoting the toxic plant extract oleandrin as a cure for COVID-19 and giving his full-throated support to the “stop the steal” movement.
And because every credible political party should seek the opinions of a conspiracy theorist who sells crap pillows, Lindell was up on the stages of CPAC alongside Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán, talking about voting machines:
This is very important you hear me on this, over 54 countries have now been taken by the machines or are getting taken by the machines! And you never get to go back! Venezuela, Australia, they’re gone! You don’t get to vote out the machines once they’re there!
It’s always fascinating to see Australia make international news.
Social truth Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC), the SPAC — that’s Special Purpose Acquisition Company, also known as a blank cheque company — that is supposed to be taking former Donald Trump’s Truth Social app public, can’t get the deal up, despite more than 10 months of trying. On Friday DWAC said a special meeting of shareholders next month will be asked to extend the cutoff date for a deal to be done until late 2023, according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Friday.
When the deal was proposed last October, DWAC shares were trading around US$175. Last Friday they ended the week at just over US$31 — and it’s only that much because Elon Musk’s bid for Twitter is in trouble. Some punters reckon if Musk fails, Trump and/or his mates might bid for Twitter.
But like Musk, DWAC is attracting the attention of American market regulators. In June its board of directors had received subpoenas from a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York, while the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority had also made requests for additional information on the deal.
