Another Week! [DOT 12/6/23]

12/6/23 MegMegMcGee 31

Happy Monday gang! Hope you all had a fabulous weekend.

Sure Jan Dot Gif

Trump’s path to indictment: ‘Isn’t it better if there are no documents?’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/10/trump-classified-documents-path-bathroom-indictment/

Ah, well, neverthless

‘Unabomber’ Ted Kaczynski died by suicide in prison – report
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/11/unabomber-ted-kaczynski-died-by-suicide-report

Sprots!

Novak Djokovic makes history with straight-set win over Casper Ruud
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/06/11/novak-djokovic-vs-casper-ruud/

Stonks!

S&P 500 notches fourth straight positive week, touches highest level since August: Live updates
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/08/stock-market-today-live-updates.html

banger tweet

Aww man, I’d have liked to have seen this!

Joni Mitchell review – first headline show in two decades is three hours of total joy
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jun/11/joni-mitchell-review-gorge-amphitheatre-quincy-washington

Have a great day!

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31 Comments

  2. You know, I am a Pisces, which I discussed earlier, and aside from our wishy-washiness we are known for our powers of empathy and clairvoyance and prognostication.

    For the last week I have had a certain song stuck in my head that I just can’t get rid of. Now I know why. Last I knew Joni Mitchell had one foot in the grave. Apparently reports of her death were greatly exaggerated:

    I used to do this all the time when we had a landline with no caller ID. The phone would ring, and I would say, “I’ll get it, it’s probably my sister X” or”Better Half, answer that, it’s your mother.” Just blurted it out, but I was always right. I was like Lt. Uhura on the Enterprise, except not Black, female, wearing a miniskirt, or able to pull off a beehive hairdo.

      • One of my best friends from college, white male, showed up as a freshman with this amazing head of hair and he practically had a beehive. It had to be seen to be believed. Also, for a brief period in the early 70s Better Half’s parents went through a…not exactly a Black Power phase, since they were both employed by The Man (the public sector.) But I have a couple of photos of BH (I mean I don’t, they’re his, but I know where they are) where he’s got this full-blown Afro and wearing a dashiki. You think you looked a little goofy in your leisure suit when you were attending all those bar- and bat-mitzvahs in the 1970s?

        (Love the all-white audience, with all the sense of rhythm and movement as the blocks at Stonehenge, where Top of the Pops might as well have been filmed.)

  3. Evil Fred Flintstone telling the Trumpies what they don’t wanna hear.

    Republicans should listen to Bill Barr

    Why should any of this matter? As Trump’s former attorney general, Barr’s willingness to speak out tells Republicans still capable of reason that the case is real, it’s serious, it cannot be brushed off and that the Justice Department didn’t engage in misconduct. 

    Flaw in that argument? “Republicans still capable of reason.”

      • I guess it is fortunate then that the Not Proud Boys and Oaf Keepers had their national leadership gutted being found guilty of sedition/conspiracy/etc or found to be an FBI snitches and no one is able to replace them.

        Being disorganized and without any actual leadership, any Trump rallies will look limp and pathetic.

        I suspect that there will be individual Guy Fawkes, but without anyone to coordinate or communicate what, their violence will be mitigated.

        Shorter, most Trump supporters dumb as fuck and can’t organize a Boy Scout troop let alone an insurrection.

        • I’m not overly worried about violence, either. Even if the “masterminds” behind Jan. 6 were available, they did a pretty poor job of staging an insurrection back then. Plus those prosecutions have scared the poor witless MAGAs so badly, they won’t leave their couches and trailer parks for fear of being swept up in a “false flag” operation.

          That’s the problem with “distrust everything.” When you need the MAGAs to do something, you’ve already trained them to be suspicious that it’s a trick from “big gubment.”

          Another example. It’s finally occurred to the GQP that discouraging vote by mail disenfranchises old white people. But it’s too late. They can’t get the old white people to trust mail now. 

          Trump and GOP attempt to reverse course on mail-in voting ahead of 2024

          https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/15/politics/trump-republicans-mail-in-voting/index.html

          • The shooters tend to be on the fringe of the fringe, and I don’t know how they will be affected by the disorganization. It’s possible that Tucker Carlson getting deplatformed and the Proud Boys being disrupted may cool things off, but it may just make them more unmoored. There are genuine experts who study these things and can figure out trends, but the press tends to drown them out in favor of superficial takes from politicians.

    • I really wish this country had a more vibrant democracy. Maybe not quite as chaotic as Italy, but maybe more like Scandinavian countries, with three or four national parties. I would move all around the political map. Like a lot of people in 2016 I looked away and pulled the lever for Hillary Clinton, distasteful as I find my notional one-time Senator. In the Democratic primaries I always vote as far-left as I can. I can’t tell you how much money I’ve given to Bernie Sanders, but I would also consider becoming like a Rockefeller Republican.

      Just last night I said to Better Half, “New York State is considering a Reparations Bill.”

      “To the Indians? They have the casinos and the tax-free cigarette concessions.” [Better Half has a great-grandparent who was an “Indian.”]

      “No. To Black people. Like they’re thinking about in California. Which is weird, because there aren’t many Black people in California and it was a free state when it was admitted to the Union.”

      “You’re not making any sense, Mattie.”

      “What would happen is, I think, that you would get a payment, or payments, because you are a Black New Yorker, and I, being a white New Yorker, would be levied—”

      At this point BH burst out laughing. “You? Are going to come up with payments for me? Do you understand how this family works, who pays the mortgage and buys all the groceries and pays your health insurance and for all the Uber rides to your medical appointments?”

      “Well, according to Leftist thinking, all Black people are impoverished and it’s only systemic racism and economic—”

      “And who was our President from 2008 to 2016?”

      “Better Half, I don’t agree with this either. I think it must be kind of insulting, actually. But I’m not Black, you are.”

      [End scene]

        • On the other hand:

          No race or ethnic group constitutes a majority of California’s population: 39% of Californians are Latino, 35% are white, 15% are Asian American or Pacific Islander, 5% are Black, 4% are multiracial, and fewer than 1% are Native American or Alaska Natives, according to the 2020 Census.

          Which is kind of incredible, because when we go to LA/Palm Springs/Santa Barbara/Laguna Niguel we never run into anyone who isn’t a white Anglo with a full command of the English language.

          • Those kinds of enclaves definitely exist, and I think it’s always worth asking how did they come about? The Hollywood executive elites, the San Diego country club set, the tech bro billionaires — they didn’t end up that way by accident, or by your average Californian deciding they didn’t want an education, or work hard and make a lot of money.

            I think one of the big fallacies of conventional sorting into liberal/conservative slots is that they limit the litmus tests to just a few issues. Which is how you get Jeremy Peters pumping out his stupid analysis that Musk wasn’t a conservative. So he smokes pot and donated a few thousand bucks to Diane Feinstein? Peters decided that was all he needed to know.

            • Southern California is very strange. If you drive around LA and know what you are doing you can avoid the freeways and take local streets/avenues/boulevards and actually get around much more quickly. And it’s much more interesting. Everything along these streets looks like a slapdash strip mall, with a hundred different retail and restaurant purposes, but the architecture can be amazing. It’s because the climate is so dry. Everything lasts forever. So you’ll be driving along, and look to your left, and there’ll be this thing out of an Edward Hopper painting. In New York that little former automat, now converted into a ramen restaurant, or whatever, would have been ripped down decades ago and become a money-laundering real estate front for any number of hostile actors eager to shield their shady wealth in Manhattan real estate.

  4. beginning to think being an angry white pensioner should be an automatic disqualifier for gun ownership…

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65874063

    also..for the most part theres a fairly specific type of person that moves from here to france or spain or italy or whatever for their retirement….and they dont make great neighbours…

    tho normally they’ll just drive you mad with constant complaints about shit thats none of their concern…like…maybe a tree in your garden offends them…they dont normally open fire through a hedge…..

    • Northern Europeans are the scourge of Mediterranean Europeans. The British, Irish, and Germans, are notorious, but I didn’t know about the Dutch. I wonder if the Belgians are as bad.

      There is, or was, a common stereotype about Europeans. The French and Italians are loathe to leave their country, because why would they? The British and the Germans can’t get out of their countries fast enough, because, you know. Even when I lived in Germany and had my German boyfriend he had a zippy little car and he never said things like, “Let’s go to Frankfurt [or Würzburg, or West Berlin] for the weekend”, it was always “You have friends who are studying in Paris?” Or, “Have you ever been to Venice? I will take you.”

      • its the weather….benelux/germany and the uk are the rain lands

        south of us is sunny paradise land….and north east of us is winter wonderland…with moderate but sunny summers

        then you have the eastbloc…which is undesireable unless you have enough money to not need to work again…pretty tho…. much the same for greece

    • i mostly remember him from the bunga bunga parties

      but tbh..italian politics are a mess best ignored most of the time far as im concerned…they somehow make it work for them and i think having heated arguments is something like a sport over there

      so long as shit isnt exploding i dont pay them much mind

      • I think I mentioned before that my building used to be like a little UN, every apartment representing some different slice of humanity. We have/had a small Italian community. Early in my tenure I wandered up to the roof to do a little amateur gardening and there was astonished to find a topless woman sunbathing with her boyfriend. They invited me over for a chat, the woman put on a cover-up, and it turns out they were Italians. Berlusconi was in office at the time, and they weren’t fans, and they couldn’t really express their contempt in English. I said, “I can understand a lot of Italian…” and the woman, who went on to become one of my closest friends in the building, said, “We are from Napoli and you won’t understand what we will say about Silvio Berlusconi.”

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