Hey Look… [DOT 21/6/23]

21/6/23 MegMegMcGee 47

It’s super fun to have a short week and then work 12 hours every day just to make up for it. Me, bitter, not at all!

What about his laptop?

Hunter Biden reaches deal to plead guilty in tax, gun case
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/20/hunter-biden-plea-deal/

Trump is having a normal one:

Judge strikes down Arkansas ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/20/judge-strikes-down-arkansas-ban-gender-affirming-care-transgender-minors

Stonks!

Dow leads stocks lower ahead of Powell testimony: Stock market news today
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stock-market-news-live-updates-today-june-20-2023-104226173.html

Sprots! He’s SEVEN FOUR

Trying to Build Victor Wembanyama’s Pro Comparison
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10079892-trying-to-build-victor-wembanyamas-pro-comparison?utm_source=cnn.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=editorial

Oh wow, that was fast

Damaged portion of I-95 in Philadelphia will reopen this weekend, ahead of schedule, governor says
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/20/us/i95-philadelphia-reopens-weekend/index.html

Here’s today’s cuteness:

Have a super day!

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47 Comments

  1. When I used to haunt my dog run, every so often this incredibly hot guy would show up on rollerblades (that’s how long ago this was. Thirty years maybe) with his dog. He must have been something like 6’10” and on the rollerblades 7′ at least. I don’t know if he was gay, but the neighborhood was certainly very gay, and he was kind of showing off. Anyway, he and I struck up a very casual friendship, because as much as I would have like to have taken him behind the shrubbery I was coupled off so I never hit on him. I wonder what he’s up to now, 30 years later. Very tall people have shorter than average life expectancies. Something to do with the heart, I think, and the blood circulatory system.

  2. Also, that Donald Trump tweet (although maybe that was released through Truth Social?)

    Look, obviously Joe Biden is…you know, but he’s got Jill and others to do the heavy lifting and when he starts going on it’s nonsense but not deranged, just not entirely comprehensible.

    I almost miss Trump because of stuff like this. Communists and Marxists, all of them. I know precisely one member of the CPUSA and I hang out with, or used to hang out with, an extremely left-wing Upper West Side/brownstone Brooklyn crowd. I would know from Communists and Marxists, Don, and your antagonists are probably, at best, Clintonian Third Way center-right career bureaucrats.

    Speaking of hotbeds of Communism and Marxism, Better Half jetted off this morning to his hometown of Boston. It’s a business trip. I’ve turned him into one of America’s worst nightmares: a do-or-die New Yorker.

    Yes. He said to me, “They want me to go up the night before, and then stay overnight after the meeting, but what would be the point? Who would spend a minute more up there than necessary?”

    “Better Half, you’re from there, you have friends there, one of whom is undergoing cancer treatment. You could…I don’t know…”

    “Whatever. I’ll be home by dinnertime. I’ll walk the dog when I get back.”

    I mean, I find Boston kind of ridiculous, and I don’t think I could happily live there (the accents alone), but I never meant to turn a native son against the place. There are very, very few places in America I would move to if New York weren’t an option. LA would be my number one pick (a nice part, somewhat central) and maybe even Chicago. But I’ve been to Chicago three times in the summer, and once in the winter, and the weather is absolutely horrendous. No wonder they’re all killing each other. But I love Chicago. I love the High Modernism and the accents and the Middle European Gemütlichkeit. I was invited to a party once in Chicago, I forget which neighborhood, and it was stocked with these incredibly beautiful women, which is an academic exercise for me, but I was imagining how jealous my straight male friends would have been. They told me that to survive a Chicago winter, and to ward off pests, you had to dress in like 13 layers, like Mama Rose from “Gypsy,” and hope the El was working.

      • I think I would really love the Midwest. I’ve been to Cleveland and Detroit also a few times and really enjoyed them (the cities felt a little menacing but the suburbs were lovely.) I’ve actually always wanted to go to St. Louis, to see the arch, and the Mississippi, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen. I also love the Great Lakes and apparently the next doom-inducing crisis is going to be potable fresh water, so we can start draining and filtering the Great Lakes. Imagine Cleveland being one of the only habitable places in the country. But I will tell you from personal experience that those 1920s-era center-entrance colonials that are all over University Heights and Shaker Heights, and the Craftsmans that are all over the Detroit suburbs, would be perfectly lovely places to live.

        • Cousin Matty, any state (or country!) which thinks they’re going to be able to come in and start exporting water from the Great Lakes to another part of the country/world is in for a world of headaches & lawsuits, should they attempt to *do* anything that stupid!😉

           

          Because they’ll run in to allllllll sorts if legal hassles, state compacts, *and* an International Treaty!😉

          That’s one *small* part of the reason why many of us here in MN are *so* very AGAINST allowing Copper/Nickel mining in/near the BWCA (the ore deposit is known as “The Duluth Complex”)!

          The copper, nickel, palladium, and *other* metals are *very* abundant up there, but, they’re in soil which *also* has a shit-ton of sulfur compounds in it–and the tailings left *over* from mining the GOOD metals out, would iirc, basically create Sulfuric Acid if it’s exposed to water….

          And *all* of the Duluth Complex/BWCA mine area?

          It drains *directly* into creeks, streams, & riverswhich flow into Lake Superior.

          Right now (no matter what the Company *formerly* known as Polymet says, there *IS* no way to hold, filter, or retain *all* the liquid runoff, which would be created by allowing Copper-Nickel mining up on The Range…

          *AND* that land is also tied up in some Reservations–and and, *if* anyone tries to move forward with the mine, they’ll run into Indian (Native American Indian) Law and US/Ojibwe Treaty… difficulties 😉😆😈😈😈

          Because there’s the Treaty of 1855/Washington Treaty, which gives *LOTS* of permanent rights to the Ojibwe People, regarding natural resources & land use up there…

          And then, there was that (imo, BRILLIANT!😉😁🤗💖) Legal end-run, the Ojibwe People did a couple years back, where they *As a Nation,* decided to recognize the legal rights of Manoomin–what we Settlers call “Wild Rice,” to exist freely, without harm.

          https://www.centerforenvironmentalrights.org/rights-of-manoomin

          https://www.motherjones.com/food/2022/02/line3-wild-rice-bibeau-indigenous-rights-minnesota/

          Line 3 *did* end up getting built, but iirc, there *are* still legal cases open & MANY appeals yet to finish…

          Thing is?

          By establishing the fact that Manoomin *has* independent rights?

          The Anishinaabeg brought the weight of the 1837, 1854, AND the 1855 US/Ojibwe Treaties into play😈😈😈

          They’re playing the LONG game, and, frankly?

          I suspect that *eventually* the Anishinaabeg will WIN!😉😆😂🤣💖

          Because by *creating* those treaties? The US Federal Government entered into agreements with Sovereign Nations–just like if they’d negotiated with France, England, Canada, Mexico or *elsewhere*…

          And since it *is* an agreement between *nations,* the US will get into HUGE trouble, if the Federal Government allows entities to violate that agreement😈

          If you (or anyone else!) ever wants an entire rabbit *warren* to lose yourselves down sometime, look up the following words;

          MN walleye fishing DNR 1837 Treaty

          Some of the search results will include these websites:

          https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/97-1337.ZO.html

          https://www.lrl.mn.gov/guides/guides?issue=indian

          Basically, back in the early 1990’s, the MN Department of Natural Resources (the DNR), made an agreement with the Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa, after the tribe sued in 1990 to be able to use gill nets (a traditional way of fishing for them) on Lake Mille Lacs (a *major* walleye-fishing destination here)…

          The settlement agreement took a couple of years to work out, and was finally set to be ratified by the MN Legislature in 1993….

          Thing is? Some DUMBASSES at the State Leg looked that gift horse in the mouth, annnnd they voted the Settlement Agreement down.

          The agreement fell apart, snd the Mille Lacs band sued AGAIN…😆😈😈😈😈

          The state of Minnesota got our aases HANDED TO US, by the USSC, in 1999, in the case Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians et al. v. State of MN et al.

          😄😆😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣💖

          Not ONLY did Minnesota lose the case, and lose out *all* those things the Mille Lacs Band had originally agreed to…

          Minnesota lost ALL the way back to *1837*!!!🤣🤣🤣🤣😈

          the 1854 and 1855 Treaties?

          NOPE–The TRIBE KEPT THEIR *OLDER* Hunting, Fishing, & GATHERING rights!😁🤗😈

          And the reason why ^^THAT^^ is relevant to what I discussed above, regarding the Duluth Complex, Mineral Rights, Mining Permits, and the Rights of Manoomin?

          Because of this;

          “The law protects (the Rights of Manoomin law) the legal rights of manoomin, or wild rice, securing on- and off-reservation protection of manoomin, as well as protection of the fresh water resources and habitats on which it depends.”

          Now… folks today *regularly* bring up the 1855 Treaty, in talking about The Rights of Manoomin…

          But the 1837 Treaty, and the Legal Precedent set by the 1999 decision, will *someday* have bearing–and REMEMBER, *Signed, Inter-National Treaty!*😈😈😈 on what *exaaaaaactly* may be done, in regards to the dangers of polluting *both* the headwaters of the Mississippi River and the Lake Superior Watershed…

          Remember, too, that Canada has now signed Treaty agreements & that Compact, about the Great Lakes watershed😉😁

          So that–even in the event of the Mille Lacs Band (or *any* of the potentially affected Ojibwe tribes!) making it up to the USSC, and somehow *Losing*?

          Canada could then sue our pants off, for Treaty violations!🤣🤣🤣

           

           

  3. What’s even crazier about Victor Wembanyana is that … he might actually be seven-foot-five and still potentially growing? That’s been the reporting I’ve heard this week. It’s nuts!

    One thing I will say for basketball is that unlike other sports, when people say a guy is “can’t miss,” the only way they’re wrong is usually if the player gets injured a ton. LeBron was everything and more that scouts predicted; can’t wait to see Wembanyana get after it!

    • He has a different playing style, of course. But in terms of the skill level added to boundary-extending size, he has the potential to make as much of an impact as Kareem Abdul Jabbar or Shaquille O’Neal.

      Both of those guys really warped the shape of the games they played in, to the point where refs had to throw out the way they called games. Giannis, Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid and Nikola Jokic all have an amazing combination of size and skill, but Wembanyama could leave them in the dust. If he stays healthy, of course.

      • Yeah, I think Kevin Durant is pretty underrated (some of that his own doing with his career decisions) and Wemby could be like, a more athletic and skilled version of that … while also being 5-6 inches taller than a guy who can already shoot over anyone at any time?

        We’ll see what his game is like in years to come but the profile looks like the most reliable bucket-getter since maybe Kareem, who was the all-time leading scorer up until a few months ago.

    • Micheal Olowokandi, Black Rod, Micheal Olowokandi…

      No injuries, just a tennis-loving LAZY ASS.

      Stooooooopid McHale….

      Micheal fucking olowokandi…….Ricky Rubio….

      Stoooooooooopid dumbass McHale🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

      😉

      • I mean, there’s No. 1 picks and then there’s No. 1 picks and the Candy Man was clearly the former and not the latter 🙂

        There definitely have been busts at the top (hell, Zion Williamson is like halfway out of the league and injuries are a big part but as we’ve found out recently, not the only reason) but there are years where having the top pick is a sure-fire golden ticket and other years where it’s really just a scratch-off lottery ticket.

        • 5′ tall *me* could’ve run up & down that NBA court, faster than Kandi did, and probably could’ve rebounded better than him, too!😉😂🤣

          There were/are SO many duds, but I feel like we *often* forget that, because there’s also typically the player *that year* who does become a star….

          The 84 draft in some ways is a great example, too….

          Don’t get me wrong–Akeem at #1 is reasonable!

          But *Everyone* i can think of only remembers Sam Bowie for one reason…

          😉

          • Admittedly, I am *also* more than a bit grumbly about first-round draft picks, because *so many* “Former #1 Draft pick(s)!!!!! were supposed to “save” my ‘Wolvies…

            Fucking McHale…😠😡🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

             

            😆😂🤣

             

          • Yeah, but even Jordan was just considered a really good prospect not a (pardon the pun) slam-dunk superstar. I’m thinking more of the generational “this guy is gonna change everything” level of prospect, like Kareem, Walton, Magic, Duncan, LeBron … those dudes generally do not miss unless their bodies fail them. (And you’re right about Akeem/Hakeem — he was so good that he never gets the “Taken before Jordan” tag.)

            But if we’re talking bad draft choices, I mentioned Durant earlier and lol at taking Greg “I Look And Play Like I’m 54” Oden ahead of him. That was insanity.

            • Oden had all those knee issues, though…

              Drafted and had the microfracture surgery, right off the jump in September of what *should* have been his rookie year…

              Then his spun-glass knees & lower legs just kept on going the way of Justin Morneau’s thin, candy, skull…🙃

              Unlike Doc, he didn’t need to retire startlingly young…

              But he runs & guns like a 54 year old, because he probably *has* the knees & lower legs of one😉💖

      • It’s true. When I left for college I was 6’3″ and 18 years old. When I returned home for Christmas my mother said, “Did you grow a little bit?” She had me stand by this doorway where she had a height chart, God knows why, and yes, it turned out that in those brief months away I had grown an inch, to 6’4″. And I was barely eating because the cafeteria offerings were so godawful, so who knows what prompted this growth spurt.

  6. I texted my friend last night that used to run HURL (Hawaii Undersea Research Lab) for his thoughts on the missing sub.  This was his reply…

    Between Seattle and Victoria BC, there’s probably half a dozen or more deep-sea man submersible companies. I’ve been down to 4000 m which is about the depth of the titanic, but I was in the Japanese submersible Shinkai. You can go to 6500 m.
    My thoughts on all of this? The company does not have a good reputation for testing first and going live later. They’ve had a seat of the pants mentality. That doesn’t bode well for the situation. They’re in now. Hate to be a pessimist, but I think one of two things has happened. One. They had a catastrophic Failure where the man compartment collapsed or two. They’re stuck on the bottom somewhere and are gonna run out of air before anybody can get to them. It would be a miracle if anybody survives.
    My thoughts! How are you doing?

    • I’m not really the person to weigh in on this, being wombless and all, but one of my sisters’ maid of honor was inconsolable during that sister’s wedding. I was in the wedding party, so we got talking, and she told me that she was pregnant. Everyone in my family got married young. Including me, but it wasn’t a marriage, obviously. So here was this young woman, who I liked, she was one of my sister’s best friends and they’d known each other since sixth grade or something, faced with a dilemma. She and the boyfriend both lived at home with their parents, and both of them came from fairly conservative Catholic families. Her instinct was to go through with the pregnancy and suffer the shame and bullying that her family would inflict on her (the boyfriend of course would have been held blameless, but where did the…never mind.)

      So anyway, she said that my sister had offered to (even my own sister didn’t tell me this) loan her cash from the wedding presents if she wanted to abort. So she was thinking about it, and thinking about getting married, and having children like my sister ultimately did. She wanted to do this completely anonymously, no reporting to the insurance company, which might not have covered the procedure in any case.

      So I gave her my number and said, “Think it over and, if you want, come into the City and I’ll go with you and get you past the crazies that like to harass people. Then, whatever it costs, I’ll pay for it, and you can pay me back whenever.”

      She ultimately did abort the baby, without my residential or financial assistance, but went on to marry the boyfriend, and have three children. What kind of a horrible situation for a woman to be in.

      We once had people over and BH had had a little too much to drink and was in a feisty mood, and he said, “Did you know that Mattie is pro-life and anti-abortion?” And I had to clarify and say, “My belief is that the decision to terminate a pregnancy must be a very difficult one and I don’t envy any woman who has to make it. Asshole.”

      • It always shocks people that I am pro-choice. The number of people who say, “But… you have 4 kids! You were a teen mom!” when they find out is actually kind of hilarious. My answer is always that just because it wasn’t *my* choice, doesn’t mean that no one else should have a choice.

        • This is what I don’t understand about the intolerant right (or left, for that matter.) You think abortion is abhorrent? DON’T HAVE ONE. You find a piece of reading material abhorrent? DON’T READ IT. Or read it, and cogently argue against it, but don’t try to ban it or even worse rewrite it, which smacks of 1984 and is a gross offense against civilization.

    • And that is some weak-sauce denial, too. Seriously, if these conservative idiots are the best and brightest legal minds in the country, we are all in deep shit. But WSJ is right there to offer this crooked fuck a podium from which to issue his bullshit.

      • This all goes back for a long time, and it’s gross how these deals are only getting exposed in serious detail now.

        Scalia died on one of these junkets, but the attitude of court reporters like Nina Totenberg has been to look the other way. And then Totenberg went ahead and published a book bragging about she went out of her way to cultivate personal friendships with Ginsburg and Scalia, not in order to dig out scoops but because, gosh, they were such wonderful people.

      • Good thing ProPublica kept the receipts.  Not that it matters, ultimately, because the system works just fine for these Republican shitbags, thank you very much, and no way any Republicans in Congress vote to change it.

    • I think just as interesting is that whomever leaked Dobbs went straight to the WSJ editorial board too … and so did whomever was trying to pressure Roberts on the ACA a few years ago, too. I’m not saying it was always Alito but … wait, no, I *AM* saying it was always Alito!

  9. This motherfucker right here. Our unelected Attorney General (thanks to dipshit Eric Schmidt our previous Attorney General who now is a senator) was in a squabble with another republican – the state auditor.

    See, there’s work to try to get a ballot initiative to amend the Missouri constitution to allow abortions again and the republican attorney general is saying the cost to the state to allow abortions could be A FUCKING MILLION times more than the state auditor estimates because of lost Medicaid/Medicare and the hypothetical lost revenue of people not being born.

    For the record, the state auditor is also a forced birther but at least has financial integrity with his job.

    https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/missouri/articles/2023-06-20/missouri-judge-orders-end-to-gop-officials-standoff-over-proposed-abortion-rights-ballot-measure

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