Hope everyone had a great weekend. I’m having a lovely time in Palm Beach, if only considering the fact that it is 50 degrees warmer here than at home.
I’m on my iPad today, not because I didn’t bring my laptop, but it’s in the safe and at present I’m too lazy to go get it. I’ll keep it short and sweet!
#Florida Man
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis drops out of the presidential race, endorses Trump
Trump leads by wide margin in N.H. primary, Post-Monmouth poll finds
Sprots
Patrick Mahomes’s Chiefs outlast Bills to earn a spot in AFC championship game
I was promised iguanas falling out of trees but it hasn’t happened yet!
Have a great day and think of me stuck in ‘team-building’ hell today!
At least the team is building somewhere warm. I have a friend whose company used to hold these exercises twice a year. But they were very cheap. So they’d go to Las Vegas in July or August and places like Minneapolis in January or February, because the room rates were so low. She’s your neighbor, actually. She lives in Montgomery County. She’s one of the reasons why I sometimes go to DC. That, and to observe Better Half testifying before House sub-committees. In an informative, non-prosecutorial way.
But confess: you’re actually at Mar-a-Lago, aren’t you, under deep cover, and will be spilling the beans about Don and Mel and that whole criminal enterprise. When you use a bathroom be on the lookout for a box labeled TOP SECRET. Report back your findings. I, for one, would love to learn what America’s nuclear response to global mayhem circa 2019 would have been.
Shhhh you’ll blow my cover!
Team Building… sigh.
Hate that. I went to one event (laser tag) and ended up shooting the shit out of my boss. Not out of any hatred for the guy. Only because he was the most aggressive guy on the opposite team, I swear. I was the most aggressive guy on my team so it was only natural.
His call sign was Iceman and mine was Maverick (I didn’t select it!)
My boss is a long-suffering Bills fan. He is not a happy man.
I presume “Scott Norcross, Wide Right” sets him off?
33 years of agony and continuing.
OMG I couldn’t believe that when it happened last night. The Curse of Buffalo lives.
Allen should have thrown underneath…twice…to keep the clock running and the yard sticks moving instead he threw to the endzone…twice…can’t blame the kicker for that.
The one where Diggs was open underneath was a killer. But I can’t blame Allen; even his downfield misses were about as perfectly thrown as possible. He hit two guys in the hands like 40-50 yards downfield and neither one could come up with it.
I was honestly shocked that they kept shooting for the end zone with almost 2 minutes on the clock. I still don’t understand why they weren’t going for the 1st down.
I really wanted to cheer for the Bills but their fans are such assholes! Second week in a row I saw snowballs being thrown into the endzone to prevent a pass from being completed. Again they were too drunk to make a difference in the play but come on NFL, this should not be happening.
And now for something completely different!
I totally would have gone. I know that aspects of Chinese life are completely barbaric, the “social credits” and the Uyghurs rounded up and sent to concentration camps, not to mention the saber-rattling over Taiwan and…but anyway. They must have museums and cultural events, which would fascinate me. BH came thisclose to going to Shanghai and I did tons of research, because I was going to tag along and keep out of sight, but it fell through at the last minute.
The same thing happened in Israel, another place I’ve always wanted to go. It was a bank HQ’d in Tel Aviv. I thought, “well he could do whatever during the day and I’ll just take one of the buses up to the gay beach in the north…” But that also fell through, because the Israeli bankers didn’t want to conduct business in Tel Aviv, they wanted to take their own junket to the south of France, where I’ve been countless times. But even that fell through because someone in his company (at the time) did some due diligence and recommended that they disengage because it was such a shady operation. I was really disappointed by missing out on my opportunity to go to Israel, but wouldn’t you know it, around the time I would have been there some lunatic blew himself up on one of those beach/commuter buses, taking a few people with him.
A friend of mine once went to Tel Aviv with her husband. They’re both Jewish and had been before. They were there because the husband…I forget why. He’s a very unpleasant man so I stay away from him. Anyway, there was a reception at a museum and my friend kept getting bumped in the butt. She finally turned around to confront what she thought was a serial groper, but in reality it was someone, IDF I suppose, who had strapped on an AK-47 or something like that. That’s what was bumping into her.
As much as Republicans love to publicly bitch about China, they would fucking love to have our country operate in the exact same way, provided they were in charge. Restrictions on speech, fucking over workers, zero controls over corporate malfeasance, and no protections for consumers. China is a Republican’s wet dream.
Same with Russia
With the minor distinction that Republicans are no longer constantly bitching about Russia but have, quite suddenly, become their biggest backers. We all know why this is–because they are beholden to a man who is beholden to Putin–but the real curiosity is that the media continues to behave as though this is all perfectly normal and has always been this way. At no point have I ever heard a single journalist openly confront any of them about their sudden about-face on Russia.
They ask once.
The excuse for never following up with the GOP is that they don’t get an answer, as if that should ever be a reason for a reporter to drop a hot story.
The political press is happy to bang a drum on dumb stuff like “how scared are the Democrats by Ron DeSantis?” But only what their sources, who are deep in the GOP establishment, tell them counts as being worth a drum beat.
For another example of how it works, the Trump campaign press team is freezing out a reporter who raised questions with one of his surrogates about E. Jean Carroll.
https://bsky.app/profile/nycsouthpaw.bsky.social/post/3kjjlchamxk2t
They are banking on the rest of the press corps falling in line, based on their long history. They’d rather chase tidbits about his latest insult than deal with substance.
Even though there’s already a court ruling that Trump is a rapist, his team is counting on the press corps to decide it’s only a fact if the GOP establishment tells them it is.
You should watch/listen to the Tom Hartmann show. He talks about it constantly…
https://hartmannreport.com/p/republican-attacks-on-fact-checkers-a98
https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-gop-has-adopted-orban-as-their-eac
Yes, but Thom is essentially fringe in terms of major media reach and being a part of the overall zeitgeist. Nobody in the mainstream talks about it at all.
No more SI footbawl phones or swimsuit editions.
https://defector.com/sports-illustrated-as-we-know-it-appears-to-be-dead
Pour one out for the magazine that created the sports hot take and long form articles on the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.
FYI, I was once asked to apply as the Blue Jays blogger for their version of SB Nation when I was an active blogger for the SB Nation Blue Jays site. I got scooped out by a better writer than myself.
A story by the New York Times that I deeply wish people inside the New York Times would read and take to heart (but they won’t): https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/20/us/dei-woke-claremont-institute.html
The polite right-wingers who are definitely only interested “free speech” and “academic integrity” and “open discourse” are actually gutter racists? My goodness! Who could have possibly guessed that twist?!?!?!?!?!
The Claremont Institute! In the “right-wing rags” that I read they occasionally show up. There used to be something called The Responsible Right. Had Hillary Clinton won the nomination in 2008 I would have considered voting for John McCain over her (except there was that whole Sarah Palin VP thing.)
But now, and I’d love to know how this happened, the Trumpasaurus has taken over and everyone’s MAGA. Why, for God’s sake? It’s bereft of ideology or any real reason to exist except to keep The Orange One out of prison. Populism is rampant, it’s certainly rampant in Europe as a revolt against EU bureaucrats in Brussels imposing all kinds of wacky rules and regulations, but what, really, is the appeal of Donald Trump? He makes for good theater, I suppose. Certainly the thousands who show up at his rallies seem to think so.
He had a really great quote. “They [the government] are not coming after me, they’re coming after you. And I’m standing in their way.” Can you imagine how that must have resonated? Much like Reagan’s famous “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
The numbers have dropped significantly, Mattie.
‘Empty seats all over the arena’: Trump busted for moving rallies to tiny venues
Soon to be under card at the local puppet show.
You say that, but this is what the heart of the party always wanted. Always. McCain didn’t take off because he refused to play the “Obama’s a Muslim interloper” game and Romney was dead on arrival precisely because he was as close to the “responsible right” you imagine ever existed. (I’m also curious as to when you think they did. Purple heart stickers at the 2004 GOP convention where they nominated a deserter? Gingrich shutting down the government? Rush Limbaugh? Reagan letting AIDS run wild ’cause it was a gay disease? Ford pardoning Nixon? Nixon’s paranoid reign?)
You’re in the right tax bracket to understand the real game, which is that you and people who have a lot more money than you, pay less in taxes and don’t have to worry about crimes (financial or otherwise). But most people aren’t in a tax bracket where that’s helpful to them so they gotta gin up support in other ways.
Oh, believe me, we pay more than our fair share in taxes. Something like half of New Yorkers pay no taxes at all, except for maybe sales taxes, so the productive class is left to pick up the slack. They get exempted from all kind of onerous fees and taxes that we civilians have to put up with.
Also, I have an interesting update. Apparently we’ve taken in 168,000 migrants! Now, I think we’re getting to the tipping point. We already have a housing crisis, and it would be tough to find housing for that many people under the best of circumstances in the course of a year. The tents at Floyd Bennett Field…I think Adams is trying to make New York as undesirable as possible, having previously housed the migrants at Midtown hotels in rooms that used to go for $300 or $500 a night.
A mess. A huge mess, and a huge failure on several levels of government. Our public servants. We should treat them like Lenin treated the kulaks. Take them out back.
Again, you really need to look harder for better sources. You’re repeating the spin coming out of Adams, a guy you complain is a liar and corrupt – which he is!
Adams is cynically playing games with funding, Hochul seems to have come up with cash, now Adams is magically announcing billions more in tax revenue has showed up, and somehow they’re projecting spending almost $2 billion less on migrants.
https://www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2024/01/nyc-cuts-spending-migrants-hochul-backs-boost-state-aid/393378/
The NY Times has been using the term “crisis” in its headlines, and based on how incredibly inconsistent they’ve been about what counts as a crisis – climate is not a crisis, Trump’s attacks on democracy are not a crisis – that should be a warning sign that this is ginned up.
Speaker Johnson is out to kill the bipartisan border deal in alignment with the radical right and Trump because they don’t want progress. But the spin out of DC is that they get a pass because it’s Biden’s responsibility to clean up after them.
You really need to turn off the firehose of spin from bad sources. Their entire business model is about making people feel bad, hopeless, and persecuted, but also pretend it’s always someone else who is doing it.
Plus, the obvious thing, which is Trump says all the quiet parts out loud. Right wingers have resented that they had been pushed into the realm of code words for decades. They love that he says the shit they wish they could say out loud–and now they get to do it again. A major feature if there ever was one.
DeSantis is all over this. He’s been installing right-wing puppets in state universities as president like crazy. He’s taken over New College, Florida Atlantic University, and University of Florida so far.
The hero we need:
‘Dude’: Matt Gaetz confronted with ‘bag full of underage girls’ in New Hampshire
BUT WHERE IS NESTOR?
Literally the only question the media should ask Gaetz at any time. HOW WAS THAT NOT A HUGE STORY?!?!?!?!?!
The last I heard (or read, and this was a while ago) Nestor was in some 5th-tier no-name college in Alabama or somewhere and was keeping shtum. But I definitely remember that his father was alive and well and living near Miami, so why would he give his son up to a ~30-year-old unmarried creepy guy with a five-head? Something wasn’t right about this. If I had children I wouldn’t let them out of my sight. I mean, within reason, I don’t think BH and I would be helicopter parents, but I certainly wouldn’t hand one over to some loathsome swamp creature like Matt Gaetz. Gross.
Huh, I wonder why they lobbied so hard for an exemption?
https://www.levernews.com/the-oligarch-exemption-for-new-business-disclosure-rules/
No Koch for you!
https://www.rawstory.com/koch-network-trump-loser/
Is this “person” the worst governor in the country? At least top 3!
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/01/huckabee-sanders-touts-crisis-pregnancy