Not Yet…[DOT 28/10/20]

28/10/20 MegMegMcGee 29

6 more sleeps.

Get your shit together Florida!

Cash-strapped Trump campaign shifts resources in Florida as Democrats dominate the airwaves
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/27/politics/trump-campaign-florida/index.html

Same shit, different day:

Protests grip Philadelphia, leaving officers injured and stores damaged, after police kill a Black man
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/27/philadelphia-police-shooting-walter-wallace/

As the future of Obamacare heads to the supreme court, so do trans rights
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/26/as-the-future-of-obamacare-heads-to-the-supreme-court-so-does-trans-rights

Stonks!

Dow futures fall 150 points as Wall Street grapples with rising Covid-19 cases, earnings
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/27/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html

Women are badass.

Hi.
https://chrissyteigen.medium.com/hi-2e45e6faf764

Having for a short time in my career been ‘Bronfman adjacent’, I’ve been fascinated by this since the beginning. You love to see it!

Nxivm leader Keith Raniere sentenced to 120 years in prison
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/27/nxivm-keith-raniere-sentencing-sex-slavery

Apologies to those of you who get this joke.

Have a great day!!

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29 Comments

  1. …the NYT has its share of problems & all but the run of stories they’ve done about the serial failures of both his business ventures & his apparent inability to ever pay his debts in full continue to demonstrate that they have considerably more rigour & journalistic prowess than some of their op-eds would suggest

    …it should maybe be obvious enough to be inured to by now but damn if it doesn’t wind me the fuck up that this asshole defaults on debts that would bury most people while claiming to be oh-so-fucking-rich

    …I’d love to see him in prison & all but more & more what I really want is to see him shown to be broke… preferably because his funds have been funneled into the taxpayers’ pockets he picked most of them out of one way or another in the first place

    • There are two huge problem areas at the NY Times. The first is the politics and DC desks. The second is the editors who decide what goes where on the front page or what gets dumped into the rest of the front section, and who also write the headlines.
       
      The DC editor is Pat Healy, who believe it or not was their theater critic for many years. It pretty much sums up what is wrong with their upper management — they think it is fine to treat the destruction of health care for tens of millions as a matter of optics and staging, and any deep understanding of issues is seen as a problem, not a benefit.
       
      The Trump tax stories come from a completely different desk which handles long term investigations They want reporters who know their stuff. They care about details. They do a lot of great work. But they tend to get short shrift from the editors in charge of laying out the paper, because they are not smart people, they are people who only think about the internal politics at the paper, which favor the DC and politics desks.

      • …politics as theatre…you could argue that’s the problem in a nutshell even beyond the NYT…whereas I won’t argue with any of that…nor could I were I inclined to, as far as I can make out

  2. You probably know how the Bronfmans made their money. They founded Seagram’s, the liquor company, up in Canada. Canada at the time was pretty small, still is, population-wise, compared to its vast land mass. Then Prohibition hit the US. Joesph Kennedy, son in-law to one of the most corrupt mayors Boston has ever known, and that’s saying something, and father of St. John of Hyannisport, the 35th president of the United States, struck a deal with them to smuggle booze into the country through the ports at Boston. They both became fantastically wealthy.
     
    At one point, pre-9/11, I worked close to the Seagram building on Park Avenue. It was an architectural wonder of its time. It replaced drab rowhouses and was part of a postwar plan to get more people out of lower Manhattan, where Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange is. The plan worked. 
     
    The woman who was central to the Seagram’s building married into the family and had an interest in architecture and design. It is she, Phyllis, we have to thank for it. In the pre-9/11 days I used to go there and make up some excuse, like I was a messenger or something, and I’d be admitted. I’d spend my lunch hour riding the elevators and getting off at random floors. Since it was lunch hour there was lots of traffic and I’m a white guy unthinkingly people would hold doors for me and I would wander the floors at will. Occasionally someone would say something like, “You seem kind of lost. Is there someone you’re supposed to meet?’ 
     
    “Yes, Helen Crump. Is this the 27th floor?” [Helen Crump was the name of Steve McQueen’s girlfriend in ‘The Blob’.] “No, it’s the 22nd. I know, the elevators are crap. At least once a week I get sent down to the mailroom. Good luck!”

  4. So, now that the Republicans have their permanent SCOTUS majority, keep an eye out for every single pet project lawsuit under the sun.  ACA?  Gone.  LGBTQ rights?  Gone.  Brown v Board of Education?  Gone.  Rowe v Wade?  Gone.  Environmental precedents?  Buh-bye.  Anything resembling rights for any underrepresented group in this country?  Fughettaboutit.  
     
    Brace yourselves.  The shit is coming.

    • I think before long there will be a run on destroying the principle of one man one vote. We will see the right wingers drop gerrymandering and flat out say that it’s fine to have 1 million GOP voters get 10 state reps but 1 million Democrats only get 5 state reps.
       
      We will see a return to variable voter qualification rules, so that voters in Democratic counties can only register by going through a six month process and pass three tests, while Republican counties automatically register everyone over 18. The Florida law banning votes post-conviction will be expanded so that any history of nonpayment of a utility bill disqualifies you as a voter, but only if you’re a renter and not a homeowner.
       
      Kavanaugh’s opinion on the Wisconsin absentee ballot rule was widely mocked as essentially illiterate nonsense. He and his bubble will see that as validation and work even harder to be worse next time.

    • I keep hearing the left saying ‘pack the court’ and I’m troubled. why won’t the right ‘pack the court’ too next time? isn’t there anything else? what about this ‘jurisdiction stripping’? can you neuter the sc? would that involve the house and the senate both? I’m more comfortable with holding the house. the senate is a lot more iffy with all the small states each getting 2 senators.

      • This is exactly the problem.  There’s nothing the Democrats can do that the Republicans can’t do back again the second they get back into power.  The real solution is to put term limits on all federal judges, not just SCOTUS.  They get say, 10-15 years and that’s it.  That way there is no incentive to put a 30-year old law school grad who has tried exactly zero cases to be nominated to any federal judgeship.  There have been no less than 10 currently serving federal judges who were nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate that the National Bar Association deemed Unqualified.  Term limits will also limit the amount of damage that the right wingers can do at any given point–especially if the rotation of these terms is spread out across the board.
         
        Regarding the Senate, everyone needs to stop talking about changing how representation is apportioned.  There ain’t no way a Constitutional amendment gets passed so any effort on this is wasted.  Further, it wouldn’t just be Wyoming or Montana pitching a fit over such a plan either.  It would also include VT, RI, HI, MA, and NM just for starters.  If anyone thinks those states will just sit back and let their own representational power get curbed, then I’ve got a bridge to sell them.

        • now that you mentioned changing how representation is apportioned in the senate, does the constitution say anything about the weight of the vote of each senator? can you make the vote of each senator weigh half the population of the state he/she represents? this doesn’t change the ‘2 senators from each state’. or is this ‘vote weighing’ scheme just a pipe-dream? 🙂

      • Not necessarily. It depends on how you pack it. There are proposals to expand it to say 25 justices, which would eliminate all the problems we  have now — there would be very little emphasis on the process if one judge is only 4% of the court. Judges could feel free to retire, etc, without the enormous political pressure of representing their ‘side.’ There’s 24 others, so no big whoop.
         
        So that’s one method — pretty unlikely at this point, I’d say. The better option in my opinion is to make it 13 in the short term. Then go after voter suppression. The reality is, there are more Democrats than Republicans. Independents are growing steadily (I had my daughter register as one). More young people are voting and are staying “liberal” as they age. Old people are dying, as they do, and the Republican party is going with them. Republicans have abandoned and demonized cities and urban centers, which is where MOST PEOPLE live, in favor of courting the rural populations of middle America. And the electoral college has worked in their favor. 
         
        Republican rule depends, absolutely depends, on an active, angry, and poorly informed minority of voters. That’s why specific issues like abortion or immigration are so incredibly critical to Republicans. They can be used to motivate a poorly informed and/or racist group to vote on a single issue rather than looking at what benefits them the most. Plus stupidity gets in the way of self-interest. That’s why Republicans demonize public school. They. need. stupid. people. 
         
        That minority is steadily declining. Not fast enough, but it is. There are a number of pretty respected people who are saying this election is the end of the Republican party as we know it today. I’m not going there, but it’s going to be a massive setback. 
         
        Problem is, the Democrats need to MOVE. Act decisively, fix the Supreme Court imbalance, and start stamping out voter suppression. Once anyone can vote easily and quickly, Republicans. go. away. Forever. Even an imbecile like Trump grasps that. Something else will eventually take their place, but it will never have the outsized influence that this Republican party has been systematically building for GENERATIONS. 
         
        But the Democrats have to show some spine. Or we go right back into the same destructive cycle. 

      • They’re absolutely going to try. Trump lickspittle Ron DeSantis is all on board the Trump train, and while other Republicans are trying to put daylight between themselves and Trump, DeSantis is literally embracing him at COVID superspreader rallies. DeSantis’ popularity was never high (he won by like 1300 votes) and it’s dropping steadily. Trump is the only hope he has left of salvaging anything from politics, and he’s going to do literally anything to try to tether himself to the orange blimp and have it hoist him back up. 

  7. i think today is a lost frequencies day


    you can blame the radio for that one…it got stuck in my head
    (in unrelated news…work mandated masks as of today…but only if you’re wandering about between departments or going to the toilets or something….i somehow dont think thats going to make a whole lot of difference…..have a feeling management came up with this half arsed plan coz they dont want to have to wear masks at their desks and knew they’d have to if they told us to mask up whilst working)

  8. I’ve been reading the NYT links about Trump and Deutche Bank and I’m stunned at what I read. 1. how the hell hasn’t deutche bank gone under after losing so much? 2. how dumb were these guys? they kept losing money to someone no other bank would touch and their kept giving him money? how can someone have any confidence in these chumps if you had money in deutche bank or if you were thinking of investing in it? I hope no one in the left that has any money whatsoever in deutche bank leaves it there

    • tbh….im leaning towards money doesnt actually exist
      its shit the rich made up to keep the poors poor…as they can apparantly magick the shit up when it suits them
      and the rest of the time we have to pay added taxes and shit coz uhh… the moneys gotta come from somewhere

    • …I’m not about to claim I really understand it…but I’ve had it explained to me by more than one person who knows considerably more than I do about that sort of thing that according to some readings Deutsche Bank ought to have folded some years back so I guess it’s not a stretch to say some books have been cooked &/or they’ve been benefiting from some sketchy supplementary investment sources who apparently don’t mind covering losses without seeing the sort of returns investors are generally looking for?

      …but like I say, I don’t really understand the nuts & bolts of that sort of thing…so to me it just looks dodgy as hell & all sorts of fucked up

      • …true enough…but from what I was given to understand there’s a bit more to it where the bad debt intersects with that particular bank

        …like I say, I’m not the person to try to explain it if you want it to make any kind of sense but the upshot sure sounded to me like the only way they hadn’t gone under required some considerable monies coming into the mix…& we know that shit wasn’t flowing their way from the would-be stable genius & his masterful business prowess

        …ockham’s razor would suggest that to some extent that would make the bank a middleman of sorts…or I guess if you were inclined to a john le carre kind of a reading…perhaps a cutout?

    • …personal bankruptcy would shield him from at least some personal liabilities as I understand the thing…but honestly it seems more likely that he’d hope to either borrow from peter to pay paul the way he has before…or get away with defaulting…again like he has in the past…& then offset the shit for tax purposes

      …either way by rights he ought not to be able to get away with this shit

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