Over It [DOT 19/11/21]

19/11/21 MegMegMcGee 29
"I've only had half of four bottles of wine."

Not one but TWO of my coworkers locked themselves out of their offices yesterday. [And yes, they were both men. I’m just saying.]

I have an extra key for my boss so I got to drive to the office even though I was supposed to be working from home.

Anyway, I’m off today, so I am done!

Next stop, Supreme Court.

Man who sexually assaulted 4 teenagers gets no prison time. ‘Incarceration isn’t appropriate,’ judge says.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/17/newyork-christopher-belter-rape-probation/

They just abandoned their kids? Highly sus.

A California couple vanished after stealing millions in Covid-19 relief funds. They left a goodbye note for their three kids
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/18/us/covid-relief-fraud-scheme-cec/index.html

BBB live updates!

House moves toward vote on Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill – live
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2021/nov/18/kamala-harris-house-build-back-better-bill-joe-biden-us-politics-latest-updates

Of course he does…

Trump endorses Gosar for reelection as GOP rallies around lawmaker who posted an altered anime video of himself killing a colleague
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gosar-house-censure-republicans/2021/11/18/cb6c1396-4888-11ec-b8d9-232f4afe4d9b_story.html

Sprots!

Serena Williams joins chorus of concern over whereabouts of Peng Shuai
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/nov/18/serena-williams-joins-chorus-of-concern-over-whereabouts-of-peng-shuai

Wait, is Rod Stewart charming?

Rod Stewart: ‘I got Elton a fridge for Christmas. He got me a Rembrandt’
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/nov/18/rod-stewart-i-got-elton-a-fridge-for-christmas-he-got-me-a-rembrandt

Are you guys familiar with our local DC (and national) treasure, Pat Collins?

Have a great Friday!

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29 Comments

  1. It doesn’t matter if the House passes BBB. Manchin and Sinema will never let it get through the Senate. This bill is dead but nobody is admitting it.

    • …have an unpleasant feeling that you’re right about the manchin/sinema part…but I guess I’d argue that it still matters that it makes it to the senate even if it ultimately won’t make it through

      …it might be too much to hope for that the senate would pass it with those two running the necessary interference to let the GOP kill it but giving up on the thing seems like it would be worse…at least to me…from what I’ve read it seems like most people think the policies it’s intended to implement are ones they’d like…so however diminishing the returns might be when it comes to people remembering at the ballot box who prevented them benefiting from them that hiding to nothing still seems like the lesser evil?

      • I keep hearing that argument when it comes to literally every single Democratic bill that has died a quiet death over the years.  Personally, I think it only matters to beltway people and certain political junkies.  It literally doesn’t mean anything to anyone else–certainly not to the people who shift back and forth between parties at election time.  What the Democrats should do is give it one more go in the Senate and when S&M reliably balk at it, then just fucking bury them under a mountain of bad press and keep it going all the way through the election.  But, they won’t do that because S&M are on “our” team and it’s important to “work together” in spite of the fact that S&M have zero interest in either.

        • …yeah…I get that…in fact that was very much where I was going with the “at least to me” bit…because to me it does mean something…but I’m pretty familiar with the part where what matters to me & what actually has a meaningful effect where it needs to are basically poles apart…or polls apart, perhaps

          …it’s not a new phenomenon by any means but there’s a serious disconnect between what makes a difference at a legislative level & what makes a difference at the electoral level that determines who’s on deck to make the attempt along with their chances of getting anywhere…& it’s one that has long favored the side of the debate that doesn’t much want an electorate that’s in any shape to make an informed choice about what might be to its benefit…so in many respects I don’t think it’s the part where the dems try to get something on the floor of the senate despite having a likelihood somewhere between slim & none of it getting passed that’s the problem…I think it’s more a problem with how they communicate what it is that prevents them from making the kind of difference that people want them to…because as you say they don’t do that part effectively…I’m sympathetic to the part where even shitty as they are having sinema & manchin represent nominally dem seats is better than the alternative in which the GOP has actual rather than de facto control of the senate…though in practice I think that distinction basically qualifies as nuance when it ought to be pretty much the opposite

          …but as it stands it’s literally the stuff of headlines…so to anyone who cares to pay attention it has the appearance of being accepted fact & I suspect they think that message is already getting across to people despite the fact that as you suggest it seems all too likely that it isn’t landing where it needs to…& I don’t want to get into the part where I go all voice-of-doom about the repercussions for things like environmental policy should the GOP’s gerrymandering efforts put them in a position to derail anything & everything for pretty much the entirety of what we’re being told is a decisive decade in terms of attempting to avert disaster…or the knock on effects in the rest of the world if the US doesn’t pull its weight in that department…because that tends to sound a lot like a suggestion that there’s nothing to be done & we might as well just settle in & let the people that want to burn the place down around our ears…which isn’t a level of defeat I’m prepared to accept?

          …I don’t claim to have the answer…but I think there might be some mileage in your S&M abbreviation…it seems altogether apt where dealing with the influence those two have at present is concerned?

  2. …the gosar thing is something else…apparently pretty much the first thing he did after getting censured was to re-tweet someone who had included the video he was censured for posting in said tweet…so effectively he got slapped on the wrist for doing something & immediately did it again

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/18/paul-gosar-retweets-video-aoc-twitter

    …can’t help thinking that in a sane world that kind of thing would result in being ejected from office on the grounds that you’re knowingly doing something you’ve been warned is explicitly not ok to do while holding office…& therefore appear to be pretty clearly unfit to continue in that role

    (…not that that video would exactly be “ok” coming from someone not in office…but it’s hard not to see putting it up again as a form of escalation that seems like it merits an escalation in terms of sanction in response)

  3. Some things are eternal: The hunt for Jimmy Hoffa’s body continues, 46 years after his disappearance.

    https://nypost.com/2021/11/18/fbi-search-jersey-city-landfill-for-jimmy-hoffas-remains/

    I had always heard that he was buried in landfill somewhere in New Jersey, Giants Stadium (which was being built when he disappeared, now replaced by the MetLife stadium), somewhere along the NJ Turnpike, somewhere in the Garden State. When you take the Turnpike to the MetLife Stadium exit you are said by a friend of mine to be on the Jimmy Hoffa Trail. Apparently there’s a whole train of thought that he’s actually somewhere in Michigan?

    • The university I used to work for decades ago owned some Florida swampland that had, at one point, belonged to Hoffa. With absolutely no evidence to support me, I declare that to be his final resting place. Prove me wrong!

      • So…my paternal grandfather was a corrupt Milwaukee politician who did a lot of deals with organized crime in Milwaukee, Chicago and even NYC.  My father grew up around these guys and even tended bar at one of their favorite haunts.  He said he knew what happened to Hoffa, because people don’t really pay attention to the bartender, but refused to discuss it.

    • All of this stuff about New Jersey is like the NY Times thinking of the Supremes or Marvin Gaye in terms of concerts at Madison Square Garden. The East Coast can’t believe that Hoffa was a Detroit phenomenon, or that the mob had any presence there, so they transplant his most famous event to the East Coast.

      There is no way the mob took the risk of transporting a body hundreds of miles when they had all kinds of opportunities within a few dozen miles to dispose of the body. If you look at a map of where he disappeared, there are dozens of lakes and ponds within ten miles. If he’s not at the bottom of one them, he’s buried in the woods nearby, run through an industrial grinder or incinerated like in The Irishman.

      • I think the tie-in was that Hoffa’s bitterest enemies were powerful Garden State mobsters and if they were the ones who killed him they would drag him somehow back to their own crime-infested nest where no one would dare rat them out. Also I think (these are hazy memories from many years ago) that the suspicion was Hoffa was going to give up dirt on NJ mobsters, which, naturally, riled them up. But yes, he was definitely a creature of Detroit.

  4. I am absolutely dumbfounded by this Belter rape case. That is an insane sentence. “Hey, dude, you raped four girls and you get to go free.” “Incarceration isn’t appropriate.” Hey, judge, would you feel the same if one of the girls was your daughter? Jesus.

    TBH, I’m almost equally dumbfounded by the maximum possible penalty of eight years. Seriously? Two years per rape?

    • It’s infuriating.

      • …that’s certainly one word for it…not to mention the part where it seems like a literal travesty of justice…how in the hell can incarceration not be appropriate for someone proven to be a multiple rapist…that seems like something where even a single offense would demand a custodial sentence…if it’s not appropriate under those circumstances is the judge trying to argue prison ought to be abolished?

        …I know that’s not what they’re trying to imply…but that’s an unforgivable ruling

    • Shoulda said it earlier, but “I prayed about it” is code for “I did whatever the fuck I wanted/was bribed to do.”

  5. I’m treading on Cousin Matt’s real estate, but the NY state judge who issued that rape ruling points out a running problem in NY, which is the state judiciary is loaded with conservative hacks. Giving them jobs has been part of the grand bargain of corruption in the state for decades for establishment pols of both parties.

    And playing up to the establishment has bitten the NY Times hard — another conservative hack NY State judge has issued a blatantly unconstitutional prior restraint order blocking them from publishing anything about Project Veritas based on legal memos surrounding their involvement in a diary stolen from Biden’s daughter.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/judge-temporarily-blocks-new-york-times-publishing-project-veritas-materials-2021-11-19/

    The Times has been in denial about how much the right is expanding its efforts wage war on the press. I know it’s broken record, but they are one of the biggest violators of the insane narrative that First Amendment threats are overwhelmingly a left wing problem. And I doubt they will wake up that this is only the beginning of direct attacks on them.

    It won’t even take the US Supreme Court to body slam them — they face a threat from state judges all over, just like Gawker was ruined.

  6. So, BBB just passed the house.  I’ll leave the above debate about it making it thru the senate alone but can we agree that Bernie is the voice of reason about the military spending bill?

     

    • I think the final estimate on costs minus revenues is $16 billion per year, which is basically a rounding error for a military hardware contract. There are good arguments why the IRS enforcement provisions will turn out to be net positives.

      But the press is hardwired not to report the net, only the cost, and amplify GOP lies about deficits. There are constituencies for its provisions — we’ll see how strong they are, though. ACA had barely enough.

       

  7. I knew nothing of Pat Collins. I’m not sure how much of that I could take in the morning, though. It’s 9:05 a.m. here, and I could not get through that whole clip, even though later today I will understand that Pat is indeed a treasure.

    We have our own local color in Boise, Idaho. Larry Gebert has been a weatherman here for ages, and many here believe he was the inspiration for Anchorman’s Ron Burgundy.

    How much meta do you want? Here’s a clip of Larry interviewing a man who got a tattoo of Larry.

    • This is why local TV news should never go away. I didn’t know that Idaho was called “The Gem State.” For that alone it was worth watching the clip.

      • Yeah, nobody who doesn’t live here knows that. “It’s all taters for out-of-staters.”

        I hope you have a captain’s hat like that, though, @MatthewCrawley. Perfect when serving seafood!

        Oh, and I love that the tattoo artist in that clip seems kind of embarrassed to even be there.

  8. We used to have Cisco Morris doing a garden segment on our local news and then it became a whole show.  I think he retired but you see him at the garden shows sometimes.  I’ve posted this before but he is a national treasure!

     

  9. covids getting a little out of hand here again…hmmm…is that the 4th time?…even the gorrilas have it now

    https://nltimes.nl/2021/11/19/rotterdam-zoos-gorillas-lions-test-positive-covid

    better not get anything bad that isnt rona anytime soon

    https://nltimes.nl/2021/11/19/hospitals-unable-provide-scheduled-healthcare

    wierd what shit you can get used to

    welp..on the upside…austria is going to mandate vaccination….thats the first little sheep over the fence…the rest of europe will eventually follow suit…i reckon… once they’ve finished arguing about it

    • guess that sets the tone for any future shootings of protesters

    • Yep. Fuck everything.

    • …three days of deliberations to pull not-guilty across the board put of their ass…there have to be members of that jury who know that verdict is complete bullshit, right?

  11. As an example of how little the press cares about the details of BBB, I found out it contains a provision to cap insulin costs at $35/month. Currently people can easily pay up to $10,000 a year and it’s a massive burden for huge numbers of people.

    There’s an easy narrative the press could tell. It’s incredibly easy to find people who will benefit and get their stories. A few outlets have even covered the issue with reporters who are on non-politics beats.

    But there is a pervasive cynicism among the DC press that leads them to believe that politicians can’t care about everyday Americans and they’re all as cynical as the GOP. The same thing happened with Obamacare, and the press was astounded to find people outraged by GOP efforts to destroy it.

    Reporters and editors have great health plans, so they wonder how can people struggle to pay for insulin? It just can’t be a story in their minds.

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