Happy Wednesday!
Donald Trump counts for half of all impeachments in American history.
Trump impeachment: Senate votes to proceed with trial
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/09/trump-impeachment-senate-vote-trial
Senate votes to pursue Trump impeachment trial after declaring the proceedings constitutional
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-impeachment-trial-trump/2021/02/09/66c7ad20-6ae8-11eb-9f80-3d7646ce1bc0_story.html
Worth the watch.
Former President Donald Trump was unhappy with his impeachment lawyer Bruce Castor’s opening argument on the Senate floor Tuesday, two people familiar with his reaction told CNN.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/09/politics/trump-impeachment-bruce-castor/index.html
In other news…
Minnesota shooting: five wounded at Buffalo health clinic, police say
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/09/buffalo-minnesota-health-clinic-shooting
Stonks!
How the rich got richer: Reddit trading frenzy benefited Wall Street elite
Big hedge funds were alerted to GameStop buzz early because they actively monitor conversations on social media
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/08/gamestop-wallstreet-wealth/
I am not a cat
Have an awesome day!
I thoroughly enjoyed Castor’s open-mike-night performance from the Cafe Wha? Poetry Slam. I was snapping my fingers and in my head provided an accompanying soundtrack of Ginsburg reciting “Howl”(“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked…”) If Schoen had produced a pair of bongos they could have concluded the hearings and declared Castor the winner. I was surprised that at the end so few Senators sparked up joints and where were the candles in chianti bottles? You just know that Senator Feinstein, her mind set adrift on memory bliss as it so often is, was back as a young woman wandering the streets of San Francisco’s North Beach in the 1950s, cheap paperback Sartre edition in hand, searching for that spark, that connection…
Castor’s speech needs the Vibing Cat/levan Polkka treatment
Oh my God, that’s perfect. I also think with a little auto-tuning it could be a contender for a Grammy. This is an oldie but a goodie. Early on, when the coronavirus first set in, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed the Great Dominion of Canada. There’s really no easy way to concisely describe the fact that it is transmitted by people yakking in close quarters. He went with “speaking moistly.” Social Media lit up like the
ChristmasHoliday Tree at Rockefeller Center.I would like to take this opportunity to post the GOAT auto tune video:
Way back in 2006 Sen. Ted Stevens tried to explain the internet to his colleagues. He was about 80 at the time.
By the way, I think this would be a good DUAN topic: song parodies. Something light-hearted for a Friday or Saturday night. Weird Al’s oeuvre aside there must be hundreds, if not thousands.
I’m still waiting for the DUAN “Songs You’re Embarrassed to Love So Much.” thread. Here’s one of my Top 5. Should the thread happen I’ll divulge what about this song released so many happy endorphins. For now I’ll tell you that I still torment The Better Half with it. I like to sing while I cook, and we have a little Bose in the kitchen. I make time-consuming sauces and there’s often a point where you just have to let it rest and stare off into space, which is no fun. “Precious, could you come here for a minute? Bring your wine glass.”
“Oh no, I’m bring Rickrolled…”
“No more/carefree/laughter…”
He plays along though. I sing into my sauced wooden spoon and then comes the upswell. “KNOWING ME/KNOWING YOU” and I point the spoon in his face and he will provide the “a-ha!”
…are you by any chance familiar with alan partridge?
(…if not it’s worth bearing in mind the guy’s name is actually steve coogan…alan partridge is a fictional chat show host character he’s played in a variety of contexts…including a fake chat show – I think called knowing me, knowing you – where he’d introduce “guests” by saying “knowing me: alan partridge; knowing you: [made-up-guest-name]” & used “ah-ha” as kind of a catch phrase)
My Wifi used to be “a series of tubes” and my guest one was “get off my lan”
I was thinking someone needed to replace that music with some Meshuggah. Lo and behold:
I wish the impeachment manages would call out by name the senators who averted their eyes and pretended to shuffle papers when the video was being played. Especially Rand “Doodles of Freedom” Paul. Is there a GoFundMe up for his neighbor?
I haven’t seen someone scat sing that well since Cab Calloway.
I don’t have the knowledge to grade Castor on the “impeachment lawyer” scale but from my elementary school experience I can say he deserves an A on the “quickly scanned the back of the book 5 minutes before the book report presentation” scale.
It turns out cat lawyer has a history. It is bad.
He used to be a small town prosector. After he and the owner of a head shop broke up, he launched a long running harassment of the store which culminated in a raid by local cops and the feds.
https://www.texasobserver.org/thin-purple-line-alpine-texas-purple-zone/
Trump hires only the best people. Really, the best.
that’s a really fast milkshake ducking!
How fast can a milkshake duck duck if a milkshake duck could duck milkshake?
Catty lawyer.
Funny how “the lie is the lie” when the feds show up at your door. Y’know, dear, some critical thinking skills would have allowed you to avoid all this.
https://www.rawstory.com/jenna-ryan-2650426325/
@bryanlsplinter
Unfortunately bridging the gap between critical thinking and critical of thinking is an enormous task…as some who have lost close (or even loved) ones to the rabbit-hole of non-thinking – that has become so mainstream that even I can’t fathom it (I say that for reasons) – are well aware.
@myopicprophet Very true. And I’ve got family down that same rabbit-hole. This scumbag, however, is an opportunist. She used this crap to sell houses to other like-minded assholes, and I would bet every thing I own she violated real estate laws about racism. For her this whole conspiracy was a marketing scam she could use to sell her services to white supremacists in Texas. I have no evidence of this other than I have met other realtors who do the exact same thing.
And I’m sure it worked great for her because Texas (it works in Florida too, BTW). That’s the whole point behind her posting videos of herself being an idiot. However, once confronted with the reality of a federal trial, she quickly started following the other Qanon scumbags and started recanting and blaming Trump. Not that he’s not to blame, but this is just more opportunism.
In short, there’s miles of difference between her and the utter dupes I’m related to. I’d wager the same about yours. Profiteering’s not better, but definitely a different motivation altogether.
We talked about this briefly but it’s an escalating problem. Now I’m receiving complaints from contractors that they haven’t received their tax forms yet. Seems postal reliability has declined to 71% of first-class mail delivered on time in 2020, as compared to 92% the year before.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/2/8/2014804/-DeJoy-is-plotting-more-imminent-moves-to-destroy-the-Postal-Service-He-has-to-be-stopped
Is Postmaster General a political appointee position or an actual Federal employee position?
…I forget the details but I think he’s been put there in a way that is deliberately hard to get him out of…basically he can only be fired by the board…& that board is wall to wall trump appointees that aren’t going to be straightforward to replace with the balance of the senate being what it is…at least iirc that’s approximately the issue?
My understanding is that the postmaster general can only be fired by the nine-member board of governors, and the board can be fired and replaced by Biden only “for cause”. The board is by law split between Democrats and Republicans and Trump didn’t appoint any Democrats, so there are 4 Republicans and 2 Democrats right now. Biden needs to fill 3 slots, which would give Democrats the majority, and then they can fire DeJoy with a majority vote. There’s a Democrat that’s serving a holdover term, which means Biden can replace him, too. Not germane to this, but I bring it up for accuracy. So DeJoy is on borrowed time, and he’s decided to fuck up as much as possible before Biden can root his ass out.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/biden-cannot-fire-usps-louis-dejoy.html
I should point out that Biden can’t “require” the board to do anything, but if he nominates four conscientious human beings, that won’t be a problem. Republican will squeal and bleat about it, but those are the rules and they can fuck off. It’s a big PR move for Biden, because it’s one of those things that’s hitting EVERYBODY except the rich who don’t give a fuck about mail and send their nonsense by liveried messengers or some shit.
He should be fired. I received a Christmas card yesterday from my Aunt that she mailed on 12/21.
I’ve accomplished stuff on my week off.
1 I finally got off my lazy ass and put up all the “new” blinds I was too damn lazy to do in the fall.
2 Last year’s taxes… well, the Feds owe me money and I misplaced (read lost) a key receipt and it took me this long to make a few phone calls to replace it.
3 Dash cam installed in the Leaf. I might want to turn off the microphone because it would be a string of profanity pretending to be commentary.
So … basically like riding with me. Got it.