TGIF! [DOT 14/6/24]

14/6/24 MegMegMcGee 39

Happy Friday gang! Sorry I did the thing where I fell asleep next to my laptop. And I almost kicked it off my bed, which wouldn’t have been cool.

Under His Eye

After ruling, the future of abortion pills rests with Biden or Trump
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/13/abortion-pill-biden-trump-election

But of course

New documents show unreported trips by Justice Clarence Thomas
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/13/supreme-court-clarence-thomas-travel

Stonks! [File under Not Worth It]

Tesla shareholders approve CEO Elon Musk’s $45bn pay package
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jun/13/tesla-shareholders-approve-elon-musk-pay

Sprots!

Jaguars reportedly sign QB Trevor Lawrence to $275m contract extension
https://theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jun/13/jaguars-reportedly-sign-qb-trevor-lawrence-to-275m-contract-extension

Shut up and take my money!

Have a great day! I’ll be working from home and then watching Bridgerton. 🙂

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39 Comments

      • Or $42,069,420,580.08 – just so he could turn the check upside-down like when he used to use calculators in the ’80s and giggle helplessly for the next five or ten minutes.

    • …haven’t got to the bottom of what knocked $10billion off the total yet…since the headline figure was north of 55 before the shareholder vote…which I think was quoting the package that got 86ed by the deleware court

      …but yeah…if he didn’t get his weak weed gag in there…we’re probably due one of those any minute

      …never ceases to amaze me that so much “smart money” changes hands over business that’s objectively dumber than shit, though…what’s the logic…musk “made” tesla worth so much more than it should be that without musk tesla might stop being worth so much more than it realistically could be…& so would he…so…it’s in everyone’s interests to play by the too-big-to-fail rules because as long as everyone keeps singing from the same hymn sheet the lie is the truth

      …that makes you the richest human being in history…really?

      …I mean…I wanna be team #gohumanity…but…sometimes I wonder if we don’t make a solid case for team #humanitygo

      …like…what are we doing here, really…ugh…don’t mind me…I’m just getting over the part where someone put a clip in front of me where nigel farage parrots the “guess who’s back? tell a friend” bit of a slim shady tune & trying to resist the temptation to type up the bits of that tune I think make a good fit for the man like a parody of a lit crit piece…from a distance you can probably make out the cloud over my head?

  2. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, and I hope he spends the rest of his life broke and in a gutter: https://www.npr.org/2024/06/14/nx-s1-4991095/alex-jones-bankruptcy-sandy-hook-judge-liquidate-chapter7

    Clarence Thomas took more trips than he reported? No! Unpossible! He’s such a stand-up guy! https://www.axios.com/2024/06/13/clarence-thomas-private-trips-gop-harlan-crow

    Mango Unchained swung by DC and it was hyped like a victorious military general returning to Rome, really gross shit, the media isn’t even gonna bother to try this year: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/us/politics/trump-milwaukee-rnc.html

  3. That “Paddington in Peru” movie! Oh my God. That cast list. Not one but two actors who played QEII in “The Crown.” My father-in-law, Lord Grantham/Hugh Bonneville. My heartthrob Ben Whishaw as the voice of Paddington. And so many more. This is Britain at its finest. Sadly it looks like the movie won’t be released before the general election on 4 July. It would surely cheer up the electorate and maybe things wouldn’t look so dour.

    I was thinking of voting and elections. Macron just called one in France in the wake of his party’s disastrous performance in the EU parliament elections, although why that really matters I don’t know. Eurovision probably has more of an impact on most Europeans’ lives. In any event, the second, decisive run-off will be on 7 July. There are at least a couple of others that I’m forgetting.

    And then we will have our own. I haven’t been this enthusiastic since…well, aside from Obama’s historic win in 2008 I haven’t been particularly enthusiastic about any presidential election since I’ve been of voting age. Problem is I keep backing losers. Jerry Brown in 1992. Bernie Sanders in 2016. I campaigned for Aunt Ada/Miranda Hobbes/Cynthia Nixon for Governor. I’m volunteering for Biden now, as much as I can, but it’s another one of those elections where people aren’t for a particular candidate as against one.

    You know, you look at old newsreels and you see the mobs, thousands deep, turning out for FDR, chanting “I Like Ike,” swooning in the presence of JFK. Those massive open-air Obama rallies. You really only see that now at Trump rallies. Or at least that’s how the media portrays it.

    I’m often reminded of a misquote attributed to Pauline Kael, who was the “New Yorker” film critic for the better part of a century 36 years. She mused, in a lecture or talk, about how Nixon won in such a landslide in 1972 when she didn’t know anyone who voted for him. Her actual quote is more subtle and self-aware than this, but I know how she felt. For all of Hillary’s flaws as a campaigner, and there were many, let’s face it, to wake up on that November morning in 2016 and learn that Donald J. Trump was our next president was more than a little startling, at least for me. But I am like Pauline Kael. I don’t think I know anyone who voted for him. Maybe a few far-flung relatives out in the hinterlands but no one I know socially. The bubble. I am in the bubble.

    • …my theory on the french thing is that there’s a characteristic bit of pique in there…he looked at the EU vote & figured “that’s a protest vote, right there” & decided not to let it stew while the various hostile interests that are the sharks infesting the media waters these days to go getting the water pink & frothy in feeding frenzy mode before skipping to that heads-up final round where the posturing traditionally quits…borderline noble since there seemed scant likelihood of him not losing the gig…last I checked it looked like a duopoly from the left had clubbed together & once whoever winds up endorsing whoever for the final two shakes out…fingers crossed le pen goes back in her (larger than it used to be) box for a bit?

      …mind you…I share your difficulty keeping track of how many elections are popping off in how many places this year…it’s like that conjunction of planets thing…2024 put a historic number of balls in the air to the point where I forget even which ones are in play & which are more or less foregone conclusions

      …the india thing was a nice surprise, though

      …kinda made me begin to wonder if there might be some marginal gains to sedate my concerns with before november rolls around…if, say, the UK punt the tories into a ditch & the french give their left wing a turn…along with clipping modi’s wings…even after the lurch to the right in terms of the EU parliament…it’d still seem like not-fucking-trump would remain the game that’s for basically all the marbles…but it might at least seem like we hadn’t all lost all of ours

      …then again…if sanity claws back some of the bigger EU players in domestic admin terms…while the brussels contingent gets yanked around by wing nuts…the odds on the whole federal edifice tearing itself to bits go up…&…I’m not the biggest fan of the EU when you get into the implementation of the thing…which seems open to some legitimate critiques…but in a sense that’s parallel to the UN…the senses in which it makes it harder for europe to go to war with itself the old-fashioned way are worth quite a bit to my way of thinking?

      …basically…to continue to mix metaphors like I’ve had an accident with a blender…there’s so many plates spinning this year that it feels like my best case scenarios all come down to minimizing the busted shards on the floor when the new year rolls in…keeping all of them intact never really got a look in?

    • We all live in bubbles. The MAGAts who freaked out in 2020 assumed Trump won going to bed, but the numbers changed with the mail-in votes and Biden won.

      MAGAts kept pointing at the small numbers of people at Joe’s rallies (ignoring the zoom viewers) but not equating that Joe was being socially responsible unlike Trump’s CoVID ego driven superspreader events (which would kill a lot of Trump’s voters including Herman Cain.)

      They only looked at visual “evidence” as pointed out by wingnut media and Trump not all the extenuating circumstances. How Trump shit on mail-in ballots which again blew up in his well deserved face.

      I could on and on verbatim about how Joe Biden “stole” the election because I heard all this shit regurgitated by my now un-friended on Facebook dipshit wingnut acquaintance (who quixotically sez he has brain damage from a skiing accident as a kid and claims to be the smartest most aware person in my social circle. I believe the brain damage because he’s made some really poor life choices and horrible decisions, yet he’s still okay thanks to his family’s money.)

      • It’s too bad that Elmo unfriended you, Manchu…

        But ya *really* should’ve hit him with a MUCH bigger snowball, when you had the chance!

        😉

  4. So about that SCOTUS ruling the other day, I was shocked about two things, and really fucking irritated about one.  Shocked that they actually ruled against the plaintiffs–and really shocked that it was unanimous.  Really fucking irritated that the right winger’s justification was that they lacked standing.  Um…all those fuckers that you ruled in favor of to overturn Roe?  NONE OF THOSE FUCKERS HAD STANDING EITHER.  They should have just stayed on brand and have Roberts and whomever drew the short straw that week to rule with the liberals.

    • It’s clear that the Supremes will say whatever they need to say to justify the outcome that they want. In this case, they punted. By saying there wasn’t standing, that frees up the forced-birth maniacs to bring another case after the election, when the Supremes will then drop the hammer on the drug.

      I think the unanimous part stems from both Alito and Thomas getting scared that they’ve pushed their untouchable status too far. Neither one wanted to be hanging out there if Democrats take over in November.

        • Indeed.

          ProPublica Reporter Defends Work After Samuel Alito Accuses Outlet of Politically Motivated Coverage

          Alito told a filmmaker posing as a conservative activist that ProPublica “gets a lot of money” to dig up “any little thing they can find,” suggesting the reporting was politically motivated. That notion “is just wrong,” says Justin Elliott, one of the lead ProPublica journalists reporting on the Supreme Court. “We took a very hard look at the Democratic-appointed justices, and we simply haven’t found anything close to similar to what we found when it came to Justice Thomas and Justice Alito.” He also says the Senate Judiciary Committee has power it is not currently using to investigate the court amid the ongoing ethics scandal. “There’s really no reason to believe that we actually know all the facts about what these justices have gotten.”

          • A nation’s eyes turns to you… Senator and head of the judicial committee, Dick “DICK” Durbin

    • …it’s about of a piece with their arguments not having a leg to stand on

      …if newton saw further because he was standing on the shoulders of giants…the right side of roberts’ bench see what they see because they’re all using sky hooks like wonka’s glass elevator…no giants required…or standing…& you get to move in dimensions not normally available for that sort of ride?

    • I just assumed they were worried the same precedent with the abortion drugs could be applied to things like boner pills.

    • The judge who issued the initial nationwide ban, Matthew Kacsmaryk, is one of the most extreme rightwing ultra activist judges in the country.

      He’s also widely cited as being groomed for the Supreme Court by Trump’s kitchen cabinet, and at 47 he would be there for an eternity.

      And he’s not just an extremist on abortion – gay rights, civil rights, the environment, corporate oversight – he wants it all to burn. He has zero interest in precedent or procedure, and he’s just one of the people the GOP eould install.

  5. Today in math (or maths, for RIP):

    78% of Republicans Is One in Five Americans

    SO, I saw the headline this morning that 78% of Republicans think Trump 47 would be better than Trump 45. As usual, the initial personal impact is WTF? Who are these people? After The Big Lie, J6, the indictments and now 34 convictions? Really?

    78% of Republicans sounds like a big number. It seems like a scary number of people who look at the current snippets of the Orange Shitgibbon and think, “Damn, can’t wait for us to get some more of that.”

    • Not entirely fair as I’ve know some pretty smart farmers, but considering how much Trump loves the stupids… we know what the vast majority of his base are.

  7. I honestly think this Hunter Biden conviction is seriously backfiring for the Republicans. For one, it’s a stark contrast in watching the Bidens accept the decision and watching a big orange toddler pitch tantrums. For another, I think the public is feeling extremely sympathetic toward Hunter.

    Hunter Biden drops lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani over laptop data

    • And despite it all Joe wants Hunter to get help.

      Meanwhile… Donald Trump as played by Mr Pewterschmidt and Don Don Jr as played by Peter Griffin.

    • As some people have said in various ways: Nobody knows someone who paid off a porn star to lie about having an affair … but lots of people know a drug addict, and plenty more have probably themselves lied (or not been 100% accurate) on a form. People just aren’t going to view those crimes the same way!

  10. I stayed up way too late hate-watching Bridgerton last night. I have opinions but will refrain from spoiling anything. Can we make a special DS gab session post in (diss)honour of Bridgerton? How many of us are watching it?

    • I’m watching. I’ve got about an episode and a half to go. Can’t get to it tonight so probably tomorrow we’ll finish it.

    • I need at least another day before I can watch it.

      Maybe my Sunday NOT?

       

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