TGIF [DOT 26/1/24]

26/1/24 MegMegMcGee 30

More of my favorite song

Jan. 6 rioter got his sentence thrown out. Then his prison time doubled.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/01/25/jan-6-sentence-misdemeanor/

When is his gravy filled heart going to explode?

Trump takes stand and gives brief testimony in E Jean Carroll trial
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/25/e-jean-carroll-defamation-trial-trump-covid

Stonks! [This is a gift article. I recently discovered that my dad pays for home delivery of the WSJ (to his house in Cleveland). The price is $600 so I signed up for online access to get some of his money’s worth.]

What Recession? Growth Ended Up Accelerating in 2023
https://www.wsj.com/economy/gdp-us-economy-fourth-quarter-2023-9fc372f0?st=80k3s7oqkltzsxl&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Sprots!

WWE Founder Vince McMahon Accused of Sexual Abuse and Trafficking in Lawsuit by Former Employee

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/wwe-founder-vince-mcmahon-accused-173559427.html

Kids never lie!

Florida advances law banning children under 16 from using social media
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/25/florida-social-media-teenager-ban-bill

This is crazy…

Mystery deepens over Kansas City men found dead in friend’s frozen backyard
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/24/kansas-city-men-deaths-backyard

I’m back from Florida!

Have a great day all!

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30 Comments

  1. Oh no. The snoots!

    The WSJ is $600 a year? I used to buy it from newsstands every so often but I don’t remember it being all that expensive. Although that was right after movable type was invented by Gutenberg.

    On 9/11 they were publishing out of the World Financial Center, which is now a high-end mall/restaurant complex. That’s across the street from the World Trade Center. It’s also where American Express used to be. It sustained considerable damage from the collapse of the towers and they fled across the river to New Jersey and still managed to put out an edition for September 12th.

    So did the Times. The now-disgraced Howell Raines had just taken over and he was the one who dreamed up the “Portraits in Grief” feature. Those were mini-obituaries of the victims that dribbled out in the days and weeks following. I used to save that for when I got home. I had a very civilized job, so I usually left around 5 and often beat BH home, so I’d walk the dog and then read “Portraits in Grief,” and he’d come home to find me sobbing at our kitchen table…

    There was a very funny obit of a woman, a secretary/executive assistant, who loved to play pranks on her boss. At some point he asked her to take a pair of shoes in to be repaired and so she had them bronzed. I’m laughing at that story even now, 22+ years later.

    • Can’t speak specifically to the WSJ price but if you live outside the core market (or not near a national printing center) that’s about the going rate for a subscription. Even little daily papers are probably $1 a day for a sub in most places!

  3. WWE is one fucked up organization. Between the kiddie rape in the 70s-90s and the disgusting revelations in the 2000s-2020s…

    Whatever enjoyment I had as a kid watching this… just ugh.

      • I like to think that it would matter in the international sense that Trudeau said Canada would abide by the ICJ ruling. And possibly some other countries could use it as an excuse to stop supporting Israel in a  “Aw shucks, the ICJ has our hands tied.” kind of way. And that that would snowball into formal international not-support of Israel. But I’ll keep dreaming.

  5. The kids lying about social media is obviously true, but I also suspect parents will lie, too. Lots are going to go “What’s the harm in this? Let him watch Tik-Tok.”

    It’s pretty much the stupidest law ever, so it’s only right and proper that Florida came up with it.

    • Yeah, I mean, we know social media is a fucking disaster for kids, but how precisely does DeSantis plan to enforce it?  Requiring the companies to verify ages?  Sure, that will work just fine.  No way to game that system.

      • Also, it works to keep kids uninformed and unable to communicate. That’s their primary source for news and information. So of course authoritarians want to cut that off.

        DeSantis is ground zero for destroying education of any type, even self-education.

    • It’s downright hilarious to see Instagram ads over the past few months about how the company is fully behind a national law that allows parents to approve social media apps for kids. Of course they are; Tik Tok is eating their fucking lunch and they’re banking on parents being against letting kids download the “Chinese app” rather than the good-ol-American-‘Gram.

      In DeSantis’ case, it’s all about the bitter divorced dad/grandfather vote — why won’t these kids spend time with me so I can harangue them about not spending enough time with me?!

    • You know, much as I love your commentary about Flori-duh, have you ever considered moving? This isn’t like Medieval Europe. We’re not feudal peasants tethered to a particular plot of land.

      When we owned our little place down there we’d go every year right after Christmas. I was an avid reader of the “Miami Herald” and the “Miami New Times.” I don’t remember anything particularly strange about any of it. I also would read a Spanish-language newspaper, maybe the Spanish version of the “Herald,” and that was a little weird, because of Cuban American politics down there, but…maybe it was because the governors, as I recall, were JEB! and Charlie Crist, and they’re not insane.

      • Actually, yes. I could live anywhere. Problem is, my wife’s job is in-person. She’s got to show up for work. And she really, really, really doesn’t want to job hunt again. We both got very lucky after our recent terminations and we’re in good places, so she’s not interested in rolling the dice. And we can’t retire yet. Plus the kid is in college and while that’s not a deal-breaker, us moving away and leaving her here would involve a bunch of other issues (she’d need a car, for example). We’ve also got my mother-in-law bumbling around, and my wife has to supervise her. Being far away would make that difficult.

        But yeah, it’s definitely in the back of my mind. And honestly, if this gang of idiots in charge fucks things up much worse, it may force our hand. Homeowners’ insurance is skyrocketing, and you’ve got the ongoing climate change problems. Living in Florida makes less and less financial sense.

        • Our state has so many Texas & Florida refugees these days.  Pretty surprising they chose here since our weather is the exact opposite of those states.

      • Of course. Family ties. It was easy enough for me to graduate from college and lure Better Half into perfidious Gotham but at that point he only had his mother back in the ancestral homeland and she had her girl gang so he felt comfortable enough leaving her. And she was happy for him, like my mother and siblings were happy for me. They didn’t exactly understand it. Why wouldn’t you marry a white woman and buy a little Cape Cod or ranch house like they did, and then maybe expand it so it took on McMansion dimensions. My mother, ironically, despite our stormy past, was my biggest cheerleader. She adored Better Half, and she was probably glad to off-load me to a smart, successful, well-to-do 22-year-old junior executive. Oh my God. We were so young. Oh well, it worked out.

  6. Centrist Right wing No Labels  Trump dark money fund sued by real estate family for bait and switch.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/us/politics/durst-no-labels-lawsuit-election-donors.html

    NYC developers Douglas and Jonathan Durat are suing the group over an old $145,000 donation they said was solicited for promoting bipartisanship but was actually used to push a third party run.

    The byline signals the real story. Maggie Haberman knows this is chump change for these people, and that the suit is going nowhere. And there’s no way she’d report this if it was a good government  group like Common Cause filing the suit on their own. She wouldn’t even take their calls.

    This is a hit job. Some PR rep with connections has packaged this specifically for the NY Times, which the paper could wrap up in their usual eyebrow raised neutral language, but putting Haberman on the sole byline is the Times saying, like an edict from Queen Victoria, We Do Not Approve. They’re basically telling the donor class this has shifted from vague bad policy to bad business.

    To be clear, it’s genuinely good that this hack front group is getting bad PR. They deserve all the hit jobs they can face.

    It’s just interesting to see how the monied class does their business, and who they can hire to do it for them.

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