Friday, March 31, 2023
Atrios, WRONG
Fair to say I was skeptical that Godot would ever arrive, that Chuck would ever kick the football.
In This Ohio Diner (And the NYT Offices) It Doesn't Feel Like it
Not surprising to me, a dumb city blogger.
A majority of Americans (56%) think the investigations into former President Donald Trump are fair. 41%, though, consider the probes to be a “witch hunt.” Perceptions align closely with partisanship with 87% of Democrats and 51% of independents reporting the investigations are above board. Nearly one in five Republicans (18%) agree. Most Republicans (80%), though, think the investigations are a “witch hunt.”
Most Americans perceive Trump has engaged in improper behavior. A plurality of Americans (46%) think the former president has done something illegal, and an additional 29% consider Trump to have done something unethical but not illegal. Only 23% of Americans say Trump has done nothing wrong.
Hierarchies
One thing I've appreciated more and more with age is how much our elites tend to share the conservative view of the inviolate nature of "natural" hierarchies. For more liberal leaning (as self-identified) people, they make this sound more pleasing by calling it "meritocracy" so we can pretend this is about individual achievement rather than inherited privilege and other forms of luck, but "meritocracy" (both conceptually and certainly as a description of reality) is just the same bullshit repackaged.
The president's the top dog, no one can touch him.
The president's the top dog, no one can touch him.
Elite Impunity
The most you could say is there are some questions about how the legal system is supposed to deal with potential abuses of presidential power (is impeachment the "only" way). I think this is dumb, also, but OK it's not an insane question.
"The president shot a child live on TV at a news conference" is not even in that ballpark, and certainly "the president shot a child before he was even president" isn't.
That Trump being elected president should give him a "CAN DO CRIMES NOW, ALSO PREVIOUS CRIMES DON'T MATTER EITHER" card is a completely absurd argument that *only* our illustrious political journalists take seriously, or even pretend to.
"The president shot a child live on TV at a news conference" is not even in that ballpark, and certainly "the president shot a child before he was even president" isn't.
That Trump being elected president should give him a "CAN DO CRIMES NOW, ALSO PREVIOUS CRIMES DON'T MATTER EITHER" card is a completely absurd argument that *only* our illustrious political journalists take seriously, or even pretend to.
The Lede
I would like Baker to list all of the crimes past presidents did. "What other crimes are you referring to?" I'm not against the idea that our presidents have been on an uninterrupted crime spree but perhaps he could tell us what he's thinking of.
If the president shoots a child live on camera during the press conference, is "not prosecuting him" or "prosecuting him" the test of democracy? It shouldn't take an extreme example to make this obvious point.
Trump wasn't even president when the money was paid to Daniels. Baker is just asserting the supposed norm of a lifetime retroactive personal Purge card.I feel like the actual "test of democracy" was having a president who committed crimes constantly?https://t.co/BB7LWkzYYs pic.twitter.com/HWkzNZHYDv
— Michael Hobbes (@RottenInDenmark) March 31, 2023
If the president shoots a child live on camera during the press conference, is "not prosecuting him" or "prosecuting him" the test of democracy? It shouldn't take an extreme example to make this obvious point.
Thursday, March 30, 2023
Cops Love Talking About Fentanyl
Probably a common thing.
SAN JOSE -- The executive director of the San Jose Police Officers' Association (SJPOA) has been charged with attempting to illegally import synthetic opioids into the U.S. for mass distribution, according to federal authorities.
Our Sister Organization
Consider how the rest of mainstream journlists treat Fox employees (because they are their friends) and Fox the institution (because they pay well, and everyone might need a future job), relative to how much they freaked out when someone let the Huffington Post in the room (just an example, there are numerous ones).
Don't See How Donnie...
Grand jury is disappearing for a month. I haven't seen one journalist (I could have missed it!) say they had any information about a "looming indictment" aside from Trump's claims and speculation surrounding them.
Cult Leader
People don't appreciate how deep into our politics these guys were getting.
Haven't seen any of them go back and address whether they got scammed, because that's not how they roll.
How does this man have this position at Oxford? The answer, of course, is money.
Despite formal attempts by Alameda Research staff to push Bankman-Fried out at the time, figures including Oxford professor William MacAskill continued publicly burnishing the FTX founder’s image as he built one of the largest financial frauds of all time. MacAskill and others were ultimately rewarded for their defense of Bankman-Fried’s behavior in the form of funding and prestige as FTX appeared to succeed in later years.
This was not a matter of dismissed rumors and personal grudges, but of well-documented corporate processes derailed, in part, by people whose entire careers are premised on cultivating moral action. In April 2018, four top Alameda managers called a meeting to offer Bankman-Fried a buyout to leave the hedge fund, based on already-extensive concerns about his disdain for basic corporate processes and accounting.
...
According to Time, MacAskill was warned about Bankman-Fried’s behavior and the plan to oust him. So were Nick Beckstead, an EA-aligned moral philosopher, and Holden Karnofsky, co-CEO of EA-centric funding platform OpenPhilanthropy. MacAskill didn’t just dismiss the allegations against Bankman-Fried but “basically threatened” those raising the concerns, according to Naia Bouscal, a former software engineer at Alameda.All those PR placed pieces, dutifully retyped by reporters, about how Will was some sort of monastic saint.
Haven't seen any of them go back and address whether they got scammed, because that's not how they roll.
How does this man have this position at Oxford? The answer, of course, is money.
Like all tumors, this one should be excised: MacAskill’s continued presence at Oxford, in particular, is a nasty, dripping blemish on the face of the entire field of academic philosophy.Reporters often love investigating nasty goings on in academia, but not this one for some reason!
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
"Mascot"
Billionaire Howard Schultz, the anti-union architect of Starbucks, will testify today on allegations that the company has been breaking labor laws — and Sen. Bernie Sanders, a mascot of the union movement, will question him.https://t.co/xRlYgSY3wy
— NPR (@NPR) March 29, 2023
Claw It Back
Doesn't seem quite right.
Forbes has learned that Bankman-Fried has been paying legal fees from a multi-million dollar gift he gave his father with money borrowed from FTX’s sister company.
In 2021, while CEO of FTX, Bankman-Fried made a large monetary gift to his father, Stanford Law professor Joseph Bankman, two sources with operational knowledge of both companies told Forbes. It was funded by a loan from the exchange’s trading firm, Alameda Research, they said.
8 Can't Wait
.@FOP7Chicago President John Catanzara tells @jonathanweisman of the @nytimes that 800 to 1,000 Chicago Police officers will resign if @Brandon4Chicago is elected mayor & there will be “blood in the streets.” https://t.co/WBlrr4CnZt
— Heather Cherone (@HeatherCherone) March 28, 2023
Quality of Life
I don't assume all younger people have Atrios-approved politics, but I do know red state politicians are trying very hard to make their states uninhabitable for them. Not abnormal for some young people to want to flee wherever they are from, but these politicians are ensuring it.
Who Is On Your Side
I do my best not to pretend I am the official micromanager of The Democrats, but national Dems have been, generally, a bit too quiet on what are erroneously dubbed "culture war" issues lately.
Tuesday, March 28, 2023
Systemic Risk
System Risk, you see, is when a rich guy might lose a yacht, then all the people who work on his yacht might lose their jobs.
The Pundit Candidate
Journalists are once again trying to make Chris Christie a thing, a totally standard practice for governors who leave office with 15% approval.
Innovation
SV guys still love to talk about all the INNOVATION they do but it's been years since I've seen hype around even "reinventing the bus for the 7th time" type products. The innovation has all been innovations in various kinds of financial fraud and some of that is starting to unwind a bit. Still most of them will keep their yachts because Larry Summers will make sure of it.
What if fake money, but you get a cartoon ape???
The NFT "craze" - and the number of Very Serious People who pretended to think it was a real thing because you don't get to be a Very Serious Person by ever questioning what rich people are saying - was the stupidest thing since Colin Powell held up his vial of baby powder.
The NFT "craze" - and the number of Very Serious People who pretended to think it was a real thing because you don't get to be a Very Serious Person by ever questioning what rich people are saying - was the stupidest thing since Colin Powell held up his vial of baby powder.
Heads I Win, Tails The Government Bails Me Out, And I Also Win
15 years after the global financial crisis, we are still doing this. "Me" being the "me" that is a billionaire, not the actual me, of course.
That Larry Summers, who is responsible for more human misery in the United States than maybe any other prson alive, gets to keep being the top lobbyist for reach people with little pushback either from his media sycophants or the assholes in the Biden administration (they aren't all assholes, the ones who are) is maddening.
Gonna put on a tricorne hat and throw some tea into the harbor.
That Larry Summers, who is responsible for more human misery in the United States than maybe any other prson alive, gets to keep being the top lobbyist for reach people with little pushback either from his media sycophants or the assholes in the Biden administration (they aren't all assholes, the ones who are) is maddening.
Gonna put on a tricorne hat and throw some tea into the harbor.
Free Money For Billionaires
Larry Summers is up to his thick neck with the Silicon Valley scammers, and I should've known that when he went on TV and said "oh, everything will be fine, AS LONG AS EVERYBODY [friends and business partners of Larry] GETS ALL THEIR MONEY BACK" that the fix was in.
Shame on all the journalists who ran their PR-placed OH NO A SMALL BUSINESS IS WORRIED ABOUT MAKING PAYROLL stories. Those small businesses never had anything to worry about, and "we" only worry about such things when a billionaire might lose his 3rd yacht.Think of it this way: the FDIC could have extended deposit insurance to $20 million. An eighty-fold increase.
— david dayen (@david_dayen) March 28, 2023
They STILL would have saved over $13 billion from bailing out these 10 depositors.
Monday, March 27, 2023
Works Every Time
I remember when Scalia's Heller decision came down, and many Very Sensible Liberals argued that it was actually a good thing. The reasoning was that by clarifying the existence of an individual gun right, the Gun Nuts would stop being such paranoid lunatics and would chill. Since the decision did make clear that some regulation was perfectly constitutional, everybody wins! Gun nuts are happy, liberal gun regulations are happy! Right! Everybody's happy, right!
Needless to say the gun nuts are never pacified, no "compromise" (to the extent that one could imagine that in any sense was) is fixed. Clear moves to the right are just turns of the ratchet when everybody who matters keep accepting them.
Needless to say the gun nuts are never pacified, no "compromise" (to the extent that one could imagine that in any sense was) is fixed. Clear moves to the right are just turns of the ratchet when everybody who matters keep accepting them.
Don't See How
Will we ever find out if all the 'indictment' talk last week came from anything other than Trump seeking attention? Great week for journalism.
Zients Zucks
Sadly predictable.
Perhaps that’s no surprise: These Obama-style policies have coincided with a major change atop the White House hierarchy of personnel. In late January, progressive ally Ron Klain announced he’d be stepping down as chief of staff; he was replaced by former corporate consultant and Obama apparatchik Jeffrey Zients. Zients has also brought Obama alums Anita Dunn and Steve Ricchetti—both effectively former lobbyists who have been criticized for evading the ethics constraints put on lobbyists—into greater decision-making positions.
Not A Priority
No idea about all the behind the scenes stuff at the Texas Observer, but I do know that supporting a legacy liberal publication costs about as much as one quickly forgotten ad buy in a mid-tier Senate race and yet...
To the extent that anyone with money throws it at "media," rich donors like shiny new things which they usually quickly forget about, and hate anything with any tiny chance of being effective because they can't 100% control the message.
One rich guy, dubbed "The Real Thing" by one substacker, did throw a lot of money at some media outlets recently. His name was Sam Bankman-Fried.
To the extent that anyone with money throws it at "media," rich donors like shiny new things which they usually quickly forget about, and hate anything with any tiny chance of being effective because they can't 100% control the message.
One rich guy, dubbed "The Real Thing" by one substacker, did throw a lot of money at some media outlets recently. His name was Sam Bankman-Fried.
8 Can't Wait
The important thing is to do everything possible to undermine the activists and small number of politicians who were on board with real reform efforts, especially at a time when the public was, miraculously, largely behind them.
Kansas City Police leaders allegedly ordered officers to target minority neighborhoods to meet ticket quotas — telling them to be “ready to kill everybody in the car” — and to only respond to calls for help in white neighborhoods.
Did He Do Crimes
French is a complete fraud of a man so I have no interest in ENGAGING WITH HIS IDEAS.
I've been going on about how DC culture requires everyone to pretend that obvious liars are not, that "arguments," such as they are somehow rise or fall independent of the intentions and honest of the people making them. Centrist dipshits are remarkably susceptible to sophists. They are, as I have said, the biggest marks of all. Either that or if we remove sophistry from their toolbox, they have nothing left. Protecting the status of lies and liars is self-preservation.
An enhancement of that is the expectation that we take people who proclaim their religiosity extra seriously.
Anyhow, I don't think it's in the remit of local, state, and even federal prosecutors to make decisions based on some notion of The Good Of The Nation As Imagined By David French (or anyone). Nor does anyone pretending to think otherwise.
Sunday, March 26, 2023
Political
For some odd reason, prosecuting Trump for the crimes everyone knows he did would be very political - deep in those waters! - but NOT prosecuting him would not be.
They just drop a hammer on the heads of NYT reporters every time they walk in the building.
Aligned Incentives
One reason I hope Meatball Ron goes down is so I can laugh at all the access journalists made their career bets on him.
Not the most important reason.
Saturday, March 25, 2023
Academics
Most of my friends are, but 'normal rules shouldn't apply to me because reasons' is a bit too common.
One of the 27 FTX creditors who want to participate in the bankruptcy process without being identified is an academic who rather unfortunately started using FTX a few weeks before it collapsed and doesn’t want anyone to know of their unusual wealthhttps://t.co/TwLyIBVtas pic.twitter.com/3z0UQngRRA
— kadhim (＾ｰ^)ノ (@kadhim) March 25, 2023
Incitement
I really do hate powerful people who encourage (subtly or not so subtly) others to do violence on their behalf, whether it's politicians or media figures. That's an obvious thing to hate, of course. Encouraging violence is generally bad (including, generally, encouraging the US military to do it). But something extra gross about rich assholes doing it from the comfort of TV studios.
Friday, March 24, 2023
SNL Stars Of A Certain Era
I was thinking all the worst ones were Xers, but actually they tend to be the youngest boomers (not that the line really matters).
8 Can't Wait
No way I can really justify this feeling, but I actually do get the sense that "death is final, people get one go, and killing them is a big deal" is less understood than it was not so long ago.
Fairfax County police announced Thursday that they will fire an officer who fatally shot an unarmed Black man outside Tysons Corner Center last month in an encounter that an attorney for the man’s family described as an “execution.”That a cop being fired (and likely rehired elsewhere) is generally the biggest possible consequence...
PPP Fraud
You really had to fuck up to get busted for it.
A former Florida lawmaker pleaded guilty Tuesday to wire fraud, money laundering and making false statements in connection with Covid-19 relief fraud, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.
Former Republican state Rep. Joseph Harding acquired more than $150,000 in Small Business Administration loans by lying on loan applications, the department said.
They Don't Care
With book banning going on all over the country and state universities being taken over by conservative authoritarians who are limiting fields of study and course content in various ways, people regularly ask, WHERE ARE THE FREE SPEECH WARRIORS?
Most of the free speech warriors don't care about public school kids in Florida, or state university students anywhere. It took me a long time to understand this, but most of these people really do think liberal education is a luxury that only the rich should have access to, and everyone else should go to trade school.
Most of the free speech warriors don't care about public school kids in Florida, or state university students anywhere. It took me a long time to understand this, but most of these people really do think liberal education is a luxury that only the rich should have access to, and everyone else should go to trade school.
They wouldn't say "rich" and they might even believe they just mean "top students" as of course meritocracy is real, but they mean the top <%5 of students as defined by our biased sorting hat, most of whom are, of course, rich.
The seeds of this was planted in the general war on humanities and the promotion of STEM. After blaming African-Americans for taking out bad mortgages for the financial crisis, they moved on to blaming the Great Recession on students getting "useless" degrees. The consequences of this are pretty obvious now that our tech overlords believe the chatbots are their new sentient friends.
There's no hypocrisy in Harvard philosophy grads telling everyone to "learn to code" or whatever. They mean everyone else!
Morning
[Sees tweet of Trump threatening Bragg with a baseball bat]
Don't see how Donnie Two Scoops will wriggle out of this one!
Don't see how Donnie Two Scoops will wriggle out of this one!
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Stories You Probably Won't See In The New York Times
It's forbidden to acknowledge that our objectitudinal newspapers of course have "agendas" or, if you wish, "editorial agendas," but of course they do. They can't not! The New York Times has a clear from-the-top agenda of demonizing all treatment for trans people, and trans people themselves. The questions THEY KEEP ASKING JUST ASKING QUESTIONS are answerable, but they aren't interested in hearing them.
Gotta Go
The lack of public restrooms in the US is maddening. Every now and then some city will spend $87 million on a toilet prototype, install one, and call it a day (this is a slight exaggeration, maybe). We know how to build toilets and we know how to pay people to clean them. And, sadly, toilet cleaners probably don't even cost all that much!
It isn't complicated.
It isn't complicated.
America's Worst Humans
Jon Chait.
Chait may be the most unreconstructed of all (with the exception, perhaps, of Stephens), in his argumentative mode. In one of his recent trans-panic specials, he recreates his most notorious pro-war pieces almost frame-for-frame: He expresses his sympathy with the goals of the left (peace/protecting trans children), then accuses them of undermining their allegedly shared goal with extremism and bad manners (calling Bush a liar/writing angry letters to the New York Times). And he does this on the basis of mendacious, ideologically-driven intelligence, which he takes at face value: WMDs in the former case, an activist gender clinic “whistleblower” in the other.
The Ron and Don Show
I do wish political reporters would explain why a good 50% of political news right now is about Ron and Don trading barbs, implicitly (Ron, mostly) or explicitly (Don, of course).
A Lot Of People Died
After the WMD rationale for Iraq fizzled, we rebranded the invasion as a mission to spread Freeance and Peeance. This was cynical bullshit, of course, as absolutely no one involved with that little endeavor was someone you would trust not to piss on a homeless person for laughs.
The funny thing about Bretbug Stephens is no one really cares what he writes. Unlike some other conservatives, it's mostly pointing and laughing because he's repetitive, predictable, and dumb. The man phones it in, and he has nothing to say.
His latest on how the Iraq war was Good, Akshually, does a neat trick of putting any blame for "misery" and "suffering" (the word "deaths" is not used) on the occupied, rather than the occupiers.
As I said, Bretbug doesn't make me mad, though the editor who gave him his job does, a bit, but we shouldn't take any moral lessons from people whose cruelty to their fellow Americans is never disguised, let alone what they actually think about the lives of off-white foreigners.
More broadly, any of these assholes - the ones who are at best indifferent to the plight of their fellow hu-mans - who opine on any policy whatsoever should be ignored. They don't care how it impacts people other than them, and any pretense otherwise is a lie.
The funny thing about Bretbug Stephens is no one really cares what he writes. Unlike some other conservatives, it's mostly pointing and laughing because he's repetitive, predictable, and dumb. The man phones it in, and he has nothing to say.
His latest on how the Iraq war was Good, Akshually, does a neat trick of putting any blame for "misery" and "suffering" (the word "deaths" is not used) on the occupied, rather than the occupiers.
As I said, Bretbug doesn't make me mad, though the editor who gave him his job does, a bit, but we shouldn't take any moral lessons from people whose cruelty to their fellow Americans is never disguised, let alone what they actually think about the lives of off-white foreigners.
More broadly, any of these assholes - the ones who are at best indifferent to the plight of their fellow hu-mans - who opine on any policy whatsoever should be ignored. They don't care how it impacts people other than them, and any pretense otherwise is a lie.
Unsafe At Any Speed
Even before we get to actual individual behavior (which isn't entirely independent)and whether that has somehow changed, the bigger and taller vehicles are just incompatible with pedestrians.
There was a time when I was a bit more optimistic that car dependency, and all of the various policies which necessitate it, was at least starting to trend in a better direction for various reasons. Pretty pessimistic now! Electric cars won't save us, kids.
I know "smug urbanist" has become an annoying online type, and I get that, but while I don't need to live in "Paris" or "New York" or even a major city of any kind, necessarily, I can't fathom living somewhere I can't walk or take a quick bus ride for most of my regular wants/needs.
When I was in LA recently, some old friends had a party so we went. We were staying in DTLA and their party was around Silver Lake somewhere. I actually had a car for some of the time I was there, but public transit from DTLA is actually pretty good, and it was a quick bus ride, so we took the bus.
That was seen as a very strange thing to do!
There was a time when I was a bit more optimistic that car dependency, and all of the various policies which necessitate it, was at least starting to trend in a better direction for various reasons. Pretty pessimistic now! Electric cars won't save us, kids.
I know "smug urbanist" has become an annoying online type, and I get that, but while I don't need to live in "Paris" or "New York" or even a major city of any kind, necessarily, I can't fathom living somewhere I can't walk or take a quick bus ride for most of my regular wants/needs.
When I was in LA recently, some old friends had a party so we went. We were staying in DTLA and their party was around Silver Lake somewhere. I actually had a car for some of the time I was there, but public transit from DTLA is actually pretty good, and it was a quick bus ride, so we took the bus.
That was seen as a very strange thing to do!
The Chickenshit Club
"We" don't talk enough about the mafia-like corruption at the top levels of society. You don't prosecute rich people because then you're the guy who prosecuted rich people, and suddenly the golden job opportunities that were supposed to materialize for you and your family and your friends just don't.
People often talk about "fear" - and it's in the name there, "chickenshit" - but really it's more just basic corruption. Or, more gently, basic incentives. Don't think every "chickenshit" is corrupt, but the system is.
Not talking about Trump here, as that's a special situation, though chickenshits there too.
People often talk about "fear" - and it's in the name there, "chickenshit" - but really it's more just basic corruption. Or, more gently, basic incentives. Don't think every "chickenshit" is corrupt, but the system is.
Not talking about Trump here, as that's a special situation, though chickenshits there too.
Wednesday, March 22, 2023
And In One Of The Other Crimeing Investigations
We'll see if this gets fast tracked to SCOTUS.
Former President Donald Trump’s defense attorney Evan Corcoran is scheduled to testify Friday before the grand jury investigating classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago after a new order from a federal appeals court, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.We'll see!
The US DC Circuit Court of Appeals said that Corcoran must provide additional testimony and turn over documents about the former president as part of the criminal investigation into possible mishandling of classified documents.
The source said Trump’s side is unlikely to appeal to the Supreme Court.
I Welcome Your Hatred
The CW mentioned in the post below runs concurrently with pieces about how much Trump doesn't want to be prosecuted, and it is a bit hard for both to be true.
Tuesday, March 21, 2023
Nobody Could Have Predicted
People always want to believe the centrist dipshits don't know who their fellow travellers are, but they certainly do and don't care. Much like during the Iraq war!
They Killed An Immense Number Of People
Iraq war mea culpas were a thing about 12 years ago or so, and most of them were along the lines of, "wow how could my immense brain have failed me, no worries, my immense brain will never do that again, because it is so immense." Almost no reckoning with what they caused.
No one today can supply a simple reason for the invasion of Iraq that stands up to the slightest moral or factual scrutiny. Every attempt to provide a rationale for the war is patent sophistry or self-justification. This groundlessness, this inability to situate the war in anything tangible or concrete, is simply because it was based on a lie. More than a single lie, it was based on thoroughgoing hostility towards reality itself. It was based on an absurdly oversimplified ideological picture of the world. It was based on the willful ignorance and manipulation of intelligence. It was based on the fictitious and fanciful idea that Saddam was somehow connected to Osama bin Laden, a falsehood that played on the fears and anger of a wounded and humiliated nation, ready to lash out. It was based on indifference to the actual history and culture of Iraq, as if we could just easily shape another nation to our will. And, perhaps most disturbingly, it was based on the belief that projecting the image of power, of a tough and vengeful nation, was of paramount concern. The planners clearly thought about the war as it would play out on T.V.: in spectacular scenes that would impress audiences at home and abroad. “There are no good targets in Afghanistan; let's bomb Iraq,” Donald Rumsfeld remarked to Richard Clarke — There was just more to blow up.I'd be more forgiving if it wasn't the case that 20 years later, "support for the Iraq war" wasn't still an almost (not quite!) perfect indicator of whether someone is a complete asshole today.
They're Bad People
It's very rude in DC to point out that people are lying for money, because almost everyone is as it's part of their job, and it's incredibly rude to point out that policies have actual consequences like, for example, death.
I suppose the whole social system falls apart if the people within it treat those who supported, for example, wars, as the murderers they are, but that doesn't stop the rest of us.
Actions have consequences, actual people die. It isn't just some abstract debate beloved of a certain type of pundit.
I suppose the whole social system falls apart if the people within it treat those who supported, for example, wars, as the murderers they are, but that doesn't stop the rest of us.
Actions have consequences, actual people die. It isn't just some abstract debate beloved of a certain type of pundit.
Sounds Bad
Antifa rampaging.
Fresno Police Chief Paco Balderrama on Wednesday announced the arrest of five people after a series of bombings in the city. A task force of local police and FBI agents also seized bomb-making components, firearms, methamphetamine and white supremacist paraphernalia, including Nazi flags.
What If They Don't
The New York Times refers to it as a "looming indictment" but as far as I can tell nobody knows for sure or at least can't claim to.
Monday, March 20, 2023
Lifetime Retroactive Purge Card
My belief is that 5 votes on SCOTUS say that Republican presidents do indeed receive one of these. Everybody sure does seem excited, though!
Obvious Consequences
Shrill pro-abortion extremists were long mocked for saying this was inevitable (and what anti-abortion people actually want).
America is in a maternal health crisis. According to new CDC data released this week, the rate of maternal mortality – defined as deaths during pregnancy or within 42 days of giving birth – rose by 40% in 2021. At a rate of 33 deaths for every 100,000 live births, 1,205 women died of maternal causes that year. That rate was more than twice as high for Black women, whose maternal mortality rate was 70 deaths for every 100,000 live births. The latest federal compilation of data from reviews of maternal deaths suggests that 84% were preventable.
Wriggling Out
The theme of the day is that powerful people always wriggle out, while the rest of us suck on it.
Don't See How Donnie Two Scoops Wriggles Out Of This One
We will see!
Atlanta-area prosecutors are considering bringing racketeering and conspiracy charges in connection with Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.
Investigators have a large volume of substantial evidence related to a possible conspiracy from inside and outside the state, including recordings of phone calls, emails, text messages, documents, and testimony before a special grand jury.
Elite Accountability
It is still very rude indeed to suggest that support of the Iraq war should reflect badly on anyone. In fact, the opponents are still the weirdos who tend not to be consulted even now.
The great tragedy of the Iraq war is that disgusting pig people get to remind brain geniuses like Jon Chait what they are responsible for.
Tom Friedman Already Answered This
The New York Times has a big thumbsucker on WHY DID WE INVADE IRAQ which I think could be answered better by any left wing blogger from that period. It of course leaves out the role of The New York Times in making it happen.
But, really, as much as we like to make fun of Tom Friedman, he actually was most correct when he said we invaded Iraq to tell Iraqis, and the world, to suck on America's massive cock and balls.
Tom thought that was a good thing, however.
But, really, as much as we like to make fun of Tom Friedman, he actually was most correct when he said we invaded Iraq to tell Iraqis, and the world, to suck on America's massive cock and balls.
Tom thought that was a good thing, however.
Sunday, March 19, 2023
Guys We Know What You're Doing
All the media "centrists" who love making arguments about how DeSantis is SO MUCH BETTER THAN TRUMP aren't people who have any influence over Republican primary voters and certainly not Republican primary voters who will vote for one of those dudes.
They're just trying to create a permission structure for themselves and their friends to be on Team DeSantis.
They're just trying to create a permission structure for themselves and their friends to be on Team DeSantis.
Guns... Nice
If you look at the t-shirt you'll understand why it isn't school appropriate, no matter what your views of guns fashion are.
Can you believe Hunter Kimbell was disciplined for wearing this shirt in Utah? pic.twitter.com/DKXrfMEkRc
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 18, 2023
In The Old Times
The degree to which "we" seriously debate whether Republican presidents get a lifetime retroactive Purge card is quite interesting!!!
Saturday, March 18, 2023
Don't See How...
As Trump threatens violence and every Republican is trying to intimidate Bragg in various ways, one wonders why "obstruction of justice" isn't on the lips of every reporter. Is a favorite phrase when one of the Clintons is involved.
Full Court PR
The amount of sympathetic
stories about worries of SVB depositors is quite amazing. How do journalsts find them all?
Friday, March 17, 2023
Don't See How Donnie Two Scoops Wriggles Out Of This One!
We'll see!
Local, state and federal law enforcement and security agencies are preparing for the possibility that former President Donald Trump is indicted as early as next week, according to five senior officials familiar with the preparations.
Nothing To See Here
If we called the first hump the GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS, what do we calll the second taller one?
Well this is alarming. Latest reading (Wednesday, March 15): 38% above the 2008 financial crisis max pic.twitter.com/8s1nqifFM5
— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) March 17, 2023
The Heckler's Veto
It has been, for a long time, one of THE GREATEST THREATS TO FREE SPEECH EVER KNOWN, at least when college students do it by shouting down a speaker (in most of such stories, 'shouting down a speaker' was politely protesting outside or turning their backs inside, but nevertheless...).
Letting one busybody ban all the books is, charitably, a version of that. It certainly isn't "parent control of schools" which was what all the Very Serious Pundits told us this stuff was all about approximately one election day ago.
Letting one busybody ban all the books is, charitably, a version of that. It certainly isn't "parent control of schools" which was what all the Very Serious Pundits told us this stuff was all about approximately one election day ago.
I'll Go See That
A bit hard to explain that a concert video is a must see, and perhaps it's the only one, but Stop Making Sense actually is.
Don't See How Donnie Two Scoops Wriggles Out Of This One
We'll see!
At least two dozen people – from Mar-a-Lago resort staff to members of Donald Trump’s inner circle at the Florida estate – have been subpoenaed to testify to a federal grand jury that’s investigating the former president’s handling of classified documents, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CNN.
Thursday, March 16, 2023
Stinky
Make America Florida.
A gargantuan mass of seaweed that formed in the Atlantic Ocean is headed for the shores of Florida and other coastlines throughout the Gulf of Mexico, threatening to dump smelly and potentially dangerous heaps across beaches and put a big damper on tourist season.Nothing like the smell of rotten eggs.
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
Complete Scam
I had missed all the "Effective Altruism" stuff until pretty after the time when SBF imploded, but then I read this New Yorker profile and couldn't believe the reporter was just going along with this obvious grift.
It's a grift! It's a cult!
Leaders of the Effective Altruism movement were repeatedly warned beginning in 2018 that Sam Bankman-Fried was unethical, duplicitous, and negligent in his role as CEO of Alameda Research, the crypto trading firm that went on to play a critical role in what federal prosecutors now say was among the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history. They apparently dismissed those warnings, sources say, before taking tens of millions of dollars from Bankman-Fried’s charitable fund for effective altruist causes.Many of your faves, and the entire Discouse, was heavily corrupted by The Real Thing and his fellow scammers!
When Alameda and Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange FTX imploded in late 2022, these same effective altruist (EA) leaders professed outrage and ignorance. “I don’t know which emotion is stronger: my utter rage at Sam (and others?) for causing such harm to so many people, or my sadness and self-hatred for falling for this deception,” tweeted Will MacAskill, the Oxford moral philosopher and intellectual figurehead of EA, who co-founded the Centre for Effective Altruism.
Prophets
Everybody who veers too far out of their lane of knowledge ends up sounding like a bit of a dumbass sometimes, at least if they're the type of person who is unable to talk about anything without shifting into the Authoritative Tone.
The early blogosphere had its sometimes hilarious flaws but, insane warbloggers aside, it did have a spirit of "oh this is interesting here is my dumbass opinion what do you think," before everybody online decided everyone is or should be a serious pundit.
Nothing wrong with being a bit of dumbass as long as the premise of your public persona isn't that you're proved fucking right about everything.
The early blogosphere had its sometimes hilarious flaws but, insane warbloggers aside, it did have a spirit of "oh this is interesting here is my dumbass opinion what do you think," before everybody online decided everyone is or should be a serious pundit.
Nothing wrong with being a bit of dumbass as long as the premise of your public persona isn't that you're proved fucking right about everything.
White Knighting The World's Worst Person
Chait is so awful and so dumb.
Of course the book is just the usual mishmash of incoherent complaints. One's Jon obviously agrees with!
You know who else wrote a book on a subject?I find the pile on about this clip kind of gross. She may be wrong, but she's not an idiot. She just froze up on TV. It happens. https://t.co/eArkaZoVRI
— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) March 15, 2023
Amazing stuff.Yeah, she wrote a book in the subject so I do think that she is capable of answering the question, whatever you think of her argument. Some people freeze up on camera.
— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) March 15, 2023
Of course the book is just the usual mishmash of incoherent complaints. One's Jon obviously agrees with!
Everything Bad Is Woke
All of the prominent SV guys constantly tweet about "the woke mind virus" and nonsense like that, so I gotta admit this is pretty funny.
Just Pick Up The Phone And Call
I get enraged whenever people get annoyed that we're yelling at politicians on twitter, or people say "now is not the time to politicize" something. Rich people are always, always, yelling at them. They can barely hear us!
Other officials across the administration were more skeptical, worrying that the lobbying blitz Ms. Brainard and others were receiving was purely a sign of wealthy investors trying to force the government to backstop their losses. And there were concerns that any kind of government action could be seen as bailing out a bank that had mismanaged its risk, potentially encouraging risky behavior by other banks in the future.I suspect this whole thing is going to get smellier and smellier with time. It might still have been the right thing to do! But it's not going to be pretty. If it was the right thing to do then the important thing to note is that all the people in charge spent the last few years absolutely fucking things up.
Ms. Brainard started fielding anxious calls again on Saturday morning and did not stop until late in the evening. She and Mr. Zients briefed Mr. Biden that afternoon — virtually this time, because the president was spending the weekend in his home state of Delaware.
Tuesday, March 14, 2023
No Solutions
If you build for cars this is what happens.
When I was a younger suburban kid this kind of traffic didn't really exist. There was rush hour highway traffic congestion, but local roads generally didn't get much more than busy during high traffic times. Some of that is just increased levels of density/development, but a lot of it is also the curse of single access road neighborhood design.
In most U.S. cities, traffic is less congested than it was in 2019, as fewer people commute to offices, according to mobility data company Inrix. In some Sunbelt cities, such as Miami, Nashville and Las Vegas, where the population has surged in recent years, it has become worse.No expert on every single location discussed here, but I do think it's underappreciated how relatively recent development patterns prevalent in these era have exacerbated the problem. A big culprit is single access road housing developments which all empty onto a single stroad. Sure you can get the desire to minimize through traffic in a residential neighborhood, but when every single area neighborhood is like that, there's an unavoidable bottleneck every time there's a bit of congestion. No way around it!
These cities also attracted more companies and tourists during the pandemic. Local roads, built decades ago for a much smaller population, are struggling to accommodate the new reality.
When I was a younger suburban kid this kind of traffic didn't really exist. There was rush hour highway traffic congestion, but local roads generally didn't get much more than busy during high traffic times. Some of that is just increased levels of density/development, but a lot of it is also the curse of single access road neighborhood design.
Now Fly Away
A bunch of the worst SV guys are just addicted to posting, proving every single day that they're stupid assholes. Just a bunch of Elons. Why would we like you?All these founder types waking up to discover a deficit of sympathy for them among the public at large should consider what making lames like Elon Musk and Mark Andreesen the "faces" of their industry has done for them. You guys need faces that are slightly less grotesque.
— Will 🦥 Menaker (@willmenaker) March 14, 2023
Your latest innovation was this. Christ.
People Are Made Of People
Bouie has a good column generally, but the kicker is the important bit.
But, for example, in the process of Owning The Libs, what America's Greatest Governor, Ron DeSantis, is doing has real consequences for real people!!! Much more than most of the "serious" stuff political reporters wrongly imagine they'd "prefer" to talk about (no one's stopping you guys).
Put simply, you show me a scene from the so-called culture wars, and I’ll show you what’s behind it: a real issue with real stakes for real people.The most important political questions are usually labeled "culture war" as a way to dismiss and trivialize them. Sure we understand that some manifestations of these issues in The Discourse, like candy coated chocolate mascots not making Tucker Carlson horny enough, are ridiculous (though The Discourse comes from the people with the microphones, a thing they all ignore).
But, for example, in the process of Owning The Libs, what America's Greatest Governor, Ron DeSantis, is doing has real consequences for real people!!! Much more than most of the "serious" stuff political reporters wrongly imagine they'd "prefer" to talk about (no one's stopping you guys).
The Evolution Of Dumb Defenses
A long time ago, reporters at your local newspapers would get angry emails and calls about how BIASED THEIR NEWSPAPER IS. And they'd explain that, well, actually, the callers was complaining about the OPINION section and that was separate from the news section and did not reflect on the broader coverage of NEWS by the JOURNALISTS.
Fair enough, to a point, but somehow that evolved into a belief that every section of the paper is on its own individual plane of existence that cannot in any way be connected to each other despite being identically branded and on the same damn website.
Anyway, big national newspapers are products that contain a lot of bits. The News section. The Arts section. The Real Estate section. The Opinion section. The Automobile section. The Style section.
They're all part of the product.
I recognize that any individual reporter is not personally responsible for everything that gets printed in the newspaper, but it's still all the same newspaper.
Fair enough, to a point, but somehow that evolved into a belief that every section of the paper is on its own individual plane of existence that cannot in any way be connected to each other despite being identically branded and on the same damn website.
"Wow, the New York Times is bad, they publish all those horrible columnists." SIR, you FOOL, that is not actually THE NEW YORK TIMES, but the OPINION SECTION. That kind of thing.Nonsense. The Wall Street Journal news side is not the One True Wall Street Journal. Referring to the opinion side as the WSJ is 100% as valid as referring to the news side as such.
— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) March 14, 2023
As usual the “lol rubes you don’t understand journalism” scolds are the ones who are wrong. https://t.co/ExgvqSTatz
Anyway, big national newspapers are products that contain a lot of bits. The News section. The Arts section. The Real Estate section. The Opinion section. The Automobile section. The Style section.
They're all part of the product.
I recognize that any individual reporter is not personally responsible for everything that gets printed in the newspaper, but it's still all the same newspaper.
Monday, March 13, 2023
Fed Rates
Talk now is the Fed will quite possibly pause their "throwing people out of work" agenda for a bit. Nothing gets them to act quite like "rich assholes have different priorities now."
Don't See How Donnie Two Scoops Wriggles Out Of This One
We'll see!
Jurors are hearing from Jennifer Weisselberg, a one-time Trump family confidant embroiled in a bitter divorce who explained how the real estate mogul ordered his top finance executive to dodge taxes and cook the books.
Asked about the investigation outside the DA’s office at 12:30 p.m., Weisselberg told The Daily Beast that “something has changed and it's up-leveled.”
“It’s bigger than any taxes, paper, insurance, banks, insurance… it's bigger than money,” she said.
Herd
If you watched CNBC or similar in the runup to September 15, 2008, when Lehman went bankrupt, you would have seen a nonstop parade of people shrieking about how THERE MUST BE NO BAILOUTS and RESPECT MUH CAPITALISM and then as soon as Lehman bit it, it was OH MY GOD BAIL OUT EVERYONE POINT THE MONEY GUN HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE FREE MONEY FOR EVERY RICH PERSON AND ENTITY NOW.**
Lots of points to be made here, but the one I am thinking of at the moment is that in all of these crises, the people who fucked it always have the microphone, and the people who warned them are always sidelined.
Only Ben Bernankne can clean up Ben Bernanke's mess, and he can only do that if his critics shut the fuck up. That kind of thing.
**offer not available to greece or spain.
Lots of points to be made here, but the one I am thinking of at the moment is that in all of these crises, the people who fucked it always have the microphone, and the people who warned them are always sidelined.
Only Ben Bernankne can clean up Ben Bernanke's mess, and he can only do that if his critics shut the fuck up. That kind of thing.
**offer not available to greece or spain.
Remember Religion
Regularly I remember how the "religion and politics" beat was a pretty big portion of politics coverage. To a great degree that coverage was just "religion=conservative" though more liberal religious people would regularly try to say, "hey, us too," to little effect. Now it's just almost entirely gone from The Discourse.
A Lot Of Bullshit
Claims that the taxpayers aren't on the hook (false) and claims that this isn't a massive subsidy for bad behavior (false) and claims that it was necessary to act to stop people from losing their jobs as the Fed has an explicit policy of "throwing people out of work."
Plenty of things are above my pay grade, but the bullshit is thick with this as it always is when the rich men in nice suits (Larry Summers) soberly inform the president that he needs to act or the world will be destroyed.
The Fed has no legal authority to do what they're doing - valuing financial assets at par rather than market - other than the basic "if we declare something an emergency fuck you we do what we want" power - which is just "we do what we want when we want " power.
Plenty of things are above my pay grade, but the bullshit is thick with this as it always is when the rich men in nice suits (Larry Summers) soberly inform the president that he needs to act or the world will be destroyed.
The Fed has no legal authority to do what they're doing - valuing financial assets at par rather than market - other than the basic "if we declare something an emergency fuck you we do what we want" power - which is just "we do what we want when we want " power.
It's not a bailout!forget about SBV liabilities for a second, the real bailout story is the regime-change in the Fed's treatment of collateral:
— Daniela Gabor (@DanielaGabor) March 13, 2023
par value goes against every risk management commandment of the past 30 years.
it turbocharges the monetary power of collateral pic.twitter.com/7T0M8QUrrn
But a bailout is what it is, and what it ought to be called. The credit lines represent a subsidy to bad treasury management on the part of banks who should never have allowed themselves to get so badly overextended in terms borrowing short and lending long. (They also, perhaps conveniently, avoid anyone having to ask impertinent questions about why the bank supervisors allowed these positions to develop in the first place).In a tweet, Daniel points out that if you're going to bring out the big money bazooka, a big reason to do so is to point to it and say, "Look! We brought out the big bazooka!" Doing so, and then trying to claim you haven't, undermines most of the legitimate justification for doing so.
The extension of the FDIC guarantee, though, is not just a bailout – it’s specifically a bailout for billionaires. It undermines the whole point of limiting deposit insurance, and exposes the fund to risk. And the benefit of this risk assumption mainly goes to the venture capital investment industry.
That industry has, frankly, done the exact opposite of having covered itself in glory over the last week. We have discovered that major VCs put pressure on their portfolio companies to deposit at Silicon Valley Bank. Then they encouraged those same companies to run on the bank. And then some of them spent the weekend attempting to raise panic about the rest of the financial system, in order to put pressure on the government for a bailout. All after having spent the previous decade talking about “moral hazard” with respect to student loan forgiveness, and praising themselves for “disrupting” the old fashioned financial system with cryptocurrency.
If there had been no bailout – if the FDIC had operated normally and not extended insurance to people who hadn’t paid the premium – then the bill would have arrived at the VCs’ door. They are the owners of the tech startup companies, and they would have been the ones responsible for ensuring that those companies could make payroll if they had lost money in a bank failure through no fault of their own. It might not have been pleasant for the VCs to put up more funding, or to admit that their contribution of management expertise and financial acumen had been so spectacularly negative, but they would still have done it. To let a good investment go bad in this way would, as Professor John Cochrane points out, a clear example of the sunk cost fallacy. The venture funds were the source of the cash that was at risk in the SVB failure; it’s their loss that has been socialised.
— Dan Davies (@dsquareddigest) March 13, 2023
Whose Head At The Fed Should Roll
Playing into the hands of the whiny rich Randroids to blame THE REGULATORS after they lobbied to reduce regulation, but they aren't entirely wrong.
The president of SVB was on the Board of the San Francisco Fed until Friday when he left for obvious if undisclosed reasons.
Light touch regulation doesn’t just happen because Congress passes bad laws. It happens because the regulators are actually corrupt and serve the interests of those they are supposed to watch over.
Sunday, March 12, 2023
Amazing Scenes
They are out here buying ads comparing themselves to Ukraine aid. pic.twitter.com/GWyxgr9ez0
— James Meickle (@jmeickle) March 12, 2023
I wonder why people might not want to bail them out pic.twitter.com/HIiqUoaQii
— P0C0 (@P0C05) March 12, 2023
Nice Economy, There
Lots of twitter posts from "Tech" guys saying that that economy will implode and the world will burn to a crisp unless the government puts all their toys back in the pram.
The reality is the FDIC is good at their jobs and things will mostly be fine, and all these billionaires can step in and provie short term loans themselves if they really care so deeply (people are going to get most of their money, some of them might not get it tomorrow).
But even more than the Wall Street types, these guys really will try to burn it all down if they don't get everything they want. Giant red flags should follow around any politician who is too close to them.
The reality is the FDIC is good at their jobs and things will mostly be fine, and all these billionaires can step in and provie short term loans themselves if they really care so deeply (people are going to get most of their money, some of them might not get it tomorrow).
But even more than the Wall Street types, these guys really will try to burn it all down if they don't get everything they want. Giant red flags should follow around any politician who is too close to them.
Saturday, March 11, 2023
Gingrich's Children
Whenever anything bad happened, Newt Gingrich would jump up in front of the cameras and say this was liberals, liberalism, moral decline due to liberals, etc. So, yah, sure, feminism and the wokes took down SVB.
But They're All Important
So few accounts.
Payroll not going out can pierce the corporate veil, meaning Directors are on the hook. That's what they're going to be screaming about
The problem at Silicon Valley Bank is compounded by its relatively concentrated customer base. In its niche, its customers all know each other. And Silicon Valley Bank doesn’t have that many of them. As at the end of 2022, it had 37,466 deposit customers, each holding in excess of $250,000 per account. Great for referrals when business is booming, such concentration can magnify a feedback loop when conditions reverse.We're going to hear about workers not getting paid (bad!) they're going to bail out some rich assholes on this excuse. This isn't many people, and I bet it's a lot of rich guys' recreation money accounts.
Payroll not going out can pierce the corporate veil, meaning Directors are on the hook. That's what they're going to be screaming about
Mission Accomplished
If Jerome Powell's policies lead to a bunch of firms going bankrupt and workers losing their jobs, isn't that just proof the policies are working?
Or was it not supposed to be those firms and those workers.
Or was it not supposed to be those firms and those workers.
Broad Social Insurance
FDIC insurance isn't free. It's a charge levied on banks based on various things (a bit above my pay grade), but designed to cover what it's supposed to cover - deposits up to $250,000.
Bailing out depositers in full might even be the right thing to do, in the same way that broader social insurance generally is the right thing to do, but rich assholes should stop fighting to the death to combat anything that doesn't help rich assholes.
Things will likely be surprisingly normal Monday. A lot of this is a bunch of supergeniuses not having any idea what the FDIC does or how good it is at its job. But they know that, no matter what, THEY NEED ALL THEIR MONEY!!!!
Bailing out depositers in full might even be the right thing to do, in the same way that broader social insurance generally is the right thing to do, but rich assholes should stop fighting to the death to combat anything that doesn't help rich assholes.
Oh no mah innovation!!!Garry Tan has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to defeat socialist and progressive policies in San Francisco and now he’s begging for socialism for himself and his friends https://t.co/JqkJMvQ0tD pic.twitter.com/RjWbhzNITQ
— Kate Willett (@katewillett) March 11, 2023
Friday, March 10, 2023
Ah, Well, Nevertheless
Bail him out and try again.
Some banking experts on Friday pointed out that a bank as large as Silicon Valley Bank might have managed its interest rate risks better had parts of the Dodd-Frank financial-regulatory package, put in place after the 2008 crisis, not been rolled back under President Trump.
In 2018, Mr. Trump signed a bill that lessened regulatory scrutiny for many regional banks. Silicon Valley Bank’s chief executive, Greg Becker, was a strong supporter of the change, which removed the requirement that banks with assets under $250 billion submit to stress testing by the Fed, and changed requirements for the amount of cash they had to keep on their balance sheets to protect against shocks.
Every Cult Ever
Long behind-the-paywall (I think) piece about Effective Altruism, but really it's just a cult! The seduction of "we know things other people don't, and are better than normal people" plus "money" plus "coercive sex." It's just a cult! Rich nerds who think they're geniuses and want to have orgies!
Lock Him Up!
Or whatever.
WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Thursday ordered former Donald Trump aide Peter Navarro to hand the National Archives 200 to 250 emails that he sent during his time in the Trump administration using a private email account instead of his White House email.Always chuckle that Navarro was once sort of my colleague.
In August 2022, the Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit against Navarro to compel him to hand over the emails after he refused to do so without first being granted immunity. Lawyers for Navarro alleged the Justice Department was using the Presidential Records Act, which requires that official White House records be preserved, as a way to gather evidence against him in his ongoing criminal contempt of Congress case. They argued that forcing Navarro to produce the emails could violate his 5th amendment right against self-incrimination.
EATED
Just like old times.
...Larry said EVERYBODY NEEDS TO GET ALL THEIR MONEY BACK. I wonder where the other $150 billion bucks is supposed to come from (presumably some is available, but...).BREAKING: SVB has just become the first FDIC-insured institution to fail this year.
— Kailey Leinz (@kaileyleinz) March 10, 2023
*FDIC: SVB BANK CLOSED BY CALIFORNIA REGULATOR
*FDIC: NAMED FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE FDIC AS RECEIVER
*FDIC: MOVE TO PROTECT INSURED DEPOSITORS OF SILICON VALLEY BANK
At Silicon Valley Bank, north of 93% of the bank's $161 billion in deposits are uninsured per a recent regulatory filing, @MaxJReyes writes.
— Bloomberg (@business) March 10, 2023
Follow our live blog for the latest developments on SVB https://t.co/rXLJQRLgMC pic.twitter.com/7T3r0YqoYt
FILL THE ACCOUNT BACK UP
The failure of @SVB_Financial could destroy an important long-term driver of the economy as VC-backed companies rely on SVB for loans and holding their operating cash. If private capital can’t provide a solution, a highly dilutive gov’t preferred bailout should be considered.
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) March 10, 2023
Surely there's a caveat here, right. Haha no:Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said SVB meltdown shouldn’t pose a risk to the financial system as long as depositors get their money back https://t.co/AurubtHHNQ
— Bloomberg (@business) March 10, 2023
“What is absolutely imperative is that, however this gets resolved, depositors be paid back, and paid back in full,” Summers said on Bloomberg Television’s “Wall Street Week” with David Westin.We do have a sytem of deposit insurance, but it isn't unlimited, and if Larry thought it should be unlimited he should have said so and set up the system accordingly.
...adding, the point is that this is a bank where important connected people have their money. If this was some local bank in Ohio serving "regular" businesses, Larry wouldn't be on the teevee demanding they get all their money back.
Oh No My Apes
Haven't been following this but I guess every rich asshole/company in Palo Alto has all their money that isn't in ape pictures and magic coins there.
March 9 (Reuters) - SVB Financial Group (SIVB.O) scrambled on Thursday to reassure its venture capital clients their money was safe after a capital raise led to its stock collapsing 60% and contributed to wiping out over $80 billion in value from bank shares.Bank run is happening. Exciting!
Don't See How Donnie Two Scoops Wriggles Out Of This One
We'll see!
Prosecutors Signal Criminal Charges for Trump Are Likely
The former president was told that he could appear before a Manhattan grand jury next week if he wishes to testify, a strong indication that an indictment could soon follow.
Thursday, March 09, 2023
Everybody Loves Governor Ron
Wow what if some of this stuff negatively impacts people? Weird!
...
One afternoon a few weeks ago, Alicea Hotchkiss’s 14-year-old son, Eli, came home from his high school in Tampa with a question about something a classmate had said to him. He’d heard the student use the word “gay” as an insult, so Eli responded the way he always does when this happens. “Hey,” Eli said, “my dad’s gay.” But this time, Eli told his mom, the other kid offered a startling rebuke: You’re not allowed to say that at school.
...
When Eli wanted to know why his classmate said he couldn’t talk about his father at school, Hotchkiss, a mom of three boys who shares custody of the older two with her ex-husband, sat her son down and reiterated that there is nothing wrong with saying “gay.” But, she told him, a new law in their state means that if teachers talk about sexual orientation in certain ways, they can get in trouble. She had discussed this with her sons before, she says, but now Eli was experiencing the reverberations of the law for himself, and he stared at her, confounded. “But why?” he kept asking.Good for the Wapo for acknowledging there are real people here and this isn't just some asbtract debate about WOKENESS.
Genius Stuff
Only get to go to this well once or twice.
No one knows who’s next for the chop. Managers were recently told to provide a list of people who ought to be promoted, says one former staff member still in touch with some who remain working. Little did they realise they were signing their own death warrant: many of those managers were subsequently fired and replaced by those they’d recommended, as part of a cost-cutting drive.(twitter, of course)
Live And Let Live
I always come back to the Schiavo issue because back then I had *some* backchannels to influential DC people and I was just begging them to understand that there was a big difference between "Michael Schiavo should not pull the plug" and "Tom DeLay should be in charge of these decisions. It shouldn't be too hard to get that people were capable of having both opinions.
A big problem with our glorious pundit class is they are disproportionately made up of people who don't think anything affects them, and they are mostly right. Another big problem is they assume the great masses of unwashed losers who went to, at best, state universities, are just intellectual and moral cretins. However bigoted and racist these pundits are, personally, they believe, very deeply, that they are the smartest and most tolerant people. Nobody who went to Yale could be bad, and nobody who went to Ohio State could be any better.
Sure a lot of people are assholes, but a lot of people aren't, and even more people are able to understand that "this could be me and my kid."
A big problem with our glorious pundit class is they are disproportionately made up of people who don't think anything affects them, and they are mostly right. Another big problem is they assume the great masses of unwashed losers who went to, at best, state universities, are just intellectual and moral cretins. However bigoted and racist these pundits are, personally, they believe, very deeply, that they are the smartest and most tolerant people. Nobody who went to Yale could be bad, and nobody who went to Ohio State could be any better.
Sure a lot of people are assholes, but a lot of people aren't, and even more people are able to understand that "this could be me and my kid."
Data Guy All Vibes Now
Nate's nonspecific, but we know what he means (specificaly he means people supportive of trans rights, but it's all part of the WOKE blender).
At least the Abolish Ice guy went quiet. "Stop tweeting" was probably the first bit of advice from his attorney.
Republican presidential hopefuls are vowing to wage a war on "woke," but a new USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds a majority of Americans are inclined to see the word as a positive attribute, not a negative one.The supposed poll guys just gave up on polls when they stopped supporting their own positions on things, now they just act as Bubba whisperers. Issue polling is always a very limited way to approach politics, but at least it's an ethos, man. Now they just make things up entirely.
Fifty-six percent of those surveyed say the term means "to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices." That includes not only three-fourths of Democrats but also more than a third of Republicans.
At least the Abolish Ice guy went quiet. "Stop tweeting" was probably the first bit of advice from his attorney.
Wednesday, March 08, 2023
Run, Doug, Run
Doug Mastriano (just lost PA gov. race) is threatening to run for Senate against Casey and, well, if your name is Casey you win elections in Pennsylvania no matter what, but that will make it a bit easier!
What Choice Do They Have
I wouldn't practice medicine of any kind in a state with punitive abortion laws, if I could choose otherwise.
This crisis in care caused by abortion bans is only going to get worse. Dr. John Werdel, an OBGYN and medical director for women’s services at Saint Luke's Health System, points out in the Idaho Capital Sun today that a recent survey shows that more than 45% of OBGYNs are considering or actively working on leaving the state. And in just the last six months, he writes, three out of just six maternal fetal medicine doctors in the state have decided to leave. And it doesn’t stop here:I don't event think people have opportunities to be heroes here. They're risking felony charges every time they do the basics of their jobs.
The "Imagine If" Game
There is actually no conceivable mirror version, but one can imagine the reaction if a bunch of messages from Chris Hayes were released showing he was full of shit on air all of the time, or showing coordination with political actors.
That's even without getting to the (imaginary) head of MSNBC handing off Trump ads to the Biden campaign before they were broadcast.
I don't mean the reaction from conservative media, I mean the reaction from the more respectable mainstream outlets. The New York Times Defense Force would lose their shit over it, too. And I don't mean lose their shit over Hayes, specifically, but it would call into question ALL OF MSNBC.
That Republicans would boycott MSNBC (and NBC) would not be controversial at all.
Here’s Murdoch’s email to Kushner telling him that Biden has a good ad scheduled for an upcoming Fox broadcast (“1.0 pm this Sunday” suggests it’s an NFL game) and saying he will provide it. pic.twitter.com/hANf7YmPKr
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) March 8, 2023
I don't mean the reaction from conservative media, I mean the reaction from the more respectable mainstream outlets. The New York Times Defense Force would lose their shit over it, too. And I don't mean lose their shit over Hayes, specifically, but it would call into question ALL OF MSNBC.
That Republicans would boycott MSNBC (and NBC) would not be controversial at all.
The Hardest Day Of Elon's Life
Imagine the poor attorney who had to inform him that, yes, he had to do this.
Elon asked him what actual work he did, the guy responded, Elon mocked him with increasing intensity and the guy was informed he that he was, in fact, fired.
It seems like a story of any other mistreated-by-Elon twitter employee, then the real story starts to come out.
Amazing stuff.
Guys like Elon don't apologize. I assume whichever HR person didn't stop him from this is no longer on the job.
Yesterday a guy (Halli) posted a long thread saying he had been locked out of his work email at Twitter but had been unable to get a response from HR regarding whether or not he had a job or not.
Elon asked him what actual work he did, the guy responded, Elon mocked him with increasing intensity and the guy was informed he that he was, in fact, fired.
It seems like a story of any other mistreated-by-Elon twitter employee, then the real story starts to come out.
OK, maybe severance, right? Haha, no, Halli was no normal employee. He actually sold his company to twitter and took the sale price in employment and salary, presumably with a "if you fire me you have to pay up" clause. Also he's disabled, which Elon used to mock the idea that he could do any work, justify his firing, and then sent his insane fanboys to attack the guy.Now the next question is if you will make sure I get paid what I'm owed per my contract?!
— Halli (@iamharaldur) March 7, 2023
But that wasn’t enough for Musk, who seemed to think it was all one big joke he could dismiss with a flurry of tweets.According to Halli he can type for about an hour or so without it being too burdensome, and can one finger his phone (tweet) with no issues.
“The reason he confronted me in public was to get a big payout. From what I’ve been told, he’s done almost no work for the past four months, middle-management or otherwise,” Musk tweeted without providing any evidence.
“Despite his claims on Twitter that he did work, it turns out he told HR that he couldn’t work because he couldn’t type, but was, over the same period, typing up a storm on Twitter,” Musk continued, suggesting his disability wasn’t real.
"Independently wealthy" is the guy built a successful company and sold to twitter.
Christ what an asshole.
Guys like Elon don't apologize. I assume whichever HR person didn't stop him from this is no longer on the job.
Tuesday, March 07, 2023
If You Really Like It You Can Have The Rights
The general tolerance of "ghostwriting" is one of those things that has no justifications, given attitudes about "plagiarism" generally.
Sure there's some range between "wrote it all on my own" and "paid somebody to do it and haven't even read it myself, yet." No books are really in the first category. They're products with many people involved. But it seems like quite a few are solidly in the second.
Sure there's some range between "wrote it all on my own" and "paid somebody to do it and haven't even read it myself, yet." No books are really in the first category. They're products with many people involved. But it seems like quite a few are solidly in the second.
At Least Stick Up For Yourselves
I don't expect Senator Warner or anybody else to prioritize the things I do, or have the good sense to take a broader view of these things, but after a couple of decades of this shit, one would expect Professional Democrats to relish an opportunuity to kick some dirt over Fox's grave instead of attempting to resurrect them. Seems like very narrow self-interest would be enough!
What A Country
Innovations in medical care provision.
If I trip and fall on your sidewalk, I might sue you. But it doesn't require me doing it, my insurance company might sue you (and your insurance company) etc. etc. Just an example.
The teenage son of a friend broke his arm in a playground fall. Their insurance company, Health New England, paid the hospital bill.Tangential to this story, but one thing everybody "knows" about the US is that we are so litigious, just suing each other about everything all the time. Can't organize an event without taking out an insurance policy. It isn't our legal system, or a culture of litigiousness. It is, like almost everything else, the medical costs.
Then they received a letter from something called EXL advising that the injury “may have been caused by an act or omission of another person or entity.” In which case EXL would go after said entity to pay some or all of the medical bill, thus saving Health New England some money. EXL demanded that my friend fill out an extensive form about the circumstances of the accident.
If I trip and fall on your sidewalk, I might sue you. But it doesn't require me doing it, my insurance company might sue you (and your insurance company) etc. etc. Just an example.
Just A Debate Club Trick
I learned this one back when I first entered The Discourse. Every Iraq war cheerleader would pepper their pieces with things like, "No serious person believes...". Establish yourself as the honest (or moral or intellectual) authority, put everyone else on defense right away.
“No honest person” is a particularly funny phrase https://t.co/nJmQRn7Qbw
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) March 7, 2023
Monday, March 06, 2023
Related
When I wrote this post, I hadn't actually seen this yet, but, you know, just go piss off to Italy or whatever rather than spend your life fearing that twitter nerds are going to poison your Red Bull.
Billionaire Elon Musk is routinely followed around Twitter headquarters by two “bulky” bodyguards—even when he goes to the restroom, according to a Twitter engineer. The two bearded guards went viral back in January after they accompanied Musk at a securities fraud trial, and appear to have accompanied him to Twitter after his $44 billion purchase of the social media site. A Twitter engineer identified only as Sam told BBC News: “Wherever he goes in the office, there are at least two bodyguards—very bulky, tall, Hollywood movie bodyguards. Even when [he goes] to the restroom.” He said the constant use of bodyguards suggested that Musk, who has sacked a huge number of Twitter staff including coders, does not trust his remaining staff at Twitter HQ in San Francisco.Musk is a weirdo who can't comprehend that a level of affection less than adulation doesn't necessarily mean they're coming for him, but all the more reason to go chill somewhere.
It's your back that you been stabbin'
The extreme version of my basic confusion over the behavior of certain rich people is, basically, why doesn't Vladimir Putin want to live like Keanu Reeves? Keanu is rich and and famous, seems to have a nice life, isn't widely hated, and most importantly, doesn't have to worry about which person in his entourage is about to stab or poison him.
The prize of becoming the mafia boss seems to be spending the rest of your life worrying about who is going to take a hit out on you. That kind of thing.
Like there was a moment when old Vlad could've just took off with some portion of the giant wad of money he's looted over the year and just gone and lived the good life, not worrying about whether he would wake up the next morning. Not more than the rest of us anyway.
The prize of becoming the mafia boss seems to be spending the rest of your life worrying about who is going to take a hit out on you. That kind of thing.
Like there was a moment when old Vlad could've just took off with some portion of the giant wad of money he's looted over the year and just gone and lived the good life, not worrying about whether he would wake up the next morning. Not more than the rest of us anyway.
Are You Guys Having Fun
One frustrating thing about fighting various media battles over the years is that the people you are, to some degree, fighting for, don't see the point of it at all.
Not all media battles are simply about having Democrats be treated better, of course, but we've had some revelations about Fox lately which should discourage Senator Warner from granting them legitimacy and there he is.Two days after the Democratic Senate Majority Leader wrote a letter about Fox News’ role in aiding and abetting an attack on the Capitol of the United States, here’s where a member of his caucus was. 🤷🏽♂️ pic.twitter.com/1sId9OqHhk
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) March 6, 2023
Flipped
He was given incredibly lenient pre-trial conditions and he fucked it, as The Real Thing tends to do.
FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried may be stuck using a dumb phone for the foreseeable future. In a letter seen by Bloomberg, prosecutors involved in his criminal case said Friday that Bankman-Fried’s lawyers had agreed to modify the terms of his bail agreement. Provided the judge overseeing the case agrees to the changes, SBF will be restricted to using a “non-smartphone” without internet connectivity. Unless a lawyer is present, he will also be forbidden from contacting current or former FTX and Alameda Research employees. Additionally, SBF won’t be able to use encrypted messaging apps, including Signal.
The proposed restrictions come after Bankman-Fried allegedly attempted to contact the general counsel of FTX’s US subsidiary over Signal at the start of the year. “I would really love to reconnect and see if there’s a way for us to have a constructive relationship, use each other as resources when possible, or at least vet things with each other,” he said in one message, according to the Justice Department.
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