TGIF 6/4/21

Ah... Friday! My chance to pick the good week and bad week lists. It's always such fun, isn't it?

Let's start with me: I had a great week, at least in one respect: veritable pastiche has been around for twelve and a half years, while Former Guy's blog lasted barely a single month. Yay, me!

And speaking of Former Guy, he had a bad week, and not just because his blog slunk into the morass of failed Trump business ventures. It's been determined that his bans from Facebook and Instagram have been extended at least until January 2023. Never one to miss an opportunity to lash out at others, Former Guy responded in typical bullybluster fashion.

Facebook's ruling is an insult to the record-setting 75M people, plus many others, who voted for us in the 2020 Rigged Presidential Election. They shouldn't be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing, and ultimately, we will win. Our country can't take this abuse anymore!

And my favorite part? 

Next time in the White House there will be no more dinners, at his request, with Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. It will be all business! More hamberders and covfefe for MEEEE!!!!!!!!!! 

OK, I made up the last sentence. But only the last sentence. 

Now those "plus many others" he mentioned? I have to assume he's referring to the Russians and Ukrainians and Iranians and the rest of the election interferers who were on his side, right? 

Economic prognosticators had another bad week; they (again) widely (again) missed the mark on their jobs projections. In May, the experts anticipated over a million jobs would have been added in April, but it turned out there were only 266K. For May, the experts were looking for around 650,000 (or even as high as 671,000), but only 559K were added. Which makes me wonder if meteorologists are now helping predict our key economic indicators are going?

Elected officials in Surry County, NC think they had a good week, but I think they had a bad week. The county banned Coke machines from government buildings, to let the soda company know that they aren't going to tolerate 'woke' corporations and their support for "the out-of-control cancel culture and bigoted leftist mob." By, you know, cancelling the corporation's machines. Sigh.

Here's what the Surry County Board of Supervisors said in a letter to the company: 

Citizens of Surry County and across America are growing increasingly tired of large multinational corporations and their CEOs pushing an increasingly intolerant, bigoted, left-wing, divisive political agenda on its customers.

The root of this? A statement from James Quincey, the Georgia-based soda giant's CEO, in response to the restrictive voting legislation passed in its home state. Among other things, he had the audacity to say in part, that 

Voting is a foundational right in America, and we have long championed efforts to make it easier to vote.

We want to be crystal clear and state unambiguously that we are disappointed in the outcome of the Georgia voting legislation...  our focus is now on supporting federal legislation that protects voting access and addresses voter suppression across the country. We all have a duty to protect everyone's right to vote, and we will continue to stand up for what is right in Georgia and across the US. 

Now, I don't find anyone who says that voting is a foundational right in America to be bigoted and divisive and worthy of cancellation. And by 'anyone' I mean both living, breathing people and those large, multinational corporate people. I reserve those words to describe the people who have submitted over 360 restrictive voting bills across the country this year, and to people like the officials in Surry County, plus many others. Kudos to Coca-Cola on this one, and a giant, over-ripe raspberry to the rest of them.

Don McGahn - remember him? After a two-year fight, McGahn finally had to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. I initially thought maybe this was a bad week for McGahn, but it probably was a relief to be able to tell people how hard Trump worked to obstruct justice. Since McGahn was limited to talking about stuff in the Mueller Report that was already public knowledge, I don't think anyone else got much out of it, we'll see. We can probably read any number of books written by Trump staffers and critics, plus many others, and learn just as much.  

Do you need a fix from Donny Jr, since Daddy's availability is limited? Well, have no fear - for as little as 20 bucks, you can hear directly from the heir to the Golden Toilet. Seriously!

Apparently, there's a service called Cameo, and lots of self-important people like these are out there, waiting to provide you a personal video message, or in some cases, DMs. 

• Junior’s squeeze, Kimberly Guilfoyle ($200 for video; $19.99 for DM)
• George Papadopoulos ($100/no DMs available)
• Tomi Lahren ($90/no DMs available)
• Corey Lewandowski ($70/DMs at a bargain price of $2.99. No word if punches are included or cost extra)
• Jacob Wohl ($50/no DMs available)
• Sebastian Gorka ($99 for video, no DMs available)
• Joe Arpaio ($30/no DMs available)

That's a full-blown bad week list right there, IMO. 

And finally, there was a big kerfuffle over a tweet sent by Vice President Kamala Harris two days before Memorial Day, in which all she said was "Enjoy the long weekend." That was too much for the Fox News/My Pillow crowd, plus many others, who went off on Harris, never mentioning that she issued a Memorial Day tweet - on Memorial Day. And that's something that many of the attackers didn't even bother to do themselves.

The same people, plus many others, aren't making a peep about this story, reported by the AP. 

Organizers of a Memorial Day ceremony turned off a speaker's microphone when the former US Army officer began talking about how freed Black slaves had honored fallen soldiers soon after the Civil War. 

That's right - when Lt. Col. Barnard Kemter (Ret.) decided to include that part in his speech, he did so because "he wanted to share the history of how Memorial Day originated." Sadly, the folks who organized the Ohio celebration Kemter spoke at, said "that part of the speech was not relevant to the program's theme of honoring the city's veterans."  Pretty easy to see who the good week guy is, and who they aren't, right? 

There's more, but this'll have to do. TGIF everyone - I hope your week was a good one. 

TGIF 7/27/18

What kind of week did you have? Was it better or worse than these folks?

How about that Michael Cohen, the president's 'fixer', the deal maker's deal maker?  It seems like just a short while ago that Rudy Giuliani was saying Michael Cohen was an honest, honorable lawyer and yet, last night during an interview with Chris Cuomo on CNN, the messer-upper (Rudy) was now contending that Cohen has been a liar from the beginning, lies all the time, which lie can you believe, and so on. And I thought, wow - when the lying president's lying lawyer calls you a liar, that's a pretty bad week, right?

Who else had a bad week?  Mark Zuckerberg and anyone who owns Facebook stock, and anyone who owns Twitter stock, and maybe anyone who owns any other social media stock  Yesterday, Facebook took a huge hit, and in two days its stock has dropped around 20%. Today, Twitter took a huge hit as well, dropping in similar fashion. Both companies have been trying to address bad actors, purging fake accounts, and the like, and also dropping 'real' or 'active' users or at least not growing as fast as investors would like. Facebook faced some particular wrath lately due to its decision not to ban holocaust deniers from the platform. Sure, they're wrong and history deniers and all that, but we have to learn from them and teach them what's right and we can't do that if we shut them down or something. Infowars was another beneficiary of that thinking.

On the good week side of things, there was happy baby news from the Animal Adventure Park, outside of Binghamton, NY: Internet star April the Giraffe and her zoo mate Oliver are expecting another baby in the spring!. Folks will recall the frenzy when the park streamed live footage of April pretty much doing nothing except eating, and sleeping, and eating, and sleeping, for what seemed like weeks on end last spring, with all of the excitement culminating in the birth of baby Tajiri. We're set to go through all of that again early next spring, although owner Jordan Patch noted that while the average or normal gestation period for giraffes is around 15 months, April likes to go longer.

Rod Rosenstein could have ended up on the short end of the stick this week, after the House Freedom Caucus decided to file a resolution of impeachment against him - but that was foiled when lame duck House Speaker Paul Ryan indicated he was not supportive of their shenanigans. The HFC gang decided to table their request and instead will maybe give Rosenstein a contempt of Congress citation if he doesn't start playing better in the sandbox with them.

TGIF, everyone.

Wondering on Wednesday (v129)

I have a day job and so was not able to watch either of the two days of testimony from Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to House and Senate committees. I did hear that his personal information was compromised, as was that of 86,999,999 other people, and that he got into a spat with Lyin' Ted Cruz about Chik-Fil-A Appreciation Day and bias against conservatives or something.

I did wonder about a couple of questions he got from Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL). First, Durbin asked if Zuckerberg would be comfortable sharing what hotel he stayed in, and then he asked if Zuckerberg would share the names of anyone he had messaged that week. In both cases the answer was 'no' with varying degrees of discomfort, Zuckerberg sensing as he must have been the presumed trap he was walking into. AHA! people thought: the exchange proved everyone's point that Facebook overshares!

I didn't see it that way; Zuckerberg did not intend to share where he stayed the previous night, nor did he have any intention of sharing who he messaged - so, in effect, he set his privacy settings to 'friends only.' Just like you can do on Facebook, and should do, if you're paying attention. Congressmen are forgetting that so much information that can be gathered from Facebook is put there - on purpose - which is nothing like asking a random stranger where he spent the night.

There were also questions about political ads and disclosing who is behind them, to show transparency and protect us from bad guys. I wondered if Zuckerberg wanted to say he'd go for the same level of disclosure that Congress allows on ads that support them, but I think even if he had an inkling to, he was surely well counseled to not go there.

Another thing I thought was interesting was the level of concern these politicians have for privacy, something over which people can actually exert some control, compared to pols' apparent lack of concern over, say, clean air or clean water?  Everyone has issues with the costs of environmental regulations, and ensuring multi-billion dollar profits quarter after quarter after quarter for companies in that space. Everyone has issues with the costs of regulation on financial firms, and particularly now, no one's complaining about quarter after quarter billion dollar profits - so, why are they so concerned about Facebook and the company's profits, I wonder?

Moving on, House Speaker Paul Ryan has announced his retirement from politics - not just from the House, but from ever seeing himself run for office in the future. I wonder, will anyone hold him to that? His wife, maybe?

Ryan says he's leaving because his kids are going to only know him from the weekends, and he doesn't want that. Others say he's leaving because, well, he got his tax deal and now's as good a time as any. Or that he sees the handwriting on the wall and the House is going to fall, in the fall, so screw it all and go back to Janesville. Or that he's sick of dealing with Trump and he's not loyal enough to the orange-haired one, and loyalty is all that matters.

I could do a whole post on Ryan, and I might do that, but right now, I'm wondering about a tweet the president sent. Take a look:

Is it too much to wonder, to wish for, that Trump's "We are with you Paul!" comment means that Trump won't run in 2010?  

Nah. That's just silly stuff, not wonderful stuff.