Comments

1

Yay for EEAO and every award it got. Should have got best costume, too.

3

"While we're talking about federal relief for people in desperate circumstances, worth remembering that Congress let a program lapse that had lifted millions of children out of poverty because one senator worried families would spend the money on drugs."

the Coal Baron cum fake 'Dem'
surely Must realize so many
of our Citizenry cannot Af-
ford their fucking Pre-
scriptions much Less
wknd Cocaine bend-
ers to get the sour
taste of Unbridled
Capitalism outta
their mouths.

remember whom
we the Peeps bailed out
in bush's Great Recession?

all them Homowners?
yeah. Right! now
that's Funny.

4

Well, you may not like the tech bros. You may not like people with money. But if you start letting big banks fail, you wind up in a situation where a lot of places can’t make payroll. Then a lot of working people start getting hurt. BTW this has been widely discussed in the reporting on SVB.

Maybe you’ve heard of an unpleasant little episode called the Great Depression. You really don’t want the system to collapse. It’s probably worth the government doing something to keep that from happening.

5

with Democrats like Biden, who needs Republicans to blame for climate change?

7

"It’s probably worth the government doing
something to keep that [financial
Collapse] from happening."
--@dvs99

ya Think?
how 'bout REGULATING
or, rather, RE-Regulating Banks?

we* separated Savings and Loans
from Commercial Banking so's
they wouldn't 'invest' other
peoples' hard earned $$$
into Banksters' wild
Speculations

BECAUSE OF the Great Depression.

but when Slick Willy looked
around for Campaign Donations
he discovered to his Dismay there were
no longer those Unions Dems typically Relied on

and had to go
hat in hand to Wall St
who extricated Their many
Many pounds of Flesh thru De-
Regulating Investment Banks suddenly free
to speculate wildly. we've Been Thru This before.

RE-Instate Glass-Steagall America.
whilst you CAN. IF you can.

*well former
President
FDR did

9

@kristofarian FTW!

10

While on the topic of finance, I enjoyed this short little explanation of how corporate greed and consolidation conspired to release a foul stench in this guy's car

https://www.tiktok.com/@pearlmania500/video/7203867795006737707

11

@4: You’re using facts to disrupt Shoobop’s wet dream, the one wherein he finally sees starving, homeless tech bros wandering around Seattle. What will you do next, explain to him how tech bros aren’t likely to need the rental-unit-destroying “renters [sic] protections” he also mentioned?

You’re a cruel person, dvs99.

And I like that. ;-)

12

As someone in the FT pointed out, there are no libertarians in a financial foxhole. Like that asshole Thiel, who on Thursday night was advising people to pull their deposits from SVB, but by Friday afternoon was banging the drum for a bailout.

13

@12 -- Ironic
ain't It?

it's not about
Hating the Rich:

Brooksley Born:
Still [2015] Telling the
Uncomfortable Truths About Wall Street

“The power and influence of the financial sector threatens a continuation of the regulatory capture that contributed to the financial crisis. Financial firms, too often, have significant say in the appointment of high regulatory officials. The tendency of some former government officials to obtain highly lucrative positions in the financial sector after leaving government may well act as an inducement to those remaining in government to serve the interest of the financial sector rather than those of the public.”

Born reminded the audience that since the enactment of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, the country has witnessed more frauds, manipulations and reckless behavior on the part of the very same financial firms, adding:

“With respect to derivatives trading, JPMorgan lost $6 billion through speculative trading of the London Whale and both MF Global and Peregrine Financial went bankrupt after allegedly engaging in misappropriation of customer funds. In light of all this, we must ask ourselves whether the financial and political power of our largest financial firms poses a threat to our policy making on financial regulation and seriously undercuts the administration of justice.”

--by Pam Martens and Russ Martens; May 7, 2015

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2015/05/brooksley-born-still-telling-the-uncomfortable-truths-about-wall-street/

corporate Dems
need to WTFU.
or just go full-
on Facsist.

thnx
Again
Mr. Fox!

@tentsy
the Cruelty
Always WAS
the point amirite?

and thank you!
for Confirming it.

14

@5. I'm sure he justifies it in order to create a supply to counter Russian and Middle Eastern oil. I think Biden is well aware of the dangers of climate change, and I think it's a terrible idea to drill in the Arctic and Alaska. But if he doesn't, Russian companies will. It's difficult to square the circle of energy and national security with the current war and the shifting geopolitics with Iran and Saudi Arabia cozying up to China. If NATO is going to blockade Russian oil, then they'll need a new supply before renewables can fill the gap. And if there's any US entry into a future war, it'll be crucial.

16

@5: It's a solidly Centrist thing to do. Acknowledge that oil is still needed as the earth "transitions" to "clean" energy (AKA fiddles while Rome burns) but set aside a larger area as off-limits. Everyone gets something, no one gets everything.

Won't stop Big Oil from funding the GQP candidate in 2024, though.

17

More benefits for all, but don't save the (always will be corrupt somewhat) working economy that keeps us from fighting each other with sticks for looted food. Yeah, we should have no tech bros, but don't take away my professional ho-ing app income. The myopia at this paper is epic.

18

is everyone enjoying
crazy-clock time now?

20

from Amy Goodman's
AMAZING 'Democracy NOW!':

“Alone and Exploited”
NYT Exposé Shows Migrant Kids
in U.S. Forced into Brutal Jobs for Major Brands

We begin today’s show looking at a shocking investigation by The New York Times exposing the forced labor of migrant children as young as 12 at factories across the United States.

Over 100 unaccompanied migrant children, mostly from Central America, describe grueling and often dangerous working conditions, including having to use heavy machinery, being subjected to long hours and late-night shifts at facilities that manufacture products for major brands and retailers, such as Hearthside Food Solutions, the makers of Cheerios, Fruit of the Loom, Whole Foods, Target, Walmart, J.Crew, Frito-Lay and Ben & Jerry’s [WHOA].

Others were forced to work as cleaning staff at hotels, at slaughterhouses, construction sites, car factories owned by General Motors and Ford, in serious violation of child labor laws. At least a dozen migrant child workers have been killed on the job since 2017, according to The New York Times.

We speak with the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Hannah Dreier, who revealed in a major New York Times investigation the widespread exploitation of migrant children in some of the most dangerous jobs in the country.

In response, the Biden administration on Monday announced it would carry out a broad crackdown on the use of migrant child labor in the United States, vowing stricter enforcement of labor standards and better support for migrant children.

https://www.democracynow.org/2023/2/28/nyt_investigation_forced_migrant_child_labor

WAY TO GO
Smokin' Fuckin'JOE!

Well-applied Pressure
CAN Fucking
WORK.

@19
what do
Billionaires
taste like?

21

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_PnuXelvWA

26

@23. Well, this world will be a better place once sociopathic relativistic nihilists who live for pure selfish hedonism are gone. But for those who wish to send their will into the future to inherit, then there is no greater struggle. Only a fool would give up eternity for a petty existence of a single soul in a single body, rather than investing in their own potential life to come.

27

@23a
it's called
having Kids
or at Least GAF

this is Hard for you?
whoa.

@24
stripping
Cheaters of
their terrified
Employees is a
Dyno-mite first step
& beats the Fuck outta
caging and then Losing
other People's Chirrens

dontchya Think
fungy? fungi?

not to Mention all those silly
Southern* (formerly-) Democracies
we've Domesticated & Defeated ANY
Traces of the dreaded Socialism they'd
accidentally treated themselves to. Swell eh?

to be Fair
Central too

28

*to be Fair
Central too

Biden's sent back Many

the Borders are only
"Open" to FOX and
their Easily-misled
friends - try and
come Across
if you're not
White af.

31

@30. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZtTeqbcesw

You believe in nussin

32

@30. That's probably the most intellectually and generally irresponsible approach to have in any capacity. It's like who cares if we nuke the planet? You won't be around to experience it anyway, so if somebody else has to suffer from the aftermath of your decisions, who cares?

What an atrocious lack of character to see the world this way. You have something truly wrong with your mind.

33

@30. In fact, your mentality validates every single one of the protestors' concerns. May you and your sickened point of view be flushed into the void of eternity with the sickening filth of your pitiful hopeless small-minded nothing-mongering. Every kid past the 80s was raised to reject your gutter trash perspective. May you and your cowardly ilk who are too afraid to believe in the future never enjoy its fruits. Become dust and wither away into less than nothing. We have no time for your stunted bullshit.

35

Frothingham's got a kid he cares about and doesn't believe the outlandish shit he posts here. He just does it to troll & seem "edgy." It's sad & stupid, whatever.

36

@33 Gotta make this a generational thing? Kids weren't raised IN the 80s to care only about themselves, unless they were. Crappy people in every era.

38

in only you had an
Avatar 'fax' I might
shave a well-Wasted
20 sec. off my Reading

C'mon Rich!
do us a
Favor
Man!

39

@36. I didn't mean to make it a generational thing, but to indirectly reference the Neverending Story whose primary antagonist was the Nothing, or the death of imagination and the creation of ideas that like magic become the future when faith is realized through scientific discovery and achievement with the tools that expand the reach of the fingers into interstellar space with our golden discs awaiting the next star's gravitational pull light years from here and now.

After all, if the founders of this nation did not believe in a better future, slavery would have never ended and all would be enslaved to the idea that change is impossible because they will not live to see it. If you believe in America, you can do nothing but reject the throne of lies this "facts" nihilistic word salad talking points android regurgitates at all hours.

40

More fun seeing seeing garbler all triggered than 70’s.

It’s the difference between street violence / vigilantism, with a side of rolling coal -and full scale, major power warfare, with our cities choked for breath as the West Coast burns from Alaska to Mexico every summer.

41

1) Your existence is limited to the duration of physical life, and 2) Whatever gives the individual the greatest feelings of pleasure and wellbeing during that time, is all that matters.

This is complete and total bullshit. All you are doing is discarding the pursuit of meaning and the imagination that brings forth new ideas for a hell of pure pleasure and meaningless numbness and self harm through excess.

42

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyv905Q2omU

43

Lindy, who I’ve always thought of as pretty right-on, missed the mark on this one. “The Whale” isn’t a great film. I think it’s too expository for one thing, but in reality some people do indeed become too large for housework, and as you get older, that disability only increases. That’s not a condemnation of obesity; it’s observed fact. And the viciousness of it all is that when you get too large to exercise, you have painted yourself into a corner. If this person doesn’t have the means to hire an assistant, or doesn’t have family to help out, the housekeeping is going to suffer. Doesn’t mean the person intends squalor. It means he/she/they just isn’t able to clean.

The Academy has a history of rewarding actors who don prosthetics. Also, characters with disabilities score points, too.

Hugh Grant must be a fucking asshole. I remember when Jon Stewart had him on “The Daily Show once.” “Never again,” Stewart said. Apparently, Grant bitched and sourly complained from the time he arrived until he left the studio. That rude pre-show interview last night was uncalled for. BTW, people are asked if they’d mind being interviewed. No one is caught off-guard and shoved in front of the camera.

If your going to mention Jamie Lee Curtis roles, don’t forget “Trading Places.” Such a snappy character. She always had the most darling figure. Must have been a joy to design for. Like Doris Day. Edith Head always dressed women superbly and was amenable, I understand, to requests from those she costumed. But someone asked her late in her career who she most enjoyed dressing. “Cary Grant,” she said without hesitation.

Great news about the bees.

44

Hat Tip
to Jamie Lee
who comes Home
to Christopher Guest
who Merits one as Well.

she was
AMAZING in a
Fish Called Wanda
if only I could speak Russian

45

@29 -- may your
Compassion be
an Example for
us ALL Shorty.

48

@47. If you can perceive better, you can achieve better.

49

@47. How about a future not on fire and flooded and freezing and falling apart on top of you, under you, and all around you? Buried in rubble. Buried in water. Buried in ash. Your hand is on the gas pump.

You say you can't define better. Can you define worse?

50

I see my world neighbors being afflicted with all sorts of famines and sufferings and hypersonic guided death missiles blowing up poor kids who never asked for any this and are born into a fucking cage we just sit around and tolerate because they have a different culture, pigment, and language than us. But it's just living. So you gotta try to make it last a bit longer by not being so myopic an self centered that you just enter a goddamn matrix of shit, or WAll-E, or whatever dystopian virtual reality surrounds you in a goddamn cavern underground because the next best thing is disappearing before your eyes like so many game overs come true. We gotta respond to this shit and not tolerate the backsliding into fuckery that we have gone through so many times and can't afford to continue doing as a whole to preserve the strides we have strode to make it this far. So god damn you know what it means to lose everything because you only see the end as your own death. I couldn't give a shit about a religious dogma, I'm talking faith in the ideas of the imagination that are made reality through the precision of our tools and computational helpers. We can't do it alone; born into this world alone we are cavepeople.

51

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkvdAznoFqY

@47

52

Here in rural King County outside of Redmond "tech bro" is a term used by bitter racist old-timers. Please consider the connotations of the word.

53

@52,

There's no racial connotation to the term and not racist, bitter old-timers rule.

54

@44 - also a marvelous example, Kris - playing straight man to all those comedians is a huge talent. Isn't Chris Guest a titled Brit?

55

@4 dvs99 and @7 & @20 kristofarian for the WIN!!

@19: Don't you have a bus back to Muskogee to catch? Don't let the folding doors hit you in the butt on the way out of Washington State.

@43 Bauhaus I: Agreed on Jamie Lee Curtis. YAAAAAY about Everything, Everywhere, All at Once's big Oscar sweep! I'm equally amazed there was no mention of Jamie Lee Curtis's awesome performances in Trading Places and A Fish Called Wanda.

56

nyt:
Regional Banks Slammed by Fear of a Broader Financial Crisis

Bank Stocks Skid Despite U.S. Moves to Calm Markets

March 13, 2023

The unexpected seizure of two banks in three days by regulators intensified fears of a broader financial crisis, sending the stocks of more than two dozen banks into free fall on Monday, even as President Biden reassured Americans that the banking system was resilient and that customers’ money was safe.

Banks of various sizes in different parts of the country — from San Francisco-based First Republic Bank to Salt Lake City-based Zions Bank — found themselves battling market turmoil as customers rushed to withdraw their deposits and investors, worried about more runs, dumped bank stocks.

Across the country, banks are battling market turmoil as customers rushed to withdraw deposits and investors, worried about more bank runs, dumped bank By Stacy Cowley, Rob Copeland and Anupreeta Das

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/13/business/regional-bank-stocks.html

nothing at all
to see here?

57

@56 kristofarian: Okay......you can just rock me to sleep now, kris.

58

So, except for the customers of a few banks, it was a big nothing burger.

As Janet Yellen said, SVB's assets are still there. They're in bonds. Yes. U.S. Treasury bonds. No fraud we know of, just returns on investments that didn't keep up with inflation which is happening to us all. And most of all she underscored the truth that the U.S. banking system is resilient.

The idiots who set their hair on fire fall over this fall into two categories:

Those who want mayhem in the streets and to replay the 1930's to blame Biden.

Those who want mayhem in the streets and to replay the 1930's to blame capitalism.

The rest of are level-headed and mature about these things.

We need regional banks and not just the big guys. Regulation is a constant balancing act. Too stringent results in less competition. But we have to be conservative. Banking should be boring, not headed by risk-takers.

60

"The rest of [us?]
are level-headed and
mature about these things."
--@dewey

and yet:

Markets Tumble as Bank Fears Go Global

Shares fell sharply, with banking stocks
taking a beating, as Tuesday’s
[3/14] rally quickly faded.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/business/stocks-today.html

"Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all."
--John Maynard Keynes, possibly

@57 -- I know auntie Gee
soon we'll All need
Comforting

'cept for the Comfortable
who need Afflicting.

61

@5 Brent Gumbo and @16 Max Solomon: +2 Agreed. I am shocked that Smokin' Joe okayed oil drilling in Alaska, despite strong opposition from the Democratic Party and environmental groups everywhere! Greedy coal magnate Joe Manchin obviously was among those voting yes. Fossil fuel bigwigs are laughing their asses off at our expense.
Global environmental activist Greta Thunberg is right: Shame on us.

@60 kristofarian: If I have any comfort at all it is that I never had any children to add to the current 8 billion + human population, and to ensure that I never would, had a bilateral hysterectomy that mercifully corrected 43 years of unspeakable monthly misery. My Love Beetle and I are trying to do what we can to leave as small of carbon footprints---and tie tracks---as humanely and automotively possible.

62

@61: Dammit!! Griz needs to consume red wine before posting in order to type better. Go figure.
Make that: "My Love Beetle and I are trying to do what we can to leave as small of carbon foot prints--and tire tracks---as humanely and automotively as possible."

63

@43 Bauhaus I: I dunno. I have to agree with Lindy West on this one. "The Whale" doesn't sound like a film I'd want to see. It sounds really awful--like Dom DeLuise's title role in "Fatso" (1980). My reasons for not seeing it have to do with my health and upbringing.
I have genetic Type II diabetes, hypertension, high blood pressure, and low thyroid, monitored by my doctor's prescription medications, moderate exercise, and a healthy diet low in sugar, carbs, and gluten avoidance (I also have Celiac). A great deal of my health concerns I have had to find out about and resolve on my own over the past decade. I'm in much better shape, overall, but the overabundance of sugar and carbs so readily available and my mother's rather cruel double standard I could have done very well without as a child, in my teens, 20s, and later in life.
While I don't weigh anywhere at all close to 600 lbs. (I'm currently under 170 lbs, and am height / weight proportionate), I had a small, thin, fat phobic mother, and consequently went through a period of anorexia nervosa in my late teens. Ironically, I grew up in a household laden with processed foods high in sugar, in all forms: granulated cane sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, high fructose corn syrup--the #1 silent killer in the U.S.---in the soda pop in the refrigerator and in the breakfast cereals my family ate, and just about everything else that ended in "ose" (I.e.; fructose, glucose, lactose, sucrose). This included a full sugar bowl on our dining room table. My mother always made an abundance of home baked goodies from scratch-cookies, brownies, cakes, and pies. My two much older sisters were high school cheerleaders who were never overweight and evidently were blessed with high metabolism. I was not so fortunate, and was often unfairly compared to them. Although a high sugar diet growing up has indeed, taken its toll over the years for me, it has caught up with my older siblings, too (my oldest sister had to have a veinal ablation procedure recently). Nobody in our family bothered to read food packaging labels much back then, but this was in the '60s and '70s. Before the FDA finally enforced the listing of ingredients on food packaging, who knew?
My point is that weight bigotry negatively impacts a lot of people in all models and makes, shapes and sizes--not just those weighing over 300 lbs. You would be surprised at how many women like me out there are unjustly criticized for not weighing what we did when we were 14 years old.

In brighter news: How about that 7 Oscar sweeping indie film out of nowhere, "Everything, Everywhere, All At Once"? I wanna go see it!


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