What Are We Going To Talk About Today, Brain

Same thing we talk about every day, Pinky, whatever conservatives want us to talk about.

It's been a problem ever since I've been doing this, and I actually don't know how to fix it. Obscure 3rd rate villains in the Wingnut Cinematic Universe shouldn't always be able to drive the conversation, but somehow they do.

Morning

Slacker Saturday.

Friday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

At the end of the week you're another week older.

Afternoon Thread

Might be heading home early, boss.

Gambling On A Post Senate Career

A big problem with the standard view of political corruption among federal electeds is that it mostly involves campaign contributions. You know, the lobbyists for Industry X steer $50,000 into your senate re-elect committee and you do their bidding. This actually doesn't make any sense at all, and it's maddening that "we" all pretend to take this seriously year after year.

The reason powerful electeds dance when they say dance is so that they, their families, and their staffs all have lucrative careers to fall back on.

No one looks at this comprehensively that I'm aware of, but quite often you see the random name of a Senate failson working in some rather strange job they have no particular qualifications for and everything makes a bit more sense.

Theo's got a good career ahead of him after Groton, is what I'm saying, assuming this bet works out.

On Tuesday, Politico reported that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) former director of the division of market oversight, Dorothy DeWitt, had just joined Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-NY) office as chief counsel for finance. Before DeWitt’s two-year stint at the CFTC, for about a year, she worked as the vice president and general counsel for the cryptocurrency company Coinbase’s business and lines division.

During the peak of abortion politics in the summer, the Prospect reported how Gillibrand, a recently anointed “crypto hero,” unveiled the industry-friendly Responsible Financial Innovation Act with Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY). The bill included a study of whether to allow people to purchase crypto assets for their retirement accounts. Eventually, Gillibrand would co-sponsor Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and John Boozman’s (R-AR) Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act (DCCPA), the most likely crypto bill to pass, which would designate oversight powers for “digital commodities” to the CFTC, as opposed to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Throughout the development of a crypto regulatory framework, the New York senator has consistently functioned as a moderating force.

DeWitt's revolving door career is apparent, of course.

Lunch

Get lunchin'

Corrupt Judge, Corrupt Ruling

Fixed now, but don't forget her name.

The appeals court ruling throwing out the special master process that had been put in place for the Mar-a-Lago search was a major rebuke of former President Donald Trump’s arguments for why the materials seized from his home should be subject to outside review.

The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals made clear Thursday that it did not approve of a federal judge getting involved in the first place after Trump originally sued over the search.

The Justice Department has not been able to use in its criminal probe the bulk of the hundreds of documents it obtained in the search while the special master – senior Judge Raymond Dearie, of Brooklyn’s federal court – does his review. He was appointed by US District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee in Florida who was instructed by the appeals court Thursday to dismiss the case.

Tucker's Other Man

They snipped out Ye's anti-semitism to elevate him as a hero of the conservative revolution.

One can see that a couple of different ways.

JERBS

+263K but good news is bad news when the president is a Dem.

Morning

Like water from Ye, never found again.

Thursday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

Be as happy as you want to be.

36 Reasons This Is Excellent News For Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

Bye Chris.

CNN executives were expected to inform staffers about layoffs at the network Thursday morning, according to these people. CNN correspondents Alison Kosik, Martin Savidge, Alex Field, Mary Ann Fox and Chris Cillizza are among the staffers who have been let go, according to two people familiar with the matter. A CNN spokesperson declined to comment.

In The Old Times

Lock him up!

It is now clear that what happened at the FTX crypto exchange and the hedge fund Alameda Research involved a variety of conscious and intentional fraud intended to steal money from both users and investors. That’s why a recent New York Times interview was widely derided for seeming to frame FTX’s collapse as the result of mismanagement rather than malfeasance. A Wall Street Journal article bemoaned the loss of charitable donations from FTX, arguably propping up Bankman-Fried’s strategic philanthropic pose. Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias, court chronicler of the neoliberal status quo, seemed to whitewash his own entanglements by crediting Bankman-Fried’s money with helping Democrats in the 2020 elections – sidestepping the likelihood that the money was effectively embezzled.

Perhaps most perniciously, many outlets have described what happened to FTX as a “bank run” or a “run on deposits,” while Bankman-Fried has repeatedly insisted the company was simply overleveraged and disorganized. Both of these attempts to frame the fallout obfuscate the core issue: the misuse of customer funds.

SBF is going for the "it all just got a little bit out of hand, I didn't mean any harm, and everything would have been fine if you'd just given me a chance to make it right, also it was all Caroline's fault" but none of that changes the core issue above.

In reality, the funds were sent to the intimately linked trading firm Alameda Research, where they were, it seems, simply gambled away. This is, in the simplest terms, theft at a nearly unprecedented scale. While the total losses have yet to be quantified, up to one million customers could be impacted, according to a bankruptcy document.

Saying "my next horse was going to win and then I would have paid everyone back" - even if true! - doesn't make it not numerous crimes.

Lunch

Gotta eat.

The Election Is Dead, Long Live The Election

Our system of presidential elections lasting 2 years (certainly 18 months) is a flaw, especially as political reporters love nothing more than spending time speculating about such things.

"Playing The Race Card"

For no particular reason I'm thinking of a time when this was a regular phrase used by "objective" print and broadcast journalists, generally directed at someone having a legitimate complaint about experiencing racism and not people being racist.

Sure Why Not

Part of Elon's method for years has been to flood the zone with nonsense articles about his latest bullshit in order to push any "bad news" off the "front page" (high results in search engines).

Elon Musk’s Neuralink Corp. aims to start putting its coin-sized computing brain implant into human patients within six months, the company announced at an event at its Fremont, Calif. headquarters on Wednesday evening.

Any volunteers?

Today he is trying to make sure the search engines give you Bloomberg's free PR instead of this.

His other thing is implying his genius is being held back by "the regulators."

We are now confident that the Neuralink device is ready for humans, so timing is a function of working through the FDA approval process

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 1, 2022

Hopefully true in this case, but also likely for very good reasons (They'll kill you and they don't do anything actually useful) but...

Morning

Once again.