Spitting These Down, Here

Taxation or Tumbrels

Lord Bezos's upcoming wedding might come in at about $600 million. He's denying it, but considering that he dropped $2.5 million on the engagement ring and proposed on a yacht so large that there were plans to dismantle a bridge to get it out to sea. (They didn't, but it's still so honking large it needs a support ship to follow it around like a nautical butler.)

As much as I don't give a fuck about the Teamsters, I wish them well in their fight against the second-richest man on Earth.

The super-rich are almost daring us to take action against them. There seems to be three paths ahead: A police state, where the oligarchs stamp on our faces for fun and profit; taxation to cut down their fortunes to merely filthy rich; or a revolution to take them all down. This level of inequity cannot stand.

Bezos may be a canary in the coal mine with this wedding. And so is Luigi Mangione. Oh, the press is out there telling everyone that Luigi is evil and emphasizing "OMG, he kilt somebody", but those who live the sub-millionaire life, which is most of us, know the truth. Insurers, for example, deny that prosthetic limbs are necessary, figuring that people can be just as productive and active in wheelchairs, on peg legs and with hooks for hands.

Things will change, someday. The question is can it be managed to bring about a fairer society without a lot of turmoil.

The easy fix is to tax the billionaires down to a merely obscene level of wealth, to bring taxation back to 1950s levels and to tax capital gains over a certain amount as ordinary income (and pay into Social security). But since the billionaires have captured the incoming administration and one of them owns the GOP, I don't see it changing. Trump and his circle want to bring back 1890s America, where workers didn't have unions, worked for pittance wages and the plutocrats lived free and untxed lives. But what they may get is 1790s France, where the plutocrats got separated from their heads.

Remember, Donnie Wanted This Guy for the Nation's Top Cop

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who briefly stood to become President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to be attorney general, was found by congressional ethics investigators to have paid numerous women — including a 17-year-old girl — for sex, and to have purchased and used illegal drugs, including from his Capitol Hill office, according to a final draft of a comprehensive investigative report obtained by CBS News.
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"From 2017 to 2020, Representative Gaetz made tens of thousands of dollars in payments to women that the Committee determined were likely in connection with sexual activity and/or drug use," noted the report, which lists payments totaling more than $90,000 to 12 different women.
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The report found "substantial evidence" Gaetz engaged in rampant illicit drug use. The committee said it obtained text messages he sent where he referred to drugs as "party favors," "rolls" or "vitamins." It also said he created a fake email from his Capitol Hill office "for the purpose of purchasing marijuana." The report noted that Gaetz had denied using illicit drugs in his written answers to the committee.

In addition to sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, the report also accused Gaetz of accepting gifts of luxury travel in excess of permissible limits with the 2018 trip to the Bahamas. And, it said he arranged for his chief of staff to assist a woman with whom he had engaged in sexual activity in obtaining a passport, falsely indicating to the State Department that she was one of his constituents.

No wonder the COFF wanted him as AG, Gaetz is a man after his own heart. And, like Felon^34, he wants revenge.

Nancy Reagan Would Like a Word, Donnie

At this point, what with him claiming to have invented the word "gorceries" and now this, has anyone checked his use or Adderall or whether or not he's living next to Kay Granger?

Because there is something clearly not right with him. He is, not to use too much medical jargon, nuttier than a truckload of almonds, coupled with the attention span of a goldfish. No wonder he has Real King Elon making all of the hard choices for him.

Clicking These Down, Here

Flashback to 2008

Remember then, when the Republicans were screaming that we were going to have an African immigrant as president?

Well, here we are.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

Winter ops.

Channel-Surfing These Down, Here

Caturday

Speck is on the rocks.

The Dark Ages Return in Louisiana

A group of high-level managers at the Louisiana Department of Health walked into a Nov. 14 meeting in Baton Rouge expecting to talk about outreach and community events.

Instead, they were told by an assistant secretary in the department and another official that department leadership had a new policy: Advertising or otherwise promoting the COVID, influenza or mpox vaccines, an established practice there — a nd at most other public health entities in the U.S. — must stop.
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According to the employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear losing their jobs or other forms of retaliation, the policy would be implemented quietly and would not be put in writing.

Staffers were also told that it applies to every aspect of the health department's work: Employees could not send out press releases, give interviews, hold vaccine events, give presentations or create social media posts encouraging the public to get the vaccines. They also could not put up signs at the department's clinics that COVID, flu or mpox vaccines were available on site.

So go ahead, live in Louisiana, and let the good times roll. Maybe you won't die fron an infectious disease. Hell, those idiots will probably discontinue food safety indpections because Bobby Brainworm might conclude they're based too heavily on science.

And all illnesses in that shithole of a state will be treated by blood-letting and prayer, no doubt.

Republicans in the second quarter of the 21st Century are morons.