On Elon Musk

During the election cycle, I talked a lot about the prospect of T-rump being potentially influenced by people around him. 

And along came Musk, who was all in on the guy getting elected (and possibly committed election related crimes in order to help, but who cares about that, AmIRight?) 

We knew that Musk is not a natural born citizen and therefore could never be president. But why not let him just run everything without being the elected guy?

So he was put in charge of "the Department Of Government Efficiency" (which conveniently is the acronym for his own imaginary money DOGE). Which of course will hurt many, but will benefit him and those close to him, greatly. 

But there's one other not-so-minor detail that we learned during the election cycle: Musk lied on his immigration papers, and thus is here illegally.  Under the rules T-rump is putting forward, Musk should be deported. But of course he won't be. Because he's wealthy and is now a "friend" … the stupidity boggles the mind. 

T-rump is being manipulated by a foreign national. And no one seems to care. 

But hey, soon our country will be run by ass kissers, boot lickers, traitors, compromised foreign nationals, and assorted others that will run amok. 

"We voted for this"

Book banning and public libraries

As many states do, Idaho has a law that allows for anyone to object to any book in a library because it's offensive. 

There's a process by which the book will be reviewed and removed from the shelves. But that book can be put into a section of the library that children can't access. Call it "the adults only section"…

Here's the twist. There's a small town with a tiny library, which doesn't have space for a separate room. So they simply made the whole library 21+. 

They did and do have story time for kids, but it's held outside. And kids can only enter the library with their parents, and only if the parents sign a waiver. 

What sort of dystopian nonsense is this?

https://youtube.com/shorts/LdAJcwK0heA?si=1moETsqEVm5D4S1F

Reporting events appears to be hard

I'm still look for a news outlet - or some means of consuming real information - that I can respect and use for some form of reasonable reporting. 

The problem is that most news outlets have a bias of some sort and make everything confusing. 

As an example, I'll take the Amazon worker strike. There was a developing situation where a driver parked his delivery van apparently near a distribution center, in a way that left vehicles unable to exit the facility. And police were called. 

That much is pretty much agreed upon. 

But I saw a few reports on it, and they had differing accounts. One showed a picture of the police locking arms around the van and the headline and story were about how they were siding with the union in protecting the driver or some such. 

Another article talked about the driver being a nuisance and getting arrested after putting up a fight, with no mention of the picture of the officers locking arms. 

And on and on.  But with no regard to why or what was actually going on. 

After reading through several articles, I was able to (myself) piece together something resembling a story: the driver wanted to make a point and blocked the exit. Police were called and they arrested the driver. Without incident. Some people (unclear where they stood on the issue) swarmed the van, and the police locked arms to protect the vehicle, the entrance, and any workers from harm. 

Its tough when reporting is that bad. 

Bad editing (probably by some automation)

900 arrests doesn't sound right. There were 900 traffic stops and 9 arrests. 

https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local-news/massive-traffic-crackdown-on-us-19-results-in-nearly-900-arrests

Disney in a wage theft case

Beginning a few years ago, Disney underpaid its cast members in Disneyland by a wide margin. 

Somewhere between the union contracts, California law, and Disneys policies, many thousands of people were underpaid for their work at the theme park. 

The settlement covered back pay and came to $233 million. 

As the author notes, it's interesting that the company was quibbling about a dollar or two and hour - all the while the CEO made $31 million last year. 

Wealth inequity and corporate malfeasance meet up on this one. 

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-12-13/disney-agrees-to-233-million-settlement-in-wage-theft-case

Walt Disney was cropped out of this photo

Here's a bit of a fun story about how a photo of Stravinsky appeared in The NY Times with a greyed out part on the side. 

It turns out that someone painted over Walt Disney in the photo when it was used in publication several times over the years. 

And recently someone used a mild solvent to clear the grey and see what was underneath. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/15/insider/walt-disney-painted-out-of-the-photo.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Watch "This Private Equity Firm Owns EVERY Chain" on YouTube

This is a well done piece of reporting that's worth 11 minutes to watch. 

It underscores what is wrong with our capitalist system and why further deregulation is dangerous to most people. 

And you may ask yourself, what can I do? Well for one thing, you should not subsidize any of the brands Roark owns. 

https://youtu.be/0vwGb-Btdl0?si=vJrFOUFvsZtQHlRJ

If you're curious about what they own, they list them here. 

https://www.roarkcapital.com/portfolio