By the time you read this I will be at City of Hope having a PICC line installed in my upper arm. Then there will be a few chit-chats and miscellaneous tests, which should be finished by lunchtime.
I'll be in and out of the clinic for the next few days, and I don't really know what my schedule is going to be yet. If you don't see any posts, don't worry. It just means I haven't had enough free time—especially since I plan to use some of this free time to roam around with my trusty camera and see what's what in Duarte.
Fox News settled the Dominion lawsuit today for $787 million. Depending on how you look at it, that represents about half a year's profits or 20% of their current cash stockpile. Not a back breaker, but not a trivial hit either. Here's how the market responded:
That is one big nothingburger. Apparently investors have decided this has no material effect on Fox at all.
I have nothing interesting to say about this except that I'm going to miss the show. I don't blame Dominion for settling, but I was looking forward to the media circus that would have surrounded a trial.
BY THE WAY: Fox's only public statement so far is that the settlement "reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards." You betcha.
This is a heliotrope, specifically a Parry's Phacelia growing by the side of the 241 toll road just before it merges into highway 91. It's technically an herb, and right now it's growing all over the place along with fields of poppies.
A few days ago James Carville made some news by telling New York Times columnist Charles Blow that the biggest story of the 2022 election was "abysmally low Black turnout," especially among young Black voters.
Is this true? According to a Times analysis published last November, it's true in at least three Southern states where we have solid data. In Georgia, Louisiana, and North Carolina collectively, the gap between Black and white turnout was 26%, about double what it was in the three previous midterm elections. We will presumably get good survey data for the other states eventually, but I don't know when. ANES only covers presidential years and I haven't heard anything from folks like Catalist that have analyzed previous midterm elections.
All politics is local, and three Southern states don't necessarily represent a widespread problem. But they might. Surely someone has updated information about this by now?
A few weeks ago Bruce Willingham, publisher of the McCurtain Gazette-News in Idabel, Oklahoma, left a voice-activated recorder behind after the end of a county commissioners' meeting. He suspected the group was continuing to conduct county business after the meeting had ended.
Jennings: I heard 2 or 12 people were going for sheriff. I said fuck, let's get 20. They don’t have a goddamn clue what they’re getting into. Not this day and age. I’m gonna tell you something. If it was back in the day, when Alan Marshton would take a damn Black guy and whoop their ass and throw him in the cell? I’d run for fucking sheriff.
Sheriff: Yeah. Well, it’s not like that nomore.
Jennings: I know. Take them down to Mud Creek and hang them up with a damn rope. But you can’t do that anymore. They got more rights than we got.
This comes in the wake of a Gazette-News investigation of a case last year in which sheriff's deputies tased a hogtied burglary suspect and killed him.¹ Interestingly, everyone involved in this—the burglary suspect, the sheriff, the county commissioners, and the two reporters who have been a thorn in their side—are white. The mention of lynching Black folks isn't even personal. It's just completely gratuitous.
There is and has been an ongoing investigation into multiple, significant violation of the Oklahoma Security of Communications Act, Title 13, Chapters 176.3 and 176.4 which states that it is illegal to secretly record a conversation in which you are not involved and do not have the consent of at least one of the involved parties. There is a significant number of victims of this criminal activity and it has taken significant effort and time to identify them and corroborate evidence.
Currently, the FBI is involved and both the mayor of Idabel and the governor of Oklahoma have called for everyone involved in the recorded meeting to resign. We'll see where that goes.
¹For the record, he was hogtied by onlookers who had captured him. The deputies had nothing to do with that part.
Compared to the previous quarter, men's earnings were down $7. Women were up $8. The combined total was up 81 cents.
Since the first quarter of 2020, men's earnings are down $51 and women's earnings are down $2. The combined total was down $12 (-1%). This, of course, means the economy is running too hot and we need to drag workers down even further.
NOTE: Just as a reminder, corporate profits were up $830 billion (+59%) over the same period.
Talked to the @budlight beer salesman at the store today. He shared that he has never seen such non-movement of their products in his 15 years. Even in rural communities no product is being sold. The cooler was completely full of Bud products-not 1 case was sold since yesterday… pic.twitter.com/sNCjDIWmjQ
— TennesseeTruthSeeker (@TennesseeMAGA13) April 16, 2023
Anything is possible, I suppose, but according to actual data Bud Light sales are down -5.6% for the year compared to -10.7% during the first week of the boycott.¹ That's a net drop of five percentage points, which is considerably more believable than "not 1 case was sold since yesterday."
¹As their own VP of marketing said recently, Bud Light has "been in decline for a really long time." She added, "If we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand, there will be no future for Bud Light." This helps explain why Bud Light is doing things like partnering up with trans influencers.
On Saturday night I went out to the desert for my last astrophotography session until I recover from my upcoming CAR-T treatment. Call it four or five months.
But I was excited to go because my astro weather website was forecasting top notch conditions. It was not to be. Conditions were perfectly fine, but not especially great, so my prime target for the night turned out nicely, but not quite as nicely as I'd hoped.
There isn't much to see in April, so I was limited in my choice of targets. I ended up choosing the Pinwheel Galaxy, a large-ish galaxy that appears face-on from our neck of the woods. It sports some very pretty blue and magenta sparkles that I enhanced just because I felt like it, and I was able to pick up a fair amount of detail using 10-minute exposures for about five hours.
The little blob at the far right is NGC5477, a dwarf galaxy of no special interest.
I suppose this is a longshot, but can anyone tell me the difference between federal expenditures and federal outlays? I wouldn't care too much except for this:
The two lines are generally the same, but outlays show a big spike in Q3 of 2022 while expenditures don't. This spike is specifically in September, as you can see in the monthly chart:
Are outlays the amount budgeted, while expenditures are what actually went out the door? No. According to the Treasury Monthly Statement, outlays represent the actual flow of money out of the Treasury.
This is probably one of those things with an obvious answer that I will be embarrassed to learn I had missed. But what is it?
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy proclaimed Monday that Republicans would not allow the government to default on its debts, even as he labored to sell Wall Street on a risky fiscal showdown with the White House that could unleash vast economic turmoil.
Speaking at the New York Stock Exchange, McCarthy (R-Calif.) affirmed his party’s plan to seize on a rapidly approaching deadline — an urgent need to raise the debt ceiling, which sets how much Washington can borrow to pay its bills — to extract spending cuts and other policy concessions from President Biden.
Fucking Republicans. I wouldn't normally use such language, but my cancer treatment is just a few days away now. When I eventually get back I can pretend that I was mad with anxiety and hardly knew what I was saying.
In the meantime, fucking Republicans. McCarthy is doing this because it's one of the promises he had to make to the fuckwit wing of the party before they'd support his nomination to the speakership:
But McCarthy’s speech belied the risks in the GOP’s political gambit, which threatens to sink the stock market, thrust millions of Americans from their jobs and jolt the global financial system. The stakes seemed only more glaring given McCarthy’s choice to deliver his remarks in the beating heart of Wall Street.
For the moment, Wall Street doesn't care because investors assume that it's all just talk and McCarthy will eventually back down. And I suppose that's likely. But before it happens, Republicans may be responsible for tipping a fragile economy into recession.
Not that they care. After all, immiserating millions of people will be good for their electoral chances in 2024. Eyes on the prize, people.
