well it's a news item at least

Tyson plant managers placed bets on how many employees would get infected with COVID after the company forced them to return to work

For legal reasons anything that I am thinking should happen to these guys should strictly be done in 4k rtx minecraft

Video of Giuliani in court presenting his case for fraud

@Sterno i list listened to Phillip DeFranco explain it. this will be good

oh wait

:)

there's the Phillip DeFranco i saw describing Rudy, times to the segment

(do love how Phillip DeFranco is using a timestamp index to, makes it easy to find the link in the description when it's in the timeline too)

I didn't see that mention Rudy at that timestamp

a little bit in

he starts talking about how Rudy's in charge and his first court appearance in decades where he admits the case isn't about fraud and then continues to rant about fraud

I think the link went to the end of that section instead of the beginning. Got it now

oh right, sorry

lol, praised how useful the index is and i messed up getting the wrong one

Sounds like my video summed it up perfectly!

yeh, but i was hoping to actually see the court proceeding and just Rudy quietly admitting it's not about fraud and then ranting about all of it

Senator Perdue is really bad at hiding insider dealing

Side note: Anyone else think tweets that start with the word "EXCLUSIVE:" are obnoxious?

@Sterno EXCLUSIVE: yes

@Sterno BREAKING: tweets that start with the word "EXCLUSIVE:" are as obnoxious as ones that start with "BREAKING:"

Or, for a week on CNN, "KEY RACE ALERT"

think that's a synonym for BREAKING:

@Sterno Yeah but mostly because it's almost never exclusive

Like I get the intent of "you'll only read this here" but usually I'll read it everywhere else too, actually

you'll only find this tweet here on this account.....and retweeted by hundred of others

and posted in your feed because someone liked it

and in your feed because someone pasted the link to it

And a dozen other accounts will post the exact same thing at the same time

> And take off the fucking face diapers. Masks do more harm than good, the morbidity/lethality of this virus is fading away to nil and all this is about seeing who will comply and who will not, making you an easy target for your own neighbors to act as the government's enforcers.

JFC, it's becoming hard to read this conservative blog anymore just to see the crazy shit they're saying. Makes me ill

@Sterno probably coming from someone who reacts to Trump saying that they must fight to save democracy

I see the Michigan officials who voted not to certify, then voted to certify, are now rescinding their votes. Wonder how this will play out

Also very unclear on what "rescinding" their vote actually means in a legal sense

At least if masks are so harmful, it makes sense that people are still dieing amass now that we're round he corner.

They've just all been killed by their masks!

Interesting variation on traditional polling questions:

Election polls are more accurate if they ask participants how others will vote

Saddened that it's not "How would others answer if asked who they voted for?"

@Sterno Wow can't imagine why they'd suddenly do…Oh it was Trump

No no no, Fox News and everyone else says it was the evil Democrats who threatened their families

The case I saw was someone saying "Think of your children" which was clearly a reference to what example they're setting and what Trump as President says as a message, but the right twisted into "They're threatening their kids!"

though I've no doubt if they search they can find actual threats somewhere, because internet

Yeah, but bad faith is so much easier

I'm mad. Didn't realize I could change my dependent-care FSA contributions when COVID hit, found out in September, and changed it (losing about 2.5k because I'm obviously not paying for daycare right now). Just looked and saw that apparently HR never sent the paperwork in so I'm still contributing like $400+ a month which is just disappearing into a black hole

What the hell 😐

> Disturbing new details in alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer reveal their Plan B was to takeover the Michigan capitol building with 200 combatants, who would stage a week-long series of televised executions of public officials

Okay I'm not sure that your plan B is supposed to be harder to pull off than your plan A, but uhhh also yeah, wtf?

Clearly just honest concerned citizens.

Trump will say some absolutely outrageous bullshit like "that's what happens when the state doesn't fight fraud" or whatever and noone will bat an eye because it's par for the course that Republican politicians condone terrorism now.

@TimStone To be fair, your plan B should never be the easier plan. Why would you deliberately make your first attempt harder?

More risk bigger reward

Yeah pro tip if you're doing a conspiracy and some guy comes up like "hey I got a buddy who can get us some explosives I need you to take a material step and front $5,000", they are the FBI and are trying to get you to take a material step toward becoming an actual threat

But also if you're doing a conspiracy you should totally agree

And then get arrested. Because you want to do the conspiracy

I don't quite remember why "blow up the bridge" became a part of their plan but

The bridge was antifa

Like 1) that would scramble EVERY police officer in the state, get in your car right the fuck now 2) they have helicopters?

So apparently Disney has found a new way to screw with Copyright: twitter.com/doctorow/status/1329240238816858120 Summary: They're not paying the author of a series of tie-in novels they bought the rights to, and they're justifying it by the batshit crazy claim that they only bought the copyright license that allows them to sell the books during the Lucasarts takeover, but not the liability, i.e. the obligation to pay the writer

> ‘Reach Out to Trump Supporters,’ They Said. I Tried.

Though calling this batshit crazy might be an insult to batshit

> Just as in 2016, I don’t need Trump supporters to be humiliated to feel great again. I want them to have health insurance, decent paying jobs and security for their family. I do not want them to suffer, but I also refuse to spend any more time trying to understand and help the architects of my oppression

Holy shit I'm glad I didn't look at my 401k back in March

> Trump campaign DISMISSES its last remaining Michigan federal court lawsuit. Trump and his allies are 1-29 in post-election litigation in court

@TimStone The one they won was like 20 votes or something, right?

Also: BREAKING

@Sterno I'm not sure if we know the specific number

But we do know that it doesn't matter because the ballots were already set aside and not counted

@TimStone The night Biden was declared winner, I had a 2 hour discord conversation with a Trump voter. The biggest takeaway I had from that was that he thought Biden hadn't changed since the 90s in how racist he was (Would Obama really have made him his running mate if he was still racist), while forgetting that Trump has repeatedly shown that's he's probably become even more racist since the 90s

What do you mean? Trump is the least racist person in any room

He said so and he never lies

oh right, sarcasm

But seriously, I think Biden and Harris have most likely changed their views since the 90s

joe biden is probably the second most conservative guy out of the entire primary (actual republican mike bloomberg obviously gets number 1 here) so I mean, eh. is he still out here talking about superpredators who are going to kidnap your (white) daughter or whatever no, does he look back and think that sucked though I'm not sure

Obviously the easy and correct answer is "yeah that was pretty messed up of me", I think his answer is "come on that was 20 years ago who cares if that had lasting consequences"

I think most people have changed their views since the 90s. Hooray for progress!

> Ben Carson says he used unproven COVID-19 treatment recommended by MyPillow CEO

Yeah alright that tracks

@Unionhawk I don't remember the specifics but I know during one of the debates he did say it was a mistake

Imagine a president who can admit mistakes

Alright then, good work hitting a home run on a pitch that got served to you at a home run derby joe

@Sterno That right there is such a change

Obviously that's a long way from "that was messed up of me"

Definitely goes to show how low the bar is

Sad that you can just shuffle your ass over the bar because the damn thing has been pounded into the ground

When you vote Trump because Biden is too racist for you...

@NapoleonWilson It's less a case of "Biden is too racist for me" and more a case of "they've both been racist in the 90s, and since I still have the same views as in the 90s, they probably do too, so they're equally racist"

Then who to vote, Kanye?

Oh wait, no, Trump, to stick it to the "elites".

@NapoleonWilson If racism isn't a dealbreaker for you, you're probably not going to vote for a black rapper

But if racism isn't a dealbreaker for you, then what's it matter how racist Biden or Trump are anyway?

Biden isn't perfect and Hillary really was kinda bad. But ya gotta vote somethin'. That's the dilemma of the two-party system. But if you vote for Trump, saying Biden was kinda racist, too isn't really an argument. Unless you just want to see the world burn, which might have been a trendy voting reason 4 years ago, but hardly holds anymore.

World already successfully on fire

You did it, 2016! Congratulations!

I'd never seen this John Stewart/Tucker Carlson thing on Crossfire. Good times

@Nzall Fuck Disney, holy shit.

This is just straight up theft

I mean, it's a company built entirely on theft from the public domain, it makes sense that they'd eventually broaden their horizons

@ToxicFrog yuuuup

fuck Disney. this is just a whole new low.

Disney delenda est.

(true story, ADF's SW novelization and Splinter of the Mind's Eye were the first SW books -- and I think possibly the first licensed novels of any kind -- I read)

It's also simply straight up greed and deliberate assholery. While it is unfortunate that the system allows crap like that and you can't force people to be good humans, at some point you also just decide to be a complete and utter scumbag despite not being in any remotely financial need.

But...they can also ultimately afford the backlash, people won't stop watching and paying for Disney shit no matter how outraged they are on Twitter. Testing the boundaries has shown time and time again that there are none. Watcha gonna do? Say good bye to Star Wars, the MCU, or cinema altogether? Muahahaha!

I mean, it's not just twitter outrage, their claim here is basically that when they acquired LucasArts they only got the half of each contract LucasArts had with other entities that was advantageous to them

This is, AIUI, entirely unsupported in contract law and they're basically gambling that either (a) no-one they're doing this to has the time and money available to sue them over it and/or (b) if it goes to court they can drag it out until their opponents go bankrupt and/or lean on the judge

If they actually pull this is off it's an apocalypse for all forms of royalty agreements because it means they are trivial for the publisher to abrogate

@ToxicFrog Just like McDonalds is a real estate company, not a restaurant chain, Disney is closer to a law firm than a multimedia producer

@ToxicFrog yeah, just sell your copyright agreements to a sister company

Exactly

@Nzall Or create a middleman shell company through which you'd acquire your copyright agreements. It's basically copyright laundering.

So uh the Trump Campaign press conference is obviously dumb but Sidney Powell just said that Hugo Chavez was responsible for rigging the election

Something about Venezuelan voting machines blah blah, I don't even know

But that's what we call a long con, after you died, seven years ago

rig the election against the president you didn't even know was president because you had, i dunno, died three years before they had even become president

hastrumpconceded.com

@MBraedley A decade later that's still going to say no

@TimStone from the descriptions that press conference must have been truly wild, even for Trump and Guiliani standards

He's somehow still going

I'm not going to watch that

Also Rudy is so flustered he's sweating out his hair dye

Just an A+ performance

Never dyed my hair, but I thought that isn't supposed to be water-soluble

It depends, I guess.

I'm going to guess he half-assed it with some temporary dye or something

> "Our cases haven't been dismissed," says @RudyGiuliani responding to reporter noting 20+ cases dismissed or dropped. "You're lying. You're lying."

Huh, apparently the Trump campaign has dismissed their last fraud lawsuit

Their explanation for that was that the board decertified the results

Which they did not

Even if the President tried to get the two people to recant, it doesn't work that way?

It is election interference though!

> "Please don't make light of it," Giuliani says of his baseless fraud allegations, as hair dye runs down both sides of his face simultaneously

Okay, that is the perfect summary

@TimStone Oh here's the video

It's too dumb for me to even check at this point but it's possible the person she's referring to that signed an affidavit "detailing" this mastermind scheme is the 8kun guy, which is really something

@TimStone Rudy looks like he's about to fall over and die

@TimStone It is

@TimStone 8chan is the chan that get created since 4chan wasn't racist enough, right?

and wouldn't allow child pornography

He must be one of those "good people" Trump was talking about

You gotta be kind of glad everyone put on this fraud case is so completely and outrageously deranged to make it nothing but a clown show. Of course this makes it all the sadder when a lot of people still buy into this shit. But at least it's pretty much clear to everyone sane how entirely futile all of this is. It would be more dangerous if anyone remotely competent was on this.

(Though, in that case they'd also probably just pulled the cord earlier.)

> Czech president says Trump should quit after election loss and "not be embarrassing"

> Infowars host praises press conference by Trump attorneys including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell: "This sounds like exactly like what Infowars has been saying for months"

lmao

@TimStone Oh god

@NapoleonWilson It also worries me just how far beyond the usual insanity they're willing to go. Who knows what else they might try

Also true. Though, the entire administration was about testing the waters on how deranged a president is still acceptable. So is the election testing the waters of how far you can drive the democracy and the people.

Trump himself has basically nothing to lose for he doesn't give a shit about anything but himself. The worst that could happen to him is he's no longer president.

> The rollup everyone has been waiting for, but different: BuzzFeed (initially bankrolled by Kenny Lerer), is taking over HuffPost (cofounded by Kenny Lerer)

> on the official donald trump youtube stream they accidentally left their audio on and you can hear the team there say "you see f--king rudy's hair dye dripping down his face?"

Amazing

@TimStone if this were fiction, nobody would believe it

Imagine if Republicans grew a spine and called Trump on his bullshit

Too busy taking notes, apparently

I mean, it'd be bad marginally worse for the country, but it would be hilariously poetic to see Lindsey Graham, McConnell, or others lose their next primary to some QAnon nut

Wait a minute though. If QAnon takes over the government, who are they going to blame for things?

@Sterno non-whites

> We found Tucker Carlson and Obama speaking at the same private equity conference months after Carlson slammed him for doing paid Wall St speeches

lol

but also lol at anyone speaking at a private equity conference

(Jeffrey Cutler, in the Middle District Pa. Action, has pro se filed a "Motion to Declare Donald J. Trump Victorious." This is one of the funniest legal documents I've read in ages

Like, this is a lawyer who doesn't even know how to write the word "amendment"

Fox News still talking about Jeffrey Toobin just to take shots at CNN, I guess. Remind me if they covered all the Bill O'Reilly stuff?

16 Photos Of Rudy Giuliani In A Hot Room

"Shit I am dripping. Must've drunk too much blood."

@TimStone pot kettle

> Arizona court DISMISSES lawsuit filed by the Arizona Republican Party seeking to expand the state’s election audit

Now 1-30

@TimStone "We withdrew because we won!"

It's a far cry from the Guiliani craziness and whatever Trump does, but Pence is still pretty much denying reality in the Coronavirus briefing right now. Pretty much ignoring how bad the situation is right now

@MadScientist I mean that's just the GOP playbook. See also: Global Warming.

Really, the only very good news right now are the vaccines. And it does sound like everyone will be flooring the gas pedal on approving them and shipping them as soon as possible

Well, looks like Birx isn't sugarcoating the situation right now

@MadScientist I'm not sure who that is

IT's hard to keep track of everyone in the Trump admin, since they keep getting replaced.

Deborah Birx, from the Covid task force. Generally not political, but went a bit too far in giving in to Trump. So certainly not Fauci, but also not as bad as actual Trump stooges

I assume she'll be fired soon too, if she's being honest.

she's been there forever, so I don't think so. I doubt Trump will even watch this briefing

> This'll be missed in the Rudy chaos news, but this is a big deal. The Fed is publicly asking for help saving this economy and the Trump Administration is saying no

@MadScientist So... is that chart an attempt to say that because prior slopes failed to continue growing indefinitely (largely because of lockdowns and other measures), that we shouldn't be worried about the current trend?

@BradC no, I think that is just a visualization of how serious the situation is right now

@Nzall so you can go "what's plan B" and cut away to the more violent option

> In this interview, Stephen Moore, who still serves as an official Trump campaign surrogate & as an outside adviser to Trump, said on-record what so many close to DJT say not on-rec: —Biden won —little to no chance the Trump legal blitz is going to work

So he really is trying to dismantle democracy so he can say he wasn't owned and maybe in the slim chance it works, amazing

@TimStone is that 1-29 counting when they withdrawal their lawsuits because they know they'll loose and be lambasted?

@Nzall probably the more reason for authors, series writers, etc, now-a-days to not hand over any rights to companies and just release themselves

> Biden says that he has made his choice for Treasury Sec, and it's a person who will make all factions of the party happy.

like it'll be harder with some mediums but Games and Books already have means to self-publish. only a matter of time before we have self-published animation

I uh, have suspicions that they won't actually

First of all because that is of course not possible

It could be Bailey, whose platforms is just free burritos. Doesn't say in the rules the Treasury Secretary can't be a dog

@TimStone 1-31

I am at least lowering the odds that it's like, literally Jamie Dimon CEO of JP Morgan Chase but

@Unionhawk I'd assume that this simply means that it is someone more in the middle of the party and not on any extreme end. Which certainly wouldn't make everyone happy, but might make fewer people unhappy

Which would indeed make a large portion of capital letters The Party happy

Having a hard time deciding who would be the funniest person it could be

I mean [there are a lot of funny picks](en dot wikipedia slash list of bank ceos) but I don't think those are likely and am honestly not convinced they'd be the funniest

I've decided it's Paul Krugman

George Soros treasury is the funniest actually that's what I'm going with

I will allow that too

that guy does hedge funds or whatever he'd be qualified

He also isn't an executive producer of Suicide Squad

or, you know, extremely racist

wait shit I'm getting my guys with a last name starting with M mixed up aren't I

shit

No you're right Mnuchin is Treasury Secretary

I think I was half right

@TimStone are we in an Invader Zim Episode now

He's the executive producer but stephen miller is the noted extremely racist guy

@Unionhawk Yeah but he also did the "Americans were united after 9/11" take

Oh, right, yeah

@TimStone So what you're saying is he'd be perfect to work for Joe Biden

Correct. It's the "Just wait and see who we got: Exactly who you expected" that makes it funny

joe biden 2020: "those who misremember history,"

> As Trump attempts to subvert the election to remain in power, Lara Trump has been telling associates she is considering a run for Senate in 2022 in her home state of North Carolina, where there will be a once in a generation open seat

lol

> "My message is hope and help is on the way," concludes @SecAzar

looks at calendar Uhhh

> EUA application by @pfizer for its #COVID19 vaccine will be submitted Friday, confirm @SecAzar and @VP

so, the press went pretty much ballistic after Pence didn't take any questions.

@MadScientist That's not surprising

I can't blame Pence though. Last thing you want to do is spend time being called out on your bullshit