Saturday, May 02, 2026

Saturday Stuff


Farron Cousins tells us that the verdict appears to be in on the reign of Bari Weiss at CBS News, and it’s about what you would expect...the Nielsen ratings agency says it looks like the CBS Evening News hasn’t hit 4 million viewers a night, which I suppose is the ratings benchmark against which the prime time newscasts are measured...Cousins is spot-on in saying that, in a world where a shameless flak like Weiss isn’t in charge of what was once a prestigious TV news organization, that person would have been canned by now with ratings like these (NSFW/H)...



...and David Shuster of Rebel HQ lets us know that California has enough signatures to get the billionaires tax on the ballot (this bunch would be taxed at 5 percent on all of their assets, and it would be a one-time tax), and leave it to Bernie Sanders to keep fighting for economic justice with the rest of us...of course, leave it also to plutocrats like Sergey Brin and his pals to have a collective hissy fit over it (not that we heard a word of protest from these characters of course over the Big Beautiful Clusterf*ck from last summer – hell, they made out like bandits, so OF COURSE they kept quiet over it)...but awwww, it looks like Peter Thiel and that foul ilk are still on the hook for the tax if it passes because they would have had to have left the state in January – womp womp...and yes, the ONE-TIME tax would go for nutrition and health care benefits that the regime of the Gropenfuhrer destroyed by the aforementioned bill (and I’m not going to dignify the typical indignant bullsh*t of our *preznit who, let’s not forget, was found civilly liable by a New York jury on a charge of sexual abuse, which is basically r*pe without the actual word - here)...



...and Dan Lieberman of More Perfect Union tells us that it looks like Corpus Christi, Texas may be the first US city to officially run out of water, with giant oil, gas, and petrochemical companies gobbling up precious resources (according to the report, businesses use about 60 percent of the water)...the residents have to rely on city, state and federal lawmakers, and I would guess that a few of them have already been paid off since that’s usually how this stuff plays out...and if you guessed that a historically black community is impacted the most here, then you win an exemption from water over-usage charges during a drought, which apparently is fine and dandy for businesses in the “All Hat, No Cattle” state (apparently, water exemptions were promised to businesses to get them to relocate to Corpus Christi, which has “bad idea” written all over it)...it looks like they reached a tipping point over a desalination plant to try and address the drought, according to councilman Jim Klein...I think it’s plain that this Roland Barrera guy is pretty much a business shill who doesn’t give a damn about the residents...kudos to civil engineer John Michael fighting what must be a lonely fight to drill emergency wells...I just don’t know about this Bob Paulison guy; I’m inclined to think he’s in on the grift too, but I’d love to be wrong, and this Peter Zanoni doesn’t sound impressive on this either as far as I can tell...



...and taking another trip over to the UK for a minute or two, Jonathan Pie discusses the “dodgy donations” of Nigel Farage, including a 5 million pound gift by someone in Thailand...didn’t know the extent of Farage’s grift, but it Is indeed a growth industry to fly around the world telling conservatives what they want to hear...Pie really nails it on crypto in particular here; there should be a full-throated corporate media outcry against it because it’s used primarily by criminals, but good luck expecting THAT to happen (very NSFW/H, but funny IMO)...



...and I wanted to conclude things for the week with this item – in our current Trumpist BS era there is so much hateful nonsense going on with the people who allegedly represent us (though we know the reality of course) and so much overall idiocy that I wanted to provide this item as a bit of a “palate cleanser”...before a recent Stanley Cup playoff game in Buffalo (where they commendably sing both the American and Canadian national anthems), the microphone for the singer performing “O Canada” went out, so the U.S. fans finished singing the anthem instead...props to the great Buffalo Sabres fans for this moment, and congrats to the team for moving on in the playoffs (and to the “Fly Guys” also of course)...



...and this week ten years ago, 15 albums by Prince reappeared on the UK charts in response to the musician’s death on 4/21/16...kind of puts me in a mood to hear this number once again.

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