Odds and Ends — 5 October 2023

7 months ago

Oh yes, I had fun yesterday. Every year, I try to play at least one event in The Fall Poker Classic. This year, I played in the Omaha-8 event. Didn’t manage to cash in it, but did make it into the seventh round of blinds, not bad for my first time playing O-8 in the tournament format. After busting out, I joined a cash game (LHE) and won better than minimum wage money at it. Yay me?

Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, and Debt:

Kraken set to acquire Dutch exchange BCM, eyes European expansion

https://twitter.com/JoeConsorti/status/1709208934551371840?s=20

Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

This MacArthur ‘genius’ knew the initial theory of COVID transmission was flawed

Florida Man:

Ron DeSantis Has Money Problems

The Florida governor’s presidential campaign entered this month with just $5 million in cash available for the primary, a sum that reignites doubts about his solvency, budgeting and ability to gain ground on front-running former President Donald Trump.

Politics:

https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/727604522156228608?s=20

Yes, as always, it’s all about him: Trump Says His Trial Is Start of Communism

Welcome to the hellscape: McCarthy Staffers Making Calls for Jim Jordan

Members of Kevin McCarthy’s staff have been working the phones on behalf of Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan’s run for speaker.

https://twitter.com/acnewsitics/status/1709754298375290938?s=20

The Only Sin That Republicans Can’t Forgive

The fall of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy … demonstrated again that the one sin that cannot be forgiven in the modern Republican Party is being seen as failing to fight the Democratic agenda by any means necessary.

https://twitter.com/Strandjunker/status/1709618183840121009?s=20

Trump World Warns Against Emmer For Majority Leader

Shortly after Emmer announced on Wednesday that he was running for the leadership position, a group of Trump’s Congressional and media allies began plotting to derail his candidacy.

Tom Emmer is very conservative, but he’s not entirely batshit insane. That seems to be a disqualifying factor.

Too bad, so sad: Giuliani Loses Another Lawyer

The Fall of Kevin McCarthy

For the first time in the nation’s history, a sitting speaker of the House has been ousted; and Kevin McCarthy now has the historic distinction of having the shortest tenure with the gavel since the guy who died of tuberculosis in 1876.
McCarthy, who so desperately wanted that title and the portrait — and who made one surrender after another to get them — will now be remembered merely as an asterisk, if even that.
Indeed, Kevin would be a tragic figure, if he were not so utterly and clownishly pathetic. His tenure was marked by serial humiliations, each paving the way to his thoroughly undignified downfall.

https://twitter.com/MarkJacob16/status/1709552726089097559?s=20

Don’t Blame the Democrats

I just reject the Republican establishmentarian spin that the real issue here is Democrats’ refusal to bail McCarthy out. My advice to Democrats was to not drive a hard bargain here — be a cheap date, want to get to yes. But if McCarthy wants Democrats to do something for him, he has to do something in return.
I understand he felt that he couldn’t offer any concessions for risk of further increasing the size of the rebellion, but that’s just another way of saying that the GOP caucus is dysfunctional. And people need to know that. Joe Biden is old, but he runs a competent professional administration. Republicans are running a shit show.
Importantly, the shit show is bigger than the handful of rebels. The rebels are absolutely part of it, but given that, the mainstream wing of the party has no choice but the cauterize the wound and make a deal with Democrats to keep McCarthy in the Speaker’s chair.
That means mainstream Republicans need to suck it up and offer Democrats something. They don’t need to like sucking it up, but that is the position the rebels put them in. And they just refused. That’s a top to bottom dysfunctional Republican caucus. People need to see and understand that.

https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1709539181624447423?s=20

How the White House Keeps Canceling Student Debt

President Biden announced student-debt forgiveness for another tranche of Americans on Wednesday, months after the Supreme Court blocked the administration’s most ambitious borrower-relief plan.
The string of politically advantageous announcements comes thanks to the administration’s use of existing programs that allow the government to waive debt for certain borrowers.
The moves are separate from the administration’s troubled attempt to cancel as much as $20,000 in student debt for any borrower who earns less than $125,000 a year. The Supreme Court struck down that executive action in June.

https://twitter.com/itsJeffTiedrich/status/1709649414187323904?s=20

Trump’s Words Turn Increasingly Violent

Trump’s violent rhetoric — a staple of his political brand dating back to 2015 — has grown more extreme as the walls have begun to close in on his business empire, livelihood and personal freedom.
His words’ violent turn in recent weeks — calling for a U.S. military leader to be executed, mocking a potentially fatal assault on a congressional spouse, urging police to shoot shoplifters — suggest a line has been crossed.

https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1709601797097357500?s=20

Hakeem Jeffries Is the Big Winner in the McCarthy Trials

https://twitter.com/mluckovichajc/status/1709622094810562613?s=20

The Republican Delusion Machine

The requisite for GOP leadership is delivering fantasies—that Trump won in 2020, that the Republicans did not lose in 2022. Fail at that and you’re out…
The rules of contemporary Republican politics make it hard to accept reality. Reality is just too awkward.

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1709738696629457213?s=20