Month: October 2021

Republicans are up in arms over Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan. It’s too expensive, they say. But it wasn’t that long ago that these same penny-pinching politicians were absolutely cool with the Trump tax cuts, which allowed rich people to get even richer, all while adding plenty to the national debt. And on Sunday, Fox News’ resident free-thinker, Chris Wallace, did his best to grill one senator over his financial hypocrisy.

That person is Rick Scott, former Florida governor-turned-senator and patriotic song confuser, who went on Fox News Sunday to grouse about an ambitious bill that’s already been very watered down, thanks in part to Democratic senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. Scott, like the vast majority of Republicans, is still against it, claiming that government spending is to blame for inflation and not wanting to add to an already large national debt. But Wallace wasn’t having it.

“You talk about living within your means, you talk about debt, you talk about deficits, the Trump tax cuts — which were passed in 2017, the year before you were elected to the Senate — was estimated by the Congressional Budget Office that it will increase the budget deficit by over $2 trillion over 11 years,” Wallace said. “So should the Trump tax cuts be repealed?”

Scott, of course, dodged the question, talking instead about his belief in “lower taxes.”

“Sir, respectfully, when Donald Trump was president, you had a tax cut which added $2 trillion to the deficit according to the CBO and you didn’t have the commensurate spending cuts,” Wallace replied. “So the question is if you are not going to have the spending cuts, should you repeal the tax cuts if that debt and deficit are so vital?”

Again Scott dodged the question, talking instead about how the nations needs to “watch how we spend our money.”

Wallace, as ever, tried to expose the dodgy thinking of Republicans going on Fox News, where they’re rarely confronted over their questionable ideas. But others on social media picked up where he left off, dismantling Scott’s arguments.

Scott also discussed how his mother is struggling to pay for bills due to rising inflation. That prompted people to wonder why he, a millionaire, isn’t helping out the woman who gave him life.

You can watch Scott’s exchange with Wallace in the video above.

(Via The Daily Beast)

For the last month and change, Squid Game has been a global phenomenon, shattering viewership records, even getting its distributor, Netflix, in trouble. But recently it’s crossed a new line: It’s been inspiring copycat accidents. Over on TikTok, young users have taken one of the dystopian South Korean show’s feats and started doing it for real, with sometimes dire consequences.

According to The Daily Mail, a 14-year-old boy in Sydney, Australia, named Aiden Higgie, got bored during lockdown and attempt what is known as the honeycomb challenge. That’s the one where participants try to create a thin sheet of honeycomb then carve out a shape using only a pin without breaking it. But Aiden tried to melt the mixture in a non-microwavable cup. When he went to remove it, it exploded in his hand, the hot mixture running down his legs.

Aiden wound up with first-degree burns to his hand and deep burns and nerve damage down his leg. The wound was so bad doctors believe he’ll need a skin graft. Though the burns are healing, he’ll need to spend the next year in a pressure bandage. Aiden claimed some of his friends had already tried their own honeycomb challenges.

Since Squid Game took off, Google searches for “honeycomb mixture” and “honeycomb challenge” have taken off, especially in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, the violent nature of the show, which finds cash-strapped people competing for deadly games for riches, has inspired the New York School District to ban costumes inspired by the program. At the same time, its portrait of a broken society has inspired blue collar workers to protest deplorable working conditions.

(Via The Daily Mail)

Last week, Donald Trump announced a new venture: Truth Social, his long-threatened attempt to worm his way into the social media game. It’s already in trouble. Shady business dealings and other legal matters may deep six it before it even launches. But according to a new report by NPR, that’s far from the president-turned-failed blogger’s only financial woe.

The article surveys Trump’s businesses and finds that, while his company “still owns valuable assets” and he has a “steady income from commercial real estate properties that don’t bear his name in New York and San Francisco,” he’s still treading water. Multiple investigations into his business are underway, and he’s trying his best not to cooperate. Meanwhile, his brand, synonymous with a controversial former world leader whose term ended in disgrace and who continues to spread misinformation, has become “stagnant.”

The real estate that does bear his name, for instance, is not doing so hot. Trump Tower in Midtown New York City, his former home and the spiritual center of his empire, has sure seen better days:

Once, Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan was a bustling indoor mall, with floors and floors of retail, a pink marble atrium and an indoor waterfall. On a recent visit, the waterfall and the pink marble were still there, but the escalator going up from the first floor was roped off, a currency exchange was closed, and small ground-level shops had been converted to display windows for Trump-branded merchandise.

Meanwhile, other avenues, such as office rentals and retail, continue to struggle post-pandemic. Even his golf courses, which should have thrived over the last two years due to their outdoor locations, have seen in a decline in attendance. To make matters worse, he was recently removed from Forbes’ list of 400 richest people.

Much of this could have been averted, Forbes argued, had Trump “sold off his assets and invested in markets” while president. Had he done that, they estimated, he could have been $4.5 billion richer now. Instead, someone whose celebrity has long been based on how wealthy he claimed he was is at best just hanging on.

(Via NPR)

If you had Florida State covering the 9.5-point spread and/or threw some cash on Under 48 points in the Seminoles’ matchup with Clemson, our hearts go out to you. The ‘Noles traveled to take on the Tigers on Saturday afternoon and put up one heck of a fight, including scoring a touchdown on one of the weirdest plays we’ve seen this year, but looked like they were going to lose, 24-20.

With four seconds left and the ball on their own 33-yard line, though, Florida State decided to go for broke. There are two approaches that a team can take in this situation.

1. Hoist a Hail Mary, which usually does not work, but at the very least, the odds of something catastrophic happening are relatively low, OR…
2. PITCHY PITCHY WOO WOO, which also usually does not work, but — and this is a key difference — increases the odds of calamity exponentially.

The ‘Noles took option number two. The pass was completed and one lateral worked as planned, but there were a few more after and none of them went well. One, in particular, went as bad as you can imagine, as Clemson’s Barrett Carter scooped it up and got shoved into the end zone.

Again, Clemson was a 9.5-point favorite and won by 10 on this play. The total went from 44 to 50, too, meaning the over hit. In the immortal words of Charles Barkley, that’s a bad beat, Scott Van Pelt. We fully expect to see this one on Monday night’s edition of SportsCenter with SVP.

Joe Biden’s approval ratings aren’t doing so great right now, which is to say they’re about as good as Donald Trump’s were throughout the majority of his one-term presidency. Republicans, still in thrall to a pee tape-obsessed weirdo who may be in several kinds of big doo-doo, take up the bulk of the Joe hate, so much so that some have even coined an innocuous term that’s supposed to be code for an epithet. When someone says “Let’s go Brandon,” what they’re really saying is “F*ck Joe Biden.” And those, reportedly, are the words a Southwest pilot uttered on a flight that just happened to contain an AP reporter.

Journalist Colleen Long, whose beat is law enforcement, the Department of Justice, and the Supreme Court, wrote that she was on a flight from Houston to Albuquerque Friday morning. She was working on a piece about the “Let’s Go Brandon” craze. Then she had those very words from the pilot. At the end of his greeting over the PA system, he slipped in the secretive Biden bash, “to audible gasps from some passengers.”

Long claimed that when she tried to get a comment from the pilot, she was “almost” removed from the plane.

When reached for comment, Southwest top brass said the company “takes pride in providing a welcoming, comfortable, and respectful environment” and that “behavior from any individual that is divisive or offensive is not condoned.”

Where did the “Brandon” line come from? From NASCAR, of course. As per Long’s article:

It started at an Oct. 2 NASCAR race at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. Brandon Brown, a 28-year-old driver, had won his first Xfinity Series and was being interviewed by an NBC Sports reporter. The crowd behind him was chanting something at first difficult to make out. The reporter suggested they were chanting “Let’s go, Brandon” to cheer the driver. But it became increasingly clear they were saying: “F—- Joe Biden.”

Trump himself is very aware of the “Let’s Go Brandon.” His PAC sells a shirt emblazoned with the words for a cool $45. Meanwhile, a statement to supporters read, #FJB or LET’S GO BRANDON? Either way, President Trump wants YOU to have our ICONIC new shirt.”

(Via AP)

Though Nirvana’s Nevermind is considered canon, an essential listen for any rock fan, it’s hard a deeper impact on some listeners than others. Say, the listener who is fully depicted on the album’s cover, one Spencer Elden, who was literally an infant when the infamous cover was shot and distributed. Now that he’s an adult, Elden has an understandably complicated relationship to the image.

Though initially Elden was happy to make bank off his relationship to the cover, getting paid by various photographers to jump into a pool and “recreate” the image over the years, he recently changed his tune. As of 2021, Elden now considers the image to be “child pornography” and is suing Nirvana for “lifelong damages” as a result of the image’s popularity. Whew, what a 180?

Well, political host Bill Maher thinks that’s just not right, and he said as much on a recent episode of his show.“The words ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’ have traveled a long way from their original usage,” Maher said, addressing the subject during his show Real Time with Bill Maher. “The baby from the Nirvana album says he’s a victim. He’s suing Nirvana for lifelong damages. I never thought I’d have to say this to a baby, but stop being such a f*cking baby. You’re not a victim. There’s no reason you can’t have a normal, happy life just because people look at you and think, ‘baby penis.’”

Check out the clip above, the Nirvana topic comes up right around 3:52.

While flying is usually a pretty hellish proposition (especially during Covid-19) no matter who you are, flying while Black remains an experience unto itself. Last year’s reckoning with racism against Black people in America opened the floodgates for stories about stereotyping and discrimination, and today rapper Meek Mill faced another example of it. Though he says he had just boarded a private jet (!), a flight attendant immediately came up to Meek and his crew and accused them of smoking weed.

After the flight attendant tries to backtrack and claims he “smelled’ the weed, Meek said he wanted to get off the plane anyway because he didn’t feel safe. The flight attendant says he will try to “fix this problem,” which should be relatively easy since he’s the one who created it. “You acting real racist right now, like real crazy, ‘must be smoking weed,’” Meek said to the attendant. It’s unclear if the rapper ended up staying on the flight or looking for a different mode of transportation, but the incident is just another reminder. It’s hard to imagine a flight attendant accusing a group of white passengers of the same thing just 30 seconds after boarding.

Oh and if you have a jet for Meek, please help him out:

One of the first bits of advice you learn when you’re a pop warner football player is to play through the whistle. There are times when that ends poorly — namely when a dude gets a little too overzealous and gives the other team 15 yards as a result — but this is decidedly not one of those times.

During the second quarter of the team’s game against Clemson, Florida State signal caller Jordan Travis dropped back and found his running back, Lawrance Toafili, on a wheel route. Normally this is enough to get college football fans excited — who doesn’t love a good wheel route? — but Toafili had acres of space ahead of him and took off.

It looked like he was going to get taken down deep in Tigers territory and set the Noles up for at least three points on the possession. But somehow, instead of getting tackled, Toafili rolled on the defender without a single body part that would rule him down hitting the ground. A few yards later and he was in the end zone giving Florida State the lead.

This was the first receiving touchdown of Toafili’s career, and it is certainly not a bad way to open his account.

At 42 years old, Glover Teixeira’s Cinderella run isn’t quite over yet. Teixeira (33-7) claimed UFC gold with a second-round submission over Jan Blachowicz (28-9) to win the UFC light heavyweight championship at UFC 267 from Fight Island in Abu Dhabi.

In the first, Teixeira ate a few stiff shots from Blachowicz, but he earned an early takedown and held position through the end of the round. In the second, Blachowicz stuffed two takedown attempts from Teixeira and looked to be gaining momentum. But late in the round, Teixeira hurt Blachowicz with a big hook and then locked in a rear-naked choke after flattening the champion to earn the submission.

Teixeira became the second-oldest champion in UFC history, making it six wins in a row for the veteran. Teixeira’s last three wins have been some of the most notable of his career — over two former title contenders in dominating fashion with a knockout victory over Anthony Smith and a submission over Thiago Santos, and a submission over the champion. Blachowicz himself was coming off a notable five-fight run, one that included wins over Luke Rockhold and Dominick Reyes. He also handed Israel Adesanya his first professional loss.

After the win, Teixeira gave no hints that retirement is in his sights with full anticipation to defend the belt.

Madonna loves to skirt the line between edgy, uncomfortable, and downright disgusting. And some fans think she might’ve crossed over it with a new magazine cover shoot. Working on a shot for the cover of V Magazine, Madonna apparently thought a good conceit for the scene would be recreating the bedroom where Marilyn Monroe was found dead. For those who might be unaware, Monroe tragically died at age 36 of a drug overdose when she took too many sleeping pills.

While the connection between the two has been well-established in Madonna’s art in the past, this gruesome depiction takes it to a whole new level. Sure, the “Material Girl” inspiration from Monroe performing “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” made sense, and there’s an obvious similarity between the two, appearance-wise. It’s a great Halloween costume, as her photos below reveal:

But the emphasis is more on one of the three covers that V ended up choosing:

Photographer Steven Klein defended his artistic choices, saying the shoot was about the relationship between photographer and subject. “We were not interested in recreating the images exactly,” he said in a press release. “But more importantly, we wanted to explore the relationship between photographer and subject. Both the friendship and the artistic process, and how art can imitate life and vice versa. When I sent Madonna the photos, she was really taken by the incandescent fragility of Marilyn at that moment in her life. We decided to find a hotel suite and try to capture the liaison between a star and the camera, the mystery, and magic of this creative collaboration.”

Not sure if the scene of someone’s death by overdose is part of the mystery and magic he’s talking about, but critics seem to have a fair point for this one.