Money, Not Showing Up, and BAROOM!

Various Forms of Justice

Molly Ivins: “Confusing the academy with the world is a dumb and dangerous thing to do. In the real world, money talks, bullshit walks. In a state legislature, clout meets clout, money meets money, interest fights interest, and only the strong prevail. Which is why ordinary folks keep losing. Should this strike you as an unduly Darwinian view of what is, after all, a liberal, Western democracy, I can only commend you to Reality School. Go and study how the laws are made and then tell me if I lie.” 

Still it's a shame that Fox never had to get down on the ground and grovel and rub dirt in its hair for lying that Dominion Voting Systems stole the election. All Rupert and his forked-tongue minions had to do was compensate the voting-machine company (at the tune of $787.5 million) for damage done to the company's reputation. Fox bought its way out of having to admit in court that it lied, knowingly, to its listeners. Who apparently don't care, anyway, as their numbers are going up.

            But lies served to people who lap up lies spill out onto the rest of us. Fox has not been penalized for falsely defaming American democracy's integrity. If Rupert's minions, out joyriding to impress gullible bystanders, had run over a lot of people on purpose, and blamed it on the car, I guess their accountability would have ended with paying off the car company. Including, it goes without saying, the car company's lawyers. The judge in the Dominion versus Fox case was impressed with the work of both legal teams: "This is the best lawyering I've ever had. I just want to say I would be proud to be your judge in the future."

            Step aside, folks. This matter has been settled.

            The judge by the way makes $7,055.54 every two weeks, according to Openpayrolls.com. Chump change, compared to what fast-track lawyers pull in. But he gets to rule.

            And he probably keeps track of his money, unlike (Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and) the cryptocurrency magnate (now I believe under house arrest in his parents' house, which must be awkward) Sam Bankman-Fried, who according to the Times "told colleagues at one point that [his company's] sister hedge fund, Alamedda Research, was 'unauditable' and that the team sometimes  found $50 million in assets lying around that they had lost track of. 'Such is life,' he wrote."

            Life in New Orleans is increasingly crime-infested, according to statistics cited by the City Council. The mayor, Latoya Cantrell, has referred to the Council's data as "false truths." She presents data that shows crime reports going down. City Council President J. P. Morrell has an answer to that: 32 percent of calls to the police about violent crimes are never counted as crime reports because by the time police respond to them (106 minutes on average last month) everybody has given up and gone. So these would-be reports are marked as GOA or "gone on arrival." I tend to side with the Council's data, beOut front of our house a while back, a truck hauling a thirty-foot-long container snagged its load on crepe myrtle lining the street and the container fell on top of a car parked right in front of ours. All traffic was blocked, and rerouted by the maintenance man at the bar on the corner. Police were called right away. A cop showed up six hours later.

            So you want some good news? I can't understand why this story didn't get more play, when it came out a couple of weeks ago. It seems that Vladlen Tatarsky of St Petersburg, Russia, a notorious hardline supporter of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, who once declared, "We'll defeat everyone, we'll kill everyone, and we'll rob everyone we need to. Everything will be just as we like it" --

            Was killed by a bust of himself.

            The bust had just been presented to him. "Oh what a handsome guy!" he said. "Is that me? It's golden."

            Then the bust exploded.