Finally Friday Reads: Ground Hog’s Day Edition

Happy Groundhog Day to those who celebrate. John Buss, @repeat1969

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

When I get around friends these days, the topic of conversation isn’t so much about Mardi Gras Parades or the usual stuff in their lives. It’s about how challenging it is to deal with anyone they know in the Kool-Aid Cult or simply trying to watch the day’s news. Open any list of today’s news items, and it will return you to bed. I’ve had conversations with everyone, from a friend since sixth grade to folks I’ve just met in front of my house. Just gazing at any social media site makes me wonder what Star Trek Timeline I landed in. Is it possible I will also bump into the evil Spock?

But you don’t have to ask me.

Ask Elmo. Why Is Elmo a Topic on the Evening and Morning News Shows? He showed up on social media asking how everyone felt, and they told him. This is from CNN and AJ Willingham. The Screen Capture from yesterday got 5.4 million views. I retweeted it. I wasn’t alone. “Elmo asked people online how they were doing. He got an earful.” The Elmo beat is mainstream now.

When Elmo posted a kind-hearted check-in this week on X, formally known as Twitter, he may have assumed he’d be shielded by these social mores. But he comes from “Sesame Street,” which is no place for lies.

“Elmo is just checking in!” he wrote. “How is everybody doing?”

Thousands of replies and a few interventions from his “Sesame Street” pals later, and it was pretty clear: The people are not doing well, Elmo!

It’s not surprising. The world is experiencing a grinding war in Ukraine, potential famine in Gaza and a seemingly endless drumbeat of mass shootings in the US. Many young Americans are struggling with anxiety and depression as the country faces a well-documented mental health crisis. And in many places we’re in the middle of a cold, dark winter.

The tenor of the responses to Elmo reflect much of that — and some welcome dark humor in unburdening ourselves to a fuzzy puppet. Elmo’s query also led to some heartwarming conversations about emotional health and the importance of checking in with friends.

We are not OK, thanks

“Elmo each day the abyss we stare into grows a unique horror. one that was previously unfathomable in nature. our inevitable doom which once accelerated in years, or months, now accelerates in hours, even minutes. however I did have a good grapefruit earlier, thank you for asking.”

“Every morning, I cannot wait to go back to sleep. Every Monday, I cannot wait for Friday to come. Every single day and every single week for life.”

“Elmo I’m depressed and broke.”

“I’m at my lowest, thanks for asking.”

“Elmo I’ve got to level with you baby we are fighting for our lives”

And, one of the most brutally honest replies:

“Elmo I’m gonna be real I am at my f***ing limit.”

After a few hours of people trauma dumping on the Muppet, the official “Sesame Street” account called time with a follow-up post directing people to — yes, really — mental health resources.

Or, as someone else on X said, “Elmo sorry but this above Elmo’s pay grade.”

I didn’t add anything to the list, but I sure could’ve. We have an excellent economy, and the response of many major corporations is to price gouge us after four years of Trump, three years of COVID-19, and all the war news that’s never fit to print but must be. I was not okay as a kid watching the Vietnam War unfold on my parent’s black and white console TV  or watching a bunch of Southern Cops use fire hoses on Black children my age on the same TV.   At least it wasn’t 24/7, but we got newspaper delivery twice daily and the weekly news magazines. Still, seeing Donnie Dotard on TV and hearing that voice is worse. It’s like a peep show into the psycho ward at the Super Max prison for the criminally insane.

President Biden, whose approval rating has suffered amid high inflation, is beginning to pressure large grocery chains to slash food prices for American consumers, accusing the stores of reaping excess profits and ripping off shoppers.

“There are still too many corporations in America ripping people off: price gouging, junk fees, greedflation, shrinkflation,” Mr. Biden said last week in South Carolina. Aides say those comments are a preview of more pressure to come against grocery chains and other companies that are maintaining higher-than-usual profit margins after a period of rapid price growth.

Mr. Biden’s public offensive reflects the political reality that, while inflation is moderating, voters are angry about how much they are paying at the grocery store, and that is weighing on Mr. Biden’s approval rating ahead of the 2024 election.

Economic research suggests the cost of eggs, milk and other staples — which consumers buy far more frequently than big-ticket items like furniture or electronics — play an outsize role in shaping Americans’ views of inflation. Those prices jumped more than 11 percent in 2022 and 5 percent last year, amid a post-pandemic inflation surge that was the nation’s fastest burst of price increases in four decades.

Nothing is more traumatizing than watching a feeble dotard former guy and his absolutely deluded and mean followers sickeningly scream about their assumed grievances. It’s absolutely mood-killing. The economy is doing phenomenally. The Biden Administration has done everything that Economists know about running a good economy, and it’s going gangbusters in terms of employment and growth. Again, price-gouging is an issue, but only Congress can enact a law to curb that, and they won’t do anything that would make Biden look good. I mean seriously. They’ll kill us over selling out the Orange Snot Blossom. Biden spent 2023 shaming them in speeches, but that only goes so far.

But still, wow, the economy rocks. Just ask Hillary. The link is from Steve Benen at MSNBC. New report points to blockbuster U.S. job growth as 2024 begins. “By every metric, the latest jobs report points to a robust U.S. job market. The political implications have the potential to be dramatic.” The word ‘potential’ is essential. Will Fox News viewers ever see the results of Bidenomics?

Expectations heading into this morning showed projections of about 185,000 new jobs having been added in the United States in January. As it turns out, according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the job market managed to do much better than that. CNBC reported:

Job growth posted a surprise increase in January, demonstrating again that the U.S. labor market is solid and poised to support broader economic growth. Nonfarm payrolls expanded by 353,000 for the month, much better than the Dow Jones estimate for 185,000, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. The unemployment rate held at 3.7%, against the estimate for 3.8%.

What’s more, while January’s jobs report showed employers adding 353,000 positions last month, we also learned that wage growth continued to outpace inflation, and the unemployment rate remained at 3.7%. In fact, the jobless rate has been below 4% for 24 consecutive months — a streak unseen in the United States since the 1960s.

Also note, the jobs report that comes every year in early February is especially notable because it includes revisions for all of the previous year. With this in mind, we now know that 3.05 million jobs were created in 2023 — well above the previous 2.7 million estimate.

As for the politics, let’s circle back to previous coverage to put the data in perspective. Over the course of the first three years of Donald Trump’s presidency — when the Republican said the United States’ economy was the greatest in the history of the planet — the economy created roughly 6.35 million jobs, spanning all of 2017, 2018 and 2019.

According to the latest tally, the U.S. economy has created roughly 15.1 million jobs since January 2021 — more than double the combined total of Trump’s first three years.

In recent months, Republicans have responded to developments like these by pretending not to notice them. No one should be surprised if GOP officials keep the trend going today.

Biden and Nikki Haley are not holding back on attacking Donnie Dotard. Most of the funds raised by his supporters go to take care of his massive legal troubles. The Washington Post reported yesterday that “Trump spent more than $55 million in donor money on legal fees last year, filings show.” Given that Nikki now has a large donor base filled with Republican billionaires, his uneducated SDE base is really on the hook for it.

Former president Donald Trump is cruising toward the Republican presidential nomination after victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, but he is diverting enormous sums of donor money to his mounting legal fees as he faces multiple lawsuits and 91 felony charges across four criminal cases.

The new figures for his legal spending were outlined in campaign disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday night. Trump’s advisers have said the money that is being spent on legal expenses is not only for Trump’s defense, but also for the lawyer fees for some of his advisers and associates. Here are a few early takeaways from the new filings:

Two of Trump’s committees, Save America leadership PAC and the Make America Great Again PAC, spent $55.6 million on legal bills in 2023, including $29.9 million in the second half of the year, according to the new reports released Wednesday.

According to Politico, Biden has many behind-the-door things to say about Trump. I say let Biden be Biden. “What Biden *really* says about Trump behind closed doors.”

President JOE BIDEN has a reputation for salty language behind closed doors. But it nearly slipped out in public during his speech at Valley Forge last month to mark the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Animated and angry, he derided DONALD TRUMP and his followers for drawing glee from political violence.

“At his rally, he jokes about an intruder, whipped up by the Big Trump Lie, taking a hammer to Paul Pelosi’s skull,” Biden said.

“And he thinks that’s funny,” the president continued. “He laughed about it. What a sick …”

Biden let his voice trail off as the crowd cheered and chuckled.

In private, he doesn’t stop short.

The president has described Trump to longtime friends and close aides as a “sick fuck” who delights in others’ misfortunes, according to three people who have heard the president use the profane description. According to one of the people who has spoken with the president, Biden recently said of Trump:

My thoughts exactly, Mr. President. “”What a fucking asshole the guy is.”

But you don’t have to take my or his word for it. Here are some recent examples reported in the news. This is from CNN. “Roberta Kaplan says Trump threw papers across table at Mar-a-Lago deposition because his legal team agreed to feed her lunch.” It gets worse.

Attorney Roberta Kaplan said former President Donald Trump threw papers across a table and stormed off during a deposition at Mar-a-Lago after learning that his legal team had agreed to provide her lunch.

Kaplan, who has represented clients in high-profile cases against Trump, including E. Jean Carroll, said on an episode of the “George Conway Explains it All (to Sarah Longwell)” podcast recorded Thursday that she rejected the former president’s request that they work through a lunch break because he believed the deposition was “a waste of my time.”

“And then you could kind of see the wheel spinning in his brain. You could really almost see it,” Kaplan told Republican strategist Sarah Longwell and conservative attorney George Conway, a longtime Trump critic. “And he said, ‘Well, you’re here in Mar-a-Lago. What do you think you’re going to do for lunch? Where are you going to get lunch?’”

Kaplan said she told him that his attorneys had “graciously offered to provide” her team with lunch — a common civil practice between opposing legal teams.

“At which point there was a huge pile of documents, exhibits, sitting in front of him, and he took the pile and he just threw it across the table. And stormed out of the room,” Kaplan shared, adding that Trump specifically yelled at his lawyer Alina Habba for providing them lunch.

“He really yelled at Alina for that. He was so mad at Alina,” she said.

Kaplan continued: “He came back in and he said, ‘Well, how’d you like the lunch?’ And I said, ‘Well, sir, I had a banana. You know, I can never really eat when I’m taking testimony.’ And he said, ‘Well, I told you,’ — it was kind of charming. He said, ‘I told you, I told them to make you really bad sandwiches, but they can’t help themselves here. We have the best sandwiches.’”

His misogyny was worse in a prior case that Kaplan was handling.

Kaplan was deposing Trump at Mar-Lago in a lawsuit alleging the former president was involved with a fraudulent marketing company. A federal judge dismissed the suit last month.

In a separate anecdote, Kaplan detailed the end of the deposition when she was set to leave, saying that Trump told her: “See you next Tuesday” – a phrase that is often used as a derogatory euphemism directed at women.

“We come in the room and I say, ‘I’m done asking questions’ and immediately I hear from the other side, ‘Off the record. Off the record. Off the record.’ So they must have planned it. And he looks at me from across the table and he says, ‘See you next Tuesday,’” she recounted.

I had to look that one up.

See you next Tuesday is derived from a combination of the letters c and u, which when pronounced aloud sound like “see you,” and the first letters of the words next and Tuesday. This forms an acronym rebus that, when taken together, stands for cunt. The phrase is sometimes typed out as c u next Tuesday.

So, here’s some more Donnie Dotard and friends-related links if you are so inclined.

Jose Pagliery / The Daily Beast:
Trump PAC Paid to Investigate Stupidity of Trump’s Own Lawyers

 Suzanne Blake / Newsweek:
Republicans Want New Hampshire to Leave United States

 Ana Swanson / New York Times:
Trump’s Tariffs Hurt U.S. Jobs but Swayed American Voters, Study Says

Oh, it’s a folly holiday with Donnie. No wonder it’s Donnie we abhor!!! (With apologies to Burt, the Chimney Sweep.)

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?