Social media giant Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg officially announced the company would be changing its name to who gives a fuck on Thursday, capping off days of buzz in the blogosphere among fucking assholes who use words like “buzz” (outside normal usages like the sound a bee or a hair trimmer makes) and “blogosphere” in normal conversation (no context justifies that one).

The new [Who Gives a Fuck] Inc. will be the parent corporation to the still formerly eponymous Facebook network full of boomers and degenerates to spread vaccine misinformation, Instagram for vain self-cocksuckers to lord their status over shy and introverted teenagers, and WhatsApp for trafficking drugs and weapons across international borders. Nothing changes, so who gives a fuck.

“After Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina dumped more than $1.6 million in stocks in February 2020 a week before the coronavirus market crash, he called his brother-in-law, according to a new Securities and Exchange Commission filing. They talked for 50 seconds. Burr, according to the SEC, had material nonpublic information regarding the incoming economic impact of coronavirus. The very next minute, Burr’s brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth, called his broker.”

“ProPublica previously reported that Fauth, a member of the National Mediation Board, had dumped stock the same day Burr did. But it was previously unknown that Burr and Fauth spoke that day, and that their contact came just before Fauth began the process of dumping stock himself. The revelations come as part of an effort by the SEC to force Fauth to comply with a subpoena that the agency said he has stonewalled for more than a year, and which was filed not long after ProPublica’s story. In the filings, the SEC also revealed that there is an ongoing insider trading investigation into both Burr and Fauth’s trades. It had previously been reported that federal prosecutors had decided not to charge Burr” ProPublica reports.

Jittery man-boy Ben Shapiro gives up on denialism and goes with his version of “realism” in this rant, saying that “mitigation” is the only answer and not “remaking the global economy”, almost as if he’s going to start advocating for wind and solar power for electric grids, fueling electric motor vehicles for transportation, thereby reducing carbon pollution. He won’t.

Politico: “Donald Trump’s proclamation that he’d ‘soon’ visit Virginia as the state’s gubernatorial race comes to a close was so unexpected that few outside his inner orbit knew it was coming and the Republican candidate’s own campaign was left searching for details. Aides to Glenn Youngkin, who is in the last week of a tight race against Democrat Terry McAuliffe, said they were caught off guard by the former president’s Wednesday afternoon statement. Trump confidants, meanwhile, were initially coy about whether he was being serious, with staff noting his penchant for mischief-making and trolling by tweet. Within a few hours, there was some clarity. Trump wasn’t actually planning to stop in the commonwealth, at least not imminently, according to aides.”

“A late appearance by Trump in Virginia would be a gift to McAuliffe, a disruption for Youngkin and a final test of how both campaigns have tried to navigate Trump and his polarizing powers. That would have been especially true if Trump had gone to Arlington – which his statement said would be the site of his stop – a place where he won the same percentage of the vote in 2020 as liberal Portland, Ore. In the end, however, a swing through Virginia won’t come before the votes are cast. And critics of Trump said they suspected he wasn’t visiting precisely so that he could take credit after the fact for a Youngkin win or play Monday morning quarterback should Youngkin lose. ‘He wants to have the ability to call himself the winner no matter what happens, so staying away preserves all his options in the aftermath,’ said Tucker Martin, a former GOP consultant in Virginia.”

We go live to a speech that’s already started in which President Biden announces a new Build Back Somewhat Sort Of Better Though Not As Better As What was Originally Proposed But Whatever At Least It’s Something And It’s Definitely Betterer Than We Ever Got From The Orange Slob Plan.

3. NO EVIDENCE my CAMPAIGN staff involved in Jan 6 IN ANY WAY. THEY WEREN’T!

4. My OFFICE STAFF tells me they NEVER helped organize or plan Jan 6 rally in any relevant way other than scheduling my speech at White House request.

ALCOM & Stephen Colbert = ashamed IF honorable!

— Mo Brooks (@RepMoBrooks) October 28, 2021

An item in the Thursday edition of Politico’s often circlejerky but sometimes useful Playbook tip sheet detailed a conversation between two Republican House members and a fan that demonstrates the widely understood but rarely directly observed contempt the GOP have for the MAGA base. Last Thursday evening, after nearly all of the House Republicans voted to refer Steve Bannon to the DOJ for contempt, Reps Michael McCaul (R-TX) and Ann Wagner (R-MO) were at an event in a Capitol Hill-area restaurant when an unnamed person in their group said he hoped Wagner would end up with a more Conservative district after Missouri redraws their maps.

“Then you get those wacko birds” Wagner said, to which McCaul added “That’s why we had to vote the way we did today!”, referring to the no on Bannon’s contempt charge they’d both been whipped into, per Playbook, also adding that a House Foreign Affairs GOP staffer (McCaul is the ranking member) told them she would never speak to a Politico reporter again if they published this item.

So this brief exchange says quite a lot: Both of these Republicans apparently don’t seem to really like their voters and just vote for fascist bullshit to appease them, and they actually agree that Steve Bannon should be prosecuted for contempt of Congress, but both are too chickenshit to actually vote the way they feel because they’re terrified of the MAGA cult. Inspiring!

“Jeffrey Clark has parted ways with his lawyer. The former top Trump Justice Department official is scheduled to field questions from Jan. 6 committee investigators on Friday. But he and Robert Driscoll, the Washington attorney who has been representing him, have recently parted ways, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. It is unclear if the departure will impact Clark’s interview. Clark and Driscoll did not respond to requests for comment” – Politico.

David Frum, The Atlantic: “Anybody who follows politics even casually can see the Trump comeback emerging. Well-sourced reporters carefully detail the comeback’s mechanics. But almost nobody is prepared for the malicious destructiveness of what is to come. In a 2011 speech, Donald Trump explained his single top rule in life: ‘Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.’ He’s repeated the same idea over and over again in speeches, tweets, and books published under his byline. In 2024, the targets of Trump’s revenge are American law and American democracy. In Trump’s first term, the country was protected to some degree by his ignorance and ineptitude. He kept trying to do bad things, but it took him a while to figure out how the controls operated, where the kill-switches were located. By the time of his attempt to extort the Ukrainian president, in 2019, Trump had achieved a higher degree of mastery. But by then it was too late. Then the pandemic struck, and Trump bumped into a new wall of failure.”

“In a second Trump presidency, however, the burglars will arrive already knowing how to bypass the alarms and disable the locks. He’ll understand that it’s not enough to install an ally as attorney general – he must control the secondary and tertiary ranks of the Justice Department too. He won’t allow himself to be talked into another chief of staff with an independent sense of duty, such as John Kelly, who averted much harm from the middle of 2017 to the beginning of 2019. It’ll be Mark Meadows types from day one to day last. And he’ll bring with them a new generation of Republican officeholders whose top priority will be rearranging their states’ election laws so that Republicans do not lose power even if they lose the vote. That’s the future Trump is preparing. Be ready.”

“Assembly Republicans have hired someone named Carol to help answer their questions about the 2020 election. Just don’t ask Carol or her bosses what her last name is. ‘No comment,’ she said Wednesday before hanging up on a reporter. The hiring of Carol is the latest example of the opacity of a review of the 2020 election being overseen by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman at a cost to taxpayers of $676,000. Wisconsinites picked Joe Biden over Donald Trump by a margin of nearly 21,000 votes. Recounts and court rulings upheld those results and a legislative audit released last week did not identify any widespread fraud.”

“Republicans who control the Assembly and Gableman want further investigation and they’ve brought on Carol to help them. The woman, who signs her emails ‘Carol M.’ has been contacting attorneys for election officials recently to discuss subpoenas Gableman has issued. She has not told them whether she is a lawyer, an administrative assistant or holds some other post, the attorneys said. The names of state employees and their contractors are ordinarily public. No one has offered any justification for not disclosing Carol’s last name” – Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

“What country will be the primary beneficiary from a ‘Billionaires Tax,’ or Wealth Tax? Where will wealthy people and companies move to, leaving the United States high and dry? Most don’t need to be in the US anyway. I know all of those very smartly run countries, and they are all thrilled by what the Radical Left maniacs are doing in Congress. I just wonder, will I be allowed to run for president again if I move to another country? No, I guess I’ll just stick it out, but most others won’t!” says the Orange God Emperor in a Wednesday night statement.

CNN: “The Wall Street Journal’s Opinion section published a lengthy letter to the editor from Donald Trump on Wednesday that was full of the former US president’s debunked claims and conspiratorial falsehoods about the election he lost last year. The Journal’s opinion operation is separate from the newsroom and sometimes downright oppositional. But both are part of Rupert Murdoch’s cherished newspaper. Several Journal reporters grumbled about the letter after it came out on Wednesday, but none were surprised it was published, given the opinion section’s right-wing contrarian bent.”

“‘I think it’s very disappointing that our opinion section continues to publish misinformation that our news side works so hard to debunk,’ one of the reporters said. ‘They should hold themselves to the same standards we do!’ So what was the justification for publishing the letter to the editor? No comment, thus far. Jeremy Barr of the Washington Post inquired, but ‘Steve Severinghaus, a spokesman for the Journal, declined to comment about the decision to publish the letter. When asked specifically about the newspaper’s standards for publishing a letter, he did not respond.'”

“President Biden plans to announce Thursday a revised framework for his social spending plan that he expects will gain the support of all Democrats, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation, marking a potential breakthrough after months of lengthy negotiations and stalled talks. The White House plans to detail specific policies it expects to pass Congress after weeks of whittling down Biden’s agenda, according to one of the people. Democrats on Capitol Hill were preparing written details of the revamped proposal for release on Thursday, according to the second person. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plans on the record. The White House declined to comment” – Washington Post.

Reuters: “The Russian capital brought in its strictest lockdown measures since June 2020 on Thursday as hospitals confront a rising wave of coronavirus cases that has sent one-day pandemic deaths to record highs. The partial lockdown, in which only essential shops like pharmacies and supermarkets are allowed to remain open, while schools and state kindergartens are shut, comes ahead of a nationwide week-long shutdown from Oct. 30. Like Moscow, some regions decided to kick off their partial lockdowns on Thursday or earlier, ahead of the nationwide initiative.”

“Moscow’s residents are allowed to leave their homes freely unlike the lockdown of summer 2020, but the new measures point to rising concern among officials over record numbers of deaths that the Kremlin has blamed on the slow vaccination rate. Many Russians have decided that now is an ideal time to fly off for a foreign beach holiday instead of hunkering down at home.”

@meredithsanders1

#waitforit #Virginia #westfield #awesome

♬ Thunderstruck – AC/DC

New York Times:  “Two Atlanta-area law enforcement officers were charged this week with felony murder for their roles in a confrontation in 2016 with an armed man who was shot nearly 60 times as they tried to arrest him, according to court documents.

“The officers — identified in an indictment as Eric A. Heinze, a deputy U.S. marshal, and Kristopher L. Hutchens, a Clayton County police officer — were members of a fugitive task force that had been serving an arrest warrant for the man, Jamarion Robinson.  The task force members told the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that Mr. Robinson had fired a handgun at them two or three times on Aug. 5, 2016, after the officers broke through the door of his girlfriend’s apartment in East Point, Ga., a Fulton County suburb of Atlanta.

“Mr. Robinson, 26, had been wanted on charges of attempted arson and aggravated assault of a police officer, according to the officers, who said that he still refused to drop his gun after being shot. Three task force members shot at Mr. Robinson, state investigators said.  The family of Mr. Robinson has contested law enforcement accounts of what happened that afternoon. The fatal shooting of Mr. Robinson, who was Black and whose family said he had schizophrenia, touched off protests over racial injustice and excessive force, straining relations between local law enforcement authorities and their federal partners.”

Washington Post:  “Nicholas Kristof, a former New York Times columnist, announced Wednesday he is running for Oregon governor, ending months of speculation over whether he would make a bid for the top political office in his home state.

“It’s hard to watch your home state struggle when you can make a difference on homelessness, education, jobs,” Kristof, 62, tweeted Wednesday morning, along with a link to his campaign’s launch video. In it, he spoke of his roots in Yamhill, Ore., the opportunities he felt his Oregon upbringing had given him, and the decline in prospects for those with whom he grew up.  ‘If you want to see what happens when our politics so badly fails the people it’s supposed to serve, just take a walk through downtown Portland,’ Kristoff, who is running as a Democrat, narrates in the video, as the camera pans across a homeless encampment.

“‘It’s time to do something about a system that’s rigged against so many ordinary Oregonians,’ he adds. ‘But nothing will change until we stop moving politicians up the career ladder year after year, even though they refuse to step up to the problems Oregon faces.’  Kristoff, who has no political experience, says as much in the video. Instead, he leans heavily on his 37-year career at the Times — where he was a foreign correspondent and a columnist who won the Pulitzer Prize — saying he ‘spent a lifetime shining a light in the darkest corners of the globe.’”

WHAM ABC-3 Rochester:  “Three people were arrested at Tuesday’s Hilton [New York] Central School District Board of Education meeting.  According to the district, several people in attendance refused to comply with a masking mandate.

“‘These individuals were asked repeatedly to comply and all eventually did except one individual,’ according to a district spokesperson. ‘At that time, the individual was asked to leave the property and refused. The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office responded, and the individual was arrested for trespassing.’

“During the meeting, a group of people became disruptive, according to the district. The meeting was suspended and the auditorium was cleared.  Two people were arrested for refusing to leave school property.  Hilton residents James Burroughs, 45; Dawn Fox, 53; and Shanierae Iorio, 42 were ticketed for trespassing.”

“A resident of a high-rise condominium in Thailand cut the support rope for two painters, apparently angry she wasn’t told they would be doing work, and left them hanging above the 26th floor until a couple rescued them, police said Wednesday. The woman is facing attempted murder and property destruction charges, Pol. Col. Pongjak Preechakarunpong, chief of the Pak Kret police station north of the Thai capital, told The Associated Press. Pongjak did not say what prompted the suspect to cut the rope, but Thai media reported that she was apparently frustrated when the workers appeared outside her room and hadn’t seen an announcement by the condo that they would be doing work on Oct. 12. The management of the condo accompanied the painters to report the incident to the police. The 34-year-old woman at first denied she responsible, but police sent the severed rope for a fingerprint and DNA analysis, media reported” the AP reports.

The attempted murder charge is 100% justified but property destruction is… uh… What the hell did the rope cost? $10.00? Seems kind of gratuitous, like charging OJ Simpson with trespassing or Timothy McVeigh with speeding. Now I don’t know how the Thai justice system works, but I wouldn’t think a property crime is on par with attempted murder as far as sentencing goes.

NBC News:  “A cheap antidepressant reduced the need for hospitalization among high-risk adults with Covid-19 in a study hunting for existing drugs that could be repurposed to treat coronavirus.  Researchers tested the pill used for depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder because it was known to reduce inflammation and looked promising in smaller studies.

“They’ve shared the results with the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which publishes treatment guidelines, and they hope for a World Health Organization recommendation. ‘If WHO recommends this, you will see it widely taken up,’ said study co-author Dr. Edward Mills of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, adding that many poor nations have the drug readily available. ‘We hope it will lead to a lot of lives saved.’

“The pill, called fluvoxamine, would cost $4 for a course of Covid treatment. By comparison, antibody IV treatments cost about $2,000 and Merck’s experimental antiviral pill for Covid is about $700 per course. Some experts predict various treatments eventually will be used in combination to fight the coronavirus.”