Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

The Kochs get all the ink and, recently, the Mercers have seen their (extraordinarily white) profiles skyrocket, but of all the wingnut sugar daddies presiding over the care and feeding of America’s conservative infrastructure, the Ricketts clan has been sadly overlooked by the cheap peddlers of scorn and mockery like, for example, me. No longer, though.

Poppa Joe, who founded TD Ameritrade and whose son Tom owns the Chicago Cubs, which probably causes no little agita to Cubs fans like Chris Hayes, is a thoroughgoing omadhaun who tried to stop Barack Obama by peddling scurrilous cowflop about Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Meanwhile, son Pete is the governor of Nebraska, in which capacity he is very enthusiastic about the death penalty, and son Todd was nominated, but later withdrew his name, to be part of the Trump administration. (Daughter Laura, on the other hand, supported and raised money for Hillary.) But, this week, Poppa Joe showed the young folks he's still gunning for the title of Worst Rickett.

Two very good local news sites in New York City—DNAinfo and Gothamist—were owned by Ricketts. The employees at these two sites decided they would like to unionize, as is still theoretically their right here in the United States. They held an election and the result was that the employees voted to form a union. Poppa Joe Ricketts then decided that the world could do without those two sites and shut them down, cold. From The New York Times:

At 5 p.m., a post by Mr. Ricketts went up on the sites announcing the decision. He praised them for reporting “tens of thousands of stories that have informed, impacted and inspired millions of people.” But he added, “DNAinfo is, at the end of the day, a business, and businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure.” All other articles promptly vanished from the sites; an official at DNAinfo said they would be archived online. Mr. Ricketts wrote that he founded DNAinfo in 2009 “because I believe people care deeply about the things that happen where they live and work,” and he thought he could build “a large and loyal audience that advertisers would want to reach.” DNAinfo and Gothamist, which Mr. Ricketts bought in the spring, attracted more than 9 million readers a month, in New York and other cities where they operate satellite sites, DNAinfo said.

This development is horrid on many levels. First of all, there never can be enough good local news sites, and these were two of the best. Second, it illustrates just where the media is headed in this country, and this includes the cyber-media, which was supposed to liberate the flow of information from the corporate behemoths and which also was supposed to bring upon us a whole new utopian media era of citizen-entrepreneurial-journalists. Sooner or later, some person with a whole lot of money comes along and offers you a whole lot of money for what you’ve developed and, nine times out of 10, because you are not stupid, you take it.

And then, just as if they worked at CBS or CNN, every one of your employees at your plucky operation is at the mercy of some plutocrat, his temper, and his beancounters.

For DNAinfo and Gothamist, the staff’s vote to join the Writers Guild of America East was just part of the decision to close the company. A spokeswoman for DNAinfo said in a statement, “The decision by the editorial team to unionize is simply another competitive obstacle making it harder for the business to be financially successful.”

Oh, horse-hockey. All of those problems were there throughout the life of these sites. It was the union that made Poppa Joe bail on the project because he is a rich wingnut who doesn’t believe in them. The news ecology of New York is infinitely poorer for the death of these two sites, and for the fact that very talented young reporters are out on the bricks again, just because they wanted to bargain collectively for wages and benefits.

A new climate crisis report got dropped in the Friday news dump and, no, it doesn’t look good for Team Denial. From The New York Times:



Over the past 115 years global average temperatures have increased 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, leading to record-breaking weather events and temperature extremes, the report says. The global, long-term warming trend is “unambiguous,” it says, and there is “no convincing alternative explanation” that anything other than humans—the cars we drive, the power plants we operate, the forests we destroy—are to blame.

The report was approved for release by the White House, but the findings come as the Trump administration is defending its climate change policies on several fronts. The United Nations convenes its annual climate change conference next week in Bonn, Germany, and the American delegation is expected to face harsh criticism over President Trump’s decision to walk away from the 195-nation Paris climate accord and top administration officials’ stated doubts about the causes and impacts of a warming planet.

Remember, we have allowed ourselves only two political parties in this country, and one of them is wholly committed to the notion that none of this is really happening. Think about that.

Get out there and shoot something for dinner, daughter. It’s your turn with the shotgun and I’ll push the stroller.



The state of Wisconsin, where the killing of forest creatures has been a big deal for centuries, decided this week to open a new front in the area of children’s rights. For years, if you were under the age of 10, you had to be “mentored” out in the bush by an adult. (This presumes the adult to be sober, always a risk during Pabst season in the woods.) But the Wisconsin legislature has decided that the children of Wisconsin had labored too long under this bleak oppression. It’s time for some lessons in FREEEEEDOMMMMMMMM! From Wisconsin Public Radio:

"I think that line should be drawn by the parents," said state Rep. Rob Stafsholt, R-New Richmond, the measure's sponsor. "If you don't think they're ready under the age of 10, then please don't take them. This gives the choice back to the parent."

I am not prepared to see Big Wheels with gun-racks. Not prepared at all. Junior can’t color inside the lines, but he can bring down a buck at 30 yards. Yee-fcking-haw.

These are lines that appeared in David Brooks’ column in The New York Times on Friday.



We’ll call this the room of love.

So a lot of men cross the threshold and enter another room, the room of the prospector. In this room sex is a gold nugget, a pleasure, like any other pleasure, except maybe it’s better and the desire for it is stronger.

And:

In the political world, for example, partisans of left and right rationalize their support for Bill Clinton or Donald Trump because they could tell themselves in effect, “Oh, he’s just a horny prospector.”

I know nobody who says this, even to themselves. If Brooks wants to write Yosemite Sam porn he should do it on his own time and, I’m sorry, nobody can pay me enough to write about David Brooks’ musings on rooms of love and sex prospectors. I have my limits.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Trouble In Mind” (Otis Spann): Yeah, I pretty much love New Orleans.



Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here’s Russian spy Rudolf Abel being busted in Brooklyn. “He is the highest-ranking Russian ever arrested here on spy charges.” Well, nothing’s forever, I guess, and records are made to be broken. History is so cool.

It seems that several members of the House of Representatives are inclined to throw deep in the contest between the president* and Robert Mueller, and what a fine lot of solons they are.



Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida): a young and promising crackpot who campaigned on the issue of doing away with the EPA, who would like to force mandatory ultrasounds on ladies who plan to do things that Matt Gaetz considers unseemly, and who once said the following about the death penalty: "Only God can judge. But we sure can set up the meeting."

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Arizona): A Trumpist through and through who wants The Wall built tomorrow, who voted against relief funds for the victims of Hurricane Harvey, and who once compared himself to Albert Einstein, whom he does not resemble even a little, although they both are the same species of higher primate.

And, gloriously and inevitably, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Padishah Emperor of All The Crazy People.

With that kind of brainpower lined up against him, I figure Mueller will be indicting everyone within a 10-block radius of the White House by Thanksgiving.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, Fox News? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!



With an approximately 36-foot wingspan, “It might have been this quite robust, formidable predator,” Mark Witton, an expert on pterosaurs at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K., told National Geographic. “They seem to be feeding on things on the ground and are generalist in their ability to grab basically whatever they can fit in their beaks.”… Scientists think this pterosaur had to settle for a diet of little dinosaurs.

This is the most incredibly funky looking dinosaur I ever have seen depicted anywhere, like the love child of Rodan and an oil derrick, and I am happy to make its acquaintance because, as we know, dinosaurs lived then to make us happy now.

I’ll be back on Monday after a weekend of Dems In Disarray, Aieeeeeee! Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snakeline, and remember, only eat the little dinosaurs.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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