If Trump has one single accomplishment as President, it is how thoroughly he’s revealed extremely rich people as being not somehow braver or smarter or more disciplined than the rest of us but somehow exactly the opposite—consumed by pettiness, enslaved by vanity, and perfectly willing to fuck important things up in order to make some point to themselves and their rancid peers.
-- David Roth
(via an ongoing story that has me OD'ing on schadenfreude)
And you thought eBay was no fun anymore.
Sports Business Daily found that over the first half of this year’s Major League Baseball season, 91 percent of player profits in daily fantasy sports were won by just 1.3 percent of the players. In fact, the top 11 players on average paid $2 million in entry fees and made $135,000 in profit while accounting for 17 percent of all entry fees.
Many of the professionals use automated processes that let them change hundreds, if not thousands, of lineups in seconds, a decided advantage when last-minute changes are made in the lineups of real football, basketball or baseball teams.
I never have understood why American English has not embraced the term punters. Denial, I suspect.
Anyway, the FBI has expressed interest, and I gotta say, I'm snickering, just a bit.
Click it to big it, and then print 5000 copies, and then wrap them all around a large brick, and then send that postage-collect to your favorite wingnut. Repeat for your second-favorite wingnut. &c.
Or! You could buy them each a coffee cup find out their credit card numbers, and order them each a gross of coffee cups.
You may remember a few weeks ago, when we celebrated the results of the first ten days. I was going to update the charts several times, but for some reason, Box Office Mojo never showed any more data after Day 24. So I guess this is the final report?
Better get in line now for tickets to Part 3!
(title: cf.)
A few of you may remember my pointing out this Nate Silver post from last week:
So guess who is now whining long and loud?
"Watch Mitt Romney's Facebook Likes Decrease in Real Time."
It's really amazing when you consider how furiously Jennifer Rubin is creating fake Facebook accounts just to keep liking him again.
(h/t: Neetzan Zimmerman)
Now, who will clean
up his Twitter account?
Los Angeles Times, 26 April 2011:
EXCLUSIVE: Twelve days after opening "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1," the producer of the Ayn Rand adaptation said Tuesday that he is reconsidering his plans to make Parts 2 and 3 because of scathing reviews and flagging box office returns for the film.
"Critics, you won," said John Aglialoro, the businessman who spent 18 years and more than $20 million of his own money to make, distribute and market "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1," which covers the first third of Rand's dystopian novel. "I’m having deep second thoughts on why I should do Part 2."
Eagle News, 23 October 2012:
After the box office, critical and qualitative failure of “Atlas Shrugged Part 1,” the attempt to put the entirety of Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” on the big screen looked to be dead. However, through the power of having way too much money to spend, a new cast was gathered and, through hard work, “Atlas Shrugged Part 2” was made even worse than the first.
B-b-but, Part 2 opened in more than three times as many theaters!!!1!
Therefore, we will make some charts, and prove to you how much better ...
Back to Evan Maxwell, our source at Eagle News:
“Atlas Shrugged Part 2” fails in every conceivable way: from the completely hyperbolic nature of the arguments presented in the film, to the amazing lack of acting talent and to the overall lack of interesting events. Given that this movie was made despite the lack of success of “Part 1,” “Atlas Shrugged Part 3” is inevitable, and there is absolutely nothing in this movie to indicate that it will be of any quality whatsoever.
Know hope!
[Added] Follow-up.
The National Review Online called on Monday for Newt Gingrich to quit the Republican presidential contest and endorse Rick Santorum.
The editors of the conservative magazine said it would be a mistake for Republican voters to nominate someone with “such poor judgment and persistent unpopularity” to be the party’s standard bearer.
But wait. That's not the weird part. Here's the weird part:
“On his own arguments the proper course for him now is to endorse Santorum and exit,” the editors wrote.
Endorse Santorum? What about "poor judgment" and "persistent unpopularity?" On the NRO's editors' own arguments …
Gingrich, who would have made a marvelous Marxist, …
Sweet! But how does he really feel?
Gingrich … embodies the vanity and rapacity that make modern Washington repulsive. … There is almost artistic vulgarity in Gingrich’s unrepented role as a hired larynx … Olympian sense of exemption from standards and logic … His temperament — intellectual hubris distilled — … grotesque opportunism — tarted up as sociology — … (as Churchill said of John Foster Dulles) a bull who carries his own china shop around with him.
Much as it discourages me to contemplate the downward trajectory which today's GOP is bent upon pushing this country, at least there's the entertainment of watching guys like George Eff Will have to face what they helped bring about. And who knows? Maybe some decade, they'll even admit their complicity. Know hope!
(h/t: Substance McGravitas, in Comments under the previous post about GOP2012)
(pic. sources: Faith Trust and Pixie Dust, Northern Insights / Perceptivity)
