53 years ago Arlo Guthrie took to the stage at the Newport Folk Festival and for 18 and a half minutes entertained the audience with his storied song “Alice’s Restaurant.” You could close your eyes and see the old church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts where the story is centered. At the end of the song the audience was on their feet. The song has since become a Thanksgiving tradition. The along came director Arthur Penn who turn the song into a movie with Arlo playing himself along with the real Sheriff Obie, William Obanhein and James Hanlon, the real blind judge. Alice and Ray Brock were played by Pat Quinn and James Broderick. The movie was released 50 years ago on August 19. Alternet has the story surrounding the song and movie which are based on the garbage toss that took place on Thanksgiving in 1965.
Thanksgiving is not complete without the song and the movie.
Reposted from October 3, 2015 by TMC for ek hornbeck
From the Group W Bench
I’m so mad.
How mad are you?
I’m so mad.
No, really.
I’m so mad I’m not even going to sing my aria.
This song is called Alice’s Restaurant, and it’s about Alice, and the Restaurant, but Alice’s Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant, That’s just the name of the song, and that’s why I called the song Alice’s Restaurant.
You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant
Walk right in it’s around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant
Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on – two years ago on Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the Restaurant, but Alice doesn’t live in the restaurant, she lives in the Church nearby the restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray and Fasha the dog. And livin’ in the bell tower like that, they got a lot of Room downstairs where the pews used to be in. Havin’ all that room, Seein’ as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn’t Have to take out their garbage for a long time.
We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it’d be a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump. So We took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW Microbus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the city dump.
Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across the dump saying, “Closed on Thanksgiving.” And we had never heard of a dump closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes we drove off into the sunset looking for another place to put the garbage.
We didn’t find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of the side road there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the cliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we decided to throw our’s down.
That’s what we did, and drove back to the church, had a Thanksgiving Dinner that couldn’t be beat, went to sleep and didn’t get up until the next morning, when we got a phone call from officer Obie. He said, “Kid, we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it. ” And I said, “Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope under that garbage.”
After speaking to Obie for about fourty-five minutes on the telephone we finally arrived at the truth of the matter and said that we had to go down and pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at the Police Officer’s station. So we got in the red vw microbus with the shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the Police Officer’s station.
Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at the police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn’t very likely, and we didn’t expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out and told us never to be seen driving garbage around the vicinity again, which is what we expected, but when we got to the police officer’s station there was a third possibility that we hadn’t even counted upon, and we was both immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said “Obie, I don’t think I can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on. ” He said, “Shut up, kid. get in the back of the patrol car.”
And that’s what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to the quote Scene of the Crime unquote. I want tell you about the town of Stockbridge, Massachusets, where this happened here, they got three stop signs, two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the Scene of the Crime there was five police officers and three police cars, being the biggest crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to get in the newspaper story about it. And they was using up all kinds of Cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officer’s station. They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and they took twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. Took pictures of the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that’s not to mention the aerial photography.
After the ordeal, we went back to the jail. Obie said he was going to put us in the cell. Said, “Kid, I’m going to put you in the cell, I want your wallet and your belt. ” And I said, “Obie, I can understand you wanting my wallet so I don’t have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you want my belt for? ” And he said, “Kid, we don’t want any hangings.
“I said, “Obie, did you think I was going to hang myself for littering?”
Obie said he was making sure, and friends Obie was, cause he took out the toilet seat so I couldn’t hit myself over the head and drown, and he took out the toilet paper so I couldn’t bend the bars roll out the – roll the toilet paper out the window, slide down the roll and have an escape. Obie was making sure, and it was about four or five hours later that Alice (remember Alice? It’s a song about Alice), Alice came by and with a few nasty words to Obie on the side, bailed us out of jail, and we went back to the church, had a another thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat, and didn’t get up until the next morning, when we all had to go to court.
We walked in, sat down, Obie came in with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, sat down. Man came in said, “All rise.” We all stood up, and Obie stood up with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures, and the judge walked in sat down with a seeing eye dog, and he sat down, we sat down. Obie looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog. Aand then at twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one and began to cry, ’cause Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case of American blind justice, and there wasn’t nothing he could do about it, and the Judge wasn’t going to look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. And we was fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage in the snow, but that’s not what I came to tell you about.
Came to talk about the draft.
They got a building down New York City, it’s called Whitehall Street, where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected. I went down to get my physical examination one day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk the night before, so I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning. ‘Cause I wanted to look like the all-American kid from New York City, man I wanted, I wanted to feel like the all-, I wanted to be the all American kid from New York, and I walked in, sat down, I was hung down, brung down, hung up, and all kinds o’ mean nasty ugly things. And I waked in and sat down and they gave me a piece of paper, said, “Kid, see the psychiatrist, room 604.”
And I went up there, I said, “Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I Wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and Guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, Kill, kill. ” And I started jumpin up and down yelling, “kill, kill,” and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, “KILL, KILL.” And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, “You’re our boy.”
Didn’t feel too good about it.
Proceeded on down the hall gettin more injections, inspections, detections, neglections and all kinds of stuff that they was doin’ to me at the thing there, and I was there for two hours, three hours, four hours, I was there for a long time going through all kinds of mean nasty ugly things and I was just having a tough time there, and they was inspecting, injecting every single part of me, and they was leaving no part untouched. Proceeded through, and when I finally came to the see the last man, I walked in, walked in sat down after a whole big thing there, and I walked up and said, “What do you want?” He said, “Kid, we only got one question. Have you ever been arrested?”
And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Alice’s Restaurant Massacre, with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that and all the phenome… – and he stopped me right there and said, “Kid, did you ever go to court? ”
And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one, and he stopped me right there and said, “Kid, I want you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W…. Now kid!! ”
And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W’s where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father Rapers! Father Rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest Father Raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean ‘n’ ugly ‘n’ nasty ‘n’ horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, “Kid, whad’ya get?” I said, “I didn’t get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage. ” He said, “What were you arrested for, kid? ” and I said, “Littering.” And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, “And creating a nuisance.” And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, Mother Stabbing, Father Raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, until the Sargeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and said.
“Kids, this-piece-of-paper’s-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna-know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting-Officer’s-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say”, and talked for forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there, and I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the following words:
(“KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?”)
I went over to the sargent, said, “Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I’ve rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I’m sittin’ here on the bench, I mean I’m sittin here on the Group W bench ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein’ a litterbug. ” He looked at me and said, “Kid, we don’t like your kind, and we’re gonna send you fingerprints off to Washington.”
And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I’m singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a situation like that there’s only one thing you can do and that’s walk into the shrink wherever you are, just walk in say “Shrink, You can get Anything you want, at Alice’s restaurant. “. And walk out. You know, if One person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and they won’t take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. They may think it’s an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may think it’s a movement.
And that’s what it is, the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come’s around on the Guitar.
With feeling.
So we’ll wait for it to come around on the guitar, here and sing it when it does. Here it comes.
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
Walk right in it’s around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
That was horrible. If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud.
I’ve been singing this song now for twenty five minutes. I could sing it
for another twenty five minutes. I’m not proud… Or tired.
So we’ll wait till it comes around again, and this time with four part
harmony and feeling.
We’re just waitin’ for it to come around is what we’re doing.
All right now.
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
Excepting Alice
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
Walk right in it’s around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
One of the best parts of Thanksgiving dinner is the gravy made from the pan drippings. Here are Alton Brown’s directions for making a smooth, not greasy dressing. It’s actually pretty easy.
Now the last task is carving the bird, for which you’ll thank yourself for investing in an electric knife. It really makes it easier and faster. I suspect that a lot of people will need to watch this. My condolences to the turkeys that were sacrificed to provide the feasts. Just follow Alton’s instructions and you’ll be the other star of the day.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
China enters Korean War; Nazis force half a million Jews into walled ghetto; Nixon’s secretary tries to explain gap on Watergate tapes; ‘Casablanca’ premieres at Hollywood Theater; Tina Turner is born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Cooking and eating are among the most important ways we weave days into lives.
I read this at Digby’s Hullabaloo, Heather didn’t give link, so I don’t think she’ll mind if I repost this here. I don’t know this doctor but I know him and his staff, every ER doctor, Nurse, Physician Assistant, Paramedic and EMT does. It is who we are. It’s from an Er doctor in Los Angelis.
In my world, there is a lot of anger — most of it kept professionally hidden.
In emergency rooms and intensive care units across the country, frontline nurses, respiratory therapists and doctors like me have been in danger every day for eight months. Smothered in PPE, we’re doused in coronavirus every day while we take care of the very sick, the worried well and the dying. Some of the dead aren’t patients; some are colleagues, friends and our own families.
We are furious and we are exhausted. And now we face again the flooding of our hospitals.
We’re tired of seeing patients who got the virus after their kid’s “limited” birthday party or because they went out to a restaurant dinner with “close friends” or flew to a celebration in a state “that didn’t have much COVID.”
It didn’t have to be this way.
We bent the curve, then let it bend right back. Distracted and tired, our focus faded.
Fall is aptly named. People aren’t made to be perfect, but damn, we should be better than this.
What you do — how we ALL act in the next six weeks — will make the difference between an inconvenient fall and a disaster that will take years to overcome.
Until months AFTER the vaccines arrive, the same simple steps will be required. Not just in California, but also across our un-United States.
Wear a mask whenever you leave the house. Stop doing dumb stuff, like going to parties, destination weddings and the French Laundry. Stop listening to know-nothings who spout “science” on YouTube and Twitter.
Stop being crybabies about a little inconvenience. We already have more than 250,000 reasons to weep — and to be thankful we are alive and can still do something about it.
So avoid crowds. Wash your hands. Stay home. Why is this so hard?
You may have noticed that I’m a little bit on edge.
The problem is, people don’t understand the danger. Yes, you may have attended a party and you’re fine. You’re young, you’re healthy. What’s the problem?
If you don’t understand, go back and read a story by Karen Kaplan in this newspaper. She reported how a single wedding of 55 people in Maine infected 27 guests. None of them died and some didn’t even have symptoms. So, no big deal, right? Wrong. The infected guests went on to infect others, who in turn spread it themselves. Over the next 38 days, the wedding was responsible for infecting at least 176 people, and seven of them died.
Multiply that mistake thousands of times across our country and you have real trouble. You don’t have to get sick to transmit COVID. You can kill someone you’ve never met in another state, or their mother, or they can kill yours.
What you do matters.
We’ve reached that place in the movie where there are so many zombies we have to hide in the basement. Except the zombies are down there with us, fresh from an “essential” shopping trip, and now their kid has a cough.
So this column is a warning, a confession and a cry for unity — perhaps even patriotism.
If you come to me in the ER, you’ll never know what I’m thinking about you or your choices. Like the virus, I don’t care if you’re from Orange County or North Dakota. You’ll get 100% from me and my crew, no matter who you are or what you did — or didn’t — do. Even if you say this is a political conspiracy or a test of “liberty,” or you call us “sheeple.”
COVID doesn’t care how you vote, where you live or if you die. The fire burns all around us and we are dry grass, from sea to shining sea.
In my world, we are deeply disheartened to realize that, as a country, the United States can’t unite as other countries have, and that the work of crushing this virus turned out to be too complicated for our leaders and our neighbors. Now we are in danger of losing perhaps half a million people or more.
It makes front-liners like me feel as though our work doesn’t matter.
The way people, including the president, are behaving seems un-American. How can the world’s strongest democracy be unwilling to fight a winnable war on our own soil to protect our own lives and those of our neighbors? A lot of us won’t even don masks to aid the fight.
As I put on my PPE before a shift in the ER, I think of seasick WWII soldiers, riding toward a beach as other young men on shore tried to kill them in the surf. Compared to what they faced, what I do is easy.
Then, no one knew how long the war would last or if they would survive. People back home collected rubber and bacon grease for years, gave up countless liberties and luxuries, and no one ever called the war a hoax, even if they never saw a Nazi in their backyard.
We’re eight months into COVID. World War II lasted six years and a day. The Great Depression lasted 10 years. The 1918 flu lasted two years and two months.
Are we really that soft? That careless? That selfish?
It’s great news that a vaccine is likely to come soon, but don’t depend on it to save you and the people you love. Like the last man shot in war, you might get the virus before you get the vaccine.
There is still time to save lives. Stay at home, and when you have to go out, wear your mask everywhere. Break the virus chain. Do it for yourself. Do it for those you love. Do it for your country.
Come, be a hero.
Please, adhere to the guidelines and have a Happy, Healthy and Safe Thanksgiving
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Trump may believe otherwise, but he’s a huge bore. His followers’ unbreakable loyalty is what’s so fascinating
Are we addicted to Donald Trump? It’s a question that’s haunting journalists and political commentators, most of whom hate Trump but cannot deny that his name drives traffic and ratings. Even though Trump lost the election and Joe Biden will be the next president, Trump continues to be the big attention draw for political websites and cable news networks. [..]
Because of all this, it’s become quite fashionable in some circles to haughtily declare that all this interest is tawdry, and that if we simply ignored Trump, he would go away. Hardly a week goes by on social media where I don’t get some reader who, sick of it all, will lash out at me personally and demand that I stop writing about, tweeting about or otherwise giving attention to Trump.
But the command to ignore him didn’t make the bully disappear in junior high school and it certainly doesn’t work with the president. Nor can Trump’s importance in our politics be easily reduced to a pop psychology assumption that all fascination is inherently addiction and therefore bad.
The reality is that the Trump obsession isn’t really about Trump himself anyway. It’s about his followers.
Georgia Republicans have descended into backstabbing, with the Senate on the line. Trump probably likes it that way
Attacking Republican officials who fail to toe the line is comfortably familiar to GOP base voters. (Just ask former House Speaker Paul Ryan.) They’ve been ruthlessly culling their herd this way for a couple of decades now, and are always eager to show their power.
Across social media, Trump followers are calling for Loeffler and Perdue to step in and demand that the state’s presidential vote be audited yet again, with all signatures checked on absentee ballots. As mentioned above, there has already been a hand count, and a machine recount is now underway. Rechecking signatures is literally impossible, since signed envelopes were already checked and separated from the ballots in order to protect the secrecy of the vote. Right-wing Georgia attorney Lin Wood (who is also representing Kenosha vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse) is one of those leading the charge with threats to withhold his vote if the two Senate candidates fail to take action: [..]
He has not backed off even in light of Powell’s removal, and he’s not alone. The Daily Beast reports that a couple of shady groups affiliated with Roger Stone are involved as well, encouraging voters to write in Trump’s name in the Senate races to show the RINOs who’s boss. A lawyer for one of these groups admits that Stone is a client but denies knowing anything about it. (We know Stone would never be involved in any sort of dirty tricks, so that’s that. )
As impressive as the historical nature of Biden’s nominations are the credentials that all of them bring to their jobs.
While the current president continues to deny the clear result of the election, the incoming one is well along in putting together an administration that is both barrier-breaking and reassuringly conventional.
President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday unveiled his picks for a national security team that, if confirmed by the Senate, will include Avril Haines, the first woman to serve as director of national intelligence, and Alejandro Mayorkas, a Cuban-born Latino, to lead the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that oversees border control and immigration policies.
Former Federal Reserve chair Janet L. Yellen, his choice for treasury secretary, would also be the first woman to hold that post.
But as impressive as the historical nature of their nominations are the credentials that all of them bring to their jobs. Without exception, Biden has thus far named people who have deep experience both in the subject matter they will be dealing with and in the workings of government.
The former Federal Reserve chair has the right talents, temperament, experience and — perhaps most important — values.
Like other Biden administration officials already named, the president-elect’s latest reported Cabinet pick exemplifies what Americans asked for when they cast ballots this month: a person with authority, placed back into a position of authority.
Former Federal Reserve chair Janet L. Yellen is incomparably qualified to serve as the next treasury secretary.
A former economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Yellen is a brilliant researcher, adept at formulating complicated models and synthesizing large quantities of data. She communicates clearly and effectively, a skill necessary for calming markets. And on a more humanistic level, she thinks rigorously about the values a society should pursue, its practical interest in pursuing those values, and what economic tools are most effective for achieving them.
In other words, she is exactly who we want leading the United States through this immediate economic crisis and strategizing ways to address the country’s more chronic challenges.
Even in defeat, President Trump’s villainies command the spotlight. Speculation is rife over whether the Biden administration or the various state and local criminal investigations in New York will lead to prosecutions of Trump himself on everything from campaign finance violations (the alleged bribes to his mistresses to keep silent about Trump’s dalliances with them in 2016) to tax fraud to obstruction of justice. President-elect Joe Biden has stated that “this is the time to heal,” suggesting that he’ll leave the pursuit of Trump to others. But for the country to heal, one critical remedy is to rebuild trust in government and pride in public service. And that will require putting the spotlight on how the Trump administration systematically traduced our government.
Trump has run what essentially has been a shameless kleptocracy; without question it is one of the most corrupt administrations in history. His own self-enrichment is notorious. He staffed regulatory agencies and departments with lobbyists and executives from special interests that they were tasked to regulate: a coal industry lobbyist to protect air and water, an oil lobbyist at the Interior Department, a Raytheon lobbyist at the Defense Department and so on.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
President John F. Kennedy laid to rest at Arlington; New details emerge about Iran-Contra affair; British forces leave New York; Elian Gonzalez rescued off Florida coast; Baseball’s Joe DiMaggio born.
This is brief rundown of the news so you don’t have to watch cable news. It’s just the facts with maybe a little snark.
With news that the GSA had OK’d the Biden transition, the Dow Jones broke the 30,000 point ceiling. In the morning, the Squatter-in-Chief made a 55 second appearance in the briefing room to call the record “sacred” and try to take claim it. He took no questions and ran out.
He later appeared in the “Roseless” Garden for his last annual pardon of the turkeys. It was announced that this year the two birds, named Corn and Cob, would be reprieved but only Corn showed up. Bet ya Cob is on his way to the Squatter’s dinner table on Thursday. Squatter again took credit for the stock market rise and suggested President-Elect Biden adopt his “America First” slogan. Mmmm, I don’t think so. He and Melanoma left ignoring shouted questions. Press shy, are we.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is doing everything in his power to hinder the Biden administration from giving the unspent funds from the CARES Act.
Bloomberg News reported Tuesday that there is about $455 billion in unspent funds from the CARES Act, which Congress passed to help Americans get through the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Mnuchin plans to place the money into the agency’s General Fund, a Treasury Department spokesperson said Tuesday. That fund can only be tapped with ‘authority based on congressionally issued legislation,” the report said, citing, the Treasury’s website.
The $455 billion include about $429 billion Mnuchin is trying to get back from the Federal Reserve, “which backed some of the central bank’s emergency lending facilities.” The remaining $26 billion comes from unspent loans Treasury could give directly to companies that need help. Given the bankruptcies, evictions, and companies announcing that they’re going out of business. It’s unclear why Mnuchin didn’t spend such a huge sum of funds when so many needed it.
Nah, it’s really clear why he didn’t spend the money, he doesn’t care about the little people. After all, he has his.
In California, a judge has tossed another of the Squatter’s lawsuits. This one would have forced our nation’s low-income elderly, disabled and blind out of their own homes and into deathtrap nursing homes during the pandemic. In another ruling, a California federal judge called the Trump rule that bars states from withholding part of the paychecks of some home healthcare workers for things like health insurance and voluntary union dues a “legal error.”
Judge Vince Chhabria wrote that the Trump rule appears “contrary to the overall purpose” of the Medicaid law. He noted that improving working conditions for home health workers, who have median hourly pay of $10.49, improves the quality of care the workers provide for Medicaid patients.
“It is unclear how barring the payroll practices would serve the purposes of the Medicaid program,” wrote Chhabria, an Obama appointee. He threw out that provision of the law and sent it back to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services to rewrite it.
California and five other states challenged the law. The states in the lawsuit could have lost $6 billion in federal Medicaid funding if they didn’t comply.
Last month tribes discovered that the date for the completion of a crucial environmental review process has suddenly been moved forward by a full year, to December 2020, even as the tribes are struggling with a Covid outbreak that has stifled their ability to respond. If the environmental review is completed before Trump leaves office, the tribes may be unable to stop the mine.
Purdue’s plea deal carries more than $5.5bn in penalties, most of which will go unpaid. A $3.54bn criminal fine will be considered alongside trillions of dollars in unsecured claims as part of Purdue’s bankruptcy proceedings.
Purdue agreed to pay $225m toward a $2bn criminal forfeiture, with the justice department foregoing the rest if the company completes a bankruptcy reorganization dissolving itself and shifting assets to a “public benefit company” or similar entity that steers the $1.78bn unpaid portion to thousands of US communities suing it over the opioid crisis.
A sentencing imposing those penalties is set to come around the time Purdue receives court approval for a bankruptcy reorganization.
Naturally, nobody goes to jail.
The US has more than 12 million cases of CoVid-19 aand over 257,000 deaths as per John Hopkins University.
On Monday, more than 85,700 people were hospitalized with the illness as healthcare workers warned of overwhelmed clinics and emergency rooms.
The daily average of cases is the highest it has ever been across the country. There were twice as many new cases a day as there were two weeks ago in nine states: Arizona, California, Delaware, Louisiana, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Vermont.
In the country’s most populous state, California, there were more than 30,000 cases over the weekend, prompting a flurry of new restrictions. Los Angeles is set to shut down restaurant dining on Wednesday and officials were expected to announce another lockdown.
I’ve spent time in New Hampshire, most of the people are very nice but there’s a hot bed of loud Trumpsters that can be annoying.
Too many people are ignoring the warning to stay home this holiday to their own detriment and the detriment of family, friends and strangers. STAY HOME, WEAR A MASK AND WASH YOUR HANDS.
Sadly, former New York City Mayor David Dickens died in is home at the age of 93. His wife, Joyce, passed away just last month. She was 89. Mayor Dickens was NYC first, and so far only, Black mayor who served just one tumultuous term that was plagued with a soaring murder rate, stubborn unemployment, rampant homelessness, and his mishandling of a riot in Brooklyn. He was soft spoken and always a gentleman with a penchant for formal wear. He did clean up Time Square, enlisting the Disney Corporation’s help. He raised taxes to hire more police, and spent billions of dollars revitalizing neglected housing. After beating Giuliani by only 47,000 votes out of 1.75m cast in 1989, Dinkins lost a rematch by roughly the same margin in 1993.
I was at Mayor Dickens’s Inauguration and met him and his wife on many occasions during his time in office and after his term. He always kind with a smile and glint in his eye. His face and voice will be missed. May he rest in peace with Joyce. Blessed Be.
This is a round up of the previous night’s late night talk show host’s opening monologues and highlight segments, because we need a good laugh to get through the rest of the day.
With Stephen Colbert on The Late Show
President Sore Loser Gives Up Opposition To Biden’s Transition After Exhausting Legal Options In PA
After losing his last lawsuit in Pennsylvania and facing calls from Republicans to give up the fight, the president on Monday announced that he would no longer block GSA head Emily Murphy from formally beginning the transfer of executive power to President-elect Biden.
Seth Meyers takes a Closer Look: Trump Disavows Sidney Powell as His Legal Team Embarrasses Itself
Seth takes a closer look at Trump firing one of his lawyers after she claimed the election was rigged as part of a vast conspiracy involving the CIA, the Republican governor of Georgia and the president of Venezuela – who died seven years ago.
It’s day 20 of #Squattergate on Jimmy Kimmel Live
Trump Desperately Tries to Keep Job He Doesn’t Even Do
Day 20 of #Squattergate is upon us, Trump tweeted and golfed his way through the virtual G-20 summit, a new Trump character was introduced and then promptly killed off, Jimmy has another new plan to trick Trump out of the White House, Donald Trump Jr. (DJTJ) tested positive for “The Rona,” Eric Trump’s wife Lara is looking to potentially run for the Senate in North Carolina, despite CDC warnings airports were packed in anticipation of Thanksgiving, we discover Guillermo’s Star Wars obsession after he decorated his front yard for Christmas, and a new high-tech option to celebrate the holidays from home.
On The Late, Late Show with James Cordon
Trump’s Legal Team Is Getting Too Crazy for Trump
James Corden kicks off the show with a bit of breaking news from his head writer, Ian Karmel, who just learned the federal GSA office will officially begin the presidential transition process from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. And Trump had to part ways with one of his lawyers for her conspiracy theories that were even a bit much for the president, who hasn’t shows himself much since the election.
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Larry Wilmore has his own show again on the free streaming service Peacock. He mocks the Trump campaign’s failed election lawsuits.
Rudy Giuliani’s voter fraud lawsuits are trying to overload us with disinformation
We’re now 17 days into Election Day and a couple dozen lawsuits into the ongoing legal matter of Rudolph Giuliani v. Reality. Spoiler alert! Reality is kicking Giuliani’s ass.
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
We all knew that Donald Trump would react badly to defeat. But his refusal to concede, the destructiveness of his temper tantrum and the willingness of almost the entire Republican Party to indulge him have surpassed even pessimists’ expectations.
Even so, it’s very unlikely that Trump will manage to overturn the election results. But he’s doing all he can to wreck America on his way out, in ways large and small. Among other things, his officials are already trying to sabotage the economy, setting the stage for a possible financial crisis on Joe Biden’s watch.
To the uninitiated, the sudden announcement by Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, that he’s terminating support for several emergency lending programs created back in March might not seem like that big a deal. After all, the financial markets aren’t currently in crisis. In fact, defying Trump’s prediction that “your 401(k)s will go to hell” if he were to lose, stocks have risen substantially since Biden’s win.
Furthermore, much of the money allocated to those programs was never actually used. So what’s the problem?
Well, the Federal Reserve, which administers the programs, has objected strenuously — for good reason. You see, the Fed knows a lot about financial crises and what it takes to stop them — and Mnuchin is depriving the nation of tools that could be crucial in the months or years ahead.
From “The Warmth of Other Suns” to Langston Hughes.
Who are they and what drove them to vote in such huge numbers, even during a pandemic? What makes them tick? Is it culture? Tribalism? Race? How did they come to their worldview, and why do they cling to it so passionately? What do they mean for the future of American democracy?
I’m talking about the opaque and inscrutable Joe Biden voter, of course.
After Donald Trump won in 2016, the media and academia embarked on a numbingly comprehensive sociological and anthropological examination of “the Trump voter.” Reporters and researchers swarmed what seemed like every bereft factory town in the industrial Midwest, every hill and hollow of Appalachia, every windswept farming community throughout the Great Plains. I’m pretty sure television crews did, in fact, bring us reports from every single diner in the contiguous United States — at least, those where at least one regular patron wears overalls.
Never mind that nearly 3 million more of us voted against Trump four years ago; no one seemed terribly interested in our inner lives, our hopes and dreams. This time, however, the gap is too big to ignore — Biden, the president-elect, beat Trump by more than 6 million votes and counting. He won back the heartland of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He won Georgia, for heaven’s sake.
Logically, then, we should put aside those dog-eared copies of J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” and subject “the Biden voter” to the same kind of microscopic scrutiny. Venture out of your bubble, Trump supporters, and try to understand how most of America thinks.
There is nothing funny about the Republican Party’s multipronged attack on voting rights.
Even as the campaign lawsuits brought by President Trump over the 2020 election enter their death throes, many people continue to worry that Mr. Trump will find three Republican legislatures to magically snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. They are concerned that he will pull off an antidemocratic hat trick through maneuvers like delaying recounts in Wisconsin and blocking certification in Michigan to allow these legislatures to submit competing slates of electors to Congress. The goal is to prevent Joe Biden from securing the Electoral College votes he needs on Jan. 6 for Congress to declare him president. [..]
Together, the Trump-related precedents mean that neither state nor federal courts are likely to be able to play a backstop role when Republican state legislatures pass new restrictive voting laws, and that efforts to get around these state legislative efforts are likely to fail as well. Although in theory Congress has the power to override state legislatures with voter-protective legislation for federal elections, it is hard to see any of that getting through the next Congress even if Democrats barely grab control by winning the upcoming pair of Senate runoffs in Georgia.
Mr. Trump has not admitted it, but he lost the 2020 election. His attack on voting rights and the legitimacy of our election system, however, will live far beyond his presidency. At stake is whether this country continues to adhere to the rule of law and to allow elections to be decided by a majority of voters.
How did the Kenosha shooter post $2 million in bail? Because conservatives are normalizing right-wing terrorism
In any sensible society, Kyle Rittenhouse would be shunned across the political spectrum. [..]
In the past, Rittenhouse would have been largely abandoned, even by right-wingers who might otherwise be generally sympathetic to insecure white men playing dress-up with camo and guns. We’ve seen this pattern from Timothy McVeigh in the 1990s right through the Trump years. Conservatives certainly didn’t embrace Patrick Crusius, the 21-year-old white nationalist accused of murdering 23 people in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart store last year. The mainstream conservative movement often flirts with right-wing extremists, but when the bullets fly or the bombs go off, conservative leaders prefer to pretend that they had nothing to do with the violence.
Rittenhouse has Trump to thank for the hero’s treatment he’s getting on the right. Along with undermining the social prohibitions against blatant racism, overt misogyny and openly trying to steal elections, Trump spent the past five years dismantling the taboo against shamelessly encouraging domestic terrorism. Trump’s incitement of violence started shortly after he announced his first presidential campaign, when he fantasized out loud about physical violence against Black Lives Matter protesters in August 2015. He has continued at a steady and intensifying clip over the last five years. By the time Rittenhouse rolled into Kenosha with a gun, Trump had made it safe for conservatives to openly support political violence.
53 years ago Arlo Guthrie took to the stage at the Newport Folk Festival and for 18 and a half minutes entertained the audience with his storied song “Alice’s Restaurant.” You could close your eyes and see the old church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts where the story is centered. At the end of the song the audience was on their feet. The song has since become a Thanksgiving tradition. The along came director Arthur Penn who turn the song into a movie with Arlo playing himself along with the real Sheriff Obie, William Obanhein and James Hanlon, the real blind judge. Alice and Ray Brock were played by Pat Quinn and James Broderick. The movie was released 50 years ago on August 19. Alternet has the story surrounding the song and movie which are based on the garbage toss that took place on Thanksgiving in 1965. 