Feb. 23, 2024 - GOP tries to kill its own IVF attacks in the womb
… Scrambled eggs … Nvidia nvigorated … AT&T screwup … Government funding deadline …
Republicans Vow to Save IVF from Republicans
Republicans are mobilizing to save In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) from the Republicans who are attacking it, the AP reports. The new effort follows on the undifferentiated heels of last week’s frozen-embryo ruling by Alabama’s Supreme Court.
IVF typically involves creating a batch of embryos and then praying to Jesus that science can do what He won’t and implant one of them successfully. Which, of course, means a lot of embryos don’t get to be people.
The ruling that frozen embryos, popularly known as Dippin’ Dots™1, are entitled to the same rights as babies warmed the hearts of Democratic political consultants around the country. But it froze liberal hearts and it froze IVF programs in Alabama this week. So now Republicans are taking action talking about taking action.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) said, “We’ve got to talk about making sure we don’t take away women’s rights to IVF.” If successful, Mace’s strategy of talking about not taking away women’s rights could effectively mask the broader strategy of taking away women’s rights.
On the other hand, former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) said she supports the Alabama ruling. Haley’s stand drew a strong rebuke yesterday from former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC), who said the court was wrong to issue a ruling that would freeze IVF programs, telling CNN that “Alabama needs to go back and look at the law.” No date has yet been scheduled for the expected debate between Haley and Haley.
Nvidia Stock Surge Reveals Wall Street Nsanity
The AP does a good job contextualizing yesterday’s rise in Nvidia’s stock value, which I’m going to do a good job of more-contextualizing.
As the AP notes, the value of the chip maker jumped by 16% yesterday, for an increase of $273 billion, making the company now worth an estimated $1.9 trillion. That’s “trillion” with a “what the fuck?”
Here’s the stock’s performance over the past five years:
But it’s yesterday’s increase I want to focus on. The AP points out that the $273 billion Nvidia leapt by yesterday is equal to or more than the total value of Bank of America ($265 billion) and Coca-Cola ($263 billion).
Now, why do we give a shit? Well, why did Wall Street add an entire Coca-Cola worth of company to Nvidia yesterday? Anyone know?
The closest I can find is that Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang did a quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, telling Wall Street analysts things are going great for his company, which has specialized in videogame and Artificial-Intelligence chips. Then Wednesday night Huang said we’ve hit “a tipping point” for generative AI (the AI that makes shit by copying pre-made shit pre-made by humans).
Huang’s remarks then made Wall Street hit a tipping point in their jeans.
By now you’re probably thinking you’ll need an Nvidia chip to compute what my fucking point is. Well, my point isn’t about Nvidia. It’s about Wall Street.
What Wall Street is supposed to do — the social utility (don’t laugh) it’s supposed to perform — is the efficient allocation of capital. The market, in other words, is supposed to move money to where it will do the most good (and by “good” I obviously don’t mean moral good).
And if that is Wall Street’s purpose… then it shouldn’t be shoveling an entire Coca-Cola of money at one single company on one single day.
Another way to think of it is, if Wall Street missed the existence of an entire Coca-Cola within Nvidia, what else is it missing? Because literally the only entity that could possibly merit such a massive one-day increase in value is Taylor Swift.
In other words, Nvidia’s surge yesterday doesn’t tell us anything about the greatness of Nvidia, it tells us about the weakness of Wall Street, where trading is driven by fee-fees, group think, and the collective fragility of bros.
It’s no coincidence that the company we’re talking about got its name from the Latin word “invidia.” (It means “envy.”)
Congress Poised to Create Totes-Avoidable Crisis
Members of Congress return from their recess next week facing yet another deadline, March 1, to avert yet another government shutdown. There’s a key difference from previous last-minute nail-bitery, though.
This time, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) split the government funding packages, Solomon-style, into two tranches. Miss the March 1 deadline, and some of the government shuts down. Miss the next deadline, March 8, and most of the rest shuts down.
Here’s the danger — which, as far as I’m aware, only I’m concerned about: Splitting a shutdown into pieces obliges media to explain that the shutdown was split into pieces. Almost any time the media are obliged to explain things, they prefer to drop the subject entirely. Which means we may be on the verge of our first Stealth Shutdown™.
Right before our eyes, the age-old conservative plan to kill the government may be switching from drowning it in the bathtub to boiling it alongside the apocryphal frog. In other words, it may be evolving even though evolution violates Johnson’s religious beliefs.
SURPRISE TWIST None of this is even the crisis I’m talking about today!
According to Roll Call, proposed spending packages produced by both chambers would lead to serious layoffs of federal-level public defenders — y’know, the people paid by the government to defend people from government prosecutors.
Naturally, I assumed at first that public defenders were being cut because they’re not profitable. And in my defense, that’s true. In a Fucking News exclusive, I can now reveal that the federal government doesn’t make one single dime protecting defendants’ right to effective counsel.
But the real reason the Senate bill would cut public defenders, according to Judiciary Committee Chair Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), is that “there was a mistake made.” And they’re gonna fix it by the March 8 deadline.
Over in the House, Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) told Roll Call he’s “optimistic that we’ll be OK” fixing the funding levels. Presumably with money.
It’s not clear, however, whether Womack was factoring in the possibility that fellow House Republicans might realize he’s talking about adding to our national debt — thereby killing America’s future — in order to pay for lawyers to defend people accused of killing Americans in the past.
In fact, House Republicans will likely kill the funding fix if they learn about it, for instance, in the media.
Oops.
AT&T Drops the Ball
America’s largest cellphone carrier stopped being that yesterday, when AT&T’s network went down for hours in cities around the country. The epic break in service was treated as something near a national emergency, with federal officials involved.
Typically, the government only considers a breach in access to essential communications acceptable when it’s because customers don’t have enough money to pay for it.
Although this isn’t believed to be a case of hacking, the Federal Communications Commission, Department of Homeland Security, and FBI were all looking into what happened. Reportedly, the top concern was that people might not be able to call 911 in the event of an emergency.
With 911 inaccessible, officials worried, people getting killed by fires or murders or other scary death-things might suffer the same lack of government response experienced every day by people getting killed incrementally from malnutrition or lack of proper health care.
The culprit, experts say, is most likely human error or technical failure, either of which could have been prevented by throwing more money at AT&T’s redundancies, instead of at shareholders.
In a joint statement, House Republican committee chairs Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-WA) and Bob Latta (R-OH) said they are working “to gain a complete understanding of … what can be done to prevent future incidents like this,” short of inconveniencing corporate executives.
Three Quickies
Lawyers for D4FRFP2 Donald Trump argued in a new legal filing last night that a judge should dismiss charges that he violated the law by stealing government documents. Trump’s lawyers argued he was still a government official when he committed this act, and ergo it must be an official act. Fucking airtight circular reasoning, people! Suck it, haters!
A federal judge ruled Wednesday that, yes, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell really truly does have to pay $5 million to the winner of Lindell’s “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge.” Lindell had falsely promised to pay $5 million to anyone who could refute (some of) his lies about the 2020 election, which a guy did because he was smart enough to do computer shit, but stupid enough to think Lindell might actually pay him. (FLASHBACK: I revealed Lindell’s secret origin, including how he got his super powers, was inspired to fight liberal crime after the tragic loss of his mind, and the brief phone call in which the born-again Christian called me a “scumbag,” the way Jesus would have.
A new poll suggests that in California’s March 5 Senate primary, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is likely to advance to the November runoff and face either Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) or Steve Garvey, a Republican who once played baseball for money. If Garvey goes to the runoff, Schiff is almost assured of victory, which would explain why Schiff and his super PAC have spent millions to help Garvey best Porter. Because that’s what a true progressive would do!
TCB
As I mentioned yesterday, I’m traveling this week and so I’m a little less combobulated than usual. I apologize if I threw anyone by hitting “Send” so early in the morning! We should be back to your regularly scheduled newsfucking as of Monday.
Until then, you can always find me on Twitter and Facebook and Bluesky and Mastodon.
Go get ‘em, kids…
Yer damn right I used the same joke yesterday; and I’m gonna keep using it until the law recognizes that it’s easier to tell a baby from an embryo than it is to tell an embryo from a Dippin’ Dot™.
D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.