DL Open Thread Thursday, April 22, 2021

Republican officials in Georgia are getting scared because they can’t convince Trump’s hardcore fans to move on, and Trumpism disgusts the suburban voters the party needs to win elections. Ironic, isn’t it, that a party that wants to rule from a minority position is itself ruled by a minority within?

That brings up the latest boycott target: Home Depot. The Atlanta-based home improvement behemoth is majority-owned by a conservative billionaire an asshole, and all right-thinking people should have been boycotting it already.

Hey, kidz, remember that border wall that became the obsession of millions of American mouth-breathers, including their president? Texas Monthly found that the $27 million-a-mile fence is being defeated by $5 homemade ladders. As one architecture prof put it, ““A wall is a medieval war technology, and the responses to it are antiquated technologies that have been proven to surmount it, that includes ladders, catapults, and tunnels.” Obviously, that guy was not consulted before billions of dollars were pissed away.

Like millions of Americans, you’ve probably been pointing and laughing as My Pillow guy Mike Lindell makes an ass of himself and burns a pile of money trying to launch a social media platform. “Clusterfuck” and “shit show” only begin to describe the incompetence, highlighted by a prank caller pretending to be Donald Trump who totally duped Lindell in a live interview. The Daily Beast interviewed that prankster, who revealed how easy it was to outsmart Lindell’s team, starting with Lindell’s co-host, a right-wing talker named Brandon Howse. “That dude is dumber than a bag of rocks,” the prankster said. “He’s the reason I got to Lindell so easily.” Bags of rocks everywhere should take offense.

Is greed losing its cachet? Some of the top clubs in European soccer announced plans for a new “super league” that would supplant the current international order by plucking the top teams from the English, Spanish and Italian domestic leagues for an international circuit from which they could not be relegated. Fans reacted with so much outrage that the plan was withdrawn in just 48 hours.

What’s wrong with private philanthropists like Bill Gates? The money comes with strings attached. In Gates’ case, his involvement in Covid vaccine development slowed global access to vaccines because he insisted intellectual property rights be maintained. Nice work there, Specs.

Amazon defeated the union drive at its warehouse in Alabama by pulling every trick at its disposal, including the transfer of hundreds of employees into the facility. They’ll have to do it all over again, though, because another union drive in slated for Staten Island.

China, mindful of the vast amount of electricity it consumes, is putting the kibosh on bitcoin mining in Mongolia, where cheap, coal-fired electricity has made the province the world capital for the activity.

The state Senate confirmed Kathaleen McCormick as the first woman to lead Delaware’s Chancery Court, deflating the deeply cynical attempts by Toxic Capitalism Poster Boy Phil Shawe to pretend his problem with that court was its not-diverse makeup and not the fact that it ruled against him repeatedly. Hey, shitbird Shawe — Va te faire foutre et crève. 为什么你他妈的斜面客死. Desapareça e morra. دفعہ ہو جائو، اور مرجائو. Here, I’ll save you the trouble of using your translation service: Fuck off and die.

The floor’s yours.