Team Brandon welcomes Chuy // What's Good: Mar. 17, 2023
Librarians, a game show, and natural and probable consequences of one's own actions.
Hello, good afternoon, happy Friday. This week, the Chicago Board of Elections officially certified that Daniel La Spata is the winner of the election for Alderperson of the 1st Ward, and we will not be going to a runoff. This is a huge win for my neighborhood, and I worked my ass off the last six months to help make it happen. We came in 15 votes above the 50% line - every vote counts, and local politics is always a game of inches.
You may have thought I was kidding when I said that every week we would be talking about how you should vote for Brandon Johnson. You may have thought it was like a meme, or that I was doing a bit. It is a meme and I am doing a bit, except it is ongoing, and I am going to keep my promise. Please vote for Brandon. Here is a thread of reasons we should not elect his opponent, for example.
Brandon is better
The endorsements are coming in:
LITTLE VILLAGE — Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García and activist Jesse Jackson are backing Brandon Johnson for Chicago mayor.
García — who also ran for mayor — announced his endorsement Friday morning along with several of his political allies on the Southwest Side. Jackson, a famed and longtime political activist, announced his endorsement later in the day.
Brandon Johnson also got endorsed by Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, James Clyburn, and Kwame Raoul this week. The coalition is strong and growing. You can help us build a better Chicago by signing up to volunteer. No previous experience is necessary, and the campaign will happily train you. It’s actually a blast to go out and knock doors - they send you to likely voters, so people are excited and happy to see you. Even the people who respond coldly tend to show up and vote in the end because voters enjoy being courted. It’s worth the time and effort and super rewarding.
Meanwhile, here’s a thread about how the other guy ruined Philadelphia Public Schools. It resulted in a federal investigation! And here’s a poll showing Brandon with a two-point lead. We can win this, but we need all hands on deck!
And, one more thing, here’s a great piece about the race:
On the last day of February, during an unusually mild winter evening for Chicago, hundreds of people jammed into a cavernous, squat brick building in the West Side neighborhood of Garfield Park. If the West Side of Chicago is defined by poverty, violence, and despair, then Garfield Park is its epicenter. But, on this night, excitement crackled through the air as the Cook County commissioner, Brandon Johnson, defied the odds to face a conservative Democrat, Paul Vallas, in an April runoff election for mayor of Chicago. A cross-section of Johnson supporters—teachers, activists, and organizers—danced and cheered, waiting for Johnson to address the crowd. When news circulated that Mayor Lori Lightfoot had conceded the election, the music cranked louder, as everyone surged toward a podium where Johnson would speak. He appeared with his wife and three children, to thunderous chants of “We want Brandon!” Beaming, Johnson said, “A few months ago, they said they didn’t know who I was. Well, if you didn’t know, now you know.”
A problem of their own making
Hoist on their own petard, you could say:
AFTER SUCCESSFULLY LOBBYING for the rollback of new rules applied to Wall Street in the wake of the financial crisis, lobbyists for Silicon Valley Bank immediately began pressing their case further to the federal authority that insures bank deposits in the event of another crisis, according to lobbying disclosures reviewed by The Intercept. The lobbying effort managed to exempt banks the size of Silicon Valley Bank from more stringent regulations, including stress tests aimed at uncovering the type of weaknesses that led to the bank’s implosion Friday. Two of the bank’s top lobbyists previously served as senior staffers for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who himself pushed for the repeal of significant pieces of the landmark Wall Street reform legislation known as Dodd-Frank.
Horse paste death cult
Yes, well, shocker:
Just before 7 am on March 3, Danny Lemoi posted an update in his hugely popular pro-ivermectin Telegram group, Dirt Road Discussions: “HAPPY FRIDAY ALL YOU POISONOUS HORSE PASTE EATING SURVIVORS !!!”
Hours later, Lemoi was dead.
Role models
This judge, in particular, is not one:
In 2018, President Donald Trump appointed Stuart Kyle Duncan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the most conservative federal appeals court in the country. Duncan was a natural fit: Before taking the bench, he was best known for representing the conservative owners of Hobby Lobby craft stores chafing under the burden of having to provide their employees with health care that includes contraceptive access.
In 2016, Duncan referred to Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, as an “abject failure” that “imperils civic peace.”
Let them fight
I shall be watching this infighting with great interest:
At any given fundraiser or VIP room where he’s present, Ron DeSantis is usually easy to find—in the corner, keeping to himself.
Despite having a job that entails exchanging small talk and pleasantries on a daily basis, the Florida governor tends to brush off those obligations and struggles with basic social skills, according to a source close to DeSantis, several of his former staffers, and other GOP operatives who have worked with him and his team.
As DeSantis gears up for a potential White House run in 2024, his aloof public persona is being thought of by his rivals—namely, former President Donald Trump—as his Achilles heel in the retail politics-heavy early primary states.
Love your librarians
It was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and the children were off from school in the Ferndale Area District Library in Michigan, zooming around the play area in the Kid’s Corner, where no one needs to be totally hushed, and where the youth desk toward the entrance is decorated with little snowflakes and a die-cut paper squirrel named Cornelius. Someone’s grown-up walked through the stacks (shorter ones than in the main room), balancing an armful of children’s books while the kids with her did their own browsing. One stood at the online public access catalog, a screen and keyboard, with a step stool and a little privacy screen on the sides. His dark winter hat was pulled nearly all the way down over his eyes. After searching for a time, he walked over to the desk and up to Damon, a youth librarian, their hair pulled back in a ponytail, with a white knit cardigan thrown over their t-shirt and a lanyard dotted with pins, including a rainbow one. The kid asked Damon for some help.
Ahem
This is real, I assure you:
FIGHTING TO SURVIVE in the crowded ecosystem of far-right social media companies, the pro-Trump platform Gettr has in recent weeks held high-level deliberations on the oddest of business pivots: remaking the site to add an online clearinghouse for human sperm.
But it’s not just any sperm. The proposal would see the company expand to include a marketplace for semen from men who haven’t taken any of the vaccines against Covid-19.
Sam Reich is an icon
Here at Polygon, you could say that we have a soft spot for the intersection between games and entertainment. And if that soft spot has a sweet spot, Game Changer is there. Nominally a game show hosted by CollegeHumor CEO Sam Reich on the Dropout streaming service, the series combines improv comedy, puzzle solving, fierce competition, and a prankster ethos.
But check your preconceptions at the door: Game Changer, the only game show where the game changes every show, is one of the funniest, nicest, cleverest pieces of TV you can put your eyeballs on right now.
You deserve some good animal content
Have a good weekend.
Addendums
Philadelphia and the demise of Uncle O’Grimacey, McDonald’s onetime Shamrock Shake mascot. The Strongest Evidence Yet That an Animal Started the Pandemic. Matt Gaetz’s New Staffer Identifies as a ‘Raging Misogynist’. COVID Testing Lab Gave Chicagoans False Results, Got $83 Million From Gov’t — While Owner Bought Cars And Crypto. Destiny, Horizon Actor Lance Reddick Dies At 60.1 Law enforcement agencies are prepping for a possible Trump indictment as early as next week. Dallas has a problem with ‘zombie’ astroturf groups.
This one fucking hurts.