Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, March 21, 2023
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79 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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If what we think will probably happen today, it will be a big day.
An ex-president, Donald Trump, will likely be indicted. By a state and not the US government.
That is both huge and normal. Huge, in that an ex-president has never been in that position, and normal as in if he were rando citizen this would be page 13 police blotter.
Trump called for something close to insurrection and coup to prevent this / protest this. I hope people behave. They can assemble and protest in support of asshole Trump. It is their right. Within limits. Like with any protest.
A lot of right wing folks are suddenly reconsidering their gut reaction to BLM protests from summer 2020. Discerning, reckoning the outer limits of acceptable protest. How to disavow the rioters. The shitty people.
I sincerely hope today goes well. If things go crazy, hopefully no one / few people get seriously hurt.
I want today to be peaceful and it not be an attempted coup. That would really suck.
I’m going to double down on my for-the-hell-of-it prediction: when the indictment comes down (or when we get to trial) there will be more of a crime than what is know right now. My guess is perjury under oath, but I’ll keep my prediction more general.
@MarkedMan: (And yes, I know he pleaded the fifth to everything when he was deposed. I think the perjury would have occurred a while ago. )
Fox News producer files explosive lawsuits against the network, alleging she was coerced into providing misleading Dominion testimony
Rats, ships.
@OzarkHillbilly: Good to hear from you! Hope you’re enjoying your vaycay!
@OzarkHillbilly:
Welcome back. I hope you had a grand time with the grandgirls.
@OzarkHillbilly: Glad to see you’re back! Hope NOLA and the family time was amazing! It was pretty slow around here without you….so slow Mimai tried to make ChatGPT post comments in the style of OzarkHillbilly, but it failed pretty miserably. 😛 😛
@Just nutha: @CSK: It was good. The eldest is quite the charmer, a hug monster. The youngest is a… Blob with an endearing smile. Both of them blue-eyed redheads. My son is in for a lot of trouble. And speaking of which I got to spend a lot of time with him, it seemed he really needed it.
Unfortunately we had to cut it a day short because a long time buddy of mine had 2 sisters killed in a SC car wreck. Took over a week to bring the bodies home. I am not looking forward to tonight and tomorrow AM, I am really bad at these things. I just shut down.
Well, DeSantis’s latest pointless proposal is to ban the use of CBDC in Florida.
So the guy who wants to force bloggers to register with the state is concerned about Big Brother in terms of financial transactions. Even though anything other than cash is traceable, including crypto currencies. Does he also plan on banning credit and debit card transactions?*
Voorhees is the garden variety adult with a teenage view of free markets, liberty, and politics. Or: the secular version of the charismatic evangelist preaching the prosperity gospel.
Snowden, the guy so concerned about government overreach and surveillance, he becomes a citizen of an authoritarian regime that has a habit of murdering dissidents in foreign countries.
The latter two raise legitimate concerns about technology, surveillance, and the State. But neither can be taken as sincere, even if for different reasons.**
ETA: *Getting cash isn’t exactly anonymous, either.
**All three favor different flavors of hierarchy and control. Voorhees may just be a deluded techbro, whereas Desantis and Snowden don’t appear to have a sense of irony.
Today I should have been driving to the airport for a flight to Cancun. Instead I’m at the office readying a bunch of samples, and waiting for a manager to give his ok on them…
I’m pondering taking the trip next month, April 10th to 13th, but work doesn’t look like it will let up until late April or early May. By then there’d be no issues, but it’s the rainy/hurricane season. So, now I’m thinking of postponing things til September/October.
That’s also iffy as regards weather and work. Sometimes the Hell Week prelude comes in November, sometimes it comes earlier. One year it arrived in August. That’s when a bunch of relates proposals go out to a bunch of related agencies. There’s a lot or prep work with product listings and prices.
June through August ought to be clear, but that’s a terrible time to go. It’s hot and it rains almost non-stop, and a hurricane or tropical storm might hit. When I don’t travel, that’s when I take my tome off, so I won’t have to drive as much in the rain.
I wonder if next year I might time things just so I could get away in mid-January and visit a ski resort in the US or Canada. It’s one of those things I’ve always wanted to do.
@de stijl:
If I ran the Manhattan DA’s office and had indictments ready to go, I’d wait until Friday to issue them, or maybe better until Sunday.
My thinking is to let Donnie Cheeto look silly predicting doom on a specific day, only for nothing to happen. Then as the crowds of angry deplorables disperse, swarm in and bring in the fat fish.
@de stijl: @Kathy:
There probably won’t be an indictment today, because the grand jury isn’t meeting today.
@OzarkHillbilly: Sad news. I’m also bad at this type of thing. Just remember that being there for him is most of the job.
@OzarkHillbilly:
You’ll be more help to your buddy than you can imagine.
@Kathy: From what little I have read, there hasn’t been much response in MAGA land to Trump’s demand that they PROTEST.
Perhaps this is because the MAGAts have figured out that there can be negative consequences to certain types of “protesting,” but I think the more likely reason is that there in no focal point, geographically or temporally. Where do we meet and when? Mar-A-Lago? Manhattan? Tuesday? sooner? later? What exactly are we trying to stop? A perp walk in Florida? A first appearance in New York?
January 6 was a calendar date that allowed Trump to summons everyone to a logical location. There is no similar touch point here. Random protests in El Paso and Kansas City aren’t going to hack it.
@Kurtz: “So the guy who wants to force bloggers to register with the state is concerned about Big Brother in terms of financial transactions.”
I can see his point, though–doesn’t blog but does deal in large sums of wire-transferred money. One’s reaction to surveillance depends on the likelihood of being under surveillance. My reaction would probably be the exact opposite–concerned about having to register as a blogger not caring at all about my 5 wire transactions a decade.
@Kathy: I dunno. Correct me if I’m wrong (I really haven’t been following this bit of news with any attentiveness), but the belief that he’d be indicted today came from Trump himself. There have been signs of a possible coming indictment, but only Trump said Tuesday. Indeed, there’s been secondary evidence that an indictment by today was unlikely. Maybe he’s privy to some inside info, but more likely he’s using the prediction to gain some advantage. And in this case, it’s similar to the Mueller probe and several other scandals he’s faced: he uses the fact that nothing happens to spin a narrative that it was a nothingberder. I’m not saying this tactic will necessarily help him long term. But I don’t think the prosecutors themselves are factoring it in very much. If any indictment happens (and I still have my doubts), they’ll issue it when they feel they’re ready.
@Kylopod:
I’m not sure I’d be willing to commit to the idea that Trump ever even thinks about long term.
His own lawyers say, “We’ve heard nothing and if it was imminent we would be the first to know.”
I think trump was trying to get the MAGA hordes out in force demonstrating on his behalf such that when no indictments were forthcoming he could say, “See? They’re terrified of me!” The “hordes” turned out to be about a dozen fat MAGA heads from the 3rd LaZ-Boy division walking in a circle in front of trump tower.
Not a good look.
@Kathy:
I’m not sure waiting for a specific day will help in any meaningful fashion. Since certain agencies will need to be alerted for coordination purposes (don’t wanna surprise Secret Service rolling up armed after all) and there’s MAGA-types at all levels, someone’s gonna leak if it’s going down. Moving the date gives Trump the ability to crow that they “flinched” or were intimated by all the “outrage” his people spouted; doesn’t matter that it’s not true, any ammo for the MAGA base is bad news for both democracy as conservatives are actively starting to publicly turn on him. They’re like groundhogs – they see a shadow and back into the hole they go. If it looks like he might get even a temporary pass, they’ll go back to “omg the nuts need to be appeased no matter what” mode
My guess is nothing will happen today except maybe the same sort of pathetic demonstrations that happened yesterday. It never seemed likely the arraignment would happen the day after the grand jury concluded. It also strikes me as unlikely the actual event will drive much protest. Although they’d never admit it, a lot of the faithful have to feel sheepish about getting sucked into 1/6. But more to the point, Trump doesn’t know when or exactly where it will occur, so he can’t tell his people where to gather.
Trump may have said it’d be today hoping for big protests to show Bragg how much stink there’ll be if he proceeds. I expect him to be disappointed. And if I were the NYPD I’d be ostentatiously placing bike racks around places it won’t be.
IANAL. People keep talking about arrest. If he voluntarily shows up for the arraignment would he actually be arrested? And if he posts bail can he not go right back home to Mar a Lago? Were I the judge, I wouldn’t worry about flight risk. Flight would be the best thing that could happen.
@OzarkHillbilly:
“I’m really really bad at these things. I just shut down.”
I hear you. It is entirely okay to shut down. I’ve done it myself. I’ve seen it, too. People who just show up and don’t know what to say are 10x preferred over “x is in a better place” glad-handing assholes.
Just don’t be the 14th person in an hour telling the bereaved that so-and-so is “in a better place”. I know those folks in an uncomfortable position of following societal norms while trying to offer emotional support, but c’mon, try to be a bit creative.
Just sincerely be there. The hardest bit of death is dealing with the practicalities. The moving stuff out of apartments or houses. It sucks. Offer to help with that. That bit surely sucks.
@gVOR08:
Can you imagine someone with a diplomatic passport and access to a private jet is not a flight risk?
About the only question is whether he’d seek asylum in Moscow of Pyongyang.
@gVOR08: I get the impression that lots of people are waiting to frame Mr Trump’s mugshot. It’s not much but worth memorializing.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I agree. He’s a creature of the moment. That’s why I used the term “tactic” rather than “strategy.” That doesn’t mean it isn’t effective. Throughout his career–both before and after his entry into politics–he’s shown a remarkable ability to wriggle his way out of accountability for the many, many crimes he’s committed. I don’t want to fall into the trap some commentators have of making him out to be some kind of genius mastermind, but I also think it’s a mistake to view his survival as purely a matter of luck or the privilege of being wealthy and famous (though the latter is still a big factor). He knows how to run out the clock. And I’m convinced he understands something about how hype and expectations can be used to his advantage.
Even now, as we’re speaking (and I know I could be eating my words very soon), I still think there’s a significant chance he won’t ever be indicted for anything. And if that happens, it will just add to the narrative of his supposed invincibility. He knows that, which is part of the reason he thinks it’s in his interests for people to think an indictment is right around the corner.
To my earlier point, Politico says:
@Joe:
This answers art of a question. The rabble at the Capitol on Jan 6th. posted video and selfies of themselves on social media, because they didn’t understand they were committing crimes. At least some of them, probably most.
Like the creature quoted above, they believe themselves to be above the law.
@OzarkHillbilly: @gVOR08:
The protests will be muted because at present the most ardent MAGAs are fighting with one another about who among them might be a cleverly disguised federal agent or Antifa member. This is causing a lot of people to be leery of showing up to demonstrate on Trump’s behalf.
@Joe:
The MAGAts fear that protesting is a trap being set by the deep state.
@Kathy:
Were I you, I would definitely book the ski vacation.
Skiing is big fun. Whole body fun, but mostly quads and glutes. Muscles you didn’t know existed will ache after a hard day. Outer thigh, inner thigh, tushie, calves. Upper body if you fall down a lot, and there is no shame in that at all. You will fall. A lot. Part of the process.
Not a fan, myself, of the big Colorado resorts – too hoity-toity for my taste. Vermont gets over-run by New Yorkers. I really like Montana – locals and mid-income tourists. Low pressure. Not so much focus on “look at my cool gear and fab fashion” bullshit.
I go to Whitefish. A friend of a friend hooks me up.
Hit the bunny hill hard and practice your craft. Five year old kids will out-ski you and that is entirely cool and okay – pay attention to what they are doing. Learn to snow-plow.
It’s big fun. Whole body fun. You will ache. Highly recommended. If hoity-toity folks give you shit tell ’em to fuck off. Have fun!
@Sleeping Dog:
Oh, definitely they do. See, all of the MAGAs walking through the Capitol on Jan. 6 were peaceful patriots, just touring the building. All the rioters were Antifa or minions of the Deep State (FBI guys).
The same might happen now. The peaceful patriots will show up to demonstrate peacefully for Trump, and Antifa and the FBI will cause bloodshed and destruction and blame it all on MAGA.
Seriously, when did being against fascism become a bad thing?
I am against fascism and creeping fascism like in Florida, and hope other like-minded people are too.
Why is antifa coded as “bad”, “evil”, “enemy” in Right Wing world?
@Kathy: If you’ve never skied before, start out with beginner lessons and take one every day. You will be very happy you did. It may be also worth booking a place with a gondola so you can ride up to the beautiful mountain view, have a relaxing drink and a meal at the top, and the ride down again.
@Kathy:
Friday after the courts close so that he has to spend the weekend in holding until he can get arraigned 😉
@de stijl:
Because a lot of Right Wing world is pro-fa
@Stormy Dragon:
Then Trump won’t be able to hold his rally in Waco, TX. Pity.
@Stormy Dragon:
Yeah, there is that.
Sorting, societally induced or ideologically, yields strange bed-fellows.
Still stunned that anti-fascist is considered bad in some circles. We fought WW2 for a reason. And it wasn’t to free Poland.
You have to be an extraordinarily shitty person to go all in and declare anti-fascists as “bad”. I am against people who are against a totalitarian nationalist state.
Who does that? Why?
Why are out of control rumors about so-called voter fraud always about illegal immigrants and antifa? And buses?
Seriously, no one cares about your shitty local election.
It’s just rank paranoia and projection. Why do people fixate on busses? Bussing outsiders in to disrupt community standards, it is absurdly, obviously paranoid. Why is it always outsiders on busses? There is an underlying pathology there with that fixation.
(I know the preferred spelling is “buses” and “busing” but that looks wrong to me so I go for the double s. U before a single consonant usually invokes a “yu” pronunciation sound and doubled consonants usually a flat u except for duplicate, hubris, putrid, etc. Buses with one s gives a huge indication you should pronounce that by looks as rhyming with Gary Busey’s last name which is mental. In my world the plural of of bus is busses, not buses. That makes sense to me. Fight me.)
Trump tells his followers to sign his petition and send him money tout de suite.
http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-asks-sign-petition-potential-arrest-then-asks-for-money-2023-3
Kevin Williamson on trump
https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/wanderland/deplorable/
The beauty of skiing is being able to control the descent by will and skill. You are in control, gravity is your toy.
Granted, more than once looking at the slope of black diamond hills I have noped out. I lack the skill to cope with that and I know it. That scares me even looking at it at my skill level. So nope. I don’t believe I could maintain an edge to thwart that descent. Gravity wins. Nope.
@de stijl:
There was a kind of precursor to this some years back when Dinesh D’Souza started calling Obama an “anti-colonialist.” Liberals were like, “Your point…? Isn’t that what America was founded on?”
But frankly I don’t think righties are even thinking much about what “antifa” stands for. It’s sort of like when people think UFO automatically means “alien spaceship.” The right just spits out buzzwords they can’t even define (like “woke”), and antifa to them means little more than “mob of left-wing boogeymen getting its marching orders directly from the DNC.”
@Sleeping Dog:
Oh, that’s glorious. Thanks for posting the excerpt. Kevin Williamson and Rick Wilson are in a class by themselves when it comes to takedowns of Trump..
Heh, Accept no substitutes!
@gVOR08:
Fleeing the country would get his assets seized and/or frozen. Unlikely Trump will risk that.
@CSK:
Williamson is
frequentlyusually viscous and he’ll take aim at whoever he is writing about on a given day. His nastiness is what cost him the position at The Atlantic a few years ago.On the whole, I find his criticism and analysis, fairly pedestrian, but the writing style is definitely entertaining.
@Sleeping Dog: Heh:
@Sleeping Dog:
I laughed out loud at “delusional bedlamite.”
@de stijl: I agree with you on spelling. “Busing” seems like something Gary Busey would do.
The Tea Party did bus people around. A lot of journalists seemed to want to believe they were a kitchen table, grassroots thing. Where did they think the graphic wrapped busses came from? If the pro-Trump demonstrators want attention they should dress (or is that dres?) somebody up in a tricorne hat and give him a drum. That used to reliably draw press attention to any dozen or three Tea Partiers.
I’m beginning to wonder if Trump decided to announce that he’d be arrested today just to gauge the reaction of the MAGAs to his calls for protest.
Am I giving him too much credit for forethought?
Question: When my dad left government service, we had to surrender our Official passports different than diplomatic, but not “regular”–it showed we were connected to the Embassy, but the same held true for the black diplomatic passports–once you leave service, you get the same blue passport everyone else has.
Why *does* Trump still hold a diplomatic passport? It’s not like he’s actively engaged in diplomacy (I think that Obama, Bush, and Clinton do actually engage in diplomatic activities).
@JohnMc:
That might be the best picture of Trump ever, but it’s still a picture of Trump. Ew.
@Joe:
The arraignment would give them a date and target, along with various pretrial motions or the start of the trial.
I would almost want them to arraign him over Zoom, to deny him a spectacle.
And it’s hard to flee with Secret Service in tow. They won’t be obligated to arrest him, but they also cannot assist him in a crime.
It would be an amazing spectacle that would be worth watching, as the agents are trying to persuade him to at least pretend to have snuck past them.
@Gustopher: One little factoid I learned about the rules of what prisoners can and can’t do came from Blago.
@de stijl:
Well, the British declaration of war on Germany wasn’t because they were fascists; it really was specifically because they had invaded Poland. If Mussolini had been prepared to risk it, the UK and France would perfectly happily have contrived an alliance with Fascist Italy against Nazi Germany in 1939.
Indeed in 1935 there briefly was an Italian-French-British alliance, the Stresa Front aimed at curbing Hitler.
And of course, the US only became a belligerent when it did because it was attacked by Japan, and then Germany helpfully declared war on the USA.
A lot of historians suspect that without Hitler’s helping hand, Roosevelt might have faced considerable difficulty getting Congress to declare war on Germany.
@dazedandconfused: Trump has assets not leveraged to f***all? That’s good news for his kids!
Willis Reed, 80, has died. RIP.
@Kylopod: You really can’t look for logic on the right. It’s all about vibes and protecting the in-group, rationale and consistency be damned.
The fact that the in-group is filled with Nazis is almost irrelevant. If mimes were a part of Trump’s coalition, they would all be rabidly pro-mime.
(Painting your face white for miming is a lot like painting your face black for minstrelling, and it makes you super white… how is mime not a Republican pastime?)
——
Autocorrect hates mimes on my phone and keeps changing it to mines.
@Gustopher:
I’m pretty sure it’s been 30 years or more since Trump drove a car. Even if he could get away from the police he would hit the first telephone pole he encountered. (Note: I just googled and NYS issued him a license at least as late as 2012. But I still don’t believe he’s driven himself for decades.)
@de stijl:
@MarkedMan:
I could make a self-deprecating joke at my own expense, or tell a Benit joke.
No contest.
One day Benito calls his favorite lackey, Pence, to ask him for advice.
“Miles,” Benito says, “I have a very tough problem. You won’t be able to solve it. I’m the best at solving problems, manypeoplesaythat. I have the best problems.”
“It’s “Mike,” sir.”
“Not important, Miles. I need to go skiing. I’m a great skier. the best. manypeoplesaythat. I know more about skiing than the skiers. But I don’t like cold weather. I have the best skis, manypeoplesaythat.”
“It’s “Mike,” sir. BUt there’s an easy solution: go water-skiing.”
“See, I knew you’d eff this up. Instead, I’ll go water-skiing.”
Some days later El Cheeto calls his least favorite lackey, Pence, into his office.
“You and your stupid ideas, Miles! Do you kn0w how bad you made me look!!! People laughed at me when I asked them to find me a lake with a slope!!”
If you believe the Daily Mail, Trump will be indicted this week, but not arraigned until he appears before a judge next week.
The only skiing I’ve done was on water, and that was in 1981.
I’ve never skied on snow, nor, I kid you not, seen snow live up close.
Our busiest times tends to be December, so that’s out. Things get bad again in February, but sometimes there’s a lull in mid-January. I figure that’s a good time.
@Kathy:
I’ve tried snowboarding twice. First with an instructor for a few hours, second time with a willing buddy who basically just laughed at my ineptitude a lot. Second time I fell so often my butt got bruised and I was basically incapable of walking or standing upright the next day. He thought that was fucking hilarious.
My problem with the concept was that if I felt unbalanced I would try to kick my most downhill foot out to counter as if I were skiing and if both feet are locked to the board that attempt will absolutely knock you on your ass or get a face full off snow depending on which way the off-balance was tending. Snowboarding is roughly like skiing only turned 90 degrees to the right and both feet locked on to one short ski. My brain, if feeling unbalanced, would revert to form and will my leg to kick out, whichever is most downhill, which makes zero sense if both feet are locked to a board so I fell. A lot. My buddy laughed his ass off.
Next morning I basically could not walk. I could sort of crab step forward with hip rotation, but most of the day I laid on my stomach and watched TV. God bless tv remote controllers! My butt was actually bruised and turned purple a day later.
Snowboarding is *not* like skateboarding. At all. Kinda, but not. You are not locked to a skateboard and you can kick your foot out if necessary, usually the left. You can move your feet, adjust your stance. Catch balance with footwork. Skateboards usually have a bit of give and rock. Snowboards don’t.
I could bomb straight downhill and slalom a bit, anything more and I kerplunked on my ass. Or face. Usually, my ass.
@Gustopher:
The SS is a branch of US law enforcement, they can and would be obligated to arrest DJT if he tried to flee an indictment.
@Kathy:
Even if you don’t ski, you owe it to yourself to see snow at least once.
Not just on the ground, but falling from the sky.
I find it magical still to this day even though, to me, it is basically a pain in the ass that I have to shovel.
Even still, it looks so cool coming down!
@de stijl:
Actually it’s more about that than skiing. I figure a ski resort does keep snow around, on purpose, and some even make their own if they have to.
It goes back to childhood, when I first saw a winter olympics. It just hasn’t happened.
@CSK: If Trump has agreed to appear at an arraignment, Kathy will be sad. 🙁 Agreeing to appear will mean they won’t need to arrest him, so no perp walk. 🙁 🙁 🙁
Over the weekend I finished a book about diseases set in a historical context. I forget the title and author. It was interesting, with lots of details about how hard it is to diagnose an epidemic thousands of years after the fact, as well as the tools available for doing just that.
It may be smallpox at one time was no big deal. A childhood disease most children got over, and few people died of. Then it changed, or was replaced by more virulent but related pathogen. Other diseases we conceive as being as old as humanity might not be that old. And some may have gone extinct on their own (why not? Larger species have gone extinct without human intervention).
I moved on to the latest work by the Novella brothers, The Skeptic’s Guide to the Future. It’s an attempt at more fact-based futurism, not unlike Clarke’s Profiles of the Future.
I’d like nothing better than to live forever and see what they go right. Or just to live forever 😉
Clarke got a few things wrong, as I recall. He didn’t think cell phones would be as ubiquitous, though he did foresee mobile telephony. I think he lived long enough to see himself proven wrong. I wonder if he was glad it was so.
@dazedandconfused: State vs federal. Plus their duty in this specific role is traditionally to protect, rather than investigate.
Without case law, I wouldn’t be entirely eager to say one way or the other.
Plus, these are likely agents that Trump likes, i.e. sycophants, so they would be looking for an excuse not to.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I don’t know if he’s agreed. I’d love to see him perp-walked.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I suppose she would be if she were gullible enough to believe him.
Actually I can’t say for certain. It depends on what Benito thinks makes him look bad (worse): appearing at an arraignment, or being arrested. I’m inclined to say the second is worse, but the first requires a measure of courage and self-assurance.
@Gustopher:
Partially true but not in the context of this discussion, which is imagining Trump attempting to flee the country to dodge prosecution. That’s a federal crime so the feds can act.
@Kathy: I’m assuming that Trump’s “lawyer” is agreeing to some sort of surrender/appearance condition to avoid having the circus that would go with a Trump arrest. That Trump is agreeing/offering to appear at an arraignment of his own choice or has asked for such a condition as CSK’s Daily Mailrumor is offering is outside the scope of my concern about Trump. (Actually, I couldn’t give a popcorn f*rt about the whole thing.)
@Kathy: Also, I’m not sure appearing at an arraignment requires anything from Trump beyond getting into a limo in front of wherever he’s staying on the day of the arraignment. It’s not even like he has to walk up the courthouse steps. Whichever number it is Center Street has an underground parking complex and an elevator.
On small matters, I’ve been drinking Starbucks coffee for free.
See, the master franchise for Sbux in Mexico is held by a corporation called Alsea, which holds the master franchises of other fast food chains. Notably in this case Domino’s. We sometimes order from Domino’s when we work late.
Alsea has its own rewards program separate from each specific franchise. When I order from Domino’s for the office, I get points on it, which can be spent on Starbucks.
Dinner when we work late is paid for by my employer. So, I get to consume mediocre pizza for free, and that allows me to drink mediocre coffee for free as well.
It’s not great, but at least it’s free.
Today I got free coffee for two coworkers who came along to deliver the samples.
I think I could obtain an invoice and charge it for petty cash reimbursement. I won’t because that’s just greedy, even if perhaps one ought to be paid for eating Domino’s and drinking Starbucks.
@Gustopher: IGet 100 copies superimposed on a dartboard; inside a couple months you’d never have to buy yr own pint – if you were in the right kinda place. Such is the impact of motivated workouts.
@Kathy: Story told as true about a person of remarkable wealth, part of my fairly close family. Got tremendously enthused over a story he read about New Zealand trout. It was near the end of the season! Damn! He corralled his best fishing pal, called his pilot, loaded up on the recommended tackle and flew to New f-ing Zealand. Where they discovered that seasons are reversed in the southern hemisphere.
He was said to be real clever in his business.
There were a few small pro-Trump demonstrations in Manhattan yesterday. I’m seeing reports that there was a larger demonstration today. New Yorkers demanding Trump be prosecuted.
@gVOR08: Ha! Boy, I bet it never occurred to the Orange Caligula that his call to “protest” would be heeded by the people who want him incarcerated. Even MOAR ketchup on the walls at the golf course. 😛 😛
@Kathy: A classic treatment of virulent diseases in a historical context is William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples. It was published in 1976, but is still a valuable source (I’m teaching a course on plagues in history at the local university). Another challenging read is James Barry, The Great Influenza.