Erin H

Monday was Halloween, which means we just wrapped up four days of celebs flaunting their deep pockets by choosing over-the-top costumes that could only be executed by people with a lot of money and not a lot of imagination.

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Major crypto exchanges including Coinbase and Binance are refusing a request by Ukraine to freeze all Russian accounts, saying that doing so would harm civilians and be counter to their ideals. "To unilaterally decide to ban people’s access to their crypto would fly in the face of the reason why crypto exists,” a Binance spokesperson told CNBC. 

In a tweet, Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Federov asked major crypto exchanges to freeze all Russian and Belarus accounts, not just the accounts of sanctioned oligarchs. "It's crucial to freeze not only the addresses linked to Russian and Belarusian politicians, but also to sabotage ordinary users," he said. 

Such a move would be in line with US and European Union sanctions against Russian banks and leadership designed to cripple the nation's economy. However, freezing crypto holdings could directly impact regular Russian citizens.

Coinbase said it's already sanctioning any persons or entities in Russia as required by law, but won't go any further. "A unilateral and total ban would punish ordinary Russian citizens who are enduring historic currency destabilization as a result of their government’s aggression against a democratic neighbor," it told Motherboard. Binance similarly stated that it wouldn't "unilaterally freeze millions of innocent users’ accounts." 

Binance, on the flip side, said it has committed to donate at least $10 million in humanitarian aide to Ukraine and launched a fundraiser with the goal of raising $20 million. The company is also currently under investigation by the US government for alleged money laundering and insider trading.

Other exchanges including KuCoin also said they wouldn't go beyond anything required by law. Kraken exchange CEO Jesse Powell said that such a move would violate the company's "libertarian values." 

One exception is Dmarket, a Ukraine-based platform that allows people to trade NFTs and virtual in-game items. The company said in a tweet that it had cut "all relationships with Russia and Belarus due to the invasion of Ukraine." 

Your opinions on Valentine’s Day don’t matter. “But the holiday is made up!” you cry. “All holidays are made up,” I calmly reply. “We live in a society.”

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Charcuterie boards are fantastic in a million ways, whether it’s taking one on a camping trip, assembling one for your kids’ lunch, hosting a party, a last-minute dinner when you’re too tired to cook, or even giving one as a Valentine’s Day gift. The classics are classics for a reason, and charcuterie boards are no…

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In an attempt to illustrate how tough inflation is making it for the ordinary American family to get by these days, CNN's Evan McMorris-Santoro went grocery shopping with an ordinary American family, the Stotlers of Cannondale, Kennedale, Texas, who are being pinched by inflation. (Update: Sure sounded like "Cannondale" to me, and I don't even own an expensive bike)

The Stotlers seem like a pretty nice family, with their nine kids, because don't most American families in 2021 have nine kids? We guess 11 people in a family is pretty close to the national average of 3.15 members, so good enough for CNN. Let's watch this perfectly atypical family make sense of all the terrible inflation that's happening these days. Listen carefully, because we have a feeling some of the numbers these nice folks rattle off just might be the teensiest bit inaccurate, starting with the figures highlighted in this tweet from CNN "New Day" host Brianna Keilar:

"A gallon of milk was $1.99. Now it's $2.79. When you buy 12 gallons a week times four weeks, that's a lot of money."\n\n@EvanMcS goes grocery shopping with the Stotlers and shows us how badly inflation is hitting the middle class.pic.twitter.com/39hPPRHLja

— Brianna Keilar (@brikeilarcnn) 1636026576

Mom Krista Stotler explains that just keeping the family in milk is costing a fortune, because "A gallon of milk was $1.99. Now it's $2.79. When you buy 12 gallons a week times four weeks, that's a lot of money."

That led to a bit of skepticism about just how typical the Stotlers' milk consumption is, because again, they have far more kids than most families. And where was this $1.99 milk they were buying, anyway? Smart-aleck historian Kevin Kruse noted that milk hasn't been anywhere near $1.99 in 25 years, although the price, as adjusted for inflation, has actually decreased over the that time:

A couple other folks chimed in to point out that, during the pandemic, milk sometimes sold for as little as $1.99 a gallon where they were, but that's hardly a normal price for milk, either, and that teenaged boys can indeed put away nearly a gallon of milk a day, because teen boys, like other space aliens, often have unearthly metabolisms.

Still, we can't help but think that some of the figures reported by the Stotler family may not be altogether accurate. At one point, Krista Stotler estimated that in June, a dollar was worth a dollar, but now, five months later, it's only worth about 70 cents. That sure doesn't sound right to us! Now, I am no good at math, but I asked on the Twitter machine, and people who are good at math agreed that for that to be the case, the inflation rate would be about 42.9 percent.

Also, we checked the Labor Department's inflation calculator, which only covers up to September, and it says that you'd have to spend $1.01 in September to equal the buying power of a June 2021 dollar. But maybe the value of a dollar collapsed a lot more in the last two months!

We see the Stotlers shopping carefully and clipping coupons, and again, we understand it's hard to make ends meet, not only when global supply chains are still being worked out, but at the best of times. This is absolutely not one of those stories about how we can't tax the rich because ordinary folks need $10K a month for entertaining. But it might be nice if there were just a little bit of fact-checking.

Following the shopping trip, Ms. Stotler says that the groceries that cost her $310 this week would have cost only "$150, $200" back in March, which again, would be an insanely high rate of inflation — not quite the hyperinflation of Germany in 1923, but nothing like September's inflation rate of 5.4 percent over the last year. And at no point does McMorris-Santoro mention the actual inflation rate, or even gently suggest that Ms. Stotler might be a little off in her estimates.

And again, we're not accusing her of lying at all here — if anything, it simply illustrates that most people have only a vague sense of what prices and inflation mean. I know I only think about the price of a gallon of milk when a politician has no idea what it is.

And as another smart cookie (cookies are too expensive to even think about these days) pointed out, the piece might also have explained that families these days — even teensy little families with one to three kids — have had some help, since the expanded family tax credit went into effect in June. That means the Stotlers should be getting $250 a month for any kids aged six to 17, or $300 a month for each child under six (at least for their own eight kids; they do mention they're caring for one kiddo "in kind of a foster situation," which sounds like an informal arrangement, we dunno). With a minimum of $2000 a month in child tax credits, you can buy an awful lot of milk, even at the criminal price of $2.79 a gallon.

In a later tweet (just not the video!) Keilar explained that

The child tax credit has been essential for them and they're very thankful for it. It spared mom and dad from taking on second jobs and helped offset the rising cost of food, gas and utilities, but they're still feeling the squeeze on their grocery bill.

So that's a very good thing to leave out, for sure.

In conclusion, why hasn't Joe Biden done anything to help ordinary people, huh?

OPEN THREAD!

[Brianna Keilar on Twitter / Bureau of Labor statistics]

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R. Kelly is facing decades in prison for kidnapping and sexually exploiting children, but the singer’s career somehow still seems to be on the up and up.

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Former Missouri GOP Rep. Todd Akin passed away late Sunday night at the age of 74, having lived with cancer for the last several years.

Akin was, of course, best known for losing a Senate race against Claire McCaskill, after making some extremely messed up comments about rape and human biology.

When asked by a local television reporter if he supported allowing abortions in the case of rape, Akin explained, "from what I understand from doctors," pregnancies caused by rape are "really rare," adding that "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

The subtext there was that if someone did get pregnant after rape, it shouldn't even count as rape because they were probably asking for it. Because if it was rape, their bodies would prevent them from getting pregnant. While this is true for ducks, it is not true for humans.

According to a statement from Akin's son, he was a devoted Christian who enjoyed dressing up as a colonial minuteman at 4th of July parties.

"As my father's death approached, we had people from all different walks of life share story after story of the personal impact he had on them," his son Perry Akin said in a statement.

"He was a devoted Christian, a great father and friend to many. We cherish many fond memories: from him driving the tractor at our annual hayride, to his riveting delivery of the freedom story at 4th of July parties dressed in the full uniform of a colonial minuteman.

"The family is thankful for his legacy: a man with a servant's heart who stood for truth."

Akin's opponent Claire McCaskill also shared some thoughts on Twitter, writing, "I just learned that Todd Akin has died. He was a nice man, and although we had major disagreements about just about everything, he was authentic to his beliefs. He actually believed in everything he said, which is a tribute to his character. My thoughts are with his lovely family."

I don't know about tribute, but fact that he believed everything he said certainly said something about his character.

In many ways, Akin was a man before his time. Had he run just a few years later, and refused to apologize for his statements as he later did in an unbelievably awkward "I have daughters" PSA, he probably would have won in a landslide. In fact, his wild-at-the-time statement probably paved the way for anti-choicers to just come right out and oppose exceptions for rape, which is what they've been doing the last few years. He may have lost his Senate race, but he helped expand the Overton Window to include making wildly inaccurate scientific statements and no longer pretending to care about victims of sexual assault. So there was that.

Surely if there is an afterlife, Akin is up there commiserating with Clayton Williams, who died last year and famously lost his own bid for Governor of Texas in 1990, against Ann Richards, when he suggested that victims of rape should just ''relax and enjoy it.''

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We've got Message Outfits (metaphorically, and literally), feathered capes, suits of armour, robot babies, designer blackmail, A HORSE HEAD, Kim Kardashian's ENTIRE HEAD COVERED...and more.  SO much more.

The post The 2021 Met Gala FINALLY Arrived, And Some Folks Wanted to Make a Statement first appeared on Go Fug Yourself.

fencehopping:

Beautifully cut Amethyst stones.

The chief operating officer of a Chicago hospital has shitcanned himself after creating a huge scandal by offering coronavirus vaccinations to all sorts of people working in businesses that happen to be in his personal orbit, instead of to people in the communities the hospital serves. In one of those stories that leaves you exclaiming "Holy shit!" with each new paragraph, Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold summarizes the outrageous fuckery, which was first uncovered by Chicago nonprofit journalism outfit Block Club Chicago. Excellent community muckraking!

Anosh Ahmed, COO of Loretto Hospital, which serves Chicago's West and South sides, stepped down yesterday (good luck in your future endeavors, etc) following a weeks-long saga of horribleness that started when staff at Trump Tower Chicago were given vaccinations on March 10 and 11, even though that was well ahead of hotel workers' eligibility to receive the vaccine. A Trump Tower spokesperson told Block Club Chicago the vaccines were part of the "Protect Chicago Plus campaign," although oopsies, the Chicago Department of Public Health said it wasn't aware of any approved vaccination events at Trump Tower.

Instead, the Protect Chicago Plus vaccines were supposed to go to residents in "15 community areas on the city's South and West sides hit hard by COVID-19. The Downtown area, where Trump Tower is located, is not among them."

It's no doubt all just a big misunderstanding, and totally unrelated to the coincidental detail that Mr. Ahmed owns a $2.7 million luxury condo in the Trump palace of gaudy excess.

But wait, there's more! We'll go with Fahrenthold's summary here and there, for conciseness:

In addition, the hospital offered vaccines to county judges and congregants at Loretto Hospital CEO George Miller's church. A hospital spokeswoman said only eligible congregants were given vaccines.

Well that makes it perfectly fine, then, because we bet that church is in one of the very neighborhoods the vaccines were supposed to go. What's that? The church was in the suburbs instead? 17 miles from Loretto Hospital? Oh dear, that seems bad too.

And then there's Ahmed's favorite luxury watch shop, which also seems not to have been targeted by the health authorities. (Actually, we're speculating there. Maybe it's only his second-favorite watch shop; we didn't look into that.)

Loretto Hospital also held a March 3 vaccination event at a Gold Coast shop called Geneva Seal, which sells jewelry and designer watches worth $20,000 — and more. Ahmed is a frequent customer there and has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at the shop, a source said.

The shop at 112 E. Oak St. is far from Loretto Hospital — and the vaccinations were offered to ineligible people who own and work at the high-end boutiques along the Gold Coast, as well as their family and friends, sources said.

Block Club Chicago notes that a woman who was invited to the event (she knew an employee at a Gold Coast shop) said that people attending the vaccination clinic at the watch shop were told to just list Geneva Seal's address instead of their home addresses. Isn't that clever?

Fahrenthold says that after that report came out, "the hospital's board met but decided not to terminate Ahmed."

But the last straw came Wednesday, when yet another report from Block Club Chicago revealed that vaccines went to employees at a pricey steakhouse frequented by Ahmed — the restaurant was yet another Gold Coast business, "Maple & Ash, a trendy, high-end steakhouse at 8 W. Maple St. Reservations at the steakhouse require a $100 deposit, and steaks cost up to $180." Several sources said the vaccinations were given to "higher-up workers who would've been ineligible to be vaccinated," in early to mid February. One worker at the restaurant said Ahmed dines there weekly. Guess he's a good tipper! At the time restaurant workers weren't yet "frontline workers" on Chicago's priority list, to say nothing of restaurant managers.

Another anonymous tipster who's "close to Ahmed" but didn't want to be identified out of fear of retaliation said Ahmed regularly held business meetings at Maple & Ash, and that the tabs for the meals would often run around $1,000. Gee, we can see why he'd want the staff to be safe from the virus! It's not like he was eating with the scum in the neighborhoods where the vaccines were supposed to go.

Just about the only good-ish news in this parade of horribles is that as soon as the vaccinations in Trump Tower were reported last week, the supply of vaccines to Loretto Hospital was cut off and the city sought new providers to get the nearby neighborhoods vaccinated.

"I fear that we're going to hear more stories. Which is why we pushed pause on giving Loretto new first doses," [Chicago Mayor Lori] Lightfoot said in a news conference Monday. 'They've got work to do, I think, to rebuild trust in their own community."

In another bit of news that brightened our bitter old hearts, we also see that Lightfoot is warning Chicago employers they'll face $5,000 fines if they retaliate against workers who need time off from work to get vaccinated. Presumably we're not talking about luxury watch consultants there.

Oh yes, let's cap off all this fuckery with one more example, shall we?

Last week, Block Club Chicago also reported that Ahmed had bragged that he had also vaccinated Eric Trump, the former president's son. Later, the hospital issued a statement from Ahmed saying that he had only been joking.

Eric Trump has not responded to requests for comment.

Welp, if anyone knows about being a joke, it's Eric Trump.

[WaPo / Block Club Chicago / Block Club Chicago / Photo: Andrew Seaman, Creative Commons license 2.0]

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Two women have come forward to accuse Thomas Middleditch of groping them at a Los Angeles nightclub in 2019.

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Bless.

The post SJP Is Our Most Reliable Resource Right Now first appeared on Go Fug Yourself.