Just a flesh wound, declares Jack Shafer, who titles his piece Rupert Wins Again.

Getting out from under all of that hurt for $787.5 million is a kind of bargain for a company with a market cap of $17.3 billion. Fox has $4.1 billion in cash and warrants on hand, says the New York Times... [Murdoch always pays] his way out of jams. The Dominion case and the similar Smartmatic case that awaits its place in the defamation docket, are not aberrations for Fox. It’s all a part of Murdoch’s way of doing business.

UD‘s got no doubt Murdoch, like his fellow slashed and amputated knights Berlusconi and Trump, remains a fully intact legend in his own mind. Smartmatic, just to take one of many lawsuits Rupert faces, demands 2.7 billion and will, you figure, get one billion. Doing the big math on Fox/Murdoch is always going to be tricky (he apparently spent 1.7 billion to get rid of his second wife), but even with a ton of assets the enterprise absurdly endlessly drains – and publicly humiliates – itself in what only a nut would call a winning strategy. Just for starters:

[T]he condemning depositions of Fox anchors and executives, admitting that they knew their stories were false and sources were ludicrous, opens Fox’s board to serious claims of negligence and breaches of fiduciary duty—violations of a board’s duty of care and duty of loyalty under Delaware corporate law.

But there’s so much more.

Joasia Zakrzewski finished third in the 2023 GB Ultras Manchester to Liverpool 50-mile race – but is thought to have travelled by car for 2.5 miles.

The 47-year-old GP, from Dumfries, is understood to have been tracked on GPX mapping data covering a mile of the race in just one minute 40 seconds.

Fox just settled. Will we ever know how much money it had to fork over? UD‘s gonna guess it was something like half of what Dominion asked for. $800,000,000.

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WHOA NELLIE. Swear I didn’t peek!!

Fox News-Dominion settlement totals more than $787 million, Dominion lawyer says

… against Disney.

… only to turn around in two days and go to Cartagena.

The Fox/Dominion Voting trial has suddenly been delayed, and people speculate that Fox may be trying to settle mucho money on Dominion so it can run away.

And babe, when I say mucho, I mean like a billion. Cuz Dominion has little reason to settle; plus it knows the rest of us are desperate for things to proceed so that more astounding revelations about Murdoch’s trash enterprise may emerge.

… shows that we’ve moved from late night sketchy gunfight locations (hookah bars) to wholesome kids’ dance class locations. Look at the Facebook page for this once-wonderful, now utterly bloodied, place.

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Four dead, many injured, most in their teens. UD‘s gonna go ahead and guess that what got the fight going was the same old shit – two guys arguing over a girl. But now, along with fists, lots of kids have got a gun.

And it was so innocent a place – a dance studio for kids – that I’m sure no one thought they’d need to pat people down for weapons.

Yet surely they knew that everyone in this story lives (died) in the seventh most gun-friendly state in America. Guns per capita: 33.15. Look at this list! Do people in Alabama look at these lists??

Not to be mean, but what the fuck sort of thing do people think is going to happen.

***************************

Keenan Cooper, the DJ at the party, told WBMA-TV that the party was stopped briefly when attendees heard someone had a gun. He said people with guns were asked to leave, but no one left. 

See how it is? No security. “Asked to leave.” WTF. Alabama has to accept what it is – 33.15 guns per capita – and act accordingly. No place is even a little safe with 33.15 per capita. Get it?

Nope. Deadville’s nihilist mayor says “trying to control guns would prove … futile … .”

Ten percent!

BOOK BANNERS ARE NOW TRYING TO CLOSE PUBLIC LIBRARIES

A Nashville, Tenn., florist is refusing to serve a Republican National Committee (RNC) fundraiser featuring former President Trump in protest over lack of action on gun control laws… [The shop calls for] other Nashville businesses to refuse money from the RNC “until they begin to make the changes to gun laws that most Americans are calling for. … Our community has just lost seven people, including three young children, to yet another school shooting. At this moment I cannot ignore the work that the RNC has done to create this tragedy and so many others like it… The Republican Party has wasted taxpayer money and precious legislative will on banning drag shows, rather than assault rifles that are being used to murder children in their classrooms.“

*****************

UPDATE: The GOP responds.

“We already found another place.”

If you can read all the way through this without laughing out loud, you’re a better man than I am.

The $3million coral art Sphinx destroyed when a 66-year-old Florida woman smashed her Rolls Royce into it was designed by British artist Damien Hirst and owned by hedge fund magnate Steven Tananbaum.

You may recall an earlier DeLilloesque headline:

Florida ferry accident off exclusive island results in deaths of 2 socialites as Mercedes rolls into water

All postmodern headlines must include:

1. an accident, preferably involving cars
2. the car must be a luxury car, and its make must be specified in the lead or headline
3. there must be at least three wealth-markers packed into the headline (Rolls Royce, Hirst, hedge fund; exclusive, socialites, Mercedes).

Both of these headlines would have appeared in DeLillo’s White Noise had he written it more recently.

Let’s start with delight: One of UD‘s heroes, Steven Pinker, has started a defense of free speech group among faculty there. Everyone’s got an eye on Stanford and Oberlin and multiple other stagers of politically coercive campus melodrama, and all self-respecting centers of free inquiry need to take an explicit stand against these enemies of freedom. UD’s beloved University of Chicago is a pioneer here; Harvard and other schools follow UC in strong unmitigated statements, rules, and organizations deployed to resist right and left ideologues – some of whom, grotesquely, were hired by these same universities – who are always trying to shut/shout down free thought and free expression. Harvard’s Council on Academic Freedom (which includes econ prof Jason Furman, whose Cambridge house UD knows well, because for years it was owned by her buddy Peter Galbraith) rightly anticipates, and readies itself to fight, mindless and destructive fanaticism.

On the disgust front, there’s yet another greedy egomaniac who can’t think of anything to do with three hundred million dollars other than give it to an institution worth significantly more than fifty billion dollars in order to get his name on a building and get some tax benefits. Vomit.

Not to mention.

‘[Kim Jong-Un is] top of the line. Really smart. As a young man at 24, even though he sort of inherits it, most people when they inherit it they lose it… He has total dominant control. That’s not easy.‘

House Republicans expressed alarm after an increasingly unhinged Rep. Jim Jordan subpoenaed himself to testify before Congress.

In a blistering statement, the House Judiciary Committee chairman demanded that he comply with his subpoena and called himself a “toadying Soros-backed flunky.”

“The message to Jim Jordan is clear: you can run, but you can’t hide,” Jordan said.

The Ohio congressman warned that, if he refused to testify, he would have “no other choice” but to call for himself to be jailed.