If not, don't worry--there's still time! The Commenteriat Commune has been designated an official Voting Center and will be open November 3rd, from 6pm to 7pm PST for voting and ballot drop-off.
As head Poll Worker, I will be verifying signatures and administering the literacy tests.
Also, to ensure your ballot doesnt get rejected, I will also be checking random ballot cards to ensure blue/black ink was used and no incumbents or tax increases "accidentally" received any votes.
And Eustace Tilley sheds a single tear as his monocle shatters upon the marble floor.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/epdgm4/new-yorker-suspends-jeffrey-toobin-for-zoom-dick-incident
We've been doing this work from home thing for eight months now. Anyone have any horror stories like Mr. Toobin's yet?
https://images.app.goo.gl/PPBj468NLB8DXoSz8
Well known Harvard legal scholar Elie Mystal has a piece in Nation online in which he compares the confirmation of ACB to, wait for it, The Princess Bride.
There’s a moment in The Princess Bride when the evil and conniving Prince Humperdinck, eager to finish a sham wedding to his unwilling bride, Buttercup, demands that the priest cut to the chase. As the bride’s rescuers prepare to charge the castle, Humperdinck insists, “‘Man and wife.’ Say ‘man and wife’!”
That’s basically where we are with the confirmation process for Amy Coney Barrett.
Any guess what Disney movie Mystal tied up for the kiddies while his wife was out making a living?
Our favorite walrus goes on from there to conclude pack the court yes.
The way to free ourselves from the random wheel of death is to have more justices on the court. Ginsburg’s passing would have had significantly less impact on the fate of women’s rights if she had been but one of 19 people instead of nine.
19 justices? Can you imagine digesting a Supreme Court decision with 18 concurring opinions? The mind boggles. Like Mystal's. Utterly unchecked by any need for scholarship.
But wait. having established the 'need' for 19, Mystal jumps to 29!
The benefits of court expansion are so manifest that I’d be willing, as a Democrat, to put additional Republican nominees on the court, too. If you had a bill to add 20 people to the Supreme Court, I’d be willing to split the new seats between, say, 11 Democratic appointees and nine Republican ones. I’m serious. The Garland debt must be paid...
That Elie is a legal giant! Go big or go home.
Yeah, yeah, I know I switched firms less than two years ago, but I've made another move. I'm purposefully withholding some details so that I don't dox myself, but you'll hopefully get the gist of what's going on.
To give you a brief refresher, I left my job as a partner at a mid sized regional law firm to become a partner at a national "BigLaw" firm. When I realized that I really hated being a BigLaw partner, I came back to my mid sized firm. I was relatively happy to be back and things were going pretty well. Then the COVID lockdown came. We were all working from home and everyone I knew was still pretty busy.
Things seemed to be going pretty well. Then, about a month into the lockdown, firm management started talking about cutting pay for associates and non-equity partners. This struck me as odd since I kept up with the deposit reports and we were seemingly having an outstanding year. It struck me that one of two things was going on, either (1) the firm's financial position was in worse shape than I thought due to information the equity partners weren't sharing or (2) the equity partners were going to use COVID as an excuse to screw the non-equity partners. They claimed that the equity partners had taken very large hits to their draws already, but of course I had no way of knowing if that was true. I immediately changed my LinkedIn profile to say that I was open to opportunities. Firm management decided not to cut our pay, but I still had a bad feeling in my gut, so I continued to take calls from recruiters.
Over the months of working from home, I had begun to really enjoy not spending 1-3 hours in the car every day fighting traffic. I was more productive working from home and I got to spend the time that I would have been commuting on home improvement projects or on my garden. I also started wondering why my firm was paying so much in overhead for office space that wasn't being used and pretty clearly (at least to me) wasn't necessary. I think I mentioned here several times that I'd really be interested in a law firm that had a remote model. The problem is that most of the "virtual" firms that recruiters called me about were pretty clearly scams, or at the very least provided minimal benefit.
I also got tons of calls for traditional firms. The lateral market, at least in Dallas, is pretty hot. However, most of the calls were pretty much the same.
I'm working with [NATIONAL FIRM] and they've made expanding their Dallas office one of their top priorities. They're looking for IP partners with portable business. They offer a national platform/rate flexibility/a collegial work environment/a no assholes policy/a puppy. Their partners would love to talk to you about moving over so that they can jump all over your current clients.
I'm always polite when when I talk to recruiters, but I didn't see anything that sounded interesting. Then one recruiter kept trying to get me to talk to an IP boutique firm. I was leery since I've always mentally equated "boutique" with low pay. I finally agreed to get on a call with one of the name partners. He told me that his firm had so much potential work that they didn't have enough experienced attorneys to work it all. THAT got my attention.
They use a virtual model where the firm maintains small offices in flyover states for administrative functions, but the attorneys for the most part work from home. This results in overhead per lawyer that's about 1/3 of where I was.
So anyways, yada yada yada, they made me a really good offer and I decided to make a move. I cleaned out my office and moved everything home. They actually lowered my billing rate, so now I can be hired for less than a paralegal at a coastal BigLaw firm.
As a final note, it's amazing how much I spent per month on everything that commuting to a downtown office entails. Between tolls, gas, dry cleaning and lunches, I'm probably saving $500 per month. I think that we're going to see a lot more firms moving to this model.
Since I totally prayed for Lat I'm now required by God (look it up) to pray for Trump and --not to brag-- but as of 11PM PST he's alive and tweeting. Yes, Mari Dupont gets results!
Which brings me to my next topic: the horrifying photos of the Presidential Suite (link at end of post) in that hospital that all US presidents get thrown in when they catch a cold, Walter Reed. Ugh where is the HG Channel when you need them, this is so gross! Who could get well in this grim, Mary Todd Lincoln-designed hell hole? Trump must be freaking out, nothing is gold plated.
Finally I made a few drunken well-thought out political donations to candidates whose ads have appeared on the Youtube channels that I watch after 11pm. A few Black GOP newbies and some guy in Minnesota who seemed nice.
So who are you guys giving money to??
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8800181/Inside-Walter-Reed-Trump-treated-coronavirus-secure-Presidential-Suite.html
