Fri: Pepsi is Shrinking Packages to Help You.

He Expected Pain in His Workout Class, But Not This Pain

APeloton instructor took time during a class to air her grievances about the movie "Tenet" — and the director of the film, Christopher Nolan, happened to take that class.

Jenn Sherman, an instructor who leads virtual workout classes for Peloton that can be taken live or on demand, played a song from "Tenet" during a cycling class in 2020. She asked the people at home streaming the class if they had seen the move.

"Did anybody see this besides me?" she asked. "Because I need a manual. Someone's got to explain this. I'm not kidding."

She kept ranting about the movie, a science fiction written and directed by Nolan. Nolan, 53, has received four Oscar nominations for his movies "Memento," "Inception," and "Dunkirk," and he is also the director behind "The Dark Knight" trilogy and this year's "Oppenheimer," a blockbuster that is receiving Oscar buzz.

But Sherman was not impressed with "Tenet."

"That's two and a half hours of my life that I want back. I want it back," she said as she continued to lead the virtual class. Unbeknownst to her, Nolan took that class and heard her comments about his film.

But that twist didn't come out until recently, when the director was accepting an award and decided to harken back to the time he was insulted during a Peloton workout.

"I was on my Peloton doing a high interval, some s***, I was gasping, dying, and the instructor started talking about one of my films," Nolan said while accepting the New York Film Critics Circle Award for best director for "Oppenheimer." He recounted what Sherman said about "Tenet," and joked about the harsh criticism.

"When [film critic] Rex Reed takes a s*** on your film, he doesn't ask you to work out more with him," Nolan joked.

Are We Gonna' Party Like It's 1948?

Want to Understand 2024? Look at 1948.

Americans were angry with Truman because of high prices in the aftermath of World War II, even as other economic signals looked promising.

If there’s a time that might make sense of today’s political moment, postwar America might just be it. Many analysts today have been perplexed by public dissatisfaction with the economy, as unemployment and gross domestic product have remained strong and as inflation has slowed significantly after a steep rise. To some, public opinion and economic reality are so discordant that it requires a noneconomic explanation, sometimes called “vibes,” like the effect of social media or a pandemic hangover on the national mood.

But in the era of modern economic data, Harry Truman was the only president besides Joe Biden to oversee an economy with inflation over 7 percent while unemployment stayed under 4 percent and G.D.P. growth kept climbing. Voters weren’t overjoyed then, either. Instead, they saw Mr. Truman as incompetent, feared another depression and doubted their economic future, even though they were at the dawn of postwar economic prosperity.

The source of postwar inflation was fundamentally similar to post-pandemic inflation. The end of wartime rationing unleashed years of pent-up consumer demand in an economy that hadn’t fully transitioned back to producing butter instead of guns. A year after the war, wartime price controls ended and inflation skyrocketed. A great housing crisis gripped the nation’s cities as millions of troops returned from overseas after 15 years of limited housing construction. Labor unrest roiled the nation and exacerbated production shortages. The most severe inflation of the last 100 years wasn’t in the 1970s, but in 1947, reaching around 20 percent.

According to the historian James T. Patterson, “no domestic issue of these years did Truman more damage than the highly contentious question of what to do about wartime restraints on prices.”

The QOP Playbook.  Complain About Everything. Don't Try to Fix Anything,

Speaker Mike Johnson took no fewer than 60 of his House GOP colleagues on a trip to the southern border this week, enacting a ritual that is both familiar and pointless. The playbook is rife with cliches: Don outdoor-rated clothing (tactical pockets are a bonus); nod gravely while speaking to Border Patrol agents; gaze determinedly into Mexico; and hold a press conference to repeat words such as “crisis” and “open borders” dozens of times. That’s what you call leadership.

Republicans treat these jaunts to the border as accomplishments in themselves, far more meaningful than any legislative response. The same holds true for their main immigration “solution” in Washington: moving to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Not because Mayorkas has committed any malfeasance but because … well … they haven’t quite been able to say why they want to impeach him, other than the fact that it’s a good excuse to shout about the border some more.

Given this toxic stew of silliness and bad faith with which Republicans approach a complicated policy issue that they claim to care about above all others, you’d think the White House and congressional Democrats would be roasting them mercilessly. They’d be telling the public that only one party is serious about immigration, and it isn’t the one that shouts the loudest about it.
---------------------
"Let me tell you, I'm not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden's approval rating," Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas told CNN this week. "I will not help the Democrats try to improve this man's dismal approval ratings. I'm not going to do it. Why would I?"

The American People Be Damned!

It's a Great Club, But We Can't Afford to Join

Americans worth more than $100 million sat on a whopping $8.5 trillion in untaxed profits in 2022, a report released Wednesday found — money that may never be taxed unless Congress closes a loophole shielding the investments of the ultrarich.

These centimillionaires and billionaires made up just 0.05% of all American households in 2022, according to Federal Reserve data analyzed by the progressive nonprofit Americans for Tax Fairness. But they held one-sixth of so-called unrealized capital gains in the country.

Unrealized gains are the primary source of income for many elite families. Under current law, growth in the value of assets like stocks, bonds, investments, real estate or businesses is not taxable until they are “realized,” or sold. The ultrawealthy can nonetheless live off these gains by taking out low-interest loans against their exorbitant wealth. And when their fortunes become inheritances, the gains are no longer taxable.

“The superrich truly live in a strange and privileged world,” said David Kass, the executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness. While most households depend on paychecks — “income that is taxed all year, every year,” Kass noted — these untaxed gains make up the largest single source of income for the ultrawealthy.

“The scandal of tax-free billionaires,” Kass added, also results in billions of dollars less in tax revenue that could fund health care, housing, education and other public programs.

Led by President Joe Biden, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Reps. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.) have introduced a “Billionaires Income Tax” in both chambers of Congress. The tax would apply only to unrealized gains held by ultrawealthy households, and could generate an estimated $500 billion in new revenue over a decade.

Flori-Dumb Does Something Smart

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a Florida program that sets the stage for the state being able to import certain prescription drugs from Canada at a lower cost, the agency said Friday.

The FDA’s decision came in response to a proposal from Florida, under a law that allows states or Indian tribes to import prescription drugs from Canada if it reduces costs to American consumers without creating other health and safety risks.

And They Have a Chance to Do the Right Thing.

Advocates for a proposed state constitutional amendment to codify abortion rights in Florida have collected enough signatures to put the issue on the 2024 ballot.

Floridians Protecting Freedom, the umbrella group that helped to coordinate the signature collection effort across the state, said it has collected more than 1 million petitions for the amendment — far more than the 891,523 needed. The Florida Division of Elections website on Friday reported that 910,946 of those petitions so far have been verified.

The proposal still faces challenges, including an upcoming ruling by the conservative state Supreme Court over the language on the proposed amendment, which is titled “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion.”

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody asked the court to review the language of the proposal, which she said will confuse and mislead voters. The court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on Feb. 7.

But backers of the amendment celebrated surpassing the signature milestone on Friday, noting how relatively quickly they were able to generate support for the issue. Advocates beat the deadline to get the measure on the ballot in November by a month.

I am So Happy to Hear This

Weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy may not increase thoughts of suicide

MAY Not?