The Good Meat

Back in June, I predicted:

I said it looked like we would get scenario three (“The Aristocrats!”) but as it turned out we got all three scenarios, counting backward. Yesterday Ron DeSantis dropped out, leaving Trump still opposed only by a Nikki Haley projecting the purest light of madness from her eyes and acting like she’s still got a shot in New Hampshire from eleven points behind.

Now that he’s out we can do the math and find that “Ron DeSantis Spent More Than $53 Million To Win 23,420 Votes In Iowa,” which works out to at least $2,262 per vote. According to Liz Skalka in Huffpost that’s not even that bad, compared to Vivek Ramaswamy’s $2,603 per vote or Doug Burgum’s fifteen million dollars per zero votes. Not to even mention Mike Bloomberg who “spent at least $13.6 million per delegate in the most expensive presidential primary campaign in history” to win four delegates from American Samoa in 2020.

Ron DeSantis’s political career is probably over, and all he proved is that he can’t laugh, eat, stand, smile, talk, wear shoes, or laugh like a human. Here’s a clip of DeSantis saying “I couldn’t subsist if I didn’t have the good meat,” and there’s no way to tell whether it’s real because DeSantis is always already a deepfake of himself. I guess it’s real? Is anything real? In defeat, DeSantis threw his minimal support to Trump (who told him to kick rocks) and posted a fake Winston Churchill quote that was actually from a 1938 Budweiser ad.

The smart politics knowers are backpedaling like drunken unicyclists. “Perhaps Mr. DeSantis might have won the nomination in most other years, if he hadn’t been going against a former president,” speculated one idiot. But Max Tani checked on the New Hampshire primary “political-media-industrial-complex” and found the Doubletree in Manch Vegas deserted. This thing is over: it’s Trump vs. Biden like it always was, unless one or both of them die before November, or all the rest of us do.

I Have Questions:

Are you Chad facing? Or just meong? Can you tell AI faces apart from real faces (that look like AI faces)? Is it slime or goo? (And together, will we achieve the unthinkable?) Who decided to call the thirteen year cicadas Brood XIX and the seventeen year cicadas Brood XIII? Is tinned fish still hot girl food after the Fishwife breakup? We’re fat-shaming The Meg now? What is this, Family Guy? And how many dicks are there in Wikimedia Commons? According to Jason Koebler, it’s over 9,000.

And now:

A Nearly Unprecedented Product Endorsement

YES PLZ has been at it for five years and find themselves at that glorious inflection point where they’re debt-free, breaking even, and just a few new customers short of being able to pay for healthcare and make some investments in growth. So listen: if you love good coffee and hate the hassle of getting it, this is an absolute no-brainer. If you love Tabs and want to help make sure I stay caffeinated, you also have a vested interest here. And if none of that is convincing, Tony has one final offer for you:

Use the code TABS20 and get 20% off your first bag. I’ll check in tomorrow with an update on our progress toward Tony’s new tattoo. —Rusty

Michael CeraVe. You know what? Fine. Ukraine is destroying Russian drone jammers with drones. The Sacramento Stanley Bandit has been caught. And speaking of the (non-hockey) Stanley cup, Caitlin Dewey has a Q&A with Paul Matzko about the Stanley cup / Mormon influencer connection.

And Finally: For pure reading enjoyment today, you can’t beat Kurt Andersen’s literary analysis of “Brilliant Fictional Character” Bill Ackman‘s deranged tweets.

Today’s Song: Rachel Chinouriri, “The Hills”

Thanks to Tonx for many weeks of getting me ready to face another slew of tabs. Y’all seriously, get some good coffee. I can’t tell you how freeing it is to just stop having to worry about where my next bag of coffee beans is coming from. Thanks Music Intern Sam, who uncharacteristically picked a song with guitars today. I hope this doesn’t become a habit.