According to a House Ethics subcommittee, GOP Congressman George Santos defrauded campaign donors, falsified financial records, and used campaign money on beauty products, rent, luxury items from Hermes and Ferragamo, and purchases at the website OnlyFans. It recommended Santos be referred to the DOJ. It also suggested Santos try to get his money back for those beauty products.

BTW, according to wikipedia, OnlyFans is an internet content subscription service used primarily by sex workers who produce pornography, but it also hosts the work of other content creators, such as physical fitness experts, musicians, and tax professors.

Content on the platform is user-generated and monetized via subscriptions, tips, and pay-per-view. As of May, OnlyFans had more than 3 million registered creators and 220 million registered users. Bella Thorne broke OnlyFans earnings records when she joined the platform in 2020, generating $2 million in a week. Thorne promised subscribers nude photos, but instead provided only photos in lingerie, leading to a large number of chargebacks. [In defense of OnlyFans, Owl Chatter notes that we got our refund pretty quickly.] Here’s Bella.

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Lobsterman Rescues Man From Submerged Car. That was the headline. I thought a new superhero had risen among us – half man, half lobster. But it was just a lobster fisherman in Maine jumping off of his boat to help a guy who drove a stolen car into the water.

Here’s our hero — Manny Kourinos — let’s just take a look at his hands closely before giving up the dream. Nope, they’re human. Good job Kourinos!

True story: Many years ago a distant cousin of mine, Murray Lubitsch, was working a part-time job down in Florida as a parking attendant near a shallow canal, and he saw a car swerve off the road and into the water. An elderly woman had lost control of the car. The water wasn’t very deep, but the woman was pretty shaken up and was having trouble getting out. My cousin waded into the canal, and helped the poor dear out.

Somehow, word of the incident reached the local paper and it wrote a story about the “rescue.” Then, since these towns in Florida don’t have much going on, my cousin got a call saying the mayor was going to issue a certificate of valor to him in a special ceremony. My very funny Uncle Morris (alav hashalom) went. We called him Maish. After the certificate was presented and some words were spoken, people were milling around, and the local reporter who was covering the event went up to Maish and asked him what his connection to Murray was. Maish said he was Murray’s swimming instructor.

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It happened again during my law exam today. A student came up and said he was confused about Question 16. The question described a contract and asked whether one of the parties, Bob, could assign his contract right to Ellen. Okay, I said, what’s confusing you? (He was whispering, of course.) So he whispered: Can Bob assign his contract right to Ellen? I looked at him for a few seconds and then I whispered back: That’s what I’m asking you — that’s the question.

God, I love these students – I would teach for free.

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This poem by Ted Kooser is from Winter Morning Walks. I’m going to let it usher us out tonight. Thanks for stopping in.

A rag rug of a landscape this morning —
remnants of dirty snow,
torn strips of muddy stubble field.
Behind the yellow windowshade of dawn,
in an enormous, sunny room,
my grandfather’s older brother Lou,
wearing a woman’s apron, blue and white,
bends stiffly away from the loom
upon which he’s weaving the day
and rummages through his bag of scraps.
He needs one with a spot of green
to show me down here on the gravel road
stepping along in my winter coat.

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Owl Chatter is heading down to College Park, MD, early tomorrow for the Michigan/Maryland game at noon. Go Blue!