Midweek Meh-Ness [DOT 10/1/24]

10/1/24 MegMegMcGee 36

I hope everyone is having a good week so far…

Comforting.

Boeing CEO says company is “acknowledging our mistake” after Alaska Airlines door blowout
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boeing-ceo-acknowledging-our-mistake-alaska-airlines-door-plug-blowout-dave-calhoun/

This is wild.

Several men arrested after dispute over secret tunnel in Brooklyn synagogue
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/09/brooklyn-synagogue-secret-tunnel-dispute-arrests

This is real. Not deep fake. Not AI. This guy is that dumb.

Not enough $$ in the world

Elon Musk Married And Divorced The Same Woman Twice Paying Her Over $20 Million In Settlements, She Says, ‘Elon Musk Is The Perfect Ex-Husband’ And Is Open To Marrying Him A 3rd Time
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-married-divorced-same-190535830.html

Sprots!

Sources: Heat extend Erik Spoelstra on record 8-year, $120M deal
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/39275735/sources-heat-extend-erik-spoelstra-record-8-year-120m-deal

Stonks!

Stock futures are flat in overnight trading Tuesday: Live updates
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/09/stock-market-today-live-updates.html

A Deadsplinter would never!

Have a great day!

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36 Comments

    • I was snowmobiling in Alaska (they call it snow-machining), and we were in some serious deep powder.  We stopped for a break & realized that on one side of us was a mother moose and the other the baby.  We had separated her from her calf.  My cousins immediately realized what we had done and remained super calm but pulled out their guns.  They just told me to stay calm and behind the snowmobiles.  Luckily, she realized we were not a threat and they moved on.  I have had a few other encounters with moose in Alaska but that was the scariest, especially since they had shown me this video the day before…

    • I’m OK with people attempting to pet the wildlife. Those who choose to do so are, uh, of suspect intelligence, and thusly more likely to vote against progress, health, safety, etc.

      Let Bullwinkle sort those assholes out with a quickness.

  2. I didn’t watch the video because it says it contains sensitive content (and I’m nothing if not sensitive).  Also, in my house “pet the moose” means something very specific.

  3. That confrontation in Brooklyn has been brewing for decades.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/01/nyregion/rebbe-but-not-the-messiah-as-lubavitchers-compromise.html

    There are lots of articles that state the basic fact that there is a split between members of Chabad who believe Schneerson is the Messiah and those who do not, but I’ve never read a good one that explains what else is going on — things like who leads these factions, what their numbers are, how these disputes are addressed internally, and more.

  4. This entire spectacle is insane.

    Trump’s “Fifth Avenue” sequel

    In case you’re not following, one of the judges asked Trump’s attorney if “presidential immunity” could allow a sitting president to have Seal Team 6 assassinate a political rival. The attorney said, basically, “yes.” And added that the president would have to be impeached and convicted before anyone could file any charges.

    Can you imagine being the judge who votes “sure, let the president kill whomever he wants”? Or worse yet, “Congress will step in if this happens.”

     

      • Now we get to wonder which members of SCOTUS will vote in favor of giving presidents carte blanche to commit crimes. Thomas? Would this be a bridge to far even for him? Alito? I mean, they’re crazy, but are they THAT crazy?

        • Maybe — and I mean mayyyyybeeee — Roberts says no. Absolutely no chance any of the other ones vote against it. “A Republican president can do whatever he wants” is pretty much the entire conservative political mission; after all, this all sprang out of Nixon.

        • What I think the dummies on the Supreme Court don’t get is that if they ordain Trump, the Supreme Court as they know it is dead.

          Why would they think that Trump wouldn’t get a GOP Senate to pack the court? Why wouldn’t he drive the remaining liberals from the court with death threats and investigations and replace them with 30 year old Federalist Society hacks?

          The second that someone like Thomas becomes irrelevant, the gravy train stops for him. His luxury RV is going to need a new set of tires, and he’s going to find that Harlan Crow is grooming someone younger to take his place and has no incentive to buy another set of Goodyears.

          All of the glitz and prestige of the job will be gone too, and they’re going to be as downtrodden as the GOP House. And like the GOP House, simple obedience won’t be enough — they’re going to need to endlessly debase themselves in public for his amusement.

          • cf. leopards, face-eating

            [ETA: …intended more by way of footnote than response…on the off-chance the perfectly normal absence of an ellipsis masquerading as a prefix didn’t make that as obvious as it did in my head]

    • Also of course the logic would be Trump could execute reps and senators and their families if they even hinted they wanted to throw him out, so he would never have to worry about impeachment.

      And almost all Republicans in Congress would be fine with paying that price.

      • …for a bunch who so often like to abuse authority to fuck shit up & constantly bang on about being vengeful it is surpassing weird that they’d be willing to bet the other team would never borrow their play to the point of saying “we vote to play politics by the mafia playbook as translated through the medium of hollywood”

        …those movies…do not end well for the characters they best line up with once people start getting whacked

        …do have to wonder how close we have to flirt with that “are we the baddies” mitchell & webb skit doing that thing the onion does where it stops being a parody…I thought the attempt to appropriate the punisher logo was a little close to the skull-shaped bone insignia thing as it was

        …either way the circular logic on display is dizzying…only I can save you from a world where joe biden can have you murdered by the state using a black bag hit-squad…& to prove it I’m going to not be assassinated by the state I claim grants that power even though I’m explicitly telling people who understand what it means that I intend to enshrine myself as a demagogue & try to turn the US into a banana republic by…potentially getting death squads to eliminate my opposition

        …they say life imitates art but this has taken the adage that the best defense is a good offense well beyond the realm of parody & into the bleakest farce imaginable

        • I think they (rightly) presume that Democrats would hem and haw and not actually go full Corleone even if courts said theoretically that they could. Even if Biden had the stones (which I do not believe), you can easily imagine the GOP would get plenty of Democratic votes for impeachment, no doubt with the liberal media’s full-throated approval.

          • …you’d think it was a safe bet…certainly has been in a lot of parallel instances…though once in a blue moon a dem will pull a bit of procedural shenanigans out of the GOP form guide & that’s usually good for a giggle…I think there’s a pretty bright line for that side of aisle between, say, signing off on de facto surveillance of the domestic population at the internet backbone level of telcom traffic…& the explicit murder of dissident citizens sanctioned by the state at the level of the oval office, no less

            …all the same…when it comes to bearding the oddly docile lion in its den…kinda ballsy to be all “hey, so you know there’s always the option you just feast on my carcass – you got the right & all, just figured I’d point that out”

            …in a lot of contexts that would have a suicidal ring to it…in fact…if the GOP were a person…at this point it seems like it might well look a lot like an elderly & infirm white guy in bad physical shape frothing at the mouth & waving a gun about while threatening all & sundry in between muttering about getting his own back & butchering quotes from people like paine…who could credibly be claimed to be attempting suicide by cop

            …I think that’s maybe what makes the spectacle of their cheering section so surreal…though that’s more than likely just me getting sucked in to an imploding analogy

            • Well, they don’t have to think about the long game because we both know the reality after the fact would be the court saying “No, no, [Republican crime] is not nearly as bad as [Democratic crime]” even if, to borrow from the meme universe, you can’t tell the difference between the two pictures. The old line about fascists delighting in the lies and absurdity that their opponents wouldn’t dare and all that. It’s not supposed to make sense!

              There was a time when right-wing legal philosophy had a bend to it, but it kept in mind actual laws, precedent and even had forethought about how it could be used. Now it’s just “Whatever the mad king says, goes” and it’s never going to be coherent in the slightest.

               

      • The funny thing, as always, is that Trump wouldn’t! Maybe one of his underlings would take it upon himself (Flynn certainly seems like the type) but Trump has shown himself way too lazy and scattered to actually use the power. He just wants everyone to tell him he won and clap for him.

    • …interesting site I’d not come across at the end there…& it’s fair to say that I’ve been curious for a long time how little follow-through there seems to have been at the headline/mainstream level about a lot of that side of how ’16 shook out & the relatively large amount of corroborated evidence available…largely on the record at this point…about things that many of the principle actors are…& have been… continuously engaged in…& the voluminous instances of it tracking back to individuals in the business of furthering hostile interests

      …it’s not like there’s nothing that talks about it…but it’s mostly treated like a footnote or a downplayed bit of contextual framing…when arguably it adds up to “nobody has to hack voting machines to skew the result of a presidential election – USA #1 & all that so naturally the best in the world at that are domestic interests – but boy those russians are some real players when it comes to rigging elections so they came in handy…their whole implausible-plausible-not-even-really-denial schtick is slicker than shit, I tell you what…”

      • I heard an interview with her yesterday and was pretty blown away with her info on how Hilary Clinton went from the most popular politician of either party to underwater in no time at all.  It seems that Re-thugs benefit from this shit so won’t acknowledge it as a problem and the Dems don’t want promote anything that might suggest elections might not be legitimate?  This is my biggest fear for the next election, if this was bad last time it will be 10x this bad in the next election as Russia, Saudi Arabia, China & others have so much to gain from our democracy ending.

        • …I think that’s honestly been one of the big risks from way back…for me probably the hanging chads debacle but arguably you could draw a longer line if you wanted

          …there’s more than mere pride involved in the first world status “the west” feels secure in treating as inviolate…& basic fundamental faith in the mechanism of democracy being something you don’t have to really think about is fairly essential if you want to be making legislative strides & not wallowing through a morass of unstable & potentially violent, toxic & destructive shit

          …so they didn’t fight when bush pipped gore at the post…& for the same reasons of believing they couldn’t rely on getting enough people to see the distinction & not commence chucking out babies & bathwater as they bailed furiously & panicked about the ship foundering while poking holes in the hull…they haven’t done much at an ostensible or visible level to even engage with the ways that the very threats being waved about like bogeymen & consistently found to be without merit when the accusations are levelled at their targets map almost directly on to the behavior of the accusers

          …but part of me gets it…sort of…I think…it just sounds so preposterous to baldly state what realistically the stakes & the players & the state of the board looks like…for what’s basically the most powerful & arguably most advanced nation the globe can provide…& have it sound like a sketchy game in a joint that rigs more tables than it doesn’t between players who’d all be in prison if anyone could prove how they came by their stakes for the game…you start reaching to tear off the tinfoil & realizing you’re not wearing a hat & end up feeling like it must be you that’s ridiculous because the alternative is unfathomably nuts

          …or something?

  6. Nancy Mace, in a house committee meeting, said that Hunter Biden has “no balls” but iirc – and I do – the GOP literally entered photos of Hunter’s balls into the congressional record last year.

  7. That dude with the parkour.

    I can’t tell if he legitimately is that stupid because I felt like his sister knew exactly what they were doing. Or if he’s just pretending to be that stupid to try to get a lighter sentence.

    He really might be that stupid and his sister needed a useful idiot for cover.

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