Midweek Meh-Ness [DOT 13/3/24]

13/3/24 MegMegMcGee 39

My best friend’s Mom has a favorite saying and it goes like this: “There’s a fine line between lazy and stupid”. Growing up, this mainly applied to our not refilling the ice trays after taking ice out. Today it applies to my cousin texting me to make a dinner reservation for family dinner. That’s fine, no problem. But then I find out from his girlfriend that he is on Spring Break this week and off work. So really, you’re asking me (who’s at work btw) to make a reservation when your lazy ass is off? Anyhow, that’s my daily rant today. TYVM for listening.

IDK what is going on here

Hur tells Congress his report ‘did not exonerate’ Biden
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/03/12/robert-hur-testimony-biden-classified-documents/

Wish he’d run that into the ground instead

Trump asked Elon Musk if he wanted to buy Truth Social
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/03/12/trump-musk-truth-social-sale/

Ummmm

Boeing whistleblower John Barnett, who raised alarm over plane quality, is found dead
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/12/1238033573/boeing-whistleblower-john-barnett-dead?ft=nprml&f=1003

Biden secures nomination, Trump could clinch GOP
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/12/election-2024-trump-biden-georgia-mississippi-washington-hawaii-primary/

Stonks!

Larry Ellison is $15 billion richer after Oracle’s best day on stock market since 2021
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/12/larry-ellison-makes-15-billion-from-oracle-best-day-since-2021.html

Sprots!

2024 NFL free agency live tracker: Updated signings, trades, rumors
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/39624174/2024-nfl-free-agency-tracker-updates-signings-trades-cuts-contracts

The way I laughed at this

Have a great day!

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39 Comments

  1. So last night I made a point to pay attention to the network news to see if they would say literally anything about the montage of Trump’s obvious memory problems from the hearing. No. Of course not. But they did faithfully carry Republican water by continuing to discuss Biden’s memory as if that’s the only thing worth talking about.

    • I did the same with major news outlets. WaPo, AP, and NYT all buried the story. Democrats clearly demonstrated that Hur lied repeatedly in his report, and nobody mentioned it. And, of course, you’ve got those video montages which are devastating.

      I will give the Democrats props. They came looking for a fight and they ran over the Republicans, then backed the truck up and ran over them again for good measure. I saw a report on Politico that Republicans are looking for a way out of the impeachment shit they’ve smeared all over themselves.

      Playbook: GOP plots a Biden non-impeachment

    • Oh, see, but that was political theater and therefore not news.

      It’s only true if a special prosecutor* says what a report says, even if the report doesn’t say it.

      * – if a Republican; Democratic special prosecutors may also be doing political theater

    • You can see the obvious looming problem for the press which parallels what happened to them with Biden.

      They tried to prop up weak sauce GOP gaslighting that Biden was incompetent and got egg on their face when Biden made it clear they were wrong.

      Now they’re trying to do PR duty for the GOP by obscuring just how cracked Trump is. But what are the odds Trump can be disciplined through the rest of the election? He can’t even be rational about his loss to E. Jean Carroll.

      By taking the side of GOP spin on both sides of the coin, the political press is only increasing the odds that they get caught in the crossfire when the difference between the two gets clearer.

      The GOP has no reputation to uphold any longer. But the establishment press does. The short term gain of accommodating GOP spin isn’t worth the long term loss.

    • In case anyone missed it, here’s all three videos the Democrats played spliced together.

      WaPo finally dredged up a mealy-mouthed “bothsiderism” review saying “nobody got what they wanted.” I dunno, I’m pretty sure Democrats would be happy to do this a few dozen more times.

    • Same reason the right gets all hot n bothered about that one school shooter who was trans, but doesn’t give a singular shit about the rest of them?

      A question for the ages.

  7. NY Times LOL

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/us/politics/rfk-jr-aaron-rodgers-jesse-ventura.html

    They’ve resorted to writing and releasing press releases for RFK Jr.

    This isn’t reporting. This isn’t news. Any objective outlet would drop single sentence into paragraph 31 of a serious story. But the Times assigned FIVE reporters to the story. RFK Jr. is notoriously out of touch with reality. He lies. That two people on his campaign confirmed this hope doesn’t make it true. Maybe write a full paragraph about it when someone actually accepts the offer.

    The Times says “it is not clear” how Rodgers would pull it off. It’s also “not clear” how he would make Hershey’s Kisses emerge from his butt. A serious reporter and editor would demand confirmation from the Jets that this is anything but a fantasy from RFK Jr. before running the article. This is pure PR for RFK Jr.

    They describe RFK Jr. and Rodgers in terms of “skepticism” about vaccines. They are hardcore anti-vaxxers, it’s not even close, and describing them in terms of skepticism is flat out bad journalism. Maybe talk to some of the paper’s health reporters before accepting this framing? Oh wait, they already had five political desk reporters on the case. How could they manage any more?

    This is embarassing.

      • I know – the Times is giving away their game when they only talk about Biden being worried about RFK Jr., when it’s been widely reported how the oligarchs who back him are getting cold feet when they see how he’s draining the anti-vax votes from Trump.

        But I also don’t expect this news to have penetrated the bubble of whatever political editor signed off on so many reporters chasing this story. They’re living in the past on so many other things, what would make them acknowledge reality now?

        There’s even buried news inside this story which might qualify for a standalone – that so many others like Yang and Gabbard have laughed at RFK Jr. This is so obviously an attempt by RFK Jr.’s people to try to stay relevant by throwing out whatever they can to get outlets to bite. Maybe use the one vaguely relevant news item as the lede?

        • Basically in two points: I do think giving potential third parties a little more coverage is good generally (now should it be RFK Jr.’s freakshow, probably not, but the broader point stands) but also knowing the Times this space would have either been taken up by “Trump Strong!” or “Could Presidential Trump Be Arriving Soon?” or “Biden Old!” so like, fine, let them chase their tail with a dum-dum for a while. It’s more interesting copy anyway, unless they were gonna bring back a “But her Emails” or “But What Of Rev. Wright?!” classic.

          • I think you’re right that the Times is locked into a stupid Trump v. Biden framing. What’s so dumb is that all of those reporters could have been reassigned to something truly different. That the only thing they could choose was another guy running for president shows how little they know.

            It’s like if they decided they were oversaturated with Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce news and decided to do a big writeup of Jason Kelce.

            • The no third party coverage is definitely not a Times-only thing. I wasn’t media savvy or old enough in ’92 to remember exactly how Perot became Perot, but I do recall there being a real grudging sense of “I guess we have to cover this guy after all” once he made the debates and kept polling at 15%+. So on that end, go ahead and cover RFK Jr. and whichever I’m-not-a-Nazi-I’m-just-asking-questions picks up the Libertarian nod and the Green Party’s crunchy believes-in-crystals pick. That’s fine! Indeed, if people actually hate Biden and Trump (or Hillary and Trump, or Obama and Romney, or Bush and Gore, or Dukakis and Bush, or Ford and Carter, or Nixon and McGovern, or Truman and Dewey … etc. etc.) as much as they say, by all means let the other potential contenders have a little space. As always, I suspect the narrative of “oh not these shitheads” will turn into “98% of voters voted for one of these shitheads” as always. Voters love to complain way more than they like to change.

              I even think it was pretty reasonable journalism to have them talk to the loudest third party types and note they have ZERO interest in joining up with the Kennedy freakshow. Notable. I think it’s just a little wishcasting to be like “I wish they’d covered something else better” because we both know they wouldn’t have.

              Also Jason Kelce got lots of pub during the Tay-vis hype train!

               

              • There was definitely a lot of “let’s cover that brother of Travis” going on, and part of the problem was the angle ended up being “Jason Kelce Says Brother Travis Kelce Is Being a ‘Gentleman’ With Taylor Swift”

                https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/jason-kelce-taylor-swift-travis-kelce-relationship-update-1235426838/

                I think the issue with what the Times did with RFK Jr. is it’s not really about him or third parties, it’s about trying to hurt Biden, which they explicitly raised in that article. You’re right that there are real issues to raise about how he’d pull votes from Trump, being an antivaxxer who spreads antisemitic Covid hoaxes. But I don’t expect political reporters to do that when they’re obviously playing the access game with the RFK Jr. campaign.

                • …I’m still a heathen in terms of sports stuff but even I am aware the brother retired recently because there was a spate of coverage of him (& travis & taylor’s reactions) in, as it were, his own right…so I think as far as parallels go @clevernamehere2 was pretty much on the money the first time

                  …the third party candidate thing in US general elections has been a broadly static example of falling between two stools for as long as I can remember, though…so the RFK coverage seems pretty much in keeping with past iterations…while his source of “stolen” votes seems less likely to draw on (D) voters than a number of previous wannabes

                  …that no labels bunch would like to make out they could throw jill stein sized spanners into the works but it’s not looking like they really can…she threw her hat into the ring for the greens again back before christmas but they don’t decide until june or july iirc

                  …so RFK is the spoiler they can write up for the time being & apparently nothing can stop them mashing the pegs they have into the holes they haven’t changed since year dot, respective shapes be damned…because they seem to insist this is all plug & play in a standard format despite the list as long as your arm of reasons that ain’t so?

                • Also to this point: I think the Times is covering RFKJ as a Biden vote-stealer but I’ve yet to see real evidence after his initial announcement coverage bump — when he, importantly, was running as a Democrat — that he takes away Biden votes at all, and in fact, everything we’ve seen from his “independent” run suggests he’s drawing from Trump donors for his money and Trump voters are his base. The Times is narrative-ing itself against itself!

                  They’ll figure it out and promote whichever stiff the Greens run as the antidote to Genocide Joe eventually (and probably with greater effect) but I think in this case they think they’re doing good by their anti-Democrat stand but are really missing that mark!

                  (Edit to add: Whatever good grace “Kennedy” brought — and I think it was way less than people thought — is now wholly subsumed by the knowledge that his one true belief is anti-vax and that is increasingly tied to being a right-winger: https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2024/03/07/how-americans-view-the-coronavirus-covid-19-vaccines-amid-declining-levels-of-concern/)

    • I should drop a note to the NY Times and float myself as a running mate with RFK, Jr. I would have the Times reporters over. The Hound would like to meet them, but I’m sure it would come as more than a mild surprise to Better Half. Oh, wait. According to the Constitution the Prez and VP can’t come from the same state.

      • Whatever, if your mayor can live in New Jersey, I feel like you can sneak residency elsewhere if necessary. Or even better, knowing the Times political desk’s skill at journalism, I feel like you’re giving them a lot of extra credit that they would a) know that or b) bother to ask!

  9. Something actually GOOD today, that until I read this local news article, I had no idea even *existed*!

    https://kstp.com/kstp-news/local-news/officials-highlight-new-suppression-device-that-saved-a-house-2-dogs-from-a-fire/

    I have a feeling, that once these fire suppression “grenades” become more known about & widespread, they’re going to do as much to save lives in small & rural places, as when places like my home county finally managed to get the Jaws of Life.

     

    I STILL remember how incredibly *huge* a deal it was, back in about 1986-87, when *one* of the departments in our county was able to get that first Jaws.

    It meant people were going to make it to the hospital in Glenwood or Alexandria, so that they could actually *get* life-flighted to the bigger hospitals like St. Cloud, or HCMC & North Memorial down in The Cities… rather than remaining trapped in a vehicle potentially bleeding out or dying of shock, as it took *hours* for the local crews to *try* and get the person out with hacksaws, bolt cutters, shears, & angle grinders.

    The Jaws made an *absolute* paradigm shift–just like when the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux started funding AED devices in every school & community building around the state.

    This Fire Suppression Device *is* going to be a similar & *INCREDIBLE* game-changer & lifesaver–for a mere grand a pop!!!💖💝💗

    • …last time the monolith was some art installation thing & presumably this one is, too…so I kinda skipped past that one

      …but it’s nuts to me that the uvalde guy was still clinging on long enough for that resignation to only be happening now?

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