Midweek Meh-Ness [DOT 18/9/24]

18/9/24 MegMegMcGee 32

Hope everyone is having a great week. I’m feeling much better, still catching up on sleep and also all the work I neglected the last couple of days.

Holy shit

Hezbollah vows retaliation after exploding pagers kill at least nine and hurt almost 3,000
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/17/hundreds-of-hezbollah-members-hurt-in-lebanon-after-pagers-explode

Israel behind pager explosions that targeted Hezbollah, CNN learns
https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/lebanon-pagers-attack-hezbollah/index.html

Oh he’s never getting out

Charges against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs allege 16 years of abuse and crimes
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2024/09/17/sean-combs-diddy-indictment-charges-lawsuits-allegations

Sprots!

Miami Dolphins place Tua Tagovailoa on injured reserve after latest concussion
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/sep/17/tua-tagovailoa-injured-reserve-miami-dolphins-concussion

Stonks!

The Fed’s biggest interest rate call in years happens Wednesday. Here’s what to expect
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/17/the-feds-biggest-interest-rate-call-in-years-happens-wednesday-heres-what-to-expect.html

Imagine Jane Fonda just knocks on your door

Have a super day!

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32 Comments

  1. It has not been a super day so far. First I learn that Ina Garten and Jeffrey have separated, then came the news that Tupperware went bankrupt. Ina and Jeff got married in 1968. Doesn’t there come a time when you just say, “We’ve been doing this since Jesus was born in the manger. Why don’t we just agree to quietly live separate lives?” I think that’s what BH and I would do. We wouldn’t need the scrutiny that would follow a full-blown divorce. “So which one of you got caught in bed with the rent boy? It was you, Mattie, wasn’t it? Your Better Half wouldn’t have had to pay for it…”

      • Oh no! I’m spreading fake news again. Yes, the news of this separation from years ago has been released to goose interest in her memoir but the couple of tabloid headlines I read made it seem like they called it off last week.

        NOW I must get to the bottom of RFK Jr. chainsawing the head off a beached whale for reasons unknown. And people are concerned about Haitians in Springfield, OH. Like all Kennedy men, I’m sure RFK, Jr., has substantial experience with substantial amounts of substances. Perhaps this played a role.

        • Thank goodness!

          You almost gave me a heart attack, my friend!😆😂🤣

          Because apparently I can deal with getting bitten & scratched as a “normal and regular” workday thing, I can live in a world FULL of chaos, where we are dealing with the modern-day Nazis/Nazi-wannabes attempting a do-over of 1930’s Germany, sci-fi level pocket-bombs, and far too many awful things in the world….

          But you damn near BROKE ME, with that misunderstanding of Ina & her Jeffrey (and conversely, Jeffrey and *his* Beloved Ina!) splitting, after all these years, and alllllll that struggle & growth *with* each other, rather than against, through those decades.

          I can take a *LOT*, dear ‘Cuz!😉💖

          But *that* happening, would be like losing *another* Sycamore Gap tree, or the worry we all had for the Lahaina Banyan immediately after the fire (She is smaller, but she lives, and she will thrive again💝).

          I’ve already lost one of my most favorite oaks in the world, which was beautiful, old, and strong… I *can’t* lose the beautiful, sturdy old oak that’s their marriage, dammit!🤣

          Dealing with diaper blowouts, vomit, and being a human-kleenex for a sobbing 3 or 8-year old doesn’t even make me blink anymore–heck, I can laugh my way through *those* trying to make that child feel better!

          But even the mere *THOUGHT* of Ina & Jeffrey *voluntarily* splitting?

          That broke *me* this morning, like “The Dot over the I” in the Jeremy Bearimy timeline broke Chidi!😆😂🤣🤣🤣🤣

           

            • Somehow, I completely forgot the time knife, sorry Jake!

              I think it’s probably because the straight-time timeline vs. the Jeremy Bearimy (plus my blender analogy) was how I explained the ways my Dad’s brain worked time-wise, after he had Dementia, vs the way it was linear for the rest of us…

              The blender analogy was “Imagine that someone flipped open the top of dad’s head, lifted out his brain, plopped it in a blender on the counter, and every so often, as they walked by all day, they just randomly hit the “Pulse” button…. sometimes just once, sometimes they held it down for a couple minutes.

              Then, afterward, they flipped the top of his skull open again, and just dumped the blended sludge back in…

              *That’s* the type of “scramble” he’s trying to fight & send messages back & forth through.

  2. …ok…’fess up…who was it that broke the universe?

    …I can cope with exploding pagers being real & not just a “shaped charge concealed in your phone” plot device so someone can deliver a killer line in a movie scene…just about…but…this shit is not ok

    Green bonds are bunkum
    And investors don’t care
    [FT]

    …nothing against the article, per se…but…the header image?

    …this is the *FT* for crying out loud…how in the fuck does that have a captionless variant of a longtime meme for a header image?

    …that’s it, I guess…clearly humanity is a fallen race & the whole world has in fact gone mad

    …what other possible explanation could there even be?

  3. ……I know it’s literally his job description & all…but every so often bedbugs really does give some textbook examples…so…just for fun…I’ve taken the direct references out of a bit so you, too can imagine the spectacle of his interrogative programme being directed at both candidates with a rigorous approach to journalistic parity

    What does [the candidate] think the United States should do about the Houthis, whose assaults on commercial shipping threaten global trade, and whose attacks on Israel risk a much wider Mideast war? If an interviewer were to ask […] about them, would [they] be able to give a coherent and compelling answer?

    …after all…brett wants us to know he’s sticking to “fair game”

    It’s not an unfair or unprecedented question. As a presidential candidate, George W. Bush was quizzed on the names of the leaders of Taiwan, India, Pakistan and Chechnya. He got one right (Taiwan’s Lee Teng-hui) but drew blanks on the rest. It fueled criticism, as The Times’s Frank Bruni reported in 1999, that “he is not knowledgeable enough about foreign policy to lead the nation.”

    …so…it’s like this

    A few more questions […]: If, as president, [they] had intelligence that Iran was on the cusp of assembling a nuclear weapon, would [they] use force to stop it? Are there limits to American support for Ukraine, and what are they? Would [they] push for the creation of a Palestinian state if Hamas remained a potent political force within it? Are there any regulations [they’d] like to get rid of […] to build […] new homes in the next four years? What role, if any, [do they] see for nuclear power in [their] energy and climate plans? If there were another pandemic similar to Covid-19, what might [their] administration do differently?

    …hands up anyone who’s heard mr they’re-mean-to-me-because-they-hate-you asked any of those things…or even said anything about any of them that suggested someone he knew could talk about them without betraying their ignorance?

    …me, neither…but brett’s all riled up because there’s been two interviews now & she didn’t fuck up badly enough in either for his liking so he’d like you to know that’s because they haven’t asked her the right questions yet

    Now how about interest-rate policy, federal spending and the resilience of our supply chains?

    …how about that shit brett? …how exactly do unprecedented levels (at least recently) of blanket protectionist tariffs impact on any of those…because…that sounds like it might be the other side of them apples if we’re not comparing those to…err…artificial oranges, I guess?

    […] an unease I never felt, despite policy differences, when Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were on the ballot against Trump.

    …careful now brett…that’s close to saying it out loud…whatever could that nebulous unease be latching on to…hmmm…can we spot any clearly distinguishable differences that make her the odd one out in that triumvirate?

    If Harris can answer the sorts of questions I posed above, she should be quick to do so, if only to dispel a widespread perception of unseriousness. If she can’t, then what was she doing over nearly eight years as a senator and vice president?

    …whoa there, hoss…run that by me again…you’re a…wossname…journalist…right? …”nearly eight years as a senator and vice president”…that’s…well…I feel like this maybe shouldn’t be news to someone in your line of work…but…those things leave traces…a track record, if you will…that people we refer to as a thing called “dilligent” pay due attention to…so they don’t sound like they just sit around playing with themselves when it’s time to offer their opinion…when they don’t…well…let’s say it does nothing to “dispel a widespread perception of unseriousness”

    Biden has said we’re living through a “decisive decade” for the future of the free world, and he’s right. Does [the candidate] have an overriding strategic concept for how to steer through it, or the instincts to respond to fast-moving crises?

    …also…bit of a late tackle, I guess…but…would it not be responsible to quit with the “does” questions & make with the “which” questions…so as to present the actual dichotomy of outcome?

    …ok…that’s sort of a joke…there’s that whole job description part that dictates that sort of thing as anathema…see exhibit #lostcountagesago

    Illiberal populism has taken root in response to well-founded perceptions of elite incompetence, highhandedness and self-dealing. Does Harris have anything to offer disaffected voters, or does she merely embody the elitist perspective that they despise?

    …I mean…grain of truth, right…the “elite incompetence, highhandedness & self-dealing” is…as has been overwhelmingly documented outside of the cognitive bubble that is the MAGAsphere…wildly & disproportionately the wheelhouse team oranges-ARE-the-only-fruit considers to be its comfort zone…& arguably she does, from their twisted perspective, “embody the elitist”…on account of it being pretty hard to argue that the VP is excluded from the “elite”…but…to pick just one of the begged questions…what exactly does “illiberal populism” offer those disaffected (&/or disenfranchised) voters beyond an outlet for all the despising they got up extra early to squeeze into their busy schedules?

    …anyway…I shouldn’t be mean…10,000 hours & all that…this isn’t some journeyman apologia…this is the finely-honed end of what’s on offer

    But: Trump.

    That’s the all-purpose response for many voters to any doubts about Harris’s qualifications. It makes November’s choice easy for anyone sincerely convinced that the former president poses an existential threat to the perpetuation of our political institutions. It also makes it easy for Never-Trumpers who hope that a decisive electoral rebuke of the former president might return the G.O.P. to its pre-MAGA incarnation as the party of John McCain or Mitt Romney.

    Yet Trump victory or no, the Republican Party isn’t likely to revert to its former ideological leanings. And the argument that Trump is our Mussolini, scheming with ever-greater malevolence and cunning to end the Republic, is getting a little long in the tooth.

    Trump may be much the worse sinner, but Democrats aren’t blameless when it comes to weaponizing the instruments of state power to interfere with the will of the voters. Otherwise, what does it mean to try to kick a candidate off a state ballot, or use a nakedly politicized prosecution to turn an opponent into a convicted felon, or have powerful insiders anoint a presidential candidate without the benefit of a single primary vote?

    …easy answers aren’t good enough…or something…unsatisfying, maybe…if you want to go the distance those need to be hopped, skipped & jumped or you’ll never hit your takeoff…& being an ongoing threat to the fabric & institutions of the republic stops counting if you keep it up long enough to let brett get bored with hearing about it, anyway…it’s only natural to reserve your greater rebuke for the lesser of two evils if you’re bored with hearing about how much greater the greater evil is…which neatly explains why he’d once again skip the due dilligence that might explain why the instigator of a schlubby sort of an insurrection & misuser & abuser of classified national security material around the sorts of “clients” that were happy to fork over not-emoluments in significant quantites to pockets that don’t belong to the office…on timelines that would be of interest to…say…a dilligent exponent of this thing called journalism I heard about…or to ponder the ineffable question of how exactly being convicted of the minority of the clear & obviously documented criminal behavior displayed by a candidate with a shot at being stricken from the contest by the actual constitution should be viewed as something an honorable opponent would studiously avoid so much as alluding to so as to ensure they didn’t enjoy an unfair advantage due to not having been federally convicted after the senate let them out of jail repeatedly before they even got voted out office…that’s an exhausting routine for any mental gymnast…props to brett for pulling it off without seeming to break stride, I guess…made my head hurt so much I almost didn’t notice that the whole GOP primary cycle was approached as courtship by prospective VPs professing fealty to their presumptive candidate…who didn’t deign to debate them…& how that hardly subverts the annointing thing

    It should not be hard for Harris to demonstrate that she can give detailed answers to urgent policy questions. Or to express a sense, beyond a few canned phrases, of how she sees the American interest in a darkening world. Or to articulate a politics of genuine inclusion that reaches out to tens of millions of distrustful voters. Or to prove that she’s more than another factory-settings liberal Democrat whose greatest virtue, like her greatest fault, is that she won’t step too far from the conventional wisdom.

    …it should not be hard for brett to demonstrate that he thinks he knows the detailed answers the other side would give to the same suite of “urgent policy questions”…he’s got nearly 900 pages of detail to work from even if he acknowledges that the actual candidate couldn’t give a detailed answer to any question he couldn’t hijack into another extraordinary rendition of his self-pity-party greatest hits…or to express a sense, beyond a few canned phrases, of how he sees the alternative as better representing the american interest in a darkening world…or to articulate a politics of at least feigned inclusion that reaches out to distrustful voters…hell, that shit is damn near a full-time occupation so he even ought to be good at it by now

    …sadly…for more people than just poor brett…he can’t…his factory settings don’t allow for it, you see…he’s not rated for a task that demanding using the material his team have given him to work with the last decade or three…& you wouldn’t want poor widdle bwett-y to blow a fuse, would you?

    …so long as he professes to be athwart conventional wisdom we have to give him the benefit of the doubt accorded to the designated court jester…hey nonny-nonny…right?

    …because if that’s not it then he seems to have been on a run of F-‘s on his homework for, like, an embarrassing string of semesters…I’d expect better from 13-15 year olds given an essay assignment than the thing I just read…that he got paid for

    …fuck you, market forces…if I have to hear one more dipshit trot out the phrase “not fit for purpose” in lieu of explaining their purpose or what might qualify as fit for it…I dunno…I suppose I might develop an aneurysm & stop bothering you all…but whatever happens I’m guessing it won’t be pretty if I haven’t had a while to let the intercranial pressure gauge drop the needle back out of the red band

    …how’s your day going?

    • Do these idiots ever listen to themselves? What would happen if those questions were posed to Trump? He’d regurgitate some babble about eating pets.

      Yet, somehow, that renders him fit for office while Harris is not? Jesus, the stupidity is blinding.

    • He’s showing just how mad the GOP is that their carefully planned gambit of painting Harris as too dumb because, um, just look at her, fell apart immediately because anyone who looks and listens to her knows that’s not true.

      He’s also just showing how his little friends can’t feed him anything else.

      It was the same with Ross Douthat a little while ago when he was insisting there was still a scandal over Biden’s age after Harris won the nomination. He felt is was so unfair everyone had moved on from his talking points when he didn’t have anything else.

      The Washington Post tried a different angle of attack on Harris saying some aides felt burned out working for her because she was too well prepared, read all their briefings in advance, and made them feel on edge because she asked so many probing questions.

      The “unlikeable” stereotype fizzled too because people like her.

      But to your point, there’s a common thread to all of these pieces in that none of them want to make a contrast to Trump.

    • “How can you convince me, a person who’s been involved in the opposition party for my entire life and disagrees with you on basically every issue, why I should vote for you and if you don’t, it’s because you suck, not because I might be biased in any reasonable fashion”

    • I’m even gonna double up on my comment: I want to hear from all these people what they don’t like about Trump. Specifics, please. Because generally they all seem to like about 97% of what he would do in office but hate the 3% of how he spells it out and … like … that’s not really being against Trump in a meaningful way?

      I’m not sure how you can square “he’s a threat to democracy” with “Mitch McConnell has done a great job with the judicial system” without some pretty significant cognitive dissonance. (And that’s even before the truly LOL moment of Bret having to fully admit that Trump couldn’t answer any of the questions he demands of Harris. Like, man, just say you’re not gonna vote! It’s an easier lie!)

      • You’re expectinng Stephens to pay attention to policy details and understand specifics? What’s next, he’s supposed to do his own reading? Talk to people with different viewpoints? Think about stuff? That’s not what he was hired to do!

        • I know you’re kidding here but in all seriousness that wasn’t what he was hired to do! Unfortunately for him (and for us) what he was hired to do he can’t do either, which is make the right-wing case while somehow also being anti-Trump, because I don’t think he’s really all that anti-Trump and so he has to keep throwing up every rhetorical trick to keep it up and … he’s not smart or witty enough to do it.

          • Right, he wasn’t even hired to make an original case, he’s just there to be the endpoint of a long supply chain. A faucet had better not stray from the pipe or ever do anything but open and close on demand.

  4. Israel behind pager explosions that targeted Hezbollah, CNN learns

    Thanks Captain Obvious News Network. I’m “shocked” that Israel of all nations would use explosive pagers as weapons against a group they’ve had a serious grudge with for a long fucking time.

    • Make no mistake, this is a reprehensible action. Innocent people were hurt and killed. That said, it’s pretty stunning that Israel hatches and executes plans like this. Explosives had to be planted in hundreds of pagers. This is not a battery overload — they don’t blow up like that, they catch fire.

      How many other booby traps have they planted around the Middle East?

      • It’s pretty James Bond-ish though, huh? Like, in the old days, someone unwittingly flicks a cigarette lighter implanted with a small nuclear device and half a city is incinerated. And the real tragedy is this takes place in the mid-1960s so everyone looks fabulous. Do it at any time in the 21st century and if I were watching this in a movie theater I would stand up and applaud.

  6. Trump’s campaign schedule has shrunken to almost nothing. For the week he has one appearance in Michigan, one in New York (?) and one in DC (???) while Harris is putting in far more appearances in battleground states.

    But again for the press, making a contrast is somehow against the rules.

    The Long Island appearance is especially odd because at most he can boost a marginal congressional candidate, but he could do that in multiple battlefield states too. Except the odds are none of them want to appear with him.

  8. This is what I really love about being a smug Manhattanite. I have no idea who these people are or what any of this means:

    10:45 a.m. – Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado joins SUNY Chancellor King to announce the fall launch of the Empire State Service Corps, SUNY Oneonta Welcome Center, 108 Ravine Pkwy., Oneonta.

    Ravine Pkwy., Oneonta. Is that anything like “Deadman’s Curve?” I bet it is.

     

  9. This is great news;

    NPR Exclusive: U.S. overdose deaths plummet, saving thousands of lives

    https://www.npr.org/2024/09/18/nx-s1-5107417/overdose-fatal-fentanyl-death-opioid

    “This year overdose deaths [in Ohio] are down 31 percent,” said Dennis Couchon, a harm reduction activist. “The deaths were just plummeting. The data has never moved like this.””

    While the mortality data for 2024 is incomplete and subject to change, Ohio is now in the ninth consecutive month of a historic and unexpected drop in overdose deaths,” said the organization Harm Reduction Ohio in a statement.M

    issouri is seeing a similar trend that appears to be accelerating. After dropping by 10 percent last year, preliminary data shows drug deaths in the state have now fallen roughly 34 percent in the second quarter of 2024.

    It runs counter to multiple narratives though, just like dropping inflation, so pretty much every reporter and columnist who has made hay out of OD deaths will ignore it.

    Although I shouldn’t be so sure. I can imagine Fox going with “Thousands More Drug Addicts Than Projected Thanks To Harris.”

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