Midweek Meh-Ness [DOT 2/10/24]

2/10/24 MegMegMcGee 22

Meh-ness indeed – it’s been steadily raining and grey here in the DMV (that’s the District, Maryland, and Virginia – not the Department of Motor Vehicles). Hope you guys are having a good week so far…

October Surprise!

Iran launched nearly 200 missiles at Israel, U.S. says
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/01/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-hamas-war-news-gaza

Crazy

Desperation grows to find unaccounted for in wake of Helene


https://www.cnn.com/weather/live-news/hurricane-helene-damage-north-carolina-10-01-24/index.html

Fill us in if you watched this last night

Vance and Walz are both veterans. Here’s what it means to have a vet VP

https://www.npr.org/2024/09/30/nx-s1-5134005/vance-walz-veteran-election-2024-vice-president

#RIP

John Amos, actor in groundbreaking TV roles, dies at 84
https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/10/01/john-amos-dead

He’s holding on just to vote for Kamala

Jimmy Carter becomes the first former US president to turn 100
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/01/president-jimmy-carter-turns-100

Sprots! IDK this was just too hilarious to me. Like you’re SHAQ, you’re 8 Feet Tall

Have a great day!

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22 Comments

  1. The Olivia Nuzzi/Ryan Lizza drama reaches a new phase:

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/olivia-nuzzi-accuses-ex-fiance-ryan-lizza-of-blackmail-campaign-amid-rfk-jr-scandal

    They both sound deeply disturbed and stalker-ish, she for RFK, Jr., he for his ex-fiancée, Liv herself. Now everyone’s on leave and the entire DC press corps must be exchanging their favorite anecdotes about what nutjobs the two of them are.

    • The rush to defend Nuzzi was so stupid at first and looks vastly worse now. Yes it was all true and I didn’t disclose it but I was blackmailed isn’t the defense you ever want to bring up.

      And now Politico’s top brass looks like they were covering for a nutjob. What else are they hiding? How much are other outlets hiding? I can’t help but think back to how Jeff Zucker was routinely violating rules at NBC and CNN to promote the career of the woman he was having a longtime affair with. Everyone knew it, including rivals at the Murdoch outlets, and nobody wanted to dish.

      A functional press would be jumping at the opportunity to go after rivals from the beginning. Not only is it very much in the public interest to know when reporters and editors are being shady, but dirt sells! But what the insular political press does is claim they don’t have agendas and are all a bunch of angels.

  2. It is time to see if “On The Waterfront” is streaming somewhere.

    https://cbs6albany.com/news/local/gov-kathy-hochul-tells-new-york-resident-not-to-panic-amidst-nationwide-port-strike-maine-texas-philadelphia-new-york-port-authority-new-jersey-grocery-store-

    Somehow having Kickback telling me not to panic is not calming. During the pandemic no one was on strike, and still the ships were backed up for months due to sheer ineptitude. All that food that rotted. Oh well. As the old song went:

  3. Kinda fitting. I get why John Amos left the ironically named sitcom Good Times. He wanted people to take the issues of racism and poverty seriously, not deal with Kid Dynomite.

    I will remember him as the main henchman in the comically stupid ending of Die Hard 2 who died by jet engine (whose fan blades are made of indestructonium as getting sucked into a jet engine usually ends the flight.)

    • Amos was also in “Roots.” He played the older Kunta Kinte. But then again, who wasn’t in “Roots”? I think the miniseries had a cast of 10,000 or something. I’m surprised I wasn’t cast as some kind of rural white sharecropper child, maybe an indentured servant who makes common cause with one of the hot, half-naked slaves…

  4. Kind of hard not to notice Shaq.

    One time, a campus group organized a game of assassination. My 6’7″ friend was the first to die because how are you not going to notice a 6’7″ guy in a crowd?

    I was barely noticeable and managed to survive most of the game.

    On the other hand, in elementary school there was a contest they held for my grade where everyone had to bring a baby pic to school and people had to guess who each of the babies were. Shockingly being the only non white person in my class, I was the first person out of the contest.

    • My husband’s company did something similar. They published stats about their staff, out of transparency concerns. Since they had precisely one Black male on staff, they reported his age and salary. They did the same thing to an Asian woman colleague. A little DEI exercise run amok.

      • Oof, HR was not really thinking…

        One of the few good things that happened to me at Ericsson was after a salary survey they told me straight up that I was grossly underpaid compared to my colleagues and gave me a 10k raise effective immediately.

        I was both happy and pissed off. Happy to get a raise and pissed off with Nortel HR/my managers.

      • A similar thing happened when I got fired (laid off, if you prefer — my position is any time they escort you out, you’ve been fired). They had to prove they were being non-discriminatory so they had to provide us with a list of everyone who got let go in that purge. No names, but ages and positions. Which means, in a relatively small company, you can instantly tell who was who and what their ages are.

        The big takeaway for me was that they really wanted to get rid of some of us older employees, so they also cut loose a bunch of kids to “balance” it out. Some of them had only worked there a few months. Hopefully they all landed on their feet.

  5. I did not watch the debate. So far, there seems to have been no major flubs or anything to changes minds and polling. Walz apparently started shaky and got better (some parallels to Biden there) and Vance avoided saying anything too terribly stupid, except for one point where he whined about getting fact-checked. Here’s an overview.

    It’s all about Election Day after VP debate snoozefest changed nothing

    • I watched the early bits. Walz started stiff but got better; Vance just lied and lied and lied and really whined over being fact checked. The questions sucked, of course, and I didn’t love Walz being nice to Vance on stage; I don’t think you need to be insulting but I also don’t think you should take BS seriously or politely, either.

      It is pretty hilarious that the NYT posted this Doubt-That column before the debate was even over: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/25/opinion/vance-winning-debate.html

      But in closing, VP debates usually don’t matter and I don’t think this one did.

      • It was just about four years ago that the JD Vance whisperer promised Trump would accept losing and go away quietly, because he was already in bed with DeSantis.

        He doesn’t just have bad ideas, he has such dumb ones. Any smart operation would have sent him packing after January 6, except the Times seems to exist for the sole purpose of telling dull people there are affirmative action programs for them.

         

  6. The Heritage Foundation is putting together a target list of government employees to be purged for simply acknowledging the existence of climate change or supporting honest elections as a part of Project 2025.

    https://www.propublica.org/article/have-government-employees-mentioned-climate-change-voting-or-gender-identity-the-heritage-foundation-wants-to-know

    • “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?”

      Let us remember that McCarthy’s two chief henchmen were RFK (McCarthy was an intimate of “Bobby’s” Dad, Joe) and Roy Cohn. Fine company to be among.

  7. I, unfortunately, watched the full debate.  Vance looked like a reasonable person, mostly because he lied the entire time.  Walz failed to jump on his lies too many times but did an okay job.

    I’m sure 100% of this will go to hurricane victims…

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-gofundme-hurricane-helene-billionaire-b2621975.html

    I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist but…ah, hell, yes I am!

  10. Who wants my DUAN for Friday?  Looking like I’m not going to get to it.

    • i can take it…ive got the day off anyways

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