Midweek Meh-Ness [DOT 23/10/24]

23/10/24 MegMegMcGee 34

How’s everyone’s week going so far? Mildly under control here!

I believe they call this the “Finding Out” stage, after the “Fucking Around”

Giuliani assets will transfer to Georgia election workers he defamed
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/22/rudy-giuliani-condo-georgia-defamation

Man they let Trump in the kitchen ONE time…

E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounders in 10 states
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/10/22/mcdonalds-e-coli-cdc-quarter-pounder

Sprots! (this just made me laugh, I have no idea about this guy)

Stonks!

Starbucks shares slide after coffee chain says sales fell again, suspends outlook
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/22/starbucks-shares-slide-after-preliminary-results-show-sales-fell-again.html

Was it these guys?

950-year-old coins unearthed by treasure hunters are U.K.’s highest-value find
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/22/norman-coins-hoard-sold-uk-most-valuable-treasure

Have a great day!

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34 Comments

    • It’s kind of like Pence in 2021 deciding he couldn’t conspire with Trump anymore.

      I suspect there are things going on below the surface on the right wing in terms of how loyalties and antagonisms work that we just don’t know about because they don’t fit standard diner safari narratives.

      It’s a parallel to how the reality of the evangelical community has a lot of disillusioned members and quiet quitters but it gets reported by the establishment press in very different ways most of the time.

  4. …so…can we take a moment to commemorate the death of the last of my sanity?

    …because the bar for false equivalence has been pretty high for a while now so it takes a big swing to make a dent…but…”blatant foreign election interference”…per mr no-collusion™…is not meeting with russians & lying about what was discussed or the what purpose of the meeting was purported to be vs predicated on explicitly in messages we’ve actually seen…that’s totally fine & just smart politics

    …the real problem?

    Donald Trump’s campaign has filed a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against the UK’s Labour Party, accusing it of “blatant foreign interference” in the US election in aid of the Harris-Walz campaign.

    The complaint cites media reports about contact between Labour and the Harris campaign as well as apparent volunteering efforts, arguing that this amounts to illegal “contributions”.

    The BBC understands that Labour activists campaigning in the US presidential election are doing so in a personal capacity.

    [Trump accuses UK’s Labour Party of ‘foreign interference’ – BBC News]

    …& nige is out  there saying “I never went as anything but an individual even when I made out I was single-handedly negotiating a trade agreement so I can be indignant about how outrageous it is that labour campaigners are individually campaigning in a campaign for my guy’s opposition because that’s beyond the pale, you guys…”

    …&…I…just…can…not?

    • This for me except it was last weekend when Trump telling an extra at his McDonald’s photo-op how he and Bibi were talking and planning and it’s the “I may have committed some light treason” meme but apparently even treason is fine and dandy these days.

  5. I’ve talked about this before but the answer is “yes.”

    “Red Wave” Redux: Are GOP Polls Rigging the Averages in Trump’s Favor?

    “It’s ridiculous that Democrats are being asked to accept the integrity of polling averages when a plurality or a majority of the polls are coming from right-aligned organizations,” Rosenberg, the author of the Hopium Chronicles on Substack, tells us. The point, he adds, is to “get the entire mainstream analytical community saying the election is slipping away from Harris.”

    …

    Theoretically, this should game the averages as well. Something like this happened in 2022: As Nate Cohn wrote for The Times on the eve of that election, the averages were being bombarded by “a wave of polls” from firms that didn’t “adhere to industry standards for transparency or data collection” and which were producing “much more Republican-friendly results.” Democrats ended up defying the results suggested by some of the averages, picking up a Senate seat and holding House losses to a minimum—itself a historically anomalous result for a party holding the White House in a midterm election—even as many predicted a GOP rout.

    …

    But the perception this creates of a shift is indeed a problem. To illustrate the point, Bonier says that he sometimes gets calls from journalists who, prompted by such tiny movements to Trump, are looking to write stories about a momentum shift his way. “I had multiple reporters reaching out to me asking what’s wrong with the Harris campaign when the polling averages moved half a point towards Trump,” Bonier told us.

    …

    We now know that the wave of data coming from some right-leaning pollsters is posing serious methodological challenges. We also know that these pollsters are influencing the discourse in a way that risks misleading people. How off the mark all this data really will prove to be remains to be seen. But the question of whether operatives, journalists, and news consumers are going to let that data shake up our perceptions in the present—well, that’s very much within our control. So let’s choose not to do this instead.

    • Polling was used early on to drive coverage of the GOP agenda at the expense of Democrats, and lazy or sympathetic outlets went along. You’d get right wing consultants doing laundry lists of issue testing and then release a selective list of results to imply that the top concerns of voters were things like immigration, crime, and of course Biden’s age. Abortion somehow doesn’t make those lists, and even mainstream pollsters like Gallup often fail to capture true voter sentiment.

      The NY Times’ top editor Joe Kahn fell for it – in one interview, he complained about critics of his coverage by claiming immigration was #1 on voters minds, so what choice did he have but make it the subject of drumbeat coverage? Except people pointed out that comprehensive polling didn’t put it at the top, it was in the middle. Kahn had just gotten played. Or else saw what he wanted to see.

      It happened in 2022 most notably on crime. There was a flood of polling releases before the midterms pumping up how crime was the top issue for voters, and coverage of crime was relentless at the expense of things like abortion and health care. Then when the red wave fizzled, post election polling showed that voters didn’t care that much most of the time about crime. But when coverage is so heavily tilted toward GOP messaging, it massively shrinks bandwidth for Democratic messaging.

      None of this is a revelation for anyone who follows polling. But there’s a combination of being lazy, dumb and complicit at the level of top editors and news producers that goes along. They have a network of GOP consultants they like, they get some prepackaged poll/horse race stories, and they run with them.

  8. This is an interesting article about the Chew Valley Horde:

    https://the-past.com/feature/the-chew-valley-hoard-unpicking-the-largest-coin-hoard-of-the-post-conquest-period/

    At the time the coins had the value of 500 sheep, which was a substantial amount but not a fortune, and probably belonged to a wealthy person who was below the top level.

    I know archaelogists tend to gnash their teeth at amateur treasure hunters because they typically destroy so much of the context around discoveries. This article says the coins were found in ploughsoil, so I’m guessing in this case the context was lost a long time ago, though.

    • One of the things senior reporters who gush about Trump’s rallies never, ever mention is how they get shepherded around by Trump staff and sit in VIP seats. On the rare occasions when they actually go to one. People like Peter Baker are insulated from the venom.

      What’s really sick about top editors is they get whispers from their rank and file reporters who have to descend into the depths, but they just don’t care. They settled on a narrative a long time ago filled with euphemisms like “enthusiasm” and “loyalty” and are willing to sacrifice their own people before they change their preconceptions.

      A Times photographer was assaulted on January 6, but editors still championed false narratives about Trump loyalists and published wildly misleading bothsides stories. Because they don’t want to know.

      • …who else is gonna replace bill barr as his roy cohn attorney-for-the-president?

        …if she’d do what she did for that case then what wouldn’t she roll over for…that’s a resume he can get to grips with

        • I wonder if there’s any angle to challenging the election if there won’t be a big rush of low level Federalist Society judges issuing all kinds of injunctions in the hope of getting his attention. The more insane the better, from their perspective. She may get drowned out, and Trump hates women too. She wouldn’t be the first lackey who finds out he doesn’t pay his debts.

          • …they’ve already kicked off their judicial DDoS attack in at the very least several states…if not all the ones they want an option to contest

            …but she played a big card on top of a series of reminders of how on-side she’s been all the way through since before she even had the case she slow-rolled the shit out of before trying to flush beyond the electoral U-bend

            …then she expedited things with the guy who lay for him on the golf course…so the markers she’s laid down as his best earner…or what the boondocks tells me a pimp would call his “bottom bitch“…those are some graven-in-stone neural pathways, would be my guess

            …that I’m aware of…which may be a lot less than there is to be in this line…nobody’s come close other than her (that isn’t already a supreme court justice) to the kind of “pick me” play barr went for with that “actually a president should be able to whatever & everyone just has to let him” memo for explicitly planting a big ol’ shingle out in the open saying “will do what you want no matter how much shit that means I have to swallow”…& given the particular case she had on her docket almost nobody could even potentially match her for the gift that keeps on giving?

          • There will be a big rush of judicial fuckery, but reports say the Harris team are prepped and ready for it. She’s got a billion-dollar war chest and that’s gonna buy a LOT of legal representation. One report I read said they’ve prepped hundreds of legal briefs already and are standing ready to file them.

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