Midweek Meh-ness [DOT 26/7/23]

26/7/23 MegMegMcGee 37

I hope everyone is having a great week. Better than the guy that tried to remove the Twitter sign without a permit.

Good news, especially for my hot UPS driver! 😉

UPS, Teamsters reach agreement, averting strike
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/25/ups-strike-deal-teamsters/

Seems fine.

Gulf stream could collapse as early as 2025, study suggests
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/25/gulf-stream-could-collapse-as-early-as-2025-study-suggests

Stonks!

Microsoft set to report earnings after the close
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/25/microsoft-msft-q4-earnings-report-2023.html

Sprots! Jeebus, that’s scary!

Bronny James in stable condition after cardiac arrest during practice at USC
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/07/25/bronny-james-cardiac-arrest/

LeBron James’s son, Bronny, out of ICU after suffering cardiac arrest on court
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/jul/25/lebron-james-bronny-james-cardiac-arrest-reports-usc-basketball

It’s me, I’m the problem it’s me

Have a great day!

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37 Comments

  2. Ron DeSantis fired a bunch of campaign staff amid a “reboot” effort, including a speechwriter who created and distributed a video using Nazi symbolism to promote RDS.

    https://www.axios.com/2023/07/25/desantis-campaign-video-nazi-symbol-sonnenrad

    What adds an extra dimension is that the speechwriter, Nate Hochman, wasn’t just a stealth Nazi/white supremacist. He had been based out of the National Review, and had been all along an active, openly bigoted, sexist, homophobic writer, in the mode of the infamous John Derbyshire, who was happily accepted by National Review colleagues like top editor Ramesh Ponnuru for years until he finally became too inconvenient.

    What’s more, Hochman had already been exposed back in June 2022 as having praised well known Nazi and January 6 figure Nick Fuentes during a Twitter conference.

    June 2022 is also when the NY Times ran a very long Opinion section piece by Hochman arguing that the GOP had moved on from being under the thumb of the Christian right, which was then and is now obviously a pure propaganda piece. The Times continued using Hochman as a supposedly good faith source since then, including credulous reporting by Thomas Edsall.

    Ironically, while Hochman was burnishing his reputation in the Times, the Never Trump GOP outlets The Bulwark and Dispatch had been on the same page as liberal outlets like The New Republic in exposing Hochman’s much darker side.

    https://www.thebulwark.com/desantis-finds-his-voice-a-natcon-culture-warrior-who-praised-a-prominent-white-nationalist/

    Notably, when the Times covered the video they never named Hochman or mentioned his previous role as contributor and “authoritative” source. Just as they never got around to mentioning that Gal Luft, the indicted arms dealer who was peddling Hunter Biden dirt, had been a longtime source and writer for the Times.

    The effort to bring supposedly thoughtful, intellectual right wingers keeps blowing up in the faces of top editors who blandly talk about wanting to expand the dialogue and give their audiences more information. And as the Times seems to show, when it happens, they try to memoryhole it.

    • The DuhSantis campaign is utterly dumbfounding. He’s absolutely cratering in the polls. Hangnails are more popular. And yet he keeps doing this shit. I would chalk it up to stupidity but I begin to think he and his campaign team truly believe they can usher in a Fourth Reich by appealing to all the fascists out there.

      He’s created his own militia, which is getting steadily more disturbing. The Florida Guard is training in military techniques and tactics. Recruits have quit because they thought they would be deployed to help during hurricanes and disasters but instead find themselves in a military boot camp.

      I’m not even going to detail his takeover of Florida schools and universities and placing his hand-picked stooges in charge of everything.

      The man is a serious threat to this country. And I’m not sure people are taking him seriously enough.

        • DeSantis never got that no matter what he managed to accomplish, Trump would just lie when the time came and say he did it better.

          It was always going to come down to who could spin the more appealing fiction for the GOP base, but DeSantis was too far up his own butt to see it.

      • I agree that he’s a true believer. Josh Marshall has written how he was constantly getting pitched by right wing insidery types that RDS was just play acting and was secretly more moderate, though Marshall never seemed to buy it.

        For that matter the white supremacist Hochman was pushing a similar line in the Times, claiming that RDS was only doing this stuff for tactical reasons, which was a big warning sign that he was not on the level and shouldn’t have been a source to begin with.

        It would be an uphill battle, but the only way to beat Trump in the GOP primary is by beating him on the personality front, not issues. Reagan would have mopped the floor with Trump, GW Bush might well have beaten him. These guys??? But pundits and funders want to believe there is some magic position on issues that can beat Trump, which is a sign they still don’t get why he won in 2016.

        • DeSanctimonious is both a true believer and he and his people are INSANELY too online. They are attempting to win Twitter (yes, Elmo, that’s its name) and have, I suspect, no idea how to cater to anyone else outside of that sphere. So of course they’re gonna be winky-winky fascists because that’s right-wing Twitter, and then they seem shocked when everyone else is turned off.

          Also, not for nothing, if you want to run against Trump, you actually have to run against him! They’re kiiiiiinda trying that now but the campaign rollout was almost entirely “He’s the best president we’ve ever had but …” and it’s like, no, that’s never going to win a goddamn thing when he’s sitting right there!

  3. Just got back from the parents (I went there right after work.) It’s been a frustrating couple of weeks with the parents. My dad is just being clueless thanks to dementia, but my mom’s poor hearing has almost set off my temper.

    It’s not the fact her hearing is going bad that is getting me angry, but rather her denial is. Similar stupid denial former housemate did. Crying about this and that. What’s worse is that I can’t talk to them on the phone to help their issues because dad can’t be a translator like he did before when mom just says she doesn’t hear me.

    I went to their house today and told them I can’t help them if you can’t hear me on the phone. She was upset and told me that she’s sorry. I (channeling my dad) told don’t be sorry just do something about it. Don’t pretend that everything is fine. I need her to help me with dad. If she can’t hear me then how can I help them?

    Maybe she’ll contact the clinic my sisters tried to get her to go to before they gave up in frustration.  Probably not.

    I get the denial as I’ve been there myself, but it bothers me that both my former housemate/friend and mom behaved badly with regards to going deaf although mom handled it with much less crying than former housemate did.  I was also a bit nicer to mom at least she didn’t get mad unlike former housemate who then whinged that my hearing was “too sensitive” which was when I exploded and yelled loud enough to hear me call him a hearing impaired man baby.  (Again channeled my dad.)  He ran off to hide in his room.

    • It took years for my family to convince my mom to get hearing aids, and now that she finally did, it’s basically no bigger of deal than the glasses she’s worn forever. I sure hope I’m not so stubborn when it’s my turn for something like that.

      • After watching my dad resist hearing aids until the end, my wife and I have an agreement that when it’s time, it’s time. We will both need them eventually.

    • I’ve been there, my friend, though with slight variations. My mother-in-law denied her hearing loss for years, and finally caved and got hearing aids. But she won’t wear them. “They don’t work.” No, they don’t if you don’t put them in your fucking ears. Now she’s spending $7K on another set, but they “don’t work.” It’s fucking exhausting.

      At 88, she’s obsessed with “not looking old.” (Just as an aside, she looks like what you find when you unwrap a 3,000 year old mummy — literally because she’s down to about 70 pounds so she’s a stick figure — pretending she’s not old is ridiculous and pathetic.)

      Wouldn’t move into senior living — that’s all old people. Shuffles through the grocery store like a zombie (or the aforementioned mummy), but won’t use a cart — those are for old people. Told us that she needed to get her teeth straightened — umm, why? Got a date?

      So she won’t wear hearing aids, even alone in her house, because they make her look old. Everyone else is expected to scream at her so she can hear them. My wife now takes her phone into the back bedroom for calls with her mother, so her yelling doesn’t bother me.

      It’s just insane. I told my daughter that I swear to use any assistive devices necessary in my dotage, and that the second she told me I needed hearing aids I promise I’ll get them. No debate, no argument.

    • Also… It’s just a hearing aid. Who cares. They’re not noticeable. They don’t ruin your haircuts etc. It’s not like macular degeneration or some vision issues that requires surgery. Shit, I’d happily take hearing loss over vision loss.

      It’s such a frustratingly easy problem to solve.

      • My MIL is a textbook narcissist. She won a couple of beauty contests 70 years ago and I’m convinced that’s what she sees when she looks in a mirror. Hearing aids do not fit into that picture. She’s also absolutely certain she’ll live another 20-30 years and failing that, the Rapture will occur and the world will end. She literally cannot conceive of a world without her in it. It’s creepy.

  7. A regretful White said he thought Fox “wouldn’t take a commercial like that unless it was legitimate.” 😂

    And he probably still watches Fox News and believes all their other lies.

     

  9. …it’s like they didn’t think it through

    …but…that would be staggeringly dumb…oh, wait…yes…that checks out

        • Thanks, you can tell by his slurring & then the freeze.  She said it is like being trapped in your body, you can see what is going on around you but you can’t speak or move.  She has them frequently now but I’ve only seen it personally once.  My wife says it happens often towards the end of people’s lives and can be the reason they fall.  My mom is a freak of nature since she has had these for years and years.

    • I’m convinced his fall several months ago was really a stroke. But after the way the GOP went after Fetterman, saying he was unfit to hold office they couldn’t admit it.

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