Midweek Meh-Ness [DOT 31/7/24]

31/7/24 MegMegMcGee 62

Hope everyone is having a good week. Me and the varmints are happy to be home.

Sure Jan dot gif

Project 2025 to end policy work after Democratic attacks angered Trump
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/30/project-2025-director-paul-dans-leaves-heritage-foundation

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh killed in Iran, group says
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/07/30/israel-hamas-war-news-gaza-haniyeh

Sprots!

Olympic moment of the day: Simone Biles, alone on the floor, completes an incredible comeback


https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/30/sport/simone-biles-comeback-olympic-moment-spt/index.html

Stonks!

Starbucks revenue misses estimates as same-store sales decline for second straight quarter
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/30/starbucks-sbux-q3-2024-earnings.html

Fun rabbit hole:

Have a great day!

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62 Comments

  1. I loved the Far Side. I had daily calendars and kept them all. I would enclose a cartoon with every letter I wrote to friends and family.

    Project 2025 isn’t ending their “policy work”. They’re just going to stop talking about it until they find a way to either cheat the election in Trump’s favor or they succeed at the next January 6th.

    • …I intend no deliberate offense to anyone by it but I can’t think of a reason that makes sense to me to not love the far side…I don’t know if folks with twitter accounts get more than the spiders at the slide one but I couldn’t stop my brain from serving up at least 4 I’d have picked over that one before I could blink

      …mind you I think the humbling aspect of your comment is the part that seals the deal on you being more altruistic than I & that’s the calendar thing…for a while while I was at school the person I was lodged next door to had those & between those & collections & the internet it’s rare I see one for the first time now but in those days there were loads…not sure what he did with them…but during the same period there were, to the students at least, “free” newspapers – not all of them unless you went to the library but some in a common room in the buildings you slept in…one of those carried peanuts…took me most of a term before it started to feel like it but for several years my room was basically papered in those…I wrote a lot of letters in those days…it never even occured to me to send strips with them…not even after it got hard to find spots to fit new ones

      …so TIL I might have been hasty thinking dawkins was being a dick with the whole selfish gene thing…hmmm…good job I read up on making terms with shit yesterday or I think I could be in trouble, there?

    • RE: Project 2025. You are correct.

      Project 2025 has not been ‘shut down,’ much to Trump’s dismay

      In what seems like an orchestrated effort, Project 2025 director Paul Dans has reportedly stepped down, and talk of “pressure” from the Trump campaign has prompted political reporters like The Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger to tweet, “This suggests Project 2025 will likely shut down.”

      There are two problems with that. The first is that Project 2025 doesn’t consist of some guy sitting in an office at The Heritage Foundation’s headquarters. It’s an extremely detailed blueprint, and it has already been released. You don’t “shut down” a blueprint. Trump and his extremist cronies have their roadmap for the complete remaking of the federal government, and it’s ready to go if Republicans retake the White House in November.

      Secondly, there is a lesser-known component to Project 2025: a database of 20,000 conservative minions ready to be hired and eager to implement the blueprint’s tenets. And according to The Washington Post, that terrifying list isn’t getting “shut down.”

        • They know he’s a liar but they still can’t say it applies to anything he’s currently saying.

          It’s like the claims that Trump was moderating on abortion before he nominated the guy for VP who not only wants to ban abortion but launch punitive preemptive strikes against women who might become pregnant. They knew he had zero credibility but they still gave it to him.

      • Project 2025 is the Don Jr of Projects.

        The Donald was happy to have it done in his name till he realized how fucking stupid and awful it would be (for his election chances.) Now 2o25 is begging and pleading with The Donald to love him once again.

    • …I was thinking “cat fud ->”, door issues at the school for the gifted, little bears beg big bear to tell the story again…so many…but if I had to pick the one that sort of hooked me on the far side it was sort of a two-fer, I think…I’d already seen the one where the cows are gathered around one sitting down to eat with a caption about how “we taste…like chicken?” & a while later I saw one of the split-panel ones with a 4-part sequence…cows standing around chatting…cow on lookout yells car…cows grazing normally as car passes…cows standing around chatting…some of the alien ones were pretty great but I think when I saw that one was when I decided I might be able to assume there’d be way more hits than misses for me with those?

    • I remember when an additional Starbucks opened on the other side of Astor Place and the fact that you could sit in one Starbucks and watch another Starbucks was considered a sign of the apocalypse

      That’s a very NYC-centric view.

      I stood at the one intersection in downtown Vancouver where there was a Starbucks on each corner. I felt like THAT was ground zero of the Apocalypse.

      • I’d be willing to bet there was a line in every single one. I’ve never seen an empty Starbucks. I’ve never understood the obsession with buying coffee. Make it at home like a regular person. I knew people who spend hundreds each month at Starbucks, plus time lost waiting in line. Just buy a damn coffeemaker.

      • That’s also a joke in “Best in Show.” Parker Posey, wearing braces, describes how she met her husband. She frequented a SB and he frequented the one across the street. One of them finally left their SB to meet the other at the other Starbucks.

    • Is anyone else a bit surprised that that “Chef’s Kitchen”–lovely as it *is* with the giant fridge and three ovens–only has *one* sink?!?

      Unless there’s a little/secondary sink for hand washing/rinsing veggies, etc.  behind where the person took the picture, it’s a little surprising that there *isn’t* a secondary one on the island or at the end of the counter.

      If you’re dropping *that* much money on design & looks in a kitchen, I’d *think* that you’d want a second sink, so that if the main is in use (especially since it looks like a single-basin “farmhouse” style!), you can *still* wash your hands, if you get them covered in chicken-goo… or if you touch the listeria Boar’s Head deli meats, etc.

      Although it *does* look like that may also be a flat-top stove–so possibly electric, rather than gas?

      And if so, then it likely *isn’t* a “Cook’s Kitchen,” as much as a “Prep Station” for the Chef’s who *prepared* the meal elsewhere, brought it out and put the cold stuff in that big ‘ol fridge, and are keeping the warm items at temp in those extra ovens…

      As someone who loves to cook and bake, and who had roommates who *also* liked cooking & baking–sometimes as a communal effort–one thing my roommates and I always talked about, “if we ever win the lottery” (that we very rarely ever played!😆😂🤣) was that the first item on the list was going to be a prep/hand-wash sink across the kitchen from the man, so that one person can be prepping, while the other sink is in use!

      Space and *storage*-wise, it looks like a really solidly-designed kitchen, though!

      There are really good cabinets all around the room, no “floating shelves” to get dust and dirt on your clean dishes, etc.

      It just always surprises me, when folks drop *that* much cash on a Kitchen, but then lave out something so basic, you know?

      • This is possibly a Paul Rudolph house. Why they don’t know one way or the other is beyond me. Paul Rudolph is (was?) an extremely gifted architect who deserves o be much better known than he is. Maybe a second sink in the kitchen offended his design sensibilities. Architects, especially the talented ones (most aren’t) have very strange quirks.

      • That’s why it’s important for us to coalesce around Cousin Mattie. While many of us aren’t registered there, our insult game is on point, and what else does a politician need? And I’ll find one of the DeSantis immigrant buses headed that way and offer everyone on it $10 to Vote For Mattie. That should be enough to put us over the top. One day soon Gracie Mansion will be Deadsplinter HQ.

         

        I’ve had a lot of coffee today.

        • Did you know that Gracie Mansion is supposed to be haunted? At some point, and maybe this was a one-off, there was a Halloween tour or annual tours offered. This might have been during the Bloomberg years. He refused to live there, preferring his far superior UES townhouse, and I think made it much more accessible to the public. He also poured millions into sprucing the place up.

    • What’s interesting to me is how little of the Trump attacks on Biden had anything to do with issues, and what there was turned out to be completely scattershot.

      His core will respond to anything, of course, which is why he’s done the electric boat and shark weirdness. But he knows that’s not enough.

      A couple of possibilities are that chaos around Gaza protests emerges. It could just be five students holding signs at Princeton get smashed up by a mob of right wing thugs with pipes, and the press narrative will be that it’s a sign that Trump needs to be elected.

      Another is that some foreign Trump ally like one of the Gulf States does something to the oil supply to start a big gas price spike.

      I think one problem for Trump is that increasingly people view him as the source of chaos, and another is that a forthright, energetic response by Harris flips the issue on him. That doesn’t mean he won’t gamble, of course.

      There’s an underlying problem which is that time has gotten really short for him. Anything involving a narrative like “crooked Hillary” takes time to build, and that’s really hard to pull off in a few months. He gets that traction by repeating things endlessly for months, and he doesn’t have months.

      One advantage of the Democrats jumping on GOP weirdness is that it’s preempted a lot of their attacks and shrunken the clock even more. We’ll see if they can keep it up, but right now the GOP hasn’t had anything ready.

      • Also, very VERY importantly: “weird” isn’t a partisan attack, which makes the media less timid about it being used against their right-wing pals. That helps! (So does their brain melting on Fox News where they get so upset by being called weird that they get even fucking weirder on live TV. Not beating the rap that way, boys!)

        • One memorable word. Aimed at opponents not the public. Options to attack future moves. Lets them define themselves as reliable.

          It’s classic branding and it makes official DC furious. Going back to Gore and beyond, it’s supposed to be GOP consultants feeding attack lines to the political press.

          How dare Democrats challenge the playbook that gave us “John Kerry sounds French?”

        • “Weird” is brilliant in its simplicity. You’re right, it’s not partisan, so it’s incredibly hard to counter. It’s not specific to any policy or position. But most importantly, it connotes that kid in junior high that sat in the corner and ate boogers, and being conflated with that is Trump’s worst nightmare.

          And you know that in a stable full of cretins like Miller and Bannon and those other creeps, plenty of them got labeled that in school. Which is another reason it’s hitting them so hard. And while I’d prefer not to revel in dredging up someone else’s trauma, in this situation, I’ll allow it. 

          Finally, a big part of the MAGA identity is considering themselves the majority, and as such, they should be in charge. Labeling them weird correctly puts them into minority status, making them look foolish and weak.  

    • having watched the whole thing….and regretting that decision

      i just cant get past that tie man….

      yeah sure….became black is …problematic…..but that tie is a disaster man

      you’d think after what 8 years?…. someone would get him one that fucking fits him….

       

      im reasonably his stylist hates him…..or hasnt been paid…..probably both

    • Trump is a narcissist, and he is literally incapable of understanding that there are people that don’t like him. He doesn’t know why, and he lacks the introspection to figure it out.

      What I don’t understand was who on his team thought this was a good idea?

    • I’ll just leave it out there that the DC press corps is overwhelmingly white.

      When the NY Times union revealed that  formal job ratings were heavily biased against minorities…

      https://www.npr.org/2022/08/23/1118817023/new-york-times-race-employees-job-review-union

      ….  minority Times employees complained that diversity efforts there seemed entirely focused on placing reporters in non “serious” departments like arts and local coverage so that editors could hire any white person they wanted for politics beat jobs.

      A lot of the bias in political coverage at the paper and across the DC press corps isn’t necessarily explicit, although some of it clearly is. A lot just emerges because the people who keep getting hired have such narrow, uninformed perspectives on the real world.

  12. but uhh….you know…all fun things like trumps fucking oversized tie and dont call us wierd magas…..

     

    is it just me or is israel actually trying to get a region wide conflict started?

    is like…well if we are getting away with genocide we may as well push a few more buttons…..till someone says….hey……thats not cool man…knock it off

    suspect if they avoid hurting oil production….that may not happen

      • i actually believe iran doesnt have nukes…….least not ones they made themselves..

        and barring nuclear warfare…..israel can hold its own (i mean they can hold their own in nuclear warfare too…but really whats the point? it worked as a detterent for the usa coz no one else could field the same weapon at the time…..that argument no longer holds true)

        if they decide to go toe to toe well…… thats gonna be a slaughter

        on both sides….and iran outnumbers israel by quite a bit

    • …that part of the world I always figure there’s more I’m missing than understanding…so…appropriate heapings of salt & such

      …but bibi is all but begging for them to “escalate”…but at least some of the supposedly smart money says iran doesn’t want that…on the one hand they might not do great in a direct matchup military-hardware-wise…but on a different spectrum even if they had something they could place that accurately the chances are they don’t have the kind of parity of information that would let them know their target was in exactly the spot they needed flight-time+hit-the-button

      …they hit a specific building in beirut….& another in tehran…& by the standards of their peers at least one of those guys was considered on the less-hardline side of things so netan-yahoo is all about the escalating…how to put it…for all he’s worth?

      …if don’t-vote-for-donnie-does-all-the-don’ts is playing with matches & gasoline, though…bibi’s hail mary stay-out-of-jail campaign is still in a pre-jan 6th mode & already playing with nitroglycerin & napalm…it’s probably way off the beam of what people who know shit about that shit think it all augurs but I’m less than certain it’s really iran that he’s goading in terms of pressure being felt…the “international community” isn’t keen on getting together to depose one another lest their head of state be the next one on the block but the longer nobody stops him & the militant crowd that are as scary as MAGA wants to be the less credible any claim to stand for or by “the rule of law” looks to those who find it inconvenient to pay that more than lip service

      …iran can afford to not take that bait…but it’s about as dangerous a bout of boat-rocking as I can remember?

      …maybe my reckoning is off but even when there’s been significant “hostilities” in that sense the background music wasn’t in the same league of ominous

      …hoping the fundamentalists don’t rise to the bait seems like playing the sort of odds I don’t see the fun in at a casino for stakes that I really wish I could spend less time thinking about…for a lot of reasons…but…they have a different book so maybe the reference doesn’t apply & all…all the same though how many “other cheeks” have they turned while talking smack & funding proxies to keep the iron dome match fit

      …fingers crossed it goes with as little bang as the time israel hit that embassy a while back direct rather than launched from outside their own territory?

      • iran can afford to be reasonable

        but on the other hand,,,,israel just lobbed a missile on their soil

        and turning the other cheeck is very christian

        dont think theres all that many christians left over there tho

        • …yeppers…& yipes

          …then again the USSR managed to be more capitalist than anyplace about some things & now we have oligarchs that own the mineral wealth of a third of the globe between a few dozen names some of which are just stand-ins/cut-outs for don vlad-alone

          …so iran being more christian to those who trespass against them than the benny & bibi choir…history can have that kind of weird symmetry sometimes?

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