Ugh, feeling a little better but still battle snot. Hope everyone had a great weekend!
Oh phew
Trump ‘safe’ after gunshots reported at his golf course – follow live
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2024/sep/15/donald-trump-shooting-florida-golf-course
These are his actual constituents.
JD Vance admits he is willing to ‘create stories’ to get media attention
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/15/jd-vance-lies-haitian-immigrants
He’s so mad
What a headline
RFK Jr says he faces federal investigation for beheading whale
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/15/rfk-jr-whale-beheading-federal-investigation
Stonks!
The Fed has the proof it wants that inflation is slowing, but the next move is still up in the air
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/14/inflation-is-slowing-but-the-feds-next-move-is-still-up-in-the-air.html
Sprots!
Arch Manning, nephew of Peyton and Eli, stars with five touchdown game and leads Texas Longhorns to huge win
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/15/sport/arch-manning-five-touchdown-win-spt-intl/index.html
Emmy Night!
The Emmys are back for the second time in 2024. Here’s how to watch.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/2024/09/15/emmy-awards-2024-how-to-watch-stream-channelHave a great day!
Now we know what NY’s junior senator, Kyyrstyn Gyllenhaal, or whatever her name is, has been up to: In her lonely madness, she has been cosplaying Dana Scully in her own DC version of the X Files. Well, it’s something, I guess. Now, if only the aliens would abduct her and open the Senate seat for someone who might do something every six months or so.
And now for something completely different.
I was paging through a vintage copy of “Life Magazine” and came across this. I don’t know how to embed photos in comments, so I hope this comes through:
What’s interesting about this is that Pearl Harbor had happened recently and in retrospect it’s not really clear what kind of Christmas Americans would have. But the media couldn’t pivot on a dime so it’s like nothing out of the ordinary happened.
Maureen O’Hara is not only shilling cartons of cigarettes as Christmas presents (my parents used to give and receive them all the time; they made great stocking stuffers) but she’s also promoting her new film, the very beautiful and moving “How Green Was My Valley.” The real question is, Mo, after a carton of Chesterfields, how black were your lungs? But the movie takes place in a Welsh mining town so…
Then we have this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/375245253726
It looks like the man arriving on the Pan-Am Clipper got well lubricated on the trip and really didn’t miss The Four Roses. The Clipper at the time was capable of crossing the Atlantic but it took ages because of refueling stops. Say you were in Paris. Off you went to London or maybe Ireland. Then make the hop to Iceland. Then to that town in Newfoundland, Gander, where the play “Come From Away” takes place. And then maybe onto Boston or maybe a straight shot to an airfield in NY.
Speaking of the Golden Age of Air Travel, I hope you have all seen “The VIPs.”
Shocked I’m totally shocked.
https://apple.news/AYrIPSXZ0S_e-XJ9uOLIFOA
John Roberts should have realized one thing…
A symphony of rage and corruption
Hopefully the not so Supreme Six get
Roberts gets a lot of rope because he seems normal enough and talks about legacy and whatnot, but he’s as batshit as Thomas or Alito. And as much as I’d be happy to see Harris win and the Dems take the House and/or Senate, so long as he has the power to strike down everything in sight, he will, and they’ll get blamed for not doing whatever it is he won’t let them do.
It’s going to get ugly and require some serious spine from Democrats. They’re going to have to remove any important laws, like restoring abortion rights, from SCOTUS’ jurisdiction. They’re going to have to pass all the reforms that have been discussed and shove it down their throats. And then they’re going to have to launch investigations of Thomas and Alito. I honestly suspect that if Congress can pass a law eliminating gifts to justices, Thomas will quit of his own accord.
But first we have to win.
I mean, it’s not nothing that Biden outright said “We need judicial reforms” already. It’s the first time any Dem had ever dared to point out the obvious. Will they do it? History suggests the answer is somewhere between “not really” and “extremely half-heartedly” but even getting some tepid reforms on the board is a starting point. (Plus we know that the GOP will respond with some frothing madness to even the gentlest of reforms and that usually makes people go “Huh, that was weird.”)
That is a big deal because Joe has not been the most … aggressive president as far as reform goes. Some of that isn’t his fault and some is just Joe. Him launching that says a lot and provides a big boost for future reform efforts. But Harris is going to be operating under a whole new set of expectations. If Democrats retake Congress she absolutely has to restore abortion. Even if they don’t she has to make a massive effort to do it, or the electorate will turn on her. That’s going to absolutely require hamstringing SCOTUS. Yes, there will be screeching and yowling from the wrong side but they’ve got to focus on what voters want. And they can’t take the path outlined by Ruth Marcus at WaPo, which is “Democrats must win every election ever until the end of time.” That’s not going to sit well with voters. They (we) want this shit fixed and fixed now.
I just don’t want Harris to squander opportunities like Obama did.
It does put into perspective what a golden opportunity Obama had and squandered. Harris is going to be expected to fix a lot more with a much narrower path (and possibly even a GOP Senate which will render most of her options automatically nullified).
I like Obama and I think he did OK as a president but man, even 2020 Biden would have gotten a shitload more good stuff done with that kind of margin.
THISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHIS.
I think the obvious next big step if Harris wins is a direct confrontation between the executive and judicial branch. A judge is going to order something crazy and Harris would say that it’s unconstitutional and order the federal government not to comply.
Another scenario is this plays out on the state level, where some Texas federal judge will order a governor like Granholm to shut down medical centers which perform abortions, and she’ll simply refuse.
I pretty strongly suspect there are judges out there who will intentionally provoke a constitutional crisis to try to force the federal government or states to comply with their authority. And the courts have no enforcement powers, they ultimately rely on voluntary compliance.
In the past it wouldn’t have been close – the courts had enough respect that any executive would know they’d lose the public and press quickly. I think it’s much less clear what would happen now.
I fucking hate that they’ve brought us to this point. Because now we’ll be seen as the one who Broke The Norms.
I think the right will squeal about norms and I expect the DC press will too. I think there is a growing chance it won’t matter. The courts and the press have really hurt themselves and I think they can’t see where they’re headed.
50 years ago the courts were headed toward massive defiance of court authority over busing, and they blinked, which salvaged their hold on authority. I have serious doubts the Federalist Society loons are capable of any strategy. They are apocalyptics, but I also think they wildly underestimate how many people would rather let a sane Democratic executive have power than a crazy apocalyptic judge.
I’ve read one takeaway which is that Roberts genuinely thought he’d written a powerful opinion which would impress everyone as thoughtful and reasonable, and was surprised when it was widely seen for exactly what it was.
He was surprised because he lives in the same closed loop as Thomas and Alito and has no concept of the real world. And what’s obvious is that for years people like Nina Totenberg who are supposed to be reporting on the court are contained in that loop too. When she wrote a book about she happily sat with them for birthday parties with squirt guns and had a lot of fun spraying Scalia, she was furious when people said she was compromised and too close to all of them.
The justices themselves told her she was fair and impartial. How could her sources be wrong?
So… like Hillbilly Elegy, Just Divans?
I really don’t care do u
RJKJR is Kennedy Noonian Singh/Captain Rehab.
“He Tasks Me. He Tasks Me, And I Shall Have Him! I’ll Cut Him ‘Round The brains Of his head, And ‘Round The blubber/blood/guts Maelstrom, And ‘Round My StilhSaw’s chains Before I Give Him Up!”
How can I dislike someone who brought “whale juice” into the national conversation?
This is like the 12th biggest takeaway from what happened yesterday but … Trump was golfing on his home course on a weekend day two months out from Election Day? I know only Joe Biden can be old in this election — and my goodness he was born shortly after the Civil War started and has Alzsmentiasons or whatever — but uhhhhh if I were invested in my party winning an election and my candidate was taking the weekend off, I think I’d be asking some questions about what the hell was going on here.
…well we know he & his VP pick don’t chat about policy…so…you know…it’s in line with his “position” on only having project 2025 – that he has “no intention of reading” – to go on for his campaign platform…it’s like jan 6th…he’s not really involved…other people are responsible for everything until it’s time for him to be “asked to make a speech”
…that’s totally normal according to loads of people who seem invested in people not drawing conclusions about any massive or obvious implications…so…nothing to see here…except a rifle barrel poking through a fence line on the next fairway over
…god forbid we have a third time lucky…imagine if he got the GOP a sympathy vote that gave the whitehouse to whichever shitbird wound up on the top of that heap?
I gotta be honest: I didn’t buy a sympathy bump that much on the first assassination attempt and I buy it even less going forward, successful or otherwise. The median voter might have views that are completely incomprehensible if you pay even token attention to politics, but I think people have heard enough from Trump to know he’s encouraged this and aren’t going to fake boo-hoo about it when it turns out he’s doing it to himself.
The dude got shot in the ear on the campaign trail and it wasn’t news within 3 days and he’s STILL mad it wasn’t brought up more. I just don’t think there’s a “there” there at this point no matter what happens.
…I guess my hypothetical concern is…in the event someone pulled that out of the bag & he’s off the ticket…they aren’t going to give the top slot to JD…so ideally they eat each other & the “winner” is in strips that harris turns into mincemeat
…but there might be a threadable needle where they install someone real quick – dunno who but the less recently familiar probably the better provided they have a longer form guide than JD…& then get the votes that couldn’t bring themselves to chip in for trump + the ones who think he might resurrect before inauguration
…I’m not buying he gets “so sorry the one guy shot at you & the other one looked like he might be thinking about it when they shot at him” votes, either
At this point they’re locked into Trump-Vance as the ticket so they’d have to go with Vance and LMAO at that. He’d be out there giving speeches about the Italian Menace while his aides were fainting backstage.
I also think Trump minus Trump is not that exciting for a lot of GOP voters. They might win back the Cheneys but lots of other people are really not that interested in Diet Trump (aka DeSantis).
…I assumed they couldn’t ditch JD without losing the funds then way joe could dip but on kamala had a line on the campaign kitty
…but they’d need to keep him on the undercard
…so…it could be hilarious but there was maybe a tiny overlap on the venn diagram that would suck mightily?
No, I think they’re even more committed than Biden-Harris was: The funds are one thing, yes, but they can’t change the name on ballots I think anywhere at this point, so even if they did pull a switcharoo, it would still say “Trump-Vance” on ballots everywhere. It’s how every so often we get a dead person running for office (and occasionally they win!)
He’s also completely capable of undermining any sympathy he might have gotten.
Up until January 6 the pundit class kept trying to come up with “this is the day he finally became president” moments when he’d show up before a camera and read a prepared statement sounding halfway normal. And then within 24 hours he’d completely reverse himself. They meet the old formulation that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
…they might have an easier time making a martyr out of him that they could claim was presidential
…certainly the ones who think he’s their messiah would give it the ol’ college try…albeit mostly to preserve their spot on the grifter gravy train?
As long as Trump is around his worshippers will always be at capacity. There is no more room for more Kool Aid in their Dixie Cups. Anything new that gets poured in just displaces something else.
The instant Trump is dead the score settling starts. It will be like Destalinization for the GOP where there is a rush to taint living opponents with Trump’s stench before the opponents strike first.
It’s a good point that I hadn’t actually thought about. Honestly, I don’t expect anything else from Trump. He’s old and lazy and can barely focus on anything, much less campaigning. But it really underscores the fact that the Republican party doesn’t plan to win this election by getting more votes. They’re going to try to steal it.
Joe Biden is very, very old. Why aren’t Maga Haberman andPeter Baker and Maureen “MoDo” Dowd talking about this? What are they hiding?!?!?
Can I just say that one of my sibling’s father-in-law lived to be 93. Sharp as a tack. A little deaf and used a cane and had a home health care attendant but lived alone quite successfully. One day, he woke up and wasn’t feeling well so he drove himself to his nearby hospital and was dead within 24 hours. He was very, very old. There’s a woman in my building who just turned 100. She is my buddy. She’s in a wheelchair and has a live-in health care attendant and has cognitive issues but she’s more lucid than Joe Biden or Donald Trump.
I am the one who gripes about the gerontocracy that has an iron grip on this country, or at least the non-Squad Democrats, but as long as you don’t slip into Dianne Feinstein territory it’s not actually the worst thing. Yes, Chuck Schumer still has a flip phone. I envy him. He also must have a Senatorial staff numbering in the hundreds. Great-aunt Nan Pelosi, the she-wolf of Wall Street, is 84 and manages somehow (it’s a mystery) to rack up better results than the most successful 20-something traders at Goldman Sachs. So she’s not slowing down.
My wife called her grandmother on her 93rd birthday. She didn’t answer, because she was outside shoveling the fucking driveway. She’d whip your ass in a game of Skip-Bo, too. She died at 98.
Well, he spent half his fucking term as President on the goddamned golf course, so this is just par.
No, of course, he’s the laziest president we’ve ever had. That’s fine (actually good, IMO — keeps him from causing trouble) but his lack of schedule is pretty glaring compared to what he was doing in 2016. He’s not old, don’t put in the newspaper I said he was old because he’s NOT only Biden can be old, Biden is old, Biden, old, old, Biden, but … um … well he sure isn’t trying real hard to be out there.
It’s almost as if he doesn’t care.
I don’t think he does. And it’s more than just his lack of campaigning.
The presidency was mostly a “get out of jail free” card for him, and the Supreme Court has rigged everything so that it’s going to be almost impossible to get any more convictions. And any court cases are going to be delayed so badly he’ll probably die (of natural causes) before any other actions are taken. So he’s not worried about that any more.
He’s also rigged things so he can steal campaign funds, and he’s been busily pumping those into shell companies that don’t actually seem to do anything.
If I’m right about him dumping Truth Social stock in a few days, he’s going to get another payday that will also alienate a few (very few) more MAGAs. But if he can shove their money in his pockets, he’s going to do it.
He’s going to be pimping Dumb and Dumber’s crypto scam, which is gonna bilk some more investors.
The whole JD Vance thing is also (to use an overused term) weird. I’m not sure why he picked Vance but it wasn’t to win an election. The dude is ridiculously bad at politics. I can only think it’s for his business connections, such as they are.
It all just feels to me like he’s going for a big score, and that’s far more important to him than the election. His whole life has been about the grift. I think that’s all he’s after now.
I think Vance might have been the “most qualified” white straight man who was willing to say yes to being a running mate.
He’s lazy as shit and always has been. Likes the perks, doesn’t like the effort. He didn’t want to be president in 2016 but he loved the rallies. Didn’t like the job but liked being the center of the world’s attention.
I think this time around he is older — again NOT OLD, NOT OLD, only Joe Biden is old, can we talk about how old Joe Biden is for the front page — and slower but also the rallies are not fun (in part from being 78 but also getting shot) and I’m sure it feels like a job, which he’s never been good at holding.
I love Schoolhouse Rock.
“The Federalist–what?”
“Oh, the Supreme Court, ha ha ha, that’s a good one.”
Fucking killed me. Ded.
When your own people keep trying to kill you, maybe you’re appealing to the wrong people.