Monday Mood [DOT 20/5/24]

20/5/24 MegMegMcGee 28

Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a great weekend. I made it back to DC and I have two purring cats next to me at the moment.

Uh oh

Rescuers struggle to find helicopter carrying Iranian president
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/19/iran-president-raisi-helicopter-incident

Iran president helicopter crash: rescuers search for Ebrahim Raisi – live updates
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/may/20/iran-helicopter-crash-live-updates-ebrahim-raisi-iranian-president-search-and-rescue-middle-east-crisis-latest-news

Somehow this is bad and also Biden’s fault, but if Trump were president it would be great…Did I get that right?

Stock futures tick higher after Dow closes above 40,000 for the first time: Live updates
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/19/stock-market-today-live-updates.html

Sprots!

Xander Schauffele wins PGA Championship for first major
https://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/id/40181564/xander-schauffele-wins-pga-championship-first-major

A little something for my fellow Bridgerton fans:

Have a great day!

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28 Comments

  1. By early this morning we now know the Iranian president died in a helicopter crash, and suffice to say that choppers are very dangerous and if one goes down it’s a recovery not a rescue mission; he was apparently flying through fog and mountains; and we have no reason to think it’s anything other than what it looks like.

    It just better NOT be anything other than what it looks like, because there’s enough tension to go around right now. I’m not saying we or Israel would do this, but both nations have lots of priors of doing shit like this in Iran. And that would be all sorts of bad.

    • Yup. Unlike movies, that big whirling blade does not conveniently break away from the fuselage.

      Also, that’s some seriously poor decision making on the pilot or the prez. From what I know flying in mountainous areas is very dangerous with clear skies let alone bad weather and low visibility.

      A friend of mine’s dad used to fly VIPs around (well Canadian ones) and they would leave the crew alone to do their jobs, but he heard that there were some colossal assholes who would insist on doing stupid things like putting the plane in danger for their schedule.

      Kobe Bryant and his daughter died under similar circumstances due to pilot error.

      • Helicopter crashes have a much higher fatality rate than plane crashes. When I heard it was missing, I knew it crashed. There’s no really effective way to crash-land a helicopter. With a fixed-wing aircraft, the pilot can often glide to a safer landing spot, but helicopters tend to just drop. Also, if there’s more than one engine on a fixed-wing aircraft, that’s often enough to get the plane to safety.

        And yes, the timing is highly suspect. I don’t see us doing it this time, but Israel has been making all kinds of bad decisions lately.

        Why a Helicopter Crash is Deadlier than a Plane Crash

        https://www.newsweek.com/why-helicopter-crash-worse-plane-crash-1791619#:~:text=End%20of%20dialog%20window.&text=Helicopter%20crashes%20tend%20to%20be,multiple%20aviation%20experts%20told%20Newsweek.

        • That’s not true in all situations and for all copters.  I don’t know what kind this one was but my dad was in charge of all the aircraft on a military base including Chinooks, Cobras, & CH53s & taught me that you helicopters can actually glide during an engine failure.  I even saw this once & his pilots would train for such situations.

          https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a20559/how-helicopters-land-safely-engine-cuts-out/

          • It’s absolutely true that helicopters have a  higher fatality rate than fixed-wing aircraft. That’s fact.

            To your point, I know some helicopters can glide in some situations. I knew a couple of helicopter pilots, and both told me that if you ask any helicopter pilot if they’d rather be piloting a copter or a fixed-wing aircraft during engine failure, every one will tell you fixed-wing.

            My understanding is that during auto-rotation, you’re dropping at several hundred feet per second (Google tells me 1700) and then at the last second, you’ve got basically one chance to use the air pressure turning the blades to pull up. If you screw it up, things don’t end well. But yes, helicopter pilots train for that situation, and military pilots get a lot more training than civilian, I would think. 

            • No doubt they have a higher fatality rate, you can’t eject out of a helicopter for one thing.  My point was just that helicopters are not just bricks when you have an engine failure.

              • No, I agree with you. There’s things the pilot can do. It’s just very difficult and requires expert timing. Which I’m sure is why the pilots on your father’s base trained hard for such situations. I’d suspect the Iranian pilots don’t get anything near that level of training.

    • If it’s not just an accident, it’s also going to have more suspects than an Agatha Christie murder.

      There are so many motives internally and externally and it’s worth watching who suddenly embraces things with little evidence, similar to the way certain bad actors jumped on the Covid lab leak theory in the name of “just asking questions.” It was all about exploiting the lack of evidence and trying to use it as proof.

      • …israel certainly said “not us” with the quickness

        • My dentist is Iranian American and she came back recently from a pro bono trip. The amount of dissent going on is striking.

          The John Bolton types in the GOP want to tamp down the idea of internal opposition as much as the Iranian leadership, because the US right needs a black and white narrative.

          When Trump blew up Obama’s nuclear freeze deal with Iran, the US press completely blew it by treating it as a liberals say/conservatives say situation. It was in fact a mainstream opinion that Trump was opening the doors to greater Iranian extremism and nuclear acceleration, and that’s what happened.

          But default press narratives meant that people like Bolton who were known bad actors on the Iraq war with a track record of lying to the press had to be elevated because the press needed two sides. Equal treatment over accuracy once again.

      • To this point: In some ways it doesn’t matter IF we did it if Iran’s next guy wants to make the case that we did it. In a way it’s funny how dumb we are on foreign policy here; we think of every country as a monolith of thought rather than “gee what if their politicians lie for power just like ours do?”

  2. Also that’s a great scene — that whole movie is full of hilarious quotes and monologues. I say to my wife “Don’t you want to help me realize my vision?” probably once a week when I’m asking her for help with something.

  3. We had some excitement yesterday.  A swan with cygnets, and a pair of geese with goslings, got too close to each other and a fight broke out.  It alternated between the swan going after the geese on land (just down the street from us) and one of the geese creating a diversion to get the swan back out on the water.

    Mrs. Butcher and I walked over to see how the geese were faring and there were two goslings that had gotten themselves trapped in a fence up against a tree, while they were trying to escape.  So, we helped them get loose, but one of them couldn’t get to the parents because the swan was in the way.

    We were eventually able to get the gosling back with the rest of the family, but the swan just wouldn’t let up. So I got between the swan and the geese to keep the swan busy.  Eventually, the geese made their escape.

    The swan made a little show of how big she was, but this wasn’t my first rodeo.  Anyway, got a decent picture.

    • …nice work…I’d rather pull apart fighting dogs than get in the way of a swan…they can be nasty

      • They are nasty, but I grew up on a farm so I’m used to dealing with large, cranky animals.

    • I saw a video of a fox pup running at a flock of Canada geese on the ground, and I was surprised the geese just sort of skittered around, instead of trying to kick its tail.

      Maybe they decided it was too small to be a threat.

  4. Don’t be surprised by the “Surging stock market is bad for Biden” reporting. Cognitive dissonance is now a way of life for the right. From what I’ve been able to discern from Trump’s trial, he did not have sex with Stormy Daniels and the sex was consensual. I’m still puzzling over that one. Plus the phrase “sex with Trump” makes me want to scrub my brain with bleach.

    Judge Merchan faces critical decisions as Trump’s trial nears its end

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/19/judge-juan-merchan-trump-hush-money-trial/ 

    [Linking tool ain’t working for me today.]

     

    • …I thought one of her better lines was responding to an accusation she broke her NDA for personal gain was “nobody *wants* to say they had sex with that man”…or words to that effect?

    • Not a pass for the media but IMO Democrats are — correctly — less stock market focused as a indication of how the general economy is doing. (Plus, obviously, the GOP is better for the economy, doesn’t matter if it hasn’t been true in 5 decades, that’s just The Way Things Are.)

      In addition, the judge should throw his ass in jail for contempt for a week, see how he likes it.

      • If you measure the economy by the stock market, Republicans have never been better, ever, in the history of the stock market since we’ve been keeping records. It’s always performed better under Democrats. And I did the math, over and over, and walked numerous clients though it, over and over. A couple were basically hysterical about it. Sorry, can’t write up something that’s not true. I wonder how that would work now — would the client just say “Make something up”? Somehow, I suspect that’s what would happen.

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