Monday Mood [DOT 26/2/24]

26/2/24 MegMegMcGee 33

Hope everyone had a nice weekend. Mine wasn’t too exciting but it was relaxing. At post time I’m sitting on my couch watching Father Brown and the kitty cat is snoozing nearby.

Anyone who would give him money is Not Smart.

Clock is ticking for Trump to post bonds worth half a billion dollars
https://wapo.st/42UsZdx

Russian authorities hand Navalny’s body to mother for burial
https://washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/24/alexei-navalny-body-russia-burial/

AT&T is my personal nemisis

In a letter to employees, AT&T CEO apologizes for widespread outage, says some customers will receive credits
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/25/att-ceo-says-some-customers-will-receive-credits-for-outage.html

Stonks! [and DIVORCE!]

Texas man allegedly made $1.76 million from insider trading by eavesdropping on wife’s work calls
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/texas-man-allegedly-made-176-million-insider-trading-eavesdropping-wif-rcna140379

Sprots!

When it comes to court storming, something’s ‘gotta change.’ But will it?|https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/02/25/when-it-comes-court-storming-somethings-gotta-change-will-it/

Today in turtle content:

Have a great day!

avataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravatar

33 Comments

    • Schwartz has been open for years about Trump, and he’s got a better handle on his pathologies than most.

      Trump has well developed plans to nationalize the National Guard to sweep through blue states and capture suspected undocumented immigrants and put them in huge prison camps, all without due process.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/us/politics/trump-2025-immigration-agenda.html

      If he wins in November, how does the execs think their reporters will cover the soldiers going into homes and buildings to take people away? Do they seriously think the soldiers will be playing nice and let reporters just hang out while this is going on? Do they think they will be allowed to take photos, or will they end up in the same camps?

      And what makes these execs think it will just stop with immigrants? Individual reporters often know the score, but the higher up the food chain, the worse the level of denial.

    • The basic math is that if Haley has 33% of the GOP vote, and Trump manages to get 90% of that back, the 3.3% that no shows or votes third party in November could doom him.

      Pundits get hung up on horse race analysis, which blinds them to why Haley would keep running. If they knew any history, it would be more obvious.

      She’s not running with an eye on the delegate count this year. She’s setting herself up for 2028, just as Reagan primaried Ford in 1976 with an eye toward 1980.

      If Trump wins, she’s toast, but of course he’ll never share power, so why jump on that train and end up like Pence?

      But if Biden wins, Trump and his backers will be easy scapegoats. And if she can establish herself now as the only Republican with the guts to take him on, she would be in position in 2025 to take over the party in a way that someone like DeSantis never could.

      • Exactly. Haley is playing the long game. It’s a gamble, but it’s a pretty good one. She knows she can’t win this time. Even if Trump keels over, she won’t win. But she’s laying groundwork. And right now, there’s no presumptive heir to Biden, so she’d be in a pretty good position in 2028.

    • In two points: She’s consolidating the anti-Trump vote to get a leg up on ’28 and in case he dies or goes to prison she’s now clearly the most likely option should the GOP actually have to do what they keep claiming the Democrats have to do.

      It is bizarre that her getting 40%+ in a primary was spun as a big shrug. If Biden ceded 40% to someone in a primary, the Times would have minimum three front page stories: The result being bad for Biden, an analysis on Biden being weak, and a “Man, is Joe Biden old?” story. Maybe a fourth about the party in panic/disarray.

  5. Did you hear about Aaron Bushnell self-immolating in solidarity with Palestine? The IG is of his live stream video. (It provides a content warning before he sets himself on fire so that you can listen to his message and then stop watching at that point)

    https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3zuSCgLoex/?igsh=aHZwMDE0eDRpZmZu

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-immolation_of_Aaron_Bushnell

    I’m not sure how long the Wikipedia link will be up and not rewritten.

    While livestreaming, he said “I am an active duty member, of the United States Airforce. And I will no longer be complicit to genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at their hands of their colonizers – it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal,”[8] while walking towards the Israeli Embassy.

    Outside the gates of the embassy, Bushnell placed his camera down and positioned himself in front of the gates. He poured a flammable liquid over himself, exclaimed “free Palestine”[6] and threw the canister holding the flammable liquid on the side. A security officer approached Bushnell, asking if he needed help, but was ignored. Bushnell then ignited himself and screamed “free Palestine” four times in pain. After saying “free Palestine” one last time, he collapsed to the ground. The security officer radioed in for assistance. Another police officer approached the scene, aiming a gun at Bushnell off-camera and ordered him to “get on the ground” multiple times.

     

  6. Queen’s was once notorious for field storming.

    The worst was 1990. We tied McGill at our big homecoming football game and we idiots stormed OUR field and partially destroyed it. Worse, some drunken guys chased our mascot around and “sport humped” it (basically knocked the poor guy to the ground and 20 or so guys piled onto it.)

    As I said, we were fucking stupid.

    After that the Admin decided that they would bring in the biggest meanest cops around the next time a bunch of students tried to do something stupid.

  7. Greed and stupidity are usually the reasons why someone gets caught insider trading.

    There are a few times I could have made serious coin with the insider info I had, but didn’t because I’m not stupid and dump in large amounts of capital (which I don’t have) into massive stock gains.

    Sure I can be greedy, but I also don’t like the idea of going to jail because I’m greedy.

    Once my dad yelled at me over the demise of Nortel (he bought several thousand shares) and I told him repeatedly not to (because he was going to waste his money.) I reminded that I kept telling him at the time he bought those shares to buy Apple and Amazon stock instead. He didn’t listen. If he did then he would have about $3-4 million USD worth (and the conversation was in 2018 so now if he had held onto them they would be about $5-7 mil?)

    If one is wondering why I didn’t? It’s because I just bought a house and had no money to do so.

    • I wish doctors would take your advice. That’s the only thing that will get through red state voters’ thick skulls. “Hey, I cut myself and I need stitches.” “Okay, well please drive to Michigan — there isn’t anyone here that can treat you.”

      If that happened in Florida the old people would revolt. They don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves, but that would get through to them.

    • Thanks for sharing. It gets some central problems with so much supposedly smart discourse.

      The worst actors constantly get a pass because people who want to be smart decide they’re “realistic” that bad actors “definitely” won’t change. When the police murder Radio Raheem, the discourse skipped right past to say “the real issue is….”

      Which is how we get so much bad coverage today of the worst actors out there. There’s a crazy filter that police brutality, or GOP dirtbaggery, or gross sexism is 100% locked in, which leads to a refusal to ask what happens if it’s actually 75% or even 55%.

      That piece points to the issue of privilege as a driver of perspective, and that’s true. If someone feels immune, the value to them of fighting an uphill battle seems like a waste. If someone feels safe, then they don’t care much about someone else winning a partial victory.

      And it ends up shifting the blame the wrong way. If there’s a position of absolving the worst actors because they’ll supposedly never change, then the blame for anything that goes wrong gets moved to the people pushing back.

      The concern troll mentality has sunk deep roots in modern punditry, and to a large extent it’s about trying to shut down any real analysis or different perspectives that might change “it will never change” into “here’s what we need to change and here’s how to start.”

  10. This has really disturbing implications about how the NY Times is run:

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-york-times-reviewing-reporter-anat-schwartz-for-liking-gaza-slaughterhouse-tweet

    The deeper story is that the “reporter” in question had no real journalism experience, but somehow ended up getting hired and given a front page byline.

    The Times is huge organization, and there are definitely times when bringing in qualified freelancers is justified. But this isn’t a case of assigning a story on a surprise flash flood in a place where the Times has little presence like Alberta to someone with a ton of AP credits to their name. The Times has no shortage of its own reporters on the ground in Israel and a large group of well credentialed independent reporters it could have chosen, if it wanted.

    Some editor made the call to make this hire and streamline them to the front page. Who and why? Was it Michael Slackman, who is the editor in charge of the international desk? Carolyn Ryan, who is the managing editor? Joe Kahn, the editor in chief?

    Former public editor Margaret Sullivan’s response is this:

    https://nitter.poast.org/Sulliview/status/1762094816194654327

      • Editors there will push back when they want to, even on the Opinion section side. Paul Krugman has described it when he was writing about how the economy was getting stronger, and how he was getting editorial pressure to jam his pieces into the model “this may look like good news but here’s why it’s not.”

        That they give so much freedom to some people points to how much the place is dominated by internal politics, and that’s why serious journalism critics are asking about who the editors are behind the Anat Schwartz hiring. If there’s no accounting for the internal politics that drove it, then it’s just going to keep happening.

Leave a Reply