I hope everyone had a great week! Welcome to my 1,001th post…
Explainer to the JD Vance couch jokes:
Whoa
Top Sinaloa cartel leader taken into U.S. custody alongside son of ‘El Chapo’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/07/25/mayo-zambada-sinaloa-cartel-arrested
Stonks!
Stock futures rise slightly as investors prepare for Fed’s preferred inflation gauge: Live updates
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/25/stock-market-today-live-updates.html
Sprots! LOL
Have a super day!
…if you have access AFP probably have more information but by there was a co-ordinated attempt to fuck with the TGV network coming into paris from all four directions & north/east/west are out of commission for probably the weekend as far I could understand it…nobody seems to have said it was russia…but?
French train network hit by ‘malicious’ arson attacks hours before Olympics ceremony, rail firm says [that ought to take you to the BBC live feed which is about as far as I’ve got about the whole thing]
I have absolutely no idea who is behind these arson fires but it’s so low-tech. I think a Russian teenager with a laptop could take down the whole system. It could be French anarchists, who have been around for over a century. But I’m guessing that it might be locals who are not enthusiastic about the participation of Israeli athletes. Or who knows. Possibly former East Germans pissed off that they don’t have their own judges to award ridiculously low scores to their “enemies?” Maybe participants scared to death of the prospect of being in the Seine? I’m sure we will know soon enough.
Yeah, I was wondering who it was because my first assumption was “uh oh French protesters are at it again!”
…on a lighter note…figured @loveshaq wouldn’t want to miss this?
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/jul/26/experience-ive-tried-50000-beers
Burp!
@SplinterRip thanks for thinking of me! I think that guy has me beat but I’ve never kept track of the number of beers I have tried. I have been going to beer festivals since around ’99 & hosted a weekly beer club for 20+ years so who knows. I think all that beer might have given me memory issues.
The couch was asking for it.
Today’s DOT brought into sharp relief how dull my “romantic” life has been. I have never “smashed” a couch nor have I ever jacked off in a parking lot.
You’ve gotta live a little, cuz
In my defense my high school boyfriend and I used to have sex in my hometown’s cemetery. We did this because the gates were always open, just in case a resident wanted to visit a dead friend or relative at 3 am or something. We always stayed in the car, though (big, hulking 70s-era sedans, the finest Detroit had on offer, plenty of room to stretch out) so it’s not like we went at it on some gravesite.
Yeah but I know you have jacked off on a couch in a parking lot! Who among us can honestly say they haven’t done that?
Mike Pence adds “couches” to things he won’t be alone with.
Snort chuckle guffaw – comment of the day, my friend!
Okay, I spit coffee on my monitor.
That’s one reason why Reese is not in Toronto.
Also, the fact he was terrible.
Not to be rude to Meg here but the couch is so yesterday — now it turns out he’s a dolphin sex enthusiast. Please try to keep up! https://www.rawstory.com/jd-vance-dolphin-search-history/
And that is why he’s been banned from Sea World.
Vance should have named his book “Hillbilly Eulogy” because he’s not coming back from this.
“Dolphin Experience” indeed.
The Hillbilly Aquarium
How did we all miss this? America’s favorite Eastern European mail-order bride (to be charitable) has written a memoir! I know what I’m asking Santa for.
Eh, I’m waiting for Nestor’s tell-all.
¡O, yo también!
Speaking of (once-) hot Cuban twinks Marco “Foam Party at Warsaw in South Beach” Rubio is looking pretty good at 53. I guess married life (heh-hem) agrees with him.
For everybody asking “When will Obama endorse Harris?” that day is today.
Barack and Michelle Obama endorse Kamala Harris for president
Very good dog.
Lost dog survived in deep woods nearly two months: ‘She defied the odds’
Yeah, no kidding.
Trump chickens out and refuses to debate Harris
Shocked. This me when I’m shocked. 😶
Here’s a really gruesome twist on a story about bad reporting in the NY Times.
The Times ran one of its supposed “person on the street” explainers including a California woman who claimed she was a voting for Trump after voting for Biden in 2020 because “I’m a Democrat, but I’ve changed my mind after everything that’s happened after Joe Biden’s administration. I mean, the border situation is out of control.”
“Former Democrat who has now switched to Republican” is a warning sign that you’re reading junk. Finding truthful examples of these people is actually a lot harder than reporters make it seem.
It’s a common trope in NY Times stories, except it keeps coming up that reporters like Jeremy Peters keep citing supposed former Democrats and independent voters who turn out to right wing activists with official GOP ties that show up in quick online searches.
A big reason it keeps happening is that reporters don’t do the legwork when they cite supposedly everyday people. Not only don’t they do a routine search on the names they quote, they get these people from GOP campaign consultants, who have ready lists of supposedly “disillusioned” party switchers who are happy to give quotes to gullible reporters.
Anyway, it turns out the woman quoted didn’t exactly have a history as a GOP activist. She was the woman who tried to scam Wendy’s by sticking a severed finger in a bowl of chili!
https://nitter.privacydev.net/GiladEdelman/status/1816549506294645225
To make it worse, the Times once ran an article about her arrest. They literally had the info at their, um, fingertips!
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/14/us/police-identify-severed-finger-in-the-wendys-chili-case.html
At first the Times tried to quietly take out the reference, but finally ended up issuing a bland retraction which didn’t explain how they screwed up in the first place.
Honestly, as soon as any article refers to a person on the street, it’s time to activate the bullshit detector, as we noted yesterday. But this is a fuckup of epic proportions.
I really don’t get this. When I was a reporter, I would have been fired for publishing unvetted dreck like this, and I worked at a local daily. Actually, it would have never made it past my editor. The NYT just says “sorry” and there seem to be no repercussions whatsoever.
I will never get tired of this, at it must be 20 years old.
It’s a tactic that goes back at least to the John Birch Society, who used to send fraudulent letters to the editor from supposedly former Democrats opposed to flouride or UN domination.
The Watergate tapes include Nixon telling aides to plant “former Democrat” letters in friendly papers over 50 years ago.
It’s always possible to find these people, of course. But getting the right combo of coherent quote, position you want, and former Democrat takes way more time than reporters and their editors want. They can’t go through 50 people when they have other quotes to slot in too. So they cheat and ask GOP campaigns for help.
It’s an institutional problem and they just don’t care. It feels true, so they feel justified taking shortcuts that keep blowing up on them.
…did you try that new yorker article I left at the end of the DOT the other day?
…they interviewed the khan guy who’s EiC & I imagined you might have to take breaks to let your eyes roll back down before you could read a bit more & take it in installments
I read a different one with him and it’s wild how deep he’s sunk in this swamp. Dean Baquet was always so much smoother. Kahn doesn’t even bother.
One of the mysteries of Times Kremlinology is why did AG Sulzberger take so long to replace Baquet? Baquet was ready to retire after the 2016 election but agreed to stay until a successor was chosen. He waited and waited until he finally moved to LA and went through the motions of being top editor, which of course is impossible to do considering the three hour time difference with the HQ.
For a long time they seemed to be grooming Carolyn Ryan, who ran their disastrous 2016 coverage, but she is loathed by a lot of the staff, and it’s possible Kahn was the compromise candidate. Whatever happened, he’s really bad at even pretending to care, and combined with AG Sulzberger he adds to the faceplant quality of official positioning there.
This is happening with crime reporting, too. LastWeekTonight covered it, but lots of news (real and “news”) sources are blaring that CRIME IS UP, especially “migrant crime,” which isn’t a thing. First, all categories of crime are trending down for years. Second, only Texas even categories crime committed by undocumented persons vs citizens, so most places would not know if it was “migrant” crime. And even in TX crime by undocumented people is like half as much.
As a life-long resident of Florida, I can assure you that undocumented people are much more law-abiding than citizens. Even saying otherwise is stupid — they have so much more to lose. And research backs me up. NPR looked at incarceration rates, because that’s where immigration status is checked, and guess what?
Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans, studies find
And it’s not even close. Immigrants are 37% less likely to commit crimes.
You know Harris’ candidacy is devastating to the press. “What? We can’t print 15 stories about Biden’s age? What the fuck do we do now?” The go-to seems to be “This won’t last.”
Trump campaign plays defense amid Harris honeymoon
Somewhat related: I can’t find a current fundraising total for Harris. I’m certain that the flow of cash didn’t stop on Tuesday, but the press seems utterly reluctant to publish a current total (also my Google-fu may be weak, but I’m not prepared to say that yet). It can’t be that hard to get a number (one call to the DNC should do it) but nobody’s publishing anything.
Sorta seems like they don’t want to demoralize the Republicans any more than they’ve already been. I mean, it’s gotta be tough to construct a winning scenario for Hannibal Lecter’s best friend and the couchfucker. So maybe the solution for the partisan press is to say nothing? ‘Cause Orange Man is running scared.
The world has changed, and Trump needs a mulligan
That dough headed asshole has been living on Mulligans all his life.
You’d figure being a convicted felon would have knocked an ordinary pol out.
Now, now, Manchu. People who work for him, accept his paychecks, and care for his ego have clearly stated that he won two, not one, but two, championships at clubs he owns.
I am certain that a competitor of that caliber would not need to resort to mulligans.
“Honeymoon” is a term the headline editors use to signal to the GOP that they are ready to be attacked for being too soft. “Please push us into a locker, we hate saying there’s a difference.”
They’re itching to return to attacking Democrats over trivial financial issues so they can bothsides Trump’s business fraud conviction and other massive scandals. So they’re playing the positive press as something inherently BS.
…it feels like it’s basically begging somebody, anybody to please, please find a reason to say they’ve found another shoe to drop
…but then they remembered that guy who threw one at W & bottle it…or…well…be a lot of work to explain how the 2 in 3 shot they’ve been claiming trump has as the odds-on favourite might not be as solid as they’ve got used to thinking it is
…mind you…in a chinese whispers way I’ve had a couple of UK friends in the last couple of days telling me how dismaying it was to hear (in one case) a family who voted labour when they lived in the UK saying they were leaning (R)…& another saying contacts of theirs in the US were shocked to hear the UK press thought the orange guy was a fuck up who’d fuck up everything from the deficit to foreign policy & all points in between
…echo chambers don’t get much real-er than the fox news/newsmax alternative fact “reality”…those people seem to literally live in a different america already…maybe the answer is to not have the election…give the white house to kamala & just let fox news keep saying their guy won?
Harris campaign comes out swinging. This is how you handle an orange asshole.
“78-Year-Old Criminal”: Kamala Savagely Roasts Trump’s Newest Meltdown
…good thing she’s married already or she’d have to beat them away with a stick?
Headline writers are finally acknowledging reality:
The US economy is pulling off something historic
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/economy/us-economy-gdp-second-quarter/index.html
This is not to say the US economy is where it should be, but the achievement of low inflation and high employment without going through austerity is remarkable. Conventional wisdom was that you had to plunge the economy into a massive recession, deregulation, and huge budget cuts to stop inflation. That simply wasn’t true.
There’s a stark choice going forward. Go the way of the GOP and old school Bill Clinton types and hand the keys back to billionaires and corporations.
Or we can expand what Democrats did over the past four years – raise taxes on the rich and corporations. Stop rubber stamping mergers and monopolies. Increase regulation. Invest in infrastructure. Stop favoring oil companies and shift to green energy. But accelerate it.
A lot of this is going to mean fighting the power of the Supreme Court, to be honest. It’s what happened during the fight for New Deal programs and it ‘s needed now.
The good news is that the majority of Americans hates the Supreme Court now, and the ghouls are fully capable of making it worse for themselves. What’s more, the influence of status quo humpers in the press is weaker than in many years, and Democrats are finally learning their worried recommendations are useless.
Fixing the economy and fixing the courts is an uphill battle, and billionaires have tons of power. But they’re also hurt by their cluelessness and arrogance, and there has never been a better time to move forward.
I was pondering SCOTUS the other day. Republicans are often lauded for playing the long game. Rigging the Supreme Court was the culmination of decades of effort. But then, oddly, SCOTUS charged forward recklessly overturning laws and revoking freedoms. I say oddly because they’d have done a lot better to move slowly, basically turning up the temperature until the frog boils. But they didn’t. And it’s not just ideology — don’t tell me any of them except for maybe Barrett actually cares about fetuses.
So why the change in tactics, from slow boil to “oh, fuck, we pissed everybody off”? Maybe because Thomas and/or Alito could croak, leaving them in a less secure position. But even then, with a supermajority, you could move slowly until one or the other is gone, and then hit the gas.
Or maybe it’s because the billionaires that bought them are also old, and demanded to see immediate progress on fascism?
It’s just strange that SCOTUS has overplayed their hand so badly, and galvanized resistance at every level. Let’s face it, revoking abortion was stupid. It’s not like there wasn’t evidence of its popularity and the potential effects of overturning Roe. And again, I don’t think any of them are sincere about fetal personhood except for Handmaid Barrett.
Not sure what my point is other than damn, did they fuck up.
Yeah the suprmes did, but they also made themselves a target for investigative outfits like Propublica who did a deep dive into their personal finances which them made things much much much more worse for the gang of six.
Exactly. So a slow boil would have been a much better plan, but they went all in on fascism. I guess I’m looking for strategy where there isn’t any.
A lot of it comes from them being apocalyptic types who actively want to spark the end times.
…one of those FT things I failed to find a spot for was about the “inverted yield curve” having been wrong for a while about meaning there’s a recession
…unless I did put that somewhere…but it’s kind of fascinating as it used to be a reliable indicator for quite a while
Considering most coaches are like Tommy Tuberville, a narcissist power flexing simpleton, probably one of the dumbest things Trump has said.
One of the problems with US generals is they are too much like football coaches especially those of the Westmoreland model who think in football analogies. That mentality didn’t work well in counter insurgencies like Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.
Also considering how verbally abusive/abrasive many of these college coaches are, and you’re dealing with hardened men trained to kill… well. Better hope they sleep with grenade proof blankets.
“Dumbest” is relative. Let’s see what he says by the end of the day. I have faith he can drop the bar even further.