TGIF [DOT 6/9/24]

6/9/24 MegMegMcGee 41

Longest short week ever?!

‘merica gonna ‘merica

Georgia school-shooting suspect struggled with mental health, aunt says
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/09/05/suspected-shooter-georgia-school-shooting-apalachee-high

Let’s gooo
Trump campaign pulls away from three target states after Harris surge

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/05/trump-swing-state-harris

I mean I’m ok with this

Remote Indigenous tribe kills two loggers encroaching on their land in Peru


https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/05/americas/indigenous-tribe-kills-loggers-peru-intl-scli/index.html

Sprots!

Commanders fire employee who called NFL players ‘dumb as hell’ homophobes
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/sep/05/commanders-fire-employee-who-called-nfl-players-dumb-as-hell-homophobes

Stonks! [I love sad traders!]

Dow falls 200 points, S&P 500 posts third straight loss as growth fears plague investors: Live updates

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/04/stock-market-today-live-updates.html

This is so dumb just make them free for everyone who wants ’em

For people without insurance, updated Covid-19 shots are no longer free of charge at pharmacies

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/05/health/covid-vaccine-cost-pharmacies/index.html

This made me laugh way too hard

Have a great Friday!

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41 Comments

  1. That article about the Commanders is priceless.

    [Enteen] called fans “high school-educated alcoholics”

    Enteen is the VP of content, whatever that is. PR, I guess? Marketing?

    But if he really wants the full-on “high school-educated alcoholics” mob, he should do what I did. There’s a row of not particularly interesting clubs near Fenway Park and my hosts and I made the tragic mistake of parking somewhere near the stadium just as a game was getting out. The Red Sox lost. In the mob’s rage I thought we were going to be rounded up and beheaded at third base. Luckily they were so shitfaced (men and women) they were barely able to pee themselves before retrieving their cars. And what cars they were! Ten years old minimum, several dings and dents, DIY door panel and windshield replacement efforts…

    • That person’s not entirely wrong…

      It’s not like Football players are a highly educated demographic. They’re like cops, swing GOPer and tend to vote against their best interests.

      For me, I look at a lot of the players and wince at the damage they’re doing to their brains from the constant hits to the head. As I said before, I used to enjoy watching football, but now I can’t knowing they’re slowly killing themselves.

      As for the fans… well. Depends on where you sit. In some cities, sitting in the bleacher creature seats is not a smart idea especially if you’re the out of town team fan. And sometimes not even… I and a friend (among others) once jumped in to break up a fight between a very drunk Mets fan who decided he didn’t like a teenaged Jays fan. The kid wasn’t being a jerk, he was just enjoying the game when drunky decided he had enough of him and jumped the kid. We pinned the drunk down and kept his screechy drunk GF from trying to hit the teen till security and the cops showed up. Gave witness testimony and watched the rest of the game in peace.

    • The seizures of the phones belonging to David Banks and Ms. Wright and Philip Banks were first reported by the nonprofit news site The City.

      It’s hilarious to me that the Times keeps getting scooped and then tries to compensate by writing a Cliffs Notes summary.

      They have the resources to dig, as shown by the four separate bylines on that after action report. But they won’t use them to dig in any serious way.

      They have been happy to dig for trivia, like whether Adams is actually a vegan and what he eats at that restaurant with the shady owner. But actual legwork on serious corruption is beneath them.

  3. I know nothing makes sense, but how is the FBI weaponized when they keep going after Dems (I have no problem with it, if you are corrupt or guilty of a crime, that’s on you). I get how some things are easy to flip or manipulate, but this seems pretty straight forward.

    Much like Trump’s shooter, a lifelong Republican from a family of Republicans…. Yet we get “damn those Dems and their attempts to kill Trump”….huh?

    • It’s just like those guys that got all that Russian money to post right-wing nonsense. Half their posts are about how everything around them is a giant conspiracy. Covid? Psyop! Woke? Psyop! Vaccines? Psyop! Taylor Swift? Psyop! LGBTQ+? Psyop! Education? Psyop! Unlimited Russian funding for propaganda? Well, you see, who could have known, anyone could have been taken in …

      Shorter me: Their shit don’t make sense, so don’t try to apply logic.

  5. This is a fun one. Axios:

    How Harris dodges scrutiny

    With 60 days left in the race, and at the very moment she’s presenting a different ideology than four years ago, Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t getting subjected to the media scrutiny typical for a presidential nominee.

    Y’know who else isn’t getting subjected to scrutiny? Here’s a hint: He’s orange.

    But then in the very last sentence:

    For a story this week, Axios asked her campaign about the issue for six days before getting a “no comment.”

    Oh, I see. The problem here is not that Harris won’t talk, it’s that she won’t talk to you. Got it.

      • Yeah, Kamala has correctly realized there’s no point in talking to right-wing media (Axios is owned by Cox). You’re simply feeding them information that will be twisted into some form of attack. It’s best to just avoid them and let them write meaningless stories about “Nobody knows any of Harris’ policies.”

        It’s stupid anyway. The only policy that’s going to count is where a candidate stands on abortion. Harris weighing in on EVs is pointless and, as previously noted, just gives Axios fodder to complain about her.

  7. Here’s a little think piece from the NYTimes’s Pamela Paul, former editor of the Book Review (one of the most controversial sections of the paper) and ex-wife of Bret Stephens. Now they are both Op-Ed writers, sharing their “deep thoughts.” Pam recently got back from London, where she took the Tube, and decided to apply lessons learned to the NYC subways.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/05/opinion/public-transit-subway-bus-police.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IU4.d0oA.swk_OuD6HuJx&smid=url-share

    Pam was especially blessed by the transit gods while she was over there because I can’t tell you how often I have tried to take the Tube and a station’s been closed or a part of a line taken out of service. Yes, the seats are upholstered, but for that reason they smell like British ass, which is no more pleasant than any other kind of human ass. Also, most of the Tube trains are not air-conditioned, and the height of a train car is about my height, a little more, so maybe 6′ 6″. Believe it or not, the majority of Londoners do not follow the bathing routine of Keira Knightley so in a crowded car things can smell a little ripe at any season of the year.

  9. NPR has finally broken what appears to be a strange press embargo on naming the Trump campaign staff involved in attacking the Arlungton Cenetery employee enforcing the rules against campaigning there.

    https://www.npr.org/2024/09/05/nx-s1-5101991/trump-campaign-arlington-national-cemetery-staff-debate

    They are “deputy campaign manager Justin Caporale and Michel Picard, a member of Trump’s advance team.”

    The article is odd, though. it states “The former president insisted this week the incident did not happen, highlighting a growing disconnect between the messaging of the candidate and his campaign. NPR is identifying both staffers after the campaign’s conflicting responses to the incident last week”

    What that means is NPR has had the names and held off publishing for unknown reasons. Reading between the lines NPR was bending over backwards to accomodate the Trump campaign until reporters finally balked. In limited cases there are grounds for this, like an active hostage situation or the involvement of a minor, but here?

    The oddness continues. The headline calls the attack a “dustup” which minimizes what happened, when even a neutral word like “incident” would have been better. They refer to Trump calling war dead losers and suckers as “alleged” even when multiple reporters confirmed it and John Kelly went on camera to CNN to say it happened. Trump is massive liar. At best his denial should be noted but discounted.

    And it goes out of its way to repeat Trump’s unfounded claims about the event and his attacks on Harris on the issue.

    But what’s really odd is that every other outlet has stayed silent too. They either didn’t follow up on it or declined to publish. The names had to be an open secret.

    The only apparent recognition from someone at the Times is from Jamelle Bouie, who linked to the NPR story on Bluesky. You have to wonder if he’s poking the DC bureau for chiosing to leave a scoop to a rival rather than cross the Trump team in the slightest.

    There is a huge amount more going on behind the scenes of the Trump campaign and the political press is deliberately avoiding reporting on it. This can’t be the only significant incident.

     

    • I’m actually surprised that this story has legs. It’s absolutely awful and Trump looks horrible, so I really expected it to be memory-holed within three days. And the MSM, for the most part, did exactly that. But oddly, it keeps surging back upward from the grave, like a zombie determined to attack Trump. I don’t know if it’s social media outrage that continues to feed the zombie or what, but it stubbornly refuses to vanish utterly.

  10. It’s become an article of faith among the DC press that there was no collusion between Russia and Trump in 2016. And now we get this:

    Former 2016 Trump campaign adviser is charged over his work for sanctioned Russian TV

    https://apnews.com/article/trump-simes-russia-election-fbi-f0b0fe681c821f735c4e951736f041c8

    The article cites information released in Mueller Report, which the DC press only skimmed before swallowing the Trump claim that it actuallly proved his innocence:

    The report chronicles interactions that the Soviet-born Simes, who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s, had with assorted figures in Trump’s orbit, including Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

    Before one such meeting, according to the Mueller report, Simes sent Kushner a letter detailing potential talking points for Trump about Russia and also passed along derogatory information about Bill Clinton that was then forwarded to other representatives of the campaign.

    Of course Simes isn’t even the highest person from 2016 involved – Trump’s campaign director Paul Manafort was up to his neck in 2016 in Russian schemes to take over Ukraine. But we still get David Brooks moaning there was no collusion.

    • Two things we all knew that we were told no no that’s not true and oops turns out we were right!

      The “phone is listening” thing has been apparent for a long time. My wife and I would talk about something and then she’d “magically” get an ad for it on her Facebook page. It was not a particularly well-kept secret. (This is also why I have always refused — and will continue to do so — to get a “digital assistant” thing in my home. I am extremely boring but still, I don’t need something listening to me 24/7.)

    • The weird thing about Trump admitting there was no steal is that MAGA doesn’t seem to care. Which is odd, because as of March, 500 people have been sentenced to prison terms and 1,358 have been criminally charged. So these idiots have been charged or convicted over rioting about something that Trump now admits never actually happened.

      I’m also waiting for Trump to dump his Truth Social stock, which is going to wipe out hundreds or thousands of small MAGA investors.

      But MAGA will bend over and take it again and again. And still vote for him.

      • …he can’t yet…but…& I meant to mention it but it was part of what didn’t come back when I resorted to an autosave part way through the DOT yesterday…it’s not worth what it was

        https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/sep/04/trump-media-djt-stock

        …I’m sure it’s entirely a coincidence that the meme-stock style inflation of the value of the stock cratered just as the DoJ started talking about russian money showing up in pro-MAGA places in an indictment-adjacent way

        …nothing to see here…move along

        • I know he can’t until Sep. 19. But when that day hits, I’m gonna be very surprised if he doesn’t dump the stock. Unless Russians somehow prop him up, which is certainly a strong probability.

          • …I don’t know how to deliberately tank a meme stock but I think there should be some FSA/IRS type folks paying very close attention to the people involved & the trades that have “valued” that junk well in excess of, say, anything you could reasonably compare it to…possibly including what used to be twitter at this point on its peak…not to mention it seems like the ruling that let them break those SPAC rules in the first place is sketchy

            …always seemed over the line from the grift to the actual scam type money laundering thing, really…& he’s been waiting on the backend like it was going to be all his christmases at once which never seemed like it had a reason to think it merited if, like the SPAC wasn’t meant to…you know how the thing is going to go down the line

            …it shouldn’t even be worth what it is now…so…maybe they should just freeze the proceeds until the investigation finishes & it makes its way through the full appeals process to an ultimate resolution

            …he can wait until he’s 90-whatever still thinking his ship might come in…it’d almost be poetic?

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