Weekend Vibes [DOT 10/8/24]

10/8/24 MegMegMcGee 26

Hope everyone had a good week!

They got nothing so this is what they’re going with

Democrats move to avoid ‘Swift boat’ redux in attacks on Walz service
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/09/tim-walz-military-national-guard

Enjoy prison loser

Man who violently fought cops gets 2nd-longest Jan. 6 sentence: 20 years
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/08/09/david-dempsey-jan-6-sentencing

Stonks! I was FIGHTING people not to sell on Monday.

Wealthy investors find opportunities in stock market sell-offs
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/09/wealthy-investors-find-opportunities-in-stock-market-sell-offs-.html

Sprots!

RIP

Have a great weekend!

avataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravatar

26 Comments

  1. I don’t know if the WaPo article mentioned this, it probably does, but Trump’s campaign co-manager, Chris LaCivita, whipped up the Swift Boats and probably did more than anyone to sink John Kerry’s Presidential campaign. Well, him, and the ad showing Kerry windsurfing off the coast of Nantucket. That was one for the ages.

    Speaking of political advertising, were were watching some police procedural on TV and a Trump ad appeared! We never get presidential campaign ads because the metro ad market is so expensive and we’re traditionally a lost cause. But who knows. Hochul, a Democratic incumbent, won her gubernatorial election by a little over 5 points, which is really like losing by 10 or more points, and her opponent was a Trump-supporting pro-lifer. Skating on thin ice there, Kickback. No wonder that despite the MTA spending half a billion dollars setting up the tolling infrastructure (and I’m sure she got her share) she canceled congestion pricing at the last minute. Had it been implemented millions, possibly a majority of voters, would vote for the reanimated ghost of Pol Pot if he promised to get rid of it.

    • …the “congestion charge” in london…& the follow-up requirements for a “ULEZ” (ultra-low emissions zone) weren’t overly popular…in a similarly opinion-dividing way that I gather some of the “temporarily” pedestrianized residental streets that were rendered such during lockdown & have been left that way seems to be a “marmite issue”

      …but it hasn’t flipped the political colors for the office of london mayor

      …not saying you’re wrong about that in the NY context…but…stranger things have happened than that sort of thing not being career-ending stuff for mayors?

      • I wasn’t thinking of the mayor, I was thinking of the governor. Last I heard (although these numbers might be lower because of Covid/work-from-home) Manhattan had a population of about 1.2 or 1.5 million people, but that swelled to 3.5 million on a weekday. So of those extra 2 million people, some of them must drive. The teacher’s union was dead set against congestion pricing because some, or maybe a lot, of schools have free private parking lots and the teachers prefer to drive in. Same with a lot of public sector buildings. Police precincts. Fire houses. None of these people were given exemptions. You think a New York State governor doesn’t pay attention to the unions?

        • …the mayor was about the nearest analogy I could figure in a UK set up…they’re not the same but there isn’t the same sort of strata between “state” & “the state”…so the next layer down between “the state” & “local government” in a councillor sense would be mayor…if you’re somewhere that has one…like london…or manchester…or a couple of other spots with a “metro-mayor”

          …places like…oxford, say…tend to have tried things like “park&ride” to basically put the parking out of town & get people to bookend their commute with a bus ride…& there’s the trains if you’re going the right way…which is generally north-south as sideways can be a bitch even when you haven’t far to go…but london went fairly big against a lot of pretty loud opposition & for the most part it’s turned out to lose a lot less votes than advertised was all I was saying…not a lot about that to suggest that it’d turn out that way in NY…but labour have held on to the post of mayor & far from it getting scrapped they’ve actually doubled down without getting deposed…so it seemed like a not-entirely-hopeless bit of compare & contrast?

          • Oh no, I’m not disagreeing with you. In America most mayors are Democrats and have been for decades. I think Miami-Dade and San Diego have Republicans, but that’s all off the top of my head. You don’t have an intervening layer of bureaucracy like we do? For example, I was just reading that today’s Yorkshire consists of four counties. So the four counties don’t have…county executives or something, and neither does Yorkshire as a whole? You’re blessed.

            • …they don’t necessarily make more or less sense than one another but the two sets of hierarchies are pretty different when you don’t have counties as independent fiefs that run parliament beneath a directly-elected head of their federation while replicating the edifice within each county the way state legislatures work

              https://www.gov.uk/guidance/local-government-structure-and-elections

              …york council can have bylaws that don’t apply in carlisle’s jurisdiction…but neither of them get to say they ignore the law imposed by westminster…so there’s loads of aspects of how the thing meshes together that are pretty direct parallels but also some massive differences in the dynamics involved

              …the “metro-mayor” thing is relatively recent & was advertised as devolving a bit more power & authority to the north, mainly…for all the “levelling up” sorts of reasons that the whole HS2 business was about…that got cut back & delayed & overspent & under-delivered for a decade & a half (or more)…& holyrood & the senedd…& when it manages to get seated the assembly in northern ireland…those are a bit like state legislatures…in that they, too are countries in their own right by some reckonings that get dual nationality status as part of a federated club calling itself one nation?

  2. …not to poach @bryanlsplinter ‘s beat…but while I was noticing that the poll aggregate leaderboard on the WaPo homepage had actually changed (PA now <1 for harris not tied WIS up past +1 for her & the remainder +tangerine but now a 1, two 3s & two 4s when they’d been up more like 3-5 lately & sometimes higher, if not above 10 that I can recall) I also saw these which seemed to make a nice set?

    Former president Donald Trump’s social media company Trump Media reported a $16.4 million loss and less than $1 million of quarterly revenue, showing that the business’s financials remain tentative following a public debut earlier this year.

    Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns the social media platform Truth Social, said Friday the company earned $837,000 in revenue for the second quarter, while shelling out millions of dollars of legal expenses associated with its stock market listing.
    [https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/08/09/trump-media-loss-quarter/]

    …it’s not the PACs…but…be nice to think it was indicative of something…because if he ever tries to haul more money out of that thing than it’s ever been worth as a going concern & not a money laundering tool to avoid campaign finance violations regarding foreign sources of money…I will be less than happy if that shit doesn’t incur the other sort of charges…anyway…on to the accusations

    Amid some Republican consternation about Trump and his campaign’s slow build toward making a case against Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump emerged Thursday from his relative obscurity to deliver a news conference at Mar-a-Lago.
    […]

    One thing he did not do: Offer anything amounting to a coherent or detailed case against Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D).
    Trump has for years been prone to tangents and riffs and generalities, but even by his standards this session was unfocused. And that was despite the apparent reason for calling the news conference in the first place: to take on an opponent who was rising in the polls.
    […]

    When Trump did bring up specific attacks, they often lacked any real clarity and were almost perfunctory.
    He mentioned “what they’ve done to the national reserves.”
    “The Strategic National Reserves is, as you know very well, because you cover it, but what they’ve done is incredible,” Trump said. “They’ve just – for the sake of getting some votes, for the sake of having gasoline, you know, that’s meant for wars. It’s meant for, like, tragedy.”
    […]

    Trump was asked, “How you are going to go after Black voters now that she is the nominee?”
    He proceeded to summarize his poll numbers and express confidence, before landing on this recipe: “I think ultimately, they’ll like me better because I’m going to give them security, safety and jobs; I’m going to give them a good economy.”
    […]

    Trump was asked how Harris compares as an opponent to Biden and Hillary Clinton. He briefly spoke about how Clinton was smarter than Harris – rather than, for example, accusing Harris of being more liberal – and quickly asked for the next question.
    […]
    “These guys get up — think of it: We’re going to give you no security, we’re going to give you a weak military, we’re going to give you no walls, no borders, no anything, we’re going to — all these things they’re doing,” Trump said. “I mean, the transgender became such a big thing. But they do all of these things.”But “these things” were largely outcomes rather than actual policies. And to the extent Trump won’t or can’t offer details about why Democrats will drive things in those directions — or really demonstrate any familiarity with Harris’s and Walz’s actual records — Republicans might begin to worry about their own candidate’s campaigning wherewithal.
    [The GOP’s new worry: Trump can’t drive a coherent message – WaPo]

    …I might be tempted to argue that he does get a coherent message across & it’s about being a man obsessed with personal vindictiveness with no regard to the level of abuse of power his desired outcomes imply so long as he can tell himself he’s insulated from adverse consequences beyond which he DGAF who or what gets FUBAR’d?

    Former president Donald Trump insisted again Friday that he took a dangerous helicopter ride with former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, telling the New York Times that he would release flight records.
    Trump, who did not release the records, told reporters at a news conference Thursday that he had ridden in a helicopter with Brown, who dated Vice President Kamala Harris 25 years ago, claiming that Brown had criticized her during the flight.
    Brown, who is Black, called Trump’s story “fiction.” Former California governor Jerry Brown, who is White, and the state’s current governor, Gavin Newsom, said they rode in a helicopter with Trump to survey the fire-devastated town of Paradise, Calif., in 2018, but they said Harris was not a topic of conversation and the landing was uneventful.
    And late Friday night, Politico reported that Nate Holden, who is Black – a former Los Angeles council member who grew close to Trump when he tried to renovate the historic Ambassador Hotel in the 1990s – said he was the one in a helicopter with Trump when it almost crashed.
    Trump claimed in the Times interview that he had “flight records of the helicopter” showing he was with Willie Brown and that he would release the records. The Times reported Trump said he was “probably going to sue” the news organization, according to an article written by longtime Trump reporter Maggie Haberman, and he responded mockingly to a request for the flight records by repeating it in a “singsong” voice.
    […]

    In the Politico report, Holden says he met Trump at Trump Tower, en route to Atlantic City, where they were going to tour the developer’s brand new Taj Mahal casino in what he remembers to be 1990. Barbara Res, Trump’s former executive vice president of construction and development, told Politico that she remembers the flight, which she wrote about in a book, and that Holden, not Brown, was on board. She said the helicopter had to make an emergency landing due to instrument failure.
    “Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco,” Holden told Politico. “I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles.”
    “I guess we all look alike,” Holden added with a laugh.
    During his Thursday news conference, Trump first brought the story up with his usual dramatic flare and insisted the helicopter trip was a dangerous mission.
    “I went down in a helicopter with him,” Trump said of Brown at his Florida resort. “We thought maybe this is the end. … So I know him pretty well. I mean, I haven’t seen him in years. But he told me terrible things about her.”
    [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/09/trump-willie-brown-helicopter/]
    …now…I’m not saying it’s always been obvious he’s significantly more cognitively deficient that biden…in short bursts he can seem to get it together & sound like there’s something left between his ears other than solidified hairspray…but…well
    Donald Trump received effusive praise from allies and sympathizers alike for his willingness to hold an off-the-cuff news conference Thursday in a different part of his house. Here’s a guy who can simply invite in reporters and answer questions for an hour without preparation; why can’t Vice President Kamala Harris do the same?
    …well…not the same, same…because then she’d be wide open to accusations about being spectacularly full of shit & a conspicuous liability…but…who’s counting?
    One reason, of course, is that Trump is not now and has not ever been terribly worried about the product of his riffing. Sure, he almost invariably gets himself into trouble by disgorging false claims or toxic disparagements, but it’s easy enough to bury those with more disgorgement. It is the way; it has always been the way.
    …uh huh…so…he’s covered by owning the floor of low expectations
    But this habit now unfolds in an environment where, thanks in part to Trump’s own energetic efforts, Americans are attuned to signs of mental decline or confusion. A story about, say, a near-deadly helicopter ride with a famous California politician – as Trump presented on Thursday – isn’t as easily dismissed as it might have been. Is this Trump making stuff up? Or is this Trump confusing different parts of different stories? Trump has a cover that President Joe Biden never did: that history of bizarre disgorgements.
    …it’s…like spraying chaff, I guess
    This story has many of the trademarks of a Trump invention. The “know him well” after a brief encounter, just as he once said that he got to know Russian President Vladimir Putin very well because … they were both featured in segments on the same episode of “60 Minutes.” Then there’s the emotional exaggeration. No burly men crying on Trump’s shoulder here but, instead, a brush with death, the sort of thing that might engender a strong sympathetic response from the listener.
    Except that there’s no evidence it’s true.
    …there was a true story with a helicopter he obsessed about, though
    One element of this story that’s worth noting is how, in broad strokes, it mirrors the story that led to the demotion of former NBC anchor Brian Williams – a demotion that Trump energetically celebrated.
    As you may recall, Williams had claimed that while in Iraq during the war he was riding in a helicopter that had been forced to land after being struck by a rocket-propelled grenade. That didn’t happen, though the helicopter may have come under fire from small arms and was forced to land due to a incoming sandstorm. NBC pulled him from its flagship nightly news broadcast in early 2015 and suspended him for six months.
    […]

    Williams eventually returned to the air, hosting a late-night news show on MSNBC. The program was often critical of Trump during his presidency, prompting the then-president to repeatedly target Williams – and to highlight the story about the Iraq War helicopter.
    “Lyin'” Brian Williams of MSDNC, a Concast Scam Company, wouldn’t know the truth if it was nailed to his wooden forehead,” Trump wrote on social media in early 2020. “Remember when he lied about his bravery in a helicopter? Totally made up story. He’s a true dummy who was thrown off Network News like a dog.”
    […]
    It has long been the case that Trump is immune to hypocrisy. But the similarity here is striking: Williams lied about a brush with death in a helicopter? He made up a story for effect? Heaven forfend.But now we circle back to the reason Trump told the story: to imply that he was close with Brown and, therefore, that Trump could be trusted when he says that Brown offered disparaging comments about Harris. The two survived a brush with death! No wonder they opened up about their past relationships.

    Williams was demoted by NBC News because his story eroded the audience’s confidence in his presentations. His was a position of influence and authority, and his exaggeration put that authority and the network’s authority at risk.

    Trump understood and amplified this.

    So what about his helicopter story?
    [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/09/other-problem-with-donald-trumps-helicopter-ride-story/]

    …in terms of what seems coherent…those dots seem like they join up pretty straightforwardly…& it’s an idiom that would probably be offensive to some people in the american vernacular but the way it went where I grew up was that when someone was described as being “away with the fairies” it didn’t mean anything about who they liked to go to bed with…it’s hardly news that he talks vastly more shite than sense…but the part where it’s a feature not a bug is well past its sell by date & starting to whiff?

    • Trump said. “I mean, the transgender became such a big thing.”

      The transgender has become such a big thing, just like “the gays” did in the 1970s and 1980s. Oh well. It’s a beautiful world out there and everyone has something to contribute. Actually, maybe Trump and the Thomases don’t, or nothing useful anyway, and Amy Coney Island—I’ll stop. You get the drift.

      • …do you think maybe it’s the non-binary aspect that breaks their minds?

        …they’re really big on “there’s two kinds of ______”…so I could see it fracturing their whole world-view like a tectonic fault-line

        …could be nothing to it…but it sure is wierd how much trouble “they” have using the word “they” the same way they always used it only more often…”what did that little shit do this time?” “oh, they pulled some other kid’s pigtails or something & we have to go see the principal now”…no problem…”well, that’s just what they want you to think”…they fucking love that one…”you know what, chief – you can just go on ahead & call me a “they” with my blessing”…that ties them in a knot & gives them conniptions?

        …that’s just plain confusing if they’re mentally older than the average toddler…if you ask me, anyway…besides…the ones with a problem with drag acts are their middle-aged spread…anyone getting on a bit wasn’t bothered by barry humphries being dame edna everage…or set fire to mork & mindy merch after mrs doubtfire

        …apparently dumb kneejerk antipathy has a sweet-spot in generational terms…so…it’s a they/them problem after all, maybe?

    • “The GOP’s new worry: Trump can’t drive a coherent message” is a completely messed up way to put it. It’s the equivalent of “Man’s death announced in connection to police involved shooting.”

      “GOP struggles with Trump’s incoherence” or “Trump’s incoherence is growing worry for GOP.” Or since it’s really about message control, how about admitting “Press struggling to avoid Trump’s incoherence.”

      • …we had all this stuff lined up waiting to file about how messed up it was to be putting a dude who couldn’t avoid coming off as maybe over the hill in charge & without joe in the race it’s a lot harder to ignore all the ways we can still run that stuff but it’s hella inconvenient that we spent so long ignoring it when the other guy did it…or talked it up as a strength & a USP for a maverick political figurehead who thinks the president should get to be a demagogue

        …anyway…once we return this hotdog costume to the rental place we will absolutely get on with explaining to you who other than us should be blamed for this only just now coming up…because democracy dies in darkness & all but let’s not go about spotlighting our personal shortcomings…that never goes well & people should trust the press more rather than less

        …I think I have that approximately “right”?

    • Please, have at it. That meandering hour of crazy is too deep and layered for just one person to criticize.

      Someone stated, and I can’t find it right now, that the more people see of Trump, the worse he does in polls and popularity. Seems about right to me. Sorry I can’t credit the original comment.

  3. …by way of atonement for the block-quoting-when-it-weren’t-my-turn thing…this might not be everyone’s cup of tea & has a couple of minutes in the middle which are an advert for a subscription service called ground.news…which actually seems like a pretty decent model it’d be nice to see made available for free since there’s a chance it might clear some shit up that seems to confuse an awful lot of people…but the rest is a dude who’s a stand up comedian talking about a month ago…which is several years in campaign-time…being before the debate that did for joe…but it has some commentary about trump that hasn’t dated so much?

    …this one has the other kinds of ads interspersed but you can skip them after a few seconds…but…ron perlman…so…easier listening than stuff quoting the tangerine man?

  7. More on congestion pricing: Mildred Pierce was working her chicken restaurant and trying to take a quick break when, totally random and unscripted, a woman from Actor’s Equity doing an improv gig perfect stranger approached to thank her for “pausing” congestion pricing.

    https://www.politico.com/newsletters/new-york-playbook-pm/2024/08/09/kathy-hochul-diner-congestion-pricing-pause-governor-new-york-00173435

    Here in New York we are very used to “pausing.” When Emperor Andreus Marcus Maximus started throttling all signs of civic life at the onset of the pandemic he didn’t like the term “lockdown” (which is what it was) and tried to tell us that there would be a 2-week pause. Vestiges of it lasted three years, far longer than necessary in some cases.

  9. This NY Times headline is absolute idiocy:

    Biden Promised Peace, but Will Leave His Successor a Nation Consumed By War

    They’ve shown they’re doing the exact contrarian appeasement of the GOP they did with the infamous Donald the Dove, Hilary the Hawk headine in 2016. They cannot do an honest comparison to Trump, who came within minutes of war with Iran, expanded drone warfare, and has toyed with nuclear war, so this is one of their parting gifts for Biden.

    They’re pretending he promised that everything would be like this:

    and now we’re like this:

    Maybe just engage in some coherent objective reporting?

    • That’s absolutely nuts.

      One of the striking things is it outlines just how much a Trump administration would go to war with the press. And yet AG Sulzberger is still fuming about how Biden gave interviews to AP, Reuters and network TV but not him.

      Execs like him don’t want the press to be able to report. They just want a little bit of superficial tidbits thrown their way. And then they’d sit back as Trump and the GOP wipe out the Freedom of Information Act and all of the reporting that goes with it.

Leave a Reply