Open Mic for the week of 8/19/2024
Happy Birthday, Bill Clinton!
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to the front page.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
I still think starting school before Labor Day is weird. School should start on the Wednesday after Labor DayReport
I’m a “Wednesday the week before” man. This gives the kiddos a three-day weekend right off the bat.
Start them off gently:
First week three days.
Second week four days.
Third week five days.Report
The difficulty of partial weeks lacking an official holiday is dealing with childcare.
Mine start back the Tuesday before Labor day, and the first 2 days are half days, one without, and one with only partial aftercare. It’s hell. So while your proposal is elegant I’d have to stick with Saul.Report
He’s starting you a week later than I am!
My plan doesn’t cost, it pays!Report
The most logical school year is Singapore which starts right after NYD in January and ends in mid-November.
I semi-seriously think being a degree north of the equator allows them to do this because the weather is hot and humid or hot and humid and the amount of daytime vs. nighttime each day varies by minutes, not hours.Report
I liked when my kids went to school in Vegas, where the law is school runs from first Tuesday after Labor Day until the Thursday before Memorial Day. Now, granted, they don’t have to worry about losing days to weather and such, but that’s a darn good rule.Report
That seems short.
New York ran school from the Wednesday after Labor Day until mid JuneReport
my university used to do this. I’m sure some people found it confusing but it was nice starting that first week on a Wednesday to ease in to it. Now it’s everything all at once, hit the ground running, you can catch your breath on Labor Day in 2-3 weeks….Report
Ours started August 1st and will let out a week or so before Memorial Day. That’s how we get a week off in October, a week at thanksgiving, and a week for Mardi Gras plus the usual two weeks for Christmas/Kwanza/New Years and a week of Spring Break in late March/April.
It does wreck havoc with our summer travel schedule if we want to visit friends or relatives up north.Report
That seems to be a New York thing. It is sort of how the New York civil courts used to close for the summer long after every other state adopted year long civil courts.Report
Compared to when I was a lad, kids get a lot more days off during the school year. I got the Monday after Easter; now they get a whole week of spring vacation. I got Thanksgiving and the Friday after; now they get that whole week. Depending on where Christmas and New Years fell, I got five or six days off; now they get two weeks, maybe three. There are a couple of holidays that didn’t exist during my time. My perception is that teachers get more “in service” days than they used to. The number of days in the school year hasn’t been reduced, so something has to give.Report
Israel accepts a ceasefire deal: https://apnews.com/article/us-israel-blinken-hamas-palestinians-gaza-34f91f99c9a4f63e98134aaecb7af971Report
The ball is in Hamas’ court.Report
Depends on the terms of the deal. Hamas had already accepted the previous U.S. deal, which Israel had rejected (it’d be hard to know this reading the U.S. media, though). Israel made the Gaza corridors a requirement, and Hamas has said they’ll accept no deal with the corridors, so if this deal is just the U.S. deal with corridors, Israel knows it won’t be accepted, and the ball effectively remains in their court.Report
Hamas are a bunch of true believing psychos who don’t care about the Palestinians at all. They probably also really don’t want any word about what has happened to the hostages get out because that would give them the villain ball again.Report
Obviously you’ve just changed the subject, but running with it, while I can’t speak to the beliefs of Hamas’ civilian or military leadership, I’m perfectly willing to grant that, like Israel’s military and civilian leadership, they are likely genuinely bad people. However, I’ve seen enough interviews with foot soldiers to know where the leaders get their power from, and it’s not a hoard of true believers who don’t care about what happens to Palestinians, but from decades of occupation, followed by almost two decades of being under siege, bombed seemingly incessantly, and occasionally invaded, leaving a huge segment of the population willing to join any group that appears to be doing something, anything, against a ruthlessly inhuman oppressor. So even when it comes to the badness of Hamas’ leadership, the ball is in Israel’s court.Report
I am not changing the subject. Hamas broke the previous ceasefire with a horrific act of war. The only people who see Oct. 7th as an act of kinetic decolonization are at the extreme edges of politics. Since Hamas started a war they have been plummeted and much of their leadership has been killed. Despite this, Hamas negotiates with the arrogance of Japanese leadership in World War II who wanted to keep their colonial empire even as they were getting their asses handed to them. Saying that they will keep all the hostages and return corpses at times in exchange for Israel leaving Gaza and never firing on them again even if Hamas starts the shooting is not good faith negotiations.
I am also not convinced that the Pro-Palestinian protestors in the United States really care about the Palestinians. The current tactic seems to be calling Kamala Harris a mass murderer and asking African-Americans to take one for the team and ensure Harris is defeated in November. Every strategy that the allegdly Pro-Palestinian activists have chosen since October 7th makes no sense with American demographics and politics. They make doctrinal demands that are utterly impossible for the side that might actually do something for the Palestinians. They demand that Jews just abandon half the world’s Jewish population as evil. Hell, many of them use the world Zionist in ways that have nothing to do about Israel.
My guess is that most of the Pro-Palestinian activists care more about demonstrating their purity and superiority to bog standard liberals and Democratic voters than they care about helping the Palestinians.Report
It’s weird to call October 7 the start of a war, given that Gaza has been under siege, an act of war, for the better part of two decades. Call it a breaking of a (tentative, and regularly violated by both sides) ceasefire, sure, but they didn’t start the war.Report
Hamas was an openly genocidal terror group before the siege. The siege is a result of that, not a cause.Report
Israel accepted it, we don’t know if Hamas has accepted it.
This reminds me of the articles that talked about Hamas accepting a peace deal that didn’t mention whether Israel accepted it.Report
When Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, the House GOP investigated her twice trying to find something to impeach her or criminally refer her on, and failed both times. Now the next iteration of the Scandal Squad (TM) has published its report, with a lot of hand waving and innuendo, but no criminal referrals or impeachment articles:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/19/impeachment-report-house-republicans-joe-biden-hunter/Report
Hamas rejects the ceasefire deal:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/israel-hamas/2024/08/18/israel-war-updates-netanyahu-ceasefire/74849579007/Report
The current strategy of the Pro-Palestinian movement seems to be “Abandon Harris” and reliable sources are telling me that they are trying to convince African-Americans to take one for the team and ensure a Democratic loss in 2024. Never mind that this will be worse for the Palestinians and many other people. Meanwhile, the “Pro-Palestinian” demonstration planned for the DNC has attracted tens of thousands less people than anticipated. The Palestinians have the worst and stupidest and vainest allies in the United States.
https://x.com/cam_joseph/status/1825593806856638890?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1825593806856638890%7Ctwgr%5E33a7ef15125199241378cb97758480969c156278%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D14383320https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D143833t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20242F082Fthe-laziest-ratfuckert_e%3DThe20laziest20ratfuckert_d%3DThe20laziest20ratfucker20-20Lawyers2C20Guns202620Moneyt_t%3DThe20laziest20ratfuckers_o%3Ddescversion%3D4cca83b0da0691f931ef86061fb7db43Report
Known right-wing troll and N@@i Jack Posobiec tries to troll Democratic voters, gets identified and trolled in return: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dfa84162c67d628f377515687ffd9527bb770510ebb0a6303ff4634fb3ee90da.jpg
Charlie Kirk also got identified and called out.Report
I wish a mysterious haze could descend from the heavens that would convince everyone for a few weeks that J.D. Vance were a Democrat, because I would love to read some frank chat from Veterans Who Are Not Partisan And Just Call It Like They See about a REMF who pretends to be a regular Marine and has the gall to say that OTHER PEOPLE are “stealing valor”. If we all thought J.D. Vance were a Democrat, there would so much to say, from the completely non-partisan unbiased point of view of military veterans who are politically middle-of-the-road and whose only priority when they speak is their love of country.
But, alas, Vance is a Republican, and everyone knows he’s a Republican, so we’ll never get to hear that chat.Report
To my knowledge he has never claimed or implied a higher rank or greater proximity to danger than his actual service. This framing isn’t going to work for you.Report
But it’s not about me, Pinky. It’s about the Veterans Who Are Not Partisan And Just Call It Like They See It and their ability to give frank veteran chat about the merits of the military service of politicians from a completely non-partisan unbiased middle-of-the-road point of view and speak only because of their love of country.
I would love to hear those people analyze the military service of J.D. Vance. Perhaps (if they in their wisdom choose to) an analysis with special attention paid to its parallels with the military service of one Al Gore. Your focus on what Vance HASN’T done, Pinky, overlooks the fact that he has surely done SOMETHING, and if I can trust anyone to do the proctological examination of a military career to find out what that something is, I can trust the Veterans Who Are Not Partisan And Just Call It Like They See It.
But, alas, we will never see such an examination. IF ONLY VANCE WERE A DEMOCRAT!!!Report
I got an idea. If you don’t make this be a thing, then we’ll stop talking about how a guy who was a gate guard in Italy for a couple months right before retirement described that as “deploying in support of Operation Enduring Freedom”. Deal?
(I mean, Walz seems fine, but whatever intern wrote that up for his website needs a good smack around the ear.)Report
Vance isn’t running against Audie Murphy for “most medals”. He’s running against, well, I’m not sure because your comments don’t name him, but he’s running against someone and I don’t think you’d be writing this except that that someone doesn’t compare well against Vance. Maybe you would, I don’t know. But the emphasis on party in your comments suggests otherwise. Also, the way you’re not talking about whoever Vance is running against.Report
Do you happen to have a theory for why I brought Al Gore’s name into the discussion, but not Tim Walz’? If my focus were solely the 2024 election, rather than something else, then what would Al Gore have to do with it?
(It’s often easier to see the infuriating charlatans in the other political coalition than it is to see the ones in your own. After all, the ones in your own coalition don’t infuriate *you*, so why would you notice them?)Report
If you were just thinking about Gore, then I was wrong. If you’ve been seeing the phrase “blue falcon” as much as I have lately, you’d understand.
I think Gore could never shake the Fortunate Son perception.Report
“Blue Falcon?” No that’s not a common phrase out here in meat space, even in my highly partisan part of the South.Report
I have never heard it and am scared to google and find out.Report
It’s fairly common out here in Colorado Springs.
But we live in the shadow of 4.5 military bases.Report
Neither Tim Walz nor JD Vance is a charlatan regarding their military service. Vance has tried to make stolen valor accusations based on a single, years ago statement by Walz. Walz has responded by recognizing Vance’s service, and setting his own record straight. So what’s your point exactly?Report
Are you Kimmi?Report
The Republicans are officially out of material:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/tim-walz-ron-johnson-china-kamala-harris-b2598530.html?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_campaign=IndyUS&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1724084489Report
If only al politicians who do wrong were so willing to plead out:
https://gothamist.com/news/george-santos-guilty-plea-nyReport
I saw him crying about it on TV and I realized I now have compassion fatigue because I was actually angry and may have muttered the letters “F, A, F, O” under my breath.Report
Trump is allegedly on the phone or was on the phone with Netanyahu to tell him to not agree to a ceasefire because a ceasefire helps Harris: https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1825934511038939515?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1825934511038939515%7Ctwgr%5E59f08fffe736995dbba0ee5cfe2166db18501488%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D14385220https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D143852t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20242F082Fwe-will-never-know-if-biden-was-right-to-drop-outt_e%3DWe20Will20Never20Know20if20Biden20Was20Right20to20Drop20Outt_d%3DWe20Will20Never20Know20if20Biden20Was20Right20to20Drop20Outt_t%3DWe20Will20Never20Know20if20Biden20Was20Right20to20Drop20Outs_o%3Ddefaultversion%3D4cca83b0da0691f931ef86061fb7db43Report
When does he get arrested for breaking US law by engaging in foreign diplomacy without jurisdiction to do so?Report
I see no evidence either side is willing to have a ceasefire. Both sides want victory. For that matter both sides seem to think they’re not committing war crimes.
This could easily drag on another year.Report
In different cultures department and hate-reads, some couples apparently are charging invitees to attend their wedding and it is causing a riff: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/16/style/wedding-guest-charge.html#commentsContainer
In the west, there is generally a tradition against cash gifts. In a lot of Asian cultures, cash gifts of a few hundred dollars or more) is usually the norm.Report
What is the point of a wedding?
Is it to join two souls together in holy matrimony?
Is it to give the bride the party she’s been daydreaming about since her first visit to The Magic Kingdom and she laid her eyes upon Cinderella Palace and, let’s face it, the influencers on Insta and Tik Tok have added additional floors, annexes, and extensions to this daydream?
If it’s the former, you should probably have a relatively intimate ordeal in the church/synagogue/mosque nearby and a relatively tasteful reception where you invite a relatively moderate number of friends and relatives where you feed them, you have the father of the bride give a speech that opens with “if I start to cry, that’s because I got the bill”, you do the chicken dance, and you send them home happy.
If it’s the latter, well… Lemme tell ya, that’s a recipe for disaster because even if every single guest ponied up $1k, you’d still end up with a wedding that would stop getting likes about a month after the last honeymoon photo got posted. And then someone might invite you to their own wedding. And she could easily expect you to pony up. Even though you just got married and now money is tight!Report
It’s a complicated question, but I’d say that one point of a wedding is to being the couple together in the sight of the community in holy matrimony. So it’s not just about the couple. Additionally, in most cultures the couple is brought together in the sight of God. But skipping a whole lot of sociology and theology, I’d just say that the phenomenon of destination weddings is making a flat fee look good.Report
If it’s “in the sight of the community” then the wedding should be a somewhat big deal. Get the big church with the big pews and invite *EVERYBODY IN TOWN*. Have a couple of people whose job it is to hold out a hat and collect a fiver from anybody who has an extra.
Get married in front of everybody, have people throw birdseed as the happy couple gets in the car, go home.
The reception, at that point, is consumption for the people involved and a small party for friends and relations. (Maybe you’ll get a toaster out of it.)
“Destination wedding”.
Ugh. I recoil at the thought. “You know what’d be better than getting married with a bunch of our friends there? GOING TO DISNEYWORLD TO GET MARRIED WITH A BUNCH OF OUR FRIENDS THERE!”
My one main story about this is that I had a coworker back in 2002-2003 who had a destination wedding and a dress code that involved wearing white/cream clothing and NO KIDS (beyond the three or four flowergirls and the little ringbearer). So, like, all of the guests wore white/cream and they were up in Wyoming or something and the pictures were absolutely gorgeous and the marriage lasted eight months.Report
I find the whole destination thing to be in somewhat poor taste, or maybe at minimum a recipe for interpersonal drama and bridge burning. Of course people should be free to do it but the right thing is to abandon any expectations on the invitees, including their being able to attend at all. Part of the reason my wife and I kept it local and modest was because our highest priority was to make it as easy as possible for those that wanted to be there. People have become to obsessed with having it all and nothing baffles me more than full grown adults who believe they can.Report
I had a “destination wedding”. The now ex and I flew to an island and got married on the beach. The group consisted of the bride and groom, the photographer, the minister, and the witness (his wife). Pictures took longer than the actual ceremony. Our honeymoon was on the same island.Report
That sounds more like a destination elopement than the stuff I’ve heard about, with a large number of invitees having to decline due to the cost.Report
Yes, technically, it was an elopement. The logistics of having a wedding, even in the states, was problematic due to where our extended family was, and the age of the grand parents. So we eloped. Best decision ever.Report
26 years ago, I told my parents we were going to elope this weekend and with three days to work with they turned it into a hasty church wedding.
Then 6 weeks later we got married again in her church.
We had checked her visa and weren’t sure if she’d be in the country legally in 6 weeks. But it was clear she was legal at the time so if we got married there would be no question about it.Report
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all. My gripe is with couples asking people to spend big sums on travel and lodging, take more than nominal time off, etc. then getting butt hurt when some inevitably can’t make it work. Doesn’t sound like you asked anything like that of anyone.Report
Nope, and I wouldn’t. But I had a bride that didn’t care about the pomp and crap. She just wanted to marry me. A private marriage on the beach followed by a nice quiet dinner was just the ticket.
In fact, after we got back, we sent out announcements that were were marred and where, and specifically asked for “no gifts”. We still got some stuff but most folks had no problem with not buying us stuff, and that was cool with us.Report
I find the idea of charging for attendance obscene but nothing remotely wrong with cash gifts.Report
I was once invited to a wedding party in Japan by the groom, who I had met the same day. I thought he was just being friendly; then I showed up found out that there was a 10,000 yen cover charge. I was later informed (not by the groom) that I got off light and 30,000 is more typical.Report
Utah has requested permission from the Supreme Court to file suit against the federal government over control of the Bureau of Land Management’s holdings in Utah. There are a ton of precedents against what Utah is attempting. OTOH, this SCOTUS has overturned enough precedents that some Constitutional law professors are complaining that they no longer understand what to teach their students.
https://apnews.com/article/utah-public-lands-state-control-lawsuit-6459622b4534dcdd150731c84ed2a7b9Report
I really wish all these states would just secede so we can get this over with.Report
I have to admit that occasionally I have some sympathy. The northern Front Range — between the Palmer Divide on the south and the Cheyenne Ridge on the north — has been declared in serious ongoing violation of EPA’s clean air standards for both ozone and PM2.5. We’ll never be in compliance; smoke from fires burning on BLM and USFS land now put us over the limits for too many days each year.Report
Shifting to state management will likely make that worse, since fire suppression through active management (which BLM and USFS are sometimes funded to do) will go away completely, and states won’t have the interagency fire resources the feds have.Report
Oh, I know that. I just want the BLM, USFS, and EPA to sit down and reach some sort of agreement that says the EPA won’t punish the Front Range for compliance failures that can’t be fixed.Report
you know that’s not how government works . . . .Report
The r@tfu@@ revealed: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/us/politics/robert-kennedy-campaign-future.html
RFK Jr considers dropping out to support Trump. Ah but Trump’s ability to be a dignity wraith should continueReport
How many votes do you think this is likely to change?
I think an estimate of 1% is a little high.Report
The best any third party candidate has done is 5%. Given that third party candidates don’t benefit from test runs in a primary its hard to say what he could do – but in a close election even low single digit percentages are important, as are the funds those candidates have.Report
Note: I’m not asking “how many votes was RFK Jr. going to get”.
I’m asking how many votes RFK Jr.’s endorsement is likely to change.Report
My answer is still applicable.Report
I’m somehow skeptical that Kennedy is running a surplus. But if he is, maybe his funds could be a useful windfall (send it directly to lawyers!).
But what I am not seeing is people inclined to vote for Kennedy in 2024 being moved by a particularly good Kennedy speech to change their vote from Kennedy to Trump.
I see them being moved from “finally, a chance to vote for a Kennedy!” to “welp, back to my old plan of staying home and sniffing glue” and being moved from “Kennedy will do” to “okay, well, next down the list is… Cornell West.”Report
You may not think so, but the Kennedy campaign most definitely thinks that their voters are those who would otherwise vote Trump.Report
Let’s assume 100 Kennedy voters.
Kennedy drops out.
How do those 100 shake out?
While *SOME* of them will vote for Trump, no doubt, others will vote for Harris. Still others will vote for some other 3rd party. Still others will just stay home.
If 35 of the Kennedy voters just stay home/vote for some other 3rd party, 30 vote for Harris, and 35 vote for Trump, yeah, you’ve got a surplus of 5 Trump voters there.
So 5% of Kennedy’s voters will jump to Trump if RFK Jr. drops out and endorses Trump under this thought experiment and Kennedy is running at 3.2%.
So one twentieth of 3.2%.
Now, you may say, “No! I think that it’s more likely to be 50 and 20 and 30!”, then we have one tenth of 3.2%.
Which brings me back to my original comment:
How many votes do you think this is likely to change?
I think an estimate of 1% is a little high.Report
Maybe you’re right.
Maybe the Kennedy campaign doesn’t know anything about their voters.Report
They’re hoping that Trump’s campaign doesn’t know anything about RFK Jr.’s voters.Report
Given Kennedy’s policy proposals, I see very little likelihood his voters go democratic, or other third party. I expect 100% of his voters to go Trump if he drops out and endorses.
One wonders if he had succeeded in getting a cabinet position form Harris (as he was apparently seeking) how this would have played out.Report
Given his policy proposals?
You think that people are hangers-on to the son of Robert Kennedy because of Kennedy’s *POLICY PROPOSALS*?Report
Given Kennedy’s
policy proposalslist of things that he hates and fears…FIFYReport
I’m pretty sure you’re old enough to remember 1992. I’m not saying it’s likely to happen again, but in point of fact a third party candidate has done quite a bit better than 5%, in living memory.Report
Perot is the exception that proves the rule.Report
You sound like a vintage 2020 Bernie Bro. There are many things wrong with every single person mentioned in this story, but there’s nothing wrong with a nonviable candidate dropping out and endorsing his preferred viable candidate in order to avoid splitting the vote. That’s what you’re supposed to do in a first-past-the-post election. It’s how Biden won the primary.Report
That’s exactly the point.
Trump was always Kennedy’s preferred candidate. And now that they realize that they are not splitting the Harris vote and making a Trump win more likely, but in fact the reverse, they are dropping out and endorsing their preferred candidate, Donald Trump.
Because Kennedy supporters like Trump. They prefer Trump. and when it appears their movement endangers a Trump win, they drop out and endorse Trump.
Because they like Trump.
That’s the whole point.Report
Banks are unable to unload the debt/loans they gave to Musk to purchase Twitter: https://gizmodo.com/bankers-have-lost-so-much-money-thanks-to-elons-terrible-twitter-deal-2000489136
“Seven banks loaned Elon Musk money totaling $13 billion in 2022 to help him buy Twitter, now known by the obnoxiously generic name X, and every single one has been unable to offload the debt without incurring “major losses” from the deal, according to the Wall Street Journal. This means the loans are just sitting on the balance sheets of these banks. In fact, the Journal explains that this wasn’t just one of the worst deals since 2008, it’s one of the worst deals of all time.
Musk and other investors brought roughly $30 billion in cash to the table, while the banks supplied the other $13 billion to finalize the purchase. But we now know the people who work at those banks have felt considerable financial pain from agreeing to something so stupid. How much pain? As the Journal tells it, top investment bankers at Barclays were told at a dinner in late 2023 that everyone would be getting at least a 40% pay cut. After everyone got their bonuses for the year, about 50 of the company’s 200 directors left, according to the Journal.”
I’m sure I have a really tiny violin somewhereReport
I need to dig around in my closet and find the sing from my Occupy days:
“JUMP YOU F*CKERS!”Report
So everybody knows that The Acolyte got cancelled. The budget was rumored to be around $180 million for 8 episodes which puts it around $22.5 million/episode (though I’m sure that there were some episodes that were half that and a couple that almost doubled it).
There’s talk of “review bombing”, of course, but the premiere of the season had 444 million minutes watched, 2nd episode fell to 370 million minutes, and 3rd episode fell out of the top ten entirely.
Which is the “bombing” that producers look at.
I feel like if the cow was being fed the right nutrition, it’d be a lot easier to milk.Report
I feel like people keep looking at the cow and thinking its a two hump camel.Report
Well, not enough people looked at the cow this time.Report
Uff da.
Report
No More Acolyte For You, Rebel Scum!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyiHjQXn9RcReport
Inside Out 2 did well!
But I remember Bob Iger’s battle to keep some of the, ahem, “activist shareholders” off of the board from just 4 months ago.
That fight was bitter and Iger won it handily.
But the game is iterated.Report
When you’ve had multiple nine-figure losses, how many iterations do you get?Report
Twelve-figure companies can eat quite a few before they become eleven-figure companies.
But the five-year history of the stock price is *ROUGH*.
Maybe it’s a good time to buy, of course. (A lot depends on Snow White. If Snow White craters, I would *DEFINITELY* buy the dip that follows. If I had any money.)Report
People aren’t going to stop going to Disneyworld.
But they might start saying “eh, maybe I’ll wait for streaming to catch the new Star Wars flick.”
They might start saying “how much cape-fantasy do we really need, anyway?”
They might start saying “for our next big Broadway musical we’ll go with an original property.”
They might start saying “…and the Oscar for Best Animated Film goes to Dreamworks ‘Wild Robot’!””
They might start saying “We’re rebalancing our portfolio, going with more tech stocks and less large-cap entertainment.”Report
New evidence points to the Shroud of Turin to being around 2000 years old.
Jacques de Molay hardest hit.Report
That study was published a couple years ago, and at the time, got a lot of positive press in the various Christian publications, but got hammered in science media for its incredibly improbably assumptions about the environment in which the shroud had been stored for these 2000 years (basically assuming modern climate-controlled temperatures and humidity). There’s a reason pretty much everyone in the relevant areas of social and physical science still believes it to be a medieval fake.Report
Oh, bummer.
Well, at least the Templars are still good.
(Wait, is Harris a member of The Prince Hall Order of the Eastern Star?)Report
In Economic news you should be paying attention to, the two Canadian freight railroads have shut down to prevent strikes against them. This matters south of the border because both own significant trackage in mid America, with CPKC owning track from Canada into Mexico through its acquisition last year of KCS. Current estimates is a 7 day shut down would cost $1Billion in economic activity, and each day of shut down would require a minimum of 3 days to restart.
Read more here – https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/22/business/canadian-railroad-shut-down-hnk-intl/index.htmlReport
Who likes conspiracy theories? I know I do!
Current conspiracy theory is that hiring for ideology rather than technical skill has trade-offs.Report
I guess the Republicans ought not implement Project 2025, which they have totally disavowed, if they get elected.Report
Whatever you do, don’t google Project 2025. It specifically talks about how Heritage wants to *INCREASE* the delays of CES preliminary benchmark announcements!Report
Now this actually could be a conspiracy. There’s an understandable mechanism and a plausible reason. Someone might be paying someone at the BLS to delay the figures and let him get a first look to trade on the early information. At least this makes sense, and things like this have been done before.
At this point, it’s not the way to bet, on the theory that when you hear clattering hooves in a city street it’s more likely horses than zebras. It’s more likely a screw-up than a criminal conspiracy, but that’s certainly a possibility that will be looked into.Report
There is apparently some minor bruhaha about the DNC not letting a Palestinian-American state representative talk at the Convention. Matt Y has some common sense to say about this on X. In the proposed speech, Representative Ruwa:
1. Refers to a kibbutz in Greenline Israel as part of Palestine.
2. Compares to hostages to Hamas to Hamas prisoners in Israel. Normies do not like Hamas and the entire Democratic Convention had a chant about freeing Americans imprisoned by Hamas.
3. Can’t even bring herself to a minor ritual condemnation of Hamas. In fact she seems to have tweeted praises for the October 7th massacre on October 7th.
https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/1826678575887434006?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1826678575887434006%7Ctwgr%5Ecc1e457c75d3b5108ab54af2f826836afa57af67%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D14391620https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D143916t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20242F082Fdnc-kamala-day-open-threadt_e%3DDNC3A20Kamala20Day20open20threadt_d%3DDNC3A20Kamala20Day20open20thread20-20Lawyers2C20Guns202620Moneyt_t%3DDNC3A20Kamala20Day20open20threads_o%3Ddescversion%3D4cca83b0da0691f931ef86061fb7db43Report
Here is Representative Ruwa Romman praising the October 7th massacre on October 7th:
https://x.com/Ruwa4Georgia/status/1710732984586776593?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1710732984586776593%7Ctwgr%5Ecc1e457c75d3b5108ab54af2f826836afa57af67%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D14391620https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D143916t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20242F082Fdnc-kamala-day-open-threadt_e%3DDNC3A20Kamala20Day20open20threadt_d%3DDNC3A20Kamala20Day20open20thread20-20Lawyers2C20Guns202620Moneyt_t%3DDNC3A20Kamala20Day20open20threads_o%3Ddescversion%3D4cca83b0da0691f931ef86061fb7db43Report
When you think about inflation, consider this:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/23/business/realpage-doj-antitrust/index.htmlReport
There are at least two different stories you can tell here:
1. Small landlords face a difficult decision when pricing rental units. If they price above the market-clearing price, they risk losing money due to a long period of vacancy. If they price below the market-clearing price, the unit rents quickly, but they lose money due to renting at a lower price than they could have. Because units priced too high don’t rent until the rents are lowered, and units priced too low do rent as is, there’s a systematic underpricing of the rental units that actually rent. By helping landlords find the market-clearing price, RealPage simultaneously increases rents and reduces vacancies without facilitating monopolistic pricing, which is totally legitimate.
2. RealPage facilitates collusion and monopolistic pricing, increasing rents above the market-clearing level. A telltale sign of this is rising vacancies that can’t be explained by increased supply, since monopolistic pricing reduces the quantity demanded.
#1 is definitely part of what’s going on here, the important question is whether #2 is also happening. Frankly, we’re not seeing strong evidence of an effect on vacancies, at least at the national level. There may be some evidence that it’s pushing up vacancies in locales where it has the highest market penetration, and I have no strong objection to, e.g., prohibiting RealPage from requiring its customers to follow its pricing recommendations, but reducing underpricing improves allocative efficiency and is probably a net social good.
That said, let’s put this in context: Rent of primary residence is 7.6% of the CPI basket (shelter is 36.1%, owner-equivalent rent is 26.8%, and lodging away from home accounts for the other 1.3%). No serious analysis suggests that RealPage is driving rents even 10% above market prices in markets where it has the highest penetration, much less nationally. But let’s say for kicks and giggles that it has increased rent 10% nationally: That’s a less than one percentage point cumulative (not annual) increase in the overall CPI.
Is it a problem? Maybe, but in the grand scheme of things it’s a sideshow. It does not absolve the Federal Reserve, Congress, and the President of responsibility for overstimulating the economy, and it does not absolve local governments of responsibility for restricting the development of new housing supply over the past decade. These are the real cause of excess general and housing-specific inflation.
I laid out the evidence last week that the increase in nominal consumer purchasing power is sufficient explains the entire increase in consumer prices since 2019. It’s unfortunate that it went over your head and you’re still looking for scapegoats.Report
Hey! This comment didn’t get kicked to moderation for having more than one link.Report
The issue (as with residential-real-estate builders) is that some people have a religious devotion to the idea that it’s genuinely a matter of life or death to be Housed, and therefore if you do something to make a Profit off of that (as opposed to bare recovery of cost) then you’re exploiting humans’ desire to stay alive. And so obviously profiting off of real-estate (either as a builder or a landlord) is a moral transgression.
So while the legal basis for the action is collusion to fix prices, it doesn’t actually matter to the people involved whether price-fixing is actually happening, because the fact that it could happen is enough; that means you could sin, that every possible opportunity to stamp out sin has not been taken, and therefore they can get another stop in their Holy Crusade.Report
Right, because large, oligarchic and/or monopolistic corporations have LESS economic influence in our restricted market economy then the government – though it’s nice to see you spreading the blame around a bit there.Report
The Free Speech Warrior, everyone:
Lawyers representing Elon Musk and X, previously known as Twitter, have quietly begun sending subpoenas to a host of public interest groups, Mother Jones has learned. Most of the targeted organizations have signed open letters to X’s advertisers expressing concerns about the platform’s direction under Musk’s leadership.
…
One of the letters was sent in May 2022 to express concern about Musk’s plan to take over Twitter, and was spearheaded by Media Matters alongside the big tech watchdog group Accountable Tech and the women’s rights nonprofit Ultraviolet. The other, from a coalition calling itself Stop Toxic Twitter, was sent to the platform’s top ad-buyers in November 2022; Media Matters was one of its lead signatories. Media Matters and their legal counsel declined to comment. Twitter, which no longer responds to requests for comment, could not be reached.
FAIR, for the record, had not signed either letter, but had written about X’s lawsuit targeting Media Matters, calling it an attack on free speech. “If a blog post is evidence of collaboration, that’s a stance that’s somewhat hostile to the First Amendment,” Naureckas dryly says.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/08/twitter-x-subpoenas-elon-musk/
I wonder if Musk knows that the Ordinary Times blog has held numerous discussions about his purchase of Twitter- Who would he send the subpoena to?
And has anyone heard from Matt Taibbi?Report
Related:
World Bank halts paid advertising on X after CBS News finds its promoted ad under racist content
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/world-bank-advertising-elon-musk-x-racism-pro-nazi-accounts/
The World Bank has ceased all paid advertising on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, which was formerly Twitter, after a CBS News investigation found promoted advertisements from the organization showing up under a racist post from an account that prolifically posts pro-Nazi and white nationalist content.
CBS News found a verified X account with more than 115,000 followers that had posted a racist image alongside a post praising Europe’s colonization of Africa. CBS News is not publicly identifying the accounts spreading racist content on X.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/world-bank-advertising-elon-musk-x-racism-pro-nazi-accounts/
Maybe Musk can sue CBS and the World Bank.Report
Al Jazeera is reporting that Israel has destroyed the 700 year old Grand Mosque in Gaza (and they are claiming that there’s footage of soldiers burning the Koran housed there first).
Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, I guess.
(Also, to be Islamophobic, you need privilege + power so it doesn’t apply here.)Report