DL Open Thread: Saturday, September 14, 2024
Send Those Haitians Back To–Venezuela. You don’t even need to read the article to know who said it:
“We will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio, large deportations. We’re going to get these people out. We’re bringing them back to Venezuela,” he said. It’s unclear if he meant to say Venezuela.
True. Could be he just had an election-denying strongman on his mind. Riding a horse.
Devin Nunes, North Macedonia And Truth Social. Absolute corruption corrupts absolutely:
Earlier this summer, Devin Nunes, the CEO of Trump Media and a former California congressman, touched down just outside Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia.
He and a small group of other North American executives were there to talk business. But they weren’t there to meet with representatives from another company. A high-ranking official from the Macedonian government greeted them on the tarmac outside their private jet. Then a police escort ferried them from the airport. They were there to meet with the Balkan nation’s newly elected prime minister.
At the time, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski, the leader of the country’s conservative nationalist party, offered little in the way of specifics about the meeting’s purpose: “For now, I would not reveal this type of details,” he told local reporters in the Balkans who covered the meeting at the time.
In a recent earnings call, Chris Pavlovski, who accompanied Nunes on the trip and who is the CEO of Rumble, a video streaming company and close partner of Trump Media, revealed that he had discussed a cloud technology services deal with the Macedonian government.
I dunno. North Macedonia sure seems like a step down from, you know, Russia.
Concussions And Football: A feature, not a bug:
In Thursday night’s NFL game between the Miami Dolphins and Buffalo Bills, Miami’s $212m quarterback Tua Tagovailoa suffered his fourth documented concussion, and third since joining the NFL, after colliding with defensive back Damar Hamlin, who himself nearly died in a game less than two years ago. The reactions from inside the football world were immediate and telling.
But as well-intentioned as those pleas are, they should not be the predominant takeaway from this event.
The fact we all need to confront in the aftermath of yet another spectacle of egregious harm is that this sport is profoundly and irredeemably unsafe. It has already killed or transformed the lives of far too many participants. There is no plausible deniability about the consequences. This is not the time to deploy personal responsibility narratives around what the right ‘choice’ is for Tua Tagovailoa, who seven weeks ago signed a team-record contract extension. He is currently simply the most visible representation of the harm this sport inflicts on everyone who participates.
Every 2.6 years of participation in tackle football doubles the chances of contracting CTE and kids start playing this sport at five years old. Concussions are the most extreme manifestation of the problem, but they are not the only one. For members of the offensive and defensive lines especially, constant head contact is an inextricable part of the game as it is currently conceived, and it is that contact that leads to brain deterioration. (Finally, an explanation for John Carney’s incuriosity that makes sense. But, I digress…)
The fact that people are worried about the health and wellbeing of Tua Tagovailoa is only a good thing. We need to be humane towards the athletes whose sacrificial labor sustains our emotional investments in sports fandom, and expressing fear on his behalf – much as people did after watching Damar Hamilin lie on the field after his heart stopped – is precisely the appropriate response.
But we cannot fool ourselves into thinking Tagovailoa or Hamlin are and tragic rare exceptions. They are simply the visible consequences of the toll that tackle football takes on all who participate.
Another NFL Sunday beckons. Every week, several players end up in ‘concussion protocol’. They have to clear said protocol to go out there and risk being concussed again. Still, their brains will never be the same.
Reports Held Hostage. Neither Anthony Albence nor Lydia York released reports that could be potentially damaging to Bethany Hall Long this week. They have them and they are sitting on them. Might I remind both officials that BHL is still a duly-elected official, sitting on something like a $250 mill Opioid Slush Fund? She can do a lot of damage in her remaining days in office, you can help prevent that, yet you persist in running interference for her. You know she’s crooked, you have the goods to prove it, she no longer poses a threat to either of you. How about doing the right thing? For once.
Which reminds me—Our Pal Val is still the Speaker Of The House until Election Day. Can some people in that Caucus put a lock box on the House finances until she’s out of there? I’m serious. Oh, and can those same somebodies stop her from firing anybody else before November? Mimi, ya wanna be Speaker? Then stop being Our PAL Val’s lackey, and step up.
What do you want to talk about?
I’m again seeing comments in the Trash folder that we didn’t trash.
We don’t automatically post them because it’s possible that the poster thought better of it, and trashed it.
If you think something has been trashed in error, drop a note on the tip line, and we’ll rescue it.
We really don’t need Mimi as speaker. Nor Kerri. They’ve disqualified themselves in my view. They’re simply not who they pretended to be but luckily they revealed themselves through their fealty to our humiliated white rose queen and their further fealty to the abomination that was Bethany hall longs campaign for governor. If the House wants to do meaningful things then they should probably pick leadership that didn’t spend the past year involved with people who lied about sexual harassment and other nasty, untrue things. I know Betsy’s little soldier came here to defend a grown man for being someone’s child. Doesn’t make them a child. That said – I heard very little in defense of other family members involved in the race that didn’t happen to be a part of the very broken party machine. Funny how that happens.
No thanks. We can do better.
Honestly WFP should just print out a list of people who endorsed Bethany and let’s start crossing them off one by one in future primaries.
Mimi endorsed Dave McBride against Marie Pinkney back in 2020, even cut a promo for him. She went down and campaigned for Bill Bush against Monica Shockley Porter this cycle, and, of course, endorsed Val.
Her leadership position is solely a byproduct of her support for Val, and she has demonstrated an affinity for the white overdogs.
Certainly wouldn’t be my choice.
👍🏻
There’s more. Mimi ‘inherited’ the Underwater City At Ft. DuPont from Val, who got out of Delaware City ahead of the voters running her out.
Was her leadership position contingent on continued support for this boondoggle? Will she continue to push throwing good money after bad at this money pot?
I assume I’m the little soldier in this cryptic pile of bullshit. What child of a public figure did I not defend. Like me or hate me, I try very hard to be consistent.
And whether a person is a full grown adult or not, doesn’t have any impact on a) whether they are someone’s kid (mine are in their 20s, but they are still my kids) and b) whether this blog opens itself up to legal action by discussing and misrepresenting a person that is not covered by being a public person (especially a lawyer who is the child of two lawyers).
Albence is holding onto another report? What is it?
It details the, um, inadequacies of her, um, amended reports.