INTERNATIONAL ASTEROID DAY UPDATES
I Know, There’s A Joke About Asteroids and Last Thursday, but I’m Not Making It …
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-The reverberations after the first Presidential “debate” on Thursday are still ringing, but in somewhat different ways. The loudest clanging seems to be coming from Democrats with connections to various pundits who continue to feed reporters BIDEN B DOOMED stories throughout the weekend – albeit not without significant pushback and some actual data that seems to indicate the din of doom is … not what’s actually going on.
-One need not look further for the BIDEN B DOOMED flip-out than the Gray Lady herself, the New York Times – who, it must be pointed out, have consciously been publishing BIDEN B OLD stories ever since Biden denied them an exclusive interview. A day after virtually every one of their “liberal” columnists declared the Biden candidacy deader than dead after Thursday’s debate, the Editorial Board came out with an editorial that called on Biden to step down and end his campaign.
-Virtually immediately, non-New York Times commentators and social media savaged the board, noting with righteous anger that while NYT demanded Biden leave after one bad debate, at no point had that same board ever so much as suggested Biden’s predecessor step down from a campaign or Presidency despite the record of criminality, incompetence, shame and threat that characterized the reign of Convicted Felon Ex-President Trump. That vacuum was filled brilliantly by the editors of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who responded to the NYT op-ed with an op-ed of their own in which, semi-parodyzing the language of the Times editorial, they wrote that “The only person who should withdraw from this race is Trump,” adding “Trump, 78, has been on the political stage for eight years marked by chaos, corruption, and incivility. Why go back to that?”
-Apparently not wanting to be outdone, NBC News, in a story authored by five ‘reporters’ including The Woman Who Astonishingly Makes Us Miss Chuck Todd, Kristin Welker, deeply intoned that the Biden family would “turn to his family on his path forward,” clearly trying to imply they would urge Biden to drop out. The problem, as the second paragraph of the story did note and the Biden campaign forcefully re-enforced, was that the ‘meeting’ in question was really an Independence Day summer reunion of sorts that was planned several weeks ago – and that there were absolutely no plans for Biden to step aside.
-That was re-enforced by the roster of surrogates on this morning’s Sunday talk show circuit saying the same thing – among them Nancy Pelosi, James Clybourn, Hakeem Jeffries, Rafael Warnock, and Chris Coons – as they the airwaves to not shirk from Biden’s Thursday performance but assure the Democratic non-consultant class that Biden was in it for the duration.
-And if we look at those odd people the consultants and pundits refer to as “voters,” there does seem to be evidence that Thursday did not implode the Biden campaign. “Y’all keep handwringing while I sit here in the corner counting!” posted DNC Chair Jamie Harrison this morning as he happily reported that the Democrats had raised over $33 million in donations since just before the start of the debate – 2/3 from small donors, 1/3 from donors kicking in to the campaign for the first time.
-Data that continues to trickle in from different polling – including Morning Consult and YouGov/CBS – indicate that little movement has been detected in the polling averages other than a slight uptick for Biden since Friday. And the raw numbers suggest the reaction to Thursday was overblown, seeing as only 49 million people watched all or part of the debate, which is the lowest viewership for a Presidential debate in the 21st Century.
-Because, when one looks at what Trump and the Trump campaign has done since Thursday, the word that seems to come to mind is one of the same words used to describe Biden: lethargic. True, some in the Trump campaign reported they were happy to see Democrats self-flagellate, but in the only appearances Trump made since Thursday, his speeches were not full of any kind of vigor or even venom. He went on two half-hearted appearances on Friday, and the biggest thing to have happened was a ramble in Virginia in which Trump decided to rant about one of his favorite subjects to rant about and ACTUALLY SAID THIS: “All they know is electric. They want electric army tanks. They want electric planes. What happens if the sun isn’t shining while you’re up in the air?”
-Also, Trump defecated himself on Thursday night completing a non-answer about the opioid crisis while talking about tariffs. Never forget …
-But please … do go on about Biden’s cognitive skills …
-While we wait for votes to be cast in this country, in France the first round of their snap elections are taking place now, with early turnout appearing to be the largest since at least 2012. This is believed to be very good news for political parties hoping to stop the spike of voting that far-right National Front candidates got earlier this Spring, which in turn prompted French President Emanuel Macron to call the general election. The hope was to isolate and galvanize anti-far-right forces, and while the raw numbers do likely indicate a pushback to the NF, the volume of voting may create three-way runoff elections which raise the spectre of split ballots that could let NF candidates a way into power. Runoffs will be in one week, after the British election on July 4.
-In THAT election, there DOES appear to be an implosion about to take place: the implosion of the Conservative Party after 14 years of rule. Polling is so bad that some Tories have reported they fear what they are calling “an extinction-level result,” with some betting houses thinking they may go down to as low as 100 seats in Parliament. It is also so bad that The Financial Times this morning endorsed Labour and its leader and would-be Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, solemnly writing that “This generation of Tories has squandered its reputation as the party of business.”
-And yes, at least one columnist has tried to use the potential doom of Rishi Sunak as a warning … for Joe Biden.
-Meanwhile, tomorrow at long last the Supreme Court will issue its opinion on whether it believes Trump has Immortal Powers that absolve him of consequence for literally anything he did while President. Given the spate of rulings from last week, expectations are extremely low that a Court with at least two spouses who openly participated in the January 6 insurrection will not find a way to protect Trump from the charges and a full trial before Election Day.
-That said, the expected ruling – that Presidents don’t have immunity but it is “unclear” whether what Trump did in the run-up to his attempted coup were official Presidential actions or not (EYEROLL) – may wind up opening a window for voters anyway. A ruling along these lines will mean a hearing would have to be made on what the expected Trump argument would be: that what he did were official Presidential acts and therefore hunky dory. If that happens, reports indicate trial Judge Tanya Chutkan will be ready to quickly schedule what is being called a “mini-trial” – one in which Special Prosecutor Jack Smith would be given the ability to present all the evidence he has, and importantly, to do so in a public venue, allowing voters to see what Smith wants to do and Trump and SCOTUS (perhaps?) would be stalling.
-Tomorrow’s update will be posted after the ruling to get reports on what the ruling means, whatever it is.
-Speaking of court rulings, we pivot and close with SportsBall News, where if you did not hear, the NFL was judged by a jury in Los Angeles to have given DirecTV an unfair monopoly with its Sunday Ticket satellite television package, and was fined a whopping $4.8 billion dollars – a cost that under Federal law spikes up to a staggering-even-for-the-NFL $14.39 billion. That would put each franchise on the hook for around $450M, and What This Means for your favorite NFL team could include a throttling of raises to the NFL salary cap and subsequent cuts to salaries and stars, though not really any changes to other packages, as YouTubeTV has picked up rights to the NFL amid reports it will be rolling out an a la carte package to allow individual games to be screened rather than all NFL games as a whole (which was indeed one of the arguments that led to the judgment in this case).
-HAPPY PRIDE for all celebrating!
- On this date in 1934, Adolph Hitler ordered SS troops to round up and execute members of a rival Nazi paramilitary group in what became known as The Night of the Long Knives. On this date in 2015, Misty Copeland became the first Black principal dancer of the American Ballet Theatre. And on this date in 2019, Trump met one of his boos, North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-Un, on North Korean soil (the first for an American leader).
-Debuts on this date: traversing over Niagara Falls via tightrope (1859), the Theory of Relativity (1905), GONE WITH THE WIND (1936), an emergency telephone number (999, in 1937), Superman (1938), the Chevy Corvette (1953), Zaire (1960), the National Organization for Women (1966), “Good Times” (1979), DO THE RIGHT THING (1989), “End of the Road” (1992).
-Happy Birthday to Czeslaw Milosz, Lena Horne, Susan Hayward, Pat McCormick, Orval Tessier, Harry Blackstone Jr., Eleanor Smeal, Florence Ballard, Stanley Clarke, David Alan Grier, Vincent D’Onofrio, Yngwie Malmsteen, Philip Anselmo, Matisyahu, Fantasia Barrino, Michael Phelps, and Joe Mazzulla.
-Rest in Peace/Rest in Power to Alberta King, Mary Livingstone, Lillian Hellman, Spanky McFarland, Gale Gordon, Albus Dumbledore, Chet Atkins, Buddy Hackett, Robert McCloskey, Christopher Fry, Harve Presnell, Pina Bausch, Yitzhak Shamir, and Paul Mazursky.
-Feed the Worms: Presidential assassin Charles Guiteau bought it on this date.
-Mike Tyson was born on this date. You decide if he gets a Happy Birthday or if he Feeds the Worms.
-The Number One Song in America on this date … in 2024, “Please Please Please” by Sabrina Carpenter … in 2014, “Fancy” by Iggy Azalea featuring Charli XCX … in 2004, “Burn” by Usher … in 1994, “I Swear” by All-4-One … in 1984, “The Reflex” by Duran Duran … and in 1974, “Sundown” by Gordon Lightfoot.