If It’s Not One Thing It’s Another

From this

Helene Live Updates: Southeast reels from deadly storm damage and heavy flooding (nbcnews.com)

  • At least 125 people have died as a result of the devastation Hurricane Helene has brought to Southeastern states, including dozens in flood-stricken North Carolina.
  • Entire communities are under feet of water in western North Carolina — at least 40 are dead in Buncombe County, which contains Asheville.
  • Helene made landfall in Florida last Thursday as a powerful Category 4 storm with winds of more than 100 mph — its remnants are dropping moderate to heavy rain in the Mid-Atlantic, with a risk of flash flooding.
  • Power is slowly being restored to affected areas, but more than 1.5 million energy customers are still in the dark.

to this

Major Longshoremen Strike Hits East Coast Ports (msn.com)

It’s unclear how long the strike will last and how expensive it will be, but a prolonged shutdown could deal a significant blow to the economy since the workers who handle shipping containers control major commercial choke points.

The showdown also presents a political problem for President Joe Biden, who has the power to suspend the strike. Doing so would take away workers’ leverage and could hurt the union-friendly president’s relationship with organized labor.

These people today don’t know what a strike is. … In today’s world, I’ll cripple you. I will cripple you, and you have no idea what that means.Harold Daggett, ILA president

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76 thoughts on “If It’s Not One Thing It’s Another”

  2. on other topics

    An asteroid is acting as Earth’s mini moon for the next two months, vice presidential candidate Tim Walz is reportedly nervous ahead of Tuesday’s debate, and former president Donald Trump proposed fighting crime by directing police to rough people up for one nasty, violent day.

  4. debate debates
    here’s ms petri’s Opinion | Live, on-air fact-checking? That was so last month. – The Washington Post

    I am so glad they learned their lesson after the last debate and will not be offering live, on-air fact-checking for the vice-presidential debate.
    First, because there is no such thing as fact. Objective reality doesn’t exist! We all live in a cave grasping at shadows, with no ability to tell truth from falsehood. A televised debate between two people vying to be one heartbeat away from the presidency is no time to try any funny business by implying that, actually, some things are true and others aren’t. No, sir! That would be obvious media bias. Who are you, the Pope? And even the Pope is only right when he sits in a certain chair. Are you in that chair?
    The question is not, who is right. The question is, who is persuasive?
    The only job of the media is to make certain that everyone gets to go on TV and have fun! This is also why all the media outlets keep losing money. They keep sending reporters places to find out information, instead of just letting people talk, and then writing down verbatim what they said, without comment, as they ought to do. Fortunately, artificial intelligence will replace us all soon!
    No, this is good for the media to understand. If you bothered to learn anything about the reality you inhabit, the polite thing to do is keep it to yourself. Especially if a candidate for high office is speaking!
    It is good that there won’t be live, on-air fact-checking, because if someone tells a lie convincingly, maybe that’s actually better than saying something that isn’t a lie. Maybe that’s not lying! It’s storytelling, and should be rewarded. Who has created a nicer story for you? That’s the real question! Why, creating stories is something JD Vance prides himself on doing. And if his opponent can’t counteract it with better storytelling, maybe that’s their problem! If a lie is getting around the world while the truth is still tying its shoelaces, have we considered the possibility that this is the truth’s fault for wearing the wrong shoes?
    We don’t all occupy a shared reality, and it would be rude to try to force people into one even for two hours. As everyone knows, we live in a beautiful multiverse, where dozens of contradictory things can be true at once. There are at least three Spider-Men, and five lights! Or as many lights as you want!
    If Donald Trump went off the rails ranting about people eating dogs and cats, and Kamala Harris did not do that, the important thing is that they both talked for a period of time, and that means that both deserve to be fact-checked for an equal period of time. That’s the fairness doctrine, I think.
    Should a person be fact-checked more just for saying more ridiculous things? No. That would be unfair.
    Imagine how unfair it would be if you carried an umbrella only on days when it was raining. Why, people might think that it rained on some days and not on others! And it would be your fault for making them think that, by wielding your umbrella in such a pointed way.
    Or imagine that you said, “Stop pulling Eli’s hair!” to the toddler pulling Eli’s hair and nothing to Eli, instead of saying, “Stop pulling Eli’s hair!” to both of them. This would show horrible bias on your part. Either yell at both toddlers or say nothing at all. That’s fairness. I know this because I’m a parent!
    Imagine, if you will, that you had two unlike things. No! I must stop you. Do not imagine that; it is impossible; that would be bias on your part, to dare to suggest that there was a difference between things. No! This is not the time. Not this election year. Not ever.

  5. Quite the contrast. One acted like a president, the other a lying loser…

    CBS Evening News @CBSEveningNews

    Hurricane Helene has disrupted presidential campaigns, with Vice President Kamala Harris returning to Washington for briefings and former President Donald Trump touring storm-hit Valdosta, Georgia, where he falsely claimed the governor couldn’t reach President Biden. Gov. Brian Kemp and Biden spoke over the weekend.

  7. happy hundredth, Jimmy!

    Thousands of kids made cards for Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday. See some of the best ones – CNN

    In honor of his birthday, more than 4,000 students from coast to coast got creative and sent hand-drawn birthday cards to celebrate the former president.

    The effort is part of the annual Peanut Festival Postcard Contest, a competition started nearly 15 years ago by the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park in Plains. The contest not only pays tribute to Carter’s political legacy and humanitarian work but also shines a spotlight on peanuts’ role in Georgia’s economy and history through art.

    [continues]

  8. I wonder if Walz should lean into climate change tonight. Vance used to believe it was real, until the oil industry funded his Senate campaign. This hurricane, and so much else, might be a tipping point for climate change becoming a mainstream issue. Even ultra conservative Rick Scott is a post-Helene convert.

  9. Well, get ready for prices on everything that enters our economy by ship to skyrocket. Joe needs to get engaged and get the longshoremen’s strike over. It could be the October surprise that turns the tide of the election down a dark side street. 

  10. Poobah, I can’t imagine the issue of climate change won’t come up. I think calling out CS’s lies about the Biden/Harris policies would be a good approach, but he’ll have to have the facts straight to confront JDouché’s lies about them. 

  14. About the port strike, I’m sure Joe will fix it. Whatever it is — diaper shortages, supply chain disruptions, vaccine distribution, on and on — Joe fixes it. But competence is tough to campaign on. We forget what it was like to have an administration that didn’t fix anything, that just tells lies until a million people die in a pandemic.

  15. Climate “weirding”

    Don Cheadle, a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Goodwill Ambassador

  17. Understand that while the head of the union sounds like a mobster extorting money, the workers are fighting for their livelihoods. 
    Automation will cost jobs.  That should mean owners have more to pay remaining workers, but no.   
    A strike now, while we need a supply line to the storm impact area is heartless.   
    Less CEO and upper management pay, more to those doing the work, and only add automation if it helps workers instead of replaces them.

  19. https://apnews.com/article/congress-spending-bill-speaker-johnson-shutdown-7917f589502c40d4815f1b9583d3fa23

    “House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., billed the measure as doing “only what’s absolutely necessary,” a statement directed at members of his own conference concerned about spending levels.”

    “Still, it was a no-go for some Republicans, which forced House GOP leadership to rely on Democratic votes to pass the bill through a process that requires at least two-thirds support from voting members. The final vote was 341-82, with Republicans supplying all the no votes in both chambers. Johnson said the only alternative to the continuing resolution at this stage would have been a government shutdown.”

    Democrats spared us from a government shutdown, too.     Hmmm, red states really need government funding right now, and the MAGAts couldn’t get themselves to do the right thing…and while there’s a devastating weather event.

  20. Surprise PA numbers this AM from GOP pollster Fabrizo/Impact Research
    🔵 Harris: 50%
    🔴 Trump: 47%
    Previous poll was Trump+5
    (1,398 LikelyVoters, Margin of Error +/-4)

  21. My concern re: the strike is not Joe’s competence – I’m confident of that, but that won’t be the message.  My concern is the effect strikes in the supply chain have on prices of everything that moves in a shipping container to Walmart or on a ship deck (think Toyota here). We live in a retail environment that relies on “just in time” inventory, so disruptions of delivery chains have a very quick effect on prices. If the Teamsters strike in support of the longshoremen we’ll be screwed badly.

  22. I’m only now catching up.

    Determined to thwart the automating of their jobs, about 45,000 dockworkers along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts are threatening to strike on Oct. 1, a move that would shut down ports that handle about half the nation’s cargo from ships. 
    The International Longshoremen’s Union is demanding significantly higher wages and a total ban on the automation of cranes, gates and container movements that are used in the loading or loading of freight at 36 U.S. ports. Whenever and however the dispute is resolved, it’s likely to affect how freight moves in and out of the United States for years to come.
    If a strike were resolved within a few weeks, consumers probably wouldn’t notice any major shortages of retail goods. But a strike that persists for more than a month would likely cause a shortage of some consumer products, although most holiday retail goods have already arrived from overseas. A prolonged strike would almost certainly hurt the U.S. economy. Even a brief strike would cause disruptions. Heavier vehicular traffic would be likely at key points around the country as cargo was diverted to West Coast ports, where workers belong to a different union not involved in the strike. And once the longshoremen’s union eventually returned to work, a ship backlog would likely result. For every day of a port strike, experts say it takes four to six days to clear it up. The longshoremen’s union and the United States Maritime Alliance, which represents the ports, haven’t met to negotiate since June, when the union said it suspended national talks to first complete local port agreements. No further national contract talks have been scheduled. Harold Daggett, the union president, warned earlier this month that the longshoremen stood ready to strike once their contract expires on Sept. 30.
    “We are very far apart,” Daggett said. “Mark my words, we’ll shut them down Oct. 1 if we don’t get the kind of wages we deserve.”
    Top-scale port workers now earn a base pay of $39 an hour, or just over $81,000 a year. But with overtime and other benefits, some can make in excess of $200,000 annually. Neither the union nor the ports would discuss pay levels. But a 2019-2020 report by the Waterfront Commission, which oversees New York Harbor, said about a third of the longshoremen based there made $200,000 or more.
    Daggett contends, though, that higher-paid longshoremen work up to 100 hours a week, most of it overtime, and sacrifice much of their family time in doing so.
    The Maritime Alliance has said it’s committed to resuming talks and avoiding the first national longshoremen’s strike since 1977. It has accused the union of having already decided in advance to walk off the job.
    “We need to sit down and negotiate a new agreement that avoids an unnecessary and costly strike that will be detrimental to both sides,” the alliance said in a statement.
    In the case of a short-lived strike, industry experts say consumers wouldn’t likely notice shortages of store goods during the holiday shopping season. Most retailers had goods transported ahead of the usual pre-holiday shipping season, and they’re already stored in warehouses.
    “It would be an inconvenience, but it’s not going to be ‘Santa’s not showing up,’ ” said Jonathan Chappell, senior managing director of transportation at Evercore ISI, an investment research firm…
    The longshoreman’s union, Nolan suggested, commands some leverage going into a presidential election, with memories still fresh of jammed ports and clogged supply chains that followed the pandemic recession. Unions also have drawn support this year from political candidates who have been courting the labor vote.
    If a strike were to extend beyond a month or so, spot shortages of goods could develop. Some manufacturers could run short of parts, notably in the auto and pharmaceutical industries, which generally don’t stock large parts inventories. Exports of autos and other goods that move through the East Coast also could be affected.
    Most analysts don’t expect President Joe Biden to intervene, as he and Congress did to head off a railroad strike in 2022, at least not before the Nov. 5 presidential election. Robinson, of the logistics firm C.H. Robinson, noted that the administration cannot legally impose a contract on the dockworkers before a strike. But if a strike were deemed to endanger national health or safety, Ginter said, Biden could, under the Taft-Hartley Act, seek a court order for an 80-day cooling-off period. This would suspend the strike…

    https://apnews.com/article/longshoremen-strike-pay-automation-ports-jobs-consumers-3aa66e0a05db25a49645fad404a5f000

  23. Happy Birthday to Jimmy. I got to meet him once at a Habitat for Humanity board meeting. It was a long time ago but I’ll always remember it. 

  25. Among Jimmy’s several books on my shelf, one is autographed and inscribed to me, a keepsake. Also enjoyed reading his novel of the Revolutionary War. 
     

    The first work of fiction by a President of the United States—a sweeping novel of the American South and the War of Independence.In his ambitious and deeply rewarding novel, Jimmy Carter brings to life the Revolutionary War as it was fought in the Deep South; it is a saga that will change the way we think about the conflict. He reminds us that much of the fight for independence took place in that region and that it was a struggle of both great and small battles and of terrible brutality, with neighbor turned against neighbor, the Indians’ support sought by both sides, and no quarter asked or given. The Hornet’s Nest follows a cast of characters and their loved ones on both sides of this violent conflict—including some who are based on the author’s ancestors.At the heart of the story is Ethan Pratt, who in 1766 moves with his wife, Epsey, from Philadelphia to North Carolina and then to Georgia in 1771, in the company of Quakers. On their homesteads in Georgia, Ethan and his wife form a friendship with neighbors Kindred Morris and his wife, Mavis. Through Kindred and his young Indian friend Newota, Ethan learns about the frontier and the Native American tribes who are being continually pressed farther inland by settlers. As the eight-year war develops, Ethan and Kindred find themselves in life-and-death combat with opposing forces.With its moving love story, vivid action, and the suspense of a war fought with increasing ferocity and stealth, The Hornet’s Nest is historical fiction at its best, in the tradition of such major classics as The Last of the Mohicans.

    https://www.amazon.com/Hornets-Nest-Novel-Revolutionary-War/dp/0743255445

  26. from a friend…

    “Lots of tributes in the news today.

    Here’s a photo of the last time I was with him….15 years ago. We built a village in Cambodia called New Hope to house the poorest of the poor who were living in the Phnom Penh landfill. What was amazing is the Cambodian government treated him like a head of state with all the pomp and circumstance. He was a bit taken back. He was there to build houses, not put on a show.

    Happy Birthday Jimmy Carter”

  28. I think the campaign should tell North Carolina field staff to suspend canvassing for a week, put on their Harris-Walz t-shirts and go volunteer to help relief efforts however they can

  29. Craig,  not sure she could even reach some of that staff let alone tell them to just concentrate on saving themselves and not her.   see this excerpt from an august story at Harris-Walz campaign launches offices in rural NC • NC Newsline

    Currently, there are 20 offices for the campaign across North Carolina. Six more will open next week in key rural counties, such as Wayne, Wilson, Burke, Henderson, and Lenoir counties. In addition to Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, these offices are dedicated to electing Democrats down the ballot as well.

    This marks a historic investment in rural North Carolina communities, according to the campaign. Wayne, Wilson, Henderson, and Lenoir counties have seen a shift towards Democrats since 2004. Other offices will serve rural communities like Alamance and Johnston counties.

    Nearly 12,000 new volunteers have signed up since Harris entered the presidential race.

    I bet Walz will put in some concerned words about them tonight.

     

    BTW, thanks for the kudo.  given all the rumors about what JD is digging up to throw at Tim tonight, maybe tomorrow’s thread should be titled “At least he wasn’t called Hitler”

  30. JD’s personal attacks will just be an effort to distract from Project 2025.   

    Tim knows what those attacks will be; he should have stock answers for them, and immediately segue into what the American people care about…which is themselves and what’s happening in their backyard.  

    Pete Buttegeig did debate prep with Tim, so I’m sure they’ve got it covered.
     
    JD will come off as mean, hypocritical, and off-putting.   

    Tim will be approachable but serious, and like one of us.  

    Will the wives be there to congratulate their husbands at the end? Is Usha allowed to be seen with him in public?  

    Sure wish CBS would employ good journalism and do live face-checking.  Are they in the bag for the fascists? What, they couldn’t take a little guff from Adolf like ABC did when they told him that there was no eating of “dawgz” by Haitian-uh-Venezuelans. 

    At least call JD out for admitting he makes up shit whenever it’s handy, including his former opinion of the orange guy, and ask why he thinks anyone would trust him.

    Also, ask him about his relationship to his billionaire benefactor, Thiel. Yeah, CBS is too scared to do that; they probably have ties to Thiel’s money, too.

  31. Blaze Media has infiltrated my in-box. Based on my quick perusal before consigning it to Junk, they have nothing but recycled attacks against Tim Walz. No new stuff. 

  32. Must remember tonight Trump is the oldest nominee ever, so if elected JD Vance is the likeliest on stage to become president, either by natural succession or the 25th Amendment. Let that sink in.

  36. Did the grocery shopping yesterday.  Feel like checking out prices tomorrow to see if they are price gouging (even more) already, even though inventory isn’t impacted yet.  President Biden needs to put out a statement/warning to companies planning to profit from the strike.  
    Tim Walz needs to mention that if he has a chance, too. 

  38. Craig: Blaze is one of the outlets in the recent DOJ indictment alleging they got Russian money and propaganda.

     
    Yikes! Didn’t know that. Thanks, Craig. Going straight to junk file if they show up again. 

  39. The Jimmy Carter book I have inscribed is – ironically today – the first edition first printing of The Blood of Abraham, Insights into the Middle East. 

  41. The oldest nominee ever…natural succession, 25th amendment, or perhaps just a gentle push from a very high window, eh?

  42. Yep, they don’t plan on keeping him around.  He’ll just be in the way.  Hope his paranoia about that sets in soon.   That’ll be fun to watch. 

  43. Trump’s supporters will tell you that they appreciate this ability to articulate their values. Maybe they didn’t like Vance at first, but now they believe that he is smart. He brings a wholesome substance to their movement, like a bowl of leafy greens before the red-meat entrée. “He balances Trump out,” Diane Ernest, a retiree from Southampton, Pennsylvania, told me at a Vance event on Saturday in Bucks County. “He’s a good speaker, and he doesn’t run off—just gets right to the facts.”
    “In the beginning, I wondered why Trump picked Vance,” 77-year-old Carol Cavanaugh told me at the same event. But she gets it now. Unlike Trump, “Vance keeps his composure,” she said. She’s proud that Trump “went out of his comfort zone and didn’t pick someone just like him.” For voters like these, the symbiotic relationship makes the two men stronger.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/vance-fans-trump-debate/680091/

  45. No matter how many times Tim has actually been to China, or when was there, I care more about Project 2025 and its blueprint for destroying our democracy.  I care more about the government staying out of our private lives.  I care more about politicians not being on the take from billionaire businesspeople or beholden to foreign states.    
    JD admitted that he makes up stuff whenever it suits him, and does not care what negative impact it has on others.    Not when he misremembers something, but when he can use it to manipulate things.  
    JD is an evil, lying troll.   He, and everyone else who’ve aligned themselves with Orange Adolf will be forever covered in his stench. 

  46. I think JD, like Mary Trump, was a child deeply damaged and lastingly affected by a parent’s severe disease of addiction. Difference is Mary Trump went on to receive an education in the effects of the family disease and to seek personal recovery to help heal herself and others. JD has used his experience and education to spread the madness. His mother, according to accounts, has gone on to treatment and lasting recovery. As evidenced by his public behavior, he sadly is still suffering. 

  47. closeted self-loathing gay person bankrolled by other closeted self -loathers doing his best to fit in with a crowd that hates gay people 

    doesn’t know how to do things like order donuts because he’s only ever acting how he thinks he should not how he is

    next

  49. trump sunk the Republican-authored border bill after having had 4 years as President to address border security, because, say it with me now,
     
    “He’d rather run on a problem than fix a problem”
     
    Harris/Walz 2024 

  50. Craig – That’s worrisome, as whenever he is making an accusation, he’s making a confession. This one sounds like a demented plan he has yet to carry out.   No guardrails.  The pimple is coming  to a head.  

  51. In accusing others, P01135809’s imagination is very limited. He can only imagine what he’s already done or plans to do. 

  53. But earlier in this speech he said “her phone isn’t plugged in” 

    Trump:

    “I will shut down all entries through Kamala’s migrant phone app. She’s got a phone app. It’s meant for the cartel heads. The cartel heads call the app, and they tell them where to drop the illegal migrants… It’s not even believable.”

  54. I really go nuts watching this man and then not seeing the obvious headline “Trump is a stark raving crazy person”. Instead I see stories trying to make sense of it, untangling his syntax and outright ignoring his loss of mind. 

  57. It’s not even believable.

    Exactly CS – it’s not believable because you fucking made it up, like JDouche and the Haitians of Springfield eating pets.

  58. So I came across this tweet which stuck out at me for a number of reasons.  Having recognized that the original tweet was stupid, (not shown is he then asks, “Who do think he’ll replace Christmas with?” Just dirt stupid) and that the community notes gave them some valid information which they were bound to ignore I stared wondering for the first time in my life “Why does Easter jump around so, instead of just being one particular day like Christmas?”
    zSo I followed the link about why does Easter move and got there.  So here’s the thing: my eyes are becoming weary of seeing things, trying to read long passages kind of wears them out and I just forego reading a lot of stuff here and there. But I really wanted to know about this moving Easter deal and out of exasperation summoned Siri and asked her if she cou read this damn page to me. Without a reply she started reading the page.    What a nice thing to discover.   
    https://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/easter

  62. Word is out now that he skipped the “traditional” CBS candidate interview.  
     
    The charade of the orange maroon being sane, stable and in this universe is cracking open.  It needs to happen faster and more mainstream.  The anti-American team pushing him around has to be concerned he will breakdown during one of the staged (safe) events and spill the beans (so to speak).

  63. I really wanted to know about this moving Easter deal

    the first sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring 

  65. From that site
    The statement that Easter Day is the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs next after the vernal equinox , is only an approximate statement of the actual ecclesiastical rules. The full moon involved is not the astronomical Full Moon but an ecclesiastical moon (determined from tables) that keeps, more or less, in step with the astronomical full Moon.

  66. lol the ****s got their own moon

    sorry about your eyes, Good Sir, if it makes you feel any better, yours are lasting longer than mine will, can’t see shit lately

  67. That moving easter got LOTS of crap behind it  from Constantine forward.  in hoc Señor Wences
     
    Easter is an annual festival observed throughout the Christian world. The date for Easter shifts every year within the Christian calendar. The Gregorian Calendar used by most Western Christian churches is the standard international calendar for civil use. It also regulates the ceremonial cycle of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. The ecclesiastical rules that determine the date of Easter trace back to 325 CE at the First Council of Nicaea convened by the Roman Emperor Constantine. At that time the Roman world used the Julian Calendar (put in place by Julius Caesar).
    The Council decided to keep Easter on the same Sunday throughout the Christian world. To fix incontrovertibly the date for Easter, and to make it determinable indefinitely in advance, the Council constructed tables to compute the date. These tables were revised during the following few centuries resulting, eventually in the tables constructed by the 6th century Abbot of Scythia, Dionysius Exiguus. Nonetheless, different means of calculations continued in use throughout the Christian world.
    In 1582, Christopher Clavius and a council working at the direction of Gregory XIII (Pope of the Roman Catholic Church) completed a reconstruction of the Julian Calendar producing new Easter tables. The new calendar was issued in February in the papal bull called “Inter gravissimas”. This new calendar is referred to as the Gregorian Calendar . One major difference between the Julian and Gregorian Calendars is the “leap year rule”. See the Astronomical Information Center page on Calendars for a description of the difference. Universal adoption of this Gregorian calendar occurred slowly. By the 1700’s, though, most of western Europe had adopted the Gregorian Calendar. The Eastern Christian churches still determine the Easter dates using the older

  70. It’s called wet macular degeneration, if there’s something you can do to avoid it check it out because the satan devised treatment is injections  to the eyeballs every 8 weeks.   I was bitchin a little to my brother and he says yeah I been getting that for 12 years now.  Aiee chihuahua……Serves me right for all those times I tossed of “Beats a sharp stick in the eye.”
    And then, just in the nick of time the pages LIGHT UP.        lol

  72. well, at least i got that to look forward to
     
    Ok let’s go Tim, put a ribbon on this thing 💪 🇺🇸 

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