Jack

Go Vols

[Jack @JackBuckets]

@BJSplitt I sure hope that’s not the measure. But if that is true, I would suggest expanding your reading on this site. If all you are seeing is one opinion and the market is moving against it, then your measure of opinions is missing the mark

[Jack @JackBuckets]

@BJSplitt If you are measuring opinions in money flows, yes I would say that is the minority opinion. I’m obviously not running any statistically significant polling, but I feel relatively safe in suggesting a $1.50 rally in beans suggests the majority doesn’t see bearish fundamentals

[Jack @JackBuckets]

@BJSplitt It seems like hollow advice when you use an anonymous “They.” Rhetorically it’s a way of establishing a faceless boogeyman to rally against. Not too substantive IMO. How can the majority see bearish fundamentals when price is going higher?

[Jack @JackBuckets]

@JerodMcDaniel Cattle and crops should be the price that the market sets them at. Thankfully in the US they have stayed cheap enough to limit food insecurity and enable exports.

[Jack @JackBuckets]

@1989swiftafboi @DrOBrienMD The usda tracks national average egg prices here https://t.co/ubTLxrYBsC

[Jack @JackBuckets]

@Mar_Apr_Mayheu Jalen milroe is mid at best though. Same as Nico

[Josh Ward @Josh_Ward]

Tennessee has beaten Alabama and Florida four combined times since Josh Heupel became UT's head coach in 2021.

From 2007-2020, Tennessee went 1-27 against Alabama and Florida.

[Jack @JackBuckets]

Share this picture to scare Josh Huepel

[Jack @JackBuckets]

I wonder if college football is more enjoyable when your team scores. Right now I feel like James Bond on a wicker chair in Casino Royale

[Jack @JackBuckets]

I am starting a petition to surgically shorten Nico's arm. Doctors and engineers agree this will solve our overthrow problems

[Jack @JackBuckets]

OK he is confirmed bad at football

[Jack @JackBuckets]

So is Nico actually bad or am I overreacting

[Jack @JackBuckets]

So is Nico actually bad or am I overreacting

[Jack @JackBuckets]

Despite all of the loving memories I have for the University of Tennessee, the football team may have singlehandedly made going there a net negative

[Isaac Saul @Ike_Saul]

A horrific tragedy is unfolding in North Carolina and across the southeastern United States, but liars and hacks have decided to capitalize on it for social media clout.

Hurricane Helene tore through the region over the weekend. Hundreds of people have been declared dead; some estimates project that hundreds more will be discovered in the days or weeks to come. Roads are not just washed out, but completely gone. Houses are floating down streets. Entire areas, like those around Asheville, are underwater and will be rebuilt over the years to come. The damage is hard to describe in words, but the images come close to doing it justice. It is shaping up to be one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.

Amidst this horror, many North Carolinians on the ground are desperate for help. They need to be rescued from rooftops, or they need water, or they need food, or they need help finding missing relatives. Internet and power are down in many places, as is cell phone service. It is complete chaos — something akin to a post-apocalyptic world.

In situations like this, helping people in disaster areas requires a tremendous amount of planning, coordination, and — perhaps most of all — reliable information. Federal, state, and local governments need to coordinate. Citizens need to receive information from rescue services, and they need to trust that information so they can act on it. Saving people in these situations is incredibly challenging, harrowing, and complicated.

Unfortunately, it's election season, which means that some online influencers and pundits — many on the right, but some on the left — decided that a healthy information system is less useful to them than an opportunity to score political points. And they started inundating social media and niche news outlets with complete and utter nonsense.

One of the worst purveyors of these lies is Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of The Federalist, a conservative news organization that we’ve quoted many times in Tangle and employs some of the most convincing writers from the right. Unfortunately, their CEO has been discrediting the organization for days. For the last few days, Davis has been tweeting things like, "Americans just watched torrential rain and flooding kill their loved ones and destroy their homes and businesses, many are still stranded without food or water, and Joe Biden is tweeting about Ukraine," or “If you’re wondering why Biden and Harris aren’t lifting a finger to help the people in Tennessee and North Carolina, it’s because they hate rural Americans (and everything rural America represents and preserves) and are happy to see them replaced by illegal immigrants.”

Stephen Miller, a senior advisor to President Trump, has tweeted at Kamala Harris that, "Americans are dying and they are drowning. You failed to warn them. You failed to evacuate them. You failed to rescue them. Just like you failed in Afghanistan. Except this is on our own soil."

Random accounts with major followings and anonymous hosts are tweeting things like, "Entire roads in North Carolina are washed out and people are without a way to get out of their driveways, no power, little to no communication, AND OUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS DOING NOTHING. OUR MEDIA IS BARELY ACKNOWLEDGING THIS DISASTER."

As it often does, this messaging is spreading across social media platforms and now moving into the real world — with some news organizations publishing opinion pieces echoing these claims and former President Donald Trump using them on the campaign trail to claim that Biden and Harris are doing nothing for North Carolina.

The implication, if not overt claim, is that Harris and Biden care more about Ukrainians than Americans. Or, similarly, that they don't care about dying Americans in Appalachia because they are conservative (not for nothing, but the Asheville area — which has probably been hit hardest — is a liberal hub, and claiming otherwise makes it clear you have no idea what you are talking about).

Anyway, there is an even bigger problem with this narrative: It's all nonsense.

It's all a lie.

Before I explain how I know this, let me do some throat clearing: I hate writing pieces like this. It is not my job to "defend" the federal government from lies — and it's hard to write a piece like this without it reading like I'm openly shilling for Harris or Biden. I am not. I do not give a damn about Harris, Biden, or the Democratic Party. I'm not here to do their PR or protect their reputations.

However, I do care about our information ecosystem. I care about reliable, accurate information being shared widely. I also care about the North Carolinians in danger right now. Not just because they are Americans and it's a state I love, but also because my mom, my aunt, my brother, and his family — my sister-in-law and my niece — all live in North Carolina. So the horrors we're all witnessing on the news hits close to home.

Here is the truth, though: Biden and Harris have actually pulled every lever the federal government can in a situation like this. And none of the critics that I posted above can say exactly what they want them to do that they aren’t already doing, because there isn’t anything.

They have declared a national emergency for impacted counties across North Carolina. That happened on Friday, a full day before most of these criticisms started pouring in. On Saturday, Biden declared a major disaster declaration, which means survivors on the ground can immediately begin applying for funds through the federal government. They can do that right now. And contrary to what Sean Davis is tweeting, Biden has, actually, said more about North Carolina than Ukraine on his X account over the last few days. The media is also all over this story — not ignoring it. It’s on the homepage of every major news organization I checked on Monday, and every major network has been devoting segments to it throughout the weekend.

I’m not sure what else Biden and Harris could do. In places like North Carolina, this is a once-in-a-century storm; every resource the federal government has won’t turn this around in 48 hours. They sent in FEMA. Hundreds of first responders from the U.S. Health and Human Services are on the ground in North Carolina. The U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are responding across the region. National Guard troops were deployed in North Carolina before Helene got there, and more have been sent in since; close to 5,000 are now in North Carolina, and some are performing helicopter airlifts in Tennessee (which has also been rocked by the storms). State-level national guard troops, like those sent by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are also in the region. Food and supplies are being delivered not just by plane, but truck and even via mules!

Once the storm has passed, literally and figuratively, Biden, Harris, and Congress will work together to deliver a federal aid package to the region. That aid package will come, but something like that takes weeks if not months to execute.

Some have asked why Biden or Harris haven't gone to North Carolina. The answer is simple: Them doing so would be a colossal waste of resources. They would get in the way. They would create a circus. Currently, it also looks like it'd be damn near impossible — roads, airports, and bridges are washed out across the western portion of the state. Both Biden and Harris, as well as Trump and JD Vance, have said they are going to visit soon, but are rightly hanging back and staying out of the way of literal rescue missions. Political visits should come when things are calm to boost morale, raise donations, and keep the focus on the area. Campaigning politicians staying out of North Carolina now isn’t a sign that they don’t care; it’s a sign that they’re following reason.

Of course, there are some very bad optics here — things worth criticizing.

Harris was on the west coast for a fundraising trip as the storm passed through the southeast. She cut that trip short to go to FEMA headquarters, but you could easily make the case she should have hung back and avoided the trip altogether. Biden, who seems to be having more and more trouble understanding questions from the press recently, gave a terse answer of "no" when asked if the federal government could do more to help. It didn't look great, but he's also right: Every lever and tool the government has is actually being used.

We can take away other, more legitimate policy lessons. For instance, some people have pointed out that gas stoves are currently helping keep them fed, while they would have been screwed if such appliances were banned, like some Democrats want to do. Fair enough.

Again: The point of all of this is not to defend Harris or Biden or Democrats. I am also not here to defend FEMA or the federal government more broadly. In fact, I once reported on all the mistakes FEMA made in Puerto Rico, and actually got FEMA representatives to admit (on the record) errors they had previously not disclosed. If they screw up in North Carolina, I'll promptly say so, and will report on it.

What infuriates me, though, is that FEMA and other federal government agencies aren't even getting a chance to respond. Soldiers, like those who serve in the National Guard, are risking their lives while these pundits pretend they are sitting on their hands. Before the storm had passed, these same pundits and influencers saw an opportunity to use a very real tragedy to mislead people into hating their own government and leaders, all to score some election year points. And, in the process, they've put people more at risk.

Imagine being a North Carolinian conservative who is getting told to evacuate by a Democratic politician, but when you go on social media all the people you follow and trust are saying that the Democrats don't care if you die and can't be trusted.

What do you do?

Some people, like Pastor Ben Marsh, have speculated that this narrative, which is spreading like wildfire, is some kind of bot operation or Russian influence — something designed specifically to hurt Biden and Harris on social media. I have not seen any evidence for that, and chalk the claim up to the left's own conspiratorial brainworms of blaming everything on Russia.

I actually think it is much simpler: It's just a bunch of opportunistic grifters who want to make the president and vice president look bad, and so they will say whatever they want — even egregiously lying about there being no federal response with national guard troops and FEMA on the ground — in order to do so. They’ll spin the information black hole created by downed cell towers, no internet service, and clogged or unusable roadways into mainstream apathy, tying that same information blackout and apathy to the federal government. And somewhere in there, they’ll point people to their own websites, writing, or subscriber-only content to get paid for their lies.

I am praying and hoping and wishing for a robust response to the horrors in North Carolina. We should all keep our attention and focus there, and hold our federal government to the highest standards possible in their response. But, while we do, let’s not make the situation actively worse by spreading lies.

We can support our fellow Americans, and hold our leaders accountable, while also remaining faithful to the truth. Not only can we, but it is the only way to help; otherwise, we put those same people we claim to care for in more danger.

[Jack @JackBuckets]

@GregButcher_ This is true, but if we saw a steady rate of overall price decline the economy would likely collapse. Investment flows would stop and the stock market would tank, hurting most everyone's ability to retire. The better statistic would be real wages, which have recovered slightly

[Jack @JackBuckets]

Tim Walz: The Power I formation is the most beautiful scheme in football

JD Vance: I slept on the couch in my office every night just to get the deal done

RFK Jr:

[Jack @JackBuckets]

@GregButcher_ That said, if you call this sell off "Bratonomics" you also need to give credit to the stock market gains that happened since 2020

[Jack @JackBuckets]

@GregButcher_ I don't think this market sell off or the recovery since 2020 has much to do with Biden or Harris. It is likely due to AI and foreign investment choosing dollar denominated stocks due to a strong dollar and a high volatility macro environment

[Jack @JackBuckets]

@GregButcher_ I just thought it was a funny hyperbole. I respect the game, you can't really say that it will be a 10th percentile watched event or something like that. When talking politics online you have to speak in extremes