In Indiana 85% of the time, when children were sent to foster care, parents weren’t accused of physical/sexual abuse. 40% of the time, not even drugs. Far more commonly family poverty is confused with neglect.
Indiana took children at a rate 65% above the national average. Black kids taken at 50% above IN’s rate. 4-in-5 Black Hoosier kids endure a child abuse investigation.
The federal government reimburses county courts to hire more family defense lawyers. 1-in-5 counties don’t bother to apply for it.
One of the most effective [reforms] is high-quality family defense. Under this model, families get a lawyer with a reasonable caseload, their own social worker, and sometimes a parent advocate who’s been through the system
[…]
One can only wonder how anyone can […] turn down federal aid […] claiming, as [one court admin] does: “[T]he system we have works well.”
Oh, Lynna, thanks, again, for your work here. However, personally, as a terrible play on words, thinking about most of the topics posted here, it makes me want to roll over in agony.
If you don’t mind my expressing it, our take on things today is our video at theartsinarizona.org
The hosts of “Fox & Friends” praised Donald Trump for allowing the hosts of their rival morning news program, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” to come to Mar-a-Lago and curry favor with him ahead of his presidency.
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski announced on Monday that they had visited Trump to reopen a line of communication between the network and the bigoted incoming president.
“That is probably the most magnanimous thing any individual in America has done in a long time [bullshit],” “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade declared. His co-host Ainsley Earhardt agreed, arguing that Trump should be applauded for welcoming the MSNBC hosts after years of criticism of his behavior.
“It just shows you that he does want—you know—to smooth things over, maybe he is going to unite our country,” Earhardt added, ignoring everything Trump has ever said since becoming a political figure. [laughable]
None of the Fox hosts bothered to suggest that the obsequious behavior of the MSNBC hosts follows a pattern of major media figures—including Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos—bowing to the notoriously media-hostile Trump.
For his part, Trump also appears to have enjoyed Scarborough and Brzezinski’s groveling. In a separate interview with Fox News, Trump said the meeting was “very cordial,” adding, “In many ways, it’s too bad that it wasn’t done long ago.”
Trump also claimed the MSNBC hosts “congratulated me on running a ‘great and flawless campaign, one for the history books.’” [Oh FFS] Based on Trump’s well-documented history of lying about his interactions with people, there is little reason to believe his version of events is completely accurate.
Trump told Fox it is “vital” for the United States to have a “free, fair and open media,” [gaslighting] a sentiment completely at odds with his history and rhetoric.
In fact, Trump is currently suing CBS News and The New York Times as retribution for accurate reporting on him and his campaign. He has also previously called for broadcast outlets to lose their licenses for reporting factual, negative things about him. […]
Civil-liberties lawyers alarmed by President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to launch mass deportations of undocumented immigrants sued the federal government Monday for information about how authorities might quickly remove people from the United States.
The federal lawsuit alleges that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has failed to respond to requests for basic information about its existing contracts with private airline companies that make up “ICE Air,” as well as ground transportation services, airfields and policies governing deportation flights, including those carrying children.
Lawyers said the information is urgent because of Trump’s election victory this month and his upcoming inauguration on Jan. 20. Advocates for immigrants have accused ICE and its contractors of treating migrants harshly and holding them in inhumane conditions.
“Despite the critical role these flights play in the removal system—in many instances, serving as the mechanism for deportation—ICE Air remains shrouded in secrecy,” said the lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California. “This secrecy has masked responsibility for serious abuses and danger on ICE Air flights.” […]
Dental care supplier Henry Schein advanced in Monday trading as investors bet that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary, could recommend removing fluoride from the U.S. water system, a move that would lead to a boom in dental visits.
Shares of Henry Schein shares jumped nearly 5%, on track for its best day since July. Fellow dental product makers Dentsply Sirona and Envista also edged higher in the session.
Monday’s moves come as investors ready for public health changes under a second Trump administration. Kennedy posted on X before the presidential election this month that a “Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.”
Fluoride has long been shown as an effective method for fighting cavities. But the mineral has found itself at the center of a nationwide fight that’s led some local communities to end programs centered on its insertion into public water.
While Kennedy will need to win Senate approval to take the job, market participants are already zeroing in on a group of stocks that make dental hygiene products as potential beneficiaries of his policies. That’s because taking fluoride out of water would actually put the tooth cleaning industry in higher demand as consumers look elsewhere to fight cavities, according to firm Gordon Haskett. […]
While the market appears to be moving on Kennedy’s nomination, Bilson said that regulatory changes would likely take years to come into effect. He also noted that drinking water should fall more under the Environmental Protection Agency than Health and Human Services.
lumipunasays
Hello.
Two international data cables in the Baltic Sea have mysteriously broken. It’s that time of year, I guess.
Analysts attribute continually-decreasing battery prices to two main factors. One is technological advancements, specifically larger cells and cell-to-pack tech that lower the number of battery modules or eliminate them completely. This could help not only lower costs, but achieve up to 30% higher energy density that could keep battery-pack size in check, analysts believe. Tesla has moved to produce its own large-format 4680 cells, but has had trouble keeping manufacturing costs of those cells down.
The other factor is a downturn in the prices of raw materials like lithium and cobalt. Higher raw-material prices contributed to soaring EV battery costs in 2022, but that’s declining and will continue to decline through at least 2030, representing about 40% of anticipated battery cost reductions, according to Goldman Sachs…
birgerjohanssonsays
Dr. Pekka Jahunen explains concepts for exploring space.
.
“How The Moon’s Bumpy Gravitational Field Can Help Launch Things From Its Surface ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=VP4fn0_cb24
There is also a discussion about extracting ammonia salt from Ceres for its nitrogen.
Ceres rotates fast enough (and has an orbital velocity low enough) to make a space elevator feasible. You could even build a megasatellite around it with a frame holding multiple Oneill cylinders.
Modern chips are manufactured on slabs of silicon less than a millimeter thick. But semiconductor companies try to slice these silicon wafers thinner and thinner to squeeze more performance out of existing designs.
Infineon Technologies recently revealed what it called the thinnest silicon power wafers ever mass-produced in a bid to boost the power efficiency, power density, and reliability of its power-conversion solutions, specifically DC-DC converters that feed the AI chips in data centers. The newly produced power wafer is 20 µm thick, which is half as thick as current state-of-the-art wafers for power semiconductors that typically measure 40 to 60 µm…
Infosys founder Narayana Murthy has tripled down on his previous statements that 70-hour work weeks are what’s needed in India and revealed he also thinks weekends were a mistake. From a report:
…
Look, I can’t help the fact that team D is coping hard with having anointed a monumentally shitty presidential candidate, or that you’ve chosen to cope with a campaign of fear and by turning the Orange Man Bad dial up to 11. That’s your problem, not mine. I am going to vote third party in November like I did in 2012, 2016, and 2020, and this time I won’t vote for any congressional candidates who support funding for Israel. There are at least a few hundred thousand people who think the way I do and we live in all fifty states — I’m just letting you know ahead of time that you’re going to lose, and it will be across the board in downballot races too. It may not be the conviction at the Hague that Biden and his cronies deserve, but a decisive defeat for the Democratic Party in November is at least a little bit of justice.
People like Vicar, myself, and very few others are the only credible political commentators on here. If you’re looking for ways to move forward from your devastating and complete defeat, I have ideas.
Polynesian explorers settled on a group of freezing sub-Antarctic islands in the 13th century after a “mind-blowing” voyage across the Southern Pacific Ocean, archaeologists have discovered.
Scientists found stone tools, waste mounds and dog bones on the small island of Enderby in the uninhabited Auckland archipelago, one of the most remote and forbidding spots on the planet…
Analysis with carbon dating revealed that the settlement dates to some time between AD 1250 and 1320.
“Radiocarbon ages across the site indicate a single continuous settlement, probably of some decades,” the scientists wrote.
“The site was about as far south as prehistoric habitation could be sustained and was probably vacated at the onset of the Little Ice Age in the late 14th century.” …
whheydtsays
Re: beholder @ #15…
Current vote counts (which are still continuing) have Harris slightly ahead in the popular vote, so hardly a “devastating and complete defeat”.
Jeansays
beholder:
You’re proud of your predictions and how you voted?! You talk about a campaign of fear and turning the dial up to 11 but after the nominations up to now that was not even close; it’s even worse than anything foreseen and that’s just the preview. If you think Biden was bad (and he is on many fronts), it’s going to be so much worse on all fronts (unless you’re rooting for dictators and fascism). And there’s not going to be any guard rails like there would have been with the democrats.
So enjoy your smugness while the world burns around you and people die and suffer. Unless you end up amongst the casualties.
[Other family]: [This] husband and father was a DACA recipient until this summer when he got a green card, his sister and brother-in-law are DACA recipients, his sister-in-law is a green card holder, and the rest of his family here [11 of them including his wife] are US citizens, some who are not present are undocumented.
[…]
[Wife]: I cried a lot. […] Half of my family—if they’re gonna be here or they’re not […] and how do you tell all of our kids, my nephews?
[…]
[Husband]: [Of Latinos] There’s still a lot of machismo. There’s still a lot of misogyny. And something that we need to say aloud is there’s a lot of anti-blackness.
——
[Titular Fool]: [Supported Trump] For the economy, yes. I’m not supporting the anti-immigrant action. No, it’s not human. I’m not afraid [of deportation]. I’m not afraid. […] Democrats forget their promises […] I wouldn’t regret being deported. I want better for my children.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 18
Take your advice, roll it up, and use it to fuck your puckered asshole until you bleed out and die.
Akira MacKenziesays
Whoops, that was meant to be hurled at 15.
Bekenstein Boundsays
I wouldn’t regret being deported. I want better for my children.
You think having to grow up without a father would be better?
[Supported Trump]
Oh, wait. Yeah, they’d definitely be better off without this particular father serving as a role model. Nevermind.
beholdersays
@17 whheydt
Current vote counts (which are still continuing) have Harris slightly ahead in the popular vote
Fake news. Are you even trying anymore?
@20 Akira
You first. If it works, I’ll consider it.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 23
You’re welcome try.
StevoRsays
One thousand days today since Putin decided to invade Ukraine. The consequences have been catastrophic for both Ukraine and Russia.
The death toll disputed estimated at around 120- 174,000 Russian troops, 57,000 Ukranian troops & 39,000 civilians but probly really higher.
You should not fantasize about violence when posting in The Infinite Thread, nor should you propose that others do violence. The rule holds even if you are speaking metaphorically or jokingly.
That wording is courtesy of CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain. I approve that wording. The reminder was directed to birgerjohansson @480, 481, from the previous set of 500 comments in The Infinite Thread.
Akira, you already know this. You should not have to be reminded.
StevoRsays
Ukrainian refugee who opened cafe in London reflects on 1,000 days of Russia’s war in Ukraine
“I thought it would be over very, very soon,” Ms Tataryna tells the ABC as Ukraine marks a grim milestone — 1,000 days since the war began.She remains a refugee, one of more than 6 million people forced to flee Ukraine. “I don’t remember how it is not to be a refugee, how it is to not be worried about your family,” she says.
…(snip)…
The war in Ukraine is the deadliest in Europe since World War II but neither Russia or Ukraine release official casualty statistics. At the end of August, the United Nations estimated that at least 11,743 civilians had been killed and 24,614 wounded in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Ukrainian prosecutors say 589 Ukrainian children had been killed.
Ukrainian officials have said the figures are likely much higher, with verifying deaths and injuries difficult in areas like Mariupol, which was under Russian control.
Western estimates put the number of dead and wounded soldiers in the hundreds of thousands on both sides but believe that Russia is suffering worse loses.The UK chief of defence staff Sir Tony Radakin told the BBC this month that Russia was approaching 700,000 casualties since the invasion began and lost 1,500 soldiers a day on average in October.
As the last votes continue to get tallied across the country, one thing is clear: Donald Trump’s victory on Nov. 5 is nowhere near the “mandate” Republicans are claiming.
On Monday, CNN data reporter Harry Enten broke down Trump’s incredibly weak popular vote victory.
“Look, if you look historically speaking, Donald Trump is now under 50% in the national popular vote, barely under 50%,” Enten told CNN anchor John Berman. “Compare his popular vote victory to those, historically speaking, over the last 200 years. His popular vote victory ranks 44th out of 51. That ain’t exactly strong,” he explained.
Indeed, Trump has the shakiest popular vote win since George W. Bush was reelected in 2004, and the latest popular vote margin is the leanest since Al Gore’s win over Bush in 2000 (Bush won by a single Electoral College vote, while Gore won the popular vote by 543,895).
Americans also did not show much confidence in Republicans downballot.
“In fact, I went all the way back to the history books, and this is the most Senate races that the winner’s party lost in states the president won since 2004,” Enten said. Democratic Senate candidates have officially won four states that Trump also won, and the Pennsylvania Senate race between incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and Republican challenger Dave McCormick is not yet called.
As for the House?
“You’d have to go all the way back before there were 50 states in the union to find a smaller majority for the incoming House majority” based on the current election count projections, giving Republicans a paper-thin 221 to 214 majority.
Enten notes that some of those GOP House members are set to leave their seats to join the Trump administration, making the already thin Republican majority even smaller.
“We are talking about a very wide win for Donald Trump. But the depth, it’s not particularly deep,” Enten said. “It’s actually quite shallow, historically speaking.” [video at the link]
Posted by readers of the article:
I can see that an actual landslide would give the winner more of a mandate than a squeaker election. Trump does not have that landslide win—he’s a legend in his own mind.
———————–
He won the electoral college. He has a man date with Vlad Putin.
——————————-
***Non voting adult US citizens who have not been legally disfranchised: 97 million (40%)***
Trump got 2 million fewer votes than he got in 2020.
—————————–
Trump won by a smaller popular-vote margin than Biden.
—————————–
The extent of a mandate is measurable in how well the president’s actions are received or how much pushback they get. Trump is setting up for a lot of overreach.
———————————
DJT bragging that he has a mandate is gaslighting, posturing, shaping the narrative, etc.
[…] Brzezinski [Mika Brzezinski, co-host of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC] added of the meeting:
“In this meeting, President Trump [Ed. Note: not yet!] was cheerful and upbeat, and he seemed interested in finding common ground with Democrats on some of the most divisive issues.”
Holy hell, these two [Mika and Joe] have the memories of concussed goldfish. Trump has never been interested in finding “common ground” with Democrats. He blew up more attempts by Democrats to approach him in his first term than we can count. He spent his four years out of office convincing Republicans in Congress to do all they could to obstruct any Democratic effort at forging a compromise on anything. Even when, like the immigration bill he got the GOP to kill, the policies were the sorts his party had been trying to pass for years.
Said Joe Scarborough:
“Of 150 million votes cast, Donald Trump got about 50%. Kamala Harris got about 49%. So I don’t know. It seems to make sense for leaders of both parties to seek common ground.”
In 2016, out of nearly 140 million votes cast, Hillary Clinton got about 48 percent and Trump got about 46 percent. We do not recall Trump spending the next four years trying to seek common ground with leaders of the other party. If anything, he went out of his way to antagonize them. Antagonizing people is his entire personality! There is zero reason to even pretend to believe that he has suddenly changed his tune at the age of 78.
[…] Trump also told Fox that the world’s two most credulous dipshits also “congratulated me on running a ‘great and flawless campaign, one for the history books,’” and also that he worked “longer and harder than any presidential candidate in history.”
And it wouldn’t be a Trump interview if he didn’t end it right back where we started:
Trump added, “I expect this will take place with others in the media, even those that have been extremely hostile.”
The president-elect said he feels he has “an obligation to the American public, and to our country itself, to be open and available to the press.”
“If not treated fairly, however, that will end,” Trump said. “The media is very important to the long-term success of the United States of America.”
Yeah, he’s turned over a new leaf, all right. This is Trump’s version of magnanimity: Be nice to me and maybe I’ll consider not putting you or your news organization under criminal investigation for the offense of being mean and nasty to Trump.
[…] We can also say we give it until Christmas before Trump proudly announces on TruthSocial that Scarborough and Brzezinski have committed the unforgivable sin of not sucking up to him lavishly enough, so now he hates them again.
So you’re taking beholder’s side, eh? After all he’s said and done here?
KGsays
People like Vicar, myself, and very few others are the only credible political commentators on here. If you’re looking for ways to move forward from your devastating and complete defeat, I have ideas. – beholder@15
I’m sure you and your fellow fascist stooges will go on helping Trump all you can, while he turns up the dial on enabling Israeli genocide in Palestine to 11, abandons the Ukrainians to the mercies of your chum Putin, and gets on with imposing fascism at home. But you won’t find much help here.
Kyle Kulinski demolishes the uber-smug Bill Maher’s bulldust here – just under 15 minutes long
@15. Beholder : Talking of the infuriatringly , unhelpfully uber-smug and utterly wrong. Fuck off you vile hypocritical, worse than useless Trump enabling, genocide assisting troll! You got Trump who is the person you * ACTUALLY fucking voted for elected. YOU inflicted him on the retsof our planet with your purity disunity bullshit. You have hurt the entire planet and at least doubled if not tripled or quintupled the amount of genocide we will see you willfully ignorant, fanatically, blinkered piece of exrement.
StevoRsays
.* You and Vicar and every fucking douchebag extremist unelectable third party spoiler voter and counter-productive fool who did anything other than vote for Kamala Harris and encourage and support people to vote for Kamala Harris. Turns out it was close – closer now than it first appeared – and you could have made a difference for good instead of evil. But refuse dto do so because good wasn’t good enough for you even when the ONLY alternative was, again, evil. Which for the umpteenth time are relative fucking terms and you’ll never get the perfect unicorn that farts rainbows you demand as your minimum ideal candidate. Its politics its life, its how your shitty Amercian system works – or used to pre-Trump’s fascist Christian Suypremacist Dictatorship which, again, is on you.
The South Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology has forced one of its robo-dogs to run a marathon.
The Boston Dynamics-esque quadrupedal walking robot became the first of its kind to complete a full-course marathon in an official event, according to a Sunday announcement from the Institute.
The race was the 22nd Sangju Dried-Persimmon Marathon, which Raibo2 finished in four hours, 19 minutes and 52 seconds. The (human) first place winner finished in two hours, 36 minutes, and 32 seconds…
Do you remember that chat we had about the protective effects of the Earth’s magnetic fields not long ago? This would be outside the protection of those fields, which no previous nor existing space station has been.
lumipunasays
Re 29 and 31,
Apparently, Trump won the popular vote by a smaller margin than he lost it in 2016. He must be still one of the least mandated presidents in United states history, on average. Barely mandated, if you consider just his second term.
That’s the concept behind Hippos Exoskeleton, a startup created by former basketball hopeful Kylin Shaw after he heard “a sickening pop from my knee while landing from a dunk,” according to TechCrunch.
The expanding “knee sleeve” uses predictive AI to detect risky movements and inflates in 30 milliseconds. The idea is to help prevent ACL tears and other injuries in athletes, construction workers, and older adults.
birgerjohanssonsays
Seen on a t shirt :
Crows before bros.
Support your local murder.
Chapter Four: The Problem of Anti-SLAPP Statutes In Federal Court
Ken White
November 18, 2024
…
Reginald Selkirksays
@ 29, 38
The right is so anti-gay I am surprised they are touting a man-date.
lumipunasays
Reginald Selkirk at 16 – That’s interesting. I looked up Enderby Island on Google Maps. It’s one of the smaller islands in the Auckland group, but seems to have an excellent natural harbor.
The Polynesian (proto-Maori) settlers there must have lived off seabirds, seals and fish. I suspect the settlement was abandoned largely because the local game populations collapsed after some decades of overexploitation. Similar collapse happened on the NZ main islands, and the early Maori then became increasingly agricultural people. That wasn’t an option in the frigid south, particularly since the Polynesians only had crops that required a tropical or at least warm temperate climate.
The proto-Maori also settled Chatham Islands (which are slightly warmer and larger than Auckland Islands, but about equally remote from mainland, and still too cold for Polynesian farming) shortly after settling the NZ mainland. A small population lived there for centuries on hunting, fishing and gathering, and evolved into a people called Moriori. They practically lost all contact with Maori, since both cultures became less interested in seafaring, and the Moriori din’t really even have resources for maintaining open sea canoes and navigation skills.
Shortly after European contact in the early 19th century, the Maori were eager to adopt new technology (particularly guns) and became heavily involved in colonial-industrial sealing and whaling. They rekindled their old tradition of settling remote islands, including the Chatham and Auckland, and genocided the Moriori in the process. Not that an isolated population that small would’ve been sustainable over a timescale of millennia, anyway. The Maori settlement on Auckland Islands farmed sheep and introduced useful plants. Eventually, the settlement was again abandoned, I presume because mainland communities increasingly offered a modern standard of living, which was more attractive than hardscrabble survival.
Note to Akira, and to all who comment here. I am not taking beholder’s side. I am not taking anyone’s side. I am trying to keep discussions relatively civil. Dial back the personal insults. Stick to the facts as much as possible. Do not promote violence. Do not fantasize about doing violence to other human beings. Do not indulge in imagining random violence befalling other human beings. Steer clear of even “joking” about violence, including metaphorical violence. Thank you.
In other news:
Three things to know about Todd Blanche, Trump’s pick for deputy attorney general
Trump’s defense attorney is known for his practicality, his loyalty and the copious cash he made representing him. He’s poised to take on a leading role at the DOJ next.
In the small pond that is the New York legal community, Todd Blanche — a former federal prosecutor turned lead Donald Trump defense lawyer — was well known and much liked before he made his debut for Trump roughly 18 months ago. And unlike many of those who came before him (Joe Tacopina, Jim Trusty, Tim Parlatore and Evan Corcoran among them), Blanche not only survived his time in the Trump trenches, he thrived.
That’s not only because of Blanche’s obvious rapport with Trump, but also because, despite the adverse verdict in the Manhattan hush money trial, Blanche was pivotal in delaying, curtailing and/or outright dismissing three of Trump’s four criminal cases, including the federal election interference case that gave rise to the Supreme Court’s landmark presidential immunity ruling in July.
And now, assuming the Senate confirms him, Blanche is set to become the deputy attorney general for the United States. […] three things about his selection as the Justice Department’s No. 2 official aren’t garnering as much attention as they should.
It doesn’t seem to be about the Benjamins
First, at least one person has asked me whether Trump chose Blanche as deputy attorney general (known within the DOJ as “DAG”) as compensation for unpaid legal bills. Although it’s unclear whether Blanche has been paid in full for his services, Blanche’s firm received more than $8 million between April 2023 and early October 2024 from Save America, Trump’s leadership PAC, according to Federal Election Commission records. So for those seeking to understand why Trump chose Blanche, actual indebtedness seems an unlikely reason. (Blanche declined to comment.)
A future acting attorney general?
It’s more likely that Trump picked Blanche because he possesses two qualities the transition team reportedly holds dear: demonstrated competence and proven loyalty. Yes, Blanche was occasionally hyperbolic and insufficiently in command of the details in his defense of Trump at trial. And yes, at least one former Southern District of New York prosecutor I know is worried that Blanche’s Trumpian turn could have a nasty spillover effect on SDNY’s otherwise sterling reputation and historic independence — and by extension, taint any lawyer associated with the office.
But ask others who served with him in the storied SDNY about his record as a prosecutor, and even those baffled by his fidelity to Trump praise him as practical, tactical, ethical and someone with high emotional intelligence. Those are qualities that will come in handy should, as some expect, Blanche have to serve as acting attorney general at some point.
[…] Should that happen, Blanche would be legally entitled to “exercise all the duties” of the attorney general. Moreover, even though acting secretaries are usually limited to 210 days in those positions under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, some argue an acting attorney general is not subject to any time limit because the law specific to the DOJ does not mention one.
With or without Gaetz, a direct line to Trump
Whether Blanche eventually steps into the shoes of the attorney general or is merely confirmed as the deputy, he will be uniquely positioned to effectuate Trump’s litigation priorities at the DOJ. Under current DOJ policy, initial communications between the department and the White House “concerning pending or contemplated law enforcement investigations or cases” cannot involve officials beyond the attorney general or the DAG (on behalf of the DOJ) or anyone other than the White House counsel, deputy counsel, president or vice president on the other side.
So who’s Trump going to call if he decides it’s time to investigate or indict various prosecutors, journalists or his political adversaries? Or if he needs the department to weigh in with a statement of interest in the ongoing Jan. 6 civil cases against him? Or if he wants to provide members of Congress with access to those special counsel materials they want to reveal without compromising others? […]
A state judge on Monday struck down Wyoming’s overall ban on abortion and its first-in-the-nation explicit prohibition on the use of medication to end pregnancy[…]
Since 2022, Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens has ruled consistently three times to block the laws while they were disputed in court.
The decision marks another victory for abortion rights advocates after voters in seven states passed measures in support of access.
One Wyoming law that Owens said violated women’s rights under the state constitution bans abortion except to protect to a pregnant woman’s life or in cases involving rape and incest. The other made Wyoming the only state to explicitly ban abortion pills, though other states have instituted de facto bans on the medication by broadly prohibiting abortion.
The laws were challenged by four women, including two obstetricians, and two nonprofit organizations. One of the groups, Wellspring Health Access, opened as the state’s first full-service abortion clinic in years in April 2023 following an arson attack in 2022.
[…] The recent elections saw voters in Missouri clear the way to undo one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion bans in a series of victories for abortion rights advocates. Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota, meanwhile, defeated similar constitutional amendments, leaving bans in place.
Abortion rights amendments also passed in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland and Montana. Nevada voters also approved an amendment in support of abortion rights, but they’ll need to pass it again it 2026 for it to take effect. Another that bans discrimination on the basis of “pregnancy outcomes” prevailed in New York.
[…] Currently, 13 states are enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, and four have bans that kick in at or about six weeks into pregnancy — often before women realize they’re pregnant.
Nearly every ban has been challenged with a lawsuit. Courts have blocked enforcement of some restrictions, including bans throughout pregnancy in Utah and Wyoming. Judges struck down bans in Georgia and North Dakota in September 2024. Georgia’s Supreme Court ruled the next month that the ban there can be enforced while it considers the case.
In the Wyoming case, the women and nonprofits who challenged the laws argued that the bans stood to harm their health, well-being and livelihoods, claims disputed by attorneys for the state. They also argued the bans violated a 2012 state constitutional amendment saying competent Wyoming residents have a right to make their own health care decisions.
As she had done with previous rulings, Owens found merit in both arguments. The abortion bans “will undermine the integrity of the medical profession by hamstringing the ability of physicians to provide evidence-based medicine to their patients,” Owens ruled. […]
RFK Jr. Fixing To Screw Up His One Not-Crappy Goal
Medical professionals are worried he’ll set back years of work on treating diabetes and obesity.
Amidst all his decidedly wrong and occasionally deadly yammer about vaccines, raw milk, antidepressants, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, chelating, fluoridated water, autism, peptides, nutritional supplements, vitamins, chemtrails, mental health, ADD, drug addiction, proper disposal of bear and whale corpses, COVID being engineered to spare Jewish people, and Lord only knows what other nuggets of bad science and misinformed opinions rolling around in his skull like marbles in an earthquake, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has one goal that — dare we say it — we actually agree with.
Bobby Chemtrails would like to reduce the rates of obesity and diabetes in America by getting Americans to eat healthier and exercise more. This is a laudable goal! So laudable that we agreed with Michelle Obama when she made the same goal her major policy focus […] Of course we remember how that went over with Republicans back then, but times have changed. For one thing, the GOP is in power now. For another … wait, no, that’s it.
The problem with RFK Jr.’s interest here is that, as with every other goddamn thing he ever talks about, he sounds like such a lunatic and is so confidently wrong in his pronouncements that medical professionals and public health officials are worried about his plans […]
CNN has a story about RFK Jr.’s thoughts about popular weight loss drugs like Ozempic and his strident opposition to using them, despite all evidence indicating they are safe and effective. […]:
Kennedy claimed that Novo Nordisk, which makes Ozempic, doesn’t market the medicine in its home country of Denmark, where “they do not recommend it for diabetes or obesity; they recommend dietary and behavioral changes.”
In fact, Denmark does use Ozempic, so much so that the Danish Medicines Agency said in May that it would restrict its use until after people had tried less expensive medications to treat diabetes.
[Good fact check.]
We love this guy, he’s like if the buzzer they hit when you get an answer wrong on “Family Feud” became sentient.
Kennedy also claimed that the European Union is monitoring Ozempic to see if it causes “suicidal ideation,” when in fact the EU decided seven months ago that it does not. Our own Food and Drug Administration, which he will oversee, came to the same conclusion. [Yep. Proof that RFK Jr. is wrong, and that he doesn’t pay attention to details.]
[…] Kennedy claimed in the same Fox segment that if the US spent a fraction of what it would cost to treat every overweight person in the US with Ozempic — not something anyone’s suggesting, as GLP-1 drugs aren’t approved for everyone who’s overweight — on “giving good food, three meals a day to every man, woman and child in our country, we could solve the obesity and diabetes epidemic overnight.”
Giving food to people? That sounds suspiciously like socialism to us, and we know how the Republicans with whom Bobby Chemtrails has cast his lot feel about socialism. We also assume, in addition to everything else stupid and unworkable about this idea, that it will run headlong into the Trump administration’s plan to screw up SNAP benefits in order to balance out the huge tax cuts it plans on giving wealthy people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Just in case RFK Jr. can’t do it overnight, Trump has given our future HHS Secretary two years to show “measurable improvements” in obesity and diabetes rates, so he better get cracking.
Meanwhile, doctors are very, very annoyed at RFK Jr. for his flip assertions that all he has to do to cure the obesity crisis is make sure all Americans are eating plenty of salad. As anyone who has struggled with their weight knows, it can be more complicated than simply changing your diet and your exercise habits. Which is why health professionals have spent years trying to find other complementary ways to address the issue:
“We’ve been trying to bust that stigma a lot of years,” Fitch told CNN. “What we’ve heard a lot of in his rhetoric is, ‘I want people to just eat less and exercise more.’ And what we know is, that doesn’t work.”
Still, some people who should know better want us to give this nutball a chance. People like Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who already stepped into one controversy when he praised Trump’s selection of RFK Jr. and lauded how he helped Colorado “defeat vaccine mandates,” and then decided the way out was to double down like a champ: [Social media post is available at the link.]
“His (sometimes bizarre) personal opinions”? What do you mean, “sometimes”? All of his personal opinions are bizarre! The one Polis likes about better diet and exercise for Americans is the only not-bizarre RFK Jr. opinion we have rolled across.
Kennedy may also have shot whatever tiny shards of credibility he had on this issue when someone posted a picture over the weekend of him gorging on McDonald’s with Trump, his oldest failson, and Elon Musk over the weekend: [photo at the link]
Man, the expression on RFK Jr.’s face. During Trump’s first run for president, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo came up with the concept of the “dignity wraith.” Essentially this was the idea that no matter how noble the cause for which someone would bend the knee to Trump, doing so would wreck their credibility and reputation.
Getting such a proclaimed healthy-living guy to chow down on a McDonald’s cholesterol bomb? That picture is RFK Jr.’s dignity wraith moment.
Two women interviewed by the House Ethics Committee about former GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be attorney general, testified that Gaetz paid them directly and repeatedly in Venmo transactions “for sex,” and that those transactions were obtained by the committee, an attorney for the women told CBS News. The attorney, Joel Leppard, also said the women testified that Gaetz inquired in text messages about “party favors” and “vitamins” at upcoming parties, which was understood to be code for drugs.
Leppard, who is based in Orlando, said his clients testified that they attended parties from 2017 to January 2019 where Gaetz was present and sex and drug use took place. In an interview Monday with CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett, Leppard said one of his clients testified before the House Ethics Committee that she witnessed Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old girl against a game table at a July 2017 party. Gaetz was sworn into Congress in January 2017, so all of the events the women allege took place while he was a member of the House.
Gaetz has denied all wrongdoing, including having sex with a minor. After CBS News published its initial story and it aired on “CBS Evening News,” Trump transition spokesman Alex Pfeiffer said in a statement, “Matt Gaetz will be the next Attorney General. He’s the right man for the job and will end the weaponization of our justice system. These are baseless allegations intended to derail the second Trump administration.”
“The Biden Justice Department investigated Gaetz for years and cleared him of wrongdoing,” Pfeiffer added, “The only people who went to prison over these allegations were those lying about Matt Gaetz.” Federal prosecutors did investigate Gaetz but ended the probe in 2023 without filing charges.
[…] Leppard said his clients want the public to know they are telling the truth.
One of his clients said in a text to Leppard, “‘Regardless of how many times he tries to distract from the truth, the public deserves to know that what we all experienced was real and actually happened.'”
“My clients are not political; they didn’t vote in the last two elections — they don’t care one way or another,” Leppard told Garrett. “But they do want the public to know that they are not lying. They did not come forward willingly — they have never spoken to anyone without a force of a legal subpoena.”
He continued, “And if the American people would know, then they could decide if that’s the person they want to be the next attorney general.”
One of Leppard’s clients is among at least four women who have told the committee they were paid to attend parties with drugs and sex where Gaetz was present, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. Her account corroborates the testimony of the then-minor, who told the committee that she had sex with Gaetz when she was 17 years old.
At the July 2017 party where his client alleges this occurred, Leppard said she and others were “at the party in order to provide entertainment, to be happy, to be lively and provide sexual favors for the gentlemen that were present.”
“The expectation was that they would have sexual intercourse,” Leppard said his clients testified about these parties. “They testified to the House that — and the House actually had their Venmo transactions, PayPal transactions, of Representative Gaetz.”
Leppard said the House panel asked the women about Gaetz’s PayPal and Venmo transactions.
“‘What was this for? What was this for,'” Leppard said his clients were asked.
“‘This was for sex,'” he said they responded. “‘This was for sex. This was for sex.'”
Leppard said the payments were typically between $200 and $500 at a time.
He said his clients also testified that sometimes, someone other than Gaetz would make a payment on his behalf. On at least one occasion, according to Leppard, that was Nestor Galban, a Cuban immigrant who is close to Gaetz and whom Gaetz has referred to as his “son.” He said other payments on Gaetz’s behalf were made by Gaetz associate Joel Greenberg, who was convicted in 2022 of sex trafficking of a minor and other crimes.
[Gaetz laundered the payments through other people’s PayPal and Venmo accounts, including the account of the young man Gaetz called his son!]
[…] Leppard said one of his clients provided more than 100 texts involving Gaetz to the committee. Frequently, Leppard said, the texts his client provided showed Gaetz would have to be reminded to pay.
“There was a lot of texts requesting payment, like, ‘Hey, when are you going to pay me?'” Leppard said. “Or, ‘I don’t want to be that girl, but can you please go ahead and pay me what we agreed upon?’ Text messages along those lines. The texts the House was more interested in was the ones where Representative Gaetz was seemingly requesting that drugs be present.”
“So, in my line of work as a criminal defense attorney, no one ever requests, ‘Can you give me some drugs, please?'” Leppard said. “They usually use code words. And so Representative Gaetz would use terms like, ‘Can you make sure that there are party favors present?’ Or, ‘Who’s in charge of party favors?’ He used the term ‘party favor mecca’ when he was referring to another individual who was bringing party favors. He also used the term ‘vitamins,’ I believe.”
[…] Leppard said his clients have “been through heck” and are worried that if they testify before the Senate or anywhere else publicly, “they might not be safe in their jobs.”
The House Ethics Committee had planned to vote Friday, Nov. 15, on releasing its report, but the meeting was canceled after Trump announced his intention Wednesday to nominate Gaetz, and then a few hours later, the Florida Republican abruptly resigned from Congress. The panel is now set to meet Wednesday […]
President Vladimir Putin approved changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine Tuesday, expanding conditions under which nuclear weapons could be used, including in cases of attacks by non-nuclear states supported by nuclear powers.
The updates follow reports that U.S. President Joe Biden has authorized Kyiv to use long-range missiles to strike targets inside Russia, a move the Kremlin warned could lead to “a significant new round of escalation.”
Nuclear saber rattling but it is a dangerous move. Putin is authorizing himself to use nuclear weapons widely enough that he will always be able to find a reason. Any non-trivial attack would be grounds for using nuclear weapons and some non-attacks are now considered grounds for nuclear weapons, such as preparing defenses against Russia.
The changes were proposed some time ago and it’s surely not a coincidence that they were signed at the same time as Ukraine made it’s first long range missile strikes into Russia.
The president-elect had been scheduled to be sentenced later this month after being convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
New York prosecutors told the judge who presided over Donald Trump’s hush money trial on Tuesday that his sentencing should be postponed while the president-elect’s lawyers file further legal arguments asking the case be dismissed. [video at the link]
The proposal Tuesday from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office would need to be signed off on by Judge Juan Merchan to become official. Merchan has agreed to previous requests from prosecutors seeking delays.
Merchan was tentatively scheduled to sentence Trump later this month on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, but that outcome was thrown into doubt last week after the DA’s office asked the judge to temporarily stay the proceedings while it considered the impact of Trump’s election victory on the case.
Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said they were making the request following “a number of arguments” from Trump’s legal team that it would be improper for the case to move ahead.
“The People agree that these are unprecedented circumstances and that the arguments raised by defense counsel in correspondence to the People on Friday require careful consideration to ensure that any further steps in this proceeding appropriately balance the competing interests of (1) a jury verdict of guilt following trial that has the presumption of regularity; and (2) the Office of the President,” Colangelo wrote in a Nov. 10 letter to the judge.
The letter came two days before Merchan was set to issue his ruling on whether the verdict should be overturned based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity earlier this year. A ruling against Trump on the issue would have paved the way for the judge to proceed with his sentencing, which was tentatively scheduled for Nov. 26.
The judge, however, signed off on both parties request for a stay, and gave the DA’s office until Tuesday to submit a filing on its “view of appropriate steps going forward.”
The case was the only one of the four criminal cases brought against Trump after he left office in 2021 to go to trial, and the jury verdict marked the first time a former president had ever been convicted of a crime.
Trump was charged last year with having falsified business records to cover up his reimbursement of a hush money payment his then-lawyer Michael Cohen paid to porn star Stormy Daniels in the closing days of the 2016 election.
Failed Republican presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina has written a letter demanding that President Joe Biden cease doing his job as president, even though Donald Trump is not scheduled to be sworn into office for another two months.
In a letter to Biden, Scott wrote, “To ensure an orderly transition, federal financial and housing regulators should suspend any rulemaking and nomination related activities.” The senator went on to say that federal agencies should stop making federal rules and that nominations should cease right away.
Scott’s demand that Biden stop doing the job that over 81.2 million Americans hired him for in 2020 is out of whack with how business has historically functioned in the U.S. government.
In fact, after Trump lost the 2020 election to Biden, Republicans in the Senate continued to confirm federal judges nominated by Trump—even as it was clear the public had indicated they no longer wanted to pursue Trump’s approach to running the government.
Among those given the go-ahead by the Republican Senate majority at the time was Judge Aileen Cannon, the federal judge who ultimately threw out the case against Trump for illegally keeping classified documents. Cannon was confirmed on Nov. 12, 2020, and among those who voted to confirm her was Scott. This was, of course, after Biden had been declared the victor.
In fact, at least 19 federal judges nominated by Trump were confirmed by Senate Republicans after Trump lost the election on Nov. 3, 2020, and before Biden was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2021.
During his presidency, Biden has used federal rulemaking authority to improve the quality of life for millions of Americans. Federal rules have been put in place to limit water supplies from being polluted by copper and lead pipes, to impose vehicle emission standards to cut down on pollution, to expand health care access, to provide poor families with food, and to strengthen worker’s rights among many other changes made over four years.
As a backer of Trump who will likely upend many of these rules and instead focus the government on servicing the needs of a wealthy elite, like he did in his first term, it’s clear why Scott would want Biden’s actions to stop.
For their part, Senate Democrats do not appear to be taking Scott’s letter too seriously. On Monday, they continued to process the nominations of judges appointed by Biden, fully aware that Trump does not yet hold the presidency.
Donald Trump on Monday nominated former MTV “Real World” contestant, current Fox News host, and congressional quitter Sean Duffy as transportation secretary.
Duffy has zero qualifications for the job. He has no experience in the transportation field, which he’d be tasked with regulating and improving as head of the DOT. Maybe Trump picked him because he won both “Road Rules: All Stars” and “Real World/Road Rules: Battle of the Seasons,” both of which have “road” in the title.
[…] Over the course of his eight-year tenure, Duffy had just two bills he sponsored signed into law, one of which was the renaming of a post office.
However, when he was in Congress, he did complain that his $174,000 annual salary was too low, saying he had to drive a—gasp—“used minivan.”
“With six kids, I still pay off my student loans. I still pay my mortgage. I drive a used minivan. If you think I’m living high off the hog, I’ve got one paycheck,” Duffy told an angry constituent at a town hall meeting.
[…] Of course, Duffy’s salary was far higher than the $43,000 average annual salary the rest of Americans earned in 2011, the year Duffy made the comment.
Speaking of salaries—Duffy criticized teachers during an 2022 appearance on Fox News, saying they don’t deserve pay raises, even though the national average starting teacher salary this year is $44,530, according to the National Education Association.
After leaving Capitol Hill, Duffy and his unnaturally white teeth became a Fox News contributor and co-host of the Fox Business show “The Bottom Line.”
While working for the right-wing propaganda networks, he’s peddled wild lies and conspiracy theories.
He falsely claimed Disney was trying to “sexualize our children,” that white people are now living under a new “Jim Crow,” that Democrats are trying to ban cows, and that former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin was associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
In 2018, Duffy blamed the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, on abortion, saying the shooter may have carried out his killing spree because “[w]e dehumanize life in those video games, in those movies, and with abortion.”
Duffy also made an insanely racist comment in 2021 about Native Americans, saying that “they burned villages, raped women, seized children, took their—took the people they defeated, took their lands, scalped people.” Of course, he made no mention of the horrible injustices Native Americans have faced since Europeans colonized their land.
Duffy’s wife, fellow Real World contestant Rachel Campos-Duffy, is also a Fox News contributor, so she will be able to keep up the Duffys’ presence on the right-wing propaganda network.
Trump, a frequent Fox viewer, even mentioned that in his statement nominating Duffy. […]
Jennifer Berry Hawes and Mollie Simon of ProPublica report that so-called “segregation academies” are alive and well and raking in the public dollars.
Private schools across the South that were established for white children during desegregation are now benefiting from tens of millions in taxpayer dollars flowing from rapidly expanding voucher-style programs, a ProPublica analysis found.
In North Carolina alone, we identified 39 of these likely “segregation academies” that are still operating and that have received voucher money. Of these, 20 schools reported student bodies that were at least 85% white in a 2021-22 federal survey of private schools, the most recent data available.
Those 20 academies, all founded in the 1960s and 1970s, brought in more than $20 million from the state in the past three years alone. None reflected the demographics of their communities. Few even came close. […]
Segregation academies that remain vastly white continue to play an integral role in perpetuating school segregation — and, as a result, racial separation in the surrounding communities. We found these academies benefiting from public money in Southern states beyond North Carolina. But because North Carolina collects and releases more complete data than many other states, it offers an especially telling window into what is happening across this once legally segregated region where legislatures are rapidly expanding and adopting controversial voucher-style programs.
Link. That link leads to a news roundup that includes other, unrelated reports.
Excerpt from an article by John Cassidy of The New Yorker:
[…] Between Trump’s victory on November 5th and the close of trading on Friday, Tesla’s stock price went from $251.50 to $320.72. According to Tesla’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk owns about 715 million shares, so based on that figure the value of his stake has risen by almost fifty billion dollars. This vast sum dwarfs the millions he spent on Trump’s behalf, and even the forty-four billion dollars that he and a group of investors paid for Twitter in 2022, an acquisition that greatly increased his ability to influence the political process. […]
The run-up in Tesla’s stock reflects investors’ conviction that the policies of a second Trump Administration will be favorable to the carmaker. But the presence of Trump in the White House could also have important implications for Musk’s other companies, many of which are subject to oversight by federal agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, or which have big contracts with government departments.
Same link as in comment 53.
Musk is in it for the money. And for potential deregulation that will allow him to be even more free to do whatever he wants to do.
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Monday called on Senate Democrats “to make it as hard as possible” for Donald Trump to appoint his Cabinet without Senate confirmation, known as recess appointments.
“Trump is the one who made it weird by making this demand that the Senate not confirm any of his appointees,” Maddow said of Trump and the GOP’s plans to use recess appointments to sneak through potentially dangerous government appointments.
“Democrats should take him at his word and do the hearings now,” she added, warning that skipping the important background checks and confirmation hearings for Trump’s Cabinet nominees, such as Fox News dirtbag Pete Hegseth and Florida dirtbag Matt Gaetz, is simply the first step in an authoritarian movement away from democracy.
“Right now, for these next few weeks before he’s in power, it’s actually in Democrats’ power,” Maddow reminds the audience. “It is in Democrats’ hands in the Senate to show what the Congress can do, to show what it’s for, to do the job, and to make it as hard as possible for them to get away with the worst things they’re trying to do, even before they take over.” [Video at the link.]
As Maddow points out, regardless of the hype and rhetoric, Donald Trump and the Republicans did not win a blanket mandate this election. Americans, by and large, still desire a democracy.
[…] Nearly 100 House Democrats also signed a letter urging the Ethics Committee to release the report [the Ethics Committee report on Matt Gaetz].
From the letter:
We are aware that traditionally, the Ethics Committee stops investigations into alleged misconduct when a member of Congress resigns. However, there is precedent for the House and Senate ethics committees to continue their investigations and release findings after a member has resigned in a scandal. For example, the Committee continued investigating Rep. Eric Massa for inappropriate sexual behavior even after his resignation. Similarly, in 2011, the Senate Ethics Committee publicly released its report on Sen. John Ensign in the days following his resignation and forwarded the report to the Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission.
We strongly believe that this situation meets or exceeds those standards. This is not a partisan issue. In a statement to reporters on November 14th, Republican Senator of Texas John Cornyn, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, noted, “I think that there should not be any limitations on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation including whatever the House Ethics Committee has generated.”
Given the seriousness of the charges against Representative Gaetz, withholding the findings of your investigation may jeopardize the Senate’s ability to provide fully informed, constitutionally required advice and consent regarding this nomination. Representative Gaetz’s abrupt resignation from Congress should not circumvent the Senate’s ability to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities.
We urge you to immediately release the Ethics Committee’s report into allegations of serious misconduct by former Congressman Matt Gaetz.
Meanwhile, Gaetz’s former House colleagues have been trashing Gaetz publicly.
Republican Rep. Max Miller of Ohio said that Gaetz is “literally worse than gum on the bottom of my shoe.”
“I’m looking at him as a member of Congress and the job that he has done here, and it has been abhorrent,” Miller told CNN. “I’m not the only one who thinks this way. I just say the quiet part out loud, and I wish other of my colleagues would have the same courage to do so.” […]
The file that was hacked Monday included the testimony of the woman who alleges she had sex with Gaetz when she was 17 in 2017, and the testimony of a second woman who said she witnessed the encounter, a source told NBC News. [Video at the link.]
A hacker on Monday gained access to a file containing the sworn depositions of two women involved in the investigation into Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman who is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News.
That file included the testimony of the woman who alleges she had sex with Gaetz when she was 17 years old in 2017, as well as the testimony of a second woman who said she witnessed the encounter, and the information is unredacted, according to the source.
Attorney John Clune, who represents the woman alleging she had sex with Gaetz when she was 17, told NBC News: “We were informed last night by another law firm that an unauthorized user accessed a shared file with a number of confidential documents.”
Gaetz was investigated by the Justice Department in a case involving the alleged sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl. Gaetz has always denied those allegations and has never been criminally charged.
That probe effectively ended last week when Gaetz resigned from Congress after president-elect Donald Trump picked him to be his nominee for Attorney General.
The file was downloaded from a secure link by a person using the name Altam Breezley, according to the source.
The file includes other related documentation that’s under seal and the hacker accessed hundreds of pages, the source said.
The news of the hacking was first reported by the New York Times. NBC News is not reporting the names of the women who are accusing Gaetz.
It’s not immediately clear if any of the hacked information has been made public or if law enforcement is investigating the matter. A representative for Gaetz did not immediately respond to an NBC News request for comment.
A source familiar with the contents of the files accessed characterized the contents as very detailed and damaging to Gaetz.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Followup to 332 and 437 from the previous set of 500 comments.
outside New Zealand’s Parliament […] 42,000 people demonstrated on Tuesday, calling for lawmakers to reject the Treaty Principles Bill, which was introduced earlier this month by the libertarian ACT New Zealand party. While the legislation, proposed by the junior partner in the centre-right coalition government, lacks the support needed to pass, critics worry that it threatens to divide society.
Tuesday’s protest was preceded by a nine-day march—or hikoi in the Maori language—that began in the country’s far north, with thousands joining rallies in towns and cities as marchers travelled south on foot and in cars to Wellington.
Some in the crowd were dressed in traditional attire with feathered headgear and cloaks and carried traditional Maori weapons. Others wore T-shirts emblazoned with Toitu te Tiriti (Honour the Treaty). Hundreds carried the Maori national flag.
6-hour Facebook video. A mix of English and Māori languages. No subtitles. Justice for Palestine makes a speech at 4:25:52.
She called for the Māori in the crowd to switch to the Māori electoral roll. “If every single Māori person registered on the Māori roll, we would have 20 automatic Māori seats in Parliament.” Currently, there are only seven Māori seats in the House of Representatives.
More people have now signed the Stop The Treaty Principles Bill petition on ActionStation (252k+) than voted for the ACT Party in the last election (246k).
“We need our mojo back. […] Schools are a very appetizing opportunity. […] the opening of schools may only cost us 2 to 3%, in terms of total mortality.”
University of Rochester physicist Ranga Dias made headlines with his controversial claims of high-temperature superconductivity—and made headlines again when the two papers reporting the breakthroughs were later retracted under suspicion of scientific misconduct, although Dias denied any wrongdoing. The university conducted a formal investigation over the past year and has now terminated Dias’ employment, The Wall Street Journal reported…
British automaker Jaguar is changing its branding for “a new era” as it prepares to fulfill its plan to go all-electric for its lineup, with the first new model slated to launch in 2026. The automaker has revealed a new logo that changes the font, spaces out the letters, and uses a mix of upper and lowercase letters…
Youtube: 20 Nov: BRUTAL DEFEAT. Russians ARREST ALL GENERALS. Siversk Offensive Ended
After repeated failures the army attacking Siversk was out of options. They launched a final attack before the season ended. This also failed and the situation was so bad that the Russian command arrested the general in charge and a bunch of other officers.
The Russians now have a problem with officers lying about their success. The war is going so badly the officers must succeed or be recalled to Moscow. Facing that the officers are declaring victory and hoping they can fix the situation with follow up forces before the high command notices. This has happened in both the Siversk offensive and the Kursk offensive.
This is very bad for the Russians in a bunch of ways. As word gets out it makes the war and the commanders in charge unpopular. It makes the planning and operations by the central command impossible to do well because they don’t know how far things are from the front or what areas actually need reinforcement. And worst for Putin, it makes the government look like it isn’t in control, one thing Putin can’t tolerate because if it gets out of hand it can bring down his government.
And worst for Putin, it makes the government look like it isn’t in control, one thing Putin can’t tolerate because if it gets out of hand it can bring down his government.
Putin brought that on himself.
Related news, as posted by NEXTA on X/Twitter:
Lavrov commented on the Ukrainian strike with ATACMS missiles and thanked Scholz
“The strikes on the Bryansk region with ATACMS missiles are a signal that the West wants escalation,” Lavrov said.
At the same time, the Russian foreign minister noted that “there has been no official confirmation on the US decision to strike deep into the Russian Federation yet, and the information comes from the media.”
Lavrov also thanked Scholz for the fact that Germany does not transfer long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine and prohibits strikes on Russia, calling it a “responsible position.”
If Lavrov is praising Scholz, then Scholz should conclude that he did something wrong.
As posted, with a photo, by WarTranslated (Dmitri):
Here’s a twist! Neo-Nazi and mass murderer Anders Breivik backs Russia, even going so far as to put the letter Z on his bald, empty head. The pieces are falling into place.
Strong circumstantial evidence that 🇨🇳Chinese-flagged cargo ship Yi Peng was responsible for breaking two underwater telecoms cables in the Baltic Sea (17-18th November).
CLion1 connecting 🇫🇮Finland and 🇩🇪Germany and BSC connecting 🇸🇪Sweden and 🇱🇹Lithuania severed.
What The Hell Is It That Nancy Mace Is Doing In the Ladies’ Room?
Sarah McBride made history last week as the first transgender person (that we know of) elected to the United States Congress. That is a big, wonderful, joyful deal in an otherwise unpleasant time.
But then came Congressional Mean Girl Nancy Mace, who filed a resolution on Monday to bar “[m]embers, officers, and employees of the House from using single-sex facilities other than those corresponding to their biological sex,” for the explicit purposes of barring McBride from using the congressional women’s restroom.
McBride has handled it gracefully, posting on social media that “Every day Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different than their own and engage with them respectfully, I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness,” and adding, “This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing. We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars.”
Asked by a social media user if she meant to target McBride with her legislation, Mace responded, “Yes and then some. Biological men do not have any rights to women’s private spaces. It’s perverted to think otherwise.”
Getting even more creepy about it, Mace also repeatedly told reporters that “Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say here,” and claimed to be “protecting” women and girls and the rights of women and girls. She also noted that she was the first woman to graduate from the Citadel and would be really mad if a “man in a skirt” came by and told her “No, that’s my achievement,” she would tell him it was not.
I don’t understand what the hell it is she does in the restroom that cannot be seen by eyes that were assigned male at birth.
Is Nancy Mace strutting around the ladies’ room naked? Does she go to the bathroom with the door open? Does she forget to flush? Is she masturbating? Is she changing outfits outside of the stall? Is she doing coke?
Is she like Anjelica Huston in The Witches and she has a whole ass face she has to take off?
If that is the case, it’s hard to see why she would want to do these things in front of cis women, either. I have managed to go my whole life without seeing a single fully naked person in a public bathroom and I have definitely lived a life far more conducive to that kind of thing than Nancy Mace has. Gender neutral bathrooms are the norm at the bars I go to in Chicago now, and it’s fine! Everything’s fine! Because there are doors on the stalls!
Is she afraid to look at Sarah McBride’s shoes? Or to see her washing her hands? Putting on lipstick? […]
Of course, we know that none of this is what Nancy Mace is talking about when she says that barring McBride from the women’s restroom is “common sense.” She’s suggesting that, at best, McBride might walk around the ladies’ room naked, and that at worst she is a potential sexual assailant.
So, because of this, Mace wants McBride to use the men’s room, which will be far more awkward and likely humiliating for her and for everyone else in the men’s room. Mace is a classic bully and she wants to make this woman feel as unwelcome as can be, because she doesn’t like the idea of a trans woman serving in Congress.
There is a little bit of irony in Mace mentioning that she was the first woman to graduate from The Citadel. You’ll note that she says “graduate” and not “be accepted into,” because that honor actually belongs to Shannon Faulkner. Faulkner was the first woman accepted into The Citadel, but because the men at the school (and many outside of it) felt that it was a “men’s space,” only five of them were “authorized” to talk to her — though many managed to harass and threaten her so badly that she left after a week. She would later reveal that the reason she left was because someone actually threatened to kill her parents if she didn’t.
Nancy Mace is not standing up for women, she is acting exactly like the male Citadel cadets who made her predecessor’s life hell, all because they didn’t think she belonged in “their space,” the same way that Nancy Mace thinks Sarah McBride doesn’t belong in hers.
Posted by a reader of the article:
As a woman who graduated in the first West Point class to include women, this is SPOT ON. She’s as much of a bully as the guys who tried to drive us out.
Bekenstein Boundsays
Asked by a social media user if she meant to target McBride with her legislation, Mace responded, “Yes
And that one word condemns that legislation, for it makes it a bill of attainder, and thus unconstitutional.
Or, it would condemn it if the Supreme Court could remotely be trusted anymore.
The big techs can’t build data centers fast enough. These also need power plants and networking. Where does the money come from? Investment bankers and private lenders who see a glorious new opportunity! All this planned infrastructure needs $1 trillion to $2 trillion of funding over the next five years.
[…]
Hedge funds also want in. Risky leveraged loans are backed by the data centers themselves—or the Nvidia cards in them. We’re sure phrases like “novel types of debt structures” won’t give you flashbacks to the 2008 financial crisis.
Remember that nobody has yet worked out how to make an actual profit from AI. So what if—God forbid—number stops going up? There’s a plan for that: large data center holders will go public as soon as possible and dump on retail investors, who will be left holding the bag when the bubble deflates. A bursting AI bubble will take down the Nasdaq and large swathes of the tech sector, not to mention systemic levels of losses and possible bank failures.
how […] would you leverage the data center loan against the NVIDIA cards? The only reason they’re valued as high as they are is… the AI bubble. What even.
Like if the AI bubble bursts, yes, they’ll still have value, but the market will be flooded with them and not nearly as many use cases and… God
–
yep. That’s also how subprime mortgages worked
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oh god. you’re right. god
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so basically, what history teaches us, is that the big tech firms will be given billions to avoid collapse, fire all their workers, then banks will slowly come in and lap up all the computing hardware and ensure no one can afford a computer ever again. got it.
–
Considering that NVidia is currently 12% of the US [GDP] “too big to fail” comes to mind, yes.
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I hate these people
According to reports in Eurasia Daily and Defence24, the Danish Navy has boarded and detained the Chinese Bulk Carrier Yi Peng 3 in the Danish Straits, near the exit of the Great Belt. The detention took place on the evening of November 18. According to Financial Times sources, Sweden authorities are “carefully studying the Chinese vessel.” …
The United States shut its embassy in Kyiv on Wednesday morning due to what it called the threat of a significant air attack, a day after Ukraine used American missiles to hit a target inside Russia in what Moscow described as an escalation in the war.
Later, after an air raid siren in the early afternoon jangled nerves in the capital, Ukraine’s military spy agency said Russia was trying to sow panic by circulating fake online messages about a massive looming missile and drone attack…
Donald Trump has nominated former WWE CEO Linda McMahon, who used to put on events like “Hell in a Cell” and “Wrestlemania,” to lead the Department of Education.
In a press release Tuesday night, Trump said McMahon would lead efforts to “send Education BACK TO THE STATES,” a longtime goal of Republicans who have sought to prevent the department from achieving national education goals and priorities.
McMahon also previously served as the head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. […]
McMahon follows in the tradition of Betsy DeVos, who served as education secretary in Trump’s first administration: They’re both billionaire Republican donors and not figures with serious education backgrounds. McMahon did, however, resign from a state education position after it was revealed that she falsely claimed to have a degree in education. [!!!]
McMahon’s primary background is as a wrestling mogul. While at WWE, she worked alongside Trump, who is a member of the WWE Hall of Fame. Trump was involved in a storyline called the “Battle of the Billionaires” that culminated in him shaving the head of Vince McMahon, the founder of WWE and Linda McMahon’s husband.
Under the McMahons, WWE has been involved in a series of high-profile scandals that could foreshadow her approach to educating millions of American children.
For instance, McMahon and her husband are currently the target of a civil lawsuit alleging that the couple were aware of systemic sexual abuse of underage boys working for WWE but failed to protect them. The company also reportedly had a culture of widespread drug abuse as wrestlers used steroids to build muscle.
WWE also has opposed efforts by wrestlers to unionize, and has been the subject of criticism over lax in-ring safety. In one instance, wrestler Owen Hart fell to his death right before a major pay-per-view event.
The nomination of McMahon fits in with Trump’s open hostility to public education and the federal department overseeing it. He and other Republicans have called for the Department of Education to be dismantled, with educational initiatives then falling to states where Republican leaders can infuse notions of white supremacy and pro-Christian advocacy in school curricula.
Trump has in the past backed efforts like the “1776 Report,” which advocated for removing curricula that taught children the role that slavery and racism has played in American history.
Under Trump, the guiding principle will be to put education in a chokehold, and McMahon’s role is clearly to force children to tap out.
North Carolina Republicans advanced extensive legislation Tuesday that would weaken the powers of the incoming governor, attorney general and schools superintendent — all Democrats who were elected two weeks ago — and shift election board appointments to the GOP state auditor.
The final 131-page measure, which also includes setting aside additional funds for Hurricane Helene relief, became public roughly an hour before the GOP-controlled House met to debate it during a lame-duck General Assembly session this week. The House voted largely along party lines Tuesday night for the measure, which the Republican-controlled Senate was expected to take up on Wednesday.
With Republicans likely to lose their veto-proof majority in the next two-year session following electoral losses in the House, this week could be the last best chance for them to enact legislation containing sharp partisan changes. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper leaves office at year’s end and will be succeeded by Democrat Josh Stein.
Currently the State Board of Elections’ five members are appointed by the governor based on recommendations by the Democratic and Republican parties. The governor’s party always holds three of the seats. Republican legislators have tried for years to wrest away those appointment powers but have been thwarted by courts. Judges have blocked for now a 2023 law that would move board appointment authority from the governor to the General Assembly.
Even with litigation pending, Tuesday’s measure would move the independent state board to the State Auditor’s Office starting next summer. At that time the new auditor — Republican Dave Boliek, who was elected this month — would make appointments. These changes likely would mean Republican control of the board.
[…] The legislation also would immediately weaken the governor’s authority to fill vacancies on the state Court of Appeals and Supreme Court by limiting choices to three candidates offered by the political party of the outgoing justice or judge.
[…] And the bill also will prevent the superintendent of public instruction — a post that is switching party control in January, to Democrat Mo Green — would now be barred from appealing decisions by a state board that reviews charter school applications.
The Republican attempt to erode Democrats’ powers recalls similar measures passed in late 2016 that were designed to weaken Cooper, who was about to succeed Republican Gov. Pat McCrory. Those bills led to loud demonstrations in the Legislative Building and dozens of arrests.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, President-elect Donald Trump’s latest shocking addition to his junk drawer of a Cabinet, has a documented history of choosing Big Pharma dollars over the health of Americans.
Trump has nominated Oz to be administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. But the former daytime talk show host-turned-politician raised eyebrows in 2022 when he released his personal financial disclosure form ahead of the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania.
In the form, Oz—known for peddling controversial health products on his show—reported a relationship with Usana Health Sciences, a Utah-based supplement company with a track record of contamination lawsuits and pyramid-scheme accusations.
According to The Associated Press, the former surgeon’s health-focused TV show accepted “at least $50 million” in advertising dollars from Usana to promote the company as a “trusted partner and sponsor.”
[…] In 2016, certain Usana products promoted on Oz’s talk show were flagged by a California watchdog group for “exceeding allowable levels” of lead. Usana ultimately settled the case outside of court.
The health supplement company also faced multiple accusations of operating as an illegal pyramid scheme, or multi-level marketing company.
Oz continued to take in money as a brand ambassador for the company up until his unsuccessful election bid in 2022.
[…] AP also found that he required former show staffers to sign nondisclosure agreements prohibiting them from discussing “the show’s arrangement with advertisers” and Oz’s “business or private life.”
While Trump claimed in his Tuesday press statement that the United States’ “broken” health care system “harms Americans every day,” the president-elect’s choice for CMS administrator has previously shilled for a company that, according to numerous lawsuits, has done just that. […]
Uh oh, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s mad and you’re not gonna like her when she’s mad. She’s absolutely furious that many people, even Republican senators and congressmen, think the Matt Gaetz ethics report about Matt Gaetz allegedly using his adopted “son’s” PayPal to pay for sex, and Matt Gaetz allegedly having sex with an underage girl in front of witnesses, should see the light of day before he’s allowed to become the top law enforcement official in Stupid Hitler’s administration.
And she’s not gonna take it anymore! She’s gonna assault a transgender woman! Wait no, that’s not the Marjorie Taylor Greene story that’s related to this. ([…] she’s threatening to assault incoming Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride if she tries to use the women’s restroom at the Capitol, because Greene is a worthless piece of human trash, but that’s not the story that’s related to this one.)
No, Greene says that if anybody leaks Matt Gaetz’s sex secrets all over everything, then Greene is going to release everybody ELSE’S sex secrets all over everything […] [Social media post is available at the link]
[I snipped details about other Republicans-and-religious-rightwing-nutjobs heaping scorn on each other.]
Who knows how long this is going to last with Gaetz? That ethics report could leak at any moment, and from everything we’re reading about it, it sounds explosive. Senate Republicans obviously do not want to be forced to vote on this […]
The New York Post published an editorial last night begging Trump to kick Gaetz (and Russia’s class project Tulsi Gabbard) to the curb. But not Pete Hegseth. ([…] But hey, one buffoon nominee at a time.)
Meanwhile, while Axios is reporting that Trump has been personally calling senators to beg them to confirm Junior Deputy Nestor’s Daddy and his boner pills as the attorney general, the New York Times reports that Trump totally knows Gaetz might be unconfirmable, but he’s fucking this chicken anyway. Why? Because it’s fun! And because he thinks there’s no way the Senate will reject ALL his most disgusting and rapey and un-American picks. (The Times specifically groups together Gaetz, Hegseth, Gabbard, and the guy who’s gonna take the fluoride out of the water and replace it with the semen of this blue whale he just found.)
In other words, he’s flooding the zone with shit, like he always does.
Simultaneously, Elon Musk, who thinks he’s a political strategist now, thought he was defending Gaetz yesterday when he posted this:
“Matt Gaetz has three critical assets that are needed for the AG role: a big brain, a spine of steel and an axe to grind,” he wrote in a post on X. “He is the Judge Dredd America needs to clean up a corrupt system and put powerful bad actors in prison.”
Again, he’s talking about Matt Gaetz. But whatever, Apartheid Ken! You’re totally nailing it, as usual. Those senators are totally listening to him, you betcha sure 100 percent.
NewsNation is also reporting that JD Vance […] will be escorting Gaetz and Hegseth to get to know the senators. We guess they’re under the impression that these two men are more impressive in person LOLOL we can’t even fucking type the end of this sentence without laughing, so this post is over.
Watch this interview last night with the lawyer for two of the Matt Gaetz witnesses. Was wild and crazy! Gaetz allegedly paid these two witnesses $10,000 or so for sex! The House Ethics Committee votes today on whether to release the report! Whee! [video at the link]
Austin in an exclusive interview with NBC News called women in the military a strong asset. Trump’s choice for Secretary of Defense [Pete Hegseth] has cast doubt on women in combat roles.
Women and racial diversity are vital to the strength of U.S. armed forces, outgoing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in an exclusive interview with NBC News as he prepares to shortly exit the top military post after four years.
“I have spent 41 years in uniform, three long tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, and everywhere I went on a battlefield, there were women in our formation,” Austin said. “I would tell you that, you know, our women are the finest troops in the world. Quite frankly, some of the finest in the world.”
President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of Defense is Pete Hegseth, a former Army National Guard major whose past comments about women in combat have raised questions and concerns.
Hegseth said during a podcast released this month that the military “should not have women in combat roles” and that “men in those positions are more capable.”
Women made up 17.5% of the U.S. military’s active duty force and 21.6% of the selected reserve in 2022, the Pentagon said in a November 2023 report.
“They do impact readiness. They make us better. They make us stronger. And again, what I’ve seen from our women is quite incredible, and I’m not — this is not hyperbole. This is fact,” Austin said.
Hegseth has also said he wants to see the military purged of “woke” officials who support diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
[…] “We’re a diverse nation, and we’re going to remain a diverse nation. Our military is going to remain a diverse military,” Austin said.
Hegseth must still be confirmed by Senate, which will be controlled by Republicans for the next two years, unless extraordinary circumstances like a recess appointment occur.
[…] Trump has also said that he could try to deploy the military to help with his plans to conduct mass deportations of people living in the United States without authorization. Asked in an April Time magazine interview if his plans included using the U.S. military, the president-elect responded that “it would.”
Austin would not comment on what Trump’s plans or intentions may be, but noted that the law is “well-defined” in terms of “how we employ our military, our armed forces.”
“And I have faith and confidence in our senior leaders that they will always make the right decisions and make the right recommendations to to their leadership,” Austin said. [video at the link]
[…] Austin said that as the war — which began when Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 — has evolved, “Our approach to supporting them has also evolved over time.”
The defense secretary said the U.S. has known for weeks that Russia was “revamping” its policy on the use of nuclear weapons, but he added that he did not see a “change in their strategic force posture.”
“We’ll continue to remain vigilant in this regard. But at this point, no, I don’t see an indication that there’s an imminent intent to use nuclear weapons,” he said. [Important]
[…] “We believe that those North Korean troops will be embedded in Russian formations, and I have every reason to believe that we will see them in combat in the not-too-distant future,” Austin said. […]
Austin, a four-star general who was previously commander of U.S. Central Command, was appointed as Secretary of Defense by President Joe Biden and was sworn in on Jan. 22, 2021.
A Pacific storm system 300 miles off the coast of Washington — described as a “bomb cyclone”— is bringing high winds, rain and snow to the region.
Video and photos at the link.
More than 500,000 energy customers across the West Coast were without power early Wednesday and one person was killed by a falling tree as severe weather caused by back-to-back powerful storm systems began battering the Pacific Northwest.
[…] fire crews and energy companies worked through the night to clear debris and restore power after winds of up to 77 mph caused havoc. […]
A Pacific storm system 300 miles off the coast of Washington — described as a “bomb cyclone” for the sharp, quick drop in pressure adding to its power — is bringing high winds, rain and snow, bringing down trees and power lines and creating blizzard conditions across the Cascades.
More than 570,000 customers were without power at 8.30 a.m. including more than 100,000 in Seattle early Wednesday, the public electricity company Seattle City Light said on X.
[…] In some places, winds were strong enough to be classified as hurricane-strength.
[…] The entire city of North Bend, Washington, was without power, King 5 reported.
[…] Firefighters in Puget Sound, Washington, rescued two people who became trapped when a tree fell onto their trailer.
[…] Amtrak announced a revised schedule with fewer trains for Wednesday
These strong winds should die down across the region by midday, but the atmospheric river event already above California is set to bring “extreme rainfall totals” and will linger through the end of the week, the weather service said.
Between 10 and 15 inches of rain is due to hit the northern California coast and inland mountain ranges, which is “likely to increase the threat of life-threatening flash flooding, rock slides, and debris flows,” the agency said.
To make matters worse, a separate storm is set to develop and rapidly strengthen off the Northwest coast Friday, helping to amplify the atmospheric river effect.
[…] Canada has also faced strong winds, with gusts of 101 mph recorded Tuesday night at Vancouver Island, wind speeds associated with a Category 2 hurricane.
Experts have warned that climate change is worsening the atmospheric effect. A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, boosting the potential for warmer, wetter, and more intense atmospheric river storms with greater flood risks and higher costs
Reginald Selkirksays
@77 Lynna, OM
Uh oh, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s mad and you’re not gonna like her when she’s mad.
True! I don’t like her whether she’s mad or not.
No, Greene says that if anybody leaks Matt Gaetz’s sex secrets all over everything, then Greene is going to release everybody ELSE’S sex secrets all over everything […]
Senate Republicans aired frustrations Tuesday after Vice President-elect JD Vance and other party members skipped votes Monday, greasing the skids for Democratic-backed judicial nominees to be greenlighted as part of a final push to fill the bench with lifetime appointees before President-elect Trump takes office.
However, they were unable to stop them, as a handful of GOP members did not show up to the Capitol for votes, which stretched until close to midnight.
Headlining that group were Vance and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), President-elect Trump’s choice to lead the State Department, angering GOP members during their weekly Tuesday policy luncheon. [Aww. Schadenfreude moment.]
“If we don’t show up, we lose,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who was visibly frustrated by the lack of attendance and spoke out at lunch. […]
Republicans attempted to slow down an effort by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to advance more than a dozen judicial nominees Monday, hoping to prevent Democrats from completing one of their priorities before they cede power at year’s end.
[…] GOP members were incensed at the no-shows, which stretched into Tuesday as Vance did not show up for the morning vote.
Other senators, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), tagged along with Trump to the SpaceX Starship launch in Brownsville, Texas, further exacerbating the situation as Schumer prepared to hold another long night of nomination votes on Tuesday.
[…] Vance has missed almost every Senate vote since Trump chose him as his vice presidential running mate this summer.
[…] Vance can make it to Capitol Hill to shill for an accused sexual predator, but not to do his actual job that he is paid $174,000 a year of taxpayer money to do.
Of course, we really aren’t complaining that Vance is absent. One less obstructionist seeking to hamstring Biden isn’t a problem for us.
A Houston man the FBI arrested this month and charged with providing material support to ISIS allegedly created a portfolio of online propaganda for the terrorist group and researched how to build an explosive belt, according to new court filings.
Anas Said was arrested on November 8 after a years-long investigation during which the FBI interviewed him multiple times, executed a search warrant on his home and devices, and received information from Meta that allegedly showed he was behind 11 Facebook accounts that posted pro-ISIS material. According to a motion prosecutors recently filed in the case, which was first reported by Court Watch and 404 Media, the 28-year-old “repeatedly expressed his desire to travel overseas to fight for ISIS” and “has spent time planning and discussing the commission of violent attacks he desires to perpetrate, including in the Houston area.” …
A dolphin dubbed Delle appears to be talking to himself in the Baltic Sea’s Svendborgsund channel off the coast of Denmark. According to a team of researchers that recorded Delle, the solitary dolphin may be so desperate for social connection that he’s thinking out loud.
The researchers aren’t entirely sure why the animal produced “sounds typically considered communicative,” as they note in research published last month in Bioacoustics. But that makes Delle’s situation all the more compelling. Dolphins are very social animals, and chatter in a diverse array of clicks, squeaks, and other sounds. In lieu of other dolphins, Delle resorted to what the researchers call “self-talk.”
Delle was first spotted in the Baltic channel five years ago, and was noticeable because he was the sole dolphin in the area and didn’t belong to a pod. The researchers lowered a microphone into the water and recorded Delle’s sounds from December 2022 to February 2023—a total of 10,833 voicings. The noises included clicks, whistles, and bursts of sound often linked to aggressive interactions among dolphins…
@45 Lynna, OM wrote: I am trying to keep discussions relatively civil.
I reply, we are entering a New Dark Ages (yes, I’m wearing the phrase out). I very much agree that we should be civil here. However, I also feel so angry at so much of the outrageous hatred, bigotry, lies and violence in which we are immersed, it is difficult for me to exercise sufficient self-discipline to not explode with expletives.
Hey, people, let’s keep in mind that PZ starts his videos with the greeting “friends”. let’s all drop the temperature (I, too, will try to do that). stay sane and stay civil (at least here and toward each other), this should remain a haven for rational and decent for discussion.
birgerjohanssonsays
German satire program. The US election starts at 14.30
“Ampel-Aus, Neuwahlen, Trump triumphiert – die krasseste Woche des Jahres”
Heute-Show vom Nov. 8
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Vscm7Db6OqI
birgerjohanssonsays
I find it difficult to follow the intricacies of day-to-day US economic events from over here in Sweden.
How deep is the negative reaction in US financial circles as it becomes evident that Trump really intends introducing tariffs, and appointing unqualified members of government?
Is this just a couple of bad days at the stock exchange or is it a stronger pessimism?
House Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday announced that the Capitol and House office buildings would officially segregate bathroom facilities by “biological sex.”
“All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings—such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms—are reserved for individuals of that biological sex,” Johnson said.
The statement bars transgender House members, their staff, and others from using bathrooms of the gender they identify with.
[…] Johnson’s announcement arrived on the same day as Transgender Day of Remembrance, which honors trans people who have been killed and raises awareness of bigotry against transgender Americans.
In his statement, Johnson did not elaborate on how the new facility policy would be enforced. Johnson did not say whether the House sergeant-at-arms would be empowered to police Capitol bathrooms, whether officers would need to inspect genitals to ensure bathroom usage is confined to biological sex, or if officers would be empowered to make an arrest before, during, or after someone uses the bathroom in violation of his edict.
The policy came about after Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina introduced a resolution to segregate the Capitol’s bathrooms. Mace confirmed that the resolution was “absolutely” intended to target a single incoming House member, Sarah McBride from Delaware, who will become the first openly transgender person to serve in Congress once she is sworn in.
Mace’s action was praised by bigots.
Conservative pundit Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire, who previously called for “eradicating” transgender people, called it a “good day” and said that “we kind of brought this to the forefront” on his program.
[…] The effort to reinstate a form of segregation as official American government policy is the first major action by Republicans since their victory in the 2024 election. Based on the party’s clear support for attacking an oppressed minority group, more is sure to come.
Reginald Selkirksays
@88 birgerjohansson
Is this just a couple of bad days at the stock exchange or is it a stronger pessimism?
Well actually, the Dow-Jones is up a couple hundred points since the election.
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” is seeing a ratings drop and facing criticism from multiple sources after the hosts of the show, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, traveled to Mar-a-Lago to pay homage to incoming president Donald Trump.
According to Nielsen television ratings, the audience for “Morning Joe” dropped 17% in the hour after Brzezinski relayed the details of the couple’s meeting with Trump. The audience decline was even more pronounced—down 38%—among the 25-54 demographic, a key metric for advertisers.
[…] The “Morning Joe” show turned off the ability to comment on its social media account, a move likely meant to avoid negative viewer feedback.
In on-air comments addressing the criticism, Scarborough claimed—as Trump has in the past—that anonymous supporters have praised his decision.
“Yesterday I saw for the first time what a massive disconnect there was between social media and the real world because we were flooded with phone calls from people all day, literally around the world, all very positive, very supportive,” the former Republican congressman explained. [Oh yeah? Look at the sources. See details below.]
Some sources of support have emerged. “The View” panelist Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served in the Trump administration and authored articles on anti-vaccination conspiracy theories for World Net Daily, said the hosts were right to court Trump.
“We need to stop demonizing people because they supported a man who just became president of the United States. We should hope good people are around him, and smart journalists are challenging him,” Griffin said.
Similarly, the hosts of “Morning Joe” rival “Fox & Friends” on Fox News were happy about the capitulation and praised Trump for welcoming the pair to his residence.
CNN has reported that the cave-in by Scarborough and Brzezinski was brought about by fears of retribution by Trump, who has a significant track record in threatening media outlets that report the truth about him and his inner circle.
But unlike most of the people who watch their program, the couple are extraordinarily wealthy and have financial resources numbering in the tens of millions that they could access if Trump pursued any action against them.
Based on their years of familiarity with Trump’s vendetta, the “Morning Joe” hosts could have renewed efforts to inform their viewers on aspects of Trump’s personal and political agenda. Instead, they chose to break bread with him, and this is the immediate result.
Criticism soon came in from multiple sources. Katie Phang, host of MSNBC’s “The Katie Phang Show,” wrote on X as the disclosure was made, “Normalizing Trump is a bad idea. Period.”
The House Ethics Committee met Wednesday but did not release its report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), resisting significant pressure to release its findings after President-elect Trump selected the controversial Florida Republican to be his attorney general.
“There is not an agreement by the committee to release the report,” Ethics Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) told reporters following a roughly two-hour meeting.
The panel, which met for roughly two hours behind closed doors, took multiple votes, a source familiar with the situation told The Hill, including one to release the report as-is, which failed.
The development caps off a week of speculation regarding the committee’s work, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle pushing for its publication, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) vigorously advocating for it to remain a secret, and Trump’s team charging ahead with the selection of Gaetz despite the drama.
The committee is scheduled to meet again on Dec. 5 “to further consider this matter,” according to Rep. Susan Wild (Pa.), the top Democrat on the panel.
Shortly after Guest’s statement, Wild offered remarks on behalf of the Democrats, saying it would be “inaccurate” to take Guest’s statement to mean there was consensus on the committee, confirming that a vote was taken and suggesting that it broke along partisan lines.
“I will say that a vote was taken,” Wild said. “As many of you know, this committee is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans — five Dems, five Republicans — which means that in order to affirmatively move something forward, somebody has to cross party lines and vote with the other side — which happens a lot, by the way, and we often vote unanimously.”
Wild said that she made a separate public statement because Guest “betrayed the process by disclosing our deliberations within moments after walking out of the committee.
Details from the report could make their way to the public — or to senators considering Gaetz’s nomination — even if the Ethics panel never moves to release it.
Some of the evidence and testimony reportedly on file with the committee has been leaked to ABC News, and a lawyer for two women who he says spoke to the Ethics Committee has been publicly saying that they told the panel they saw Gaetz “having sex with a minor” at a party. […]
In other words, the Republicans on the committee obeyed Trump.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: birgerjohansson:
How deep is the negative reaction in US financial circles
If you type “vti” into google on a desktop browser you’ll see a chart of Vanguard’s total market index fund, basically the S&P500 plus a bit of mid/small companies. You can click-drag across it to see the percent difference between two dates. There was a surge post election that fell days later, but zooming out, it’s not unusual for the stair step pattern.
Of course the whole point of diversifying across the whole market is to NOT react to daily chaos of any given sector. Reportedly there’ve been upticks in private prisons and Elon’s death traps, chasing dystopian fad investments.
NPR said the stock market reflects uncertainty, that companies had been holding back on decisions until they learned which administration they’d be dealing with, and now they carry on with a new normal.
In Triumphant Return, Meatball McPeenerToilet Named Ambassador To NATO
Oh look, Meatball McPeenerToilet is back, and he’s gonna be Ambassador to NATO!
It’s the lunkhead […] The scammer who ran a shady company called World Patent Marketing that bilked would-be inventors out of their life savings to promote the Masculine Toilet […]
Yep, just the crackpot for Trump to illegally name (acting) attorney general for three months way back in 2018, after Confederate Keebler elf Jeff Sessions got shoved out of his General-Attorneying tree for recusing himself and not helping a certain felon out of that Russia investigation hard enough.
Meatball was followed by Bill Barr, because he, Meatball, would never ever have gotten confirmed, being as how he was less qualified than a goat with scabies. Ah, 2018, what a sweet, innocent time.
But Meatball big, strong, build resume! Now he’s got three months handling high-stakes international legal issues, like locking up immigrant children and losing them, and doing everything he could to protect Russia’s boyfriend from nosy Robert Mueller. And most important, five years of experience going on Fox News to say NATO SUXXX and is RIPPING US OFF so they can pay for SOCIALIZED MEDICINE EXPERIMENTS!! TRUMP IS GENIUS! [video at the link]
And in between he went in front of the House Judiciary Committee to say TRUMP NO DO RUSSIA, ME EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE, DRUGS, CRIME, BORDER, HILLARY’S EMAILS!
So now Meatball will get to go over to Europe and tell those Socialism-hugging cheese-eaters IT’S MEATBALL-THIRTY, MOTHEREFFERS! The US is pulling out of NATO, IN YOUR FACE!! BIG DICK MATT AND USA gonna yoink that 15 percent of your budget cuz we got kids to deport!! Good luck with Ukraine! MEATBALL OUT!
Previous descriptions from yr Wonkette’s Whitaker files include fake thug, […] The Senate shouldn’t confirm somebody so wildly unqualified, but, gestures around. Trump sure does love to rescue stray petty grifters out of the gutter, he likes his mediocre white people hungry and loyal!
Back in the halcyon days of yore, eight years ago, he was the very stupidest nut on Trump’s bench. Now compared to these other motherfuckers, the wrestling lady, dead whale guy, Fox News Christian Nationalist, naked-teenage-hula-hoop party man, and Dr. Colloidal Silver, he looks like Clarence fucking Darrow.
It’s that old Steve Bannon strategy, flood the zone with shit. Then rob the house while everybody’s distracted trying to find a plunger for the Big Dick toilet!
Four companies currently dominating a multibillion-dollar market in the United States are being accused of sharing detailed, sensitive inside information with each other as part of an alleged conspiracy to raise the price of their goods and make more money off consumers.
To be clear, this is a story about potatoes.
Two proposed class actions filed this week in U.S. District Court claim that four leading potato companies — McCain Foods, Cavendish Farms, Lamb Weston and J.R. Simplot — have privately swapped intel to inflate the price of frozen potato goods, like fries, hash browns and tater tots, over the last several years.
“Armed with the same access to each other’s data on pricing and other sensitive information, as well as with a direct line of communication to each other, the potato cartel moves prices skyward in lockstep — harming all purchasers of potatoes in the process,” one of the claims read…
The former German chancellor painted a scathing picture of the president-elect — and hinted at a playbook for dealing with him.
European politicians preparing for United States President-elect Donald Trump’s second term in the White House have so far made a point of not saying anything that could upset him.
But Angela Merkel, who was Germany’s chancellor for 16 years, until 2021 — since which she has largely stayed out of the public eye — has no need to play the flattery game.
In her upcoming memoir, excerpts of which have been published by German weekly Die Zeit, she details her interactions with Trump during his first four-year term, including her take on the former president’s relationship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
“He judged everything from the perspective of the property entrepreneur he had been before politics,” she wrote of Trump. “Each property could only be allocated once. If he didn’t get it, someone else did. That was also how he looked at the world.”
“For him, all countries were in competition with each other, in which the success of one was the failure of the other; he did not believe that the prosperity of all could be increased through co-operation.”
Merkel’s comments are notable because of the high level of respect she commanded among European political leaders, even as her reign over Germany ended. Her thoughts on how best to treat with the ex-president will be of note to politicians preparing for a second Trump term.
[She] found the Trump relationship so challenging, she even sought advice from Pope Francis on how to deal with him.
“Without naming names, I asked him how he would deal with fundamentally differing opinions in a group of important personalities,” Merkel wrote, referring to a conversation around the time Trump was threatening to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement. “He understood me immediately and answered me straightforwardly: ‘Bend, bend, bend, but make sure it doesn’t break.’”
“I liked this image. I repeated it to him. ‘Bend, bend, bend, but make sure it doesn’t break.’ In this spirit, I would try to solve my problem with the Paris Agreement and Trump in Hamburg.”
Much of her writing about Trump concerns her meeting with him in the White House in March 2017.
“We spoke on two different levels. Trump on an emotional level, me on a factual one,” Merkel wrote of the meeting. “When he did pay attention to my arguments, it was usually only in order to construct new accusations from them.”
“When I flew home, I didn’t have a good feeling,” she said. “I concluded from my conversations: There would be no joint work for a networked world with Trump.”
Just a few months later, after Trump had thumbed his nose at Europe during a tour of the continent and a fractious G7 meeting in Italy, she famously declared, against the backdrop of Trump’s leadership and Brexit the year before, that Europe must to a greater extent than before stand on its own, unable to fully rely on others.
She also wrote that during the March 2017 meeting, Trump was keen to get her opinion on Putin.
“Donald Trump asked me a number of questions, including about my East German origins and my relationship with Putin.”
“He was obviously very fascinated by the Russian president,” she wrote. “In the years that followed, I had the impression that politicians with autocratic and dictatorial traits captivated him.“
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Republicans tend to juice the economy in the short-term by deregulating unethical business practices, then leave the resulting disaster for Dems to clean up.
birgerjohanssonsays
There is actually a precedent for the House to release an investigation of a former member: There was a congressman named (I am not making this up) Bill Boner.
The Boner precedent makes it perfectly legit to release the investigation of Matt Gaetz.
Vought is a leading proponent of “Schedule F,” a plan to potentially fire thousands of federal civil servants and replace them with MAGA acolytes.
[…] Trump is planning to appoint Russ Vought, a Christian nationalist who has plotted to remake the federal workforce in MAGA’s image, to serve as his administration’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, according to CBS News. Vought held the same position during Trump’s first term. Since leaving office he has been a leading architect of Project 2025, a sprawling plan to provide staffing and policy options to the next Republican administration.
In his role at Project 2025, Vought was instrumental in ensuring that decimating the ranks of federal civil service became a conservative priority. He wrote the second chapter in Project 2025’s policy book — Mandate for Leadership — titled: “Executive Office of the President of the United States.” In it, he argued that “a President today assumes office to find a sprawling federal bureaucracy that all too often is carrying out its own policy plans and preferences—or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly ‘woke’ faction of the country.”
As part of his anti-woke crusade, Vought has repeatedly defended and promoted Christian nationalism, at one point calling for an “army” of right-wing activists with “biblical worldview” to staff the next Republican administration. He wrote an op-ed for Newsweek in 2021 with the headline “Is There Anything Actually Wrong With ‘Christian Nationalism?’” More recently, Politico reported that a document from the Center for Renewing America — a MAGA-aligned think tank Vought founded — listed “Christian nationalism” as a top priority for a second Trump term.
While at the helm of the Center for Renewing America, Vought has been outspoken in his advocacy of Schedule F — a scheme to reclassify career civil servants as political appointees. Trump attempted to implement Schedule F in the waning days of his first term, but its effects were blunted by his loss in 2020. If his incoming administration moves forward with the plan, which seems all but inevitable, as many as 50,000 career staffers could be replaced with MAGA loyalists. (Some other estimates put the number closer to 20,000.)
Vought has championed the use of congressional rules to defund and remove individual government employees for punishment and deploying “ideological purity tests” to ensure federal workers are loyal to Trump.
During a recent interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Vought argued that the “whole notion of an independent agency should be thrown out.”
Following a broad backlash to Project 2025, Vought was caught on hidden video discussing his work at the initiative and how it might play if Trump returned to the White House.
“Eighty percent of my time is working on the plans of what’s necessary to take control of these bureaucracies, and we are working doggedly on that,” Vought said. “Whether it’s destroying agencies’ notion of independence, that they’re independent from the president.”
In the interview, Vought claimed that he’d been working on “about 350 different documents that are regulations and things of that nature” for a future Trump administration.
[…] This early preparation includes creating documents to facilitate the “largest deportation in history” and to deploy the military to “maintain law and order” against civilian protesters. Vought elaborated that the mass deportations were part of a plan to “end multiculturalism” in the country.
As a hardline conservative, Vought has pushed to implement harsh austerity measures throughout the country. The Washington Post reported that Vought advocates for eliminating trillions of dollars of reductions in “anti-poverty programs such as housing, health care and food assistance.” He has called for massive cuts to Medicaid and floated future cuts to Social Security and Medicare. [Yikes!]
Toward that end, Vought and his colleagues at the Center for Renewing America are leading proponents of a radical interpretation of executive authority that claims the president can unilaterally refuse to spend money allocated by Congress. Known as the “impoundment” power, Vought and his fellow travelers assert that a 1974 law that mandates presidents spend money Congress has allocated — passed after President Richard Nixon refused to spend federal funds for clean water and schools — is unconstitutional. This theory, if Trump acts on it, would centralize budgeting power within the Oval Office and tilt the balance of power between the president and Congress even further towards the executive branch.
Aside from slashing the United States’ very limited safety net, Vought’s think tank released a budget proposal for fiscal year 2023 that would unleash the FBI against Trump’s declared enemies and “thwart the increasing societal destruction caused by progressive policies at the state and local levels that have defunded police, refused to prosecute criminals, and released violent felons into communities.”
Now, as he reprises his role as the head of OMB, he will wield considerable influence within the Trump administration and will almost certainly play a central role in the likely purge of the federal workforce.
Gautam Adani, chair of India’s Adani Group and one of the world’s richest people, was indicted with others on bribery and fraud charges unsealed Wednesday in federal court in New York.
Adani and other defendants are accused of paying Indian government officials more than $250 million in bribes to obtain solar energy supply contracts worth more than $2 billion in profits.
The 62-year-old and two executives in Adani Green Energy Limited — his nephew Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain — are also charged with misleading U.S. and international investors about their company’s compliance with anti-bribery and anti-corruption practices as they raised more than $3 billion in capital to fund the energy contracts.
The five-count indictment in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn also charged Ranjit Gupta and Rupash Agarwal, former executives in the renewable-energy company Azure Power Global, and three former employees of the Canadian institutional investor Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec: Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal and Deepak Malhotra…
The Earth’s magnetic North Pole is currently moving toward Russia in a way that British scientists have not seen before…
In the 300 years between 1600 and 1900, scientists estimate that the magnetic North Pole moved about six miles per year. At the beginning of this century, it picked up to about 34 miles per year, before slowing in the last five years to about 22 miles per year…
her stepfather, who is an ex-state law enforcement official and a former sexual assault nurse, took Rachel to the police station and to a hospital where an official report was given. […”]I started thinking about my nieces and my nephews, and I had to protect them[“…] Rachel credits officials with the Shirley Police Department for making sure Jessup was held accountable. […] The crime could land Jessup in prison up to 20 years.
[…]
despite reports of the sexual assault—the community voted for Jessup
[…]
Jessup told county officials he will step down from the elected position as a council member as soon as he is sworn in—due to the state law that convicted felons cannot become elected officials.
[…]
In the meantime, Rachel is pushing forward and plans to graduate college this spring and head to graduate school, where she’s studying social work.
Silent Arrow has announced that it has been selected by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) for a $1.8 million Direct to Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to develop a logistical drone.
This contract focuses on the development and flight testing of the Silent Arrow CLS-200, a special missions Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) designed for contested logistics operations over a range of 200 nautical miles (230 miles)…
Conspiracy theorist and right-wing media personality Alex Jones sued on Monday to challenge the sale of his Infowars platform to the parent company satirical news outlet The Onion and the families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook mass school shooting.
Jones alleged in a filing in Texas bankruptcy court on Monday that “conspiratorial negotiation and agreement” involving his bankruptcy trustee and a “flagrantly non-compliant Frankenstein bid” led to the Sandy Hook families and Global Tetrahedron, The Onion’s parent company, winning an auction last week for the site…
Jones’s filing on Monday alleges the winning bidders in the bankruptcy auction for Infowars submitted an offer that only appeared more valuable than the $3.5m bid from a company associated with his online store. He claims The Onion’s bid was worth $1.75m on its own, but managed to appear more valuable in the aggregate because the Connecticut-based Sandy Hook families agreed to forgo some of the funds they’d earn from the sale, meaning a separate group of families who won a different defamation suit against Jones would receive a higher ultimate payout from the Jones estate…
Christopher R. Murray, the bankruptcy trustee overseeing the sale of Jones’s assets, responded to the filing on Monday, painting Jones’s move as “a disappointed bidder’s improper attempt to influence an otherwise fair and open auction process.”
Jones, he argued, “alleges, without evidence, collusion and bad faith in an attempt to mislead the Court and disqualify its only competition in the auction.”
Lawyers for the Sandy Hook families also said they would not back down…
Alex Jones making allegations without evidence to back them up? Say it isn’t so.
(Maine, USA)
Another, and the tallest, sign that the holiday season is nearing is the annual construction of Rockland’s lobster trap tree.
Volunteers gathered Wednesday, Nov. 20 to erect the tree out of lobster traps at Mildred Merrill Park, overlooking Harbor Park and Rockland Harbor…
The tree stands 40-feet tall with about 200 traps, donated by Brooks Trap Mill. The tree is adorned with 2,500 lights, 600 feet of natural green garland and more than 100 lobster buoys. A large lobster from the Trade Winds inn will sit atop the tree…
A Marine Corps veteran who pleaded guilty to making ricin after his contacts with a Virginia militia prompted a federal investigation was sentenced Wednesday to time served after the probe concluded he had no intent to harm others.
When the FBI arrested Russell Vane, 42, of Vienna, Virginia in April, authorities feared the worst: a homegrown terrorist whose interest in explosives alarmed even members of a militia group who thought Vane’s rhetoric was so extreme that he must be a government agent sent to entrap them.
Fears escalated when a search of Vane’s home found castor beans and a test tube with a white substance that tested positive for ricin. Vane also strangely took steps to legally change his name shortly before his arrest, and posted a fake online obituary…
The Humboldt County community is rallying to find a cherished piece of local art. Morris the Banana Slug, who has stood guard outside of Eureka’s Morris Graves Museum of Art since the summer, was stolen earlier this month in a nighttime heist that has stumped local authorities.
On the night of Nov. 2, the Morris Graves Museum of Art welcomed 800 community members for its monthly arts celebration and town art walk. After the festivities ended and staff locked up, they unknowingly said their last goodnight to Morris: Sometime between 9 p.m. and 11 a.m. the next morning, according to the museum curator, thieves broke into the Melvin Schuler Sculpture Garden, cut the lock and pried Morris — who was secured to the garden’s brick walkway with construction-grade adhesive — from his spot before vanishing with the beloved ceramic icon…
whheydtsays
New volcanic eruption started in Iceland at 11:14 PM (local…they’re on GMT, a bit less than 2 hours ago as I write this). It’s in the same area the last few eruptions have been. Initial fissure is about 2 Km long. Initial flow rate estimated at 12-13 cu. m/sec. Pretty much any Icelandic news site should be carrying the news by now.
JMsays
@88 birgerjohansson: There are a lot of public announcements but not a big actual market move yet. The tariffs probably will be very unpopular but it’s still some time before Trump can do it. What is happening now is more “OMG, what is going to happen?” angst then real panic or anger.
With Trump there is often a large gap between what he announces and what he does and exactly what he tariffs and by how much will matter a lot. He could easily add tariffs to Chinese products that are already essentially banned because the companies are not allowed to do business in the US, declare victory and go play golf. He could also put tariffs on all imports of important goods, trigger a global trade war and crash the global markets.
StevoRsays
The first openly transgender person elected to the US House of Representatives Sarah McBride says she is “not here to fight about bathrooms” in response to a bill aimed at blocking House members and employees from using bathrooms “other than those corresponding to their biological sex” on Capitol Hill. On Wednesday, US House Speaker Mike Johnson said that all single-sex bathrooms in the US Capitol building would be reserved for individuals of that biological sex.
Repug Congressbigots make hateful statement and ruling on on the Transgender Day of Remembrance.
StevoRsays
See :
The Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR), also known as the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, has been observed annually from its inception on November 20 to memorialize those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia.[1][2] The day was founded to draw attention to the continued violence directed toward transgender people.[3]
Transgender Day of Remembrance was founded in 1999 by a small group, including Gwendolyn Ann Smith,[4] Nancy Nangeroni, and Jahaira DeAlto,[5] to memorialize the murders of Black transgender women Rita Hester in Allston, Massachusetts,[6] and Chanelle Pickett in Watertown, Massachusetts.[7][8] After Hester’s death in 1998, Smith was surprised to realize that none of her friends remembered Pickett or her murder three years prior, saying “It really surprised me that it had already, in a short period of time, been forgotten, and here we were with another murder at the same site.”[8][9] The first TDoR took place in November 1999 in Boston and San Francisco, as both Hester and Pickett’s deaths occurred in November.[8][10] TDoR continued to be observed annually on November 20, the anniversary of Pickett’s murder.[8] In 2010, TDoR was observed in over 185 cities throughout more than 20 countries.
Gautam Adani, the Indian billionaire behind Queensland’s controversial Carmichael coal mine, has been charged in the US over an alleged multi-billion-dollar fraud scheme.
American authorities accuse the Adani Group chairman, his nephew Sagar Adani, and six associates of plotting to pay bribes to Indian government officials of more than $US265 million ($407 million).
Prosecutors also said the Adanis and another executive at Adani Green Energy, Vneet Jaain, raised several billion dollars in loans and bonds by concealing the corruption from lenders and investors.
According to court documents, some of the defendants referred privately to Gautam Adami with the code names “Numero uno” and “the big man”.
Sagar Adani allegedly used his mobile phone to track specifics about the bribes, which aimed to obtain solar energy supply contracts expected to yield $US2 billion ($3 billion) in profits.
Some measure of justice for one dodgy billionaire hopefully?
Reginald Selkirksays
@115 StevoR … would be reserved for individuals of that biological sex.
As if any of these dipshits know anything about biology.
Bekenstein Boundsays
Earth’s magnetic North Pole is shifting toward Russia. What does that mean?
Field reversal soon, or else Putin is cooking up some kind of superweapon. :P
StevoRsays
@103. Reginald Selkirk : “Earth’s magnetic North Pole is shifting toward Russia. What does that mean?”
Et tu North Magnetic Pole? Does everything have to be shifting towards Russa’s, well, Putin’s favour these days?
Admittedly not sure how this helps Putin much..
StevoRsays
@118. Reginald Selkirk : Yep – & very telling about their warped cruel priorities.
StevoRsays
Seems our galaxy may not be as typical or common a type as we’d thought :
For decades, scientists have used the Milky Way as a model for understanding how galaxies form. But three new studies raise questions about whether the Milky Way is truly representative of other galaxies in the universe. … (snip).. The results, published in three studies in the Nov. 18 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, reveal that, in many ways, the evolutionary history of the Milky Way is different from other comparable-sized galaxies.
Russia fired an intercontinental ballistic missile during an attack on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday, Kyiv’s air force said, in what would be the first use in war of a weapon designed to deliver long-distance nuclear strikes…
A convicted Jan. 6 rioter has now been found guilty of plotting to murder FBI agents who were investigating the Capitol insurrection.
Edward Kelley, 35, was convicted Wednesday in the federal case against him in Knoxville, Tennessee, according to the Department of Justice.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on May 7, and could face a sentence of up to life in prison.
Kelley made a “kill list” of FBI agents who were investigating the Jan. 6 riot, the Department of Justice said in a press release following the conviction.
Prosecutors said he plotted to attack the Knoxville FBI office with “car bombs and incendiary devices appended to drones,” and to assassinate FBI agents “in their homes and in public places such as movie theaters.” …
StevoRsays
Breaking news :
The International Criminal Court issues warrants of arrest for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif.
Fox News host Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, is on the Hill today meeting with senators (many of whom he has previously disparaged) – after the city of Monterey, California released late yesterday the police report on the 2017 sexual assault complaint against Hegseth.
The police report contains accounts given to officers from the alleged victim, who is referred to as “Jane Doe,” and from Hegseth himself. Hegseth denies a sexual assault took place and claims it was a consensual sexual encounter. He was never charged with a crime.
– “The documents offer the most detailed account yet of the steps police took to investigate Hegseth as part of an incident that has been roiling Trump’s team since the former president announced the former Fox host was his pick to run the military.”–WaPo
– “The woman, who helped organize the California Federation of Republican women gathering at which Hegseth spoke, told police that she had witnessed the TV anchor acting inappropriately throughout the night and saw him stroking multiple women’s thighs. She texted a friend that Hegseth was giving off a “creeper” vibe, according to the report.”–Associated Press
– “A California woman told police that Trump Cabinet pick Pete Hegseth physically blocked her from leaving a hotel room, took her phone, and then sexually assaulted her even though she “remembered saying ‘no’ a lot,” a police report obtained by CNN shows.”–CNN
– “The woman, referred to throughout the report as Jane Doe, said Mr. Hegseth took her phone, blocked his hotel room door when she tried to leave, and sexually assaulted her, ejaculating on her stomach. She said that her memory was hazy, and that she had drunk far more alcohol than usual throughout the day.”–NYT
We didn’t have all of these details before. Now we do.
So Much For Trump Distancing Himself From Project 2025
Trump has picked or is leaning towards picking five people connected by name to the notorious Project 2025 that he spent the last stretch of the campaign disclaiming any knowledge of:
– former Trump OMB Director Russ Vought in a repeat performance as OMB director;
– former Trump DNI John Ratcliffe as CIA director;
– Tom Homan as White House “border czar”;
– Brendan Carr, as head of the FCC;
– former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), as ambassador to Canada
Pertussis — a disease commonly referred to as whooping cough — is spreading quickly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns. The U.S. has seen five times more cases in 2024 than we did at this time last year.
As of Nov. 9, which marks the latest data available from the CDC, there were more than 23,500 cases of whooping cough reported so far this year. That’s far and above the roughly 5,000 cases confirmed in all of 2023.
Health officials warn the case count will continue to rise if people aren’t careful. The disease is highly contagious and can spread quickly through schools, childcare centers and over large areas. It spreads easily person-to-person as people cough, and sickened people can be contagious for weeks.
Experts believe the 2024 surge in cases may be in part because of missed vaccinations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Widespread masking in 2020 and 2021 also helped prevent spreading of the bacteria that causes pertussis. Now, the disease is back with a vengeance, and we’re seeing more cases than we did in 2019.
As of early November, the disease seems to be spreading fastest on the East Coast. Pennsylvania has the most cases of any state, with 2,523. New York is close behind with 2,142.
Ohio, Wisconsin, Washington and California all have more than 1,000 cases reported so far.
[…] Babies need to be vaccinated at 2 months, 4 months and 6 months. Kids need two booster shots – one between the ages of 15 and 18 months, the other between 4 and 6 years old. Preteens should get a booster between 11 and 12 years old, too. The CDC also recommends adults get vaccinated if they’ve never had a dose.
[…] “I don’t want to see your junk in my bathroom,” Nancy Mace (or her people) wrote in a text message we have to assume confused a lot of people at first […]
“The Trans Mob wants to k*ll me. But I FOUGHT BACK. And WON,” it continued, before dropping the donation link. You know, because she needs money to bully a trans woman who has done absolutely nothing to bother her since being elected to Congress. According to one of Mace’s 18,000 former spokespersons, Natalie Johnson, who posted the moneybeg, this is all just a ploy to get herself on Fox News.
To be clear, no one should see anyone’s junk in a women’s restroom. If Nancy Mace does not know that, perhaps she is the one who needs to not be allowed to pee at work.
Mace also recorded a bunch of interviews, including one for Scripps News in which she flipped the fuck out, grotesquely referred to her new colleague as “it,” diagnosed her with a “mental illness” and pretty much just continued to make no logical sense whatsoever. [video at the link]
Partial transcript via Mediaite:
LIZ LANDERS: I just want to add that the congresswoman elect does identify as a woman. I will be referring to her in that way–.
REP. NANCY MACE: She’s not a woman! It’s a MAN! She was born a man! She’s a man! She is biologically a male. That is science.
You guys on the left in the mainstream media want to say “follow the science.” Let’s follow the science!
That’s a great idea, Nancy! What do you think the science says? Because actual biologists […] tend to believe that both sex and gender exist on a spectrum.
REP. NANCY MACE: Okay. He is a man. He can wear a dress–.
LIZ LANDERS: Congresswoman–.
REP. NANCY MACE: He can call himself as pronouns, can be she or her. But he doesn’t belong in a women’s restroom, period!
LIZ LANDERS: Are you suggesting that the representative-elect McBride poses some kind of danger to you and other women in Congress?
REP. NANCY MACE: Absolutely! Absolutely! 100%. This is an assault on women, a man being a biological man, a man with a penis, male genitalia– being in a women’s locker room is an assault on women. And so the question is, do I have rights as a woman or not?
It’s not an assault either way, but how did we get onto locker rooms?
REP. NANCY MACE: And I’m not going to allow the media or Congress to strip away women’s rights for one half of 1% of people out there. That more than likely, he’s got a mental illness and this is why he’s doing this.
He should not be forcing his private parts into women’s private spaces. I’m absolutely a no, hard pass on this. I’m going to fight it every step of the way.
LIZ LANDERS: Are you diagnosing, right now, an incoming member of Congress with a mental illness? I’m not sure how you would know that.
REP. NANCY MACE: I am absolutely diagnosing anyone who crossdresses with a mental illness. And in fact, by the way, I’m getting death threats from men dressed up as women who want to kill me because I don’t want penises in women’s bathroom.
Rep. Nancy Mace is not a psychologist, and even if she were “crossdressing” is not indicative of a mental illness in any context, though that is not what Sarah McBride is doing. Because she’s a woman.
I will give Mace the tiniest bit of credit here though, because she did finally, in this interview, mention the existence of bathroom stalls. Unfortunately, it was only to say “His penis should not be in the stall next to me.”
This is where it gets especially confusing, not just because Mace has no reason to know what McBride’s genital situation is, but because a bathroom stall is a far more substantial barrier than your average pair of trousers. So she’s okay walking around every day, with thin layers of cloth being the only thing standing between her and thousands of penises (some of which may belong to men in her own party who have been credibly accused of sexual assault), but a thick metal wall is where she draws the line?
Curiously, she has also indicated that she would be fine with McBride using a Port-a-Potty in the middle of the Capitol building. [Social media post available at the link]
So she’s okay with having a peeing trans woman on the other side of a door from her in this context, but not in others? I’m starting to think there are no rules at all here!
Now, Sarah McBride herself has decided that she doesn’t want to get into it with Mace because she has other things she wants to focus on.
“I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for all Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families,” she wrote on Wednesday. “Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson, even if I disagree with them.”
However, now that Mace has gotten Speaker Mike Johnson to agree to ban McBride, personally, from peeing at the Capitol, she has now introduced legislation to ban all trans people from using the correct bathrooms in any Federal building whatsoever.
The only way to accomplish this, unfortunately, is with genital inspections. There will have to be someone positioned at every rest room, ready to look at everyone’s genitals before they go into any bathroom in any federal facility. Because otherwise, how can anyone really be sure?
These inspectors would likely have to undergo special training that would allow them to be able to tell the difference between the genitals of someone assigned female at birth and someone who has had an operation.
I’m not sure how that would work, but it certainly seems like a far bigger violation to me than a trans woman peeing in the next stall.
[…] some interesting people are starting to speak out against Gabbard, suggesting that she may not just coast on through to live out Donald Trump’s dreams of burning all America’s intel secrets and giving them to Putin.
Like, for instance, the coward Nikki Haley. Oh yes, she is creeping out of the woodwork again, now that Trump has been elected, to warn of the dangers!
Haley broke down the brokedown loser who is Tulsi Gabbard on her Nikki Haley podcast, which apparently exists.
Haley explained what the DNI does, how they’re at the top of all the 18 American intelligence agencies, and exposed to all of it. She said it’s a “job for an honest broker without any pronounced policy biases.” She listed some anti-Trump things Gabbard has done, including saying Trump had “turned the US into Saudi Arabia’s prostitute.” But then she said all this: [video at the link]
HALEY: Look at a speech I gave holding up pictures of dead children who had been killed by chemical attacks. For her to say that Assad was not behind that? Literally, everything she said about that were Russian talking points. Every bit of that, that was Russian propaganda.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, Tulsi Gabbard literally blamed NATO, our Western alliance that’s responsible for countering Russia. She blamed NATO for the attack on Ukraine and the Russians and the Chinese echoed her talking points and her interviews on Russian and Chinese television. […]
She’s defended Russia, she’s defended Syria, she’s defended Iran, and she’s defended China. No, she has not denounced any of these views. None of them. She hasn’t taken one of them back.
DNI, Department of National Intelligence. This is not a place for a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer. DNI has to analyze real threats. Are we comfortable with someone like that at the top of our national intelligence agencies?
Well then.
Now, could she have said something about the national security dangers of putting somebody like Gabbard in a role like DNI before the election, when anybody could have predicted Trump was likely to do something like this? No, she couldn’t possibly have! She was too busy crawling back to Trump […]
She’s not wrong, though, and we find it interesting that Haley was sure to include in her anti-Gabbard monologue all the times Gabbard has insulted Trump. (Haley also criticized RFK Jr., but we don’t care, her critiques there were pretty pointless.)
We wouldn’t really pay much attention to Haley going after Tulsi Gabbard, except that as we’ve mentioned a couple times this week, the New York Post has also told Trump to ditch Gabbard, in an editorial that told him to ditch Matt Gaetz too. “Please, Mr. President, ditch this dreadful duo — Gabbard and Gaetz,” said the paper’s editorial board.
Commenting on how she sucks up to dictators — LOL the same way Trump does — the Post wrote that Gabbard is “speaking softly and carrying no stick.” […]
In that same editorial, the Post categorized Pete Hegseth as a “hopeful” nominee for secretary of Defense. We guess that was before the details really started to come out about the rape accusation (which he denies) and the payoff (which he admits).
So it’s worth noting that the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal — same owner as the Post, and as Fox News, AKA where Pete Hegseth works — is now pushing Trump to ditch Hegseth, noting with a scolding tone of voice that “nominations impulsively made can also be withdrawn.”
[…] Also Mediaite got the full Pete Hegseth police report and hooooly shit. You know, “allegedly.” But that’ll be for another post.
Everybody Donald Trump loves and cherishes and respects is a beclowned piece of shit, the end.
Matt Gaetz withdraws bid to be attorney general in Trump administration [!!!]
Former congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) announced in a social media post Thursday that he was withdrawing his bid to be attorney general for President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration, saying his confirmation was “unfairly becoming a distraction.” “There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle,” Gaetz said after meeting with senators on Wednesday. Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary, is meeting with senators on Capitol Hill on Thursday after police records revealed new details about a sexual assault allegation against him. Vice President-elect JD Vance is accompanying Hegseth.
A person involved in Donald Trump’s team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations, said there was widespread belief that Matt Gaetz did not have the Senate votes needed to be named attorney general — and that did not change after the meetings Wednesday. The person said Gaetz wanted the job and pitched Trump that he would take on the Justice Department and that the decision to select Gaetz was controversial even within Trump’s orbit. “He was going to be the worst confirmation by far, and I don’t think the votes were there,” the person said.
At least two Republican senators told Trump’s advisers that Gaetz could not get confirmed, a Trump adviser said.
When asked about Matt Gaetz’s decision to withdraw his name from consideration to be the next attorney general, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said, “I think that was appropriate.”
[…] “While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition,” Gaetz wrote on X. “There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General.” […]
The U.S. and Israel criticized the International Criminal Court for issuing arrest warrants Thursday for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant — even as a slew of other countries said they would enforce the court’s order. The warrants accuse Netanyahu and Gallant of “crimes against humanity and war crimes” relating to Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip. There are 124 countries — including all 27 members of the European Union — that are parties to the Rome Statute, a United Nations treaty that created the International Criminal Court. Entering those countries would open the subjects of the warrants up to the risk of arrest.
Arrest warrant would apply to 124 countries, but not the United States [map at the link] The decision of the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant subjects both men to the threat of arrest if they travel.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada would abide by the rulings of the International Criminal Court when asked Thursday whether he would step in to prevent the arrest of senior Israeli officials in Canada.
“We are one of the founding members of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice,” Trudeau said. “We stand up for international law and we will abide by all the regulations and rulings of the international courts.” […]
Reginald Selkirksays
@135 Lynna, OM
Please tell us that his resignation from the House is still valid and unretractable.
Please.
U.S. officials told NBC News that the weapon fired by Moscow at the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro was an experimental intermediate range ballistic missile.
Russia did not fire an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at Ukraine on Thursday, a U.S. official and a military officer with knowledge of the matter told NBC News, disputing a claim by Kyiv.
Ukraine accused Moscow of launching the ICBM at the eastern city of Dnipro in an overnight attack, which would have marked the first recorded use of an ICBM in an active conflict and the latest escalation by the Kremlin.
U.S. officials said the weapon was in fact an experimental intermediate range ballistic missile and that Russia has a limited supply of that particular missile. Intermediate range ballistic missiles typically have a range of less than 3,500 miles.
ICBMs typically have a range of more than 3,400 miles. Such missiles can carry either nuclear and nonnuclear payloads.
President Vladimir Putin said, “one of the newest Russian medium-range missile systems was tested in combat conditions, in this case with a ballistic missile in non-nuclear hypersonic edition.”
[…] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared to reflect the uncertainty.
Speaking in a video posted on Telegram, Zelenskyy said that “today, our crazy neighbor once again showed what he really is and how he despises dignity, freedom, and people’s lives in general… he is so afraid that he is already using new missiles.”
“It is obvious that Putin is using Ukraine as a training ground,” he added, saying that that the speed and altitude of the missile that Russian forces launched suggested that it was an ICBM, but that investigations were now underway.
[…] “Nuclear weapons use would risk alienating China and other non-Western countries whose support or neutrality is key to maintaining the Russian war economy,” Bollfrass told NBC News in an email Wednesday. […]
Reginald @137, Gaetz only resigned from his current job. He was reelected to begin anew in January. I don’t know what is going to happen next.
[…] Trump praised Gaetz’s decision in a social media post soon after, saying the decision has his “respect” and that “Matt has a wonderful future.” […]
That’s the unmistakable lesson of the ill-fated nomination of Matt Gaetz for attorney general. Rather than showcasing Trump’s absolute power over his GOP allies, it revealed his limits. The doomed nomination lasted just eight days — and its failure is an unwelcome lesson for the president-elect, who has been projecting invincibility and claiming a historic mandate despite his reed-thin popular vote victory.
Though Republicans will control both chambers of Congress, the resistance from Senate Republicans to Gaetz’s nomination proved that there are still some checks on Trump — no matter how limited — that can hold, despite fear on the left that he will squeeze Congress into submission, get carte blanche from the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, and enact his agenda at will.
“I think it shows that Donald Trump cannot get anything he wants,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California-Berkeley School of Law.
But Chemerinsky and others cautioned against extrapolating too much from the Gaetz debacle — he was so uniquely despised and compromised by legal and political scandal that
“But the facts here are so egregious, and Gaetz so unqualified, that I would be cautious in generalizing too much from it.”
Pressure resulting from the partial release of details from the Ethics Committee report forced Gaetz out, in my opinion. Investigative journalism and public pressure sometimes works. Also, Gaetz spent some time alienating almost everyone but Marjorie Taylor Greene before he embarked on his latest lackey-for-Trump escapade.
[…] Gaetz’s resignation briefly halted work on the House Ethics panel’s report into the underage sex allegations and a slew of other accusations of misconduct. But on Thursday, the committee voted to continue work on the report, though Republican members voted as a block to stonewall its release.
In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump thanked Gaetz for his “recent efforts” to garner support for his nomination. […]
The bill, known as the PRESS Act, would codify protections against federal investigators seizing reporters’ records. It is now less likely the legislation will clear the Senate before the current session ends.
[…] Trump on Wednesday instructed congressional Republicans to block the passage of a bipartisan federal shield bill intended to strengthen the ability of reporters to protect confidential sources, dealing a potentially fatal political blow to the measure — even though the Republican-controlled House had already passed it unanimously.
The call by Mr. Trump makes it less likely that the bill — the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act, or PRESS Act — will reach the Senate floor and be passed before the current session of Congress ends next month. Even one senator can hold up the bill, chewing up many hours of Senate floor time that could be spent on confirming judges or passing other legislation deemed to be a higher priority.
Mr. Trump issued the edict in a post on his Truth Social platform Wednesday afternoon. Citing a “PBS NewsHour” report about the federal shield legislation, he wrote: “REPUBLICANS MUST KILL THIS BILL!”
Mr. Trump has exhibited extreme hostility to mainstream news reporters, whom he has often referred to as “enemies of the people.” In his first term as president, he demanded a crackdown on leaks that eventually entailed secretly seizing the private communications of reporters, including some from The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN. […]
I had excellent meetings with Senators yesterday. I appreciate their thoughtful feedback – and the incredible support of so many. While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition. There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General. Trump’s DOJ must be in place and ready on Day 1.
I remain fully committed to see that Donald J. Trump is the most successful President in history. I will forever be honored that President Trump nominated me to lead the Department of Justice and I’m certain he will Save America.
JFC.
More details, some relevant to Reginald’s earlier question:
While Gaetz resigned his current seat in the House, he won reelection in November for the new Congress that will be sworn in come January. It’s unclear whether he will want to return to Capitol Hill and be sworn in alongside the other members of Congress, many of whom hate Gaetz’s guts due to his scumbag ways.
If he does decide to be seated in the new Congress, the Ethics Committee will once again have jurisdiction over him, and the report could be released.
Trump nominated Gaetz on Nov. 13, meaning his nomination lasted just eight days—not even one Scaramucci.
While Gaetz withdrawing his nomination puts out one fire for Trump, fires around his other Cabinet nominations are still raging.
On Wednesday, multiple media outlets obtained police records detailing rape allegations against Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Defense.
The allegations in the police report are graphic, with a woman claiming she was sexually assaulted by Hegseth at a Republican women’s event in California in 2017.
…
Sonar imagery captured in January revealed a plane-shaped anomaly on the seafloor about 100 miles away (161 kilometers) from the Pacific Ocean’s Howland Island — the next location where Earhart was expected to land before she was declared lost at sea. The detection renewed a worldwide interest in the mystery and left many questioning whether Earhart’s missing Lockheed 10-E Electra had finally been found.
After returning to the site on November 1, Deep Sea Vision — an ocean exploration company based in Charleston, South Carolina, that captured the original sonar image — has identified the object to be a natural rock formation…
…
Over on the Cybertruck Owners Club forum, someone with the username “cybertooth” who also lists their name as Nick shared a series of photos of their Cybertruck’s bodywork, writing, “I feel like an idiot… Decided to put advertising magnets on my CT. Happened to take them off to wash the truck after a month and my heart sunk…rust and corrosion.” Nick was reportedly able to get most of the corrosion off, but even after a liberal application of Barkeeper’s Friend, you could still see some pitting in the sheet metal.
Nick isn’t the only one who noticed this either, with several other users replying that they’d had the same problem…
johnson catmansays
re Reginald Selkirk @145: Stainless steel is supposed to be non-magnetic, isn’t it? At least the doors of my refrigerator won’t hold a magnet. Maybe the stainless steel on the cybertrucks is inferior to that on refrigerators.
Reginald Selkirksays
@146 johnson catman
re Reginald Selkirk @145: Stainless steel is supposed to be non-magnetic, isn’t it?
…
You could also ask, is stainless steel magnetic? The truth of the matter is, some stainless steels are magnetic, while others are not. You see, stainless steel is conventionally thought of as a single type of material, but within metallurgy, stainless steel actually accounts for a group of metals with varying qualities and chemical compositions. In fact, it might be helpful to think of stainless steel as a kind of generic term based on the chemical composition of steel.
Steel alloys composed with a minimum of 10.5% chromium fall into the stainless category…
But back to magnetism. In the case of steel, whether or not it is magnetic comes down to the microstructure of the steel. Basic stainless steels have what’s known as a “ferritic” structure, which enables them to be magnetic. Remember the chromium content? It’s the addition of chromium that leads to the ferritic structure. This, plus the addition of carbon, hardens the steel and qualifies it as a martensitic steel. Stainless steel knives are typically martensitic.
Martensitic steel differs from the most common stainless steels, which are referred to as austenitic. In austenitic steel, there is a higher percentage off chromium, and nickel is also present. In terms of magnetism, it is the addition of nickel that renders the steel non-magnetic…
In my line of work we use both magnetic and nonmagnetic alloys of stainless steel.
Hitler loved rallies in this way too. For the person, not the party. And like Trump violent statements about criticism like protesting is likely. And they have uncivil language themselves already and like Trump and garbage it’ll be the worst thing ever that they get reciprocal incivility back.
The controversial head of the SEC was targeted by Donald Trump during Trump’s presidential campaign. It is customary for the SEC chair to resign when a president from the other party is elected. That cheering you hear? It’s the crypto lobby.
Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced today that she will leave the agency on January 20, 2025, the day of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration…
Rosenworcel, a Democrat, is following tradition, as the FCC chair typically resigns when the opposing party wins the White House. The move will leave the FCC with two Democrats and two Republicans, paving the way for the GOP to add one member and gain a 3–2 majority…
Wolverine Packing Co. is recalling more than 167,000 pounds of ground beef shipped to restaurants due to possible E. coli contamination.
Fifteen cases have been reported in Minnesota, with illnesses starting from November 2 to November 10, the US Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service said Wednesday.
Fresh products have a use by date of November 14. Frozen products are labeled with production date of October 22. Products have an establishment number EST. 2574B in the USDA mark of inspection.
Items were shipped to restaurants nationwide, the agency said, and it’s concerned that some products may be in restaurant refrigerators or freezers. All the products should be thrown away or returned and should not be eaten…
There has been a spate of food recalls recently. Just imagine how bad things are going to get after Trump cuts back on inspection and regulation.
A federal court yesterday ruled against parents who sued a Massachusetts school district for punishing their son who used an artificial intelligence tool to complete an assignment.
Dale and Jennifer Harris sued Hingham High School officials and the School Committee and sought a preliminary injunction requiring the school to change their son’s grade and expunge the incident from his disciplinary record before he needs to submit college applications. The parents argued that there was no rule against using AI in the student handbook, but school officials said the student violated multiple policies.
The Harris’ motion for an injunction was rejected in an order issued yesterday from US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. US Magistrate Judge Paul Levenson found that school officials “have the better of the argument on both the facts and the law.”
“On the facts, there is nothing in the preliminary factual record to suggest that HHS officials were hasty in concluding that RNH [the Harris’ son, referred to by his initials] had cheated,” Levenson wrote. “Nor were the consequences Defendants imposed so heavy-handed as to exceed Defendants’ considerable discretion in such matters.”
“On the evidence currently before the Court, I detect no wrongdoing by Defendants,” Levenson also wrote.
Students copied and pasted AI “hallucinations”
The incident occurred in December 2023 when RNH was a junior. The school determined that RNH and another student “had cheated on an AP US History project by attempting to pass off, as their own work, material that they had taken from a generative artificial intelligence (‘AI’) application,” Levenson wrote. “Although students were permitted to use AI to brainstorm topics and identify sources, in this instance the students had indiscriminately copied and pasted text from the AI application, including citations to nonexistent books (i.e., AI hallucinations).” …
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Video / Transcript: US State Dept – Daily Press Briefing 2024-11-20 (at 15:36)
Reporter: the UN Security Council vote this morning, your allies France, which has hostages held in Gaza, and the UK both said the resolution firmly calls for the release of hostages. And to most people reading it, there’s little difference between this language and what you abstained on in March. So why did the U.S. feel the need to block the resolution at this point?
[…] Spox Miller: What it doesn’t do is link the release of hostages to an immediate, unconditional ceasefire. […] we cannot support a resolution that calls for an unconditional, immediate ceasefire and delinks it from the release of hostages. […] I would turn the question around and ask, why is it that the countries pushing this resolution couldn’t actually link the two?
[…] Reporter: this resolution did contain a call for the release of hostages. What was defective[?] [crosstalk] They were right next to each other [crosstalk] other people don’t understand what could be objectionable about the language that you just vetoed. [crosstalk] An immediate ceasefire and the immediate release of hostages.
[…] Miller: when people talk about an immediate ceasefire, they mean for Israel to immediately stop fighting. You think Hamas is going to respect a UN Security Council resolution calling for the release of hostages? No
[…] Reporter: then why does it matter? […] would you prefer that the hostage release be put in the sentence before the ceasefire?
[…] Miller: We think it needs to be linked together, that the ceasefire—
Reporter: I know, but how much more linked can they be?
[…] Miller: “a ceasefire that secures the release of hostages” […] We proposed a number of different formulations of the language that were not accepted. And I, for the life of me, can’t understand why they weren’t accepted if the parties backing the resolution really wanted to get to something that could pass the Security Council.
The US decided the UN can demand neither a ceasefire nor hostage release—because the US thinks Hamas might parse it like lawful evil jackasses, so the wording has to be /exactly/ right. Then Hamas will respect the resolution. Magic words will imbue a causal influence into identical action from Israel.
France and UK must not really want their citizens back. Not pleasing the US makes it everyone else’s fault. /s
Tethyssays
Vis a vis Gaetz weaseling himself back into Congress after resigning.
Enough details of that ethics report have leaked to support Gaetz being prosecuted for solicitation and sexual assault against a minor. He should be in jail, not Congress.
Where are all those Floridian parents who were so horrified that their precious offspring will be forever scarred by reading library books that mention sex, sexuality, or any of the various permutations of gender identity?
Every member of Congress should be inundated with calls and emails from citizens who aren’t okay with a bunch of rapists in positions of power. Hold their feet to the fire over that blatant hypocrisy.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Addendum to #154: The US is insisting the canonical narrative be that Israel is heroically rescuing hostages by pausing the genocide it’s committing.
The toxic drug crisis has taken more than 47,000 lives in Canada since 2016 and the synthetic opioid fentanyl has become a household name. But now, what’s believed to be an even more potent class of synthetic drugs is showing up in drug busts across the country: nitazenes…
Nitazenes are potent, synthetic opioids linked to overdose deaths in many parts of the world, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Are they new?
No. Nitazenes were created as potential pain relievers in the 1950s.
But they were never approved for clinical use, such as human or veterinary medicines, according to the U.K. Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.
Since 2019, nitazenes have emerged within recreational drug supplies in the United States, Canada and European countries…
birgerjohanssonsays
About Hegseth, the Trump pick for secretary of war/”defense”.
The Deus Vult tattoo is # 1 a crusader slogan and # 2 a neo-nazi slogan.
Hegseth’s tattoo is made with the German Fraktur font, favored in Germany 1933-1945 and favored by neo-nazis and nobody else.
Hackers have breached an online course founded by ostensible influencer and self-described misogynist Andrew Tate, leaking data on close to 800,000 users, including thousands of email addresses, and private user chat logs.
The Daily Dot, which broke the news Thursday, reported that the hackers accessed the user data, then flooded the online course’s chatroom with emojis that “included a transgender flag, a feminist fist, an AI-generated image of Tate draped in a rainbow flag, another where his buttocks are enlarged,” among others.
The hacktivists provided the hacked data on the course’s users to The Daily Dot, which handed the records to data breach notification site Have I Been Pwned, and DDoSecrets, a nonprofit collective that stores leaked datasets in the public interest…
the very tools designed to respond to these situations are not being used. So which one is it? Are Palestinian lives not worth saving? Or does Israel have a license to kill? […] resolutions of this council are binding. Their role is to be enforced. Their goal is to change reality, not to record violations for history’s purposes and then allow them to continue. Had diplomatic efforts succeeded, we would not be here. […] Even this bare minimum was vetoed. […] You’re saying we cannot be for an unconditional ceasefire; what that means in effect now is that we are for… a war. […] Is this war releasing the hostages? Is it even trying to release the hostages?
[…]
Release of the hostages should be unconditional. But stopping killing Palestinians is conditional? […] There’s 100 Israeli hostages, and there’s 2 million Palestinians in Gaza. […] Israel will always claim conditions have not been met, because its plans require it to continue this war to annex the land and destroy the people. Therefore we can no longer accept its conditions. 14 months, and we are still debating if a genocide must be stopped. There’s no justification whatsoever for vetoing a resolution trying to stop atrocities.
Government of the rapists, by the rapists, for the rapists.
The woman, who helped organize the California Federation of Republican
I suppose it could be construed as victim-blamey to point out that this is like a chicken helping organize the California Federation of Wolves … still, why do women willingly associate themselves with predator-riddled organizations? And vote for anti-bodily-autonomy candidates? Are they a bunch of Karens who are willing to throw their own bodily autonomy under the bus to hurt Black people, or rich people willing to do so for lower taxes, or something?
One thing’s for sure. If some women are going to insist on attending, let alone helping organize, these sorts of events, it would serve them well to go in pairs, especially into places like elevators, restrooms, and the parking lot, and to never, ever take their eyes off their drinks whenever Republican men are around.
Maybe also carry pepper spray or a taser. Or go full-on 2nd Amendment.
If a few of these predatory men got shot by their would-be victims, do you think it would scare the rest into behaving themselves?
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: Bekenstein Bound @163:
why do women willingly associate themselves with predator-riddled organizations?
Victim-blaming. Survivorship bias. Mission above all. Information bubbles, low-key complaints that result in cover-ups. Scape-goating predators who do get exposed as the exceptions. Personal fulfillment and sunk cost investment. Unimpeachable celebrity personas.
Podcast: Behind the Bastards – How the Southern Baptist Convention was taken over by Republicans and child molesters, part 2
* The denomination shrunk by 2 million members in the last 20 years, coinciding with descent into scandals and culture war extremism.
And vote for anti-bodily-autonomy candidates?
They’d either have ‘valid’ excuses for themselves or expect not be in a situation to need to make the evil choice. Leopards’ laws are for restricting other, lesser people.
Podcast: You’re Wrong About – The “Pro-Life” Movement
Megan Burbank: I think the appeal of […] the pro-life movement is […] erasing that complexity in favor of a much more comforting lie. […] that pregnancy is simple, and that everyone who has a baby is going to be a good parent, and they’re going to have enough resources, and it’s not hard to make that decision.
Maybe also carry pepper spray or a taser. Or go full-on 2nd Amendment.
Predators are practiced at manipulating victims and plan their encounters. Vast majority are someone familiar with a disarming rapport, rarely a stranger in an alley.
See also: myths about guns making people safer.
StevoRsays
Hundreds of polar researchers have issued an emergency statement calling for urgent action to deal with the impacts of climate change in Antarctica. Antarctica and the Southern Ocean have been undergoing rapid and extreme changes in recent years, including unprecedented heatwaves and record-low sea ice levels.
Over the past week, more than 450 researchers gathered in Hobart for the inaugural Australian Antarctic Research Conference — the first such event in more than a decade. Almost two thirds of attendees were early career researchers, who have released a joint statement titled, Making Antarctica Cool Again. The statement warns of the potential dire consequences of global sea level rise caused by melting ice sheets. “Nowhere on Earth is there a greater cause of uncertainty in sea level rise projections than from East Antarctica, in Australia’s backyard,” the statement says.
Owen Jones EXPOSED: Israel’s Plan To COLONISE Gaza (8 minutes long) Also plans to colonise southern Lebanon aka “northern Israel” and including footage of what’s left of Gaza here.
Israeli soldiers arrested the Jewish-American reporter and three other journalists at a checkpoint in the West Bank on October 8. According to one of the jailed reporters, @the_andrey_x, the soldiers blindfolded them tightly, roughed them up, drawing guns on them at one point, and hauled them off to detention in Jerusalem.
“The soldiers… illegally requested that the journalists hand in their phones, and when they refused, the soldiers pointed a gun at one of the journalists, hit him with their hands and the barrel of a gun, then dragged him out of the car and slammed him onto the concrete. When lying on the ground, they pointed 2 guns at his head. The rest of the journalists exited the car and the military raided it, confiscating phones, cameras, and personal items,” said @the_andrey_x.
exas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Thursday he is opening an investigation into the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) to determine whether the trade group’s members conspired to boycott “certain social media platforms.” While the press release doesn’t name social media platforms by name, one of them is likely Elon Musk’s X, which filed an antitrust lawsuit against the WFA in August and alleged that advertisers orchestrated a “systematic illegal boycott” of the platform.
“Trade organizations and companies cannot collude to block advertising revenue from entities they wish to undermine,” said Paxton in the press release. “Today’s document request is part of an ongoing investigation to hold WFA and its members accountable for any attempt to rig the system to harm organizations they might disagree with.” …
Why does Ken Paxton hate freedom of speech? That sounds un-American.
According to one of Japan’s oldest newspapers, an Osaka-based shower head maker called Science has developed a contraption that’s shaped like a cockpit, fills with water when a bather sits in a seat at its center, and measures the person’s pulse and other biological data via sensors to ensure the temperature is just right. It also “projects images on the inside of [its] transparent cover to help the person feel refreshed,” says the outlet.
Dubbed “Mirai Ningen Sentakuki” (human washing machine of the future), the apparatus might never go on sale. Indeed, for now the company’s plans for it appear limited to an expo in Osaka this April, where up to eight people can experience a 15-minute-long “wash and dry” each day after first booking a reservation.
Still, a home-use version is reportedly also in the works. Its aim? To “wash the mind” as well as the body, according to earlier literature from the company.
If a few of these predatory men got shot by their would-be victims, do you think it would scare the rest into behaving themselves?
On The Infinite Thread we do not post comments that in any way promote, fantasize about, or contemplate violence against other human beings. “Just asking the question” does not excuse the violent fantasy.
[…] The Three Horseman Of The Trump II Apocalypse
The three central themes of Trump II for Morning Memo, and for TPM more broadly, are shaping up to be: retribution, corruption, and destruction.
Those play off of and reinforce each other in fascinating and alarming ways, but they each represent a different slice of what Trump has promised, has begun to deliver, and seems likely to continue to be animated by throughout his term.
If you look back over the last two weeks of post-election Morning Memos, you’ll see that they are largely organized around these three themes. We’ll continue to use them as a prism through which to understand what is happening, how to think about it, and why the old constructs of political journalism in particular are not entirely up to the challenge of covering Trump II.
Gaetz Combined Retribution, Corruption, And Destruction
What stood out most about the now-withdrawn nomination of Matt Gaetz for attorney general was that it combined all three of the elements that most drive Trump’s animus.
Taking over the Justice Department and installing as attorney general an ostentatiously unqualified loyalist who himself had been the subject until last year of federal criminal investigation was itself destructive of the rule of law, the traditions and customs of the Justice Department as an institution, and the ethical precepts of the legal profession more broadly.
Using Gaetz to weaponize the Justice Department against Trump’s political foes, perceived enemies, and anyone else who got in his way was the promised retribution against the “Deep State,” including the investigators, prosecutors, Biden administration officials, and others.
The entire endeavor was undertaken with corrupt intent, and that was mirrored in its execution and in the anticipated rewards that succeeding in it might offer. Instead of the usual background checks for nominees like Gaetz, Trump bypassed the FBI, in whose own files lay the details of its investigation of Gaetz for allegedly paying for sex, using illicit drugs, and sexually abusing a minor. Installing Gaetz at DOJ would have served to protect Trump (though the Roberts Supreme Court has already effectively immunized him) and his entire power base from legal consequence. It would have deeply corrupted the rule of law and its fair and even application across the entire range of legal issues DOJ has a hand in, which is vast.
But this isn’t about Matt Gaetz. This is about Donald Trump. Every single thing I just outlined remains true whether it’s Gaetz or Pam Bondi, his replacement as attorney general nominee, or whoever else runs DOJ for Trump.
The Old Coverage Tropes Don’t Apply Here
Analyzing the Gaetz withdrawal in terms of what it means for Trump politically, what it says about the power of Senate Republicans (welcome to the resistance, Mitch McConnell), or what it portends for Bondi’s confirmation prospects misses the point on so many levels it all collapses into a heap of outdated presumptions and myopia.
Even the very anti-Trump analysis that I have seen most often the past few days – he’s nominating a clown like Gaetz in order to sacrifice him and sneak through a still-deeply-unqualified candidate for AG, like a Bondi – falls short of the mark.
Trump wants to use the Justice Department as a centerpiece of his retribution, corruption, and destruction jihad. It doesn’t much matter who is the figurehead for that effort. The fact that it will no longer be Gaetz doesn’t dramatically change the analysis. Trump is the problem. The president-elect is the source, instigator, and prime mover of the malfeasance.
For all of these reasons, the old confirmation dance for cabinet nominees – and the news coverage it drives – has no real salience with Trump in office. Is it better that Gaetz was blocked? Sure, okay. Can we celebrate that as a win? Have at it. Does it change the nature or the seriousness of the threat that Trump poses to the Justice Department, the rule of law, and the constitutional order? Not even a little bit.
Grading On A Steep Curve
Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi has her own issues: [Photo at the link of Bondi disputing vote counts in Philadelphia.]
Now It’s Hegseth’s Turn In The Barrel
– WSJ: Trump Team Blindsided by Details of Sexual-Assault Allegation Against Hegseth
– Politico: ‘Profound fear and anxiety among women in uniform’: Pentagon reacts to allegations against Hegseth
– WaPo: Senate Republicans are more receptive to Hegseth despite Gaetz’s exit
– Idaho Capital Sun: Trump’s Defense secretary nominee has close ties to Idaho Christian nationalists
[Pete Hegseth, president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of Defense, has close ties to an Idaho-based Christian nationalist church that aims to turn America into a theocracy. Hegseth is a member of a Tennessee congregation affiliated with Christ Church, a controversial congregation in Moscow, Idaho, that has become a leader in the movement to get more Christianity in the public sphere. […]]
How Bad Was Salt Typhoon?
“The Chinese government espionage campaign that has deeply penetrated more than a dozen U.S. telecommunications companies is the ‘worst telecom hack in our nation’s history — by far,’ said Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.” –WaPo
[…]
Senator Bob Casey, a three-term Democrat from Pennsylvania long seen as an institution in state politics, was defeated on Thursday by his Republican challenger, the former hedge-fund executive David McCormick, in a stunning upset in one of the nation’s top Senate races. […]
“This race was one of the closest in our commonwealth’s history,” Mr. Casey said in a statement. “I am grateful to the thousands of people who worked to make sure every eligible vote cast could be counted.”
[…] Republicans will now hold a 53-to-47 advantage in the Senate in addition to narrowly controlling the House, giving President-elect Donald J. Trump more flexibility to pursue his agenda.
[…] Senator John Fetterman, the Democrat who holds Pennsylvania’s other Senate seat, released a notably raw statement.
“This hits me,” he said. “Bob Casey was, is and always will be Pennsylvania’s best senator.”
Remarks by Rudy Giuliani about the women on his podcast prompted the call for the contempt hearing just a day ago.
A civil contempt hearing is now on the books in Washington, D.C., for Rudy Giuliani — just a day after two election workers he defamed, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, notified a judge that they believed the former New York City mayor has continued to smear them publicly.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ordered Giuliani on Thursday to respond to the motion for civil contempt by Dec. 2. The former election workers will then have until Dec. 6 to file their response to Giuliani. The first hearing in the case will be held on Dec. 12 at the federal courthouse near the U.S. Capitol.
During that hearing, Moss and Freeman’s lawyers will ask the court to hold Giuliani in civil contempt for violating terms of an injunction placed on him last year, after a jury found him liable for defaming the women to the tune of $148 million. That verdict and the injunction that followed — which Giuliani agreed to — barred him from making any more defamatory remarks about the women going forward.
The women say that lasted only months. In recent comments on his podcast, “America’s Mayor Live,” Giuliani repeated his lie that the mother-daughter duo passed a USB drive to each other containing votes for Joe Biden when they were working the polls at an arena in Atlanta in Nov. 2020. Giuliani has long claimed the women somehow planned to upload phony vote records from the USB drive and tamper with the election results.
Giuliani’s statements aired on Nov. 12 and Nov. 14, and according to the women’s lawyer, Aaron Nathan, they resemble the same lies he told about them in 2020. In one of the podcasts this month, Giuliani claimed the women were “quadruple-counting votes.” […]
Fox News responded to Matt Gaetz’s decision to drop his bid for attorney general by suggesting a consolation prize: a U.S. Senate seat.
The former Florida congressman pulled his name from consideration for the powerful position as lurid allegations that he had sex with a minor continued to pile up.
“Could it then be Matthew Gaetz who then becomes a U.S. Senator?” Fox anchor Harris Faulkner asked, moments after the news that he dropped out was reported on air.
The Senate seat currently held by Marco Rubio is expected to be vacated and filled with an appointment by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis following Trump’s decision to nominate Rubio as secretary of state. [video at the link]
Former Trump press secretary-turned-Fox News talking head Kayleigh McEnany further suggested that Trump could nominate Gaetz to a “big and powerful position that does not require Senate approval,” which could sidestep a public spectacle as more questions are raised about Gaetz’s alleged sexual misconduct.
Faulkner again raised the prospect of Gaetz in the Senate, noting that a DeSantis appointment would also avoid confirmation hearings. […]
The results of Ukraine’s quick action after the lifting of restrictions on use of Western missiles on targets in Russia proper are still coming in. But there’s little doubt as to how shockingly effective the strike on the Russian positions in Bryansk oblast was. Not only did it deal a major blow to Russian materiel for their Sever(“Northern”) Group of forces but as an adjunct to the spectacular drone attacks a few weeks ago on Russian munitions depots in Tikhoretsk and Toropets, Russian supplies for their much ballyhooed Kursk counteroffensive has been severely affected.
Any new supplies for the Sever Group will have to come from somewhere else. Your guess is as good as mine. But with winter fast approaching and the multi-pronged Russian movement deep into Donetsk oblast(and now parts of Zaporizhia) already reduced to only inching forward and facing localized tactical counterattacks from Ukraine, any rerouting/shifting of supplies and resetting overall logistics to help the Sever Group will take time, mess up Russian operational timelines as well as possibly limit operations of the Russian Center Group focused on Donetsk and Zaporizhia
Dmytro Zhmailo, co-founder and executive director of the Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation discusses this in Espreso online:
“The warehouses in the Bryansk region of the 67th Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces were originally intended for the Sever troop grouping, which is attempting to counter the Ukrainian bridgehead in the Kursk region. To hinder their progress, we targeted the Tikhoretsk and Toropets warehouses with the drones a few weeks ago,” Zhmailo explained.
According to him, the destruction of Russian arsenals in the Bryansk region has delayed Russia’s timeline for eliminating the Ukrainian foothold in the Kursk region. Initially, Russia planned to do so by October 1, then moved the date to October 14, and has now postponed it to February 1.
global.espreso.tv/…
Critically for Russian efforts in Kursk, the Ukrainian strike on Bryansk, if reports are to be credited, has in one fell swoop likely decapitated the leadership of the Russian formation there including attached senior North Korean officers. Espreso provides additional insights on what this Ukrainian strike did and its wider implications:
The presence of such high-ranking personnel suggests that the casualties might not be limited to officers and one general.
global.espreso.tv/…
Outmanned and outgunned, Ukraine nevertheless continues to display incredible nimbleness in making maximum effective use of whatever advanced munitions her allies provide […] Such tenacity, resilience and fighting spirit in the face of an aggressor military behemoth is to be truly admired.
[…] Greg Sargent has an article up today in The New Republic about a barely covered story from last week where a rump judge in Texas killed President Biden’s new overtime rule which expanded overtime benefits for workers making between 35 & 58 thousand dollars who are classified as managers by their employers to skirt overtime rules. This amounts to roughly 4 million workers who will no longer be eligible for time and half after working 40 hours in a week or 8 hours in a day.
[…] Obama had previously tried to raise the threshold to roughly $47,000 but was thwarted by a right wing judge, President Biden ‘s DOL set the limit at $58+ thousand which was apparently too much for the big business lobby. (side note: rump did raise the limit to $35,000 which apparently was palatable to big business […]).
Sargent links to a Bloomberg Law article on the ruling, and my quick Google search returned only 3 major media articles. NPR, the AP and Reuters all covered the ruling and US News and World Reports reprinted the AP article. Sargent notes he could not find one outraged columnist who had written on the subject.
This is just another example in a long line of them in which the media covers right-wing voters disgust for “the elites” while fawning over those very same voters. Then they are notoriously silent when the right-wing elite screws over these people time after time without ever noting how the so-called liberal elite is actually trying to help imporve their lot in life. I am glad Sargent is at least trying to scream into the wind. Will it change things? Unlikely, but we need more of it from people who are on the inside.
[…] Trump’s sentencing in his New York criminal case will not go forward as planned next week as his attorneys push to dismiss the prosecution following his election victory.
Judge Juan Merchan, who oversees the trial proceedings, announced the adjournment in a letter Friday.
The judge halted the case to accept additional written briefing on Trump’s argument that his return to the White House compels the court to toss his 34-count felony conviction entirely.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) is opposing that request. Instead, Bragg floated that Merchan could freeze the proceedings while Trump is in office, meaning the conviction would remain on the books but sentencing wouldn’t occur until 2029, at the earliest.
Merchan ordered Trump to file his formal motion asking for dismissal by Dec. 2 and Bragg to respond by Dec. 9. The judge will then decide how to proceed.
Though both sides agreed to delay the sentencing, the new schedule aligns with Bragg’s request. Trump had asked for a slower timeline that would push the dismissal battle closer to his inauguration. [snipped “landslide victory comments by Trump’s campaign spokesperson]
[…] The former president’s criminal defense strategy long rested on delaying until after the election. Trump successfully staved off trial in his other three criminal prosecutions, and in the only case that did reach a verdict, the New York hush money case, he successfully pushed the sentencing until after voters headed to the ballot box.
The jury’s verdict made Trump the first former U.S. president convicted of a felony. When he returns to the White House, he would become the first person to assume the nation’s highest office with such a criminal record — if the conviction stands.
Well, we guess it simply wasn’t an option for Fox News to admit that Donald Trump is already a lame-duck president, a fucking loser who makes decisions impulsively, who has already lost complete control of the teeny-tiny non-mandate he squeaked out of the American people. […]
So they had to make some shit up.
Kayleigh McEnany, who used to lie professionally for Trump, and still does, agreed that Dear Leader is a genius, and said: [video at the link]
HARRIS FAULKNER: [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis has to appoint, if Michael Waltz, the congressman, moves on in his nominated post, if Marco Rubio, senator, moves on in his nominated post, he’s got some positions to work with there in that state. Could it be Matthew Gaetz who then becomes a US senator for an interim in the state of Florida?
MCENANY: That’s an interesting thought. I mean, Cassie, there is also the notion that Trump could appoint him to a big and powerful position that does not require Senate approval. He clearly thinks fondly of Matt Gaetz. Matt Gaetz is someone who wants to drain the swamp, who wants to shake things up in a big way. Trump could put them in a big position, just one shy of needing Senate confirmation.
Maybe Matt Gaetz was supposed to be in big and powerful position all along, and reminding America that he’s a creep who slept with an underage girl and laundered money for sex through his “adopted” “son” Nestor’s PayPal was just part of Trump’s brilliant plan!
That’s pretty pathetic, but Tomi Lahren can beat it.
Tomi Lahren agreed that Dear Leader is a genius and added that his cheeks are as lovely as a garden that is full of herbs and spices, and explained: [video at the link]
TOMI LAHREN: Well, I’ll tell you this Martha, I think this whole thing was very strategic and in my estimation it has the art of the deal written all over it.
Oh yeah you fuckin’ betcha.
LAHREN: Obviously, Matt Gaetz was a very controversial pick, some would say maybe the most controversial pick that Trump could have selected. So now whoever he picks as his second choice, they’ll probably receive a little bit less scrutiny, they won’t have as much heat on them. So I think both the nomination the withdrawal of Matt Gaetz was very strategic for the Trump team. It also took some of the heat off of the other picks that were also controversial but perhaps less so than Matt Gaetz. So I think it kind of gave cover for some of the other controversial picks and whoever he picks as his second choice, I think that they’re going to have a much easier time because they will not be as controversial as Matt Gaetz. It would be hard to find somebody more controversial for that pick, so I think it’s been very strategic.
Eleventy-dimensional chess, 100 percent […]
Martha MacCallum had a question for Lahren:
MARTHA MACCALLUM: Yeah. Do you think Matt Gaetz was in on that? Do you think Matt Gaetz was complicit in that plan that you lay out, Tomi?
Was Matt Gaetz in on the evil genius wizard plan to make Robert F. Kennedy Jr. look like less of an anti-vax crank who’s covered in the semen of this whale he just found?
LAHREN: Listen, this is all just my theory and my speculation, but I wouldn’t put it past him. I think that this is a very strategic team. You watch the media and Democrats melt down over this for an entire week. I think, as Senator Fetterman said, this was an epic troll. Maybe all part of the plan, the art of the deal.
[…] That’s pretty pathetic, but Jesse Watters can beat it, and oh boy, do we mean he’s beating it, if you know what we mean. He agreed that Dear Leader is a genius, and added that his thighs are columns of alabaster set in sockets of gold, and that he is majestic, like the Lebanon Mountains with their towering cedars. He provided his theory for what the ultra-super-secret plan for Gaetz might be: [video at the link]
JESSE WATTERS: They could even name him special prosecutor to go after the weaponization. That would be a turn of events.
BRETT TOLMAN (GUEST): A new and fearsome special prosecutor that has actual authority to do something. That would be great.
WATTERS: That would be great.
[…]Do they realize special prosecutors are supposed to be smart prosecutors who have actually, you know, practiced some law here and there?
Do they know special prosecutors have to go to work every day?
Gaetz himself hinted yesterday afternoon on Twitter that he was ready to keep fighting to Make America Hitler Again for Trump, “just maybe from a different post.”
There’s also speculation that he might be stupid enough to try to just get sworn in to the 119th Congress when it convenes, as if that wouldn’t bring that Ethics investigation just fucking roaring back. (And that’s assuming the report doesn’t come out before then.)
Whatever happens, we are certain Dear Leader is handling it perfectly […]
One of the favorite apothegms of the Trumpist Right has been “I used to think Trump was a bad guy, too, because I believed the lies of the mainstream media — but then I listened to and read him for myself and changed my mind!” Most of the time this is absolute nonsense meant to make people question their own judgment and to portray themselves as shrewd, independent thinkers and Trump’s detractors as brainwashed followers of “whatever everyone else is saying.” Other times, it’s because they realized that their path to personal success involves taking a leap onto the Trump train and they have to justify their past comments about how he’s basically Hitler. See: JD Vance and basically every Republican who ran against him in 2016 and 2024 except for Chris Christie.
The latest member of this not-so-exclusive club, to no one’s surprise, is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. CNN senior reporter Andrew Kaczynski recently unearthed multiple examples of Kennedy dragging Trump for filth, comparing him to Hitler, Mussolini, and other highly objectionable human beings, and calling his supporters “belligerent idiots” and “outright Nazis.”
“Like many Americans, I allowed myself to believe the mainstream media’s distorted, dystopian portrait of President Trump. I no longer hold this belief and now regret having made those statements,” he told CNN, without getting specific about what, specifically, he was wrong about.
At least he’s finally admitting that he’s incredibly gullible and willing to believe anything anyone tells him?
So yes — this would mean that while RFK Jr. has long had views far outside the mainstream concerning things like vaccines and fluoride, the mainstream media was able to compel him to believe that Trump was Hitler.
The curious thing about that, though, is that the vast majority of RFK Jr.’s criticisms do not seem as though they were based on any “distorted, dystopian” mainstream media portraits at all. Rather, it seems that he came by his assessment the normal way — by seeing Trump’s actions and listening to and reading his words and drawing conclusions from there.
For example!
In 2019, Kennedy argued that Trump had turned his first administration over to corporate lobbyists from industries they were supposed to regulate — industries that Kennedy would actually be able to regulate in some cases if confirmed as Trump’s HHS secretary.
So that is literally true — Trump specifically appointed people who opposed the agencies they were meant to head up. There’s not a special “mainstream media” spin to that, you either think it’s a good idea or you think it is a bad idea. I think it’s a bad one, and evidently, so did he at one point.
In another example, he specifically cites “statement[s] that Donald Trump makes” as opposed to “things that the mainstream media accused Donald Trump of saying that he would never, ever actually say.”
“And you can see that every statement that Donald Trump makes is fear-based,” Kennedy said on his radio show in December 2016. “Every statement he makes. You know, we have to be fear of the Muslims. We have to be fear of the Black people, and particularly the big Black guy Obama, who’s destroying this country, who’s making everybody miserable.”
“And only one person has the genius and the capacity to solve these things. And I’m not gonna tell you how I’m gonna do it. Just trust in me, vote for me and everything will be great again. And of course, that whole thing is like a carnival barker,” Kennedy concluded.
I look forward to RFK Jr. explaining that, actually, Donald Trump never said a bad word about Obama and that the mainstream media made all of that up, as well. Or that he has now decided that Obama is bad and was, in fact, born in Kenya. One of those two things!
The former environmental lawyer also criticized things Trump did, re: the environment.
He accused Trump of pursuing “pollution-based prosperity” by rolling back regulations like the Clean Water Act and withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement.
“Trump isn’t just gonna destroy the climate, but he’s also promised last week when he spoke to the oil industry, the shale gas industry, he promised that he would get rid of the Clean Water Act,” he added. “So he’s just gonna open the floodgates to every kind of pollution … Trump’s prosperity is gonna be pollution-based prosperity.”
Kennedy’s sharp criticisms of Trump extended into 2019, when he compared Trump’s EPA chief Andrew Wheeler to one of the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” and called Trump’s efforts to boost fossil fuel production “despicable,” accusing him of knowingly prioritizing coal, oil and gas over the planet’s future.
Again, these are things that Trump did and said. They are not things that the mainstream media or anyone else made up.
Quite frankly, the only thing I can think of that could possibly be more exhausting than covering Trump would be having to make him up from whole cloth. Who could possibly even do that? Especially if he were actually going around being absolutely lovely all of the time and never doing anything horrifying (like, for instance, planning to appoint Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head up Health and Human Services).
But if that is the case, I certainly hope that RFK Jr. will take the time to get to the specifics of what he was wrong about, as I’m sure we’d all love to be so enlightened.
Texas Volunteers As Site Of Trump’s First Deportation Concentration Camp
Texas, the state we suspect may have been named Most Likely To Embrace Fascism in its high school yearbook, has made a lovely goodwill gesture to Donald Trump, generously offering him a 1,400-acre parcel of land in Starr County where he can build a concentration camp for undocumented immigrants and other people he might want to deport.
In a letter sent Tuesday by the Texas General Land Office, State Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham goes out of her way to impress upon Trump that she and the state government hate immigrants as much as Trump does. Buckingham promised that her agency is “fully prepared to enter into agreement” with Homeland Security, Immigrations and Custom Enforcement, or the Border Patrol — any badass deportation cowboys, really! — to let the appropriate agency build a facility “for the processing, detention, and coordination of the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation’s history.”
After all, violent criminals are the only people who’ll be deported by Trump, as long as you remember that anyone in the USA without papers — and probably a lot of them who have papers, too — is by definition a “violent criminal.” As the Texas Tribune makes clear, that’s just how Buckingham sees reality.
In a Fox News interview that also aired Tuesday, Buckingham explained that she’s “100 percent on board with the Trump administration’s pledge to get these criminals out of our country.” She said the land offer originated in a “brainstorming” session with her team.
“We figured, hey, the Trump administration probably needs some deportation facilities because we’ve got a lot of these violent criminals that we need to round up and get the heck out of our country,” Buckingham said.
You want to get violent criminals out of our country, or just to say “get violent criminals out of our country” a lot, Dawn Buckingham is your violent criminal getter-outer.
Now don’t you pester Ms. Buckingham with the consistent Justice Department data confirming that undocumented migrants are way less crimey than American-born Americans.
And for heaven’s sake, you certainly shouldn’t confront her with that inconvenient October 2024 Cato Institute report showing that WELL ACTUALLY during his four years in office, Donald Trump released twice as many convicted criminal noncitizens into the US as did Joe Biden […] In fact, that wasn’t just a statistical quirk; it was the result of a deliberate policy choice: Trump rescinded an Obama executive order directing ICE to concentrate on arresting and deporting noncitizens who had committed serious crimes. As a result, since ICE didn’t have to focus on crimers, who are often harder to track down, it was freed to go after easier targets ranging “from pizza delivery drivers to domestic-violence victims to spouses of U.S. citizens with no criminal records.”
And since they were no longer a deportation priority, the Cato study found,
Immigrants with serious criminal records were frequently released into the country instead of being detained for deportation. This included individuals who were transferred to the custody of ICE after serving their sentences and those who were previously deported and encountered ICE after crossing into the country again.
[During the Trump administration, let’s emphasize!]
All told, Trump’s DHS released about twice as many criminal aliens into the US every month as the agency did under Biden, who put the Obama policy back in place. But again, that will never convince Trumpers like Commissar Commissioner Buckingham […]
To emphasize the myth of universal criminality among migrants, Buckingham’s letter explains that Trump could actually redeem the land itself it if he uses it for deporting violent criminal abuelas and their entire violent criminal families, including the violent criminal children who can’t possibly be citizens because Trump will declare the 14th Amendment void on Day One. You see, Mister President, Buckingham wrote with tears in her eyes, the land itself carried a stain because the previous property owner
had refused to allow the wall to be built and actively blocked law enforcement from accessing the property. Her actions enabled cartel members and violent criminals to sexually abuse migrant women and children on this land for some time.
We looked for any evidence that the land had been the site of any such crimes, but the only thing we found was a Fox News piece about the state’s acquisition of the land in which Buckingham herself made more detailed claims, but without reference to any specific cases.
Buckingham said there has been “a massive amount of human traffic” on the property. Her office said the acquisition includes trees that have served as “rape trees,” where migrants would display women’s clothing as trophies after abuse.
[Ever more elaborate lies.]
She wouldn’t possibly be making that “rape trees” shit up out of the far more mundane fact that border crossing sites are frequently strewn with discarded clothing, would she? It’s true that migrants are often victims of sexual violence, but the “rape tree” thing is a longtime fixture of border panic myths, with no basis in reality, according to law enforcement experts. Those denials just make online dipshits insist that the myth has to be true, and worse, law enforcement is covering it up. Like massive voter fraud, you know.
One more aside: We remember how the very imaginative border grifter Lewis Arthur convinced lots of wingnuts to send him gift cards after he insisted an abandoned homeless encampment near Tucson was obviously a “sex trafficking camp” (police said no, he was lying) — also complete with “rape trees,” because that’s what he said they were.
Commissioner Buckingham is just doing her part to propagate a cherished rightwing lie about undocumented migrants, violent criminals, all. We’re sure that if a deportation concentration camp is built on the parcel, Donald Trump himself will share the story of the rape trees when he speaks at its dedication. [Social media post, with photo, is available at the link]
In related news, to celebrate the return of Trump to power, and probably to burnish his 2028 chances, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott yesterday bragged that the state had added new migrant-drowning buoys to those already in the Rio Grande, confident that the Biden Administration’s lawsuit to have them removed as a violation of federal law will just go away in January.
There was some question as to whether Gaetz, who resigned from the House after Trump chose him for attorney general, would want to be sworn into the next Congress.
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said Friday that he doesn’t plan to rejoin Congress after he withdrew his name from consideration to be President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general amid sexual misconduct allegations.
“I’m still going to be in the fight, but it’s going to be from a new perch. I do not intend to join the 119th Congress,” Gaetz said in an interview with conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
[…] “I’m 42 now, and I’ve got other goals in life that I’m eager to pursue — my wife and my family — and so I’m going to be fighting for President Trump,” he said. “I’m going to be doing whatever he asks of me, as I always have. But I think that eight years is probably enough time in the United States Congress.”
Gaetz said it seems like “a pretty poetic time to allow that great new blood to come in, to allow my district to have high-quality representation.”
He also alluded to playing a continued role in Trump’s plans, without getting into specifics.
“We need a leadership structure under President Trump that’s going to allow for durability of our movement and the ability to continue this great realignment of our politics, and so I’ll play a part in that,” he said. “I plan to be a big voice, but maybe not as an elected member of the government.”
[…] If he were to rejoin Congress, there was also the question about whether the House Ethics Committee would proceed with releasing its report on its investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations against Gaetz.
[…] Gaetz’s forthcoming nomination was on shaky ground because of the allegations. On Friday, he told Kirk that those allegations are false and an attempt to “smear” him. […]
Transition officials have used Project 2025’s extensive personnel database to identify potential hires for the incoming administration, a person familiar with the plans said.
[…] Trump and his allies disavowed the conservative Project 2025 during the election, seeing the conservative transition plan and policy blueprint as a liability after Democrats used it to attack his campaign. Some close to Trump even suggested those tied to the effort would be shut out of a potential administration.
But with the campaign over, Trump’s transition team is turning to Project 2025 to help staff the next administration.
Already, transition officials are taking suggestions for potential hires from the extensive personnel database created by Project 2025, a person familiar with the situation told NBC News.
While Project 2025’s massive book of conservative policy recommendations received most of the attention from Democrats, a central part of the effort was putting together a database that officials had framed as a conservative LinkedIn to help staff an incoming Republican administration.
The person familiar with the transition said officials overseeing plans for some departments and agencies have started to reach out to potential hires whose names and contact information were part of that database.
[…] The receptiveness to using the Project 2025 database for potential hires comes as the transition has already shown it is open to tapping contributors to the effort for administration jobs, including Tom Homan as border czar, Brendan Carr as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and John Ratcliffe as CIA director. Both Homan and Ratcliffe were listed as contributors to Project 2025, while Carr wrote a chapter on the FCC.
Additionally, former Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, a Project 2025 author who also served as the Republican National Committee’s platform policy director, is thought of as a potential administration pick, too.
[…] a Republican operative who spoke with NBC News shortly after Trump’s electoral victory said “it’s kind of bulls— if they really try to keep all those dudes out.”
[…] There was plenty of overlap between the Trump agenda and Project 2025 — which featured contributions from dozens of officials from Trump’s first administration. For instance, the Project 2025 policy blueprint and Trump’s “Agenda 47” featured similar ideas on mass deportations and slashing the federal bureaucracy.
[…] over the summer, Project 2025 insiders weren’t sweating Trump and his campaign’s disavowals, viewing them as an effort to boost his electoral chances, not to flatly reject the ideas and people tied to the effort.
Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who railed against Project 2025 with a very large copy of the policy book at the Democratic National Convention in August, said Democrats need to focus on their policy response to the elevation of Project 2025’s officials and ideas. She shared an Instagram post in which she promoted new legislation tightening restrictions around the collection and management of reproductive health data.
“It’s easy to say ‘we told you so,’ but more importantly, we now know what they’re going to do, so it’s on Democrats to decide how to fight back,” McMorrow said. “Which is exactly what I’m doing.”
Donald Trump does not appear happy that people are correctly pointing out that his narrow victory over Vice President Kamala Harris does not give him a sweeping mandate to govern. [Aww. Fake tears. Tiny violins. Schadenfreude moment.]
Trump’s incoming White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Friday slammed articles from The New York Times and Politico highlighting that Trump did not win in a “landslide,” as he’s asserted since Nov. 5.
“New Fake News Narrative Alert! Here are the ridiculous headlines from Politico and The New York Times this morning,” Leavitt wrote on X on Friday, posting screenshots of both articles. “The fake news is trying to minimize President Trump’s massive and historic victory to try to delegitimize his mandate before he even takes the Oath of Office again.”
And his campaign fired off an email statement on Friday with the subject line “The Truth About The MAGA Mandate,” which declared, “President Trump will take office with an historic mandate for his agenda […]
Trump has been touting his win since Election Night. “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” Trump said on Nov. 6.
And he wrote in a Nov. 17 post on his Truth Social platform, “What a great week this has been. Perhaps the most successful Election results in Republican Party history! [Not true.] MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. Thank you!!!”
The whining about Trump’s mandate comes as multiple media outlets have correctly pointed out that, as vote tallies are being finalized, Trump’s win does not look like the landslide it did on election night.
Let’s look at the facts.
Trump’s share of the popular vote is now below 50%, meaning a majority of the country did not vote for him.
As of early Thursday, his popular-vote margin has dwindled to just 1.6% over Harris as states finalize their counts. That’s the third-smallest margin since 1888, according to The New York Times, and is smaller than Democrat Hillary Clinton’s margin in 2016 when she lost the Electoral College.
[…] Politico’s article that Leavitt criticized pointed out:
The presidency comes with enough legal authority by itself. Why assign any small-margin winner the moral authority that comes with a popular mandate? For people in the business of reporting results and analyzing outcomes, it may feel satisfying to claim clarity after months of watching the battle. The only problem is it’s not true.
Ultimately, Trump is already feeling the squeeze of his narrow win.
[…] At the end of the day, Trump can’t handle looking like a loser. So expect the sycophants around him to keep pushing the lie about his win to stroke his very large ego.
Physicists including Robert H. Dickle and Fred Hoyle have argued that we are living in a universe that is perfectly fine-tuned for life. Following the anthropic principle, they claimed that the only reason fundamental physical constants have the values we measure is because we wouldn’t exist if those values were any different. There would simply have been no one to measure them.
But now a team of British and Swiss astrophysicists have put that idea to test. “The short answer is no, we are not in the most likely of the universes,” said Daniele Sorini, an astrophysicist at Durham University. “And we are not in the most life-friendly universe, either.” Sorini led a study aimed at establishing how different amounts of the dark energy present in a universe would affect its ability to produce stars. Stars, he assumed, are a necessary condition for intelligent life to appear.
But worry not. While our Universe may not be the best for life, the team says it’s still pretty OK-ish…
Dear PZ, I know you have a lot of plates spinning on the end of sticks, but most other decent sites we visit have dropped their ‘xhitter’ links/icons. PLEASE, do the same and abandon that toxin.
thanks
Three Utah children who have been missing for two years were located living with members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Fredonia Police Department revealed Thursday.
The children disappeared in late October 2022, police said. Their last known location at the time was in Beaver County, Utah.
In late August 2024, the police department of the small town of Fredonia, Arizona, received information regarding three children who had been reported missing two years prior.
It was suspected that the father had “orchestrated the disappearance and subsequent hiding” of the children, along with help from family members of the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saint Church, a press release Thursday from Fredonia Police states.
Arizona and Utah agencies conducted a joint effort to plan to retrieve the children. On Sept. 1, 2024, authorities found and retrieved the three children and returned them to their mother.
Police also apprehended the children’s grandmother and aunt who “appeared to be overseeing the children,” the release states…
U.S. flights to six airports in northern Haiti can resume this week, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The restart comes after the FAA prohibited U.S. airlines from flying to Haiti’s airports earlier this month because some planes were hit with bullets amid escalating gang violence in the country.
Pilots can fly planes to six airports in Haiti: Port-de-Paix, Cap-Haïtien, Pignon, Jeremie, Antoine-Simon and Jacmel. Flights to Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, are still prohibited, the FAA said.
“The FAA issued a modified Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) adjusting the area in Haiti where U.S. civil aircraft and U.S. pilots can operate. The new NOTAM prohibits operations below 10,000 feet in specified areas of Haiti identified in the NOTAM until December 12th,” the FAA said in a statement to The Hill.
.
“Prior to today’s restrictions, the FAA prohibited operations in the entirety of the territory and airspace of Haiti below 10,000 feet for 30 days,” the agency added […]
Haiti has experienced instability following the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. In recent weeks, violence in Haiti’s capital, stemming from armed gangs, has intensified with more than 20,000 fleeing their homes, according to the United Nations.
Caitlin Clark has joined an ownership group looking to create a National Women’s Soccer League team in Cincinnati, Ohio.
NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman announced on Friday that Cincinnati is one of three remaining cities in the running to become the 16th NWSL franchise, up against Cleveland and Denver.
“The NWSL Cincinnati bid team is thrilled that Caitlin Clark has joined our ownership group in pursuit of bringing a women’s professional soccer team to our city,” the NWSL Cincinnati bid team wrote in a statement…
Ah, Florida, with its endless beauty, its endless sunshine, endless beaches, endless humidity, endless hurricanes, endless supply of alligators and illegally imported Burmese pythons slithering around the Everglades, endless condos, endless retirees, endless flooding from rising oceans […]
And of course Florida has its endless number of ambitious psychopaths disguised as elected officials for convicted felon Donald Trump to hoover up into his administration […]
Thus Trump’s first nominee for attorney general, sex pest and Florida Man Matt Gaetz, has been replaced by Florida Woman Pam Bondi, the former AG of America’s flopping dingus and a hardcore MAGA jackass who once got the state’s then-governor Rick Scott to postpone an execution because it was scheduled for the same time as one of her fundraisers.
And that was arguably one of her lesser sins.
Bondi is everything Gaetz was — a corrupt, cruel, power-hungry, smarmy, arrogant, 100 percent lickspittle for Donald Trump — without either the baggage of being loathed by nearly every member of her own party in Washington or having boinked teenagers while guzzling cases of Red Bull and snorting a pharmacy’s worth of Viagra when she was in her thirties. […]
Bondi is also a pretty formidable lawyer with experience running an AG’s domain. So she won’t be nearly as incompetent in the job as Gaetz would have been. Which means she’s much more likely to be able to follow through on Trump’s stated desire to use the Department of Justice to pursue anyone he perceives as having wronged him […]
In fact, Bondi was already promising very loudly to pursue Trump’s enemies as long as a year and a half ago during a rant on Fox, which is where Trump goes for input on all his casting nominating decisions:
“When Republicans take back the White House, you know what’s going to happen? The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones — the investigators will be investigated. Because the Deep State, last term for President Trump, they were hiding in the shadows, but now they have a spotlight on them, and they can all be investigated. Because the house needs to be cleaned out, because now we know who most of them are.”
Imagine you are a DOJ employee, particularly one who worked on any of the numerous investigations of Donald Trump over the last eight years, and you hear that paranoid gibberish. Does she sound like a reasonable boss who cares about pursuing truth? Or is your first reaction that you should be updating your résumé and/or calling your own lawyer, just in case?
Aside from that whole grotesque “reschedule this execution so I can go eat canapés and beg rich people for money” incident, Bondi has all sorts of career lowlights. Quite a few of them even involve doing favors for Donald Trump.
Such as the time in 2013 that she accepted a $25,000 campaign donation from him, and then a few weeks later dropped her office’s fraud investigation of his scam Trump University. This was a total coincidence, according to Pam Bondi […]
Considering lawsuits over Trump U eventually cost the convicted felon $25 million, we’d say Bondi works cheap. She should have at least held out for a complimentary Mar-a-Lago membership.
And as it turns out, that $25k donation was illegal because it came from his Trump Foundation, which is legally not allowed to make political donations. […]
Bondi also was a member of Trump’s impeachment defense team, arguing for his innocence during his first Senate trial. Not that that is much of a qualification for being the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, since the fix was in on that trial thanks to the spineless Republican majority. But it is certainly a qualification for a Trump toady.
Other Bondi career lowlights? There were the multiple times she joined other state attorneys general to sue the federal government over various requirements in the Affordable Care Act that were helpful to people without health insurance but committed the sin of costing insurance companies money.
She joined other states in suing the American Farm Bureau over a plan to clean up the heavily polluted Chesapeake Bay, which as a resident of southern Virginia we are 100 percent positive is nowhere near Florida. […]
She opposed gay marriage on the grounds that it would “impose significant public harm” in Florida for some reason. Then she got into a big public fight with Anderson Cooper after the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, when he had the temerity to bring up her long anti-LGBT record.
And if you want to know what Bondi thought of the American citizens who were caught up in the foreclosure crisis after they made the mistake of trusting shady mortgage lenders who were engaged in illegal practices, you can read this piece at The American Prospect. [Embedded links are available at the main link.] Spoiler alert: She sided with the lenders who had made significant contributions to her campaign for attorney general, going so far as to fire a couple of lawyers in her office’s Economic Crimes division who had turned up mountains of evidence of wrongdoing.
And possibly worst of all, Bondi essentially stole a St. Bernard that had gone missing and then been rescued in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, then engaged in a legal battle to keep from having to return the dog to the family that had lost him. She’s literally a dognapper!
America definitely dodged a bullet with the departure of Matt Gaetz. But it dodged right into the path of the freight train that is Pam Bondi. It was a given that any Gaetz replacement would suck worse than a massive chest wound. And boy, the replacement we got does not disappoint.
Texas education officials approve Bible-based lessons for K-5 schools
The optional curriculum for elementary schools aligns with Trump’s plans for a more conservative agenda in public school classrooms
The Texas state school board on Friday approved an optional elementary school curriculum that includes Bible-based lessons that critics have said inappropriately promote Christian beliefs in public classrooms. [Duh]
In its final vote Friday, the board decided in an 8-7 vote to approve the curriculum. The materials were created this year by the Texas Education Agency after a new law required the department to make a statewide curriculum for school districts to use after approval from the education board.
Supporters of the curriculum welcomed the State Board of Education’s Friday vote, saying the curriculum will help students learn and accusing opponents of trying ban the Bible from classrooms.
[…] In approving the curriculum, Texas joined at least two other GOP-led states that have passed laws incorporating Christianity into public schools. In June, Louisiana’s Republican governor signed a law requiring public classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. Oklahoma’s state superintendent the same month mandated that public schools should teach the Bible.
Those efforts align with […]Trump’s plans for a more conservative agenda in public school classrooms, including shutting down the Department of Education.
[…] several board members acknowledged the Bluebonnet curriculum contained valuable moral lessons but said they were inappropriately intertwined with specific religious teachings.
Among them was board member Rebecca Bell-Metereau, a Democrat who said she appreciated the attempt to include some other faith traditions beyond Christianity, but that those efforts don’t go far enough.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has been a supporter of the new curriculum. He said in May that the lessons would let students “better understand the connection of history, art, community, literature, and religion on pivotal events like the signing of the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Movement, and the American Revolution.”
Curriculum opponents including the Texas American Federation of Teachers decried that the narrow passing vote was made possible by Abbott making a last-minute political appointment to the board; Leslie Recine, the board member, was among those who voted Friday to approve the curriculum. [shenanigans]
In Texas, school districts will be able to start using the new curriculum in August. Those that do will receive an incentive of $60 per student.
In June 2023, Abbott signed a bill requiring the Texas Education Agency to create a curriculum for districts to use pending state education board approval. When the agency first released the materials in May, Abbott commended them, saying they would allow students to “better understand the connection of history, art, community, literature, and religion on pivotal events like the signing of the U.S. Constitution, the civil rights movement, and the American Revolution.”
[…] Months of intense scrutiny of the curriculum followed, particularly around its inclusion of Christianity-based lessons.
One lesson for kindergartners about the Golden Rule, for example, centers on how Jesus taught the rule during his Sermon on the Mount, along with a story from the Jewish Torah. The materials also include a list of variations of the rule from other religions, but do not offer detailed descriptions. […]
This rare weather phenomenon is happening simultaneously in the Northwest and Northeast.
First a bomb cyclone and an atmospheric river. Now a double Fujiwhara effect. What it all means.
As an intense week of weather wraps up for the Pacific Northwest and Northern California, Mother Nature has one last nasty trick up her sleeve: the Fujiwhara effect.
It involves two atmospheric disturbances doing an intricate dance — or in this case, two storms taking turns lashing the Northwest while rotating around a central point. And this rare phenomenon is actually happening in two places at once this week: in the Northwest and the Northeast.
The animation below of air pressure across several days showcases the unusual phenomenon. See how the initial storm, which was the bomb cyclone, and a second storm pivot around each other? [animation available at the link.]
The Pacific Northwest isn’t the only region of the United States experiencing this effect; it’s simultaneously occurring in the East this week, as two snowy systems collide and eventually join forces over Canada, shown in the bottom panel of the animation above.
The swiveling of the storms resembles a synchronized pair of figure skaters out on a rink, each mirroring the other’s sweeping movements.
[…] The Fujiwhara effect, explained
The Fujiwhara effect involves two atmospheric disturbances pinwheeling around one another. One storm can be bigger, smaller, weaker or stronger than the other, but they must both be low-pressure systems. In other words, the Fujiwhara effect can’t happen between a low-pressure system and a high.
The disturbances can be two hurricanes doing an intricate dance or, in this case, two midlatitude cyclones taking turns battering the Northwest while rotating around a central point.
[…] In the Northeast, a strong storm is swallowing a weaker storm. The two storms are expected to merge and cause stormy weather in Atlantic Canada this weekend.
In the Northwest, which involves one record-strong storm and another moderately intense system, the Fujiwhara effect will cause another round of heavy rain, snow and wind Friday.
While they sometimes look similar on satellite imagery, midlatitude cyclones are fueled by differences in temperature, whereas hurricanes siphon their energy from warm ocean water — two distinctly different processes. [NOAA images at the link]
[…] Not just meteorological jargon
While it may seem that meteorologists are pulling new descriptors out of their hats each week, terms like “bomb cyclone,” “atmospheric river” and “Fujiwhara effect” have been around for a while and are rooted in science.
The Fujiwhara effect is named for Japanese meteorologist Sakuhei Fujiwhara, who was the director of the Central Meteorological Observatory of Japan from 1941 to 1947. Usage of the phrase dates back more than 70 years in scientific literature.
The term “bomb cyclone” has been around for more than 40 years, since it was introduced by Frederick Sanders and John Gyakum in 1980.
Bomb cyclones are midlatitude cyclones — not hurricanes — that undergo explosive intensification within a 24-hour period.
Even the term “atmospheric river” is more than 30 years old, as coined in 1992 by Newell et al., though originally it was called a tropospheric river. They were initially described as narrow but long filaments of water vapor that persist for many days. Now we call them rivers in the sky and appreciate the important role they play in transporting water to almost all corners of the world. […]
One of the central organisers behind the “Freedom Convoy” protest that caused Canada’s capital to descend into gridlock for weeks in 2022 has been found guilty of mischief.
Pat King, 47, is the first leader of the protests to learn of his verdict. Two others, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, will learn the outcome of their trials within the next six months.
A judge in an Ottawa courtroom on Friday found King guilty on five counts, including one count each of mischief, counselling others to commit mischief and counselling others to obstruct police.
King, who had led a convoy of lorries in Ottawa in protest of Covid-19 measures and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, had pleaded not guilty.
King was also found guilty of two counts of disobeying a court order, but the judge did not find him guilty of two other charges he faced – intimidation and obstructing police.
Estimates made prior to the trial suggested that King could face up to 10 years in prison…
An illegal magic mushroom chain called FunGuyz has indefinitely closed all of its 30 locations across Canada.
A spokesperson for the stores who identified himself as Chris Stewart says they’ve been raided over 120 times.
“We give up. Thank you and you guys accomplished your task,” he told CBC News, directly addressing the police officers involved in the raids across the country.
A majority of the 30 FunGuyz shops were located within Ontario in cities like Toronto, Ottawa, Cambridge, London and Windsor. There was also one location in Montreal.
…
“It is important to note that the possession, sale and production of magic mushrooms, psilocybin, and psilocin are illegal,” Chatham-Kent Police said…
A federal judge on Friday rejected the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s request to sanction Elon Musk after he failed to appear for court-ordered testimony for the regulator’s probe into his $44 billion takeover of Twitter.
U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in San Francisco said sanctions over Musk’s Sept. 10 absence were unnecessary, after the world’s richest person testified on Oct. 3 and agreed to pay the SEC’s $2,923 of travel costs.
“Because the present circumstances forestall any occasion for meaningful relief that the court could grant, the SEC’s request is moot,” Corley wrote.
The SEC had sought a declaration that Musk violated a May 31 court order to provide testimony.
It said having only to repay travel costs would not deter many other people from ignoring court orders, “much less someone of Musk’s extraordinary means.” …
JD Vance’s election as vice president has opened up one of Ohio’s U.S. Senate seats for the third time in as many years, setting off a scramble for the appointment among the state’s ruling Republicans.
GOP Gov. Mike DeWine is tasked with filling the vacancy, giving the pragmatic center-right politician a hand in setting his party’s course in the state potentially for years to come. His decision will be made in the afterglow of sweeping wins by Republicans in November under the leadership of Donald Trump, but a poor choice could also help Democrats reclaim a place in Ohio’s Senate delegation when the seat comes up for reelection in less than two years…
Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said that letting Oklahoma public school educators teach the Bible is a “slippery slope” if the teachers “may not be believers” themselves.
Mullin, who sits on the Senate committee that oversees education, said that he wants his kids to know the Bible, “but I want it to be taught by someone that was taught the Bible themselves, too. I think it’s a slippery slope when you put it in the hands of teachers that may not be believers, that’s going to be teaching the word that can easily be taken out of context.”
“So if the state is going to require that, then the state should also be it be required that this taught by someone that graduated from seminary school,” Mullin said during his Wednesday appearance on NewsNation’s show “The Hill.”
“If you just leave it in the hands of a public school teacher that may be not able to actually teach it because they weren’t taught it themselves, then it can cause a tremendous amount of confusion,” he added.
The GOP senator’s remarks come a week after Oklahoma State’s Superintendent Ryan Walters did not shoot down the idea of a national mandate to require Bibles in schools…
But what about teachers who went to seminary school, and thereby became atheists?
On November 21, 1676, the Danish astronomer Ole Rømer discovered the speed of light. Before Rømer figured it out, scientists thought that light travels instantaneously, or infinitely fast. Rømer disproved this almost by accident when he was studying Jupiter’s moon Io. He was trying to figure out how long it takes Io to orbit Jupiter in hopes of using it as a cosmic clock. He watched Io disappear behind Jupiter and reappear on the other side. He did this over and over every 42 hours for years. To his surprise, the timing of the eclipses was not consistent. When Earth was closest to Jupiter, the eclipses happened 11 minutes early. Likewise, when the two planets were farthest away, the eclipses were 11 minutes behind schedule. Rømer figured out the pattern and made an accurate prediction for Io’s eclipse on November 9, 1676. Then on Nov. 21, he took his findings to the Royal Academy of Sciences and explained that a finite speed of light must be responsible.
A New York City local news broadcast inadvertently aired footage of what appears to be a mysterious blue orb floating over the Hudson River this week and no one is exactly sure what to make of it. While some are convinced that the object appears to be an unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP), some more earthly explanations seem more plausible.
The object made its appearance during an otherwise uneventful Good Day New York segment about congestion pricing plans. At approximately two minutes and 45 seconds into the clip, the broadcast cut to footage over the Hudson taken by helicopter. Suddenly, the blue orb can be seen crossing in front of a building on the Hoboken side of the river. It then zooms out toward the bank of the lower Manhattan shoreline and within seconds makes its way out of frame…
However, the Post spoke with Harvard professor and theoretical physicist Avi Loeb, who thinks the orb is an artifact of the video.
“This is most likely an optical artifact from the helicopter glass in front of the camera, namely a bright spot from the reflection of sunlight as the camera gradually changes its orientation relative to the sun and the ground,” Loeb theorized. “But even if it was a real object, the apparent speed is of an order the speed of sound and not extraordinary.”
Retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, who currently serves as CEO of Ocean STL Consulting, agreed with Loeb. “For several reasons, looks like an artifact and not an actually UAP,” he said…
If Avi Loeb and Tim Gallaudet agree that it is an artifact, then it is an artifact.
As controversy continues to cloud some of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks, his team has an ominous warning for Republicans who don’t fall in line behind his nominees.
ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl reports that one senior Trump adviser said the message to lawmakers is, “If you are on the wrong side of the vote, you’re buying yourself a primary.”
“That is all,” the adviser told Karl. “And there’s a guy named Elon Musk who is going to finance it.” …
In 2022 the two men ran one of the bitterest Senate races […] Fetterman crushed Oz specifically for his desire to privatize Medicare, along with his long history of selling misleading miracle-cure medical supplements.
And now, with Oz in line to win a plum appointment—one of the most important health care posts in America, to oversee the entire Medicare, Medicaid, and Affordable Care Act operation—what is Fetterman’s response? “I’d have a beer with the dude… I’m absolutely going to vote for the dude.”
Arrrghh!!! Nope. What!? That should’ve worked. Dunno why it didn’t. Really annoying.
Okay, giving up on the video and trying a link to an article discussing it instead here.
Scientists have found signs of some of the earliest known earthquakes in 3.3 billion-year-old rocks.
The rocks provide early evidence of plate tectonics, which explains Earth’s crust as split into large plates that glide across the mantle. The rocks also point to what conditions may have been like when life first evolved.
Geologists made the discovery after investigating the Barberton Greenstone Belt, a complex geological formation in southern Africa. They realized that the belt is remarkably similar to much younger rocks in New Zealand that have experienced earthquake-triggered submarine landslides along the Hikurangi subduction zone, according to a new study, published Feb. 27 in the journal Geology.
@205 birgerjohansson
I heard Republican senator Lisa Murkowsky will not support the appointment of candidates not vetted by the FBI. If this is correct it is huge.
Only until Trump gets around to appointing his choice to lead the FBI…
The International Space Station (ISS) is leaking — and major space agencies are divided over what to do about it.
The leak is located in a Russian segment of the station known as a PrK module, which connects Russia’s Zvezda service module to the space station’s main body. NASA and Russian space agency Roscosmos have known about the leak since at least 2019, but its underlying cause remains a mystery. Since its discovery, cosmonauts have taken various steps to minimize its impact, including sealing off the segment when it is not in use. But Roscosmos and NASA now disagree about the leak’s severity.
Alice Brock, who was one of the inspirations for the Arlo Guthrie song “Alice’s Restaurant” has died.
The announcement of Brock’s death was posted on Friday, Nov. 22 on the social media page for Rising Son Records, Guthrie’s record label.
Back in 1964, Alice and her former husband Ray Brock purchased the St. James Chapel building located at 2 Van Deusenville Road.
The building was originally the St. James Chapel, built in 1829. Eventually, the building was expanded in 1866 and renamed the Trinity Church.
Around the same time, Ray and Alice Brock also opened Alice’s Restaurant in Stockbridge.
Musician Arlo Guthrie was a friend of the Brocks and stayed with them at the church during Thanksgiving.
The year was 1965 when both Guthrie and his friend Rick Robbins helped to clean out garbage from the Brocks’ property, which subsequently led to their arrests for illegally dumping trash down a Stockbridge hillside all because they could not find a trash dump open on Thanksgiving day…
@ ^ JM : Thanks for that. Yeah, that last one is the one I wanted to share here. No idea how the iseue was happening as I’m literally cut’n’pasting and not adding anything. So I’m baffled as to where the spurious extra characters come from. The formula :
China Update: Shocking Moves As China’s Government Goes Bankrupt | China-Cambodia Canal | Xi’s Busy Week
Ignore the clickbait title, the author does this because Youtube’s algorithm forces him to.
The important part is the local government issues starting 30 seconds in. Some local Chinese governments are so broke they are sending their police across borders into other legal jurisdictions and shaking down businesses for money. China already had a problem with governments doing that to people in their own jurisdiction but the central government actually encouraged that for local governments that needed to raise money. Doing in other jurisdictions is a major escalation and a big problem. If local and regional governments end up using their police to stop police from other areas the country is already half way into a civil war.
There is also an interesting section at 3:07 talking about China quietly backing out of Belt and Road Initiative financing. China had already been cutting projects because of problems with the Initiative projects but now China can’t spare the money for big projects in other countries. The situation is unclear because of the usual Chinese vague diplomatic language. China’s diplomats won’t say a project has been canceled, delayed or reduced but the funding won’t show up either. This is leaving projects in limbo for extended periods of time.
Project 2025 Would Like Its Cabinet Now
During the presidential campaign, as Vice President Kamala Harris turned Project 2025 into a political attack, Donald Trump disavowed the conservative blueprint for the White House. However, since he was elected, Trump has staffed his incoming administration with a slew of Project 2025 authors and contributors. And now, the group behind the controversial policy push is launching a million dollar effort to ensure the “prompt confirmation” of Trump’s Cabinet.
On Thursday, the Heritage Foundation, which organized and published Project 2025, announced it would be launching a public relations effort that would “target the home states of key senators who could make or break the confirmation process for President Trump’s highly capable nominees.” That announcement included quotes from three Heritage leaders; the organization’s president, Kevin Roberts, its executive vice president, Ryan Walker, and distinguished fellow Steve Bradbury.
All three of the Heritage leaders who helped roll out the push to confirm Trump’s Cabinet played a role in Project 2025 […]
John Ratcliffe, who Trump tapped to become CIA director, which is a Cabinet-level post, was a contributor. Additionally, Trump named Tom Homan, another Project 2025 contributor, as his “Border Czar.” The term “czar” is often applied to high-level executive branch members who take on a major policy role while avoiding the confirmation process required for Cabinet members. Homan, who was Trump’s director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, during his first term, has been an outspoken advocate for Trump’s mass deportation push. Project 2025 contained a series of proposals aimed at helping step up deportations.
Trump’s efforts to distance himself from Project 2025 were always questionable. The effort was stacked with his allies and former officials from his first administration. His appointments have made the connection even more clear. And Heritage’s statement about their effort to hasten confirmation of the Trump Cabinet put a bow around the whole thing.
[…] “His Cabinet choices reflect a commitment to this mission,” Roberts said. [True.]
[…] Nearly 1 million users have signed up for Bluesky each day over the past week as the social networking website thrives in the wake of a liberal exodus from X. [I don’t think it is just “liberals.” The mix includes independents and moderates of every stripe.]
Many users either quitting X or deactivating their accounts cited a “toxic” or “disturbing” environment, in part blaming Musk’s leadership and promotion of certain political stances.
Trump’s election and Musk’s close alliance with the president-elect have intensified those concerns, repelling users who have grown uncomfortable or exhausted with the political climate on X.
“Twitter has always had its problems but over the last year or so, it has become a more toxic place, it certainly minimizes progressive voices, it has become a conservative ethosphere and I see that trend continuing,” Democratic strategist Roddell Mollineau told The Hill.
To be sure, Bluesky’s size pales in comparison to X. [Give it time.]
Musk’s site reported has 588 million accounts, meaning the users who have left, including more than 115,000 U.S. web users who deactivated their accounts the day after Election Day, represent a small segment of its audience.
Bluesky’s total user base surged by more than 500 percent after the election, but still has just 21.5 million users as of Friday afternoon.
Instagram Threads […] has about 275 million active users […]
I’m literally cut’n’pasting and not adding anything. So I’m baffled as to where the spurious extra characters come from. The formula
If you’re cut’n’pasting the formula /itself/ off the blog instead of typing quotes yourself, that might be it.
The blog likes to transform visible ordinary double quotes (" ") into pretty-but-meaningless curly quotes (“ ”). Same with single quotes.
Your YouTube links are also unusual in that they always seem to start with “//” instead of “https://” but that doesn’t break things because it’s technically shorthand for whatever this page uses.
Reginald Selkirksays
@223 Lynna, OM
To be sure, Bluesky’s size pales in comparison to X. [Give it time.]
The first woman to command Canada’s military called out a U.S. senator on Saturday for questioning the role of women in combat.
Gen. Jennie Carignan responded to comments made by Idaho Republican Sen. Jim Risch, the ranking member of the U.S. Senate foreign relations committee, who was asked on Friday whether president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, should retract comments that he believes men and women should not serve together in combat units.
“I think it’s delusional for anybody to not agree that women in combat creates certain unique situations that have to be dealt with. I think the jury’s still out on how to do that,” Risch said during a panel session at the Halifax International Security Forum on Friday.
Carignan, Canada’s chief of defence staff and the first woman to command the armed forces of any Group of 20 or Group of Seven country, took issue with those remarks during a panel session on Saturday.
“If you’ll allow me, I would first like maybe to respond to Sen. Risch’s statement yesterday about women in combat because I wouldn’t want anyone to leave this forum with this idea that women are a distraction to defence and national security,” Carignan said…
[…] Sarah McBride, first ever Congressmember-elect to also be out as trans, has been catching some shit. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-Terflandia) is only one of a number of hostile cissies who can’t even even with all their lack of even at the very idea of trans people on their own front porch. But, sadly, the media whore gets a few more electrons today because she’s relevant to this story for having launched a rule change restricting gendered bathroom use on Capitol Hill’s House of Representatives-controlled areas on the basis of gender assigned at birth. Wonkette has already taken her to the woodshed on that one and on the followup which proposes to turn the House rule into a law restricting bathroom access in every federal building in the country.
All that is certainly bad enough, but when Mace went loud and proud with her cissexism, declaring that rule change was specifically targeting McBride (which is no surprise since trans staffers, lobbyists, and visitors have been using House-controlled bathrooms with no problems for years), a significant and vocal minority of actual, real live trans people made it worse by, and we kid you not, criticizing McBride.
After Mace’s attack and House Speaker Mike “I Can’t Control My” Johnson’s endorsement of the new rule, McBride stated that she would follow the rule. The Advocate covered her statement:
“I’m not here to fight about bathrooms,” McBride said in a statement that has sparked widespread debate Wednesday. “I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families. Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson even if I disagree with them.”
Immediately some trans people began to equate these words with a will to fight that could only be described as French:
Natalie Boedecker, a 39-year-old IT manager from Maryland, expressed deep disappointment with McBride’s approach, emphasizing the broader implications for the transgender community.
“I think McBride’s capitulation here sends the wrong message to the GOP and to the larger trans community,” Boedecker told The Advocate. “The reaction I am seeing from prominent trans journalists and activists is extremely negative. They are seeing this as a betrayal.”
[“Betrayal!” Sheesh.]
The Advocate also records a few other negative examples,
“I feel like I just got pulled right under the wheels of the bus by someone I thought was trying to pull me out,” one transgender woman who asked not to be named told The Advocate on Bluesky. […]
“This will not stop with bathrooms,” [Alejandra] Caraballo told The Advocate. “The next thing they’re going to do is enforce a dress code on her, force her to wear a suit, and ensure that she’s misgendered on the House floor. If she already caved on this, what’s to stop her from caving further?”
Oh, sweet tagliatelle. I love you my peeps, but this is just wrong. To keep things simple, let’s number the errors.
One. This attacks the victim.
[…] Remember, Mace has been clear that she is “absolutely” targeting McBride specifically. When a group of 200 bullies attacks a security guard, even if the security guard turns tail and runs it’s still wrong to blame the guard for not somehow winning a fight when outnumbered 218 to 1.
[…]If we want McBride to make it in Congress long enough to defend trans lives, it’s up to us to back her up, not tear her down.
If McBride is caving in fear (and Yr Wonkette does not think she is), that’s not McBride’s fault. That’s the fault of 200 House Dems and 200 million Americans who oppose anti-trans bullying and could choose to step up (or step up more) but don’t. Nancy Mace and her gang of 218 wouldn’t be attacking McBride at all if they thought hundreds of millions would go full Spartacus. Attacking McBride for not responding to bullying the way that we think she should is just proving to the Republicans how easy it is to divide us and how safe it is to attack us.
Don’t like what’s happening? Don’t attack McBride further for being bullied, hold the bullies accountable instead.
Two. She hasn’t caved.
The statement said that she would follow the rule as written. That’s not at all the same as saying that she won’t fight.
Seriously, people, think about this. What is going to happen when a dozen people see, out of the corners of a dozen eyes, someone in a dress enter the women’s room? Nothing.
What is going to happen when a dozen people see, out of the corners of a dozen eyes, someone in a dress enter a Capitol Hill men’s room? [Good point.]
Fucking. Pan. Dee. Monium.
Even better, trans people have worked on the Hill for years. While I hate the idea of staffers, lobbyists, and visitors being forced to use bathrooms that wound their sense of self, let’s face the fact that for the most part trans men pass as cis extremely well. […] When we use the bathrooms consistent with our genders, we are ignorable. […]
Trans women wearing colorful dresses into the men’s rooms and trans dudes wearing beards and suits into the women’s rooms is going to be un-fucking-ignorable.
[…] McBride said that she was going to comply with the rule. She didn’t say she was going to make things comfortable for Republicans. […]
The Republicans have created a no-win situation for themselves, and our first trans member of congress is fucking here for it.
Three. There is no one way to fight.
The truth is it takes all kinds. [snipped examples]
[…] she can be the voice of a trans insider.
And McBride needs us. This is a cooperative effort. Yes, it’s disappointing when your member of Congress doesn’t do exactly what you think you would do if you were elected, but that’s how representative democracy works. Personally, I think McBride is in this fight to win and her statements are strategic rather than cowardly. But even on the off chance that she’s only going to be fighting for the things she campaigned hardest on like reproductive rights and universal health care and the PRO Act guaranteeing rights to worker organizing, she’s still better not only than Republicans in Congress, but also no small number of Dems.
So let’s give McBride a chance to work, a chance to develop reputation and influence. She needs to do some very careful relationship building now. Instead of sabotaging that or criticizing her for being a politician considering politics, we need to either support her against the very personal attacks she has faced or at the very least get the fuck out of the way. […]
Climate talks to offer $300 billion in aid for poor nations.
BAKU, Azerbaijan — More than a day past the scheduled end of the U.N. Climate Change Conference, negotiators from almost 200 nations are on the cusp of striking a deal to marshal the vast sums of money that poorer nations need to cope with global warming’s worst effects.
The final deal calls for developed countries to mobilize at least $300 billion per year by 2035 to help poorer nations that are most vulnerable to climate disasters, according to text released early Sunday morning.
The talks, known as COP29, have been testy, with differences erupting over core questions about who should provide the money — and at what scale. Saturday afternoon, when delegates had hoped to be finalizing a deal, delegates for vulnerable nations temporarily walked out of the negotiating room in protest, calling the offer on the table unacceptable.
Poorer nations say they have been left alone to handle climate disasters, and wealthier nations are feeling hamstrung by tight budgets and political tensions back home.
Though these dynamics would make for tough negotiations under any circumstances, the talksare taking place in a windowless prefab complex. Delegates are subsisting on a dwindling food supply and running on consecutive days of little sleep.
International negotiators at the annual climate summit Saturday night reached a deal that would ramp up financial assistance to relatively poor nations to about $300 billion a year over the next decade.
The COP29 presidency, which oversees the talks, publicly posted the deal to a U.N. website after privately circulating it among negotiators.
The document calls for developed countries to mobilize at least $300 billion annually by 2035 to help poorer nations transition to clean energy and adapt to climate disasters. That marks an increase from an earlier draft released Friday, which recommended a finance target of $250 billion annually by 2035.
These U.N. talks operate by consensus, so negotiators from almost 200 nations party to the Paris agreement will need to approve this deal. But COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev would not have publicly unveiled the agreement if he were not confident it would gain that approval soon. […]
A Norwegian student in his 20s was arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia and Iran while working as a guard at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, authorities in Norway have said.
The man, who has not been identified, was ordered to be held in custody for four weeks. He runs a security company jointly with a dual national of Norway and an unspecified eastern European country, according to Norwegian public broadcaster NRK.
Oslo police said Friday they would review the company’s operating license.
Norway’s domestic intelligence agency, PST, said Thursday night that the man was arrested in his garage at home on Wednesday on suspicion of having damaged national security with his intelligence-related activity.
The arrest warrant from the district court, says, among other things, that the police found records of the man’s assignment dialogue with a person who was apparently guiding his espionage activity, according to NRK.
The man has admitted to collecting and sharing information with Russian and Iranian authorities, the court order says, according to NRK…
Water has power. So much power, in fact, that pumping Earth’s groundwater can change the planet’s tilt and rotation. It can also impact sea-level rise and other consequences of climate change.
Pumping groundwater appears to have a greater consequence than ever previously thought. But now—thanks to a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters—we can see that, in less than two decades, Earth has tilted 31.5 inches as a result of pumping groundwater. This equates to.24 inches of sea level rise.
“Earth’s rotational pole actually changes a lot,” Ki-Weon Seo, a geophysicist at Seoul National University and study lead, says in a statement. “Our study shows that among climate-related causes, the redistribution of groundwater actually has the largest impact on the drift of the rotational pole.”
With the Earth moving on a rotational pole, the distribution of water on the planet impacts distribution of mass. “Like adding a tiny bit of weight to a spinning top,” authors say, “the Earth spins a little differently as water is moved around.” …
JMsays
@225 Reginald Selkirk: To add to that there are also a huge number of bot and popularity farming accounts on X(Twitter). Accounts that are ‘active’ but nobody is really reading. They are just there to spam pregenerated text and create activity on other accounts so they look more popular.
As BlueSky becomes more popular it will accumulate those also but I’m sure Twitter has far more right now. Twitter probably has more such garbage accounts then BlueSky has total accounts.
Researchers, co-led by Bridget Scanlon of The University of Texas at Austin (UT), have found that up to 11 million tons of rare earth elements could be extracted from coal ash in the U.S., a waste product of coal burning. That’s almost eight times the amount of rare earth elements currently in domestic reserves. Their findings, detailed in a September 17 study in the International Journal of Coal Science & Technology, highlight that this approach could significantly reinforce national supplies without the need for further mining…
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
I excerpted some critiques of Bluesky’s architecture over on PZ’s recent blog about Mastodon. A substantial one from yesterday by the co-author of ActivityPub, the protocol underlying the fediverse/Mastodon.
[…] Trump has chosen Brooke Rollins, president of the America First Policy Institute, to be agriculture secretary.
[…] If confirmed by the Senate, Rollins would lead a 100,000-person agency with offices in every county in the country, whose remit includes farm and nutrition programs, forestry, home and farm lending, food safety, rural development, agricultural research, trade and more. It had a budget of $437.2 billion in 2024.
The nominee’s agenda would carry implications for American diets and wallets, both urban and rural. Department of Agriculture officials and staff negotiate trade deals, guide dietary recommendations, inspect meat, fight wildfires and support rural broadband, among other activities.
[…] The America First Policy Institute is a right-leaning think tank whose personnel have worked closely with Trump’s campaign to help shape policy for his incoming administration. She chaired the Domestic Policy Council during Trump’s first term.
As agriculture secretary, Rollins would advise the administration on how and whether to implement clean fuel tax credits for biofuels at a time when the sector is hoping to grow through the production of sustainable aviation fuel.
The nominee would also guide next year’s renegotiation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal, in the shadow of disputes over Mexico’s attempt to bar imports of genetically modified corn and Canada’s dairy import quotas.
More commentary regarding people leaving Elon Musk’s X and going Bluesky:
[…] Trump had such a good time on Twitter before he was banned for inciting the insurrection on Jan. 6 .. [and that] is the kind of behavior Musk has fostered since he took over the company and removed Trump’s ban.
Conservatives on the social network, taking their lead from Musk and his troll army of devoted followers, live to “own the libs.”
Bluesky has said they value community over harassment and have put in tools and functions that—while flawed—are more in line with the tools available on Twitter before Musk took over. So if the “libs” move somewhere else, like Bluesky, there aren’t any liberals to own.
Without liberals to dogpile on and demonstrate their dominance, conservatives have to tolerate their own company. This is the problem that has faced other conservative social media networks in the past, including Parler and Trump’s own Truth Social. Parler was more useful as a tool to organize terroristic attacks than as a traditional social media network for this reason.
It turns out that these people need the liberals they hate so much to give meaning to their […] online lives.
[…] people are using one of the most valuable weapons one can wield online—attention—and turning it away from Musk’s pro-Trump horror show. Many people have decided that no matter the global reach and breadth of X, it just might not be worth it to empower a bigot like Musk. […]
I like that you posted Crip Dyke’s Wonkette piece, however the interjections on your part (“What even is up with y’all?” “Sheesh.”) seem to gravely misunderstand that Sarah McBride’s apparent acquiescence to rabid bullying and sexual harassment is actually a point of considerable anger for a lot of trans people who will be affected by this. What did you expect trans people to say, “oh yes, it’s perfectly fine for a Rethuglican from South Carolina and the effing Speaker of the House to treat us like sub-human garbage without the rights and dignity of others, no in fact that’s all totally fine, we will just take our lumps and use the bathrooms corresponding to our assignments-at-birth like good little doormats?” (Of course you didn’t). Please don’t delegitimise our anger.
What is more contemptible is that I’ve only seen three (3) Democratic congress-critters stand up for her so far in nearly a week. That is contemptible, along with all of the post-election backsliding from people such as Seth Moulton into anti-transgender PRATTs. The political point is that McBride’s acquiescence sends several bad messages: firstly, trans human rights are trivial and unimportant (as McBride is not going to prioritise it, which might be fair enough as the representative-elect of Delaware-at-large, but this is the most plain implication from her press release). Secondly, the Rethuglicans get a victory in the media from bullying and harassing trans people, so that other will learn that this violation of trans people’s rights is a successful method to be applied elsewhere. Finally, it makes an unsafe and unhealthy environment for trans people other than McBride working at the Capitol and other Federal buildings, in complete violation of occupational health and safety guidelines amongst all sorts of other violations of rights, decency, extending basic human dignity to others. So yeah, I agree with Crip Dyke’s analysis however there is a real cause for the dismay, hurt, and anger amongst trans folk around all of this bullshit.
[… Here’s an update on the Storm Shadow attack on the Russian command center in Kursk.
(The strike) resulted in the Death of 18 Russian Officers, including a Senior Commander, as well as 3 North Korean Officers. In addition, a Dozen other Soldiers and Officers were Wounded in the Attack, including one of North Korea’s most Senior Generals.
[X post and photo available at the link. X/Twitter is still a major source of information regarding war in Ukraine. That is unlikely to change soon.]
[…] North Korean troops have now officially invaded Ukraine, although Ukraine is denying the North Koreans are in the Kharkiv area yet. [X post and photo at the link.]
[…] Today is Holodomor Remembrance Day in Ukraine.
[…] the man-made famine orchestrated by Stalin’s regime to destroy Ukraine’s people & independence through starvation. 1932-1933
25,000 Ukrainians died every day. […] 10 million starved to death. [photos at the link] Stalin’s NKVD troops guard grain confiscated from Ukrainian peasants during Holodomor. Starving peasants tried to enter cities to find food, but NKVD troops had been stationed in so-called “Iron Rings” around the cities, shooting all peasants trying to enter.
Lynna, I apologise for my mistake. The first quote which I thought belonged to you, as it stood outside the quotation of the article without being square-bracketed off, was “What even is up with y’all?” which are Crip Dyke’s words; I entirely missed that this was the sub-heading until I reached the end, wrote my comment here, and then scrolled back to the top of the article.
However that leaves “Sheesh”, which still feels like it is trivialising trans people’s feelings about this horrible mess. And I think some of Crip Dyke’s analysis is wrong-headed. It goes to show trans people are not a monolith and disagreement over a controversy is not merely the norm, it’s actually expected, and shouldn’t be the occasion for putting other trans people in the pillory … but I suppose it’s too late for that.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Having seen a rando liken McBride to Sinema (the first openly Bi Senator and second openly LGBT one, who was terrible), over the bathroom compliance statement, the following gave me pause.
In January 2013, McBride joined the board of directors of Equality Delaware and quickly became the state’s leading advocate for legal protections and hate crime legislation for transgender Delawareans. McBride and her family led the lobbying effort for legislation protecting Delawareans from discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression in employment, housing, insurance, and public accommodations.
I’ve not dug deeply. Her campaign emphasis on bipartisanship with Republicans and being a uniter worried me, but maybe that too was pragmatic, as a forseeably minority-partymember.
Indiana’s Republican Lieutenant Governor-elect Micah Beckwith on Thursday threatened to push to defund Westfield schools after he said he was disinvited to an appearance at an agriculture program at Westfield High School following complaints about his visit.
[…]
[On a radio show] he called the rescinded invitation in Westfield an example of the “left woke mob” […] the “super far left” Westfield High School principal and […] superintendent, who he called a “coward.” […] “I think I’m going to use this story all over the state to try to get universal vouchers pushed through and try to strip away as much funding from schools like you as possible because of the woke crap you guys are doing right now,”
[…]
Beckwith does not have the power to withhold funding from a school.
[…]
On the campaign trail this year, Beckwith continued to draw condemnation for various remarks, including saying he would fire or demote state employees that put pronouns in their email signatures and calling for the deportation of Haitian refugees [and] following Election Day […] for threatening […] the student-led newspaper at Indiana University.
Scientists have found signs of some of the earliest known earthquakes in 3.3 billion-year-old rocks.
The rocks provide early evidence of plate tectonics
I think that depends on the magnitude of the quakes. Large volcanic edifices, such as Kilauea in Hawaii, are known to be able to produce temblors up to the low 7s in magnitude. However, anything much above that tends to come from either a long-range strike-slip fault or a subduction zone. The latter is a plate boundary, as are some of the former, while the remaining long strike-slip faults still tend to be the result of plate tectonics, generally collisions happening somewhere nearby.
Therefore, I’d say evidence of a quake above, say, magnitude 7.5 would be evidence of plate tectonics, but below that it could just be volcanism, not all of which is associated with plate boundaries (including the aforementioned Kilauea, which is smack dab in the middle of the Pacific plate nowhere near its boundary).
There is also an interesting section at 3:07 talking about China quietly backing out of Belt and Road Initiative financing. China had already been cutting projects because of problems with the Initiative projects but now China can’t spare the money for big projects in other countries.
I’ve been saying it. I’ve been saying it for ten damn years … yet everyone and their sister still seem to think that China’s the next big hegemonic power on the upswing, though the lesson of history is that when the existing hegemon fall down go boom, the torch gets passed to a brash young upstart and not an established player. Like when Spain’s empire ended, the Brits, formerly a pimple on the butt of Europe that was constantly getting conquered and raided (lessee, the Anglo-Saxons, then the Romans, then Vikings, then the French…) suddenly mushroomed into an imperial state with hegemony over 1/4 of the whole planet. And when that faltered, and everyone thought Russia or Germany or the Ottomans would be the next hegemon, nope, it was that far-off backwater the United States of America who grabbed the brass ring. Now everyone’s been saying “China”, but China is a paper tiger. (As long as you don’t get it to unsheath its nuclear-tipped claws, at least, and just let it implode like the Soviet Union did before it.)
Fact is, all of the other rapidly-industrializing Asian economies hit a financial crisis a few decades in: first Japan, then the “Asian tigers”. It’s China’s turn, based on the timings, but of course the consequences will be far larger, since China is far larger. China is screwed. So is the US. And so is Russia, whose adventure in Ukraine is already proving ruinous. New hegemons are also never former imperial powers that flirted with democracy and then turned autocratic again: Russia is this iteration’s Nazi Germany, doomed to a short and war-wracked existence. It also won’t be anyone who’s hitched their wagon to one of the imploding behemoths. That rules out the EU and Canada, whose fates are too strongly tied to America’s, and any of Russia’s satellite states, as well as Taiwan.
So, who will it be? If it’s like last time, an existing regional hegemon that is decently insulated from the economic shocks of superpower collapses is a good bet. Those would be India and Brazil. India has the population and industry-scale advantage, and is nuclear-armed, but Brazil might be more insulated from external economic shocks. I’m not sure which is better positioned to become a superpower.
If it’s like the time before the last, then one of the world’s recent butt-monkeys might pull a From Nobody To Nightmare in a short while. Indonesia has recently removed some autocratic leadership, started modernizing some things, and isn’t strongly in China’s orbit despite its location near there. And it is in a prime location to become a significant naval power, as Britain did before it (and as Brazil and India also are). There’s also Nigeria, perhaps the most-developed sub-Saharan African nation-state. It’s in a good position to make a bid for, at least, regional hegemony, and depending on how things shake out, it could go further. And then there’s the Middle East.
The Middle East is heading for turbulent times in the short terms. Oh, wait, that will just be a continuation of business as usual. Well, sort of. What will change is the disappearance of the three-way tug-of-war it’s caught in from the present imperialists, and the collapse of the petro-dollar system. The latter props up the Saudi middle class, without which is tumbrels time for Prince MBS and his kin. That’s the only strong Sunni state in the region, and when it dissolves into civil war the revolutionary faction(s) will seek outside aid from Shia neighbors. It will probably become Shia, while nearby Israel becomes a smoking crater. The stage will then be set for a Shia caliphate to emerge in the region without significant further resistance, likely headquartered in Iran. (The Emirates seem economically strong right now, but their fortunes are as tied to America’s as Saudi Arabia’s. Iran has maintained its strength while being a pariah state, so it is far better positioned for when the hegemons crippling Iran and propping up the Saudis and Emirates and Israel are gone.) So, it’s very likely Iran ascends to a regional hegemon in short order, and with control of half the world’s remaining oil supply, huge expanses of solar-friendly desert, deepwater ports on the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, and sitting astride both a sea bottleneck (Suez) and a land bottleneck (none other than the Silk Road, where it’s pinched between Himalayas and ocean), it will be extremely well positioned to parlay that into dominance over the western half of Eurasia, if not more. The Second Persian Empire may well arise within the lifetimes of some of you who are reading this, and the next Cold War could be between it and India or Indonesia, or Brazil, or even a Nigeria-headed confederation of African states.
Two more factors to consider involve resources. First, who is well positioned to gain control of the resources currently firmly inside an existing hegemon? Either India or Indonesia is well positioned to gain control of China’s resources, especially its lithium (and, ugh, coal). Russia’s gas will keep Russia, and whatever’s left of the EU, from freezing to death but may not retain much geopolitical significance. Countries left twisting by a collapsing hegemon may pivot to new allies for trade and defense. In the Americas, Brazil is an obvious choice, a large democracy in the same landmass, so we may see the emergence of a widened free trade area dominated by Brazil and containing Canada, the American successor states, Mexico, and the Latin American states. It may also absorb western Europe, or that may fall into the orbit of Persia or Nigeria.
Second, as fossil fuels continue to deplete and battery and other tech further improves, solar will emerge as the key new energy resource, and dry tropical land will become very valuable for anyone thinking of basing their economy on energy exports. Brazil has wet tropical land, but is also located close to the Atacama Desert; India contains lots, and Indonesia is well positioned to gain control over the Gobi and the Outback; Nigeria is on the southern border of the western Sahara; and Persia is convenient to the Empty Quarter and eastern Sahara. If space-based resources become important (e.g. asteroid mining) later in the century, equatorial land is also desirable for launch sites and possibly, farther down the line, space elevator/rotovator/skyhook/etc. base terminals. Nigeria is centered at about ten degrees north latitude and could easily ally with (or annex) Cameroon, which intersects the equator. The equator directly intersects Brazil and Indonesia, while India has a relative position remarkably similar to Nigeria’s. It could gain access to nearby Indonesian land, if the latter doesn’t become a hegemon or they become allied, or use floating launch platforms. The Neopersian Empire would also lie in the northern tropics, if it stayed out of Africa, but it will almost certainly absorb Egypt and Ethiopia into its orbit, and maybe much of supraSaharan Africa. Ethiopia gets close to the equator and neighboring Somalia intersects it. Somalia is currently a turbulent failed state, which means if its equatorial real estate suddenly becomes valuable, it will be annexed with no difficulty. (Note: being near the equator is good enough for rocket launches, but not for any of the plausible successor technologies.)
So, every one of my proposed potential future hegemons has solid access to desirable real estate for solar and space launch purposes. Most have domestic agricultural land, with the exception of Neopersia, which will have to trade something for food (possibly oil, and later solar-derived synthetic fuels, such as hydrogen, synthetic LNG, or the recharging of vanadium flow batteries; and with HVDC or other plausible near-future technology might be able to energize African and Eurasian power grids). All have mineral resources internally or near to hand.
Which ones have the best chances? There are several factors to consider. First, internal social cohesion. New hegemons have had good internal social cohesion. Neopersia is a good bet for at least emerging as a regional hegemon because it can get social cohesion from shared religion in the form of Shia Islam. India’s large Hindu population gives it a potential source of strong cohesion, but its large Muslim minority, other minorities, and history of sectarian strife count against it. It could emerge as a strong pluralistic democracy, as the US did post Civil War, if it can shake its current fever of Hindu nationalism. Alternatively, the Hindu nationalists could turn it into a theocracy and expel the religious minorities, but that would likely mean suffering a crippling civil war and letting another emerging candidate outmaneuver them. Indonesia, with a mix of Christians and Muslims, is likely in a comparable position. Nigeria may lack strong internal cohesion, but has the counterbalancing advantage of lacking strong neighbors. It’s a logical nucleus for west African states to organize around, once imperialist supports and also imperialist meddling have ceased in the region. But it might be a stronger bet for topping out at regional hegemon than becoming a global superpower. Brazil, on the other hand … it’s huge (half of India’s population) and prosperous, and a democracy that has recently shaken off a would-be autocratic putsch (and is going to be jailing its would-be autocrat). It ticks every box the US did in the run-up to the first two World Wars — maybe more so, since Bolsonaro isn’t getting the kid-glove treatment Jefferson Davis did. It’s poised to at least show the Americas how to do pluralistic democracy right. On the other hand, it could be headed for religious ructions when its Catholic majority shrinks to a minority, as happened when the US’s Protestant majority shrank.
Then there’s the political system. The last two big hegemons have had democratic home-rule with an English common-law substrate. Russia and China grabbed for superpower status, but really didn’t make it beyond regional hegemon, for all that the Soviet Union was talked up as one. In the modern era, there may be an advantage to democratic rule, which would mean a disadvantage for Neopersia, specifically.
And then there’s the geostrategic calculus. In the short term post-collapse it’s very likely we see Brazil emerge as a regional hegemon in South America and probably shortly after throughout the Americas, with economically and politically strong allies in Canada and Mexico giving it three loci of regional strength spaced north-to-south and access to the surviving hardware and personnel of the American and Canadian militaries. Brazil emerges into a strong geostrategic position, with a strong military and capacity for naval domination of the Atlantic and western Pacific. Nigeria is much less fortunate, as even in a union with all of subSaharan Africa it will have a shit military. The nearest remnant stronger military assets lie to its north, in what’s left of Russia and western Europe, and to its east, under Persian regional hegemony. The military assets in Eurussia are liable to get divvied up between Brazil and Persia, if the latter doesn’t mushroom into a dominant power over all of Africa and Europe before Brazil and Canada can cement a strong alliance and then reach across the Atlantic to Europe. After a thousand-year hiatus, Islam might finally win the Crusades and kick Christendom entirely out of the Old World. As for Nigeria, it will be caught between a militarily strong Persia and an even stronger Brazilian navy. Not a good geostrategic position to be occupying. Nigeria will top out as a regional hegemon and ally itself with either Persia or Brazil.
That leaves the Eastern Hemisphere. The Steppe may revert to low-density nomads once global warming has had its way with the Russian satellite nations’ breadbaskets and the gas fields have run dry. Prior to that, there will remain a group of impoverished states there, likely in orbit of a Russia propped up by either Brazil, India, or Persia. That area will devolve into third-world conditions. Interior Asia and Russia are the new subSaharan Africa, peripheral states that are mostly poor and mostly resource exporters, with a growing empty zone that may well become stateless, at least in all but name. South and east of the Himalayas, India and/or Indonesia are likely to dominate. Brazil may come for them from the east eventually, but it is more likely that the area originates its own naval military-power base, likely in Indonesia, which has a large length of coastline and is defensible. (It might be politically subservient to India, however, or even Brazil.) China will be one (or more) satellite state in the area with mineral resources and a breadbasket of importance. Siberia may end up absorbed into this region politically as well, especially if it becomes agriculturally useful as it thaws out, or mineral resources prove important there.
Australia and New Zealand, as well as Hawaii, are caught between Brazil and the emerging Ind(ones)ian hegemony, with the props kicked out from under them by America’s implosion. As existing trading partners of the Americas, their least turbulent future is to smoothly transition to a Brazil-centric trade network, in exchange for deepwater ports for the Brazilian navy to more easily encircle its Asian rival. Japan, being geographically closer to said rival, is likely in for turbulent times. It will face economic upheaval from both China’s and the US’s implosion, and if the US’s happens faster, a desperate China may even move to annex it first, though that will only postpone the inevitable. Its best bet is to play both failing hegemons against each other and then cut a deal with an emerging one, either nearby or Brazil. Brazil will have a strong navy fairly soon, but is farther away. The emerging Asian power (or Indonesia if both it and India become regionally powerful) will likely gain control of former Chinese military assets. This includes the world’s second most powerful deepwater navy, putting states in the Pacific region (and Hawaii) in a potential tug-of-war. The Pacific could see a major naval war on the scale of the Pacific theater of WWII if one of these emerging powers doesn’t emerge so much faster than the other as to gain naval supremacy over the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
In the latter, there’s also a potential joker in the deck. Persia will have a strong air and land military inherited from Iran, stranded American and Israeli military assets in the region, and possibly Egyptian and some European and/or Russian materiel. Currently, no middle Eastern state has a strong navy of its own (that I know of); America dominates the seas in that area (as it and its allies dominate all of the world’s seas, save for the Black Sea and the immediate vicinity of China). America’s collapse will likely include withdrawing its naval assets in the region, especially if it isn’t too sudden when it comes. But Persia will have deepwater ports and potential access to hardware from other parts of Eurasia, including Russian and maybe even Chinese naval materiel. Plus, of course, the capacity to build its own — as China falters and global supply chains become chaotic, more of the world will (re)industrialize, building local manufacturing capacity. This will accelerate when naval supply chains disintegrate under pressure from piracy once America is no longer policing most of the world’s oceans. That will both incentivize relocalized manufacture and allying with or becoming a regional hegemon whose navy can police local waters.
Brazil won’t quickly be able to project naval force into the western Indian Ocean or the eastern Mediterranean, leaving a naval power vacuum that will be filled first by pirates and then by India, Indonesia, or Persia. All will be incentivized to develop a navy quickly, and with relocalized manufacture, increasingly capable to construct one, to say nothing of obtaining European, Russian, or Chinese vessels and weapons systems through trade or annexations. It’s not unlikely that Persia will become a regional naval power, both to control piracy in its area and to exert leverage over sea-based trade routes through the region. The big question is if it can parlay that into a strong overall geopolitical position or only into a favored position in the orbit of someone else. But with no credible rivals on its western, southern, or northern flanks, it will certainly have a decent shot. India is the most poorly positioned here, with potential rivals to its east and west and hemmed in by mountains to the north. It has a position moderately good for defense but terrible for projecting force, and will likely retain its autonomy without even becoming a regional hegemon, or else become regionally strong on land but allied with Persia or Indonesia for naval protection.
When all is said and done, the strong bids for more than regional hegemon are coming from Brazil, Persia, and Indonesia, with Nigeria and India unlikely to be able to expand their influence beyond that ceiling, and India less likely to even become a regional power. Brazil probably has the strongest position. I vote for it as likeliest next superpower — subject to change based on further data, of course. Persia is second-likeliest, and likeliest to be a persistent regional rival on the China/Soviet model. The next Cold War is likely to be on secular (or possibly Catholic) vs. Islam lines, most likely secular Allende-style socialism vs. Shia theocracy-socialism (where the latter means a theocracy with a significant welfare state). Both are likely to heavily regulate business, out of an abundance of reasons, starting with climate change and past histories in both imperial-nucleus regions of being on the butt end of capitalist exploitation by American business. American-style capitalism will die with America, and the ground of its grave will be salted.
If democracy survives, its primary fastness will remain in the Americas, but it will likely lie between the Canadian/western European model and the more strongly socialist model that has emerged repeatedly, only to be sabotaged by the United States repeatedly, in South America. The “tories” in these political systems are likely to be in the political neighborhood of the NDP and Scandinavian social-democratic parties, with outright redistributive policies held by the mainstream left. Of our currently “first world” countries, most will slip into conditions resembling the more developed “third world” ones, meeting the latter on their way up, before regrouping and stabilizing at perhaps a western European standard of living (which notably has significantly lower per-capita energy use than Canada or the US) or somewhat below that, but way above abject poverty. Many of the less developed countries will either stay that way or rise to the same level, if they become regionally strong or a favored ally of a regional hegemon.
Outside the west, the highest standards of living will likely be in the Muslim world, with less political and religious freedom but low levels of abject poverty. The poorest regions are likely to be in supra-Himalayan Asia and possibly central Africa. Australia’s strategic position as a southern ocean naval base ensures it a decent place in the orbit of one or another power, likely Persia, Indonesia, or Brazil. Its most politically compatible ally of these three will be Brazil, with Indonesia likely to be relegated to a regional power not unlike present-day China and in a similar geostrategic position. It will nonetheless potentially become the hub of prosperity for Japan, southeast Asia, and possibly China.
As for the three failing hegemons’ fates, Russia’s is going to be the worst. It will be a peripheral resource-extraction province of someone else’s empire, and then a depleted husk. China has a long history of internal self-sufficiency within fairly static borders, and may fare the best, though it can shelve its dreams of Belt and Road hegemony for good. It will be most prosperous as a trade ally of Brazil, or failing that by returning to its historical norm as Fortress China. The current government will collapse, and the more tyrannical it behaves in its last desperate years the more swift and sure that collapse will be when it does come. With luck, the replacement will be some type of democratic socialism, but the history of the region is not promising: the people have little experience of democratic rule, and self-governing through democracy is a learned skill. It’s much more likely to democratize as a Brazilian trading partner than as Fortress China, which would likely retain an autocratic form of rule on a similar model to that of the more prosperous Muslim states. (India may end up on a similar path, to an isolationist Hindu state or remaining a somewhat-liberalized trade partner of someone’s. Persia probably can’t conquer and convert it — the British Empire tried, and failed, with India’s native cultures weathering the occupation and emerging strong on the far side of it. India’s too big, too populous, and too defensible due to the terrain on the southern margin of the Himalayas.)
The US has a fate less grim than Russia, but likely worse than China’s (unless Jinping royally screws it up, or someone in the world unlimbers the nukes). Given how deeply it is riven by political divisions, it is unlikely to survive as a unified state; given the lack of proximate rivals with significant military power, it also won’t be annexed. It will balkanize into between four and as many as 20 successor states, with the northeastern blue states, the west coast, the bulk of the red states, and a chunk centered on Utah likely becoming, respectively, two republics, a Protestant theocracy, and a Mormon theocracy in the four-successor scenario. Additional successors would likely be breakaway chunks of these four, especially if there is internal infighting within the main block of red states, or Colorado becomes isolated by redstate successor(s) from the left coastal states. New Mexico might even join its big brother, possibly taking Colorado with it, in that scenario. Other strong candidates for additional successors are Hawaii, if it declares independence rather than join with the left coast, and Alaska, geographically far-flung from the other red states. Puerto Rico may declare independence or become an adjunct of the New England federation, and the US Virgin Islands will likely share Hawaii’s fate. The parts that stay democratic are solid candidates to end up in Brazil’s orbit down the line, and whoever ends up annexing Siberia is likely to snarf up Alaska along with it (that could even end up being Canada).
The long term geopolitical question mark is what becomes of the main body of red-state America, from the Midwest to the Southeast. As a Protestant theocracy it’s unlikely to easily be absorbed into a Brazil-centered trade area or military alliance, dominated as that will be by Catholics. More likely it will turtle within its own borders and descend into third world poverty, propping itself up early on by selling Texas oil along with corn and wheat until some combination of antiintellectualism and climate change does for its agriculture and the oil runs dry. After that, it’s probably going to be a Russia mini-me. Peter Turchin would predict that it will be an “asabiya black hole” and mired in poverty for a long time, mainly due to the legacy of Confederate slavery. I concur that this is likely — it will remain a low-trust society with poor economic prospects that the rest of the world quickly leaves behind. Florida will submerge, the Midwest will dry up and blow away, and the east coast states will be ravaged by storms alternating with drought, while mistrust inhibits the creation of any kind of mutual aid or social supports. It will also become a source of problems for everyone around it: a hotbed of Mafia dons, illicit banking, black markets (with some portion of the US nuclear arsenal likely inside!), and piracy. No, not the Napster sort. The high seas sort, until Brazil, Mexico, and Canada get their ducks in a row and organize up a solid Atlantic blue-water navy to police that ocean again anyway. In the interim, pirates based there will ravage up and down the east coast of the Americas, dominate or even annex portions of the Caribbean, and raid the African coast, perhaps also western Europe. These attacks, and pleas for defensive aid from beleaguered Carribean nations, will motivate the formation of said blue-water navy and hasten the process by which Brazil becomes a serious, at least hemispheric, power.
The United Nations’s fate is less clear to me. It is a United States creation and often a laundromat for US foreign policy, on the one hand; on the other, the ideals the US intends it to only pay lip service to have taken on something of a life of their own, and absent American interference that process may well accelerate. On the other hand, absent American military power, the UN might be marginalized and become unimportant. If it persists, its security council will likely dump America (or retain one or a few democratic successor states) and gain Brazil. It might reform to eliminate the permanent vetoes some favored nations get, or transfer some of those to Brazil and others. If it does persist as a multilateral body of importance, it will do so backed economically by Brazil, Mexico, Canada, and recovering or rising states in the Americas and western Europe, and militarily by a NATO now dominated by same. If that happens, the international order we’re familiar with may survive, after a short interregnum of high seas piracy and disrupted supply chains (and likely at least a few major regional wars). It won’t be in unmodified form, though. As the international order post WWII no longer normalized explicit colonialism, it’s likely the new order will no longer normalize the kinds of lopsided trade relations that strongly favored large American and transnational corporations, aka colonialism continued through other means. It may also acquire Islamophobic dimensions, if there indeed is a new Cold War between the Islamosphere and the rest of the world. Such a new order is likely to eventually gain the (in some cases reluctant) endorsement of most of the rest of the world, and a pattern of fairly dependable global trade may return, with changes to the power balance and hopefully much less extreme inequality.
Routing around a Persia-controlled bottleneck may also become important, motivating strong trading relations across the Pacific and through Africa. Perhaps we will even see a high speed train route that spans from Lagos to Mombasa, carrying freight across the midsection of the continent to connect Atlantic and Indian Ocean trading partners without going through the Mediterranean, Suez, or Red Sea; or the thawing Arctic may result in trade over the North Pole. The Africa route would enrich much of subSaharan Africa by plugging it directly into a major trade corridor. In this scenario, central Africa is lifted out of poverty and coastal Africa further so than at present, as they gain a critical onramp to global trade.
That’s the optimistic scenario: emerging powers get their act together quickly, are (outside the Middle East) dominated by social-democratic values, and normal international relations and trade are quickly restored. There are upheavals, to be sure, some caused by Persia, some by climate change, and some by the reshuffling of geopolitical power and by the discrediting of laissez-faire capitalism. The “Washington Consensus” is gone, replaced perhaps by a “Brasilia Consensus” that repudiates laissez-faire and more strongly supports human rights, including rights to basic necessities such as food and shelter, recognizing that these rights are ultimately necessary to foster the stability that is in the long-term interests of businesspersons.
The intermediate scenario is that the period of upheaval is prolonged, exacerbated by chaos agents emerging from the former American red states, Russia, and opportunistic emerging troublemakers in the same general vein as ISIS. Cack-handed management of China’s crisis culminates in poorly thought out desperation moves, such as annexing Taiwan or even Japan, and sparks war. Breakdowns in trust, communications, and supply chains, combined with large refugee movements triggered by the economic crisis and by climate change, destabilize governments and provoke wars, while enabling more fascists in the mold of Victor Orban and Donald Trump to seize power, with the wars and pogroms these start further generating refugees. The world economy crashes much more deeply and geopolitics spirals unstoppably into the maelstrom of World War III, which is fought conventionally but is every bit as brutal and destructive as its prequels. A world order similar to the above eventually rises from the ashes, with the possible subtraction of a strong Persia, as that region would likely be badly trashed in the war, and China is likely to meet a poorer outcome in this scenario as well since it’s sure to be sucked into the vortex of war.
The pessimistic scenario is the same, except with mushroom clouds on top.
The optimistic scenario ends with a few million to 20 million dead, many in existing trouble spots like Gaza and Ukraine, and most of the rest in regional wars, including any Second US Civil War accompanying its breakup. The intermediate one kills from 100 million to 250 million, and the pessimistic one kills from 2 billion to 7+ billion, while reducing the survivors almost universally to poor starving refugees and subsistence farmers and knocking civilization back to the Victorian Age or earlier. (But probably the Victorian Age: once acquired, the know-how to smelt iron and to make motors and dynamos and windmills is not going to easily be lost short of full-on human extinction. Once the climate stabilizes the survivors will probably bounce back up to having electricity and mechanization fairly rapidly. They will then have a very big rebuilding job to do.)
The pessimistic scenario is the only one to deviate markedly in who is likely to end up a major power after. The interregnum will be a lot longer — decades to as much as a century or two until someone is fielding a substantial blue-water navy again — and given the devastation of the northern hemisphere and especially economically or strategically important sites in it, including the Middle East, it’s a sure bet that no Northern Hemisphere nation-state will survive as an organized state. Some will likely be totally obliterated outright — North Korea and Israel are solid candidates, for wildly different reasons. Emerging powers afterward are likely to come from the Southern Hemisphere, which will recover soonest and climb back up out of abject poverty soonest. New Zealand is a candidate, if it pulls a Britain and becomes a potent naval empire. South America is a solid bet to originate a strong state, though likely sited farther south than Brazil in this case, as is southern Africa. All three have arable land, mineral resources, and deepwater ports convenient to hand and none are likely to have strong local rivals (given that ethnoculturally similar groups ally rather than become rivals). The sparsely populated and badly impoverished north will lag behind in recovering economically and reorganizing, and will likely end up dominated by powers based in one or more of these three southerly locales.
Australia will be fucked. It’s mostly desert, and climate change will make that worse, following which climate whiplash and then more warming. New Zealand, for its matter, will have a tougher time weathering a nuclear winter than lower-latitude parts of the Southern Hemisphere; but it will also be the least likely to be hindered by local rivalries in reorganizing after, assuming that the rift between Maori and European descendants doesn’t flare up too badly. There’s a bit more scope, and space, for such in the other two spots, with white Argentinian racists in South America and local ethnic divisions like Rwanda’s in southern Africa. But those will likely not last too long under subsistence-survival conditions, sadly because the weaker sides of these conflicts will likely succumb to genocidal pogroms with the survivors possibly even being incorporated into the regionally dominant group as a slave class. The newborn regional powers are unlikely to be liberal democracies, I’m afraid, and it might be many more centuries before the ravaged Earth witnesses republican or parliamentary rule again anywhere on its surface.
If I could disappear the world’s nuclear arsenals with a snap of an infinity-gauntleted finger, I’d do it right this minute. Probably the only other things I’d snap away outright would be COVID, influenza, malaria, the two surviving smallpox samples, a bunch of other pathogens of humans and important livestock, and that ugly eyesore sculpture of Samuel de Chaplain holding an astrolabe upside-down with enslaved Natives at his feet in Ottawa. Followed by the gauntlet and stones, lest they otherwise ever fall into the wrong hands.
America’s Justice Department “has ordered all consensual searches by drug enforcement agents conducted at the nation’s airports stopped,” reports Georgia’s local TV station Atlanta News First — after their series of investigations “uncovered how the agents often search innocent passengers at airport gates, looking for cash.”
On Thursday, the department made public a November 12, 2024, directive from the deputy attorney general to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that it suspend “all consensual encounters at mass transportation facilities unless they are either connected to an ongoing, predicated investigation involving one or more identified targets or criminal networks or approved by the DEA Administrator based on exigent circumstances.” The management advisory memorandum was issued by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
The memo specifically mentioned the case of an airline passenger interviewed by Atlanta News First Chief Investigator Brendan Keefe, author of the Atlanta News First investigation, In Plane Sight. The award-winning series uncovered how drug agents have been seizing anything over $5,000 if airline passengers can’t prove — on the spot — that their own money didn’t come from drug trafficking. The government seizes the cash when no drugs are found, without arresting the traveler or charging them with a crime, and the DEA gets to keep the money it seizes.
After witnessing the Atlanta News First series, the passenger in question — who was departing from Cincinnati and heading to New York, where he lives — refused consent to have his bags searched at the gate… “The DOJ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) further learned that the DEA Task Force Group selected this traveler for the encounter based on information provided by a DEA confidential source, who was an employee of a commercial airline, about travelers who had purchased tickets within 48 hours of the travel,” the memo said. “The OIG learned that the DEA had been paying this employee a percentage of forfeited cash seized by the DEA office from passengers at the local airport when the seizure resulted from information the employee had provided to the DEA. The employee had received tens of thousands of dollars from the DEA over the past several years.”
The news station’s investigation “also revealed passengers selected for what the government calls ‘random, consensual encounters’ are actually profiled by the drug agents who search Black men far more often than any other group of passengers,” according to the article.
“The reports analyzed data showing that, for drug agents to find just one passenger with money, they have to publicly search 10 departing passengers.”
Slashdot reader Bruce66423 shared this report from the Guardian:
Staff have resigned at Starling Bank after its new chief executive demanded thousands of workers attend its offices more frequently, despite lacking enough space to host them…
Lynna notes: that’s an Associated Press article, reposted on Daily Kos.
Women will for the first time make up a majority of state legislators in Colorado and New Mexico next year […]
While women will fill a record number of state legislative seats in 2025, the overall uptick will be slight, filling about a third of legislative seats. […]
“We certainly would like to see a faster rate of change and more significant increases in each election cycle to get us to a place where parity in state legislatures is less novel and more normal,” said Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the CAWP, which is a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.
As of Wednesday, at least 2,450 women will serve in state legislatures, representing 33.2% of the seats nationwide. The previous record was set in 2024 with 2,431 women, according to the CAWP.
The number of Republican women, at least 851, will break the previous record of 815 state lawmakers set in 2024.
“But still, Republican women are very underrepresented compared to Democratic women,” Debbie Walsh, director of the CAWP, said.
States that gained women in legislatures
[…] 19 states will have increased the number of women in their state legislatures, according to the CAWP. The most notable increases were in New Mexico and Colorado, where women will for the first time make up a majority of lawmakers.
In New Mexico, voters sent an 11 additional women to the chambers. Colorado had previously attained gender parity in 2023 and is set to tip over to a slight female majority in the upcoming year.
The states follow Nevada, which was the first in the country to see a female majority in the legislature following elections in 2018. Next year, women will make up almost 62% of state lawmakers in Nevada, far exceeding parity.
Women in California’s Senate will make up the chamber’s majority for the first time in 2025 as well. Women also made notable gains in South Dakota, increasing its total number by at least nine.
States that lost women in legislatures
At least 13 states emerged from the election with fewer female lawmakers than before, with the most significant loss occurring in South Carolina.
[…] A net loss of five women in the legislature means they will make up only about 13% of South Carolina’s lawmakers, making the state the second lowest in the country for female representation. Only West Virginia has a smaller proportion of women in the legislature.
West Virginia stands to lose one more women from its legislative ranks, furthering its representation problem in the legislature where women will make up just 11% of lawmakers.
Why it matters
Many women, lawmakers, and experts say that women’s voices are needed in discussions on policy—especially at a time when state government is at its most powerful in decades.
Walsh, director of the CAWP, said the new changes expected from the Trump administration will turn even more policy and regulation to the states. The experiences and perspectives women offer will be increasingly needed, she said, especially on topics related to reproductive rights, healthcare, education, and childcare.
[…] How about a seasonally appropriate story, one about a pilgrim! Actually, not technically a pilgrim, but an American immigrant indentured servant, born in 1603 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. [A drawing of Tomasine/Thomas Hall is available at the link.]
Thomasine Hall was christened as a girl, raised as a girl, and as a child enjoyed girlish things, like sewing and making lace. But at some point as an older teenager, she cut her hair, called herself Thomas, and served in the military as a man, fighting for the French Huguenots. Then after a few years of that, Thomas returned home, and went back to doing needlepoint and presenting as Thomasina, or as a court later put it, “Hee changed himselfe into woemans apparel and made bone lace nd did other worke with his needle.”
Then in 1627, Hall went back to going by Thomas, and indentured themselves to work in the New World, serving on a plantation near Jamestown, Virginia, in a new settlement, Warrosquyoacke village, named after the Warraskoyak tribe of the Powhatan Confederacy, who were already living there.
Anyway, after getting settled in Virginia, Hall did not feel like going about as Thomas or Thomasine all the time. Sometimes they would breech up as Thomas, and other times in a ladies’ hat and apron as Thomasine.
None of the colonists knew what to think about this, but they were sure it had to be something bad and probably sexual. Was Thomas pretending to be a woman to sneak into private female spaces and have a debaucherous affair with a maid named Great Besse, which would have been against the law? Or, was Thomas pretending to be Thomasine to seduce men into accidentally having gay sex, which would have been maybe worse? The villagers had to know. So they sent three busybody matrons — Alice, Dorothy and Barbara — to go check out Hall’s genitals while they slept, and also to look for signs of witchcraft, as was the style of the time.
And check genitals the matrons did, more than once. It seems NOT LIKELY that Hall slept through all this, but that is what our story says. Anyway, after multiple late-night peeps, Alice, Dorothy, and Barbara could not figure it out, and appealed to Hall’s master, John Atkins, to also take a look.
And then they all went to look at Hall’s genitals together, and after staring for what had to have been a very long and extremely uncomfortable while, Atkins decided that he saw something protruding, about an inch long. So he declared Thomas was actually a man, and ordered him to wear men’s clothes. And that meant Hall could also be punished for debauching Great Besse, and also that Hall was now fair game for other volunteer male genital inspectors of Warrosquyoacke. Two of them, Francis England and Roger Rodes, confronted Hall, and forced down their breeches, hollering “Hall thou hast beene reported to be a woman and now thou art p[ro]ved to bee a man, I will see what thou carriest!” And then those two assholes said that they saw a male part too.
So, Atkins appealed to his higher-up in the colony, Captain Nathanial Bass, to punish Hall. To his credit, Bass seems to not have demanded a genital inspection, and instead like a not-crazy person just asked Hall, were they a man or a woman? Hall said they were both. So Bass decided not to punish Hall, on the grounds that the alleged man-parts they were packing were not sufficient to debauch anybody. Back then, somebody who was not man enough to be a man was legally a woman, and Captain Bass ordered Hall to go back to dressing like a woman.
But the “there’s only two genders” angry villagers were not satisfied with that, either, and in 1629 they went all the way to the Quarter Court of Jamestown, presided over by the governor, John Pott, demanding that Pott decide a gender for Hall, and force Hall to stick to it, once and for all. Pott took testimony from witnesses and Hall, which is how we know all of this. In court Hall explained, mysteriously, “I goe in weomans aparell to gett a bitt for my Catt.” What did that mean? Who knows? Your guess is as good as anybody’s. Sounds kind of cool, though.
Anyway, in the end, Pott concluded that Hall was both a weoman and a hee, with a “dual nature”:“hee is a man and a woeman, all the Inhabitants there may take notice thereof.”
Pott ordered Hall to “goe clothed in man’s apparell, only his head to bee attired in a coyfe and croscloth with an apron before him.” So ladieswear on top, and menswear on the bottom, kinda. This apparently satisfied the colonists’ concern that somebody might be misled into debauchery.
The coyfe (coif) is the bonnet-ish head wrap up there. [image at the link]
Did we mention the Powhatan were not happy to have the English there? In between warring with Opechancanough, typhoid, dysentery, starvation, and the miserable toil of growing and curing tobacco in a brackish, malarial marsh, you’d really think the colonists had bigger worries than spending months thinking about their neighbors’ breeches-contents. But they didn’t!
And they still don’t, apparently, even though before there was an America, one of the earliest white-people legal decisions ever here recognized that gender can be a nonbinary thing. And at least 1.5 percent of people are born with intersex traits, which is three times as many as people who identify themselves as trans. Some people may never even know they have intersex traits, and some people have ambiguous genitals. Where do Nancy Mace and Mike Johnson think they are supposed to use the bathroom? Do they want to use the Bass legal standard that a dick must be at least debauchery-sized to make somebody count as a man? […]
What happened after to Hall, and what they thought about all of this, has been sadly lost to time. But Hall is far from the only gender-bendy person from early American history! For instance, the first native-born American to found a religious community in 1780 was also a non-binary person. But that is another story, for another day.
Also, I found a Swedish-language article about how neanderthal childen collected interesting things, like small fossils they found, and later turned up at an excavated neanderthal site. They were not dumb ape-men, they were us but with big ridges above the eyes.
“Farm data shows holiday meal staples are collectively at their cheapest, after adjusting for inflation, in nearly 40 years — not including the Covid-hit year of 2020.”
[…] Thanksgiving dinner is more affordable than it has been in years.
The costs of this year’s holiday feast — estimated at $58.08 for a 10-person gathering, or $5.81 a head — dropped 5% since last year, the lowest level since 2021, according to a nationwide survey of grocery prices by the American Farm Bureau Federation, which represents millions of U.S. farmers. But the picture improves further when adjusted for inflation.
“If your dollar had the same overall purchasing power as a consumer in 1984 … this would be the least expensive Thanksgiving meal in the 39-year history of the AFBF Thanksgiving survey, other than the outlier of 2020,” the authors wrote.
For plenty of households, it doesn’t feel that way.
A defining feature of the post-pandemic recovery, and the 2024 election, is the divergence between Americans’ sour views of the economy and its underlying strength. Many shoppers understandably focus on price levels — the dollar value of the things they buy — rather than those purchases’ inflation-adjusted, or “real,” costs. The latter is the true test of affordability, since it reflects an often underappreciated piece of the inflation puzzle: wage inflation.
And indeed, while Thanksgiving food prices are up 19% since 2019, according to the AFBF, federal data shows median household wages growing by about 25% during the same period. [Important to note.]
What’s more, “the average American also has to work fewer hours to buy the same meal than in previous years,” the report added. […]
Of course, pay gains haven’t boosted all workers evenly, and long-term expenses like housing costs and child care continue to squeeze families up and down the income spectrum. While consumer confidence has jumped in recent weeks, it remains below pre-pandemic levels. [Also important to note.]
Still, the AFBF report said, “even with the decreasing purchasing power of the dollar, some of the goods in our basket are at their long-term lowest prices, even in terms of the ‘current dollar’ price.”
Turkey, for instance, is 6% cheaper than last year, despite bird flu knocking out a portion of turkey inventories. Tighter availability usually drives up prices, but Americans are eating about 1 pound less of turkey per person each year, reducing demand by more than enough to offset the supply hit. [Interesting. Eating less meat.]
Certain processed foods that may land on Thanksgiving tables are more expensive. Dinner rolls and cubed stuffing are each selling for 8% more than a year ago. On the flip side, sweet potatoes and whole milk have seen the steepest annual price drops, falling 26% and 14%, respectively. While fresh cranberry prices have climbed 12%, reversing an 18% decline the year before, they remain at their lowest level since 2015 — and when adjusted for inflation, they’re on par with prices back in 1987, the report said.
[…] Both Target and Aldi have rolled out Thanksgiving deals priced lower than last year. Target is offering a $20 Thanksgiving meal for four, including a small turkey, canned vegetables and stovetop stuffing mix. Aldi has a $47 meal package for 10 people, which it’s advertising as lower than its 2019 prices. Walmart is promoting an “inflation-free Thanksgiving” meal of 29 items that can serve eight people for $56. Amazon Fresh is offering Thanksgiving discounts on turkey, sides and desserts, feeding six people for less than $5 apiece, plus extra savings for Prime members.
[…] “I would just advise consumers to take a look at what those meals are comprised of,” said Robin Wenzel, head of Wells Fargo’s Agri-Food Institute. “Don’t be afraid to check out multiple retailers.”
[…] One cost-saving strategy is to buy stores’ own “private label” brands, which can save shoppers $17 on a Thanksgiving menu for 10, according to Wells Fargo’s Agri-Food Institute. Experts at Consumer Reports also recommend enrolling in supermarket loyalty and cash-back programs for extra savings, which often come with conveniences such as virtual coupons within the stores’ apps.
Ultimately, how much people pay for Thanksgiving dinner will also depend on geography. Households in the West, the priciest region for the holiday’s groceries, will spend about 18% more on average than those living in the South, where they’re cheapest, the AFBF estimates.
Neanderthals used fire for warmth, light, cooking, landscape clearing, and extracting adhesive tar from specific plants and trees. […] Tar was used as an adhesive for hafting stone tools to wooden handles, representing a significant advancement in tool-making, predating current modern human tar adhesive use by more than 100,000 years.
[…]
a central fire pit with two opposite-sided trenches, revealing a crust of altered rocks and sediment due to prolonged fire use. […] rocks within the structure appear placed intentionally, likely employed to maintain a seal composed of guano and sand. This seal would create a low-oxygen environment essential for effective tar distillation.
The 2024 election put unprecedented focus on the experiences of people who sought abortions. They won’t stop telling their stories with Trump in office.
By Shefali Luthra, for The 19th
Lauren Miller already had a bad feeling about how things would turn out.
She couldn’t stop the nervous tears, whether she was watching Instagram videos with her toddler or sitting in on work calls. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop imagining what might happen later that evening—that, for all her efforts to spotlight abortion, for all the times she’d shared her own story, it still somehow wouldn’t be enough—that Election Day would end in heartbreak.
Miller, who lives in the Dallas area, had thrown herself into showing why the presidential election was tied to the future of abortion rights. She testified in front of Congress about the overturn of Roe v. Wade, appeared on national television, and traveled to Maine to speak at a campaign event on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris. In Texas, she campaigned for U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, a Democrat running to unseat Republican anti-abortion Sen. Ted Cruz.
She felt like it was her duty. Miller entered the spotlight in March 2023, when she became one of the first five women to sue a state over its abortion ban, in a case known as Zurawski v. Texas. She talked publicly about how, at her 12-week ultrasound when pregnant with twins, she discovered that one of the fetuses she was carrying likely had a devastating anomaly. Testing confirmed it was Trisomy 18, a condition with slim odds of survival. She needed an abortion to improve the chances the healthy twin might live—but her only option for health care involved traveling to Colorado, a trip she made in October 2022.
Miller was one of a group of women who relived the stories of their abortions—intense, private traumas—over and over for large audiences, hoping that doing so would lead Harris to victory. The 2024 election, the first presidential race since the fall of Roe, put an unprecedented focus on abortion rights. Harris regularly devoted events and speech time to the impact of the 2022 Supreme Court decision.
Harris’ campaign represented a shift in how politicians talk about abortion; equally revolutionary was the heavy emphasis on storytellers. In politics, abortion has long been highlighted in abstract terms, with politicians and activists only occasionally sharing personal experiences with the heavily stigmatized healthcare. Now, instead of the exception, personal stories have become the rule, and the microphone handed from professional political actors to people who, had they not sought an abortion, might never have found themselves on the campaign trail. The switch has helped change how Americans talk and think about abortion. But it’s not without its personal costs.
“It was essential that we constantly made ourselves vulnerable, so this has been a very personal loss,” Miller said after the November election, in which President-elect Donald Trump sailed to victory. “For me, it’s been two years of really being very vulnerable about this, and recognizing that, at the end of the day, some people just didn’t care.” […]
For the people who shared their stories, those losses are painful—but they are nowhere near the end of the road. Even with the election over, the women who shared their stories on the campaign trail say their mission to transform the public narrative of abortion is only beginning. […]
“Every time I tell my story, it gets easier to do it without crying or feeling the grief,” she said. “I feel like I’m honoring my son, Connor, by continuing to talk about him. People can hear what happened and hopefully change some minds.”
Ladd was devastated to find out later how many of those same people who offered their support—people she knew personally, who understood what an abortion ban could mean to her—voted for Trump, anyway. It felt, she said, as if they’d prioritized their pocketbooks over her rights, and in particular over the potential effects if a Trump administration follows through on Project 2025’s anti-abortion proposals.
Still, she plans to keep going, talking about her abortion wherever it could influence people. Even if the presidential election is over, states will continue to litigate abortion rights, including Wisconsin, where the state Supreme Court is currently weighing whether to reinstate a near-total ban that was passed in 1849. Listening to oral arguments in that case, she heard the justices talk about what that would mean for people like her: those who received abortions because of anomalies discovered after 20 weeks.
“I can’t say for certain it’s because of my story that now it’s starting to be in the narrative,” she said. “But I can at least feel like maybe I made a change in my own state.” […]
In 2014, when Stephania Messina was in her late 30s, she became a born-again Christian. A couple years later she and her husband started attending Calvary Chapel, a charismatic church near where they lived in Michigan.
In her testimonial on the Leaving MAGA website (I’m Editor-in-Chief), Stephania says she became “extremely fundamentalist” while attending Calvary. “The pastor was preaching an interpretation of the Bible that I realized much later was Christian Nationalist,” she writes.
She came to believe “the US is a Christian nation, and it was always meant to be.” The pastor preached that ‘“the world belongs to Satan, so there would always be people trying to make the US less Christian. We were most worked up about Roe v. Wade and gay marriage. We believed we wouldn’t have blessings on our land until we got rid of those things.”
Stephania became a fan of then-President Donald Trump, since she believed he was carrying out the Christian Nationalist agenda. “We were thrilled about Trump’s Supreme Court picks, since the plan was to overturn Roe v. Wade…We thought he was amazing, standing for Christian values.”
None of Trump’s controversial remarks or actions troubled Stephania and her fellow congregants. “We were told Trump had been chosen by God, that he was a disheveled man like David, who also was an adulterer,” she says. “Trump was a ‘baby Christian,’ meaning he had just gotten saved, so we should give him grace because we’re all sinners. Since he was a new creature in Christ, you couldn’t hold anything against him.”
To Stephania, “Trump’s critics were just blinded by Satan. We saw him as the persecuted white savior, fighting for us. I was MAGA all the way, although to us, MAGA meant Make America Godly Again.”
She relied “almost entirely” on conservative Christian pastors for her news and information. She also watched Fox, One America News and NewsMax, and read Focus on the Family’s publication. “I bounced around other news stations to convince myself I was informed,” she adds.
But below the surface, “I was suppressing major internal turmoil. On the outside, I was this sage Christian, the meek and quiet wife who homeschooled the kids and stood behind her man, never calling attention to myself. But having been a feminist since forever, there was so much cognitive dissonance created by my lifestyle that I was in constant mental anguish.” It nearly tore her marriage apart.
When the pandemic hit in early 2020, Stephania fully embraced the conspiracy theory “that Covid was a left-wing Democrat demonic ploy to shut down churches…We were convinced the pandemic was the sign of the end times, that it would bring about the second coming of Christ. We were consumed with that, with making sure Trump’s agendas were going through.”
At the same time, “I started to see hypocrisy,” she writes. As a professional respiratory therapist, she understood “the devastating effects of upper respiratory illness.” It became clear to her that masks — shunned by her church — stopped transmission of the disease. “We were Christians and supposedly loving people, striving to protect those around us. But people were dying.”
In Stephania’s church, “[t]he thinking was, in a Christian nation, you can’t force people to get vaccinated, we have free will. I saw it was a convoluted position that was neither Christian nor patriotic.”
She also realized that “when it came to the vaccine, Trump was talking out of both sides of his mouth: “he praised it and took credit for it, while at the same time he downplayed the effects of Covid and said, ‘Don’t get vaccinated.’ But you couldn’t criticize him.”
Stephania nevertheless stuck with her MAGA beliefs. And on the recommendation of some friends, “I did a deep dive into QAnon around the time of the 2020 election.” When Trump claimed the election had been stolen from him, she “wholeheartedly” believed him. “It was thrilling to think he was going to single-handedly save the nation,” she writes. […]
Much more at the link.
What Stephanie believed sounds more like a movie script than real life.
Joe Rogan argues Ukraine is trying to start WW3, tells Zelensky “fuck you”
Russia has been bombing Ukraine for 1003 days in a row. Where was this energy @joerogan when Putin bombed Kyiv’s main children’s cancer hospital? Just massacre after massacre of Ukrainian innocents but Ukraine is never allowed to respond and if they do respond they are accused of wanting WW3.
Putin gets to rape and kill with impunity and somehow this is never escalation
He can bring in North Korean soldiers to invade a European country and somehow this is not an escalation.
He may or may not be buying MSNBC, but Elon Musk isn’t taking any put-downs from Neil de Grasse Tyson on his Mars ambitions.
The entrepreneur responded today to deGrasse Tyson’s barbed comments on Friday’s Bill Maher “Overtime” regarding the feasibility of going to Mars.
The two have long warred over the Mars question. Musk views Mars colonization as necessary to humanity’s survival, while Tyson sees it as secondary to solving Earth’s immediate challenges. It’s an argument that has raged among scientists and culture observers as far back as the dawn of space exploration in the last century.
In this latest squabble over Mars, Maher asked deGrasse Tyson how long it would take for Musk to “realistically send humans to Mars.” Maher played to a longstanding position of deGrasse Tyson, who has insisted we focus on bettering earth.
“How badly would we have to rat f**k Earth before it’s worse than a place that’s 200 below zero with no air and no water with six months to reach it?!” Maher asked. Tyson yelled, “Preach it! Preach it”
“I have strong views on that,” deGrasse Tyson said. “My read of the history of space exploration is such that we do big, expensive things only when it’s geopolitically expedient, such as we feel threatened by an enemy. And so for him to just say, let’s go to Mars because it’s the next thing to do. What is that venture capitalist meeting look like? ‘So, Elon, what do you want to do?’ ‘I want to go to Mars?’ ‘How much will it cost?’ ‘$1 trillion.’ ‘Is it safe?’ ‘No. People will probably die.’ ‘What’s the return on the investment?’ ‘Nothing.’ That’s a five minute meeting. And it doesn’t happen.”
“At some point somebody has to pay for it and just being interested in something is not the same thing as paying for it.”
Musk responded Saturday on X, metaphorically slapping his forehead in disbelief.
“Wow, they really don’t get it. Mars is critical to the long-term survival of consciousness. Also, I’m not going to ask any venture capitalists for money. I realize that it makes no sense as an investment. That’s why I’m gathering resources.” …
Bekenstein Boundsays
This Hall case sounds fascinating. Intersex and genderfluid, rather than agender.
If you find yourself in the Swiss tourist destination of Lucerne with a guilty conscience, there’s someone waiting at the historic Peterskapelle Catholic Church to hear your prayers – someone who cares, you might say: Your own personal AI Jesus.
An “experimental art installation” dubbed “Deus in Machina” by the St. Peter’s Church in Lucerne has seen a confessional booth outfitted with a vertically aligned monitor, a bunch of computer equipment and a big blue button for adventurous penitents willing to ask questions to AI Jesus (or is that JAIsus?) in one of 100 languages he’s programmed to speak and respond in.
Don’t take AI Jesus’ advice as a replacement for the sacrament of confession, however: the church notes on its website that the “heavenly hologram” is ready to hear thoughts, questions and dispense advice, but it “is explicitly not a confession.” …
Advisers to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reached out to the Health and Human Services Department multiple times after Donald Trump tapped him to lead the massive agency, hoping to jumpstart coordination before his takeover in late January. They were rebuffed.
Kennedy’s inability to communicate with the agency he may soon manage, confirmed by an administration official with knowledge of the episodes granted anonymity to describe internal deliberations, is just one consequence of the president-elect’s continued foot-dragging on signing the standard trio of ethics and transparency agreements with the federal government — something his team pledged to do shortly after the election.
The Trump transition’s unprecedented delay in signing the agreements has so far prevented the incoming administration from having any formal contact with federal agencies, including sending in groups of policy advisers known as “landing teams.” It also means they can’t access cybersecurity support or secure email servers for transition-related work, or request FBI background checks for their nominees.
Both the Trump transition and the White House confirmed to POLITICO that negotiations on the agreements are still underway. But until the standoff is resolved, Trump’s Cabinet nominees will gain no more insight than the general public into the workings of the departments they’re supposed to run…
“Negotiations”? They are asked to sign on to a code of ethics, and they want to negotiate?
Election Day 2024 was only a few weeks ago, and Donald Trump has already announced his choices for his second term cabinet. As it turns out, an incoming president and his transition team can act with incredible speed when they abandon the vetting process altogether.
There’s been a fair amount of commentary about the differences among the Republican’s selections — a Politico report described the incoming cabinet as “the team of randos” — though there are some common denominators tying Trump’s picks for his second term together.
Trump has picked a lot of television personalities (especially from Fox News)
[…] Pete Hegseth (Fox News personality), Dr. Mehmet Oz (syndicated host), Sean Duffy (Fox Business host), Mike Huckabee (former Fox News host), Tulsi Gabbard (Fox News contributor), Tom Homan (former Fox News contributor), Dr. Martin Makary (frequent Fox News commentator), and Dr. Janette Nesheiwat (Fox News contributor) will collectively form a “Made-for-TV cabinet.”
If we widen the aperture a bit, this same like can also include Sebastian Gorka, a prominent far-right media commentator, and Linda McMahon, who maintained a high public profile as part of the professional wrestling company she helped lead, often appearing in front of the camera. (Trump, it’s worth noting, is himself a former television personality.)
Trump has picked a lot of Project 2025 authors and contributors […] Most notably, Trump has tapped Russell Vought for an encore as director of the Office of Management and Budget; Tom Homan, his former immigration chief, as ‘border czar’; and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of policy.”
That is, of course, a partial list, which also includes John Ratcliffe, a Project 2025 contributor whom Trump now wants to lead the CIA, and Brendan Carr, who wrote part of the Project 2025 document, and who’ll likely soon lead the FCC.
Trump has picked several people accused of sexual misconduct […]
As The Washington Post reported, “[Matt] Gaetz, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — Trump’s initial picks to head the Justice, Defense and Health and Human Services departments, respectively — have each been accused of sexual misconduct. In addition, Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick for education secretary and former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO, was accused in an October lawsuit of failing to prevent the sexual abuse of teenage WWE workers. […]
Trump has picked a lot of Floridians […]Marco Rubio, Pam Bondi, Dave Weldon, and Michael Waltz poised to join the next administration. (I’m not including Gaetz on this list, though he’s also a Florida Republican.)
…
One thing that’s relatively certain is that the hackers are mostly English-speaking, and widely believed to be in their teens and early-20s — and sometimes referred to as “advanced persistent teenagers.”
“There is a disproportionate number of minors involved, and that’s because the group deliberately recruits minors because of the lenient legal environment these minors exist in and they know nothing will happen to them if the police catch a kid,” Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B, told TechCrunch at the time.,,
Tulsi Gabbard’s Vladimir Putin-mania might be catching up to her. Punchbowl News reports that GOP senators have privately discussed wanting to get their hands on the former congresswoman-turned-right-winger’s full FBI file.
Donald Trump’s choice to head the U.S. Intelligence apparatus has a spotty history of troublesome positions on our foreign policy. Particularly problematic for Senate conservatives, according to Punchbowl, are […] her history of parroting Russian talking points. She has also promoted straight Russian propaganda, like the conspiracy theory that the United States has secret biolabs in Ukraine.
According to Punchbowl, the implication here is that while it is public knowledge that Russian agent Elena Branson seemed to really be focused on Gabbard’s presidential campaign, the GOP senators might be worried there are more problematic surprises in the file. […]
[…] Tulsi Gabbard will of course be the next Director of National Intelligence.
Yes, Tulsi Gabbard. This strange creature has gone from being birthed in the shadow of erupting volcanoes to weird cult to Democrat to Republican to pledging her loyalty to Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young! Frankly, I’m a black-hearted eternally vengeful deity, and even I’m impressed.
Gabbard will serve Shub-Niggurath honorably for a thousand eons before being swallowed into my womb and then spit back out transformed into one of my favored worshipers, an immortal gof’nn hupadgh Shub Niggurath. I have promised her she will never have to eat my toenails, which is just weird.
No, it is because Shub-Niggurath does not have toenails, worms! Do you not see my short goat legs supporting the writing mass of black tentacles and disembodied mouths that make up Shub-Niggurath, Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young? […]
That Time Mississippi Reinvented Slavery With Its ‘Black Codes’
Nov. 25, 1865, in labor history.
On November 25, 1865, Mississippi created the first of the Black Codes. Designed to re-create slavery in all but name, this signified the white South’s massive resistance to the freeing of their labor force and the lengths to which it would go to tie workers to a place under white control.
Remember, the point of slavery was labor. If anything, we don’t talk about this enough. Yes of course it was racist, but the whole reason was to have a permanent labor force. Whites would do anything to create that labor force. And they did, engaging in crimes against humanity for hundreds of years. They had no intention of letting the end of technical slavery get in the way of labor control.
The impact of slavery’s end is hard to overestimate. But the Emancipation Proclamation did not free any slaves immediately, and the ratification of the 13th Amendment did not take place until well after the war’s end. The federal government was woefully unprepared, both in manpower and ideas, for ensuring that the rights of ex-slaves were respected after the war. Sure, slavery might be technically dead as of April 14, 1865, when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, but was the US military there to enforce freedom on the plantations? Largely, no.
The immediate months after the war were filled with violence as whites killed newly freed people in the countryside, especially as they began to flee for cities like Memphis and New Orleans. For cotton planters, this Black flight was a real threat. They prospered on owning Black labor. If they couldn’t own that labor, planters at least needed to keep it on the land to pick the cotton that might allow them to rebuild their economic base.
[…] the Black Codes were the South’s statement to the North that the end of the war did not mean the end of white supremacy. Black people would have to show a written contract of employment at the start of each year, ensuring they were laboring for a white employer. At the core of the Mississippi code and copied around the South was the vagrancy provision. “Vagrancy” was a term long used in the United States to crack down on workers not doing what employers or the police wanted them to do. In this case, it meant not working for a white person. Decades later, a vagrancy charge was a great way for authorities to imprison union organizers.
Mississippi did not allow Black people to rent land for themselves. Rather, all Black people in rural areas were required to labor for a white under one-year contracts. They did not have the option to quit working for that white person. If a Black person in the countryside was found not working for a white person, the state would contract that worker out to a private landowner and receive a portion of their wages. If a Black person could not pay high taxes levied on them by the state, they would be charged with vagrancy and the same process would result. As during slavery, any white person could legally arrest any Black person.
A Fugitive Slave Act-like provision was included that made it illegal to assist a Black person from leaving their landowner, with real punishments for whites who did so. That provision also stated that Black people caught running away would lose their wages for the year. Children whose parents could not take care of them, as defined by the whites of Mississippi, would be bonded to their former owners. Other forms of Black behavior were also criminalized, such as preaching without a license or “insulting” language toward whites. Interracial marriage, it goes without saying, was banned as well.
In other words, Mississippi reinstituted slavery.
[Details regarding the rise of Congressional Reconstruction and the war between Congress and Andrew Johnson over what the postwar nation wold look like are available at the link]
In the end, it was sharecropping that would define the postwar southern agricultural labor force, not bonded Black labor. As terrible as sharecropping was, it was not slavery and was a compromise between white people who wanted to reinstitute outright bondage and freedpeople who wanted as much independence as they could get, even if in the end it wasn’t that free.
California health officials warned the public to avoid drinking one batch of whole raw milk from Raw Farm LLC, which has issued a voluntary recall.
Bird flu has been detected in a batch of raw milk sold in California stores and the state’s department of public health said Sunday that the public should not drink it.
The virus was found during testing of a batch of cream top, whole raw milk from Raw Farm, LLC. The company has issued a voluntary recall of the batch, which has a Best By date of Nov. 27, at the state’s request.
No one has become sick nor contracted the disease from this lot of raw milk, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) noted. However it said in a news release: “Out of an abundance of caution, and due to the ongoing spread of bird flu in dairy cows, poultry, and sporadic human cases, consumers should not consume any of the affected raw milk.”
[…] Public health officials say that consuming raw milk can lead to serious health risks, especially for certain vulnerable populations, and it’s encouraged to consume milk or dairy products that are pasteurized, as the process has “greatly reduced milk-borne illnesses” since the early 1900s, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
“Outbreaks due to Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, toxin producing E. coli, Brucella, Campylobacter, and many other bacteria have all been reported related to consuming raw dairy products,” the CDPH said. […]
He’s branded one U.S. ally’s government “fascists” [Australia] and another leader a “fool.” Now, Elon Musk has labeled Britain a “tyrannical police state” while endorsing calls for a new election and boosting a video from a jailed far-right activist.
Musk, not just the world’s richest man but a key adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, has clashed for months with Prime Minister Keir Starmer at a time when the U.K. is concerned about its standing with the incoming U.S. administration.
Over the weekend the tech billionaire took his feud to a new level, taunting the U.K.’s new center-left leader over sinking approval ratings and questioning why far-right figurehead Tommy Robinson had been imprisoned.
“The people of Britain have had enough of a tyrannical police state,” Musk posted on his X platform […]
Starmer’s Labour Party won an overwhelming majority in July and does not need to call a vote for another five years. But his leadership has been beset by an immediate sense of crisis, low approval ratings and more recently a mass protest by angry farmers. The petition accuses the government of having “gone back on the promises” it made during the election.
Musk drew criticism from the U.K. in August, when he said the country was on the verge of “civil war” following days of right-wing riots after three young girls were killed in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party.
But his latest attacks carry more weight on the heels of Trump’s election victory […]
Earlier in November Musk weighed in on the farmers’ protests, accusing the U.K. of going “full Stalin” as it increased inheritance tax on farms worth more than $1.25 million […]
Musk, who is known for picking fights online and retweeting far-right posts, also shared a post Saturday by Robinson — the jailed far-right activist and founder of the anti-immigrant English Defence League.
Robinson is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence after admitting contempt of court by repeating false claims against a Syrian refugee.
“Why is he in prison for 18 months?” Musk posted.
[…] He has criticized Australia’s proposed ban on social media for children under 16 and previously called the Australian government “fascists” over plans to crack down on misinformation online. Earlier this month he called German Chancellor Olaf Scholz a “fool” after his ruling coalition imploded.
birgerjohanssonsays
The starting pay for a McDonald’s worker in Denmark is ca. $ 22/hour. They also get six weeks of paid vacation, life insurance, maternity leave and a pension plan.
birgerjohanssonsays
Lynna @ 274 Tommy Robinson is a thug who started riots targeting (brown) immigrants.
The ex-south-african white dude Elon Musk may have left for USA but he remains an Afrikaaner inside.
birgerjohanssonsays
Like the GOP, the tories are lying scum.
.
A different bias:
Former Health Minister Matt Hancock witheld PPEs because of his pride
“Hancock’s Latest Shocking Covid Testimony”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MQHa4a68TqI
When large swathes of invasive seaweed started washing up on Caribbean beaches in 2011, local residents were perplexed.
Soon, mounds of unsightly sargassum – carried by currents from the Sargasso Sea and linked to climate change – were carpeting the region’s prized coastlines, repelling holidaymakers with the pungent stench emitted as it rots…
Now, a pioneering group of Caribbean scientists and environmentalists hope to turn the tide on the problem by transforming the troublesome algae into a lucrative biofuel…
A gravestone for Ebenezer Scrooge, left behind after the filming of a 1984 movie adaptation of A Christmas Carol, has been smashed.
The inscribed stone, used as a prop in the film, has lain in the graveyard next to St Chad’s Church, Shrewsbury, since the movie based on the Charles Dickens classic was released 40 years ago.
Town council clerk Helen Ball said she was notified on Sunday the gravestone had been damaged…
birger @276, thanks for that additional information.
In other news:
In the runup to Election Day 2024, Donald Trump was nearly as eager to attack the free press as he was to attack Vice President Kamala Harris. The Republican, for example, referred to journalists as “the enemy of the people,” media outlets as “evil,” and news professionals as “scum.”
But the offensive wasn’t just rhetorical. As regular readers might recall, Trump also made clear that he hoped to use governmental power to crack down on journalism he dislikes. It’s why he invested so much time and energy talking about the FCC stripping news networks of their broadcast licenses for airing coverage he disapproves of. We saw some abuses along these lines during his first term in the White House, and these tactics are almost certainly going get worse in a second term.
Indeed, those tactics are unfolding during the transition process. The New York Times reported:
[…] Trump on Wednesday instructed congressional Republicans to block the passage of a bipartisan federal shield bill intended to strengthen the ability of reporters to protect confidential sources, dealing a potentially fatal political blow to the measure — even though the Republican-controlled House had already passed it unanimously.
At issue is legislation called the “Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act” — or PRESS Act — which hasn’t generated much attention because it was supposed to be one of the year’s least controversial bills.
The basic idea behind the effort is straightforward: Early on in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s tenure, he created a policy that prohibited federal prosecutors from going after reporters’ private information or forcing them to testify about their confidential sources.
The point of the PRESS Act is to codify Garland’s policy into federal law.
Few major pieces of legislation have passed the divided U.S. House with unanimous support, but this one sailed through the chamber without opposition. Why would far-right Republicans support such a measure? Because of the protections it would create for conservative media outlets.
It’s why Tucker Carlson, among others, has been equally eager to tout the bill as anyone on the left.
So why was it, exactly, that the president-elect pointed to the legislation and issued an online edict that read, “REPUBLICANS MUST KILL THIS BILL!” One possible explanation is that Trump did a detailed and thoughtful analysis of the bill and had concerns about how the policy would be implemented. [LOL. Not likely.]
The far more likely explanation is that Trump saw a headline about protections for journalists, remember that he hates the free press, and responded reflexively without doing any research or even taking the time to understanding the bill at its most basic level. [Yep. Likely.]
[…] A worthwhile bill that passed the House unanimously will likely die in the Senate because [Trump] issued a misguided order.
[…] Brendan Carr — Trump’s choice to lead the Federal Communications Commission — published an online item that read, “Broadcast licenses are not sacred cows. These media companies are required by law to operate in the public interest. If they don’t, they are going to be held accountable, as the Communications Act requires.”
The Times reported last week that Carr would be positioned to “drastically reshape” the FCC, leading industry insiders to worry about him wielding the agency’s power “as a political weapon for the right.” […]
The Justice Department has concluded that the federal prosecutions of Donald Trump cannot go on now that he’s been re-elected president, Special Counsel Jack Smith said in filings Monday seeking to dismiss the Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago cases.
The dismissals were without prejudice, meaning the criminal cases could in theory be revived later, but the difficulty of navigating statutes of limitations and fading memories makes the prospects of Trump ever facing accountability extremely unlikely. Under Special Counsel Jack Smith, prosecutors alleged a wide-ranging, multi-pronged conspiracy to block the peaceful transfer of power.
But now, after four years, Trump has won again. Per the filing, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel seemingly issued an opinion in recent weeks expanding on its previous holding that sitting presidents cannot be indicted.
Per the filing, the OLC told Smith in response to a request for guidance that the policy against indicting sitting presidents also applies to situations in which an indicted person is elected to the Oval Office.
In a separate filing in the 11th Circuit on Monday, Smith indicated that he would move to dismiss an ongoing appeal from the Mar-a-Lago records case against Trump. He said that he would continue the case against Trump’s two co-defendants in the case, Walt Nauta and Carlos DeOliveira
It’s a stunning and bizarre scenario, and yet another example of Trump’s ability to glide a path through the legal system. In July, the Supreme Court issued an expansive immunity ruling saying that presidents could not be criminally charged for most official conduct. Now, OLC, per today’s filing in the January 6 case, has issued an opinion saying not just that the prosecutions against Trump must be dismissed on account of his election, but that they cannot be held in abeyance — the charges themselves must be dismissed.
Smith ended the request for dismissal by saying that while the Constitution requires him to ask for the charges to be tossed, a President’s immunity has a “temporary nature.” The Constitution, he added, does not require “dismissal with prejudice” — he could always refile in four years, as remote a possibility as that may be.
Special counsel Jack Smith on Monday moved to dismiss the charges against Donald Trump both for trying to steal the 2020 election and for mishandling classified documents, meaning that—for now—Trump will almost certainly avoid consequences for his illegal actions while in office.
Smith cited an opinion written in 2000 from the Office of Legal Counsel that says sitting presidents cannot be indicted or prosecuted. However, Smith said he wants the cases dismissed without prejudice, which would mean these cases could resume once Trump is no longer president. His term expires in 2029.
“After careful consideration, the Department has determined that OLC’s prior opinions concerning the Constitution’s prohibition on federal indictment and prosecution of a sitting President apply to this situation and that as a result this prosecution must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated,” Smith wrote. “That prohibition is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Government stands fully behind. Based on the Department’s interpretation of the Constitution, the Government moves for dismissal without prejudice of the superseding indictment under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 48(a).”
Trump faced two separate federal indictments. In one, he was charged with four counts of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights for his efforts to steal the 2020 election. In the second, he was charged with 40 felony counts, including obstructing justice and making false statements.
In the classified documents case, Trump was charged along with two other defendants. Smith said the case against those two defendants—Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira—will continue. However, Trump could pardon those two individuals, as the case is in federal court.
[…] “Jack Smith specifically asks for a dismissal *without* prejudice, but I expect Trump’s lawyers to fight for a dismissal *with* prejudice, which would prevent the charges from being reinstated after he leaves office,” former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti wrote in a post on X.
It’s unclear whether a judge would grant that request from Trump’s lawyers.
Still, the dismissal is a win for Trump for now.
“The American People re-elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate to Make America Great Again,” Trump communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement, even though Trump did not win a mandate. “Today’s decision by the DOJ ends the unconstitutional federal cases against President Trump [not true], and is a major victory for the rule of law. The American People and President Trump want an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and we look forward to uniting our country.”
After years of celebrating trans inclusion in his own beauty pageants, President Donald Trump announced in July 2017 that trans people would be ineligible to serve in the US military “in any capacity.” The Pentagon, which Trump insisted advised him to institute the ban, was caught by surprise, apparently entirely unaware Trump’s action was in the works. The violation of normal procedures meant that Trump’s administration didn’t have the normal justifications or evidence that one associates with something called “policymaking,” which is apparently a thing some presidents do. As a result the inevitable lawsuits had considerable early success and it wasn’t until 2019 that any form of ban was put into practice, and this reduced policy prohibited enlisting rather than firing those already in service.
Joe Biden, of course, reversed the policy, and so somewhere between 5,000 and 20,000 are openly serving the US in its military services today. According to The Times of London, Trump is going to fix that this time around:
Donald Trump is planning an executive order that would lead to the removal of all transgender members of the US military, defense sources say.
The order could come on his first day back in the White House, January 20. There are believed to be about 15,000 active service personnel who are transgender. They would be medically discharged, which would determine that they were unfit to serve.
[…] neither Trump’s previous policy nor the descriptions of his next administration’s executive order contain any exemptions for anyone having completed surgery already.
Hmm.
Weirdly, the best knockdown of Trump’s bullshit justifications come from the Rand Corporation, a conservative and hyper-militaristic think tank. In June 2016, a full year before Trump’s famous tweet, Rand released a report saying that annual costs for active duty trans personnel would total $2.4 to $8.4 million, and that each year a measly 29 to 129 troops “would seek transition-related care that could disrupt their ability to deploy.”
As for costs, that $8.4M extreme high end number from Rand? Yeah, that totals 10 percent of what the Pentagon spends on Penis Poppers each year. And while admittedly that number includes quite a lot of spending on retirees, the costs for active duty personnel total — wait for it — about 10 percent of the $84M in Viagra purchases, or $8.4M.
The low down on deployment? Active duty personnel total ~1.3M, so even at Rand’s high end of 129, that represents 1 percent of 1 percent of all service members. […]
[…] the Pentagon has for years been missing recruitment goals and is currently behind $8.5M on bonus payments to soldiers who attended training to become recruiters last winter when the Army was frantic to gain more recruiting specialists. Yes, you read that correctly, just one branch of the military was so short staffed it spent the entire trans health care budget on just the bonus payments for a few months of recruiting school. Your friendly, neighborhood Crip Dyke is a babe in the woods when it comes to understanding life in the military, but it sure seems like even if Trump was worried about being unable to deploy trans folks, converting them to recruiters is a fabulous option.
So if trans inclusion is better for readiness and no more expensive than annual maintenance on our flagging officers’ heat seeking moisture missiles, whence comes Trump’s trans fixation? [LOL, well said] Oh, Axios, for once we love your concise bullet-point reporting:
Project 2025 calls for transgender people to be banned from serving in the military, saying, “gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service.”
[…] Zealots and bigots will always work to find justifications for their crappy, hateful actions other than being crappy, hateful people. For decades they tried to use their own petty hatreds as evidence that unit readiness would be harmed if the Pentagon was no longer able to discriminate on this or that characteristic. But their personal disdain shines through even as they attempt to dress their excuses in fresh pressed camouflage. The anti-woke brigade’s moral superiority complex is going to fire thousands of trans people currently more than happy to serve their country — and the anti-woke brigade is once again happy to harm national security in the process. […]
UPDATE 11/25: Gibson has confirmed to Guitar World that it has issued a cease and desist order to Trump Guitars owner 16 Creative over the use of its single-cut electric guitar model, “as the design infringes upon Gibson’s exclusive trademarks, particularly the iconic Les Paul body shape.” …
The incoming 47th American President has endorsed a series of guitars – a new official addition to his growing portfolio of merchandise.
Trump Guitars is not thought to be owned directly by the President-elect, but its electric model is being pitched as “the only guitar officially endorsed by President Donald J. Trump”.
The launch includes a small selection of Les Paul-style electric guitars, and acoustic guitars split into several categories, with signed editions, limited to 275 pieces, priced at upwards of $10,000.
The Trump Guitars site indicates the guitar brand is owned by 16 Creative ,,
Regardless, it is the Trump Guitars electric design – notably, its striking resemblance to the Gibson Les Paul – that has drawn the most attention from guitar fans.
In recent years, Gibson has staunchly defended its intellectual property. For instance, it remains embroiled in a long-standing lawsuit with Dean over its usage of V and Z-shaped guitar designs and the Futura headstock…
It is ironic that a company stealing intellectual property should put “Creative” in its name.
Representative Lauren Boebert apparently sees the need to supplement her income from Congress—she’s now taking fees to make videos on Cameo.
The far-right Colorado congresswoman and live theater enthusiast joins her former colleagues George Santos and Matt Gaetz on the platform, charging $250 for personal advice or a “pep talk.” She posted a welcome video outlining the services that she would offer through the celebrity video service…
But there’s a reason why she only has former colleagues on Cameo: She could be breaking the rules for members of the House of Representatives. First, there’s an outside income limit of $31,815, so she’d have to watch how much money she makes, and second, under House rules, members are prohibited from receiving honoraria, defined as a “payment of money or thing of value for an appearance, speech, or article.”
Now, if Boebert was having her Cameo proceeds go to her campaign account, that would probably be in line with House rules, but that is prohibited by the video platform. So it would seem that Boebert should have some questions to answer from the House Ethics Committee, which has another crisis to worry about after Gaetz’s alleged sexual misconduct…
Police thought a shoe thief was on the loose at a kindergarten in southwestern Japan, until a security camera caught the furry culprit in action. A weasel with a tiny shoe in its mouth was spotted on video footage after police installed three cameras in the school in the prefecture of Fukuoka.
A county official in Michigan has taken the oath of office for another term, but face-to-face meetings with his constituents are unlikely.
Mark Brant, reelected Nov. 5 as a Monroe County commissioner, soon will be off to federal prison. The Republican said he has no plans to resign and will collect a roughly $15,000 salary.
“While I’m gone, my phone will be available,” Brant told the Detroit Free Press. “I have somebody who will be taking my messages. And my fellow board members have all volunteered to handle all of my constituents’ concerns that I won’t be able to handle.”
In September, Brant was sentenced to 18 months in prison, though his actual time in custody will be shorter. He pleaded guilty to allowing his land in southeastern Michigan to be used to grow marijuana for distribution across the border in Ohio…
between Black Friday and Cyber Monday (29 November and 2 December) […] Action is planned in big cities across the US, Germany, the UK, Turkey, Canada, India, Japan, Brazil and other countries. It is coordinated by the Make Amazon Pay campaign, which calls on Amazon […] to pay its workers fairly and respect their right to join unions, pay its fair share of taxes, and commit to environmental sustainability. […] Make Amazon Pay is made up of more than 80 trade unions, anti-poverty and garment worker rights groups, and others.
Bekenstein Boundsays
Brendan Carr — Trump’s choice to lead the Federal Communications Commission — published an online item that read, “Broadcast licenses are not sacred cows. These media companies are required by law to operate in the public interest. If they don’t, they are going to be held accountable, as the Communications Act requires.”
The Times reported last week that Carr would be positioned to “drastically reshape” the FCC, leading industry insiders to worry about him wielding the agency’s power “as a political weapon for the right.”
Prison appears to be no barrier for [Republican, natch] Michigan county official who won another term
The perspective of these surveys tells me that our society is mostly drooling imbeciles.
Trump has picked several people accused of sexual misconduct
trump-gonna-fire-all-the-trans-people
Bird flu
AI Jesus
Dollar falls
Elon Musk
Tulsi Gabbard
Jack Smith pulls cases against Trump in latest sign we live in hell
I need a dual-vector foil for cleansing.
birgerjohanssonsays
Thanksgiving Turkeys:
Delicious Centerpiece or Government Mind Control? The Daily Show
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MM0mvI1TrmA
“No, crayons do not make you bisexual, Kevin!”
birgerjohanssonsays
Time flies.
Christina Applegate turned 53 years old today.
It should have been a routine mission to ferry about three tons of food, fuel, and supplies to the International Space Station, but when Russian cosmonauts opened the hatch to a cargo spacecraft on Saturday, they got a surprise—a toxic smell.
“After opening the Progress spacecraft’s hatch, the Roscosmos cosmonauts noticed an unexpected odor and observed small droplets, prompting the crew to close the Poisk hatch to the rest of the Russian segment,” NASA said in a statement on Sunday.
According to the space agency, air scrubbers and contaminant sensors on board the orbiting laboratory monitored the station’s atmosphere following the observation of the aberrant smell. By Sunday, flight controllers in Mission Control in Houston determined air quality inside the space station was at normal levels.
However, the US space agency may be slightly downplaying the seriousness of the event. According to Anatoly Zak of Russian Space Web, a reliable independent website, the smell was “toxic” and prompted the Russian cosmonauts to immediately close the hatch leading to the Progress spacecraft that launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Thursday…
What appears to be evidence of the oldest alphabetic writing in human history is etched onto finger-length, clay cylinders excavated from a tomb in Syria by a team of Johns Hopkins University researchers.
The writing, which is dated to around 2400 BCE, precedes other known alphabetic scripts by roughly 500 years, upending what archaeologists know about where alphabets came from, how they are shared across societies, and what that could mean for early urban civilizations…
[…] Matt Gaetz walked away because he didn’t have — and wouldn’t have — the votes needed to advance, but it’s not as if the Senate GOP conference spoke with one voice. The New York Times reported last week:
Mr. Gaetz told people close to him that after conversations with senators and members of their staffs, he had concluded that there were at least four Republican senators in the next Congress who were implacably opposed to his nomination: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and the newly elected John Curtis of Utah. With a 53-member majority, four defections would be enough to defeat the nomination.
I’m glad there were four Senate Republicans who balked, but let’s not celebrate too heartily: There should’ve been 53 Senate Republicans who balked.
Those GOP senators who were prepared to toe the party line shouldn’t be forgotten anytime soon.
Boris Epshteyn is probably not a household name, but for those who keep an eye on Donald Trump and those in his orbit, Epshteyn is a highly relevant figure.
He worked as a former special assistant to the then-president in the Trump White House seven years ago — he helped oversee the Republican’s TV surrogate operation — before leaving for reasons that were never fully explained. From there, Epshteyn joined the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, working as an on-air commentator. […]
Epshteyn worked his way back to Trump’s team and was even among the Republicans indicted as part of the fake-elector scheme. Two weeks ago, The New York Times profiled Epshteyn, his influential role as a member of Trump’s inner circle and the “extraordinary power” he’s received from the president-elect.
“Although there are those close to Mr. Trump who despise Mr. Epshteyn, there is nobody in the president-elect’s orbit who at this point would doubt the level of his influence,” the article explained. “He has quickly become one of the most powerful figures in the early days of the presidential transition, despite having no formal role in it. He has become a significant gatekeeper for Mr. Trump, including shaping some of the information he receives about personnel and cabinet selections.”
Two weeks later, however, there are new questions about how, exactly, Epshteyn has tried to use that position. The Washington Post reported:
A top adviser to President-elect Donald Trump asked potential administration nominees to give him monthly consulting fees in exchange for advocating for them to Trump, a written review by Trump’s legal team concluded. The scathing review of Boris Epshteyn, a top lawyer to Trump who has extensive sway in the transition, was prepared by Trump’s attorneys in recent days, according to two people familiar with the report.
[…] the allegations, if true, are quite damaging. In fact, at face value, Epshteyn has been accused of running an old-fashioned shake-down scheme: He allegedly approached those seeking positions in the incoming Trump administration, told them he could use his influence to give him them a boost, and simultaneously asked that they pay him lucrative consulting fees — including, by some accounts, up to $100,000 per month.
The allegations, in other words, are that Epshteyn launched a simple pay-to-play gambit, trying to cash in on his powerful position on Team Trump. This was uncovered, the reports added, by an “internal” investigation led by members of Trump’s operation.
[…] Why does all of this matter? In part because it’s an early indication of what we can expect in the coming months and years from Trump and those around him. Epshteyn has clashed with some of his colleagues, which made it inevitable that they’d go after him. The infighting, backbiting and sabotage will almost certainly continue in the incoming White House, because that’s how Team Trump rolls.
But more important still is the nature of the allegations, the prospect that Trump administration positions might be perceived as being for sale and concerns about systemic corruption surrounding the Republican president-elect and his operation.
I don’t imagine we’ve heard the last of this one.
A somewhat related video, “Donald Trump hiding the donors funding his transition effort from the public,” is available at the link.
A Structural And Institutional Failure
I know you have little appetite for reading about the inglorious end of the federal prosecutions of Donald Trump. I don’t have much appetite for writing about it at this point. But it needs to be acknowledged for the travesty it is, while trying not to sound melodramatic.
The historic conclusion of Trump’s prosecution for Jan. 6 – and for all practical purposes it is over – is a withering indictment of structural and institutional failures that will haunt us for decades to come. The ignoble end of the Mar-a-Lago prosecution, while similarly confounding, strikes somewhat less directly at the constitutional order.
At this late stage, finger-pointing at the many culprits who share responsibility for this absurd outcome seems inadequate to the long-term challenge of fixing the structural deficiencies and institutional inadequacies that have left the rule of law exposed, vulnerable, and unprotected.
What is required now is the difficult, long-term, low-odds challenge of reimagining a constitutional order that functions as the founders intended, elevating one person from among the people to administer the national government without making them a monarch, potentate, or tyrant.
The problem, of course, is that we must undertake this generational challenge while now confronted with a newly rearranged constitutional order that has brought us closer than ever before to having precisely the kind of ruler the founders most feared and warned of.
It’s not an undertaking for the faint of heart.
For The Record
The relevant documents are short and to the point:
– Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Motion to Dismiss the Jan. 6 Case against Donald Trump
– U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s Opinion granting Smith’s Motion to Dismiss
– Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Motion to Dismiss the Mar-a-Lago appeal as to Donald Trump
Reactions To The Dismissal Of Trump’s Federal Cases
– “The end of the two federal criminal cases against President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday left momentous, unsettled questions about constraints on criminal wrongdoing by presidents, from the scope of presidential immunity to whether the Justice Department may continue to appoint outside special counsels to investigate high-level wrongdoing.” –Charlie Savage
– “But let’s be real: It’s over. If you have to say the words “equitable tolling” in describing a vision of presidential accountability, you’re not really talking about presidential accountability. You’re talking about a fantasy. You’re lighting votive candles with pictures of prosecutors.”–Benjamin Wittes
– “It is hard to escape the grim conclusion: No president out of office has done more to grow the power of the presidency than Donald Trump. And the fact that this strengthening of the office is the result of his misdeeds, and empowers the president to undertake further misdeeds with impunity, is profoundly disturbing.”–Kim Wehle
NBC News concludes its story on the dismissal of the Jan. 6 case against Trump with this gut punch: “He is expected to walk through the lower west tunnel, where some of the worst violence of Jan. 6 took place, to be sworn in as president on Jan. 20, 2025.”
[…]
RFK Jr. Accuser Comes Forward
A woman who worked in the late 1990s as an intern in Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s office and as a babysitter for his family has spoken to the WSJ and is willing to testify to the Senate about her sexual misconduct allegations against him.
Headline Of The Day
Public Notice: “A government by toxic men, for toxic men”
[…]
State Judge Upholds Missouri Ban On Gender-Affirming Care
“A Missouri circuit court judge on Monday declined to restore access to gender-affirming care for minors in the state, ruling in a 74-page judgment that a law banning children from accessing medical care is constitutional.”–HuffPost
[…] According to Politico, Kennedy’s [Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services] inability to get information from the HHS that would help facilitate a smoother transition between the Biden and Trump administrations is an issue for all of the clowns Trump has so far named to important government positions.
Valerie Smith Boyd, the director of the Center for Presidential Transition that works with both parties during transitions, told Politico, “The main thing that it says is that the members of the transition team will be bound by an ethics agreement that ensures that they’re using information appropriately, that they limit the use of lobbyists and foreign agents, and that individuals who leave the transition and go back to the private sector won’t use this information for personal gain.”
Under the Presidential Transition Act, an incoming president is supposed to sign ethics and transparency agreements stipulating they will disclose the names of private donors and limit their contributions to $5,000. Those agreements come with federal money with which to pay for a transition team’s expenses.
Trump’s unprecedented refusal to sign off allows for undisclosed donors to fund the transition. That includes foreign donors, who are allowed to donate to the transition, though not to campaigns.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland have sent letters to the Biden administration and Trump, respectively, pointing out that not only was the ethics requirement signed into law by Trump himself in March 2020, the bill was a bipartisan layup between Sens. Tom Carper of Delaware (a Democrat) and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin (a Republican).
The first incoming Trump administration relied on being incompetent as its excuse for bungling its transition in 2017. This new administration seems to want to secure some swamp money up front.
[…] I care about guitars. In fact, I’ve been playing guitar for decades — Mom bought me my first guitar at a flea market when I was just nine — and it’s been an important part of my life. Many readers might find that surprising because I’ve never had a reason to mention it, since there’s rarely overlap between guitar-related news and the day-to-day political news that I cover for a living.
That is, until now. Billboard magazine reported:
Guitar manufacturer Gibson has issued a cease-and-desist against the branding agency behind a line of guitars endorsed by President-elect Donald Trump, alleging the design infringes the company’s trademarks, Billboard has confirmed. The cease-and-desist against 16 Creative alleges the guitar line infringes on its trademark for the “iconic Les Paul body shape,” a Gibson spokesperson tells Billboard.
If this story is unfamiliar to you, let’s back up and review how we arrived at this point.
One of the many strange things about Trump’s 2024 campaign was the frequency with which the Republican would unveil new branded merchandise that had nothing to do with his candidacy. In fact, the list of side-deals became a running joke: The GOP nominee pitched everything from Trump-branded watches to silver Trump commemorative coins, batches of digital trading cards to a weird cryptocurrency project, gold sneakers to Trump-endorsed Bibles.
Those assuming that the president-elect would stop doing this after the election were quickly proven wrong. Last week, Trump published an item to his social media platform letting would-be customers know about the “Limited Edition ‘45’ Guitar” — complete with a “Make America Great Again” pearl inlay on the fretboard.
While the prices vary, the listings at GetTrumpGuitars.com show that the most expensive model was selling for $11,500.
[…] the Trump-backed electric guitar looked indistinguishable from a Gibson Les Paul, complete with the standard humbucker pickups. […]
And as it turns out, the legendary guitar manufacturer’s attorneys apparently noticed the GetTrumpGuitars.com sales and took a keen interest.
[…] Gibson’s representatives have confirmed to a variety of outlets that the company has sent a cease-and-desist letter to the company pitching the Trump-backed instruments.
[…] I won’t pretend to know what might happen next. Will there be litigation? Will Trump start threatening Gibson? Will the company selling the instruments back down? Will Gibson face some kind of MAGA backlash? Watch this space.
You’d think Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and its wide-reaching Supercharger network, would already know about the workings of the federal National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program that has dedicated $7.5 billion to building a national charging network. However, he needed Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to chime in on X yesterday to stop some Republican leaders from spreading misinformation about the program.
“Please post the rebuttal,” Musk asked Buttigieg under a Donald Trump Jr. post quoting Ohio congressperson Michael Rulli, who accuses Buttigieg of “squandering billions” to build “8 EV charging stations.” Buttigieg tells Trump the post is “false.”
As Buttigieg explained, the $7.5 billion is “the entire program budget” for NEVI, part of the Biden administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The way it works is states apply for a piece of the $7.5 billion, which, contrary to the initial post, has not yet been spent. Once granted, the states build EV chargers with the money, not the federal government.
“This is helpful to understand,” Musk wrote at the end of the thread…
You would think someone able to assemble the money and power Musk has at his disposal might understand that you should get the facts before weighing in with stupid opinions.
And also, I doubt this will keep him from spreading this and other disinformation in the future.
The biggest word of 2024 is a profane critique of capitalism first coined in 2022. The Macquarie Dictionary, the national dictionary of Australia, has picked “enshittification” as its word of the year.
The Australians define the word as “the gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking.” …
The human eye can’t really tell the difference between 4K and 8K resolution.
Video game console manufacturers, who have built their businesses selling increasingly powerful machines every few years, are grappling with a future where performance improvements are becoming less dramatic.
This really hit last generation but it takes time for this sort of thing to make it into general news.
The quality of computer game art has hit the point where just mechanical improvements matter less then how good the artists and artwork is. The quality of controllers and how much can be pumped to the TV maxed out a while ago. Console network hardware is good enough that remaining limitations are outside the consoles control. Combined with general inflation problems fewer people are interested in buying a new console. This will be awkward for some companies but I don’t think anybody is going broke over it.
A lot of scalpers have actually lost money on the new PS5 Pro. They rushed to buy them and are now forced to sell at less then retail because there isn’t enough demand.
Russia has made a rare admission, saying that a key air defence system and an air base in the Kursk region were hit by Ukraine with US-supplied Atacms missiles.
The defence ministry statement, which threatened retaliation, came a day after Ukraine said it had hit targets in the region…
The first reported strikes by Atacms on Russian territory were reported on Tuesday, when Russia said falling fragments caused a fire at a military facility.
But Monday’s strike on an S-400 air-defence missile battalion at Lotarevka northwest of Kursk on Saturday could be seen as more serious. The S-400 is considered the closest Russian equivalent of the US Patriot missile system.
The Defence Ministry said three of the five Atacms missiles were shot down but two reached the target, damaging a radar system and causing casualties.
It also said a second strike on Monday on the Khalino (Kursk East) air base caused “insignificant damage” after one of the eight missiles fired by Ukraine got through air defences…
As President-elect Donald Trump finalized the formation of his cabinet, he tapped for Treasury Secretary a former top ally to Jewish billionaire George Soros, a champion of liberal causes who is frequently the target of antisemitic conspiracy theories from right-wing actors, including Trump himself.
The nominee, Scott Bessent, 62, spent more than two decades as a top executive at Soros’s investment fund before leaving to forge his own path, eventually appealing to some of Trump’s most ardent loyalists.
Bessent gained Trump’s trust during the campaign by predicting a potential economic fallout if the Democrats won the election and played down Trump’s trade threats in media appearances…
President Biden announced Tuesday that the U.S. helped secure a ceasefire deal in Lebanon, which would end fighting between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
His announcement came as Israel’s Cabinet approved the ceasefire after urging from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The war between Israel and the Iran-backed group has killed almost 3,800 people in Lebanon over the last year and left about 16,000 others wounded…
Rudy Giuliani was rebuked by a federal judge on Tuesday after the former New York City mayor interrupted a court hearing, pleading he could not pay his bills because two Georgia election workers to whom he owes $148 million have tied up his assets…
Wah, wah, wah. And he still won’t stop defaming them.
Outgoing North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed legislation on Tuesday that would strip powers from several Democrats elected to statewide office this month, including removing the authority of Cooper’s successor to appoint the state elections board.
These and other provisions, contained in a wide-ranging measure stuffed through the Republican-dominated General Assembly in less than 24 hours during a lame-duck session last week, would weaken Gov.-elect Josh Stein, as well as the next attorney general, schools superintendent and lieutenant governor — offices that are slated to be run by Democrats next year…
The Incas—with nothing surviving colonization to suggest a written record—still had an elaborate system to encode information. Khipus were knotted, colored, spaced, ordered ropes (lots of strands descending off a main line, themselves possibly branching). For tax collecting, censuses, calendars, etc. At least, numeric relations have been easiest to decipher in the dearth of outside context. It’s a positional decimal system: 1s 10s 100s in knots up a cord. A loop attached at both ends might straddle a span of several cords to express their sum on an offshoot cord of its own. Or a number may represent an indexed noun like zipcodes.
A third of extant khipus don’t follow number rules. Of the 1600 khipus known, half have had assorted measurements entered into databases, just to mine for correlations. Even the fiber and construction of the cords might have significance for all anyone knows.
One such correlation was recently announced. The largest khipu (1800 cords) and another, the most complex, ‘layered’ khipu (600 cords) apparently contained mostly the same values, merely presented differently: 10 groups of 7 cords (with colored divider cords) versus 7 groups of 10. Of course, with some as yet undeciphered cords left over for another purpose. Whatever was tallied, someone went to a lot of effort to make a fancy summary.
-Sweden is asking a Chinese vessel to return to Swedish waters to help facilitate an investigation into recent breaches of undersea fibre-optic cables in the Baltic Sea, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Tuesday, but stressed he was not making any accusations.
Two subsea cables, one linking Finland and Germany and the other connecting Sweden to Lithuania, were damaged in less than 24 hours on Nov. 17-18, prompting German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius to say he assumed it was sabotage.
Sweden, Germany and Lithuania all launched criminal investigations last week, zeroing in on Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3, which left the Russian port of Ust-Luga on Nov. 15. A Reuters analysis of MarineTraffic data showed that the ship’s coordinates corresponded to the time and place of the breaches.
The ship now sits idle in international waters but inside Denmark’s exclusive economic zone, closely watched by Danish military vessels…
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) briefly offered videos on Cameo, a website on which public figures sell personalized videos to fans, before the page went offline amid questions about whether it would have violated House ethics rules.
An introductory video from Boebert was visible on Cameo as of Monday morning, and a screenshot posted by a Semafor reporter showed her charging $250 per video…
But the account raised immediate questions about whether the videos would violate House rules, since Boebert, unlike Gaetz and Santos, is still a sitting member of the House.
While Ethics Committee rules say that members may earn up to $31,815 per year outside of their congressional salary, there are limitations on how they may do so. One of the rules in the code of conduct dictates House members “may not accept an honorarium for a speech, a writing for publication, or other similar activity,” with a speech being defined as an “address, oration, talk, lecture, or other form of oral presentation, whether delivered in person, transmitted electronically, recorded, or broadcast over the media.”
By Tuesday, Boebert’s Cameo page was taken offline, directing to a 404 error page.
Boebert’s office did not return requests for comment about Cameo or ethics questions surrounding it, and Camero did not immediately return a request for comment…
Mexico’s president responded angrily Tuesday to President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to impose a 25 percent tariff on its products if the country didn’t curb the flow of irregular migrants and fentanyl, warning that the penalties would only wind up causing inflation and unemployment in the United States. President Claudia Sheinbaum also made clear that Mexico would retaliate with its own tariffs if Trump went ahead with his plan.
Brazil’s former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro was fully aware of and actively participated in a coup plot to remain in office after his defeat in the 2022 election, according to a Federal Police report unsealed Tuesday. Brazil’s Federal Police last Thursday formally accused Bolsonaro and 36 other people of attempting a coup. They sent their nearly 900-page report to the Supreme Court, which lifted the seal on Tuesday.
Followup to comment 322: Video of Rudy Giuliani speaking, along with commentary in text. Link
Excerpt:
Asked if he regretted defaming Freeman and Moss, Giuliani said: “I do not regret it for a minute. I regret the persecution I have been put through.”
Elon Musk confirmed that posts containing links in their main text are deprioritized on X in a revelation that renews criticism that the platform is restricting the visibility of and access to external sources of information.
Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper has just vetoed a sweeping Republican-backed bill — a power grab disguised as a hurricane relief bill — that Republican state lawmakers have tried to fast-track in the waning days of their veto-proof supermajority.
Cooper’s veto, however, does not put an end to state Republicans’ efforts to strip power from newly-elected Democrats, a maneuver that Cooper described as a “sham,” and as playing “politics.” The Republican-controlled legislature holds its supermajority until December 31, and is expected to override Cooper’s veto at some point during this time. The General Assembly returns on December 2.
The measure, known as SB 382, which passed along party lines last week in both the state House and Senate — though three House Republicans did vote “no” — would deliberately weaken the power of the incoming Democratic Gov. Josh Stein and Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson. The bill, which does allocate funds for hurricane relief, also calls for the radical restructuring of core election responsibilities throughout the state.
“This legislation was titled disaster relief but instead violates the constitution by taking appointments from the next Governor for the Board of Elections, Utilities Commission and Commander of the NC Highway Patrol, letting political parties choose appellate judges and interfering with the Attorney General’s ability to advocate for lower electric bills for consumers,” Cooper said in a statement on Tuesday morning.
The bill would give the newly-elected Republican state auditor authority over the five-member state election board — a responsibility that has historically been under the purview of the governor. This would make North Carolina the only state that gives the auditor power of elections.
[…] If Republicans override Cooper’s veto, the measure would also compress the timeframe for county boards of elections to tabulate provisional ballots, absentee ballots, as well as shorten the amount of time a voter has to cure a ballot, which again, only makes it more difficult for election administrators to fulfill their responsibilities.
“The Governor is spot on in his veto statement,” Democratic State Rep. Pricey Harrison told TPM. “This was never about Hurricane relief but is yet another purely partisan power grab, taking power away from newly elected statewide Democrats and transferring it to the GOP-led legislature while they have the supermajority for the next five weeks.”
Georgia’s Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been given her own subcommittee to chair, the Delivering on Government Efficiency Committee. The committee, and its meme crypto name, matches the non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency that billionaire Trump-backers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been given to spin their egos.
Greene will not be able to begin playing committee chair until the end of January 2025 but that has not stopped the conspiracy theorist from doing the right-wing media rounds and promising to use her new powers to censor Trump’s enemies in the media.
Greene appeared on Fox Business, where fellow conspiracy theorist and host Maria Bartiromo asked her to explain what the Georgia lawmaker sees as “waste” in our government.
“We’ll be looking at everything from government-funded media programs like NPR that spread nothing but Democrat propaganda,” Greene said. “We’ll be going in to grant programs that fund things like sex apps in Malaysia, toilets in Africa, all kinds of programs that don’t help the American people.” [video at the link]
As for “sex apps in Malaysia,” Lauren Tousignant over at Jezebel believes Greene is referring to a harm reduction app that a U.S. professor received $3.4 million in grant money to optimize health care options for gay and bisexual men abroad. As for “toilets in Africa,” this could be any kind of aid the U.S. sends to one of dozens of countries in the continent of Africa.
On Monday, Greene did an interview for Real America’s Voice, where the discussion turned to TV host Joy Reid The MSNBC host has routinely criticized Trump on television, but what got under Greene’s skin was Reid’s reporting on ex-Trump Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s assertions that Trump wanted to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters, and had to be talked down from the outrageously unconstitutional and illegal order.
After yammering about having never heard Trump say “shoot protestors,” and attacking Reid’s support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion, Greene offered up censorship as a solution.
“The reality is I think Joy Reid is, she’s clearly for murder,” Greene said. “Because she supports all of those things, yet she wants to feign her outrage over President Trump. She’s lying about him and gaslighting her viewers, and her show needs to end.” [Video at the link]
What the DOGE project will ultimately end up being is not yet known. Greene seems interested in attacking a media that has had the unfortunate experience of having to cover her antics, and Musk is promising to apply destructive austerity policies that will decimate the lives of people who voted Republican (as well as those who did not).
The two together sound like a propaganda ministry, hellbent on dismantling the government services Americans need. [True]
StevoRsays
@315. Reginald Selkirk : “President Biden announces ceasefire to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.”
Aussie ABC news has live coverage of that & developments there in live blog form here :
Donald Trump super fan and senior aide Natalie Harp is following him to the White House, and Trump is very mad that people are beginning to learn how strange she is.
The New York Times published a profile of Harp on Monday night, and at 12:01 on Tuesday morning, Trump took to his Truth Social account to express his dismay. [snipped Trump’s bluster]
[…] In the piece that attracted Trump’s ire, the Times reported that Harp is known in Trump circles as the “human printer” for her penchant for trailing her employer with a portable printer so she can print out positive articles for him to read.
She also serves as Trump’s de facto stenographer, taking dictation from him for text messages and social media posts […]
Trump reportedly refers to Harp as “sweetie” and the Times reported that he treats her “like a daughter.” Trump infamously sexualized his biological daughter, according to former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security Miles Taylor, who wrote in his memoir that “aides said he talked about Ivanka Trump’s breasts, her backside, and what it might be like to have sex with her.”
Reporting on Harp shows she’s someone with a particularly cringeworthy admiration for Trump.
The Times reports that Harp sent Trump a letter in 2023 where she said, “You are all that matters to me,” and called him her “Guardian and Protector in this Life.” Harp said she wanted to bring Trump “joy.”
She has shown a willingness to stretch the truth in service of Trump. She appeared at the 2020 Republican National Convention and in a speech, Harp claimed Trump’s support of “right to try” policies led to the use of experimental treatments that saved her life. But the treatment Harp received for her bone cancer was available before Trump’s policy went into effect.
In her previous life, Harp also lied in service of Trump. She worked as an anchor at the far right One America News Network, and in that capacity, she pushed multiple lies alleging that Trump had won the 2020 election and had the election stolen from him by President Joe Biden.
[…] Just like his Cabinet picks, Trump has shown with Harp that what he values most is media praise. But now that people know more about the weirdness between him and the “human printer,” the Republican leader clearly doesn’t like a spotlight he cannot control.
Reports indicate Russia has withdrawn from its attempt to take Kupyansk.
[excerpts from X posts, map and video available at the link] Multiple Russian channels are reporting that their forces “withdrew” from #Kupyansk and are calling the failed attempt to capture the city a “disgrace.”
UA side: “The Ukrainian Armed Forces have completed the cleanup of Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region.”
🇺🇦 Ukrainian forces have pushed Russian troops away from Kupyansk in Kharkiv region—city is fully under control, confirms Khortytsia operational-strategic group spokesperson Voloshyn. Recently it became known Russian forces managed to break into the city’s northern outskirts.
————————————
[…] It would seem the Russian Central Bank’s ability to prop up the ruble is not what it used to be. [Current USD/RUB data at the link]
[…] Yes, the signs [of Russian economy collapsing] have been there for a long time, but the collapse hasn’t come. I’ll believe it when I see it. [Excerpt from X post: In 2025, Russians will face a new series of losses and bankruptcies. The reason is not only sanctions restrictions but also growing problems inside Russia.
◾️ Rusal, one of the world’s largest aluminum producers, announced the start of production optimization – it will be reduced by 250 thousand tons in the first stage. The company explained the decision of optimization by “record prices for raw materials and high risks of a continued negative macroeconomic environment.”
◾️ Major Russian mining and metals company Mechel announced the suspension of one of its enterprises – Olzherasskaya-Novaya mine in Mezhdurechensk. The reason is problems with the sales market.
◾️ Major Russian corporation PJSC Gazprom made a record net loss of $6.1 billion in 2023, becoming Russia’s most unprofitable company for the first time in 25 years.
◾️ ALROSA (Russian group of diamond mining companies) reduced its revenue under Russian Accounting Standards (RAS) by 30% and net profit by 3 times in 9 months. The net loss amounted to 6.5 billion rubles ($62,7 million).
◾️ Baltika brewing company is among the top ten most unprofitable companies in Russia in 2024. In 2022, the company’s revenue was about 100 billion rubles ($965 million). In 2023, the net loss was 28.1 billion rubles ($271,1 million). The option of filling the budget by nationalizing profitable private enterprises has failed. […]
[…] Sweden stands up.
Sweden has ordered the start of training for Ukrainian pilots and maintenance personnel on the JAS 39 Gripen fighter aircraft. Sweden also plans to participate in the procurement of more long projectiles through the British fund.
The UK stands up.
Dozens of Storm Shadow cruise missiles have been delivered to Ukraine by the UK in recent weeks, per Bloomberg.
The shipments come as Ukraine begins a new strike campaign into Russian territory, with a Storm Shadow raid already hitting a critical Russian command post in Kursk.
Germany steps up.
Germany has announced that it will hand over IRIS-T short- and medium-range air defence systems to Ukraine before the Christmas holidays.
[…] NATO calls for medium-range missiles for Ukraine.
NATO has called for providing Ukraine with medium-range missiles with a range of 1,000 to 5,500 km
[…]
StevoRsays
One of the most common types of planets in our galaxy are worlds larger than Earth, but not quite as massive as Neptune. These super-Earths, as they’re called, are nearly everywhere we look in the Milky Way — except, oddly enough, in our own solar system. However, according to Florida Institute of Technology planetary scientists Emily Simpson and Howard Chen, it’s no surprise that we’re sitting in a cosmic neighborhood without one of these planets. If our solar system had a super-Earth, it’s very possible we wouldn’t be here in this article together at all.
By studying an alternate version of our own solar system, Simpson and Chen hoped to investigate how exoplanets might influence one another’s orbits. Certain orbits of planets, for instance, may make their neighbors more habitable. As it turns out, if the inner reaches of a star system are home to a planet very much larger than Earth, the other planets are likely to experience weird orbits and wild climate extremes.
Of course if the USA wasn’t a rogue superpower already, it sure seems like its just about to become that as Trump takes over..
Bekenstein Boundsays
President Biden announces ceasefire to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah
Three weeks too late and a billion dollars short.
Trump reportedly refers to Harp as “sweetie” … Harp sent Trump a letter in 2023 where she said, “You are all that matters to me,” and called him her “Guardian and Protector in this Life.” Harp said she wanted to bring Trump “joy.”
Should Melania be worried?
Or relieved? 🤔
whheydtsays
Re: Bekenstein Bound @ #333….
Re: Harp. Trump can have Melania deported and marry Harp.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace […] tried to build her reputation on a self-proclaimed commitment to protecting women’s safety. […] But her hiring practices tell a different story. […] her legislative director […] whose criminal history includes an arrest for […] an act that left the victim feeling unsafe in her own home.
In January 2020, a woman returned […] from taking out the trash to find Brislin, a stranger, asleep in her bed. Brislin, who was intoxicated at the time, had entered the apartment uninvited, between 1 a.m. and 1:30 a.m.
KGsays
President Biden announces ceasefire to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah
Three weeks too late and a billion dollars short. – Bekenstein Bound@333
It seems pretty obvious that Netanyahu delayed this until after the election.
KGsays
Starmer’s Labour Party won an overwhelming majority in July – NBC News quoted by Lynna, OM@274
This is true, but it did so on barely 1/3 of the votes cast, due to the UK’s grossly undemocratic electoral system, and the intervention of Trump-worshipper Nigel Farage, who siphoned off Tory votes to his Reform Party UK Ltd. While several political mis-steps are mainly responsible for the complete absence of the “honeymoon period” a newly-elected UK government usually gets, its narrow and shallow (the election was overwhelmingly about getting the Tories out) support base has surely contributed and will continue to do so.
KGsays
the lesson of history is that when the existing hegemon fall down go boom, the torch gets passed to a brash young upstart and not an established player. Like when Spain’s empire ended, the Brits, formerly a pimple on the butt of Europe that was constantly getting conquered and raided (lessee, the Anglo-Saxons, then the Romans, then Vikings, then the French…) suddenly mushroomed into an imperial state with hegemony over 1/4 of the whole planet. And when that faltered, and everyone thought Russia or Germany or the Ottomans would be the next hegemon, nope, it was that far-off backwater the United States of America who grabbed the brass ring. – Bekenstein Bound@243
Hmm. I suggest you read a bit more history. Spain’s empire couldn’t really be said to end until most of Spanish America became independent in the early 1800s – as a consequence of Spain’s occupation by Napoleon’s France – and even then it hung on to Cuba, the Philippines, and other bits and pieces. But it lost its hegemonic position in Europe at least by 1648, when it conceded the independence of the Dutch Republic (and Portugal had de facto recovered its independence in 1640). France then became the dominant land power in Europe, while the Dutch Republic itself became the greatest sea power. England was already an established player, had been for centuries, and became even stronger (as Great Britain) after the Union with Scotland in 1707. It became undoubtedly the greatest European power after defeating France in the Seven Years’ War, (1756ish-1763), which effectively ended French power on the North American mainland and in India, and this position was confirmed by its victory in the Napoleonic Wars. But no European power had a position of global hegemony before the Industrial Revolution – Britain could not have coerced China, Japan, the Ottoman Empire, or Persia before the 1830s at the earliest (nor, for that matter, Russia), and the growth of its power in India resulted from the decline of the Mughal Empire due to Persian and Afghan attacks and the growth of the Maratha Confederacy. (Incidentally, the Roman occupation of (most of) Britain preceded the coming of the Anglo-Saxons; it was the Normans – Frenchified Vikings – rather than the French as such who conquered England in 1066; and for much of the medieval period England held parts of France rather than vice versa.) Whether Britain lost its hegemonic position as a result of WW1 or WW2 can be disputed, but in either case nobody thought the Ottomans (the “sick man of Europe” for decades before vanishing at the end of WW1) were a contender, and the USA was most certainly an established power (hegemonic in the Western hemisphere and extending its power across the Pacific to Hawaii, the Philippines, etc.), which in effect declined to take that global position after WW1 but did so after WW2.
StevoRsays
A furious Fatima Payman has used the Senate to accuse Pauline Hanson of “vile” racism before being forced to withdraw, after Senator Hanson repeatedly questioned whether Senator Payman was eligible to sit in parliament.
Senator Payman spoke after the One Nation senator attempted to table a document raising Senator Payman’s possible Afghan citizenship as a reason for her to be excluded from parliament under Section 44c of the constitution. Section 44 prevents anyone holding a citizenship of another country from sitting in parliament, however Senator Payman has previously sought legal advice confirming she has taken all possible steps to renounce her Afghan citizenship, which the Taliban-controlled state has not finalised, and so can stand as a senator.
Senator Payman used the Senate to say Senator’s Hanson’s behaviour was racist. “Senator Hanson has worn the burqa in this place. Maybe it’s time she pack her burqa and go to Afghanistan and talk to the Taliban about this,” Senator Payman said. “All that Senator Hanson has done in this place is spread hatred, spread division.
Details of the extent of China’s attacks came from senator Mark R Warner, who on Thursday gave both The Washington Post and The New York Times insights into info he’s learned in his role as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Warner told the Post, “my hair is on fire,” given the severity of China’s attacks on US telcos. The attacks, which started well before the US election, have seen Middle Kingdom operatives establish a persistent presence – and may require the replacement of “literally thousands and thousands and thousands” of switches and routers.
The senator added that China’s activities make Russia-linked incidents like the SolarWinds supply chain incident and the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline look like “child’s play.”
Warner told The Times the extent of China’s activity remains unknown, and that “The barn door is still wide open, or mostly open.”
The senator, a Democrat who represents Virginia, also confirmed previously known details, claming it was likely Chinese state employees could listen to phone calls – including some involving president-elect Donald Trump – perhaps by using carriers’ wiretapping capabilities. He also said attackers were able to steal substantial quantities of data about calls made on networks.
Most of the senator’s remarks confirm prior guidance from the FBI and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency about the activities of a Beijing-backed crew dubbed Salt Typhoon that’s accused of compromising, and rummaging around inside, US telco networks for many months…
Does it feel like your X account belongs to you and you can do whatever you want with it? That’s not true, according to a new court filing from the social media company formerly known as Twitter. It’s an argument that X is making in order to throw a wrench in The Onion’s recent purchase of InfoWars, the conspiracy theory media company run by Alex Jones. And it’s a great reminder that you don’t actually own what you think you own in the digital age.
The people behind the Onion recently won InfoWars in an auction, sold as part of a legal judgment against Jones who was found guilty of defaming the families of teachers and students who were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. The families won a $1.4 billion judgment against Jones and selling off InfoWars was part of the liquidation process for the conspiracy theorist’s assets in order to pay down that debt. But a company tied to Jones has challenged the validity of the Onion’s purchase. And X is trying to help stop the sale.
X’s legal filing on Monday, posted online by 404 Media, argues that all of the social media accounts in the auction can’t be transferred.
“Put simply, accounts are inherently part of X Corp.’s Services and their ‘use,’” the company said in Monday’s court filing. “A user must use X Corp.’s Services to create an account in the first instance, and to continue using the account going forward.”
X insists it wasn’t claiming ownership of the content in the accounts, and is only saying it controls the accounts themselves.
“While X Corp. takes no position as to the sale of any Content posted on the X Accounts, X Corp. is the sole owner of the Services being sold as part of the sale of the X Accounts,” the social media company wrote in its court filing. “While X Corp. has granted account holders, such as Jones and FSS, a license to use the Services, such license is non-assignable, both under the terms of the TOS and applicable non-bankruptcy law (i.e., as a personal services contract), and the Trustee cannot sell, assign, or otherwise transfer such license absent X Corp.’s consent.” …
So, who will it be? If it’s like last time, an existing regional hegemon that is decently insulated from the economic shocks of superpower collapses is a good bet. Those would be India and Brazil. India has the population and industry-scale advantage, and is nuclear-armed, but Brazil might be more insulated from external economic shocks. I’m not sure which is better positioned to become a superpower.
Some fascinating intriguing speculations and scenaios and possibilities outlined there. Intresting SF ideas and potential.
I fear you haven’t fully appreciated how bad Global Overheating is going to affect things with massive increases in global climate disasters, rising seas, desertification, flooding and a collapse of agriculture globally with all the starvation, war and horror that entails.
Australia will be fucked. It’s mostly desert, and climate change will make that worse, following which climate whiplash and then more warming.
OTOH, Australia is a kinda bowl shaped with a lot of potential for Lake Eyre / Kati Thanda et al changing from salt pan to actual liquid water lake.- either naturally or digging a canal from say Port Augusta ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Augusta ) through to Lake Torrens or reversing the Pirie-Torrens corridor – an infrequent water course so dry we don’t even call it that. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirie%E2%80%93Torrens_corridor. )
It (Saudi Arabia -ed) will probably become Shia, while nearby Israel becomes a smoking crater.
Problem is israel’s WMD’s arsenal and their Samson option (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option ) which means Isreal won’t go quietky and will probly take much of the world a s we know it down with it. The ultimate and longest lasting scorched earth idea. I don’t think Israel will allow iran to exist and rise to become Neo-Persia if it falls due in part to them and becomes a smoking crater. I hope I’m wrong and you could I guess imagine that the prosepct of that is toohjorrible for Israel toactually go through with but.. yeah. Don’t bet on that.
Throw in nuclear war or wars plural on top of Global Overheating, pandemics and famines and the whole Mass Extinction event we’re already living though and I fear you’ve been way too optimistic and, fuck, does that thought ever suck. Sorry.
Oh, almost forgot there’s the Kessler syndrome with the implications of space junk making Low Earth Orbit deadly to add into the mix here as well.. Yes, I have been feeling extra gloomy lately..
StevoRsays
@339. Update : Lidia Thorpe has also protested the notorious racist Senator Pauline Hanson and Lidia Thorpe, of course, is the one who gets punished. Grr..
Senator Lidia Thorpe has been suspended for the remainder of the sitting week after Labor, the Coalition and some crossbenchers voted together to condemn her tearing up of a motion by Pauline Hanson, with Labor’s Penny Wong saying the behaviour undermined workplace safety in the Senate.
Senator Hanson’s motion had questioned Senator Fatima Payman’s eligibility to sit in parliament. The Greens voted against the suspension, saying the “racially charged overtones” of that motion were important context.
A related video is available at the link. (4:51 minutes)
In October 2020, as the pandemic continued to claim the lives of thousands of Americans every day, a highly controversial joint statement called the “Great Barrington Declaration” reached the public. The statement endorsed protections for the elderly and those with compromised immune systems, while simultaneously arguing that public-health officials should pursue a radical version of “herd immunity” by allowing Covid to spread untrammeled through the rest of the population.
When Donald Trump effectively stopped trying to deal with the crisis, White House officials said it was because he liked the policy indifference recommended by the “Great Barrington Declaration.”
Roughly four years later, Trump wants one of the signatories to the document to lead the NIH. The New York Times reported:
[…] Trump said on Tuesday evening that he had selected Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford physician and economist whose authorship of an anti-lockdown treatise during the coronavirus pandemic made him a central figure in a bitter public health debate, to be the director of the National Institutes of Health.
This is not an encouraging choice. Not only did Bhattacharya, who does not practice medicine, endorse weird ideas about the pandemic four years ago, he’s also on record making problematic criticisms of the NIH, as well as former NIH leaders such as Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci.
It’s likely, however, that Senate Republicans will confirm him anyway.
Complicating matters, of course, is the public-health team he’s likely to join.
– Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is a longtime proponent of ridiculous conspiracy theories and bizarre scientific ideas.
– Former Republican Rep. Dave Weldon, Trump’s choice to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is a longtime critic of vaccines.
– Dr. Mehmet Oz, Trump’s choice to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), has spent years promoting potentially dangerous products and fringe viewpoints.
– Dr. Martin Makary, Trump’s choice to lead the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), also has a problematic record related to vaccines.
– Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, Trump’s choice to serve as surgeon general, has been a prominent voice on Fox News; she has little public health experience; and she’s been critical of vaccine requirements.
The incoming Republican administration is poised to have a dramatic impact on many issues and areas of public life, but few are as likely to be as consequential as Team Trump’s effects on public health.
Donald Trump Jr. spilled on his echo chamber podcast that his president-elect father might make space in the White House Briefing Room for his favorite podcast bros.
“I wonder now, as your father is assembling his team, as maybe [Trump’s national press secretary] Karoline Leavitt is looking at the new press briefing room chart, maybe it’s time to reorder that chart and maybe take away some people’s seats,” Michael Knowles cohost on “Triggered with Donald Trump,” asked.
“I was on the plane with my father … and we were talking about the podcast world and some of our friends and [Joe] Rogan and guys like you,” Don Jr. said, explaining their plan to add podcast hosts, influencers, and other nontraditional media sources to the Briefing Room.
Knowing that the potential move would mean the incoming administration would have to revoke some traditional media press passes, he added, “That’s going to blow up some heads.”
[…] as the line between factual reporting and opinionated entertainment shows has blurred in the fast and dirty digital realm, this makes way for influencers and podcast personalities with no prior journalistic experience to lead the national (or international) conversation.
[…] In September, one media company that housed right-wing influencers—including Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson—was found to have been unknowingly funded by a Russian influence operation.
According to an indictment obtained by the Associated Press, these influencers were taking in funding from Russian operatives to churn out English-language content that was “often consistent” with Russia’s “interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition” to Russia. This included pushing thoughts that were sympathetic to the Kremlin amid the Russia-Ukraine war. […]
[…] Trump has steadfastly refused to initiate FBI Background Checks on his Nominees.
This former “assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI,” explains HOW and WHY we don’t have to put up with Trump stalling tactics. Especially when our National Security is quite likely at stake …
Biden should order background checks of Trump’s Cabinet picks
The FBI has conducted background investigations of White House nominees since at least the tenure of President Dwight Eisenhower’s time in office. by Frank Figliuzzi, MSNBC Columnist — Nov. 19, 2024
[…] The Presidential Transition Act of 1963 directs the FBI to conduct such background checks “expeditiously” for “individuals that the President-elect has identified for high level national security positions.” But what if he never formally identifies and submits his picks to the Department of Justice and the FBI? In his last administration, Trump overrode security adjudicators who denied clearances for his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and many others, after FBI background checks resulted in national security concerns. This time, he appears poised to dispense with the FBI checks and potentially with the Senate confirmation process by making recess appointments.
That leaves us with two pertinent memorandums of understanding (MOU) which should enable President Joe Biden and/or the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee to quickly do something to preserve national security and the Constitution’s advice, and consent powers conferred on our elected lawmakers.
First, Biden should rely upon the existing MOU between the Department of Justice and his office, as well as the Presidential Transition Act, to investigate the people Trump says he wants to put in office. The MOU sets out procedures for requesting background investigations of nominees “at the request of the president.” It doesn’t say the president-elect, it says “president.” That’s you, Joe. As for the transition act, it reads as applying to people “…the President-elect has identified” for high-level positions. Well, the president-elect has already publicly identified those people. And Biden should respond. […]
Article goes on to discuss exactly how the CURRENT President and CURRENT Senate Judiciary Committee can order these Background Checks, via their relevant MOU’s. This is especially important to do, if and when the President-elect has failed to initiate such checks himself.
Link
Embedded links are available at the main link.
Biden Hopes to Parlay Lebanon Cease-Fire Into a Broader Regional Peace
With a deal to end more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, the president turns his attention back to stopping the war in Gaza before leaving office.
Finally, President Biden got his Rose Garden peace deal. It was not exactly the one he has been straining to land for most of the past year, but it was a breakthrough nonetheless […]
The question is whether the cease-fire in Lebanon that Mr. Biden announced on Tuesday will be the coda to his diplomatic efforts in the Middle East or a steppingstone to more sweeping agreements that could at last end the devastating war in Gaza and potentially even set the stage for a broader regional transformation.
If it holds, the Lebanon cease-fire by itself could make an important difference.
Times of Israel:
‘Arrogance and inherent blindness’: Civil probe slams Netanyahu for Oct. 7 failures
PM is ‘responsible for undermining all decision-making centers’ and breaking relationship ‘between the political and military echelons,’ independent commission of inquiry finds
Beyond Netanyahu, the Civilian Commission of Inquiry’s scathing report alleged that the entire government had “failed its primary mission” and that the Israel Defense Forces, Shin Bet, and other organizations “completely failed to fulfill their sole objective — protecting the citizens of Israel.”
Established by relatives of the victims of the attack this summer in light of Netanyahu’s continued refusal to approve a state commission of inquiry, and his insistence that he is not to blame for any of the failures, the commission spent more than four months holding hearings in which it interviewed some 120 witnesses — including former prime ministers, defense chiefs and intelligence officials.
They would have pursued the case if not stopped by SCOTUS. All of our reporting (and that of others) indicates that Smith and DOJ believe — right now — that Trump committed crimes and failing to prosecute him represents a threat to rule of law.
Democrats got some great news on Tuesday night, when their candidate took the lead in California’s 13th District, a seat Republicans currently hold.
As of Wednesday morning, Democrat Adam Gray now leads Republican incumbent John Duarte by 182 votes.
If the lead holds—and if they pick up the other uncalled seat where they currently lead—it would give Democrats 215 House seats, a net gain from the previous Congress. And it would make House Speaker Mike Johnson’s life even more miserable than it already was slated to be, since he’d have one fewer vote to try to pass Donald Trump’s destructive agenda.
For at least the first few months of the new Congress, Republicans would have just a 217-215 majority if they win the uncalled seat where they currently lead. That’s because Trump nominated Reps. Elise Stefanik of New York and Mike Waltz of Florida to his administration. Now-former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz—who resigned to try to bury what is believed to be a damning House Ethics Committee investigation into whether he sex-trafficked a minor in order to try to save his now-defunct quest to be attorney general—will also not be taking his seat in the 119th Congress.
That means Johnson would need to have every single Republican vote to pass bills, with just one defection or absence causing a vote to fail. That will be an extremely difficult task for Johnson, who presides over a fractious conference filled with right-wing lunatics who vote “no” on even must-pass government funding legislation over their demand for ideological purity.
“My goodness gracious: the GOP’s House Majority looks to be the smallest after any election since 1930 with current results,” CNN’s Harry Enten wrote in a Wednesday post on X. “With resignations (e.g. Gaetz), it may be the smallest majority during a House session in 100+ yrs. Just 1 GOP defection + All Dems could sink a bill.”
Of course, the race hasn’t been called yet. There are still a few votes to count in the district—a sprawling seat located in the San Joaquin Valley.
But it looks like the ballots from the Republican strongholds in the district are exhausted, which would make it difficult for Duarte to win. Election experts say Gray is now favored to win here. The seat was a major pickup opportunity for Democrats given that Joe Biden won in the district by 11 percentage points in 2020.
Republicans are so incensed that Duarte may lose his seat after just one term that they are baselessly claiming fraud—their go-to excuse when Republicans lose.
“Congressman John Duarte was winning but after 22 days of counting ballots he is now losing by 105 votes. Democrats are stealing another House seat!” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia wrote in a post on X. “Elections nationwide should be one day, paper ballots, and require proof of citizenship with ID!!”
There is obviously zero evidence that Democrats stole Duarte’s House seats.
Sure, it’s absurd how long it’s taking for California to count ballots. But just because it’s taking forever does not mean there is something untoward going on.
It’s also interesting that Greene thinks Democrats would steal a random House seat but not rig it for Vice President Kamala Harris. But common sense is obviously too difficult for Greene to process in her cobweb-filled skull.
While the Israeli military has claimed to have limited goals for its invasion of southern Lebanon, an NBC News investigation found widespread destruction in areas occupied by the IDF.
[Subheader] The Utah Republican seems to think he has uncovered evidence of special counsel Jack Smith engaging in “politicized lawfare,” but his proof is absurd.
For special counsel Jack Smith and his prosecutorial team, Donald Trump’s election victory meant one thing: They would have little choice but to wrap up their ongoing criminal cases against the Republican president-elect. It wasn’t because they lacked evidence against the defendant, it was because the Justice Department has a long-standing policy that says a sitting president can’t be prosecuted.
With this in mind, Smith and his office began taking steps to dismiss the charges they brought against Trump before his inauguration. The developments, however, appear to have generated some confusion in GOP circles. The New York Times reported:
Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, made the case — echoed by other Trump allies in recent days — that the withdrawal of the charges was “tantamount to an admission that this was just politicized lawfare from the beginning.”
The line was unintentionally amusing. On midday Monday, The Washington Post’s Philip Bump wrote online, “A good test of how dumb someone is is if they claim that Smith’s motion proves that the charges were politically motivated.” Just a half-hour later, Lee published a missive of his own that read, “All that has changed is that Trump won the election. And now Jack Smith is moving to dismiss. Isn’t that tantamount to an admission that this was just politicized lawfare from the beginning?”
[…] To be sure, I’m not a mind reader. I have no idea whether Lee was making a sincere but misguided point or if he was merely pretending to be foolish out of a cynical belief that many Americans will believe nonsense.
Either way, to the extent that reality still has any meaning, there’s literally no reason to believe Smith and the special counsel’s office wanted these cases to end. To hear Lee tell it, Smith effectively concluded, “Well, Trump won, so I guess there’s no point in trying to prosecute him anymore.”
That, however, is absurd. Smith and his team did everything they could to hold Trump accountable for his many alleged crimes. They’re wrapping up not because they’ve lost interest, but because their hands are tied. As the Times’ Glenn Thrush summarized online, in a message directed at Lee, “All of our reporting (and that of others) indicates that Smith and [Justice Department officials] believe — right now — that Trump committed crimes and failing to prosecute him represents a threat to rule of law.”
If the senior senator from Utah is looking for evidence of “politicized lawfare” — evidence that Republicans have spent years trying in vain to find — he’ll have to look elsewhere.
Wonkette published a recipe from Rush Limbaugh’s collection. The recipe includes jello (lime jello), stuffed olives, and Miracle Whip. Oh, yeah, Philadelphia creamed cheese is also included.
I just can’t.
Miracle Whip is mayonnaise blended with salad dressing.
The olives might be okay alone.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: StevoR @343:
israel’s WMDs arsenal and their Samson option
Wikipedia – Samson Option:
Israel refuses to confirm or deny it has nuclear weapons or to describe how it would use them […] allowing Israel to influence the perceptions, strategies and actions of other governments. […] any talk of Israel’s nuclear weapons in Israel can lead to “arrest, trial, and imprisonment.” Thus Israeli commentators talk in euphemisms such as “doomsday weapons” and the Samson Option.
a Cold War–era automatic or semi-automatic nuclear weapons control system […] it can initiate the launch of the Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles […] if a nuclear strike is detected by seismic, light, radioactivity, and pressure sensors even with the commanding elements fully destroyed.
By most accounts, it is normally switched off and is supposed to be activated during times of crisis; however, as of 2009, it was said to remain fully functional […] Accounts differ on whether the system, once activated by the country’s leadership, will launch missiles fully automatic or if there is still a human approval process involved, with newer sources suggesting the latter.
almost forgot there’s the Kessler syndrome with the implications of space junk
the ministry pointed out that the Rome Statute that established the ICC provided that a country cannot be required to act in a manner incompatible with its obligations “with respect to the immunities of States not party to the ICC”. […] said France intended to continue to work closely with Netanyahu
* See also: my October comment about the Rome Statute and ICC jurisdiction.
birgerjohanssonsays
Unexpected Dem wins in House races mean the GOP only has a two-seat majoity until the special elections in April (for the House seats vacated by Trump’s cabinet picks).
A Chinese freighter dragged its anchor for 100 miles along the Baltic seabed last week, severing a cable connecting Sweden and Lithuania and a second cable connecting Finland and Germany. Investigators tell The Wall Street Journal that the incident appears deliberate and that they are looking into whether it is linked to Russia, which has denied involvement. The freighter is currently surrounded by NATO warships in international waters.
Earlier this year, I wrote about the difficult work of repairing subsea cables and their increasing geopolitical importance. The repair ship Cable Vigilance has already begun work on the Germany-Finland cable, according to Finnish broadcaster YLE.
… New research found that the flashing lights mounted on emergency vehicles can disorient automated driving systems. Researchers have named the issue “digital epileptic seizure.”
Digital epileptic seizures (or epilepticars) make it impossible for systems trained with AI to identify objects on the road properly. Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Japanese technology firm Fujitsu Limited ran tests using five off-the-shelf systems. The flashing lights essentially blow out the images captured by the camera, making object detection unreliable. According to Wired, researchers did propose a solution:
The BGU and Fujitsu researchers did come with a software fix to the emergency flasher issue. Called “Caracetamol”—a portmanteau of “car” and the painkiller “Paracetamol”—it’s designed to avoid the “seizure” issue by being specifically trained to identify vehicles with emergency flashing lights. The researchers say it improves object detectors’ accuracy.
While researchers didn’t test Tesla’s Autopilot or the systems mounted on any specific vehicle, digital epileptic seizures could explain why Teslas seemingly crash into emergency vehicles far more often than cars from other automakers. Up to 2023, at least 15 crashes of this nature where Autopilot was involved. After Autopilot’s recall, Full Self-Driving is still causing Tesla vehicles to smash into police cruisers, fire trucks and ambulances. Caracetamol could be the medicine for Tesla’s software woes.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @359:
specifically trained to identify vehicles with emergency flashing lights. The researchers say it improves object detectors’ accuracy.
Thinking as I read: I take it previously Teslas weren’t pulling over to give emergency vehicles wide berth then.
Teslas seemingly crash into emergency vehicles far more often
*headdesk* Of course. I shouldn’t be surprised at this point.
“Republican Congressman from Arizona Paul Gosar shared a number of conspiracy theories in his official House of Representatives newsletter this week, including one with antisemitic ties.
[…] twice he has used it to promote websites that shared antisemitic messages like Holocaust denialism.
In the Prescott Republican’s weekly newsletter to constituents, Gosar responded to an email from a man who said he opposed President-elect Donald Trump’s nominations of Robert F. Kenney Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard to positions in his new administration.
Gosar defended former Congresswoman Gabbard, who has been criticized for her lack of experience working with the intelligence community, something Gosar believes makes her right for the job.
“Many are saying that she has no background in the so-called ‘intelligence community’ that was famously responsible for quashing the Hunter Biden laptop story, fabricating Russia-Gate, replacing Ukraine’s government in 2014, launching a false flag operation on a U.S. naval vessel in coordination with the Israeli government in 1967, perpetrating the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and perhaps even killing President John F. Kennedy,” Gosar said in the newsletter.
[…] His mention of the sinking of the U.S.S. Liberty ties to an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
“Congressman Gosar’s reference to the USS Liberty incident as part of a broader critique of the intelligence community in his newsletter is misguided at best and antisemitic at worst,” Sarah Kader, deputy regional director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Arizona chapter said in a statement to the Arizona Mirror.
“The USS Liberty incident has been historically misused by conspiracy theorists and antisemites to promote harmful narratives targeting the Jewish community and the U.S.-Israel relationship,” Kader said. “Longstanding conspiracy theories about the USS Liberty have been repeatedly debunked and by referencing it in this context, Gosar perpetuates falsehoods that feed into antisemitic tropes and undermines public discourse.”
[…] In 2023, Gosar’s newsletter linked to an article on a website that had previously posted a video by a famed Holocaust denier and featured the same coded language used by neo-Nazis.
Gosar’s newsletter has also linked to a different website with an author who promoted a book that claims the Holocaust was a “fraud.” The website is heavily pro-Kremlin, often republishing articles from the Russian state-run propaganda websites Russia Today and Sputnik. [Reliable sources, I’m sure.]
Iran has recently seized upon U.S.S. Liberty conspiracy theories and has used them to amplify hate against Jewish people and Israel. The theories have also been a go-to for neo-Nazis and other antisemites.
Gosar has long amplified extremists with his platform.
In 2021, Gosar promoted the work of known white nationalist Vincent James Foxx, who became the unofficial propagandist for a neo-Nazi fight club. Gosar spoke at the same white nationalist conference as Foxx a few years earlier, alongside Holocaust-denier and antisemite Nick Fuentes, the first sitting politician to do so.
The work that Gosar promoted mentioned the “great replacement theory,” the idea, popular among white supremacists, that white Americans are being replaced by immigrants. […]
[snipped details of past incidents]
Gosar has frequently seized on meme culture used by white supremacists and neo-Nazis on his Twitter account, including the #DarkMAGA movement, which has roots in accelerationist neo-Nazi meme culture and many memes related to it often express a desire for violence against perceived enemies.[…]
Gosar has also employed two white nationalists in his office.
“As a public servant, the Congressman’s words have significant influence,” Kader said. “We urge him to consider the implications of referencing such narratives and the potential harm they can cause to Jewish Americans, the broader community, and the vital U.S.-Israel alliance.”
Donald Trump has offered to buy a young girl’s hair for “millions.”
Trump was tooling around in a golf cart on Sunday at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, when he spotted a girl on the course and made a beeline for her.
“Oh, I love that girl. I love that hair. I want her hair!” Trump said. “Can I buy your hair? I’ll pay you millions for that.”
The girl replied that she voted for him, and Trump responded, “I voted for you too.” [X post and video are available at the link]
Like all things Trump, the reactions to a 78-year-old billionaire jesting with a young girl about whether he can “buy [her] hair” for “millions” is a litmus test of sorts. Some people see Trump’s creepy entitlement as proof of his supposed everyman appeal, while others are just reminded of the entitled, dehumanizing behavior often exhibited by the wealthy—and fascists. […]
A Louisiana law that reclassified abortion-inducing drugs as controlled substances has made it more difficult for doctors to treat a wide range of gynecological conditions, doctors say.
Now, a similar proposal has been filed in Texas.
Texas Rep. Pat Curry, a freshman Republican from Waco, said the intent of House Bill 1339 is to make it harder for people, especially teenagers, to order mifepristone and misoprostol online to terminate their pregnancies. Doctors in Louisiana say the measure has done little to strengthen the state’s near-total abortion ban, but has increased fear and confusion among doctors, pharmacists and patients.
“There’s no sense in it,” said Dr. Nicole Freehill, an OB/GYN in New Orleans. “Even though we kept trying to tell them how often [these medications] are used for other things and how safe they are, it didn’t matter. It’s just a backdoor way of restricting abortion more.”
These medications are often used to empty the uterus after a patient has a miscarriage, and are commonly prescribed ahead of inserting an intrauterine device. Misoprostol is also often the best treatment for obstetric hemorrhages, a potentially life-threatening condition in which women can bleed to death in minutes. Since the Louisiana law went into effect, hospitals have taken the medication off their obstetrics carts and put them in locked, password-protected central storage.
One hospital has been running drills to practice getting the medications to patients in time, and reported, on average, a two-minute delay from before the law went into effect, the Louisiana Illuminator reported.
“In obstetrics and gynecology, minutes or even seconds can be the difference between life and death,” Dr. Stella Dantas, president of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, said in a statement after the Louisiana law passed. “Forcing a clinician to jump through administrative hurdles in order to access a safe, effective medicine is not medically justified and is, quite simply, dangerous.” […]
Texas roots for a Louisiana law [I snipped those details]
A group of Louisiana health care providers recently filed a lawsuit arguing the law discriminates against people who need mifepristone and misoprostol for other conditions, and challenging whether the last minute amendments to the bill were proper. […]
When the law first went into effect, Anna Legreid Dopp, senior director of government relations for the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, told CNN that the group expected other states to consider similar measures. […]
Restrictions on medication
[…] Since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, conservative groups have turned their attention to restricting access to abortion-inducing medications. […]
It is already a crime to mail abortion-inducing medications in Texas, and many of the online pharmacies operate in a legal gray area outside U.S jurisdiction. Others are working in states that have “shield laws” that protect doctors’ ability to prescribe and mail pills into states that have banned abortion. None of these interstate and international legal questions have been tested in court with regards to abortion.
[…] “There’s a lot of education that needs to be done surrounding what this means and what these drugs are really used for,” she said. “I don’t know that we would have been able to sway people, even with more time, but we can at least educate on why this is completely inappropriate and really governmental overreach.”
Hidden away for centuries in a Transylvanian church tower, a forgotten medieval library has come to light, revealing treasures as old as the 9th century. This extraordinary discovery of manuscripts, books, and documents offers a rare glimpse into the intellectual and cultural life of medieval Romania.
The discovery was made two years ago in the Church of St. Margaret in Mediaș, a 15th-century Gothic structure built by the Transylvanian Saxons. A team led by Professor Adinel C. Dincă of Babeș-Bolyai University uncovered the collection in the church’s Ropemakers’ Tower, where it had remained hidden for decades, possibly centuries. Biblioteca Batthyaneum, which first announced the find, described it as a scene straight out of an Indiana Jones adventure, complete with a struggle against nesting pigeons to recover the precious volumes.
Jim Abrahams, one of the creators of wacky, slapstick comedy classics such as Airplane and the Naked Gun series, has died at the age of 80.
The writer and director died at his home in Santa Monica, Calif., his son Joseph told The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday.
In his work with brothers Jerry and David Zucker, Abrahams was a pioneer of the spoof comedy. The filmmaking trio, referred to as “ZAZ” for their last names, honed a style characterized by wild physical comedy, sight gags, double meanings and endless puns, helping to seal their place in comedy history…
It turns out that just before developing the nasty skin eruption, the man had manually squeezed a dozen limes, then headed to an outdoor soccer game without applying sunscreen. His doctors diagnosed the man’s rash as a classic case of phytophotodermatitis, according to a case report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The condition is caused by toxic substances found in plants (phyto) that react with UV light (photo) to cause a burning, blistering, scaling, pigmented skin condition (dermatitis).
Specifically, the toxic chemicals are furocoumarins, which are found in some weeds and also a range of plants used in food. Those include celery, carrot, parsley, fennel, parsnip, lime, bitter orange, lemon, grapefruit, and sweet orange. Furocoumarins include chemicals with linear structures, psoralens, and angular structures, called angelicins, though not all of them are toxic.
Furocoumarins can enter skin cells, and for those that are phototoxic, become activated by exposure to ultraviolet light. The light causes the chemicals to form cross-linking bonds with the pyrimidine bases in DNA. This ties the double-stranded genetic material together, halting replication, which in turn leads to cell death and inflammation…
…
Animals of all kinds have thrived in humanity’s absence. Living among radiation-resistant fauna are thousands of feral dogs, many of whom are descendants of pets left behind in the speedy evacuation of the area so many years ago. As the world’s greatest nuclear disaster approaches its 40th anniversary, biologists are now taking a closer look at the animals located inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), which is about the size of Yosemite National Park, and investigating how decades of radiation exposure may have altered animals’ genomes—and even, possibly, sped up evolution.
Scientists from the University of South Carolina and the National Human Genome Research Institute have begun examining the DNA of 302 feral dogs found in or around the CEZ to better understand how radiation may have altered their genomes. Their results were published in the journal Science Advances…
The study uncovered that the feral dogs living near the Chernobyl Power Plant showed distinct genetic differences from dogs living only some 10 miles away in nearby Chernobyl City. While this may seem to heavily imply that these dogs have undergone some type of rapid mutation or evolution due to radiation exposure, this study is only a first step in proving that hypothesis.
One environmental scientist, speaking with Science News, says that these studies can be tricky business, largely due to the fact that sussing out radiation-induced mutations from other effects, like inbreeding, is incredibly difficult…
Did you know there’s an almost 30-foot-tall pyramid in Salt Lake City, right next door to an otherwise normal residential neighborhood? And, yes, there is at least one human mummy inside that pyramid.
The building — which was constructed more than 40 years ago — serves as a sanctuary, a temple, and a winery, all for a Utah-founded non-profit religious organization called Summum….
tires are responsible for about one-third of the microplastics in the environment. […] synthetic rubber, which is a plastic. […] it’s not just the microplastics that result from tire wear and tear when in use. These molecules also can be released into the environment from tires left in landfills and exposed to the elements
[…]
chemical extraction [involved] heating the materials up and using a chemical solvent to quickly separate the [toxic ingredient] 6PPD […] Once the 6PPD molecules are removed, they can be chemically converted into safe chemicals […] The rest of the tire, meanwhile, can be recycled using classic plastic recycling methods—a plus, given there currently are no alternatives for tires in general. […] the research team has proven this approach at the lab scale […] analysis showed the cost looks to be very reasonable.
Decontaminating is good. Plastic recycling, not so much.
The Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW) was set up in 2019 by a group of companies which include ExxonMobil, Dow, Shell, TotalEnergies and ChevronPhillips, some of the world’s biggest producers of plastic. They promised to divert 15m tonnes of plastic waste from the environment in five years to the end of 2023 […] Documents from a PR company that were obtained by Greenpeace […] suggest a key aim of the AEPW was to “change the conversation” away from “simplistic bans of plastic” […] The waste plastic was diverted mostly by mechanical or chemical recycling, the use of landfill, or waste to fuel,
[…]
[The California AG is suing Exxon, arguing that it] has deceived the public for 50 years, with misleading public statements and slick marketing, about the recyclability of plastic.
“Advanced recycling” is an umbrella term used by the plastics industry to describe a variety of heat or solvent-based technologies […]
The vast majority—92 percent—of plastic waste processed through ExxonMobil’s “advanced recycling” technology does not become recycled plastic […]
The plastics that are produced […] contain so little plastic waste that they are effectively virgin plastics deceptively marketed as “circular” and sold at a premium, […]
ExxonMobil’s best case scenario, will only account for less than one percent of ExxonMobil’s total virgin plastic production capacity, which continues to grow.
Reginald Selkirksays
@368: This is some wacky stuff. I recommend reading the full article.
“The threats were deemed to be not credible, three senior law enforcement officials told NBC News.”
Video available at the link.
Several of […] Trump’s planned Cabinet nominees and administration appointees were subjected to bomb threats and “swatting” attacks Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, a spokesperson for the Trump transition team said.
The nominees and appointees “were targeted in violent, unAmerican threats to their lives and those who live with them. These attacks ranged from bomb threats to ‘swatting,’” transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
Swatting is when a hoax call is made to police claiming a life-threatening situation is taking place. It is meant to draw SWAT teams to a location and can lead to deadly outcomes.
Three senior law enforcement officials briefed on the swatting incident involving multiple Trump allies told NBC News that these were not credible threats. No devices or physical threats were found and some of the threats may have come in over social media, the officials said. The threats did not involve U.S. Secret Service protectees such as Trump or Vice President-elect JD Vance.
[…] The White House said President Joe Biden had been briefed on the threats and that the administration “is in touch with federal law enforcement and the President-elect’s team, and continues to monitor the situation closely. Federal law enforcement’s response, alongside state and local authorities, remains ongoing. The President and the Administration unequivocally condemn threats of political violence.”
Among those who said they were targeted are Rep. Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick to be ambassador to the United Nations; former Rep. Lee Zeldin, who’s been selected to head the Environmental Protection Agency; Brooke Rollins, Trump’s pick for the Department of Agriculture; and former Rep. Matt Gaetz, the Trump choice for U.S. attorney general who withdrew his name from consideration last week.
[…] Zeldin, a former New York GOP congressman, said in a statement that a”pipe bomb threat targeting me and my family at our home today was sent in with a pro-Palestinian themed message. My family and I were not home at the time and are safe. We are working with law enforcement to learn more as this situation develops.”
[…] Gaetz, R-Fla., confirmed to NBC News that he was also among the targets.
A bomb squad reported to his home in Florida in response to the threat. Initially, a bomb-sniffing dog was brought to his home by the sheriff but was inconclusive, which led to the bomb squad being called in.
The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office said “no devices were located. The immediate area was also searched with negative results.”
[…] The same tactics have been used in the past against some of those who’ve been viewed as Trump adversaries, including the judge who presided over his civil fraud trial in New York, the judge who presided over Trump’s federal election interference case and the prosecutor who brought that case, special counsel Jack Smith, as well as the district attorney’s office in Georgia and New York that brought criminal cases against Trump.
Hmm. I expect to see a lot more reporting on this. Let’s figure out who initiated the threats.
Three American citizens who had been detained for years in China were released, a State Department spokesperson said Wednesday. They are Mark Swidan, Kai Li and John Leung.
Good news from the Biden administration.
StevoRsays
@354. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain : “There there. The junk-disrupted magentosphere may irradiate everyone soon enough.”
Thanks. Nice to have something to look forward to eh?
(22:15): Don’t bother the Asian women or the Latino men or the Black men. […] White people make up 75% of America’s electorate, and no Democratic candidate has won the White vote since Lyndon B Johnson in 1968. The Democratic presidents that have won since then have won with a strong showing amongst Whites and an even stronger showing amongst minorities. […] It’s never the will of the White people of this country to allow a Democrat to be president, not in the last almost 60 years.
[…]
If you are trying to understand the political reality […] what motivates White people to vote and be politically active. I can only guess as to why a large portion of 76 million people who are White voted for Donald Trump […] I’m really frustrated with how people are so dismissive of the role that racism and misogyny played here.
[…]
Harris only doesn’t get blown out [in rural/surburban counties] because she was able to turn out large numbers of voters in urban areas AKA Black people and White liberals—the same voter base that many on the left are accusing of her not inspiring. Now of course I would argue that those voters are probably more inspired to vote against Trump than to vote for Kamala.
(27:40): I wish we lived in a world where American voters cared so much about Palestine that they stayed home. I wish we had a voting population in this country that cared so much about policy details that they weren’t inspired to vote for a candidate who provided none, but nothing in the data points to this. […] The data points to Trump uniquely motivating a specific type of voter that shows up only for him [—ignoring down-ticket Rs]—only for his unique brand of racist, sexist, authoritarian posturing. He gets Rural America voting in a way they traditionally do not.
(32:01): I really need those to the right of me to stop blaming the far left for this loss. The numbers show we didn’t do much. You’re showing your own true colors […] pointing the finger at Palestinians, Latinos, and Black men instead of some of your own cousins and husbands […] I also need those to my left to get a reality check because we barely had any impact at all!
First 20 min are skippable. His stats were based on 99% of votes counted.
KGsays
Specifically, the toxic chemicals are furocoumarins, which are found in some weeds and also a range of plants used in food. Those include celery, carrot, parsley, fennel, parsnip, lime, bitter orange, lemon, grapefruit, and sweet orange.- Reginald Selkirk@366
That’s interesting – I dislike all the first five in that list – celery, parsley and fennel particularly. I also dislike aniseed (which I find also contains furocoumarins, and is in the same family as celery, parsley and fennel), and identify it as tasting similar to those. Citrus fruits are fine, but maybe they contain different furocoumarins, or other substances that mask the taste I dislike.
40% of all US oil comes from Canada and Mexico. There is not domestic production capacity to replace it with US oil. Half the fruit consumed in the US comes from Mexico.
The largest export from Mexico to USA is electronic consumer goods. There is not capacity in USA to replace this with domestically manufactured goods.
birgerjohanssonsays
A long childhhod came before increase in cranial size. A long childhood to learn skills (culture) came first and morphology adapted to it.
“1.77-Million-Year-Old Fossil Challenges Human Big Brain Theory”
birgerjohansson@376-8,
There will be a procedure to apply for exemption from the tariffs – which will be granted to importers supporting Trump politically or financially. IOW, the whole “tariffs” issue is a way to licence corruption on an unprecedented scale.
Russ Vought wants to make America Christian again. And he has put quite a bit of thought into what that might look like.
Across public speeches, little-noticed interviews, and secretly made recordings, the Trump functionary-turned-MAGA policy influencer has spent several years enunciating his belief: America was founded as a Christian nation, and is intended to be governed that way.
Vought is most known for proposing aggressive actions aimed at remaking the government into something very different than it is now — actions like deploying the military to quell protests, gutting the independent civil service, and the many draconian policy ideas contained in Project 2025, which he helped bring into being. But his public statements show that he puts great emphasis on imagining a specifically Christian future for America. He’s spoken at length about his view that America is fundamentally a Christian nation, and about how that contention informs his approach to right-wing budgetary policy. Out of all of Trump’s picks for senior staff to date, Vought may be the best example of how MAGA policy prescriptions have merged with the hard-line ideas of the Christian right.
Now, he’s set to reprise his role as one of the most powerful officials in the new administration. Vought will run the White House Office of Management and Budget, the executive branch office that oversees budgeting and helps implement presidential actions. It’s an enormous amount of power, and will make him central to the execution of Trump’s promised efforts to demolish the American state as we know it: The OMB could have a hand in any White House refusal to spend congressionally-appropriated funding, in attempts to replace swathes of civil servants with political cronies, and in letting private businessmen like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have a role in reshaping the government.
In a podcast with Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) last year, Vought said that he and his organization, the Center for Renewing America, had a priority: establishing that “we’re not a secular country. That we are a Christian Nation as founded and that should be shared by everyone even if they have religious liberty for another faith.”
[…] “To the extent that you don’t have that consensus, you have a culture and a nation that just disintegrates,” he said.
[…] He told Charlie Kirk in February that he isn’t so much of a Christian nationalist as he is a nationalist that believes in a Christian America.
[…] Vought’s big-picture idea is that America was founded as a Christian nation, and must be preserved in that form. It suggests a form of Christian supremacy within the country: yes, people of other faiths can and do exist, but Christians are the only group affiliated since the founding with American national identity.
[…] in September 2023, he argued that the Bible demands drastic limitations on legal immigration and mass deportations.
[snipped some of Vought’s history, including previous jobs and positions in the Republican Party]
His move to the executive branch in 2017, after Trump nominated him to be deputy director of OMB, thrust Vought into an early spotlight. During his confirmation hearing, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) asked Vought about comments he had written saying that Muslims “do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned” over a controversy at his alma mater, Wheaton College, involving a professor’s theological views, which Vought critiqued. Vought denied to Sanders that the sentiment was Islamophobic.
In terms of policy, Vought has set his ambitions high.
He’s advocated for Trump trying to create a new rule that the executive branch can unilaterally refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress. […]
More extreme examples show that Vought, at Center for Renewing America, has pushed for legal justifications to deploy the military domestically. Per a report from ProPublica, Vought described his plans in private speeches as efforts to ensure that military leaders do not stop a future Trump administration from ordering protests quelled.
[…] “We have lost the ability in our public square to hear from Judeo-Christian values,” he said on a March 2021 podcast. “It is so foreign we don’t even know how to talk about it or how to reason from that perspective.”
StevoRsays
Oh & ten thosuand tents housing starved families lost in just two days. (From same clip in #380.)
[…] Here are some Thanksgiving favorites that, more likely than not, are possible thanks to undocumented migrants.
Apple pie
Virginia is one of the country’s top 10 states for supplying apples, producing “five to six million bushels” each year.
As for its workers, the state’s agricultural workforce relies on a “significant” number of undocumented workers to staff its farms, according to the Virginia Employment Commission. […]
This vague data set reflects at least 12,300 migrant workers who live in Virginia’s “350 migrant labor camps.” Notably, the Virginia Department of Health cited that the regulations on conditions at these camps—including AC, heat and clean water—have not been revisited “in over 20 years.”
Baked mac ‘n cheese
As it turns out, cheese is political.
California is one of the top dairy producers in the U.S., and the state with the largest migrant worker population.
LA Cooperativa released a report in 2023 revealing that 75% of California’s farm workers were undocumented immigrants.
While the West Coast state has historically advocated for workers’ rights, many of California’s farm workers (i.e., migrants) do not receive protections such as minimum wage, overtime pay, and other benefits.
Green bean casserole and mashed potatoes
Michigan is a big producer for beans, potatoes, dairy, and much more.
As the Detroit Free Press reports, the “not-so-secret truth” behind these agricultural giants is that a good chunk of their labor comes from undocumented and H-2A visa workers.
“We have multigenerational families and groups that have been coming to Michigan for years as migrant farmworkers. We have many seasonal farmer workers and year-round farmworkers and many, many of them are undocumented,” Susan Reed, director of the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, told the outlet.
A 2023 report by the U.S. Department of Labor found that 42% of these agricultural workers were undocumented. And, of course, that statistic relies on people who are willing to admit to being undocumented.
Turkey
When it comes to the U.S.’s top turkey states, Minnesota is also migrant-reliant—and officials have openly acknowledged the state workforce’s dependency on migrants.
This state in particular saw a flood of migrants—some of them minors—working in meatpacking facilities across the state, sometimes being subjected to subhuman living conditions.
As for the numbers, Minnesota does not provide updated data on undocumented immigrants, but admitted to heavily relying on a H-2A visa program to fast-track migrants into temporary seasonal workers.
“I normally get about a resume a day from somewhere across the pond. Maybe from South America. Maybe from Mexico,” farm owner Pete Van Erkel told CBS News. “We need people.” […]
Fox News primetime hosts have a message for American families as they gather together for Thanksgiving dinner: Be thankful that Donald Trump won the presidential election.
On his program on Tuesday night, Sean Hannity—whom some in Trump’s inner circle have described as the incoming president’s “shadow chief of staff”—told his audiences this Thanksgiving would be happy because the Republican leader.
“Truth is making a comeback. Common sense is making a comeback,” Hannity said as a graphic with a smiling Trump captioned “Happy Thanksgiving” appeared next to him.
Hannity argued that Trump’s plans to reduce regulation and allow for increased pollution—all while cutting support for green energy—is good news. [video at the link]
Fellow Fox host Laura Ingraham […] said conservatives should be thankful because Trump’s victory has enabled “an incredible opportunity” for them “to build a better world for our children and our grandchildren.” [video at the link]
[…] Starting at 10 minutes past midnight ET, Trump spent the next 43 minutes posting a total of 11 video clips of Fox News figures praising him and his plans. Included in the pro-Fox speed run was the Thanksgiving segment from Hannity.
The laudatory orgy exhibited once again that despite the occasional criticism from either side, Trump and Fox News are always joined at the hip. As he returns to the White House, the propaganda network will be there to extol his virtues and to instruct everyone in the country (and the world) that they must be thankful for Trump […]
Ariana Grande—who is Italian-American—found herself in the middle of another bizarre MAGA race attack.
Gina Loudon, host of far-right cable network Real America’s Voice, called the pop star “obviously” Hispanic in a failed attempt to prove Hollywood was attacking white people in the highly anticipated release of “Wicked.” […]
“I should have known they’d try to make it ‘woke’ in the ways that they could think of. Let’s just start with the fact that they have Ariana Grande, who is obviously a Hispanic woman, playing the part of a ditzy, blonde, white… really villain when it comes right down to it.”
Loudon, who was a member of the 2020 Donald Trump campaign’s media advisory board, also blasted the film for “racism” and “racial appropriation,” explaining that it was “offensive” for the filmmakers to make a villain a “ditzy, blonde, white” woman. [video at the link]
[…] Social media users were quick to notice the inaccuracy in Loudon’s weird accusations, with one Bluesky user calling the MAGA pundit “confidently stupid” for her remarks. [“Confidently stupid” is a good description of most of Trump’s team, as well as his cult followers.]
[…] It’s possible that the outspoken MAGA supporter still holds a grudge against the pop star for her vocalized support for Kamala Harris following the election.
[…] Grande also has a history of showing support for the transgender community, donating upwards of $1.5 million to organizations in 2022 to support transgender youth.
As for Loudon, her “othering” of someone based on race to spread hatred is reminiscent of Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail when the felon-elect insisted that multiracial Harris was solely “of Indian heritage.”
In front of the National Association for Black Journalists, Trump said he “didn’t know [Harris] was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black.”
Since none of us have any reason to be thankful for our current dripping-in-corruption president-elect and his unshakable love of Russia and sexual predators, please enjoy this C&J gift to you: a few minutes with a president we are thankful for and who will live on in perpetuity via reruns… [Video of President Bartlet on the butterball hotline, from a TV show]
[…] Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
The Progress Report has come up with some dandy things to be thankful for, starting with American troops. It also lists:
– Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., for showing it’s patriotic to speak your mind.
– The 90 senators who stood up to Cheney to say that torture is not an American value.
– The 79 senators who demanded the Bush administration detail a plan for Iraq.
– That Sen. Bill Frist is not our physician.
Consider these additional delights: Tom Delay is under indictment, Heckuva Job Brownie is no longer on the public payroll, and for some inexplicable reason, the administration found a Republican prosecutor in the Plame affair who seems to care more about the law than politics. […]
There’s music in poor bleeding New Orleans again, Ted Koppel and his hair put in a commendable 25 years, some terrific new films are out, my puppy has not eaten a shoe for an entire month now, and the Mountain West is moving from red to purple. So let’s all loosen our belts and get right down to the all-American tradition of overeating on Thanksgiving. It’s still a great country, even if it is a little strange. I am grateful for all my fellow citizens—how would we know it was America if we didn’t hear regularly from the nincompoop faction? Happy turkey to you all.—Thanksgiving 2005
And now my world-famous annual…
Things For Which I Am Thankful: 2024 Edition
– Our republic, which went another year without perishing from the earth (though next year looks iffy)
– VP Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz, for putting together an amazing team on very short notice and campaigned their hearts out
– The Democrats who fought and won their 2024 races, including enough in the House to make MAGA pervert Mike Johnson’s job nearly impossible
– Our new Democratic senators: Adam Schiff (CA), Elissa Slotkin (MI), Ruben Gallego (AZ), Andy Kim (NJ), Lisa Blunt Rochester (DE), and Angela Alsobrooks (MD).
– The now all-blue Oregon legislature
– Grassroots Democratic organizers and voters, especially in red states and doubly-especially women of color
– Young voters who see through the MAGA bullshit and gaslighting
– Campaign volunteers, ride sharers, and polling place workers
– Maine’s state government, for spending another year with Dem control of the state House and Senate, and Democratic Governor Janet Mills
– Doctors, nurses, and hospital administrative workers
– Vaccines and the scientists behind them
– The first responders and relief organizers who went above and beyond in the wake of this year’s hurricanes, floods, and wildfires
– Caregivers
– The indigenous people of North America
– Nila Ibrahimi, who won the 2024 International Children’s Peace Prize for her courageous efforts to advocate for the rights of Afghan girls
– The Nobel and Pulitzer winners
– Employers who give their employees Thanksgiving off
– Employees who don’t get the day off so they can keep vital services running while the rest of us do
– Teachers
– Immigrants
– Wind turbines and solar panels
– Everyone who voted blue in the 2024 elections
– The Biden cabinet, the most capable, diverse, motivated, and scandal-free in my memory
– Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and even SNL, for continuing the renaissance in late-night political humor
– Freedom of the press
– Freedom of speech fuck Trump fuck Elon Musk fuck Clarence Thomas
– The diverse slate of Biden’s 221 federal judges confirmed by the Senate, with a few more to come
– Ukraine’s continued humiliation of Russia
– Ta-Nehisi Coates, Joy Reid, Bishop William Barber, Al Sharpton, Charlie Pierce, Charles Blow, John Nichols, Howard Dean, E.J. Dionne, Eugene Robinson, David K. Johnston, Paul Krugman, Elie Mystal
– Marc Elias at Democracy Docket, for winning so many court cases against MAGA lawyers trying to steal elections and subvert democracy
– David Waldman’s Kagro in the Morning radio show
– Naomi Klein, Marcy Wheeler, Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, Daniel Dale, David Corn, Lawrence O’Donnell, Nicolle Wallace
– Atrios, Digby, Charles M. Blow, Joe Jervis, Michelangelo Signorile, Dan Savage, Leonard Pitts, Lizz Winstead
– Media Matters, The Hispanic Federation, The Southern Poverty Law Center, PFAW, PFLAG, 350.org, RAICES, Sandy Hook Promise, Indivisible, Leaders We Deserve, Black Lives Matter, Run For Something, Planned Parenthood, NAACP, IAVA, ACLU, and the many other advocacy organizations that prevent the worst of the MAGA cult’s abuses, often in coordination with each other
– Drag queens
[…] – Netroots Nation and its organizers, for putting on another great convention in Baltimore
– Books
– Electric cars
– High-speed rail
– NASA
– Unions
– Diversity
– Maine’s proximity to safe haven Canada (just in case)
[…] – Microwave ovens, which are excellent for re-heating food that gets cold because some idiot on a blog spent three hours listing all the stuff he was thankful for.
– ALL OF DARK BRANDON’S INFRASTRUCTURE WEEKS!!!
Stay safe. Stay healthy. Pass the taters ‘n gravy.
We begin this Thanksgiving Day with Heather Cox Richardson writing for her Letters from an American Substack about a still pertinent Thanksgiving message from the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln urged the crowd to take up the torch those who fought at Gettysburg had laid down. He called for them to “highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
The following year [1864], Lincoln proclaimed another day of Thanksgiving, this time congratulating Americans that God had favored them not only with immigration but also with the emancipation of formerly enslaved people. “Moreover,” Lincoln wrote, “He has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions.”
In 1861, Americans went to war to keep a cabal from taking control of the government and turning it into an oligarchy. The fight against that rebellion seemed at first to be too much for the nation to survive. But Americans rallied and threw their hearts into the cause on the battlefields even as they continued to work on the home front for a government that defended democracy and equality before the law.
A beam of sunlight in Oregon today as, with the passage of the ballot-curing deadline, Lesly Munoz has been declared the winner of the State House of Representative election in Oregon’s 22nd district, centered on Woodburn […]
she highlighted her partnership with the state farmworkers union, Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), which helped her reach Spanish-speaking voters in the district.
This makes for a Democratic governor, and two blue supermajorities in the State House this next term. […]
“Boo Hoo! GB News Cries About Have I Got News For You MOCKING [conservative] Allison Pearson”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=FtEf3wh-mMQ
Tory client media will tor without care or logic.
Building a new road through the glowing lava
The construction of the new Grindavíkurvegur Road has begun. Contractors began work on it at four o’clock yesterday. This is the fourth time this section of road has been laid over lava since the eruption started in November last year.
This time, Grindavíkurvegur Road will be moved slightly and the old road will be used for those tourists who want to stop to form a circle around the lava, according to Jón Haukur Steingrímsson, a geotechnical engineer at Efla. \
More (plus interesting pictures) at the link.
Talk about building roads under difficult conditions….
birgerjohanssonsays
A peaceful little short film to watch during thanksgiving: Le Bouffonne Orange (The Orange Buffoon)
Wait, wait, let me guess… does the menu feature turnips?
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
The Invisible Man, A firsthand account of homelessness in America
(CW: dental maladies, DV)
A very long read. By a former reporter/art-critic for The Boston Globe, The Narragansett Times, and Reuters, a bipolar novelist, car-dwelling since October 2023. It’s a series of short anecdotes with divider lines. Ends on a chilling note.
I will meet, stand my ground, and lose ground to a dozen different officers, often at night, banging on my window and waking me just to ask, “Are you all right?” The question begins to sound like a pretense. […] It’s unnerving.
[…]
The toughest parts of homelessness have been surviving the poverty and the marginalization, discrimination, and hostility from the non-homeless population. It’s usually subtle, this hostility. […] They are so afraid. I know I look disheveled, but I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with me
[…]
It’s becoming clear how little help there is for the homeless. Here’s how things look from my car: Assistance doesn’t reach low enough. The social-services net is wide and catches many, but not the person living on the street. I asked the Warm Center, which specifically addresses homelessness, for ten dollars a day to help pay for the gasoline that keeps us alive and they responded with a hard silence. We are all alone out here.
It just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without a wild message on social media from Donald Trump attacking his opponents.
Early Thursday, the president-elect ― as he’s been prone to do in recent years ― wished a “Happy Thanksgiving to all” on his Truth Social platform.
Then came the traditional Trump Thanksgiving rant as he went on to write,
Including to the Radical Left Lunatics who have worked so hard to destroy our Country, but who have miserably failed, and will always fail, because their ideas and policies are so hopelessly bad that the great people of our Nation just gave a landslide victory to those who want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
“Israel’s best friend” in hs own words as seen here Lowkey exposes Donald Trump by Double Down News on YT,. 15 mins long
But, yay, Kamala Harris who as Veep had no real power and current though now irrelevant, useless* (?), old POTUS Biden have been punished by turning the world’s biggest military superpower over to literal Fascist Christianist Zionists so.. yeah. That showed ’em huh? . Now the consequences are gunna be.. ???
Said before, will say again no doubt, every single American who actually cares about Palestine shoulda voted for Kamala given the only actual alternative . Too few actually did.
Can’t say you weren’t warned.
(On so many other things lives as well as the Gazan genocide..)
.* Despite being given as much power as Medevial kings by SCOTUS becoz he’s too decent to use it to unto them what they’d do first the fool.
StevoRsays
FWIW If I were Biden right now I’d use every last bit of the literal Emperor Palpatine Power!!! Unlimited POWER! that SCOTUS gavce me and arrest evcery lats Trumpist piece of shit inthe country and make the 20254 election null and void becoz reaslly US oA.. fuck that shit and sahem on everytone who vote danything other than the rational chgoice of Kamala given the alternative.
Democracy, just doesn’t work. VBrexcit, the Indigenous Voice to Parlt in Oz, ad nauseam keeps proving that.
If voters are willfully ignorant and deluded enough to vote for Trump then they are too willfully ignorant and deluded for their votes to deserve to count.
Democracy can ONLY work with an veducated, rational populace and right now, well United States of America, you do NOT pass that bar.
There’s a critical mass of deluded, brain-washed, Failures at critical thinking & rational analysis to allow actual democracy to work. Proof : 2024 election there..
Oh & if you think that seems tyranincal and unfair wait rtil yousee what the mionsters you colectively voted for are about to do.
StevoRsays
PS. If you think there’s typos in my comment here (ok, yeah) wait till you see the senile old POTUS’es tweets or untruths or whatevs..
[…] Militias are generally wary of the government. They’ve even been known to use violence against politicians and other government representatives, including police. […]
But militia members’ negative beliefs about immigration and self-declared mission to protect the country could lead them to join a national mass-deportation effort.
My research finds that militia members generally believe the falsehoods that undocumented migrants are a threat to public safety.
For some […] this perception is rooted in xenophobia and racism. Other militia members misunderstand what is required to obtain U.S. citizenship: They believe that anyone who enters the country illegally is, by definition, a criminal and has therefore already proven their intention to not follow the laws and generally be a good American. This is not true, because migrants may seek asylum regardless of their immigration status for up to a year after entering the country.
Members with both sets of motives believe that undocumented migrants are taking jobs away from more deserving citizens and are generally receiving unearned benefits from being in the country. […]
Militia members also believe that one of the few legitimate functions of the federal government as outlined by the Constitution is national defense. In that sense, those who believe migrants are an urgent threat could see the military’s involvement in a mass-deportation operation as consistent with a duty to defend the nation.
Most scholars agree that even if it were technically legal, domestic deployment of the military would be an alarming threat to democracy.
Some militia units in border states have been engaged in deportation efforts for a long time. They typically patrol the border, sometimes detain migrants and regularly call the U.S. Border Patrol to report their findings.
Border Patrol agents have historically expressed skepticism and concerns about militia involvement with border monitoring due to the unverifiable skills and motives of civilian support.
Some state, county and local police also do immigration enforcement, and in recent years they have seemed to become more open to civilian assistance.
Some local police agencies, particularly sheriffs, are already asking for civilian assistance managing perceived problems with migrants. Others have hosted anti-immigration events with militias who patrol the border under an effective, if not formal, deputization of their actions.
[…] In the past, Trump has directly addressed militias. The most cited example is his instruction in a Sept. 29, 2020, presidential debate, directing the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” People had similar interpretations of his comments in advance of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
But I have long believed these appeals started much earlier. In 2018 Trump pardoned the men who inspired the Bundy family occupation and standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. I believe that was an early attempt to garner support from people in militia circles.
The military has already been getting involved in immigration enforcement in unprecedented ways. In early 2024, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott claimed the U.S. Border Patrol was not protecting his state from an “invasion” from would-be immigrants. He deployed his state’s National Guard to an area of the border, blocking the Border Patrol from working in that section. That blockade continues.
In a second term, Trump has little incentive to restrain his rhetoric or his actions. The Supreme Court has ruled that presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken while in office. Even if he does not directly appeal to private citizens to control the border or detain people whom they believe to be undocumented migrants, his official presence and hard-line stance on immigration may be enough to provide legitimacy to vigilante action. […]
For the past week, Elon Musk has repeatedly commented about buying MSNBC. At the same time, Musk accused the news outlet of peddling “puerile propaganda” and derided MSNBC’s ratings, which have—as might be expected—dropped since the election. The result has been a string of comments on Twitter and Fox News in which Trump supporters chortle over the thought of replacing Rachel Maddow with Joe Rogan [replace intelligent and thoughtful commentary with stupidity] and exult in the distress they believe Musk’s comments must be generating on the left.
Many of Musk’s “jokes,” and those of toadies like Rogan, have been accompanied by the kind of homophobic, racist, or misogynist memes that have come to dominate Twitter since Musk laid down $44 billion to destroy that platform. But even as Musk and his social media pals laugh, no one should consider this a farce. It’s a threat. And it’s not just a threat against MSNBC.
Musk is signaling that he has the limitless resources and unchecked power to purchase and shutter any outlet he believes represents a threat to Donald Trump or the incoming array of kleptocrats. […]
What Musk is suggesting is known as “media capture,” and it’s a common practice among authoritarian governments everywhere. Whether it’s a long series of Russian journalists falling from windows, or Victor Orban building a media empire that controls every scrap of news reaching the citizens of Hungary, a hallmark of authoritarian governments is that they do not tolerate independent reporting. [Misogynistic and threatening tweet by Musk is available at the link.]
One of the first and most obvious messages to emerge in the wake of the election earlier this month was just how uninformed and misinformed many American voters already are. In post-election interviews, many voters falsely attributed policies advocated by Kamala Harris to Trump. The policies that Trump actually ran on, from inflationary tariffs to mass deportations to the destruction of the legal system, were either missed altogether or dismissed as inconsequential political rhetoric.
[…] When people are in their cars, radio pundits push a constant stream of fearmongering and hatred. […]
When people are in their homes, right-wing propaganda is always available. It’s not just Fox News, Newsmax, Real America’s Voice, Right Side Broadcasting Network, and One America News Network. It’s The 700 Club, Great American Family, and dozens of syndicated pundits. In many cases, these pundits pop up during news programs that are nominally on NBC, ABC, or CBS stations as right-wing owners like Sinclair Broadcasting insert commentary into what are supposedly factual news programs. [All too true.]
When people are waiting for their tires to be changed, their teeth to be cleaned, or their meal to be prepared, there’s a good chance that if there’s any news programming available at all, it’s a right-wing broadcast backing Trump, sowing suspicion about “others,” and offering up good old American solutions couched in racism and violence.
[…] Some late-night comedians are willing to take Trump on, and a handful of cable programs mingle comedy with a dose of news content. […].
Trump supporters may be quick to deride the traditional “big three” outlets, PBS, MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post as if they are all the products of Karl Marx, but all of these outlets […] still hold to a broken concept of “balanced” coverage, even when that means leaving lies unchallenged.
If anything these outlets skew distinctly right just because they are so concerned about being seen as favoring the left. Over the last decade the extent to which these outlets have bent over backward to avoid being critical of the right, while joyfully leaping on any perceived weakness of the left, has become startlingly obvious. [Image of New York Times front page from before 2016 election.]
In the 2024 election, large news outlets demonstrated an astounding willingness to amputate their coverage, to “sane wash” messages from Trump, J.D. Vance, and other figures on the right by leaving out their most outrageous, hateful, and bigoted statements. Viewers, listeners, and readers of the unvarnished right-wing media got a steady stream of statements that painted President Joe Biden as either an incompetent bumbler or a subversive radical socialist, Harris as a race-bating communist, and the Democratic Party as a threat to “traditional American values.”
Those who took their news from the other outlets received a message that this was just another election, both candidates were unpopular, and boy, would you check out the price of eggs.
[…] What Musk is proposing now, isn’t the elimination of intrepid opposition journalists. It’s cleaning up around the edges. It’s making sure that the only message, is the one that he approves. [Video “What is Media Capture” is available at the link.]
Musk’s threat to buy MSNBC followed a tweet from Donald Trump Jr. suggesting that he do just that. Both followed an announcement that the news outlet’s parent company, Comcast, was spinning the channel off as part of a package of cable channels. [yikes]
While Comcast may insist that the channel is not for sale, and Musk may continue to pretend that this is all for laughs, no one should believe this is the case. Musk isn’t joking. It’s a real threat and a real message—not only will Trump’s billionaire cronies demonize any outlet that fails to fall in line, the owners of those outlets can avoid any trouble by just handing over the keys.
In a 2019 report, international agencies identified four steps in media capture by authoritarian regimes.
Capture the media regulator
In this case, that means the FCC. Trump has selected Brendan Carr to head the agency that regulates not just television and radio but internet access. Carr is the author of the chapter on the FCC from Project 2025 where he called it an “institution ripe for change.” Expect Carr […] to eliminate diversity in rural broadband selection in favor of enormous contracts for Musk’s Starlink service. Also expect Carr to go after social media platforms like BlueSky, forcing them to end moderation practices that prevent right-wing trolls and bots from degrading that platform’s effectiveness. […]
Control of the public service broadcaster
For years, the focus of Republicans has been stripping PBS and NPR of government funding. Don’t expect that to be the limit of the damage in this cycle. Instead, expect the complete capture of these outlets and a refocus on using them to spread the right’s message at every level—including in programming aimed at children. You may think that NPR has already made a big shift to the right (because it has), but what’s coming is going to be much worse.
Use of state financing as a control tool
With the collapse of the advertising model, it’s become increasingly difficult to operate a large newspaper, radio, or television network without the largesse of a deep-pocketed owner. However, outlets will likely see that change over the next four years with an influx of funds for those willing to say the right things. […]
Ownership control
The simplest solution in many cases will be exactly what Musk is suggesting about MSNBC. The cost of public media outlets is well within the scope of what billionaires are willing to pay to expand their influence. Jeff Bezos may have spent a reported $250 million on The Washington Post and related properties, but that’s not even half of what he spent on his yacht — on one of his several yachts. Musk bought Twitter by offering the owners an unrealistically high value for their property. He could do the same with MSNBC. Or any other outlet. And those owners will take his money, no matter what they’re saying now.
[…] Here are a few random imaginary headlines that don’t require more than a dime-store crystal ball.
– Fox News and Newsmax exclusively allowed on military bases
– White House press conferences remove journalists under investigation for “treason”
– FCC moves to award Starlink nationwide contract for providing rural broadband, declares it will save billions
– CNN goes dark following dispute with regulators
– Congress opens investigation into censorship on BlueSky as FCC passes new rules against blocking or banning users
– U.S. government agencies to use only social media platforms certified “free”
– Congress insists that Sesame Street include more Christian content
None of these things have happened. Don’t think for a moment that they can’t. Or won’t.
The best move for any of the outlets not already firmly captured by the right is simply this: Report clearly. Stop trying to be fair to people who have no interest in being fair, or honest […]
[…] Musk may be threatening to buy MSNBC, but in the meantime, the remainder of the media is signaling that they don’t need to be captured — because they are willing to capitulate.
This doesn’t mean the left should surrender. It just means that no one should expect the outlets that were unwilling to confront Trump when he was out of power, to stand up to him now that he has the backing of both Congress and the courts (and the money of Musk).
U.K. backs assisted-dying law after emotional debate over end-of-life care.
“The bill, modeled after Oregon’s law, would apply to terminally ill patients .”
British lawmakers on Friday voted in favor of a bill to legalize assisted dying in England and Wales — a move that could usher in one of the most dramatic social changes this country has seen in years, arguably since the decriminalization of abortion in 1967.
The bill, largely modeled after a law in Oregon, would apply to terminally ill patients who are expected to die within six months, can demonstrate a clear wish and can administer the fatal cocktail of drugs themselves. They would have to get approval from two doctors and a high court judge. If approved, they could seek a prescription through the National Health Service.
Lawmakers voted 330 to 275 after a five-hour debate that was emotional, but also respectful. They shared personal stories and wrestled with questions about how to alleviate suffering, protect vulnerable people and improve end-of-life care.
The vote was a free one, meaning lawmakers didn’t have to vote along party lines. The bill still faces months of further scrutiny and procedural hurdles. But there’s a good chance of it becoming law.
[…] The British government is among several in Europe that have considered relaxing their prohibitions on assisted dying.
“The fighting is a significant escalation since rebels launched a surprise offensive earlier this week, seizing towns and villages as they cut a path toward Syria’s second-largest city.”
Islamist rebels breached neighborhoods in Syria’s second-largest city of Aleppo and clashed with government military forces after detonating two car bombs Friday. The incident, reported by a leading war monitoring group and The Associated Press, has renewed international attention on a country wracked by civil war and extremism for more than a decade.
The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, the monitoring organization, said fierce clashes were underway between the attacking insurgents and regime troops. The fighting is a significant escalation since rebels launched a surprise offensive Wednesday, seizing towns and villages as they advanced toward Aleppo.
The breach marked the first time opposition forces besieged the city since 2016, when they were driven out of Aleppo’s eastern neighborhoods during a military operation in which Syrian troops were supported by Russia and Iran. Four years ago, a ceasefire brought an end to the most intense violence, but the new push from rebels has upended a period of relative calm.
The rebels appear to have gained momentum by the diminished strength of Iran-backed groups such as Hezbollah throughout the region, illustrating how the conflicts in the Middle East feed off one another.
Witnesses who spoke to The Associated Press said Aleppo residents were fleeing from areas on the western edge amid missiles and exchanges of gunfire. The AP said an insurgent commander posted a recorded message on social media urging the city’s residents to cooperate with the rebels. The rebels are led by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS.
[…] The Syrian civil war started in early 2011 with a wave of protests against the authoritarian rule of President Bashar al-Assad. Assad’s government, bolstered by arms shipments from Iran and Russia, cracked down forcefully on the popular uprisings, setting off a spiral of violence and fueling an aggressive insurgency.
“Radio Mambí birthed Cuban politics in south Florida. Now it’s a platform for Trumpism […]”
Flowing from a car stereo, or trickling in from a small radio at the backroom of a café, the sound of vibrant trumpets blare as a singer croons in Spanish, “¡Viva!” It’s the day after the presidential election, and on Radio Mambí’s afternoon show, Sin Censura — Without Censorship — everybody is celebrating.
“Long live the republic!” a caller cheers.
[…] “What needed to happen happened. The truth won.”
[…] “It’s a red tsunami,” Pereda says.
If you’re from Miami, Radio Mambí’s celebratory vibe is no surprise. This is, after all, the radio station that has been a touchstone for Miami’s Cuban exiliados, or exiles, since they arrived. It’s the radio station that made Miami Cuban politics. But since the 2016 election, it’s morphed into a hotbed of misinformation — one that impacted the 2024 presidential election.
Miami-Dade County, which usually votes blue in national campaigns, swung red in the presidential election for the first time in 36 years, reflecting the general rightward shift of Latino voters in this election cycle. […]
If you tuned in to Radio Mambí 710 AM in 2020, you might have heard a caller questioning the results in Georgia and Pennsylvania, demanding recounts or denouncing the election as a fraud. In 2021, you might have heard the hosts repeat claims that Black Lives Matter and Antifa members were behind the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6 — and you definitely would have heard claims that President Joe Biden was a socialist. In 2024, listeners tuning in heard callers and hosts calling Vice President Kamala Harris a Marxist extremist, sharing concerns about the “humanitarian crisis” in Springfield, Ohio, or spreading theories about voters being registered without proof of citizenship — with the hosts rarely stepping in to correct the record.
You’d never guess that Mambí, the focus of a national controversy about disinformation in Latino communities, is now owned by Democrats.
In 2022, the Latino Media Network — run by Stephanie Valencia and Jess Morales Rocketto, who worked on the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — bought Mambí as part of a $60 million package deal. Cubans were outraged. It was an attempt at censorship, they said, by Democratic operatives hellbent on shutting down the opposition. The real kicker? The buy was funded, in part, by progressive billionaire George Soros — the boogeyman of the far-right.
Several popular hosts quit in protest. Some listeners tuned out. Some advertisers left. Mambí has fallen to No. 2, outpaced by Venezuelan current events radio Actualidad 1040 AM.
[…] Few expected Mambí’s content to remain the same after the sale, even as its owners insisted they wouldn’t change the integrity of the station. But here’s the thing: It did stay the same. Actually, some argue, it’s become even more MAGA.
[…] At its core, Mambí has always been conservative. But its brand of conservatism revolved around fighting Fidel Castro and pushing back against communism. Founded by Cuban exiles in 1985, its name invoked the mambises, Cuban guerillas who helped the island gain independence from Spain. […]
Mambí’s original hosts, the late Armando Pérez Roura and the “Queen of the Night” Martha Flores, used their microphones to keep listeners up to date on Cuba and other international affairs.
[…] In 1989, the radio station helped propel Havana-born former Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to Capitol Hill, making the Republican the first Cuban American — and the first Latina — elected to Congress. And after November 1999, Mambí spent months vehemently criticizing the Bill Clinton administration over its handling of Elián González […]
[…] According to Nielsen, 94 percent of Latinos tune in to AM/FM radio every month. So when Mambí hosts spoke, people listened.
[…] Still, while Cubans and some newer arrivals tended to vote red, Miami remained a blue dot in an increasingly red state.
But a phenomenon began growing among the Latino electorate around the time when Trump entered the political arena — […] Democratic consultant Christian Ulvert says it comes down to two key factors: Bernie Sanders’ 2016 embrace of the label “Democratic socialist” […]
[…] Trump campaign adviser Carlos Trujillo, a Cuban American who once served in Congress, says the lifting of the Cuban embargo during former President Barack Obama’s second term in office also played a big part in this political transformation. Some members of the Cuban exile community turned their backs on the president, a message that was made abundantly clear on Mambí’s airwaves.
[…] This year, 68 percent of Cubans said they would vote for Trump.
[…] As Mambí’s messaging refocused around this perception of an American socialist threat, it morphed from broadcasting conservative takes on Latin American affairs to platforming conspiracy theories.
“They simply began to mainstream disinformation,” Gamarra says, describing how he often heard QAnon conspiracies repeated by the station. “But then nobody was fact-checking them, and they were having an enormous impact on public opinion here.”
[…] After the 2020 election, the disinformation problem really exploded. In the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection, a 2021 report from a coalition of Miami NGOs found that Radio Mambí’s programming repeatedly denounced Democrats as socialists and communists. The report found the radio station spread disinformation about election voting counts, questioned the legitimacy of Biden’s victory and repeated untrue claims about Democrats staging the Capitol protest. In the Mambí shows they analyzed, both the station’s callers and hosts repeated untrue claims about the election. [Transformed into a disinformation tool.]
In one of their examples, the report’s authors cited then-Mambí host Nelson Rubio, who falsely claimed Democrats manipulated the Covid-19 crisis to win the election. […]
[…] when liberals accuse radio stations like Mambí of fomenting disinformation, it can backfire, Trujillo says, because people dismiss those accusations as an attempt at silencing opposing political views.
[…] “I think George Soros would be surprised to realize he has funded a station that is even worse than it was before he purchased it,” Amandi says. […]
[…] On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron led a final visit to Notre-Dame Cathedral, allowing cameras into the iconic Parisian monument for the first time since it was engulfed in flames in April 2019. Over the past years, Macron involved himself in the renovation of the cathedral […]
Accompanied by a small group that included his wife Brigitte Macron, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, Culture Minister Rachida Dati and the Archbishop of Paris Laurent Ulrich, Macron walked through the nave, the cathedral’s main hall.
“It’s been repaired, reinvented, and rebuilt all at once,” the president remarked as he admired the modernized interior. “It’s beautiful.” […]
Notre-Dame’s official reopening is set for next weekend, featuring a religious ceremony and the attendance of thousands of dignitaries and artists. […]
[…] As the output of chatbots ends up online, these second-generation texts – complete with made-up information called “hallucinations,” as well as outright errors, such as suggestions to put glue on your pizza – will further pollute the web.
And if a chatbot hangs out with the wrong sort of people online, it can pick up their repellent views. Microsoft discovered this the hard way in 2016, when it had to pull the plug on Tay, a bot that started repeating racist and sexist content.
Over time, all of these issues could make online content even less trustworthy and less useful than it is today. In addition, LLMs that are fed a diet of low-calorie content may produce even more problematic output that also ends up on the web. […]
It’s not hard to imagine a feedback loop that results in a continuous process of degradation as the bots feed on their own imperfect output. […]
President Biden reiterated the United States’s support for Ukraine as it deals with the recent “horrific” Russian attack.
“Overnight, Russia carried out a horrific aerial attack against Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities report that Russia launched nearly 200 missiles and drones against Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure, depriving Ukrainian civilians of access to electricity,” Biden said in a statement.
Biden said the recent attack, which occurred as the United States prepared for its Thanksgiving holiday, was outrageous and is another reminder of the importance of supporting Ukraine.
Biden said his administration has “for months” been working to help Ukraine increase its resilience in the energy sector and its Department of Defense as it attempts to surge its “critical capabilities.”
“Russia continues to underestimate the bravery, resilience, and determination for the Ukrainian people. The United States stands with more than 50 countries in support of Ukraine and its fight for freedom,” Biden said.
The statement and attack come as major questions loom over the regional war. It follows Biden’s decision to authorize Ukraine to use long-range missiles inside of Russia.
As the area heads into a long, dark and cold winter season, fighting will become more difficult. […]
SEOUL, South Korea — Starbucks, one of the world’s most recognizable […] symbols of global capitalism, has a knack for choosing unique spots to open coffee shops. A 1,200-year-old castle in Prague houses one, an ancient former mosque in Cordoba another, and a decommissioned power station in London a third.
Its latest new venture is a foray into the last frontier of the Cold War […]
As of Friday, visitors to Aegibong Peace Ecopark near Gimpo, South Korea, can take in the views across the demilitarized zone and the North Korean border.
[…] Last month, Pyongyang blew up sections of inter-Korean roads and rail lines on its side of the border as part of its push to scrap its long-standing goal of unification. North Korea has also this year sent thousands of balloons attached to bags of trash, old batteries and manure across the border […]
Still, the heavily militarized border that bisects the Korean peninsula has long been an unlikely draw for foreign and local tourists, and now Gimpo is getting in on the action.
Along with the Starbucks, the city has launched a new public bus line that will take tourists to the park, once they have passed through a military checkpoint.
“People used to think of this area near the North Korean border as a dark and gloomy place,” Kim Byung-soo, mayor of Gimpo, told NBC News. “But now … this place could now become an important tourist destination for security [and] peace that can be seen as young, bright and warm.”
As the mayor spoke, customers took pictures of the Starbucks logo on their mugs against the backdrop of the north. The coffeehouse’s patrons can see a North Korean village on Songaksan Mountain, as well as the environmental preservation area that the civilian-free DMZ is home to. […]
Photos at the link.
birgerjohanssonsays
This is from a pro-Ukrainan podcast. The interesting thing is that despite having suffered heavy losses the Russians have not comitted nearby North Korean troops, apparently as they do not (yet) have the training to be useful.
The earliest SF film version of a Stanislaw Lem story;
‘Schweigende Stern’/’First Spaceship On Venus’ is described here in a film podcast, together with the American film The Bubble (itself an interesting film that has not received as much attention as lesser films of the era)
“The Bubble And First Spaceship On Venus – Hidden Gems!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=voLVUrR-HhE
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: StevoR 380 405 406:
Your links are still doing that bad quote at the end thing.
I made a guess as to what was going on earlier.
Indeed your urls technically do end with a “double prime” in the blog source, enclosed by normal quotes.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
What you need is a plain “quotation mark” such as when you write the formula yourself. The following formula ought to be amenable to copying if you prefer.
<a href="URL">LABEL</a>
.
.
/For this post only, I used special codes to make the formula visible and prevent the blog from mangling visible quotes. & < > "
birgerjohanssonsays
If you need to decompress from political assholes (I know I do) here is some furry cuteness
Canadian officials say SunFed Produce brand whole, fresh, American cucumbers have been recalled due to potential salmonella contamination.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) said Thursday SunFed is recalling all sizes of the cucumbers packaged in bulk cardboard containers with the SunFed label or in a generic white box or black plastic crate that has a sticker with the grower’s name, Agrotato, S.A. de C.V. in Sonora, Mexico.
The recalled cucumbers were sold in Canada and the U.S. between Oct. 12 thru Nov. 26…
Jeansays
This food recall is just a small preview of what’s going to happen in the next 4 years… It’s not going to be pretty (or safe).I certainly will be checking more where my food comes from and avoid anything from the US if possible.
Bekenstein Boundsays
Remember that long Fermi paradox debate a couple months ago?
Looks like we have our answer. All you’ve got to do is look at the news this past three weeks, and it becomes fairly obvious. :(
“Weird 80s Songs You’ve Definitely Never Heard Of”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=2bD0Bxf5owE
Naah. I recall “There’s a rat in me kitchen”, “Geil”, “Star Trekking” and “The Hitler Rap”. Especially the last one.
A man who caused an online storm when he found a Mars bar without its signature ripple has received £2 in compensation.
Harry Seager’s picture of the confectionery generated interest from thousands of members on the Dull Men’s Club Facebook page, with one labelling it “hideous”.
The 34-year-old said while Mars Wrigley UK would not give him a reason for the imperfection, group members said the bar had escaped being blown by air…
[…] Setting aside that “states’ rights” is typically just cover for imposing racist and retrograde views on everyone, there’s the bigger issue, which is that the federal government doesn’t really set education policy.
The federal role in education is much smaller than the fevered imaginings of conservatives. There’s no such thing as a federally mandated curriculum ramming woke ideas down the gullets of unsuspecting schoolchildren. Nearly all funding for education is at the state and local level. However, the funding and oversight the federal government is actually responsible for is mission critical for millions of students.
Let’s start with Title I funding. That’s federal funding that goes to schools with a high concentration of students from lower-income families. While conservatives might assume that means money flowing toward large urban school districts in blue states, it’s really red and rural states that benefit most from the added boost of Title I funding.
Overall, red states spend far less on education, and four of the five states most dependent on Title I funding—Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Arizona—are GOP-dominated and went for Trump in 2024.
Because both the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee platform were criminally light on details, no one knows what Republicans think should happen to Title I money if the Department of Education is eliminated.
House Republicans have routinely proposed deep cuts to Title I, but Project 2025, the actual blueprint for Trump’s second term, proposed eliminating Title I funding entirely—even though Title I funding is critical to addressing teacher shortages and axing it would result in a loss of almost 10% of teacher jobs in red states like Alabama and Florida. Sure, wealthier people in those red states could dodge the harm by sending children to a well-funded private school, but most parents can’t.
Axing the Education Department also axes the agency that delivers federal funding for students with special needs. That’s no small slice of students. Roughly 15% of K-12 students—7.5 million children—fall under the protection of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, known as IDEA, which is supposed to guarantee that students with disabilities have the same educational opportunities as those without.
In theory, the federal government is supposed to fund 40% of the cost of special education, but it has always fallen far short. States are also theoretically required to cover the remainder of the cost, but each state funds special education differently, leaving big gaps.
Conservatives—particularly those associated with Project 2025—have been quick to note that no one has proposed getting rid of IDEA or Individualized Education Programs, which provides for special educational services for individual students. That’s true, but somewhat beside the point.
Project 2025 proposes giving states no-strings-attached block grants for special education, funneled through the Department of Health and Human Services. States could then use the money however they want, including siphoning money away from public schools and shifting it to private ones.
The bigger problem, though, is that eliminating the Education Department also eliminates its oversight of students’ civil rights. Sure, the average Trump voter is probably fairly excited to think about stopping the federal government from protecting the civil rights of LGTBQ+ students or students of color.
However, the majority of civil rights complaints investigated by the department are historically about discrimination based on a student’s disability.
Theoretically, that oversight could be shifted to HHS or the Department of Justice, which investigates other civil rights complaints. Neither of those are good alternatives.
First, there’s the simple matter of expertise. Project 2025 proposes shuffling responsibility for the administration of IDEA to HHS’s Administration for Community Living, which has nothing to do with youth or education but instead focuses on ensuring people of all ages can fully participate in their community, regardless of disability.
[…] Putting the DOJ in charge of investigating disability complaints is no better. There’s the same lack of specific expertise issue, and while the Justice Department at least won’t be led by someone facing allegations of sex trafficking minors, the top roles at that department are going to Trump’s defense attorneys. This does not suggest a robust commitment to civil rights. […]
Eliminating the Department of Education isn’t even that appealing financially. The $268 billion it received in fiscal year 2024 represented a whopping 4% of the federal budget. The Department of Defense got triple that amount, while the Social Security Administration came in at over five times that.
[…] What gutting federal education funding and oversight will do is widen the gaps between well-off and low-income families, between well-funded and struggling public schools, and between blue states and red states. Trump voters may have believed they were casting a vote to hurt woke liberals, but they likely hurt themselves and their children much more.
During the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump claimed to know nothing about Project 2025—the deeply unpopular roadmap for a second Trump term created by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. […]
But now, over a month since Trump’s unfortunate victory, he’s nominated at least seven people who either directly contributed to the document or who promoted it […]
This breaks a promise from Trump’s transition co-chair Howard Lutnick, now Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Commerce. Lutnick said there would be no Project 2025 people in a second Trump administration. [Lutnick lied. Trump lied.]
[…] now that Trump won, he is installing Project 2025 contributors and promoters to roles such as director of the CIA, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, ambassador to Canada, and border czar, to name a few.
And let’s not forget JD Vance, who wrote the foreword to a book by the head of Project 2025.
Here are the other Project 2025 contributors and promoters Trump has chosen for his administration.
Russ Vought, nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget [more details at the link]
Trump tapped Russ Vought—who wrote a chapter in Project 2025 on the executive office of the president—to serve as the head of the Office of Management and Budget.
[…] “Eighty percent of my time is working on the plans of what’s necessary to take control of these bureaucracies. And we are working doggedly on that, whether it’s destroying their agencies’ notion of independence … whether that is thinking through how the deportation would work.”
Brendan Carr, nominee for chair of Federal Communications Commission [more details at the link]
Trump nominated Brendan Carr, who wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC, to chair the commission that regulates communication in the United States. Carr is currently an FCC commissioner. […]
Tom Homan, border czar [more details at the link]
Tom Homan—one of the masterminds of the inhumane family-separation policy Trump implemented in his first term in office—is listed as a contributor to Project 2025. […]
John Ratcliffe, nominee for CIA director [more details at the link]
Trump picked John Ratcliffe, a former representative from Texas who served in the first Trump administration as director of national intelligence, to head the CIA.
Ratcliffe is also listed as a contributor to Project 2025, which calls for reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was used during the probe of Trump’s possible collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign.
Pete Hoekstra, nominee to be ambassador to Canada [more details at the link]
Hoekstra is listed as a contributor to Project 2025.
Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary [more details at the link]
[…] Leavitt herself appeared in a Project 2025 training video called “The Art of Professionalism,” where, according to Media Matters for America, Leavitt “discussed working in the Trump White House and how to navigate working for the federal government.” [video at the link]
James Braid, White House director of legislative affairs [more details at the link]
[…] Like Leavitt, Braid also starred in Project 2025 training videos, talking about congressional relations and how Trump could get the Project 2025 agenda through Congress. [video at the link]
President Biden took to social media to promote Small Business Saturday and his administration’s efforts to boost small businesses, including investing more than $50 billion into the space.
“Every small business is an act of hope,” he wrote on social platform X.
“This Small Business Saturday, we’re celebrating all small businesses, including the 20 million new business applications — 20 million acts of hope — since I took office,” he added.
Biden announced a new initiative Friday to boost federal aid for small businesses. […]
Under the new program, the administration will expand caps on lending programs, improve forecasting of upcoming federal contract opportunities, increase access to federal subcontracts and leverage research and development for small disadvantaged business (SDBs), according to a fact sheet from The White House.
More than 20 million new business applications have been filed since Biden took office in 2021, the most in any term, per the release. […]
with business ownership doubling among Black families, hitting a 30-year high for Hispanic families, exceeding a 30-year high for Asian Americans, and surpassing pre-pandemic levels for women business owners.” […]
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) hit Elon Musk for suggesting in a post on his social platform X on Wednesday that retired Army Lt. Col Alexander Vindman “committed treason” and “will pay” after the former Trump impeachment witness accused the tech billionaire and close Trump ally of being unwittingly used by Russia.
“Message to Elon Musk—The Vindman family embodies patriotism and public service. You know nothing about either,” Kaine wrote in a post on X on Friday with a link to The Hill’s reporting on the situation.
[…] The back-and-forth on social media between Musk and Vindman began on Wednesday, when the tech mogul threatened Vindman, in response to a recent interview, in which Vindman said Musk was Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s “type.”
“Clearly Putin has a type. He likes narcissists and egomaniacs that he knows as a case officer can easily pander to manipulate, to do his dirty work,” Vindman said in the late October interview, which circulated among X users this week. “Russia has been using different levers — whether that’s corruption networks, in this case, its influencers like Donald Trump, like Elon Musk, to kind of sow discord.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Musk had been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022.
“Vindman is on the payroll of Ukranian oligarchs and has committed treason against the United States,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X earlier this week. He also said that Vindman, who played a central role in the first impeachment of then-President Trump, “will pay the appropriate penalty.” [JFC. Musk is just getting worse and worse.]
In a response on X, Vindman said Musk’s comments were “false and completely unfounded accusations,” and maintained that he had never taken money from Ukrainian oligarchs.[…]
birgerjohanssonsays
As a sixtysomething I constantly worry about my brain morphing into a Reagan or Trump.
But when writing about films, I finally recalled that films with unnecessary violence have ‘gratuitous’ violence. Just like 1970s-1980s films had gratuitous nudity and topless actresses.
birgerjohanssonsays
If Democrats and media people mean business about standing up to Trump, they should do a pilgrimage to Poland and other countries that successfully pushed back authoritarian regimes.
Under no circumstances should media or politicians agree to “normalise” the new situation. The only bipartisan cooperation should be with never-trumpers.
birgerjohanssonsays
Addendum: I mean, they should learn from masters of practical resistance about saving democracy, instead of assuming they are the smartest people in the room. We have seen where that got the USA.
Donald Trump doesn’t exactly have a great record with musicians. He’s infamous for stealing their music and racking up cease-and-desist letters—and even lawsuits—because they don’t want to have any association with him.
Unless you’re still hanging onto that Kid Rock poster you bought in the early aughts, you can take some small comfort in knowing that some of your favorite artists are not Trump fans.
Taylor Swift
Earlier this year, Swift’s success has had the Republican world of conspiracists and misogynists claiming the mega pop star was a “deep state” psychological operation created to shift the election away from Trump. In September, she endorsed Kamala Harris—which of course drove conservatives absolutely mad. It made Trump so mad, he posted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” on his social media site. [Taylor Swift video is available at the link]
Bad Bunny
The Puerto Rican popstar backed Kamala Harris on Instagram to his 45 million followers after racist comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at Trump’s Nazi-inspired rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City. [Bad Bunny video at the link]
Eminem
A longtime critic of Trump, the rapper loaned his talents to Vice President Kamala’s campaign at a rally in Michigan, alongside former President Barack Obama. [Eminem video at the link]
Cher
Cher endorsed Harris in October, but her history of slamming Trump goes all the way back to his first run for the White House, when she called him “a fucking idiot.” [Cher video at the link]
Joni Mitchell
The legendary folk singer made it clear she would vote against the orange one if she were a U.S. citizen.
“Fuck Donald Trump,” she declared at a concert in October. [Joni video at the link]
Marc Anthony
The Puerto Rican superstar singer and actor cut a powerful promo for the Harris campaign, reminding Hispanic voters of Trump’s bigotry. [Marc video at the link]
Eddy Grant
Grant took Trump to court for his use of Grant’s hit song “Electric Avenue,” in 2020—and won! [Eddy video at the link]
White Stripes
Trump’s unauthorized use of The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” led the group to reunite long enough to slap him with a lawsuit. The front man of the group, Jack White, posted a damning statement on his Instagram account on Election Day.
“Americans chose a known, obvious fascist and now America will get whatever this wannabe dictator wants to enact from here on in,” he wrote. [White Stripes video at the link]
Pharrell Williams
Williams sent Trump a cease-and-desist letter for playing his hit “Happy” at Trump’s ill-advised rally the same day 11 people were murdered at the Tree of Life Congregation synagogue in Pittsburg, in October 2018.
“On the day of the mass murder of 11 human beings at the hands of a deranged ‘nationalist’, you played his song Happy to a crowd at a political event in Indiana,” the letter said. “There was nothing ‘happy’ about the tragedy inflicted upon our country on Saturday and no permission was granted for your use of this song for this purpose.” [Pharrell video at the link]
Neil Young
In 2020, he sued Trump over the unauthorized use of his music.
“The Plaintiff in good conscience cannot allow his music to be used as a ‘theme song’ for a divisive, un-American campaign of ignorance and hate,” his lawyer wrote in the court filing. [Neil video at the link]
Beyoncé
Beyoncé was one of the many artists demanding Trump stop using their music at rallies. Not only did she tell him to stop playing her hit song “Freedom,” but she gave the Harris campaign explicit permission to use it as Harris’ campaign theme song [Beyoncé video at the link]
Stevie Nicks
The music legend penned an anthem for women in service of the anti-Trump movement during this year’s election. [Stevie video at the link]
Bruce Springsteen
The Boss released a full video detailing exactly why he was not going to vote for Trump. [Bruce video at the link]
In October, as a novice volunteer knocking on doors in Pennsylvania for the Kamala Harris campaign, my task was to make sure that committed Democrats voted, and to persuade undecided voters that Harris was the better choice. I was told not to spend time talking with voters who were clearly supporters of Donald Trump. But there was something about the way one man snarled at me, “She’s evil,” as he was tending his front lawn on a quiet, tree-shaded street in a suburb of Allentown, that made me stop.
When I approached, he seemed to shrink back, but he recovered and told me that Harris was a moral and physical danger to children because she supported public middle schools allowing students to undergo transgender surgery without the consent of their parents. By this time, after two months of canvassing, I had heard from several Trump voters some version of this noxious innuendo. I shrugged, told him his concern was not based on any reality I was aware of, and moved on to the next door on my list.
[…] Allentown is the most populous city in the Lehigh Valley, a forty-mile stretch on the eastern edge of Pennsylvania that follows the path of the Lehigh River. The city’s suburbs have a peaceful veneer that belies the tensions on the ground. On a winding rural road, I met an older woman, a registered Democrat, who had volunteered as a poll worker in recent elections. She said that her whole family was under online siege by maga militants who were accusing her of preparing to subvert the upcoming count. Another volunteer I met, who had come from Brooklyn with his two pre-teen kids, had been confronted by an armed Trump supporter. The man had claimed to be in charge of security for his neighborhood and said they were barred from entering.
[…] Even on that first day, walking around in sultry heat, I began to sense a dissonance between the celebrity-inflected exuberance of the Harris campaign and the bleak mood and raw divisions I encountered in the streets. I canvassed a gritty apartment complex, with brown grass in the green spaces, that surrounded a small pool, where several mothers languished as their children splashed. They all scoffed when I asked if they were Harris supporters. By the end of that afternoon, the warnings about Project 2025’s plans for an “authoritarian, Christian nationalist movement with broad control over American life”—in the words of a flyer I received as part of my “lit pack”—felt too academic for a voter with gray and missing teeth who told me she could not afford dental care. By contrast, just blocks away was a curving street lined with colonial-style homes, with Volvos and S.U.V.s in the driveways, where one smiling Democrat after another opened the doors. Here was the class polarization that would later get so much attention.
As for the Trump voters who turned up on my lists, I quickly understood that we were not operating on a plane of shared facts. A retired police officer shouted me down when I asked him to explain his support for Trump, given that the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, had injured a hundred and forty law enforcement officers. “That’s a lie!” he said, even though I had, at the ready, the latest Justice Department report on the prosecutions of the rioters. Another voter insisted that all Trump had asked for after the 2020 election was “a recount” of the national vote, as if that were a remotely feasible, or legal, proposition. Others echoed Trump’s dark visions of millions of criminal migrants rampaging across the land, though there was little sign of them in northeast Pennsylvania. This is what I was up against: Trump was broadcasting on some direct wavelength with his followers, and he had drawn them into his alternate universe of looming economic disaster, menacing migrants, and outrages perpetrated by Democrats against their children, which only he was visionary enough to see and strong enough to combat. […]
Donald Trump has selected his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, to serve as the next US ambassador to France, the president-elect announced Saturday…
Charles Kushner was pardoned by Trump in 2020 following a 2005 conviction on federal charges. Chris Christie, who led the case as the US attorney for New Jersey, said in 2019 that Kushner committed “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he had prosecuted.
Kushner, who was under investigation at the time for making illegal campaign contributions, targeted his brother-in-law, William Schulder, a former employee turned witness for federal prosecutors in their case against the Democratic donor. As part of the plot, Kushner hired a prostitute to lure Schulder into having sex in a motel as a hidden camera rolled. A tape of the encounter was then sent to Kushner’s sister and Schulder’s wife. Ultimately, the intimidation stunt failed, and the woman turned on Kushner.
Kushner pleaded guilty in 2005 to 16 counts of tax evasion, one count of retaliating against a federal witness and another count of lying to the Federal Election Commission. He was sentenced to two years in prison…
Final paragraph from the article featured in comment 442:
[…] I have been thinking of the last voter I spoke to in Allentown on Election Day. Charles is a Black man and a Democrat who worked for most of his life as a tile layer. I had met him a few weeks earlier, while canvassing. He suffers from debilitating arthritis and, when I knocked, he had limped to the door with a cane and a pillow under a sore arm. He told me he needed home health care, affordable medications, and confidence that his social-security benefits would sustain him. I followed up with him, because he had told me he needed a ride to the polls. I picked him up in my car. At one point, while waiting in line, he bent over and began to weep in pain, but he was determined to cast a vote for Harris as the first woman President. I’m sorry he did not see her win, but I’ll be keeping his tenacity in mind.
I am familiar with all of those difficulties. Too much pain. Not enough affordable healthcare. Social security benefits that are inadequate. Concern about losing Social Security benefits, or about having those benefits reduced. Not enough public transportation.
A deposit of high-quality gold ore containing around 1,000 metric tons (1,100 US tons) of the precious metal has been discovered in central China, according to Chinese state media.
Valued at approximately 600 billion yuan or US$83 billion,…
The Geological Bureau of Hunan Province announced the detection of 40 gold veins within a depth of 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) in the northeast Hunan county of Pingjiang.
These alone were thought to contain 300 metric tons of gold, with 3D modeling suggesting additional reserves may be found to a depth of 3 kilometers…
A South Carolina mayor died while being pursued by law enforcement on Tuesday, just days after the town’s entire police force quit due to a “hostile work environment.”
McColl Mayor George Garner II veered into eastbound traffic and collided head-on with an 18-wheeler during the police chase. Garner was connected to an active investigation by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, sources told WBTW, though details of the investigation are not clear…
Astronomers have taken a close-up photo of a star outside our own galaxy, the Milky Way, for the first time, the European Southern Observatory announced in a statement Thursday.
The star — WOH G64 — is 160,000 light-years from Earth, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy that orbits the Milky Way, according to the observatory.
The star is about 2,000 times larger than our sun and is classified as a red supergiant. The star is puffing out gas and dust, in the last stages before it becomes a supernova, according to the observatory.
“We discovered an egg-shaped cocoon closely surrounding the star,” Keiichi Ohnaka, an astrophysicist from Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile and co-author of the study, said in a statement. “We are excited because this may be related to the drastic ejection of material from the dying star before a supernova explosion.” …
birgerjohanssonsays
SF film facts: ‘Soldier’ (with Kurt Russel) is supposed to play in the same universe as Blade Runner.
‘Nemesis’ came a year before the animated Ghost In The Machine and brings up similar philosophical issues.
Bekenstein Boundsays
The star is puffing out gas and dust, in the last stages before it becomes a supernova, according to the observatory.
Dammit. I warned him that smoking would kill him someday, but he just wouldn’t listen …
Republican President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday he wanted former National Security official and loyalist Kash Patel to lead the FBI, signaling an intent to drive out the bureau’s current director, Christopher Wray.
Patel, who during Trump’s first term advised both the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense, has previously called for stripping the FBI of its intelligence-gathering role and purging its ranks of any employee who refuses to support Trump’s agenda…
I don’t see any mention of him ever having been accused of rape, which puts him ahead of most of Trump’s cabinet.
A steady pulse of bright energy has been emanating from the outskirts of the Milky Way for the past 10 years, occurring every three hours and lasting for about a minute. Astronomers believe they’ve identified the source of the signal, but this discovery brought with it a new mystery—one they now claim to have solved as well.
A team of researchers from the Curtin node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) first stumbled upon the radio signal while going through archival data from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), a radio telescope located in Western Australia. The energy pulse is the longest-period radio transient ever detected, with most signals appearing on timescales between tens to thousands of seconds…
With a clear view of the signal, the team behind the discovery used the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa to pinpoint the location of the radio waves to one specific star. Using another telescope, the SOAR observatory in Chile, the researchers then measured the star’s spectrum, determining that it is an M dwarf star, also known as a red dwarf star.
Although the team solved one mystery by locating the source of the signal, another mystery now lay ahead. “An M dwarf alone couldn’t generate the amount of energy we’re seeing,” Hurley-Walker said. “The M dwarfs are low-mass stars that have a mere fraction of the Sun’s mass and luminosity. They constitute 70 per cent of the stars in the Milky Way, but not one of them is visible to the naked eye.”
Instead, the data suggested that the M dwarf was in cahoots with another type of star, both working together to produce the repeating radio transient. The M dwarf is likely in a binary system with a white dwarf—the remains of a star that has exhausted its nuclear fuel and shed its outer layers. “Together, they power radio emission,” Hurley-Walker said…
StevoRsays
Belgium’s sex workers get maternity leave and pensions under world-first law, (Headline bolded – ed.)
… (Snip)…
Under a new law in Belgium – the first of its kind in the world – this will now be the case. Sex workers will be entitled to official employment contracts, health insurance, pensions, maternity leave and sick days. Essentially, it will be treated like any other job.
“It’s an opportunity for us to exist as people,” Sophie says.
There are tens of millions of sex workers worldwide. Sex work was decriminalised in Belgium in 2022 and is legal in several countries including Germany, Greece, the Netherlands and Turkey. But establishing employment rights and contracts is a global first.
Huge flooding caused by heavy rain in Malaysia and neighbouring Thailand has killed at least 12 people, officials say. More than 122,000 people have been forced out of their homes in northern Malaysia, while in southern Thailand, around 13,000 others have also been displaced. There are fears the number could rise, as heavy rain and storm warnings remain in place.
The family of beauty-salon owner Fathi Hussein are deep in mourning at their home in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, following her horrific death at sea after a deal she struck with migrant smugglers to take her to the French island of Mayotte went wrong. “We were told by survivors that she died from hunger,” the 26-year-old’s stepsister Samira tells the BBC by phone. The family learned from them that Fathi died in one of two small boats, adrift in the Indian Ocean for about 14 days, after being abandoned by the smugglers. “People were eating raw fish and drinking sea water, which she refused. They [the survivors] said she started hallucinating before she died. And after that they threw her body into the ocean,” Samira tells the BBC. Fathi’s family learned of her death from fellow Somalis who had been rescued by fishermen off the coast of Madagascar about a week ago.
[…] Trump has made clear how much he hates the FBI, and he has convinced his MAGA base that it’s a nest of political corruption. In a stunning reversal of political polarity, a significant part of the law-and-order GOP now regards the men and women of federal law enforcement with contempt and paranoia. If Trump’s goal is to break the FBI and undermine its missions, Kash Patel is the perfect nominee. Some senior officials would likely resign rather than serve under Patel, which would probably suit Trump just fine.
Of course, this means the FBI would struggle to do the things it’s supposed to be doing, including fighting crime and conducting counter-intelligence work against America’s enemies. But it would become an excellent instrument of revenge against anyone Trump or Patel identifies as an internal enemy—which, in Trump’s world, is anyone who criticizes Donald Trump.
Text above is quoted from an article in The Atlantic, by Tom Nichols.
CNN:
[…] Even among Trump loyalists, Patel is widely viewed as a controversial figure and relentless self-promoter whose value to the president-elect largely derives from a shared disdain for established power in Washington. Putting him in charge of the FBI would require forcing out current director Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Trump, before his term expires — prompting bipartisan criticism.
Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton compared Patel to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s leader of secret police, the NKVD, telling CNN: “The Senate should reject this nomination 100-0.”
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan cautioned Sunday that the FBI director should not be subject to the “whims” of politics, but declined to weigh in directly on Patel.
“What makes the FBI director different from most other nominees is they’re not just appointed for one term of a president, they’re appointed for enough time to last past two terms of a president, because they’re supposed to be insulated from politics,” Sullivan told CNN’s Kasie Hunt on “State of the Union.”
“Leading Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza tells Vox the world needs to start preparing now for Putin’s fall.”
On April 11, 2022, just weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the writer and activist Vladimir Kara-Murza was arrested outside his home in Moscow. He was charged with “spreading deliberately false information,” Kremlin-speak for criticizing the war in Ukraine. A year later, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison before later being transferred to a remote Siberian penal colony where he was held in an isolation cell.
Kara-Murza, who had already survived two earlier poisonings that had been linked to Russia’s security services, continued writing in prison, including regular columns for the Washington Post, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. He expected to die in prison, as his fellow dissident Alexei Navalny did earlier this year.
Then, in August of 2024, Kara-Murza — a dual Russian-British citizen — found himself suddenly released and expelled from Russia as part of the massive international prisoner exchange that also freed the American journalist Evan Gershkovich.
Last week, Kara-Murza sat down with Vox for an extended interview on the sidelines of the Halifax International Security Forum, where he had just received the event’s John McCain Prize for Leadership. (The award was particularly meaningful for Kara-Murza, who was a friend of the late Arizona senator and a pallbearer at his funeral.)
In an interview with Vox, which has been edited for length and clarity, Kara-Murza talked about the “surreal” experience of sudden freedom, the lessons of history for the war in Ukraine, and why Putin’s regime might not be as stable as it seems.
When this conference was happening a year ago, you were still in prison. Is the experience of being out still strange for you?
It is completely surreal. For the last three months, I’ve felt as if I’m watching some kind of a film. Frankly, it’s a very good film, but it does not feel real. I was absolutely convinced that I was going to die in that Siberian prison. And what happened on August 1, I can only describe it as a miracle, because the last time that there was an international prisoner exchange that actually freed Russian political prisoners — not just Western citizens held in Russian jails, but Russian political prisoners — was in October 1986.
It was a miracle, but in many ways, a human-made miracle, because this exchange was made possible by the relentless efforts of so many good people in democratic nations who never stopped advocating and speaking and shouting about this growing crisis with political prisoners in Russia. We have more political prisoners in Russia today than there were in the whole of the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s. This is the situation in Russia under Putin.
And so yes, it still feels totally surreal. I haven’t really had any transition. That’s another problem. I went from solitary confinement in a maximum security prison in Siberia to being in four or five different countries every week. And that’s not really the way it should be done after the prison experience, but I just feel I have no choice. Because, you know, while people are prepared to listen, I have to speak, because I do feel that responsibility now that I’ve been rescued from that hell.
Given what’s happened to a number of prominent critics of the Russian government abroad, do you still feel like there’s some threat to your safety, even outside of Russia?
When our plane was landing in Ankara on the day of the exchange, one of the FSB [Russia’s state security service] officers who was accompanying us turned to Ilya Yashin [another Russian opposition activist freed as part of the exchange] and to me, and said, “Don’t think that you guys will be safe over there. Krasikov can come for you too.” [Yikes. Talk about a direct threat.] [Vadim Krasikov is the Russian security service hitman, released as part of the prisoner exchange, who had been serving a life sentence in Germany for the assassination of a former Chechen rebel in Berlin.] He didn’t mean literally Krasikov, of course. They have a whole desk of Krasikovs.
I’ve been in Russian opposition politics for 25 years. We all know what can happen to people who publicly oppose the Putin regime. My closest friend, my mentor, the godfather to my younger daughter, Boris Nemtsov [the former Russian Deputy Prime Minister turned opposition leader, killed in 2015], was gunned down, literally in front of the Kremlin, on Putin’s direct orders. Other people have been poisoned, including myself, and we know that these attacks have happened not just on Russian soil, but abroad. […]
Another excerpt from the interview with Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza:
[…] You’ve referred to your training as a historian. Are there moments from history that you think can help us better understand this current moment we’re in, both the war and the political situation in Russia?
So first, I’ll answer the negative side of your question, and this links to your question about the next US administration and this talk we hear about possibly cutting a deal with Putin over Ukraine. I think one lesson from history that we must never forget is that the appeasement of dictators never brings peace. It always leads to more aggression, more suffering, more wars, because dictators do not see compromise as an invitation to compromise back. They see it as a sign of weakness, and they become more aggressive.
We know this from the history of the 1930s. We know this also from the history of the past 25 years of Western dealings with Putin because for a lot of that time, Western leaders on both sides of the Atlantic basically engaged in the policy of appeasement, and this is where it led us. And so I think that it’s very important that whatever agreement, whatever settlement is made to to end this war, that settlement has to take into account the interests of Ukraine, and that settlement cannot be done in such a way as to allow Vladimir Putin to present himself as being the victor, who’s being triumphant, because if that happens, that would be a disaster for everybody.
On the more positive side, I mentioned how quickly political changes happen in Russia. I remember 1991. I was 10 at the time, I was a child, but you know, when the revolution is happening in front of your eyes, it’s not something you can forget. And I remember those days in Moscow — the very smell of the air, the freedom. And to me, this was, in many ways, a life-defining lesson of those three days in August of democratic revolution.
Because, as you know, of course, that began as an attempted hardline coup d’état led by the leadership of the Soviet Communist part of the KGB, the military. And it seemed that everything was on the side of those coup plotters, right? They had everything to themselves. They had the whole machinery, the whole apparatus of the Soviet state. They had the whole propaganda apparatus. They had the police, the military, and of course, they had the KGB, the world’s most powerful machine of repression.
And the people who opposed that coup, who wanted to stand up for Russian democracy, they were not armed with anything except their dignity and their determination to defend their own freedom, but they went into the streets in hundreds of thousands — my dad was among those people — and they literally stood there on the streets of Moscow in front of the tanks, and then the tanks stopped and turned away.
The lesson here is that however strong, however stable, however secure a dictatorial regime may seem, if enough people are willing to stand up to it, they succeed. […]
[…] how about another tale of a nonbinary colonial person, the first colonist born on American soil to found their own religion?
Jemima Wilkinson was born on a cherry farm in 1756 as a girl, the eighth child of Quaker parents. She was steeped in Quaker theology, but after some of her brothers got kicked out of Quaker meeting for training for military service and her sister was kicked out for having an illegitimate child, Wilkinson began dabbling in the teachings of the New Light Baptists, who had more of an individualistic bent. Then at at 24, Wilkinson had an illness, probably typhus from a navy ship that had recently come into port. After days of fever she either almost died and recovered with a different personality, or she did die and was resurrected as a genderless spirit, called the “Publick Universal Friend.”
Either way, the person formerly known as Jemima woke up and said they had a vision of going to heaven and getting a revelation from two archangels, who tooted horns and proclaimed, “Room, Room, Room, in the many Mansions of eternal glory for Thee and for everyone.” They:
“droppt the dying flesh & yielded up the Ghost. And according to the declaration of the Angels, the Spirit took full possession of the Body it now animates.”
And from then on, for the rest of their life, they refused to be called by the dead name, and only answered to “the Friend” or “PUF” for short. Just three days after recovering from the illness/resurrecting, The Friend started preaching, railing against slavery, drinking alcohol, dipping snuff, and lacing one’s dress too tight, promoting celibacy, and foretelling fiery apocalyptic wrath when the end of the world came in 1780. And they preached that women should be obedient to God, not their husbands.
From evil practices abstain, and every other sin. [snipped long list]
And they got a really neat looking seal: [Image at the link]
The Quakers had female preachers, even traveling ones, and were not against people claiming to have a vision or two, but they could not tolerate that The Friend was commingling with the New Light Baptists, and kicked them out of meeting.
So they got together 23 disciples, mostly unmarried women, and they called themselves the Society of Universal Friends, basing their beliefs on Quaker theology but with a side of visions, prophecies and Godly feminism. The group invested in a plot of land in Genecca (Genesee) County in 1788, and at its peak 260 people were living there, mostly in single-female-headed households, with some adherents also taking up up androgynous dressing.
And The Friend kept to itinerant preaching around the North Atlantic colonies, where they collected new followers and also attracted attention, suspicion and accusations of of blasphemy: while The Friend would not claim they were the messiah, they wouldn’t deny it, either.
In Roxbury they were stoned and thrown out of town, and in Philadelphia, a mob attacked the meetinghouse where they were preaching with “stones & brickbats.” Prurient rumors spread, such as that the right-hand woman she traveled with was actually a man dressed as a woman.
“There are some among us who appear to believe that she was something more than human—the messenger of truth, divinely sent! Others paint her as a downright devil in petticoats—artful, abandoned, libidinous, and wicked,” noted Philadelphia’s National Intelligencer. (No one but The Friend’s followers seems to have respected their pronouns.)
Back on their plot of land, the Society made up the largest non-Native community in western New York. They lived in peace with the recently-displaced Seneca, interceded for the natives with the colonial government, and built a self-sustaining community with a grist mill, saw mill and everything. It didn’t last long, though, speculators bought the land out from under them and they were forced to move, buying land from the Iroquois Confederacy and relocating to Jerusalem, a town in Yates County, New York.
But the peace didn’t last, in 1799 a magistrate judge riled up by some disillusioned followers attempted to arrest The PUF for blasphemy. But The Friend was a skilled horse-person and outrode them. Then an officer and an assistant returned to the homestead and tried to arrest The Friend, but the group of fired-up unmarried women attacked the men and tore their clothes off, which sounds like quite a scene.
The men retreated, then returned with a posse of about 30, breaking down the door with an ax, and threatening to haul The Friend away in an ox-cart to face trial. A deal was made for the PUF to appear in court, and they did. The judge ruled that blasphemy was not a crime, and even invited The Friend to give a sermon in court, not very separation-of-church-and-state. And The Friend went back to their land and traveling-preaching for another 20 years. The group lived communally, helped tend to soldiers in the Revolutionary War […]
After The Friend died in 1819, at age 67, the group did not last much longer, which is a baked-in problem when you encourage celibacy. […] Today the Publick Universal Friend and their lawman-and-gender-stereotype fighting community has been largely forgotten, but sounds like a good time while it lasted.
[…] Trump’s choice of uber-loyalist Kash Patel to be FBI director is a hair-on-fire moment. Trump is poised to install a team of toadies at the Justice Department — a flotilla of his criminal defense lawyers but most ominously an attorney general, Pam Bondi, who has vowed that “the prosecutors will be prosecuted,” and now, with Patel, an FBI director who would add journalists to that list.
“Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said of Trump’s plans in a 2023 podcast with Trump ally Stephen K. Bannon. “We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly — we’ll figure that out.”
This is not normal.
Republican senators — enough of them, anyway — did their constitutional duty in balking at former congressman Matt Gaetz, Trump’s clownish first choice to serve as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. Now, unpleasant and politically perilous as it might be, they must stand up to Trump again.
Patel is particularly worrisome. Don’t listen to me, listen to Trump’s former attorney general, William P. Barr, who balked at Trump’s first-term efforts to install Patel in the No. 2 job at the FBI. In his memoir, Barr said he told then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that Patel would get the deputy job “over my dead body.”
Patel, Barr wrote, “had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency. … The very idea of moving Patel into a role like this showed a shocking detachment from reality.”
[…] It’s important to understand that a new president picking the FBI director of his preference is not the norm — it is an aberration, and a dangerous one. Presidents are generally entitled to political appointees of their choosing, but the FBI director is supposed to be insulated from politics. That is one reason the director is appointed to a single 10-year term, spanning two administrations.
[…] In his 2023 book, “Government Gangsters,” Patel wrote, “The rot at the core of the FBI isn’t just scandalous, it’s an existential threat to our republican form of government.” He calls the bureau “one of the most cunning and powerful arms of the Deep State” and a “tool of surveillance and suppression of American citizens.” Patel describes “the political jackals at the FBI” and recommends shuttering its Washington headquarters. Putting someone like Patel at the helm of the FBI would be beyond reckless. […]
Couple that with Patel’s allegiance to Trump. “Even in an administration full of loyalists, Patel was exceptional in his devotion,” the Atlantic’s Elaina Plott Calabro wrote in an August 2024 profile. “We’re blessed by God to have Donald Trump be our juggernaut of justice, to be our leader, to be our continued warrior in the arena,” Patel told the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. […]
Meantime, Patel is doing well by serving Trump. He sits on the board of the company that owns Truth Social, and has received more than $300,000 in consulting fees from Trump’s leadership PAC and another $145,000 for fundraising consulting for former Rep. Matt Gaetz in 2021.
In her Atlantic piece, Calabro quoted a longtime Trump adviser about the president-elect’s views of Patel: “A lot of people say he’s crazy,” Trump had said, according to the adviser. “I think he’s kind of crazy. But sometimes you need a little crazy.”
Few areas of the United States have seen the flowering of as many diverse enthusiasms and social and moral reforms as blossomed along the old Mohawk Trail and the early Erie Canal in New York State in the nineteenth century. As settlers poured into what had been the traditional lands of the Iroquois Nation, experiments of all kinds of a religious and of a social nature found a haven in these new lands. At one religious extreme were the celibate Shakers at Sodus Bay at Lake Ontario and then in Groveland in the valley to the east of the Genesee River, or the semi-celibate followers of Jemima Wilkinson, the purported re-incarnation of Christ in female form. At the other end of the social, religious, and moral scale was the creation of the Perfectionist Oneida Community where a form of free-love was established under the control of a Committee of Elders.
In between these extremes, the religious effervescences gave the name of “The Burned Over District” to western New York. Just as a forest fire can sweep all before it, the religious and reforming urges swept their way across the Ontario Plain between Albany and Lake Erie, changing the religious and social approaches to life. There was, for example, Charles Grandison Finney who led the emotional religious revivals which affected town after town and village after village in the 1820s and 1830s. Next were the followers of Charles Miller who accepted his reading of the Bible to look forward to a day in October of 1843 when Jesus would re-appear and the End of Time would be at hand. Although time did not end in 1843, a new Adventist group of sects did develop from this prediction, and they continue to expect the imminent coming of the Day of Judgment in our own times…
“The Great Disappointment” marked the end of the Millerite sect but gave birth to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists. The Burned-Over District also saw the birth of Mormonism and Spiritualism, the birth of Robert Green Ingersoll (“The Great Agnostic”), and significant activity in social movements including abolitionism, the Underground Railroad, and the Women’s suffrage movement.
Nothing is as it seems in this original folk horror tale based on historic events. A recently widowed alcoholic unwittingly clashes with a 19th Century-era cult who worship a dark force deep within the wooded hills of upstate New York.
Her spouse was undocumented when she entered Congress. […]
By Mel Leonor Barclay, for The 19th
[…] For years, Ramirez [Rep. Delia Ramirez] and her husband, Boris Hernandez, navigated life as one of the millions of mixed-status households in the United States. When the 118th Congress convened after the 2022 midterms, Ramirez, a Democrat, was sworn in as the first Latina ever elected to Congress from Illinois — and the only member openly residing with an undocumented immigrant.
Ramirez will join a Republican-controlled Congress for a second term in January. Her experiences as the wife of an undocumented immigrant and daughter of immigrants who entered the United States through its southern border will help shape Democrats’ response to President-elect Donald Trump’s expansive immigration agenda, which includes deploying the military to carry out the nation’s largest deportation effort.
With less than 60 days until the presidential inauguration, Ramirez has been urging the Biden administration to take executive and administrative action to mitigate the impact of Trump’s proposed policies. Her key concerns: the prospect of family separation and the ripple effects of mass deportations on the U.S. economy.
[…] lifelong effects for mixed-status families, who could become separated, and for communities that could see many of their members — and workforce — vanish.
[…] There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. […] A 2023 Pew Research Center analysis of available data found that 5 percent of U.S. households include at least one person who is undocumented. Almost 70 percent of these households are considered “mixed status” — in other words, they are made up of authorized and unauthorized immigrants, as well as U.S.-born citizens. About 4.4 million U.S.-born children under 18 live with an unauthorized immigrant parent, the analysis says.
[…] As the vice ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security and a member of its subcommittee on border security and enforcement, Ramirez has had a front seat to the dehumanizing comments about immigrants from a lot of the same Republican lawmakers who will now help advance Trump’s immigration agenda.
“I’m the only member of Congress that was in a mixed-status family in this building, and it was emotional. I sat in rooms — continue to sit in rooms — with the very same committee that talks about my husband, my uncle and my brothers and sister-in-law as if they’re less than human; as if they’re criminals,” Ramirez told The 19th from her office in Capitol Hill.
“To be in the space to have such a personal connection to this experience with people that don’t see the humanity of my own family is anything but easy,” she said.
[…] In the lead-up to Trump’s second term, immigrants’ rights groups are asking the Biden administration to speed up the processing of applications for temporary protection programs. These include the renewal of residency permits for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, who are temporarily authorized to live and work in the United States under an Obama-era program whose validity has been and likely will be challenged by the Trump administration.
The groups have also pushed to speed up work permit renewals for refugees and asylum-seekers. Representatives from the Americans for Civil Liberties Union on Thursday publicly asked the Biden administration to help limit mass deportations by closing down Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities with “egregious records of human rights violations and abuses” and halt the ongoing expansion of detention centers.
[…] Her mother left Guatemala and crossed the Rio Grande into Texas while pregnant with Ramirez. She said her mother’s journey became more palpable during a visit to the border alongside other members of Congress.
“I was walking through this detention center watching these women laying there with no beds, no chairs and those aluminum foil blankets. And one of them, a pregnant woman, ran to the window, to the glass, and whispered to me to help her,” Ramirez recalled. “That could not have been more real and more traumatizing for me. It was like I was seeing my own mother, and now I’m the vice-ranking member of Homeland Security.”
[…] Trump’s “Agenda 47,” a document detailing the policies of his next administration, argues that the 14th Amendment has been “misinterpreted” and that it grants citizenship only to children of at least one parent legally authorized to reside in the United States.
Trump has promised to issue an executive order on the first day of his second administration to end citizenship rights to children born in the United States to undocumented parents.[…]
One of Trump’s most talked-about plans, displayed in official placards at the Republican National Convention calling for “Mass Deportations Now,” represented a threat to Ramirez’s own household until days before the election. That’s when her husband got a notice from the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services granting his petition for permanent residency as the spouse of a U.S. citizen.
[…] The news arrived by email, “at 2:22pm, on that Sunday,” Nov. 3, she said. “After 24 years in this country, Boris is no longer undocumented. He is now a legal permanent resident. And that’s important, and it was emotional,” Ramirez added. “With that said, our joy probably lasted about 10 minutes because it was really difficult for my husband to remain joyful when he began to make the calls to his family.”
Hernandez has siblings who are living in the United States under the temporary permission given to them under the DACA program. Other siblings were not eligible, so they are in limbo — “and certainly in this precise moment, living with so much fear,” she said.
Then, there was this: One of Hernandez’s brothers died on Election Day. When he was buried, Ramirez recalled being struck by the thought that he had reached a different kind of permanent status in the United States with his death.
[…] “Congress has failed mixed-status families, immigrants and Americans for decades. My party and the Republican Party and a lot of people in this building have no idea what immigration and the process of immigration really is,” Ramirez said. “I have a responsibility to help educate and inform and bring people along into a space that for me is so obvious and clear because I live in it.”
That work can’t wait until Trump takes office.
“Funny enough,” she quipped, “I literally have my sleeves rolled up right now.”
JMsays
@465 Lynna, OM:
In a stunning reversal of political polarity, a significant part of the law-and-order GOP now regards the men and women of federal law enforcement with contempt and paranoia.
It isn’t as much of a reversal as it might seem. The far right has always had a double think with the FBI. They liked the FBI when it was arresting protestors and infiltrating left wing organizations or bust drug dealers and smugglers. They hated it when it infiltrated right wing organizations or arrested right wing terrorists.
The thing to understand about this is that they don’t care about the FBI’s methodology or the actual guilt of the target. They care about who the FBI is targeting. A right wing group is too be protected, a left wing one attacked. This has been true since the 80s at least when the FBI began breaking up some of the right wing militia groups.
After several months of being a laughing stock in Parliament over shady business dealings and accusations of having faked Indigenous heritage for personal gain, Edmonton Centre MP Randy Boissonnault has stepped down from the Liberal cabinet […]
“the Honourable Randy Boissonnault” will have his work cut out for him clearing his name after digging a George Santos-sized hole for himself through a series of improbable whoppers and doozies.
His political opponents are now calling for him to resign entirely after news broke that the medical supplies company he co-founded during the pandemic, Global Health Imports (GHI), has been temporarily banned from bidding on federal contracts after lying about being “a wholly owned Indigenous and LGBTQ Company” and is now under police investigation. [Oh, a scammer, a con-man.]
Strap in folks as there’s a lot to unpack in the wildest scandal to involve a Canadian cabinet minister since Mad Max Bernier, the Conservative foreign affairs minister at the time, forgot some classified documents at his sketchy biker moll girlfriend’s place way back in 2007. (Hilarity ensued.)
The term “pretendian” entered the lexicon in recent years for someone who claims to have Indigenous DNA but is unable to back it up, and a variety of high-profile Canadian public figures have been brought down for seeming to embellish their bloodlines, including filmmaker Michelle Latimer, legal scholar Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, author Joseph Boyden, and even sainted singer Buffy Sainte-Marie. The portmanteau was coined for “pretend Indian,” which frankly isn’t great since we only call Indigenous people of North America “Indians” out of some weird lingering deference to the genocidal Christopher Columbus, who was under the impression he’d discovered the Indian subcontinent back in 1492. It’s certainly catchier than, say, fauxboriginal or imitigenous though.
Boissonnault insists this is all just a big misunderstanding and has apologized “for not being as clear” about his family history as he could have been at a recent press conference, adding:
I never asked the party to refer to me as an Indigenous person. I never clicked any box in any form with the Liberal Party. I have never put an Indigenous claim to any contract or any application in my entire life.
Maybe not, but he did often say he was “non-status adopted Cree from Alberta” who is “known as Strong Eagle Man in the Cree community” while claiming that his great-grandmother was “a full-blooded Cree woman.” Boissonnault was also a sitting member of the Indigenous Liberal Caucus, although he now says he was only there as an ally. […]
A cabinet minister owning a business seeking federal government dollars is obviously a major conflict of interest, but initially Boissonnault had some wiggle room. He was first elected in 2015, lost his Edmonton seat to the Tories in 2019, and was re-elected in 2021, one year after starting GHI with business partner Steve Anderson to provide protective medical stuff during the pando. He claims to have stepped away from the business when he got his old gig back — not unlike how Dear Leader theoretically handed over control of the Trump Organization to his idiot sons Uday and Qusay during his regrettable first term — but it turns out he only got rid of his 50 percent ownership share this past summer. Oops.
It was his claims about having a Cree background that first drew a closer look from dubious fellow Parliamentarians, due in part to a policy that aims to ensure at least five percent of all federal contracting dollars are awarded to First Nation companies in order to help level the playing field. And his claims of no longer being involved with the company were quickly undermined by old business texts mentioning a mysterious “Randy” calling the shots. Prances With Wolves insists he is NOT the Randy in question, has no idea who it might be, and that it may have just been an autocorrect typo. Perhaps in reference to an equally mysterious Andy or Sandy on the payroll. […]
But his insistence that everything is on the up-and-up hit a substantial bump in the road when it came out GHI also shared an Edmonton post office box with a woman involved in a couple of major cocaine busts. Francheska Leblond has had run-ins with the law since at least 2008, and was arrested in the Dominican Republic two years ago after local police found more than 400 pounds of gak stashed aboard a charter flight bound for Canada. The plane’s crew and six other passengers were ultimately held in jail for several months before being released without charge.
Unsurprisingly, Boissonnault claims to have never heard of Leblond, which led to one of the funnier exchanges in recent House of Commons history when Conservative MP Michael Barrett asked a question about “Cocaine Randy,” which drew a request from Ahmed Hussen, the minister of international development, to strike the unparliamentary language towards a fellow MP from the record. Barrett replied he was simply referring to “the other Randy” who was evidently still running the show. [LOL]
[…] But “Cocaine Randy” — which honestly sounds more like slang for drug-induced horniness — is certainly a much kinder nickname than the Elizabeth Warren-inspired “Cocahontas” currently making the rounds on social media. […]
It is strangely reassuring to see that Canada also has its share of whacko nutjobs serving as elected politicians. Also disturbing at the same time.
“We firmly support the Syrian army and government,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was quoted as saying by state media.
Iran has thrown its support behind Syria’s government after thousands of insurgents took control of the country’s second-largest city of Aleppo and seized nearby towns and villages in a swift and surprise offensive.
[…]. “The Syrian army will once again be victorious over these terrorist groups as in the past,” he added.
His comments came after the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based war monitor, reported that insurgents led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had seized control of Aleppo International Airport.
[…] it’s the first international airport to be controlled by insurgents. The rebels now control “the majority of” Aleppo after forcing the governor, police and security branches to retreat from the city center […]
Russian and Syrian jets responded by striking the rebel-held city of Idlib on Sunday […] in a second day of intensive bombing aimed at pushing back the insurgents.
At least 347 fatalities, including 40 civilians, have been reported during the clashes […]
The fighting further exacerbates Syria’s humanitarian crisis, already one of the world’s worst after 13 years of civil war, which began in 2011 as a protest movement against Assad’s authoritarian rule but has since killed an estimated half-million people.
[…] Iran’s renewed commitment to Assad underscores the geopolitical stakes in the conflict and exposes a complex web of rivalries, factions and foreign interventions that ensure Syria’s turmoil persists.
While Assad controls roughly 70% of Syrian territory, the remaining areas are held by a mix of opposition groups, Kurdish forces and countries like the U.S. and Turkey.
Tehran sees Syria as a critical part of its regional strategy, providing a land corridor to Hezbollah in Lebanon and a front against Israeli influence.
Iran’s support for Assad mirrors that of Russia, which helped to turn the tide of the war during 2016’s battle for Aleppo between Syrian government forces and rebel fighters. […]
Moscow’s intervention also secured its military presence in Syria, including the naval base at Tartus, while bolstering Assad’s grip on power.
[…] The U.S., for its part, opposes Assad, opposes Russia and opposes Iran, but has allied itself with Syrian Kurdish forces despite their fight against the United States’ NATO ally Turkey.
Sullivan said it was “no surprise” that rebels have tried to take advantage of the main players backing the Syrian government, because Iran, Russian and Hezbollah have been distracted by other conflicts.
Inside Aleppo, schools and government offices were closed Saturday as most people stayed indoors, according to Sham FM radio, a pro-government station, although bakeries were open.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Friday that Aleppo’s two key public hospitals were reportedly full of patients, while many private facilities were closed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he wants to work “directly” with US President-elect Donald Trump and is open to his ideas, highlighting Kyiv’s eagerness to keep its most important ally onside as Russia intensifies its attacks.
This is Zelensky being practical. He has to deal with Trump and he knows Trump is easily manipulated. So he is trying to put on a friendly face and deal with Trump directly.
Asked by Sky News whether Ukraine would consider ceding some territory to Russia in exchange for NATO membership, Zelensky said that such a solution could in theory help to end the war but that it would run counter to Ukraine’s constitution.
“The invitation (to join NATO) must be given to Ukraine within its internationally recognized border. You can’t give an invitation to just one part of the country… You have no right to recognize the occupied territory as territory of Russia,” he said.
Again being practical. If the best Ukraine can get out of the war is a real guarantee of security for the currently free parts then they will have little choice but go with it. Ukraine isn’t big enough to face off Russia on it’s own. ISW: Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 29, 2024
The Russian military is considering establishing a separate service branch for unmanned systems, likely as part of the Russian MoD’s belated effort to catch up to the establishment of the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) in February 2024.
This is a good idea in theory but in practice for an army as badly organized and managed as the Russian army doing this while at war is likely to go badly. It will likely result in drones being distributed badly and too many hoarded by the central authorities.
Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov made an unannounced visit to Pyongyang, North Korea on November 29 amid intensifying Russian-North Korean cooperation. Belousov met with North Korean Defense Minister No Kwang Chol on November 29 and stated that the Russian-North Korean comprehensive strategic partnership agreement signed in June 2024 is the foundation of a “new Eurasian security system” and will play a stabilizing role in northeast Asia.
There is a complex political game going on here. Russia is unhappy with how bad the North Korean soldiers have been but they need the man power and supplies from North Korea plus there are strategic advantages. North Korea is unhappy with seeing their soldiers used as cannon fodder but the government wants to secure trade and strategic alliances with Russia. Having angered China to ally with Russia, North Korea will be in a bad situation if it breaks down now.
Georgians protested in Tbilisi, Georgia in response to an initiative by the ruling pro-Kremlin Georgian Dream party to delay European Union (EU) accession negotiations, prompting the Russian information space to resurrect information operations falsely framing the protests and Georgian opposition parties as potential threats to Georgian sovereignty.
The situation in Georgia has very obvious similarities to the one in Ukraine. The population wants to ally with the EU, the government fears being overthrown by Russia if they do. The population wants to move now when Russia’s ability to respond will be limited. The government wants to delay in the hopes things blow over.
Russian forces continued to counterattack in Ukraine’s main salient in Kursk Oblast on November 28 and 29 but did not make any confirmed advances.
Russia is pushing real hard to drive Ukraine out of Kursk. If the front is really frozen where it is the situation will look very bad for Putin. Losing Russian soil to Ukraine even if Russia took more then it lost will smash his image.
Along the rest of the front they continue slow progress where they are willing to throw away enough men to bludgeon their way forward.
President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday threatened 100% tariffs against a bloc of nine nations if they act to undermine the U.S. dollar.
I suspect one of Trump advisors told him to make this threat because those countries are not going to do anything in the current global situation. They have talked about setting a finance system to go around the dollar but at the best of times it would be a very complex international deal, right now those countries are barely on speaking terms. Russia, China and South Africa all have their finances hosed and can’t implement what would likely be an expensive deal. This makes it an easy win for Trump, his followers like the threat and there is no risk he actually has to do anything.
Residents throughout the Great Lakes are braced for more snow after getting pummelled with up to 3ft feet over the US Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
The Arctic blast led the Buffalo Bills NFL team to ask fans to help shovel snow from their stadium ahead of Sunday night’s game.
Communities on the shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario were left blanketed in powder, snarling roads and highways on one of the country’s busiest travel weekends of the year.
More than two million residents in New York, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania were under lake effect snow warnings on Sunday morning, according to the National Weather Service (NWS)…
With heavy snowfall on Saturday and more on the way, the Buffalo Bills put a callout to volunteers to help get Highmark Stadium ready ahead of Sunday night’s game against the San Francisco 49ers.
Videos and photos shared on social media showed blizzard-like conditions as plows pushed snow off the field and volunteers cleared it from stadium seats and stairs. Snow is expected throughout the night in the city, and the state of New York…
Common in the winter in this region of the US and Canada, lake-effect snow occurs when very cold air moves across the relatively warm water of the lakes.
These types of storms can cause large – though fairly localised – amounts of snowfall…
A driver had to make an unexpected stop on a Melbourne motorway after she looked down to find a deadly snake inside her car – and slithering up her leg.
The police were called to conduct a welfare check on the woman, who was “acting hiss-terically on the side of the road” attempting to flag down passing cars, Victoria Police said.
The woman told officers she had been driving at 80km/h (50mph) on the Monash freeway when she felt something on her foot.
Melbourne Snake Control were called in to retrieve the animal, which was identified as a tiger snake, one of the world’s most venomous reptiles.
The driver was taken to hospital for a suspected snake bite and is doing well, Melbourne Snake Control said on a social media post…
This First Person column is the experience of Kenzie Sproat, who lives in Regina. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, please see the FAQ.
I can still remember the nervous energy rolling off my dad when she first told me she was a woman.
It was the year after I had graduated high school when she called me into her room to show me a journal entry. In that entry, she confessed she was not the man I knew her to be, but rather a woman.
When I read that, it was the last thing I would have expected and I was filled with disbelief. But as I looked at her, I could see she had been trying to get the courage to tell me this for a while and I wanted to provide her reassurance.
This past summer, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla started clashing online with Elon Musk over Musk’s support for Donald Trump. The two tech billionaires argued about immigration, climate policy and MAGA values before their debating devolved into name-calling. But there was one area they appeared to find common ground on: a decades-old media critique by Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton.
“How many times have you read something in the media where you know the real story, but what they printed was diabolically false?” Musk asked on X, suggesting that press depictions of Trump were deceitful. “Agree on not trusting media,” Khosla replied. Hammering his point home, Musk posted a screenshot from Wikipedia about Crichton’s “Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.” …
How many times has the media you read settled a defamation lawsuit for 778 million dollars? It depends on which media you read, doesn’t it?
Crichton coined the term in a 2002 talk at a think tank. He defined it as the sensation of reading a newspaper story in your field of expertise and finding it littered with errors, then flipping the page and taking for granted that the next article, on a subject you don’t know much about, got things right…
What may surprise some fans is that much of his talk was actually focused on his hatred of pontificators. (Its title was “Why Speculate?”) Yes, he spit dilophosaurus venom at print publications that screw up facts and sneak conjecture into their reporting. But he was equally hostile toward cable-TV talking heads, insulated academics, internet opiners and—in keeping with several of his most famous books—arrogant technologists. “Futurists don’t know any more about the future than you or I,” Crichton said, later ripping into the cheapness of heralding the world of tomorrow. “You can’t lose. Even though the speculation is correct only by chance, which means you are wrong at least 50% of the time, nobody remembers, and therefore nobody cares. You are never accountable.” …
In other words, people like Elon Musk.
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #482…
Crichton is late to the game. Asimov pointed out just that problem with critiques of Velkovsky in the 1970s. In the relevant essay, he went on the criticize Velikovsky’s biochemistry because Asimov was, in fact, a biochemist. He pointed out that Velikovsky didn’t appear to know the difference between a hydrocarbon and a carbohydrate. (Carl Sagan did much the same in the Cosmos TV series. Criticizing Velikovky’s astronomy and orbital dynamics, which fall into Sagan’s expertise in astrophysics.)
Japan’s popular Princess Aiko turned 23 on Sunday, as she takes on more official duties even while her future in the imperial family remains in doubt.
Aiko, the only child of Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako, graduated from university earlier this year and has since been participating in official duties and palace rituals while working at the Red Cross Society, according to the Imperial Household Agency.
But Japanese law requires her to renounce her royal status and leave the family if she marries outside the imperial family.
The vast majority of Japan’s public supports changing the law to allow her to remain a royal and become emperor, but conservatives in the governing party insist on keeping male-only succession. Japan’s rapidly dwindling imperial family has only 16 members, including four men…
The 1947 Imperial House Law, which largely preserves conservative prewar family values, allows only males to take the throne and forces female royals who marry outside the family to give up their status. With only one young male member, that puts the survival of the 2,000-year-old monarchy in jeopardy.
The youngest male member of the imperial family, Prince Hisahito — Aiko’s 18-year-old cousin — is currently the last heir apparent, posing a major problem for the system…
During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.
More than 3,000 fake Gibson electric guitars shipped from Asia were seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at the Los Angeles-Long Beach Seaport. Had the guitars been authentic, they would have been worth $18 million, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.
Bluesky has updated its impersonation policy to be “more aggressive” after third-party analysis highlighted its verification problem. The Bluesky Safety account said that the social media service is removing accounts that are impersonating other people and those squatting on handles.
Bluesky is growing rapidly and has passed Threads for daily users by some counts. This means that impersonators and squatters are now piling up on Bluesky also. They have ramped up their moderation of such accounts to try and handle the situation.
They are running into other issues caused by growing so fast. They have a process for verification but it only works if you have a domain name, they will probably need a more general formal verification process at some point. Ramping up moderation in general is a problem because moderators need training but they are working on it. Bluesky is also running into some problems with the EU. Their sudden growth has changed what regulatory category they fall into and they are having problems keeping up requirements.
birgerjohanssonsays
Putin is eager to reclaim all Russian territory in Kursk before the Trump inauguration to get a better negotiating position. He does not give a damn that the weather makes advances hard, or that Russian hardware, tactics and numbers are insufficient.
Even taking into account that this podcast is pro-Ukraine it looks like the Kursk region is turning into a mini-Verdun, or mini-Somme.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-O13gQVcG2Q
A Tama County church is striking back with its new Nativity scene this year, and an eastern Iowa atheist says the church is taking it too far.
The town of Toledo has at least two Nativity scenes right now.
One, at the fire department, has been altered to now include Santa and his reindeer, complying with last year’s constitutional concerns regarding religious displays on public land.
“All we’re asking for is that they adhere to what the Constitution says, and they make this holiday season one for everybody, not just one group,” Justin Scott with Eastern Iowa Atheists said.
But this year, Solid Rock Bible Church is responding to the controversy with a private nativity scene that includes a depiction of King Herod to refer to atheists butting in where some say they don’t belong.
It’s drawing attention for the non-traditional addition of King Herod, a biblical figure known for ordering the massacre of children in an attempt to kill Jesus, who is labeled on the display as an atheist…
That’s mighty Christian of them.
Bekenstein Boundsays
Depending on the source, Herod was either a Jew or a pagan (and conducted a ceremony at a temple to Jupiter, no less). It does not seem he was an atheist.
The thing to understand about this is that they don’t care about the FBI’s methodology or the actual guilt of the target. They care about who the FBI is targeting. A right wing group is too[sic] be protected, a left wing one attacked.
“There are ingroups the law must protect but must not bind, and outgroups the law must bind but must not protect; this is the sum total of conservatism.”
Canadian Spa Hopes Hair-Freezing Contest Can Continue for Another 12 Years
Paraphrased for brevity.
The contempt of courts: Refusal to accept federal funds shows disdain for families
Oh, Lynna, thanks, again, for your work here. However, personally, as a terrible play on words, thinking about most of the topics posted here, it makes me want to roll over in agony.
If you don’t mind my expressing it, our take on things today is our video at theartsinarizona.org
Followup to comment 489, (in the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread).
FFS. Really?
Fox News praises Trump for allowing ‘Morning Joe’ hosts to kiss his ring
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @1, “Far more commonly family poverty is confused with neglect.”
Yes, that’s important to note.
shermanj @2: “Oh, Lynna, thanks, again, for your work here.” Thanks for that comment.
Cartoon: Taken for a ride
Followup to comment 495, (in the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread).
Washington Post link
More at the link.
Dental supply stock surges on RFK’s anti-fluoride stance, activist involvement
Hello.
Two international data cables in the Baltic Sea have mysteriously broken. It’s that time of year, I guess.
https://yle.fi/a/74-20125395
Study: EV battery prices to drop by 50% by 2026
Dr. Pekka Jahunen explains concepts for exploring space.
.
“How The Moon’s Bumpy Gravitational Field Can Help Launch Things From Its Surface ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=VP4fn0_cb24
There is also a discussion about extracting ammonia salt from Ceres for its nitrogen.
Ceres rotates fast enough (and has an orbital velocity low enough) to make a space elevator feasible. You could even build a megasatellite around it with a frame holding multiple Oneill cylinders.
Ultra-Thin Silicon Wafers Wring More from Power Electronics
Weekends Were a Mistake, Says Infosys Co-founder Narayana Murthy
Phys.org
“Statistical approach improves models of atmosphere on early Earth and exoplanets”
.https://phys.org/news/2024-11-statistical-approach-atmosphere-early-earth.html
Some Arab Americans who voted for Trump are concerned about his picks for key positions
Leopards, etc.
Oh look, I beheld this months ahead of time:
People like Vicar, myself, and very few others are the only credible political commentators on here. If you’re looking for ways to move forward from your devastating and complete defeat, I have ideas.
13th-century Polynesians settled on freezing sub-Antarctic islands after ‘mind-blowing’ sea voyage
Re: beholder @ #15…
Current vote counts (which are still continuing) have Harris slightly ahead in the popular vote, so hardly a “devastating and complete defeat”.
beholder:
You’re proud of your predictions and how you voted?! You talk about a campaign of fear and turning the dial up to 11 but after the nominations up to now that was not even close; it’s even worse than anything foreseen and that’s just the preview. If you think Biden was bad (and he is on many fronts), it’s going to be so much worse on all fronts (unless you’re rooting for dictators and fascism). And there’s not going to be any guard rails like there would have been with the democrats.
So enjoy your smugness while the world burns around you and people die and suffer. Unless you end up amongst the casualties.
Video: CNN – Undocumented mechanic says he won’t regret his support for Trump even if he’s deported (4:03)
@ 18
Take your advice, roll it up, and use it to fuck your puckered asshole until you bleed out and die.
Whoops, that was meant to be hurled at 15.
You think having to grow up without a father would be better?
Oh, wait. Yeah, they’d definitely be better off without this particular father serving as a role model. Nevermind.
@17 whheydt
Fake news. Are you even trying anymore?
@20 Akira
You first. If it works, I’ll consider it.
@ 23
You’re welcome try.
One thousand days today since Putin decided to invade Ukraine. The consequences have been catastrophic for both Ukraine and Russia.
The death toll disputed estimated at around 120- 174,000 Russian troops, 57,000 Ukranian troops & 39,000 civilians but probly really higher.
See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War#Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
Akira MacKenzie @20,
That wording is courtesy of CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain. I approve that wording. The reminder was directed to birgerjohansson @480, 481, from the previous set of 500 comments in The Infinite Thread.
Akira, you already know this. You should not have to be reminded.
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-19/ukrainian-refugee-cafe-owner-london-ukraine-russia-war-1000-days/104608972
Please ban yourself for the night, Akira M.
No, Trump doesn’t actually have an electoral mandate—here’s why
Posted by readers of the article:
Followup to comment 3.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/suckers-make-up-with-fascist
So you’re taking beholder’s side, eh? After all he’s said and done here?
I’m sure you and your fellow fascist stooges will go on helping Trump all you can, while he turns up the dial on enabling Israeli genocide in Palestine to 11, abandons the Ukrainians to the mercies of your chum Putin, and gets on with imposing fascism at home. But you won’t find much help here.
Stephan’s History of the world.
“The original gods of Israel (El, Baal, Yahweh, Asherah)”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=n9q_b9UvfBY
Kyle Kulinski demolishes the uber-smug Bill Maher’s bulldust here – just under 15 minutes long
@15. Beholder : Talking of the infuriatringly , unhelpfully uber-smug and utterly wrong. Fuck off you vile hypocritical, worse than useless Trump enabling, genocide assisting troll! You got Trump who is the person you * ACTUALLY fucking voted for elected. YOU inflicted him on the retsof our planet with your purity disunity bullshit. You have hurt the entire planet and at least doubled if not tripled or quintupled the amount of genocide we will see you willfully ignorant, fanatically, blinkered piece of exrement.
.* You and Vicar and every fucking douchebag extremist unelectable third party spoiler voter and counter-productive fool who did anything other than vote for Kamala Harris and encourage and support people to vote for Kamala Harris. Turns out it was close – closer now than it first appeared – and you could have made a difference for good instead of evil. But refuse dto do so because good wasn’t good enough for you even when the ONLY alternative was, again, evil. Which for the umpteenth time are relative fucking terms and you’ll never get the perfect unicorn that farts rainbows you demand as your minimum ideal candidate. Its politics its life, its how your shitty Amercian system works – or used to pre-Trump’s fascist Christian Suypremacist Dictatorship which, again, is on you.
Robot runs marathon in South Korea, apparently the first time this has happened
India Plans To Build a Moon-Orbiting Space Station By 2040
Do you remember that chat we had about the protective effects of the Earth’s magnetic fields not long ago? This would be outside the protection of those fields, which no previous nor existing space station has been.
Re 29 and 31,
Apparently, Trump won the popular vote by a smaller margin than he lost it in 2016. He must be still one of the least mandated presidents in United states history, on average. Barely mandated, if you consider just his second term.
Airbags, but for knees.
Seen on a t shirt :
Crows before bros.
Support your local murder.
What Is An Anti-SLAPP, Anyway? A Lawsplainer Series
@ 29, 38
The right is so anti-gay I am surprised they are touting a man-date.
Reginald Selkirk at 16 – That’s interesting. I looked up Enderby Island on Google Maps. It’s one of the smaller islands in the Auckland group, but seems to have an excellent natural harbor.
The Polynesian (proto-Maori) settlers there must have lived off seabirds, seals and fish. I suspect the settlement was abandoned largely because the local game populations collapsed after some decades of overexploitation. Similar collapse happened on the NZ main islands, and the early Maori then became increasingly agricultural people. That wasn’t an option in the frigid south, particularly since the Polynesians only had crops that required a tropical or at least warm temperate climate.
The proto-Maori also settled Chatham Islands (which are slightly warmer and larger than Auckland Islands, but about equally remote from mainland, and still too cold for Polynesian farming) shortly after settling the NZ mainland. A small population lived there for centuries on hunting, fishing and gathering, and evolved into a people called Moriori. They practically lost all contact with Maori, since both cultures became less interested in seafaring, and the Moriori din’t really even have resources for maintaining open sea canoes and navigation skills.
Shortly after European contact in the early 19th century, the Maori were eager to adopt new technology (particularly guns) and became heavily involved in colonial-industrial sealing and whaling. They rekindled their old tradition of settling remote islands, including the Chatham and Auckland, and genocided the Moriori in the process. Not that an isolated population that small would’ve been sustainable over a timescale of millennia, anyway. The Maori settlement on Auckland Islands farmed sheep and introduced useful plants. Eventually, the settlement was again abandoned, I presume because mainland communities increasingly offered a modern standard of living, which was more attractive than hardscrabble survival.
SteveoR @34 and 35, please dial back the personal insults. You can make your points without labeling another commenter as “excrement,” etc. Thank you.
Note to Akira, and to all who comment here. I am not taking beholder’s side. I am not taking anyone’s side. I am trying to keep discussions relatively civil. Dial back the personal insults. Stick to the facts as much as possible. Do not promote violence. Do not fantasize about doing violence to other human beings. Do not indulge in imagining random violence befalling other human beings. Steer clear of even “joking” about violence, including metaphorical violence. Thank you.
In other news:
Trump’s defense attorney is known for his practicality, his loyalty and the copious cash he made representing him. He’s poised to take on a leading role at the DOJ next.
Good news:
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/rfk-jr-fixing-to-screw-up-his-one
RFK Jr. Fixing To Screw Up His One Not-Crappy Goal
Medical professionals are worried he’ll set back years of work on treating diabetes and obesity.
Link
Moscow Times: Putin Lowers Threshold for Using Nuclear Weapons in Updated Doctrine
Nuclear saber rattling but it is a dangerous move. Putin is authorizing himself to use nuclear weapons widely enough that he will always be able to find a reason. Any non-trivial attack would be grounds for using nuclear weapons and some non-attacks are now considered grounds for nuclear weapons, such as preparing defenses against Russia.
The changes were proposed some time ago and it’s surely not a coincidence that they were signed at the same time as Ukraine made it’s first long range missile strikes into Russia.
Prosecutors say sentencing in Trump hush money case can be postponed
The president-elect had been scheduled to be sentenced later this month after being convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Oh FFS.
Link
Another doofus for Trump’s cabinet:
Link
Link. That link leads to a news roundup that includes other, unrelated reports.
Excerpt from an article by John Cassidy of The New Yorker:
Same link as in comment 53.
Musk is in it for the money. And for potential deregulation that will allow him to be even more free to do whatever he wants to do.
Watch Rachel Maddow spell out how to block Trump
Link
Followup to comment 56.
Hacker accesses sealed testimony of woman alleging Matt Gaetz had sex with her when she was 17
The file that was hacked Monday included the testimony of the woman who alleges she had sex with Gaetz when she was 17 in 2017, and the testimony of a second woman who said she witnessed the encounter, a source told NBC News. [Video at the link.]
Followup to 332 and 437 from the previous set of 500 comments.
More than 40,000 protest New Zealand Maori rights bill
6-hour Facebook video. A mix of English and Māori languages. No subtitles. Justice for Palestine makes a speech at 4:25:52.
Hana-Rāwhiti delivers speech after world-shaking haka
* Video of her protest speech at the link.
* Wikipedia – Electoral System of New Zealand, Māori seats
https://mastodon.nz/@Xas/113508581688801139Trump picks Dr. Oz to lead massive Medicare, Medicaid agency CMS
Mehmet Oz in April 2020
Scientist behind superconductivity claims ousted
Jaguar is now JaGUar
Fuck me.
A sweet story to cheer you up
“My Golden Retrievers Gentle Approach to a Terrified Rescue Puppy”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=YGkSDyh8zYE
Youtube: 20 Nov: BRUTAL DEFEAT. Russians ARREST ALL GENERALS. Siversk Offensive Ended
After repeated failures the army attacking Siversk was out of options. They launched a final attack before the season ended. This also failed and the situation was so bad that the Russian command arrested the general in charge and a bunch of other officers.
The Russians now have a problem with officers lying about their success. The war is going so badly the officers must succeed or be recalled to Moscow. Facing that the officers are declaring victory and hoping they can fix the situation with follow up forces before the high command notices. This has happened in both the Siversk offensive and the Kursk offensive.
This is very bad for the Russians in a bunch of ways. As word gets out it makes the war and the commanders in charge unpopular. It makes the planning and operations by the central command impossible to do well because they don’t know how far things are from the front or what areas actually need reinforcement. And worst for Putin, it makes the government look like it isn’t in control, one thing Putin can’t tolerate because if it gets out of hand it can bring down his government.
JM @63:
Putin brought that on himself.
Related news, as posted by NEXTA on X/Twitter:
If Lavrov is praising Scholz, then Scholz should conclude that he did something wrong.
As posted, with a photo, by WarTranslated (Dmitri):
https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1858851661160046856
Also available in this report, which also features a lot of other Ukrainian and/or Russian news.
Followup to lumipuna @8.
As posted by NavyLookout:
https://x.com/NavyLookout/status/1858841426387157038
Map at the link.
Also available here. You have to scroll through other reports to find it.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/what-the-hell-is-it-that-nancy-mace
What The Hell Is It That Nancy Mace Is Doing In the Ladies’ Room?
Posted by a reader of the article:
And that one word condemns that legislation, for it makes it a bill of attainder, and thus unconstitutional.
Or, it would condemn it if the Supreme Court could remotely be trusted anymore.
Pumping the AI bubble
Two randos exchanging comments
@69
Nvidia’s data center Blackwell GPUs reportedly overheat, requiring rack redesigns and causing delays for customers
@8, 66
undersea cables cut
Danish Navy boards Chinese ship suspected in European undersea cable sabotage — Sweden’s Defense Ministry put freighter at the time and place of the disruption
US shuts Kyiv embassy citing strike threat after Ukraine fires ATACMS at Russia
Link
See also I may have to put my retirement plans on hold, in which PZ mentions Linda McMahon.
Link.
More at the link.
Link
What does RFK Jr. think about Oz’s connections to shady deals involving large amounts of Big Pharma dollars??
Cartoon: From dawn to dusk
https://www.wonkette.com/p/mtg-threatens-mutually-assured-dickstruction
Defense Secretary Austin says women in military ‘make us stronger’
Austin in an exclusive interview with NBC News called women in the military a strong asset. Trump’s choice for Secretary of Defense [Pete Hegseth] has cast doubt on women in combat roles.
‘Bomb cyclone’ storm leaves 1 confirmed dead and more than 500,000 customers without power on the West Coast
A Pacific storm system 300 miles off the coast of Washington — described as a “bomb cyclone”— is bringing high winds, rain and snow to the region.
Video and photos at the link.
@77 Lynna, OM
True! I don’t like her whether she’s mad or not.
I’m sure she would. She has a history of this.
Greene displays sexual images of Hunter Biden at IRS whistleblower hearing
Consequences:
Heh. Elon Musk did the Democrats a favor.
Link
Followup to comment 81.
Link
FBI Says It Busted ISIS’s Graphic Designer in Houston
This Solitary Dolphin in the Baltic Sea Is Really Going Through It Right Now
Operation Smash Hit Rammed A 100 MPH Train Into A Nuclear Waste Canister To Prove How Strong It Was
@45 Lynna, OM wrote: I am trying to keep discussions relatively civil.
I reply, we are entering a New Dark Ages (yes, I’m wearing the phrase out). I very much agree that we should be civil here. However, I also feel so angry at so much of the outrageous hatred, bigotry, lies and violence in which we are immersed, it is difficult for me to exercise sufficient self-discipline to not explode with expletives.
Hey, people, let’s keep in mind that PZ starts his videos with the greeting “friends”. let’s all drop the temperature (I, too, will try to do that). stay sane and stay civil (at least here and toward each other), this should remain a haven for rational and decent for discussion.
German satire program. The US election starts at 14.30
“Ampel-Aus, Neuwahlen, Trump triumphiert – die krasseste Woche des Jahres”
Heute-Show vom Nov. 8
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Vscm7Db6OqI
I find it difficult to follow the intricacies of day-to-day US economic events from over here in Sweden.
How deep is the negative reaction in US financial circles as it becomes evident that Trump really intends introducing tariffs, and appointing unqualified members of government?
Is this just a couple of bad days at the stock exchange or is it a stronger pessimism?
Tom’s of Maine toothpaste tainted with bacteria, says U.S. Food and Drug Administration
shermanj @86, I understand. Good points. Thanks for posting that.
In other news (but also somewhat related): GOP House speaker segregates Capitol bathrooms to target 1 member”
Well actually, the Dow-Jones is up a couple hundred points since the election.
Followup to comments 3 and 30.
Link
House Ethics Committee to keep Gaetz report under wraps
In other words, the Republicans on the committee obeyed Trump.
Re: birgerjohansson:
If you type “vti” into google on a desktop browser you’ll see a chart of Vanguard’s total market index fund, basically the S&P500 plus a bit of mid/small companies. You can click-drag across it to see the percent difference between two dates. There was a surge post election that fell days later, but zooming out, it’s not unusual for the stair step pattern.
Of course the whole point of diversifying across the whole market is to NOT react to daily chaos of any given sector. Reportedly there’ve been upticks in private prisons and Elon’s death traps, chasing dystopian fad investments.
NPR said the stock market reflects uncertainty, that companies had been holding back on decisions until they learned which administration they’d be dealing with, and now they carry on with a new normal.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/in-triumphant-return-meatball-mcpeenertoilet
In Triumphant Return, Meatball McPeenerToilet Named Ambassador To NATO
Alleged ‘potato cartel’ accused of conspiring to raise price of frozen fries, tater tots across U.S.
Merkel eviscerates ‘emotional’ Trump in upcoming memoir
The former German chancellor painted a scathing picture of the president-elect — and hinted at a playbook for dealing with him.
Republicans tend to juice the economy in the short-term by deregulating unethical business practices, then leave the resulting disaster for Dems to clean up.
There is actually a precedent for the House to release an investigation of a former member: There was a congressman named (I am not making this up) Bill Boner.
The Boner precedent makes it perfectly legit to release the investigation of Matt Gaetz.
“Bombshell Matt Gaetz Testimony Alleges Sex Trafficking a Minor | The Daily Show”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=2lVHumVPYgk
Trump set to appoint Project 2025 architect Russ Vought to Office of Management and Budget
Vought is a leading proponent of “Schedule F,” a plan to potentially fire thousands of federal civil servants and replace them with MAGA acolytes.
Watch Jimmy Kimmel mock Trump’s ridiculous Cabinet picks
Video at the link.
Billionaire Gautam Adani charged in New York with massive fraud, bribery
Earth’s magnetic North Pole is shifting toward Russia. What does that mean?
Republican Commissioner’s daughter steps forward as the woman he sexually assaulted in Las Vegas
Italian village offers $1 homes to Americans upset by the US election result
US Air Force plans new unmanned aircraft capable of carrying 500 lbs over 230 miles
Alex Jones sues Sandy Hook families and The Onion for ‘Frankenstein bid’ to buy Infowars
Alex Jones making allegations without evidence to back them up? Say it isn’t so.
Man convicted of killing Laken Riley sentenced to life in prison without parole
Wow, that was fast.
Michael Knowles: “Atheist chaplains, in a way, have already existed for a long time and we just call them psychiatrists”
A Lobster Trap Tree Grows in Rockland
Military Veteran Gets Time Served for Making Ricin Out of ‘Curiosity’
The missing banana slug that has a California community outraged
New volcanic eruption started in Iceland at 11:14 PM (local…they’re on GMT, a bit less than 2 hours ago as I write this). It’s in the same area the last few eruptions have been. Initial fissure is about 2 Km long. Initial flow rate estimated at 12-13 cu. m/sec. Pretty much any Icelandic news site should be carrying the news by now.
@88 birgerjohansson: There are a lot of public announcements but not a big actual market move yet. The tariffs probably will be very unpopular but it’s still some time before Trump can do it. What is happening now is more “OMG, what is going to happen?” angst then real panic or anger.
With Trump there is often a large gap between what he announces and what he does and exactly what he tariffs and by how much will matter a lot. He could easily add tariffs to Chinese products that are already essentially banned because the companies are not allowed to do business in the US, declare victory and go play golf. He could also put tariffs on all imports of important goods, trigger a global trade war and crash the global markets.
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-21/sarah-mcbride-responds-to-bill-restricting-transgender-bathrooms/104627958
Repug Congressbigots make hateful statement and ruling on on the Transgender Day of Remembrance.
See :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_Day_of_Remembrance
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-21/gautam-adani-indicted-in-new-york/104628238
Some measure of justice for one dodgy billionaire hopefully?
As if any of these dipshits know anything about biology.
Field reversal soon, or else Putin is cooking up some kind of superweapon. :P
@103. Reginald Selkirk : “Earth’s magnetic North Pole is shifting toward Russia. What does that mean?”
Et tu North Magnetic Pole? Does everything have to be shifting towards Russa’s, well, Putin’s favour these days?
Admittedly not sure how this helps Putin much..
@118. Reginald Selkirk : Yep – & very telling about their warped cruel priorities.
Seems our galaxy may not be as typical or common a type as we’d thought :
Source : https://phys.org/news/2024-11-milky-outlier-similar-galaxies-universe.html
Scott Manley – What Does Trump’s Return Mean For NASA, Artemis and US Spaceflight? Deep Space Update Special YT video – 20 mins long.
Russia fires intercontinental ballistic missile in attack on Ukraine, Kyiv says
Convicted Jan. 6 rioter now found guilty of plotting to kill FBI agents
Breaking news :
Source : https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/11/21/live-israeli-attacks-kill-52-in-north-gaza-us-defends-gaza-ceasefire-veto
Gather Deif is already dead FWIW.
Will this be enforced? Do I even needa ask?
Steven He:
“Why Ghosts Don’t Haunt Asians”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=GyRIk99toRE
More gems from Steven He.
(I get ‘Four Yourkshiremen’ vibes)
“How Asian Parents will Explain COVID”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/1Gp7GVA8Umg
Scientists Create “Extraordinary” Mouse Using Gene Older Than Animal Life Itself
.https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-create-extraordinary-mouse-using-gene-older-than-animal-life-itself/
An extraordinary result. Part of the genetic tool box in use today is way older than the Cambrian Explosion.
Link
We didn’t have all of these details before. Now we do.
So Much For Trump Distancing Himself From Project 2025
Same link as in comment 130.
Link
Followup to comments 67 and 90.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/nancy-mace-continues-obsessing-over
https://www.wonkette.com/p/everybody-hates-tulsi-gabbard-except
Washington Post link
Matt Gaetz withdraws bid to be attorney general in Trump administration [!!!]
Followup to StevoR @126
Washington Post link
@135 Lynna, OM
Please tell us that his resignation from the House is still valid and unretractable.
Please.
Russia did not fire an ICBM at Ukraine, U.S. officials say, disputing a claim by Kyiv
U.S. officials told NBC News that the weapon fired by Moscow at the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro was an experimental intermediate range ballistic missile.
Reginald @137, Gaetz only resigned from his current job. He was reelected to begin anew in January. I don’t know what is going to happen next.
Link
Pressure resulting from the partial release of details from the Ethics Committee report forced Gaetz out, in my opinion. Investigative journalism and public pressure sometimes works. Also, Gaetz spent some time alienating almost everyone but Marjorie Taylor Greene before he embarked on his latest lackey-for-Trump escapade.
Followup to to comments 135, 137, 139 and 140
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/matt-gaetz-withdraws-from-ag-consideration
Trump Tells Republicans to ‘Kill’ Reporter Shield Bill Passed Unanimously by House. (That’s a New York Times link.)
The bill, known as the PRESS Act, would codify protections against federal investigators seizing reporters’ records. It is now less likely the legislation will clear the Senate before the current session ends.
More at the link.
What Matt Gaetz actually posted on X:
JFC.
More details, some relevant to Reginald’s earlier question:
Link
They thought they’d found Amelia Earhart’s plane. Instead, the search continues
Tesla Cybertruck Owners Discover New Weakness: Magnets
re Reginald Selkirk @145: Stainless steel is supposed to be non-magnetic, isn’t it? At least the doors of my refrigerator won’t hold a magnet. Maybe the stainless steel on the cybertrucks is inferior to that on refrigerators.
Why is Stainless Steel Not Magnetic?
In my line of work we use both magnetic and nonmagnetic alloys of stainless steel.
If rallies take off as a Trump thing to emulate that’s a great opportunity to develop ways of politically and morally challenging people.
https://www.joemygod.com/2024/11/kirk-to-hold-rallies-in-red-states-in-order-to-menace-republican-senators-into-backing-trumps-nominees/
Hitler loved rallies in this way too. For the person, not the party. And like Trump violent statements about criticism like protesting is likely. And they have uncivil language themselves already and like Trump and garbage it’ll be the worst thing ever that they get reciprocal incivility back.
Reciprocal incivility should be a tool.
Gary Gensler quits
FCC chairwoman announces departure, paving way for Republican majority
Thematically relevant incivility to the person is the most fun, but Trump’s behavior should be a source, the standard they voted into office.
Ground beef recalled due to possible E. coli contamination
There has been a spate of food recalls recently. Just imagine how bad things are going to get after Trump cuts back on inspection and regulation.
School did nothing wrong when it punished student for using AI, court rules
Video / Transcript: US State Dept – Daily Press Briefing 2024-11-20 (at 15:36)
The US decided the UN can demand neither a ceasefire nor hostage release—because the US thinks Hamas might parse it like lawful evil jackasses, so the wording has to be /exactly/ right. Then Hamas will respect the resolution. Magic words will imbue a causal influence into identical action from Israel.
France and UK must not really want their citizens back. Not pleasing the US makes it everyone else’s fault. /s
Vis a vis Gaetz weaseling himself back into Congress after resigning.
Enough details of that ethics report have leaked to support Gaetz being prosecuted for solicitation and sexual assault against a minor. He should be in jail, not Congress.
Where are all those Floridian parents who were so horrified that their precious offspring will be forever scarred by reading library books that mention sex, sexuality, or any of the various permutations of gender identity?
Every member of Congress should be inundated with calls and emails from citizens who aren’t okay with a bunch of rapists in positions of power. Hold their feet to the fire over that blatant hypocrisy.
Addendum to #154: The US is insisting the canonical narrative be that Israel is heroically rescuing hostages by pausing the genocide it’s committing.
Rising threat of nitazenes joins fentanyl in Canada’s toxic drug supply
About Hegseth, the Trump pick for secretary of war/”defense”.
The Deus Vult tattoo is # 1 a crusader slogan and # 2 a neo-nazi slogan.
Hegseth’s tattoo is made with the German Fraktur font, favored in Germany 1933-1945 and favored by neo-nazis and nobody else.
Hackers break into Andrew Tate’s online ‘university,’ steal user data and flood chats with emojis
The other side of #154:
Palestinian UN rep’s extraordinary reply to US ceasefire veto (2:33 to 17:18)
Trump chooses loyalist Pam Bondi for attorney general pick after Matt Gaetz withdraws
Brazilian police indict former President Bolsonaro and aides over alleged 2022 coup attempt
Government of the rapists, by the rapists, for the rapists.
I suppose it could be construed as victim-blamey to point out that this is like a chicken helping organize the California Federation of Wolves … still, why do women willingly associate themselves with predator-riddled organizations? And vote for anti-bodily-autonomy candidates? Are they a bunch of Karens who are willing to throw their own bodily autonomy under the bus to hurt Black people, or rich people willing to do so for lower taxes, or something?
One thing’s for sure. If some women are going to insist on attending, let alone helping organize, these sorts of events, it would serve them well to go in pairs, especially into places like elevators, restrooms, and the parking lot, and to never, ever take their eyes off their drinks whenever Republican men are around.
Maybe also carry pepper spray or a taser. Or go full-on 2nd Amendment.
If a few of these predatory men got shot by their would-be victims, do you think it would scare the rest into behaving themselves?
Re: Bekenstein Bound @163:
Victim-blaming. Survivorship bias. Mission above all. Information bubbles, low-key complaints that result in cover-ups. Scape-goating predators who do get exposed as the exceptions. Personal fulfillment and sunk cost investment. Unimpeachable celebrity personas.
Podcast: Behind the Bastards – How the Southern Baptist Convention was taken over by Republicans and child molesters, part 2
* The denomination shrunk by 2 million members in the last 20 years, coinciding with descent into scandals and culture war extremism.
They’d either have ‘valid’ excuses for themselves or expect not be in a situation to need to make the evil choice. Leopards’ laws are for restricting other, lesser people.
Podcast: You’re Wrong About – The “Pro-Life” Movement
Predators are practiced at manipulating victims and plan their encounters. Vast majority are someone familiar with a disarming rapport, rarely a stranger in an alley.
See also: myths about guns making people safer.
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-22/researchers-warn-of-possible-catastrophic-sea-level-rise/104626804
Owen Jones EXPOSED: Israel’s Plan To COLONISE Gaza (8 minutes long) Also plans to colonise southern Lebanon aka “northern Israel” and including footage of what’s left of Gaza here.
Via Chris Hedges YT channel Israel’s Attack of this American Journalist Will Shock You (w/ Jeremy Loffredo
Chris Hedges wikipage : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges
Plus an account of what happened here :
https://thegrayzone.com/2024/10/11/israeli-jails-grayzones-jeremy-loffredo/
Microsoft president asks Trump to “push harder” against Russian hacks
Good luck with that.
Texas AG opens investigation into advertising group that Elon Musk sued for ‘boycotting’ X
Why does Ken Paxton hate freedom of speech? That sounds un-American.
A company is now developing human washing machines
Bekenstein Bound @163:
On The Infinite Thread we do not post comments that in any way promote, fantasize about, or contemplate violence against other human beings. “Just asking the question” does not excuse the violent fantasy.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/the-three-horsemen-of-the-trump-ii-apocalypse
Bad news:
Link
Judge Schedules Hearing For Rudy Giuliani After Workers Say He Won’t Stop Smearing Them
Remarks by Rudy Giuliani about the women on his podcast prompted the call for the contempt hearing just a day ago.
Just keep digging that hole deeper, Rudy.
Cartoon: Dance like he’s watching
Oh FFS.
Link
Emerging Importance of Yesterday’s Big Bryansk Strike to Overall Ukraine War Effort
Embedded links are available at the main link.
Link
New York judge calls off Trump hush money sentencing
North Korean News Ladies Praise Dear Leader Trump For Perfect And Wise Choice And Unchoice Of Matt Gaetz
Praise Him from whom all blessings flow.
RFK Jr Claims The Mainstream Media Brainwashed Him Into Thinking Trump Is Hitler
https://www.wonkette.com/p/texas-volunteers-as-site-of-trumps
Texas Volunteers As Site Of Trump’s First Deportation Concentration Camp
Matt Gaetz says he doesn’t plan to rejoin Congress after withdrawing as Trump’s pick for attorney general [Congress breathes a sigh of relief.]
There was some question as to whether Gaetz, who resigned from the House after Trump chose him for attorney general, would want to be sworn into the next Congress.
Trump’s transition team turns to Project 2025 after disavowing it during the campaign
Transition officials have used Project 2025’s extensive personnel database to identify potential hires for the incoming administration, a person familiar with the plans said.
Link
Our Universe is not fine-tuned for life, but it’s still kind of OK
Extrapolating from a sample size of one.
Dear PZ, I know you have a lot of plates spinning on the end of sticks, but most other decent sites we visit have dropped their ‘xhitter’ links/icons. PLEASE, do the same and abandon that toxin.
thanks
3 Utah children missing since 2022 found living with FLDS Church, returned to mother
Northern Haiti airports reopened to US flights
Caitlin Clark joins NWSL ownership group bidding to bring soccer team to Cincinnati
Blonde Chick Trump Saw On Fox Also Evil Enough To Be His Attorney General
Florida Woman replaces Florida Man.
Washington Post link
Texas education officials approve Bible-based lessons for K-5 schools
The optional curriculum for elementary schools aligns with Trump’s plans for a more conservative agenda in public school classrooms
Washington Post link
This rare weather phenomenon is happening simultaneously in the Northwest and Northeast.
First a bomb cyclone and an atmospheric river. Now a double Fujiwhara effect. What it all means.
Canada ‘Freedom Convoy’ organiser found guilty of mischief
‘We give up’: Illegal magic mushroom chain FunGuyz closes all 30 Canadian locations
US judge rejects SEC bid to sanction Elon Musk
JD Vance is leaving the Senate for the vice presidency. That’s set off a scramble for his Ohio seat
GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin: Letting Oklahoma public school educators teach the Bible is a ‘slippery slope’
But what about teachers who went to seminary school, and thereby became atheists?
OTD In Space – November 21: Astronomer ‘Accidentally’ Discovers Speed Of Light
Mysterious Orb Seen Floating Over the Hudson River Sparks Debate
If Avi Loeb and Tim Gallaudet agree that it is an artifact, then it is an artifact.
Trump team warns Republicans to support Cabinet picks or face primary funded by Musk
Democrat Bob Casey concedes to Republican David McCormick in Pennsylvania Senate contest
Well, shit.
Britain:
Reform UK MP Lies About Beating Partner
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xei5hU8TKTA
I heard Republican senator Lisa Murkowsky will not support the appointment of candidates not vetted by the FBI. If this is correct it is huge.
Oh, So Now John Fetterman Likes Dr. Oz?
MAGA The Bitter Sweet Awakening (Youtube)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=DDp_tb5bs-0
From The Netherlands: the “1:1 replica” of Noah’s Ark has been put up on an auction site, after having sat empty for 8 years. Starting bid €350k.
Article (in Dutch)
Auction
Scientists have found the oldest known earthquake YT short video.
^ Doh! Make that here actually I hope thia time..
Oh FFS!
Third time lucky here?
Arrrghh!!! Nope. What!? That should’ve worked. Dunno why it didn’t. Really annoying.
Okay, giving up on the video and trying a link to an article discussing it instead here.
Source : https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/oldest-evidence-of-earthquakes-found-in-strange-jumble-of-33-billion-year-old-rocks-from-africa
Only until Trump gets around to appointing his choice to lead the FBI…
1000s of Palo Alto Networks firewalls hijacked as miscreants exploit critical hole
D-Link tells users to trash old VPN routers over bug too dangerous to identify
Well, this :
Source : https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/nasa-warns-of-potential-catastrophic-failure-on-leaking-iss-but-russia-doesnt-want-to-fix-it
is a worry for the futureof the International Space Station..
Kyle Kulinski has a good clip here – AOC torches Republican Pėrvert Nancy Mace – 15 mins long.
Alice Brock of ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ dies
@209-211 StevoR: Your getting spurious extra quote characters in the links for some reason.
Youtube: Stephen Hawking’s 80th birthday bit
Youtube: Oldest known earthquake
@ ^ JM : Thanks for that. Yeah, that last one is the one I wanted to share here. No idea how the iseue was happening as I’m literally cut’n’pasting and not adding anything. So I’m baffled as to where the spurious extra characters come from. The formula :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2021/10/16/infinite-thread-xxi/comment-page-3/#comment-2117142
seems to work for normal youtube clips but NOT for their “shorts” for some reason maybe?
https://thehardtimes.net/lists/top-10-cartoon-villains-offered-cabinet-positions-by-trump/
I disagree with Shredder but Trump would take Rocksteady and Bebop. Shredder is too independent minded.
China Update: Shocking Moves As China’s Government Goes Bankrupt | China-Cambodia Canal | Xi’s Busy Week
Ignore the clickbait title, the author does this because Youtube’s algorithm forces him to.
The important part is the local government issues starting 30 seconds in. Some local Chinese governments are so broke they are sending their police across borders into other legal jurisdictions and shaking down businesses for money. China already had a problem with governments doing that to people in their own jurisdiction but the central government actually encouraged that for local governments that needed to raise money. Doing in other jurisdictions is a major escalation and a big problem. If local and regional governments end up using their police to stop police from other areas the country is already half way into a civil war.
There is also an interesting section at 3:07 talking about China quietly backing out of Belt and Road Initiative financing. China had already been cutting projects because of problems with the Initiative projects but now China can’t spare the money for big projects in other countries. The situation is unclear because of the usual Chinese vague diplomatic language. China’s diplomats won’t say a project has been canceled, delayed or reduced but the funding won’t show up either. This is leaving projects in limbo for extended periods of time.
Link
Link
Re: StevoR:
If you’re cut’n’pasting the formula /itself/ off the blog instead of typing quotes yourself, that might be it.
The blog likes to transform visible ordinary double quotes (" ") into pretty-but-meaningless curly quotes (“ ”). Same with single quotes.
Your YouTube links are also unusual in that they always seem to start with “//” instead of “https://” but that doesn’t break things because it’s technically shorthand for whatever this page uses.
That could be true in one of two ways. Bluesky is growing, and X is shrinking.
Number of X (formerly Twitter) users worldwide from 2019 to 2024
Reginald @225, true. Good point.
Not related: Cartoon: Brain worms
Canada’s 1st female defence chief ‘can’t believe’ U.S. senator would question a woman’s role in combat
Sarah McBride And The Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Criticism
Seriously, people? What even is up with y’all?
Washington Post link
Climate talks to offer $300 billion in aid for poor nations.
A Norwegian student has been arrested on charges of spying on the US for Russia
Earth Has Tilted 31.5 Inches. That Shouldn’t Happen.
@225 Reginald Selkirk: To add to that there are also a huge number of bot and popularity farming accounts on X(Twitter). Accounts that are ‘active’ but nobody is really reading. They are just there to spam pregenerated text and create activity on other accounts so they look more popular.
As BlueSky becomes more popular it will accumulate those also but I’m sure Twitter has far more right now. Twitter probably has more such garbage accounts then BlueSky has total accounts.
Revealed: Saudi Arabia accused of modifying official Cop29 negotiating text https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/23/revealed-saudi-arabia-accused-of-modifying-official-cop29-negotiating-text?CMP=share_btn_url
Since I was brought up with British wnglish I know what to call the Saudis but it is not permitted in American English.
America’s Rare Earth Problem Could Be Solved With Literal Trash
I excerpted some critiques of Bluesky’s architecture over on PZ’s recent blog about Mastodon. A substantial one from yesterday by the co-author of ActivityPub, the protocol underlying the fediverse/Mastodon.
Link
More commentary regarding people leaving Elon Musk’s X and going Bluesky:
Link
Hi Lynna, OM,
I like that you posted Crip Dyke’s Wonkette piece, however the interjections on your part (“What even is up with y’all?” “Sheesh.”) seem to gravely misunderstand that Sarah McBride’s apparent acquiescence to rabid bullying and sexual harassment is actually a point of considerable anger for a lot of trans people who will be affected by this. What did you expect trans people to say, “oh yes, it’s perfectly fine for a Rethuglican from South Carolina and the effing Speaker of the House to treat us like sub-human garbage without the rights and dignity of others, no in fact that’s all totally fine, we will just take our lumps and use the bathrooms corresponding to our assignments-at-birth like good little doormats?” (Of course you didn’t). Please don’t delegitimise our anger.
What is more contemptible is that I’ve only seen three (3) Democratic congress-critters stand up for her so far in nearly a week. That is contemptible, along with all of the post-election backsliding from people such as Seth Moulton into anti-transgender PRATTs. The political point is that McBride’s acquiescence sends several bad messages: firstly, trans human rights are trivial and unimportant (as McBride is not going to prioritise it, which might be fair enough as the representative-elect of Delaware-at-large, but this is the most plain implication from her press release). Secondly, the Rethuglicans get a victory in the media from bullying and harassing trans people, so that other will learn that this violation of trans people’s rights is a successful method to be applied elsewhere. Finally, it makes an unsafe and unhealthy environment for trans people other than McBride working at the Capitol and other Federal buildings, in complete violation of occupational health and safety guidelines amongst all sorts of other violations of rights, decency, extending basic human dignity to others. So yeah, I agree with Crip Dyke’s analysis however there is a real cause for the dismay, hurt, and anger amongst trans folk around all of this bullshit.
Link
Lynna, I apologise for my mistake. The first quote which I thought belonged to you, as it stood outside the quotation of the article without being square-bracketed off, was “What even is up with y’all?” which are Crip Dyke’s words; I entirely missed that this was the sub-heading until I reached the end, wrote my comment here, and then scrolled back to the top of the article.
However that leaves “Sheesh”, which still feels like it is trivialising trans people’s feelings about this horrible mess. And I think some of Crip Dyke’s analysis is wrong-headed. It goes to show trans people are not a monolith and disagreement over a controversy is not merely the norm, it’s actually expected, and shouldn’t be the occasion for putting other trans people in the pillory … but I suppose it’s too late for that.
Having seen a rando liken McBride to Sinema (the first openly Bi Senator and second openly LGBT one, who was terrible), over the bathroom compliance statement, the following gave me pause.
Wikipedia – Sarah McBride
I’ve not dug deeply. Her campaign emphasis on bipartisanship with Republicans and being a uniter worried me, but maybe that too was pragmatic, as a forseeably minority-partymember.
A petty Indiana Republican story
* Background on IN Lt Gov elect Micah Beckwith
I think that depends on the magnitude of the quakes. Large volcanic edifices, such as Kilauea in Hawaii, are known to be able to produce temblors up to the low 7s in magnitude. However, anything much above that tends to come from either a long-range strike-slip fault or a subduction zone. The latter is a plate boundary, as are some of the former, while the remaining long strike-slip faults still tend to be the result of plate tectonics, generally collisions happening somewhere nearby.
Therefore, I’d say evidence of a quake above, say, magnitude 7.5 would be evidence of plate tectonics, but below that it could just be volcanism, not all of which is associated with plate boundaries (including the aforementioned Kilauea, which is smack dab in the middle of the Pacific plate nowhere near its boundary).
I’ve been saying it. I’ve been saying it for ten damn years … yet everyone and their sister still seem to think that China’s the next big hegemonic power on the upswing, though the lesson of history is that when the existing hegemon fall down go boom, the torch gets passed to a brash young upstart and not an established player. Like when Spain’s empire ended, the Brits, formerly a pimple on the butt of Europe that was constantly getting conquered and raided (lessee, the Anglo-Saxons, then the Romans, then Vikings, then the French…) suddenly mushroomed into an imperial state with hegemony over 1/4 of the whole planet. And when that faltered, and everyone thought Russia or Germany or the Ottomans would be the next hegemon, nope, it was that far-off backwater the United States of America who grabbed the brass ring. Now everyone’s been saying “China”, but China is a paper tiger. (As long as you don’t get it to unsheath its nuclear-tipped claws, at least, and just let it implode like the Soviet Union did before it.)
Fact is, all of the other rapidly-industrializing Asian economies hit a financial crisis a few decades in: first Japan, then the “Asian tigers”. It’s China’s turn, based on the timings, but of course the consequences will be far larger, since China is far larger. China is screwed. So is the US. And so is Russia, whose adventure in Ukraine is already proving ruinous. New hegemons are also never former imperial powers that flirted with democracy and then turned autocratic again: Russia is this iteration’s Nazi Germany, doomed to a short and war-wracked existence. It also won’t be anyone who’s hitched their wagon to one of the imploding behemoths. That rules out the EU and Canada, whose fates are too strongly tied to America’s, and any of Russia’s satellite states, as well as Taiwan.
So, who will it be? If it’s like last time, an existing regional hegemon that is decently insulated from the economic shocks of superpower collapses is a good bet. Those would be India and Brazil. India has the population and industry-scale advantage, and is nuclear-armed, but Brazil might be more insulated from external economic shocks. I’m not sure which is better positioned to become a superpower.
If it’s like the time before the last, then one of the world’s recent butt-monkeys might pull a From Nobody To Nightmare in a short while. Indonesia has recently removed some autocratic leadership, started modernizing some things, and isn’t strongly in China’s orbit despite its location near there. And it is in a prime location to become a significant naval power, as Britain did before it (and as Brazil and India also are). There’s also Nigeria, perhaps the most-developed sub-Saharan African nation-state. It’s in a good position to make a bid for, at least, regional hegemony, and depending on how things shake out, it could go further. And then there’s the Middle East.
The Middle East is heading for turbulent times in the short terms. Oh, wait, that will just be a continuation of business as usual. Well, sort of. What will change is the disappearance of the three-way tug-of-war it’s caught in from the present imperialists, and the collapse of the petro-dollar system. The latter props up the Saudi middle class, without which is tumbrels time for Prince MBS and his kin. That’s the only strong Sunni state in the region, and when it dissolves into civil war the revolutionary faction(s) will seek outside aid from Shia neighbors. It will probably become Shia, while nearby Israel becomes a smoking crater. The stage will then be set for a Shia caliphate to emerge in the region without significant further resistance, likely headquartered in Iran. (The Emirates seem economically strong right now, but their fortunes are as tied to America’s as Saudi Arabia’s. Iran has maintained its strength while being a pariah state, so it is far better positioned for when the hegemons crippling Iran and propping up the Saudis and Emirates and Israel are gone.) So, it’s very likely Iran ascends to a regional hegemon in short order, and with control of half the world’s remaining oil supply, huge expanses of solar-friendly desert, deepwater ports on the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, and sitting astride both a sea bottleneck (Suez) and a land bottleneck (none other than the Silk Road, where it’s pinched between Himalayas and ocean), it will be extremely well positioned to parlay that into dominance over the western half of Eurasia, if not more. The Second Persian Empire may well arise within the lifetimes of some of you who are reading this, and the next Cold War could be between it and India or Indonesia, or Brazil, or even a Nigeria-headed confederation of African states.
Two more factors to consider involve resources. First, who is well positioned to gain control of the resources currently firmly inside an existing hegemon? Either India or Indonesia is well positioned to gain control of China’s resources, especially its lithium (and, ugh, coal). Russia’s gas will keep Russia, and whatever’s left of the EU, from freezing to death but may not retain much geopolitical significance. Countries left twisting by a collapsing hegemon may pivot to new allies for trade and defense. In the Americas, Brazil is an obvious choice, a large democracy in the same landmass, so we may see the emergence of a widened free trade area dominated by Brazil and containing Canada, the American successor states, Mexico, and the Latin American states. It may also absorb western Europe, or that may fall into the orbit of Persia or Nigeria.
Second, as fossil fuels continue to deplete and battery and other tech further improves, solar will emerge as the key new energy resource, and dry tropical land will become very valuable for anyone thinking of basing their economy on energy exports. Brazil has wet tropical land, but is also located close to the Atacama Desert; India contains lots, and Indonesia is well positioned to gain control over the Gobi and the Outback; Nigeria is on the southern border of the western Sahara; and Persia is convenient to the Empty Quarter and eastern Sahara. If space-based resources become important (e.g. asteroid mining) later in the century, equatorial land is also desirable for launch sites and possibly, farther down the line, space elevator/rotovator/skyhook/etc. base terminals. Nigeria is centered at about ten degrees north latitude and could easily ally with (or annex) Cameroon, which intersects the equator. The equator directly intersects Brazil and Indonesia, while India has a relative position remarkably similar to Nigeria’s. It could gain access to nearby Indonesian land, if the latter doesn’t become a hegemon or they become allied, or use floating launch platforms. The Neopersian Empire would also lie in the northern tropics, if it stayed out of Africa, but it will almost certainly absorb Egypt and Ethiopia into its orbit, and maybe much of supraSaharan Africa. Ethiopia gets close to the equator and neighboring Somalia intersects it. Somalia is currently a turbulent failed state, which means if its equatorial real estate suddenly becomes valuable, it will be annexed with no difficulty. (Note: being near the equator is good enough for rocket launches, but not for any of the plausible successor technologies.)
So, every one of my proposed potential future hegemons has solid access to desirable real estate for solar and space launch purposes. Most have domestic agricultural land, with the exception of Neopersia, which will have to trade something for food (possibly oil, and later solar-derived synthetic fuels, such as hydrogen, synthetic LNG, or the recharging of vanadium flow batteries; and with HVDC or other plausible near-future technology might be able to energize African and Eurasian power grids). All have mineral resources internally or near to hand.
Which ones have the best chances? There are several factors to consider. First, internal social cohesion. New hegemons have had good internal social cohesion. Neopersia is a good bet for at least emerging as a regional hegemon because it can get social cohesion from shared religion in the form of Shia Islam. India’s large Hindu population gives it a potential source of strong cohesion, but its large Muslim minority, other minorities, and history of sectarian strife count against it. It could emerge as a strong pluralistic democracy, as the US did post Civil War, if it can shake its current fever of Hindu nationalism. Alternatively, the Hindu nationalists could turn it into a theocracy and expel the religious minorities, but that would likely mean suffering a crippling civil war and letting another emerging candidate outmaneuver them. Indonesia, with a mix of Christians and Muslims, is likely in a comparable position. Nigeria may lack strong internal cohesion, but has the counterbalancing advantage of lacking strong neighbors. It’s a logical nucleus for west African states to organize around, once imperialist supports and also imperialist meddling have ceased in the region. But it might be a stronger bet for topping out at regional hegemon than becoming a global superpower. Brazil, on the other hand … it’s huge (half of India’s population) and prosperous, and a democracy that has recently shaken off a would-be autocratic putsch (and is going to be jailing its would-be autocrat). It ticks every box the US did in the run-up to the first two World Wars — maybe more so, since Bolsonaro isn’t getting the kid-glove treatment Jefferson Davis did. It’s poised to at least show the Americas how to do pluralistic democracy right. On the other hand, it could be headed for religious ructions when its Catholic majority shrinks to a minority, as happened when the US’s Protestant majority shrank.
Then there’s the political system. The last two big hegemons have had democratic home-rule with an English common-law substrate. Russia and China grabbed for superpower status, but really didn’t make it beyond regional hegemon, for all that the Soviet Union was talked up as one. In the modern era, there may be an advantage to democratic rule, which would mean a disadvantage for Neopersia, specifically.
And then there’s the geostrategic calculus. In the short term post-collapse it’s very likely we see Brazil emerge as a regional hegemon in South America and probably shortly after throughout the Americas, with economically and politically strong allies in Canada and Mexico giving it three loci of regional strength spaced north-to-south and access to the surviving hardware and personnel of the American and Canadian militaries. Brazil emerges into a strong geostrategic position, with a strong military and capacity for naval domination of the Atlantic and western Pacific. Nigeria is much less fortunate, as even in a union with all of subSaharan Africa it will have a shit military. The nearest remnant stronger military assets lie to its north, in what’s left of Russia and western Europe, and to its east, under Persian regional hegemony. The military assets in Eurussia are liable to get divvied up between Brazil and Persia, if the latter doesn’t mushroom into a dominant power over all of Africa and Europe before Brazil and Canada can cement a strong alliance and then reach across the Atlantic to Europe. After a thousand-year hiatus, Islam might finally win the Crusades and kick Christendom entirely out of the Old World. As for Nigeria, it will be caught between a militarily strong Persia and an even stronger Brazilian navy. Not a good geostrategic position to be occupying. Nigeria will top out as a regional hegemon and ally itself with either Persia or Brazil.
That leaves the Eastern Hemisphere. The Steppe may revert to low-density nomads once global warming has had its way with the Russian satellite nations’ breadbaskets and the gas fields have run dry. Prior to that, there will remain a group of impoverished states there, likely in orbit of a Russia propped up by either Brazil, India, or Persia. That area will devolve into third-world conditions. Interior Asia and Russia are the new subSaharan Africa, peripheral states that are mostly poor and mostly resource exporters, with a growing empty zone that may well become stateless, at least in all but name. South and east of the Himalayas, India and/or Indonesia are likely to dominate. Brazil may come for them from the east eventually, but it is more likely that the area originates its own naval military-power base, likely in Indonesia, which has a large length of coastline and is defensible. (It might be politically subservient to India, however, or even Brazil.) China will be one (or more) satellite state in the area with mineral resources and a breadbasket of importance. Siberia may end up absorbed into this region politically as well, especially if it becomes agriculturally useful as it thaws out, or mineral resources prove important there.
Australia and New Zealand, as well as Hawaii, are caught between Brazil and the emerging Ind(ones)ian hegemony, with the props kicked out from under them by America’s implosion. As existing trading partners of the Americas, their least turbulent future is to smoothly transition to a Brazil-centric trade network, in exchange for deepwater ports for the Brazilian navy to more easily encircle its Asian rival. Japan, being geographically closer to said rival, is likely in for turbulent times. It will face economic upheaval from both China’s and the US’s implosion, and if the US’s happens faster, a desperate China may even move to annex it first, though that will only postpone the inevitable. Its best bet is to play both failing hegemons against each other and then cut a deal with an emerging one, either nearby or Brazil. Brazil will have a strong navy fairly soon, but is farther away. The emerging Asian power (or Indonesia if both it and India become regionally powerful) will likely gain control of former Chinese military assets. This includes the world’s second most powerful deepwater navy, putting states in the Pacific region (and Hawaii) in a potential tug-of-war. The Pacific could see a major naval war on the scale of the Pacific theater of WWII if one of these emerging powers doesn’t emerge so much faster than the other as to gain naval supremacy over the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
In the latter, there’s also a potential joker in the deck. Persia will have a strong air and land military inherited from Iran, stranded American and Israeli military assets in the region, and possibly Egyptian and some European and/or Russian materiel. Currently, no middle Eastern state has a strong navy of its own (that I know of); America dominates the seas in that area (as it and its allies dominate all of the world’s seas, save for the Black Sea and the immediate vicinity of China). America’s collapse will likely include withdrawing its naval assets in the region, especially if it isn’t too sudden when it comes. But Persia will have deepwater ports and potential access to hardware from other parts of Eurasia, including Russian and maybe even Chinese naval materiel. Plus, of course, the capacity to build its own — as China falters and global supply chains become chaotic, more of the world will (re)industrialize, building local manufacturing capacity. This will accelerate when naval supply chains disintegrate under pressure from piracy once America is no longer policing most of the world’s oceans. That will both incentivize relocalized manufacture and allying with or becoming a regional hegemon whose navy can police local waters.
Brazil won’t quickly be able to project naval force into the western Indian Ocean or the eastern Mediterranean, leaving a naval power vacuum that will be filled first by pirates and then by India, Indonesia, or Persia. All will be incentivized to develop a navy quickly, and with relocalized manufacture, increasingly capable to construct one, to say nothing of obtaining European, Russian, or Chinese vessels and weapons systems through trade or annexations. It’s not unlikely that Persia will become a regional naval power, both to control piracy in its area and to exert leverage over sea-based trade routes through the region. The big question is if it can parlay that into a strong overall geopolitical position or only into a favored position in the orbit of someone else. But with no credible rivals on its western, southern, or northern flanks, it will certainly have a decent shot. India is the most poorly positioned here, with potential rivals to its east and west and hemmed in by mountains to the north. It has a position moderately good for defense but terrible for projecting force, and will likely retain its autonomy without even becoming a regional hegemon, or else become regionally strong on land but allied with Persia or Indonesia for naval protection.
When all is said and done, the strong bids for more than regional hegemon are coming from Brazil, Persia, and Indonesia, with Nigeria and India unlikely to be able to expand their influence beyond that ceiling, and India less likely to even become a regional power. Brazil probably has the strongest position. I vote for it as likeliest next superpower — subject to change based on further data, of course. Persia is second-likeliest, and likeliest to be a persistent regional rival on the China/Soviet model. The next Cold War is likely to be on secular (or possibly Catholic) vs. Islam lines, most likely secular Allende-style socialism vs. Shia theocracy-socialism (where the latter means a theocracy with a significant welfare state). Both are likely to heavily regulate business, out of an abundance of reasons, starting with climate change and past histories in both imperial-nucleus regions of being on the butt end of capitalist exploitation by American business. American-style capitalism will die with America, and the ground of its grave will be salted.
If democracy survives, its primary fastness will remain in the Americas, but it will likely lie between the Canadian/western European model and the more strongly socialist model that has emerged repeatedly, only to be sabotaged by the United States repeatedly, in South America. The “tories” in these political systems are likely to be in the political neighborhood of the NDP and Scandinavian social-democratic parties, with outright redistributive policies held by the mainstream left. Of our currently “first world” countries, most will slip into conditions resembling the more developed “third world” ones, meeting the latter on their way up, before regrouping and stabilizing at perhaps a western European standard of living (which notably has significantly lower per-capita energy use than Canada or the US) or somewhat below that, but way above abject poverty. Many of the less developed countries will either stay that way or rise to the same level, if they become regionally strong or a favored ally of a regional hegemon.
Outside the west, the highest standards of living will likely be in the Muslim world, with less political and religious freedom but low levels of abject poverty. The poorest regions are likely to be in supra-Himalayan Asia and possibly central Africa. Australia’s strategic position as a southern ocean naval base ensures it a decent place in the orbit of one or another power, likely Persia, Indonesia, or Brazil. Its most politically compatible ally of these three will be Brazil, with Indonesia likely to be relegated to a regional power not unlike present-day China and in a similar geostrategic position. It will nonetheless potentially become the hub of prosperity for Japan, southeast Asia, and possibly China.
As for the three failing hegemons’ fates, Russia’s is going to be the worst. It will be a peripheral resource-extraction province of someone else’s empire, and then a depleted husk. China has a long history of internal self-sufficiency within fairly static borders, and may fare the best, though it can shelve its dreams of Belt and Road hegemony for good. It will be most prosperous as a trade ally of Brazil, or failing that by returning to its historical norm as Fortress China. The current government will collapse, and the more tyrannical it behaves in its last desperate years the more swift and sure that collapse will be when it does come. With luck, the replacement will be some type of democratic socialism, but the history of the region is not promising: the people have little experience of democratic rule, and self-governing through democracy is a learned skill. It’s much more likely to democratize as a Brazilian trading partner than as Fortress China, which would likely retain an autocratic form of rule on a similar model to that of the more prosperous Muslim states. (India may end up on a similar path, to an isolationist Hindu state or remaining a somewhat-liberalized trade partner of someone’s. Persia probably can’t conquer and convert it — the British Empire tried, and failed, with India’s native cultures weathering the occupation and emerging strong on the far side of it. India’s too big, too populous, and too defensible due to the terrain on the southern margin of the Himalayas.)
The US has a fate less grim than Russia, but likely worse than China’s (unless Jinping royally screws it up, or someone in the world unlimbers the nukes). Given how deeply it is riven by political divisions, it is unlikely to survive as a unified state; given the lack of proximate rivals with significant military power, it also won’t be annexed. It will balkanize into between four and as many as 20 successor states, with the northeastern blue states, the west coast, the bulk of the red states, and a chunk centered on Utah likely becoming, respectively, two republics, a Protestant theocracy, and a Mormon theocracy in the four-successor scenario. Additional successors would likely be breakaway chunks of these four, especially if there is internal infighting within the main block of red states, or Colorado becomes isolated by redstate successor(s) from the left coastal states. New Mexico might even join its big brother, possibly taking Colorado with it, in that scenario. Other strong candidates for additional successors are Hawaii, if it declares independence rather than join with the left coast, and Alaska, geographically far-flung from the other red states. Puerto Rico may declare independence or become an adjunct of the New England federation, and the US Virgin Islands will likely share Hawaii’s fate. The parts that stay democratic are solid candidates to end up in Brazil’s orbit down the line, and whoever ends up annexing Siberia is likely to snarf up Alaska along with it (that could even end up being Canada).
The long term geopolitical question mark is what becomes of the main body of red-state America, from the Midwest to the Southeast. As a Protestant theocracy it’s unlikely to easily be absorbed into a Brazil-centered trade area or military alliance, dominated as that will be by Catholics. More likely it will turtle within its own borders and descend into third world poverty, propping itself up early on by selling Texas oil along with corn and wheat until some combination of antiintellectualism and climate change does for its agriculture and the oil runs dry. After that, it’s probably going to be a Russia mini-me. Peter Turchin would predict that it will be an “asabiya black hole” and mired in poverty for a long time, mainly due to the legacy of Confederate slavery. I concur that this is likely — it will remain a low-trust society with poor economic prospects that the rest of the world quickly leaves behind. Florida will submerge, the Midwest will dry up and blow away, and the east coast states will be ravaged by storms alternating with drought, while mistrust inhibits the creation of any kind of mutual aid or social supports. It will also become a source of problems for everyone around it: a hotbed of Mafia dons, illicit banking, black markets (with some portion of the US nuclear arsenal likely inside!), and piracy. No, not the Napster sort. The high seas sort, until Brazil, Mexico, and Canada get their ducks in a row and organize up a solid Atlantic blue-water navy to police that ocean again anyway. In the interim, pirates based there will ravage up and down the east coast of the Americas, dominate or even annex portions of the Caribbean, and raid the African coast, perhaps also western Europe. These attacks, and pleas for defensive aid from beleaguered Carribean nations, will motivate the formation of said blue-water navy and hasten the process by which Brazil becomes a serious, at least hemispheric, power.
The United Nations’s fate is less clear to me. It is a United States creation and often a laundromat for US foreign policy, on the one hand; on the other, the ideals the US intends it to only pay lip service to have taken on something of a life of their own, and absent American interference that process may well accelerate. On the other hand, absent American military power, the UN might be marginalized and become unimportant. If it persists, its security council will likely dump America (or retain one or a few democratic successor states) and gain Brazil. It might reform to eliminate the permanent vetoes some favored nations get, or transfer some of those to Brazil and others. If it does persist as a multilateral body of importance, it will do so backed economically by Brazil, Mexico, Canada, and recovering or rising states in the Americas and western Europe, and militarily by a NATO now dominated by same. If that happens, the international order we’re familiar with may survive, after a short interregnum of high seas piracy and disrupted supply chains (and likely at least a few major regional wars). It won’t be in unmodified form, though. As the international order post WWII no longer normalized explicit colonialism, it’s likely the new order will no longer normalize the kinds of lopsided trade relations that strongly favored large American and transnational corporations, aka colonialism continued through other means. It may also acquire Islamophobic dimensions, if there indeed is a new Cold War between the Islamosphere and the rest of the world. Such a new order is likely to eventually gain the (in some cases reluctant) endorsement of most of the rest of the world, and a pattern of fairly dependable global trade may return, with changes to the power balance and hopefully much less extreme inequality.
Routing around a Persia-controlled bottleneck may also become important, motivating strong trading relations across the Pacific and through Africa. Perhaps we will even see a high speed train route that spans from Lagos to Mombasa, carrying freight across the midsection of the continent to connect Atlantic and Indian Ocean trading partners without going through the Mediterranean, Suez, or Red Sea; or the thawing Arctic may result in trade over the North Pole. The Africa route would enrich much of subSaharan Africa by plugging it directly into a major trade corridor. In this scenario, central Africa is lifted out of poverty and coastal Africa further so than at present, as they gain a critical onramp to global trade.
That’s the optimistic scenario: emerging powers get their act together quickly, are (outside the Middle East) dominated by social-democratic values, and normal international relations and trade are quickly restored. There are upheavals, to be sure, some caused by Persia, some by climate change, and some by the reshuffling of geopolitical power and by the discrediting of laissez-faire capitalism. The “Washington Consensus” is gone, replaced perhaps by a “Brasilia Consensus” that repudiates laissez-faire and more strongly supports human rights, including rights to basic necessities such as food and shelter, recognizing that these rights are ultimately necessary to foster the stability that is in the long-term interests of businesspersons.
The intermediate scenario is that the period of upheaval is prolonged, exacerbated by chaos agents emerging from the former American red states, Russia, and opportunistic emerging troublemakers in the same general vein as ISIS. Cack-handed management of China’s crisis culminates in poorly thought out desperation moves, such as annexing Taiwan or even Japan, and sparks war. Breakdowns in trust, communications, and supply chains, combined with large refugee movements triggered by the economic crisis and by climate change, destabilize governments and provoke wars, while enabling more fascists in the mold of Victor Orban and Donald Trump to seize power, with the wars and pogroms these start further generating refugees. The world economy crashes much more deeply and geopolitics spirals unstoppably into the maelstrom of World War III, which is fought conventionally but is every bit as brutal and destructive as its prequels. A world order similar to the above eventually rises from the ashes, with the possible subtraction of a strong Persia, as that region would likely be badly trashed in the war, and China is likely to meet a poorer outcome in this scenario as well since it’s sure to be sucked into the vortex of war.
The pessimistic scenario is the same, except with mushroom clouds on top.
The optimistic scenario ends with a few million to 20 million dead, many in existing trouble spots like Gaza and Ukraine, and most of the rest in regional wars, including any Second US Civil War accompanying its breakup. The intermediate one kills from 100 million to 250 million, and the pessimistic one kills from 2 billion to 7+ billion, while reducing the survivors almost universally to poor starving refugees and subsistence farmers and knocking civilization back to the Victorian Age or earlier. (But probably the Victorian Age: once acquired, the know-how to smelt iron and to make motors and dynamos and windmills is not going to easily be lost short of full-on human extinction. Once the climate stabilizes the survivors will probably bounce back up to having electricity and mechanization fairly rapidly. They will then have a very big rebuilding job to do.)
The pessimistic scenario is the only one to deviate markedly in who is likely to end up a major power after. The interregnum will be a lot longer — decades to as much as a century or two until someone is fielding a substantial blue-water navy again — and given the devastation of the northern hemisphere and especially economically or strategically important sites in it, including the Middle East, it’s a sure bet that no Northern Hemisphere nation-state will survive as an organized state. Some will likely be totally obliterated outright — North Korea and Israel are solid candidates, for wildly different reasons. Emerging powers afterward are likely to come from the Southern Hemisphere, which will recover soonest and climb back up out of abject poverty soonest. New Zealand is a candidate, if it pulls a Britain and becomes a potent naval empire. South America is a solid bet to originate a strong state, though likely sited farther south than Brazil in this case, as is southern Africa. All three have arable land, mineral resources, and deepwater ports convenient to hand and none are likely to have strong local rivals (given that ethnoculturally similar groups ally rather than become rivals). The sparsely populated and badly impoverished north will lag behind in recovering economically and reorganizing, and will likely end up dominated by powers based in one or more of these three southerly locales.
Australia will be fucked. It’s mostly desert, and climate change will make that worse, following which climate whiplash and then more warming. New Zealand, for its matter, will have a tougher time weathering a nuclear winter than lower-latitude parts of the Southern Hemisphere; but it will also be the least likely to be hindered by local rivalries in reorganizing after, assuming that the rift between Maori and European descendants doesn’t flare up too badly. There’s a bit more scope, and space, for such in the other two spots, with white Argentinian racists in South America and local ethnic divisions like Rwanda’s in southern Africa. But those will likely not last too long under subsistence-survival conditions, sadly because the weaker sides of these conflicts will likely succumb to genocidal pogroms with the survivors possibly even being incorporated into the regionally dominant group as a slave class. The newborn regional powers are unlikely to be liberal democracies, I’m afraid, and it might be many more centuries before the ravaged Earth witnesses republican or parliamentary rule again anywhere on its surface.
If I could disappear the world’s nuclear arsenals with a snap of an infinity-gauntleted finger, I’d do it right this minute. Probably the only other things I’d snap away outright would be COVID, influenza, malaria, the two surviving smallpox samples, a bunch of other pathogens of humans and important livestock, and that ugly eyesore sculpture of Samuel de Chaplain holding an astrolabe upside-down with enslaved Natives at his feet in Ottawa. Followed by the gauntlet and stones, lest they otherwise ever fall into the wrong hands.
America’s DEA Ordered to Stop Searching Random Travellers at Airports – and Seizing Their Cash
Bank Employees Resign After Executive Demands Return to Offices Without Space for Everyone
Cartoon: Cabinet pick
The cartoon references Neo-Nazis who marched through the streets of Columbus, Ohio recently
Benefits of chewing on guava leaves thrice a week
Number of women who are state lawmakers inches up to a record high
Lynna notes: that’s an Associated Press article, reposted on Daily Kos.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/american-history-corner-the-story
Sabine Hossenfelder
We are unlikely to be in this universe, new study finds. Multiverse falsified ?
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=IXzV7zdl4oU
Also, I found a Swedish-language article about how neanderthal childen collected interesting things, like small fossils they found, and later turned up at an excavated neanderthal site. They were not dumb ape-men, they were us but with big ridges above the eyes.
Health benefits attributed to coffee may be due to the kind of gut biome coffee encourages.
“Coffee drinking habits may greatly impact makeup of gut biome, research suggests”
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-11-coffee-habits-greatly-impact-makeup.html
Video: Hear RFK Jr.’s past criticisms of Trump in resurfaced audio from 2016 | CNN Politics
.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/21/politics/video/rfk-jr-past-trump-criticism-kfile-ebof-digvid
Good economic news: Thanksgiving dinner is historically affordable this year
“Farm data shows holiday meal staples are collectively at their cheapest, after adjusting for inflation, in nearly 40 years — not including the Covid-hit year of 2020.”
Link
Re: birgerjohansson:
Indeed.
Neanderthal adhesive manufacturing site found in Gibraltar cave
Cartoon: Square peg
They shared their abortion stories on the campaign trail. They’re not done
Much more at the link.
A Former Christian Nationalist Tells How She Left MAGA
Much more at the link.
What Stephanie believed sounds more like a movie script than real life.
https://x.com/DrewPavlou/status/1860416404153131189
Video at the link.
Gaetz joins Cameo after withdrawing from AG consideration
Elon Musk and Neil deGrasse Tyson Exchange Barbs on Mars Colonization
This Hall case sounds fascinating. Intersex and genderfluid, rather than agender.
Consciousness.
“It’s not all evolution: Denis Noble on how consciousness develops from disorder.”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=8OhMmjlYvxU
AI Jesus is ready to dispense advice from a booth in historic Swiss church
Dollar falls after Donald Trump names Scott Bessent to Treasury role
Stock market today: World shares mostly gain after Trump picks billionaire for Treasury post
Trump team barred from agencies amid legal standoff
“Negotiations”? They are asked to sign on to a code of ethics, and they want to negotiate?
The common denominators tying together Trump’s picks for his second term
How ‘Scattered Spider’ hacked some of the world’s biggest tech giants, and got caught
Tulsi:
Link
Cartoon: A bumpy ride ahead
Followup to comment 269.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/i-shub-niggurath-have-chosen-the
https://www.wonkette.com/p/that-time-mississippi-reinvented
That Time Mississippi Reinvented Slavery With Its ‘Black Codes’
Nov. 25, 1865, in labor history.
Bird flu detected in raw milk sold in California, health officials say
California health officials warned the public to avoid drinking one batch of whole raw milk from Raw Farm LLC, which has issued a voluntary recall.
Elon Musk brands Britain a ‘tyrannical police state’ and boosts far-right activist
The starting pay for a McDonald’s worker in Denmark is ca. $ 22/hour. They also get six weeks of paid vacation, life insurance, maternity leave and a pension plan.
Lynna @ 274 Tommy Robinson is a thug who started riots targeting (brown) immigrants.
The ex-south-african white dude Elon Musk may have left for USA but he remains an Afrikaaner inside.
Like the GOP, the tories are lying scum.
.
A different bias:
Former Health Minister Matt Hancock witheld PPEs because of his pride
“Hancock’s Latest Shocking Covid Testimony”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MQHa4a68TqI
The perspective of these surveys tells me that our society is mostly drooling imbeciles.
It is scary. I don’t want to be near these tRUMP cult members.
https://digbysblog.net/2024/11/24/they-like-him-they-really-like-him-2/
A Brief History of Radishes
Leslie Jones, Michael Kosta, & Desi Lydic Help You Survive Thanksgiving / The Daily Show
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=xxk5oAlY5RY
From eyesore to asset: How a smelly seaweed could fuel cars
Ebenezer Scrooge’s gravestone smashed to pieces
birger @276, thanks for that additional information.
In other news:
Link
Link
Followup to comment 284.
Jack Smith pulls cases against Trump in latest sign we live in hell
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-gonna-fire-all-the-trans-people
Ex-FOX COLLEAGUE Of Trump’s Cabinet Pick SPILLS THE BEANS
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7b0P-OMetps
NASA just released a stunning new image of the Sombrero galaxy captured by the JWST
Trump Guitars hit with cease and desist from Gibson over use of Les Paul body shape
It is ironic that a company stealing intellectual property should put “Creative” in its name.
Lauren Boebert Is Now on Cameo—and About to Get in Legal Trouble
Stolen shoe mystery solved at Japanese kindergarten when security camera catches weasel in the act
Prison appears to be no barrier for Michigan county official who won another term
The First Digital Flight Computer That Was Actually Any Good: The SAAB Viggen’s CK37
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zf6bZBV7EWo
Amazon workers in 20 countries to protest or strike
I need a dual-vector foil for cleansing.
Thanksgiving Turkeys:
Delicious Centerpiece or Government Mind Control? The Daily Show
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MM0mvI1TrmA
“No, crayons do not make you bisexual, Kevin!”
Time flies.
Christina Applegate turned 53 years old today.
Why Narcissistic Leaders Always Fail (In The End)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=XZ4gbvjdIao
A comparison with old Roman leaders.
@298 birgerjohannson
Eventually, but they can do a lot of damage getting there.
After Russian ship docks to space station, astronauts report a foul smell
New Discovery Suggests the Alphabet May Not Have Originated in Egypt After All
Link
Boris Epshteyn allegedly ran an old fashioned shake-down scheme targeting those interested in working in Donald Trump’s incoming administration.
A somewhat related video, “Donald Trump hiding the donors funding his transition effort from the public,” is available at the link.
The Hard Truth Is That Donald Trump Got Away With A Violent Insurrection
Same link as in comment 304.
Link
Cartoon: Measles and mumps and rubella—oh my!
Followup to Reginald @289.
Link
Elon Musk learns how EV charging works from Pete Buttigieg
You would think someone able to assemble the money and power Musk has at his disposal might understand that you should get the facts before weighing in with stupid opinions.
And also, I doubt this will keep him from spreading this and other disinformation in the future.
‘Enshittification’ Is Officially the Biggest Word of the Year
Bloomberg: Video Game Console Makers Confront Performance Ceiling
This really hit last generation but it takes time for this sort of thing to make it into general news.
The quality of computer game art has hit the point where just mechanical improvements matter less then how good the artists and artwork is. The quality of controllers and how much can be pumped to the TV maxed out a while ago. Console network hardware is good enough that remaining limitations are outside the consoles control. Combined with general inflation problems fewer people are interested in buying a new console. This will be awkward for some companies but I don’t think anybody is going broke over it.
A lot of scalpers have actually lost money on the new PS5 Pro. They rushed to buy them and are now forced to sell at less then retail because there isn’t enough demand.
Key Russian air defence system hit in Ukraine Atacms strike
Hundreds More Nazca Lines Emerge in Peru’s Desert
Trump has vilified George Soros. He just picked the Jewish billionaire’s protege for Treasury Secretary.
President Biden announces ceasefire to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah
‘I can’t pay my bills,’ Rudy Giuliani says in courtroom outburst
Wah, wah, wah. And he still won’t stop defaming them.
North Carolina’s governor has vetoed a GOP bill that would weaken his successor and other Democrats
Retigabine – an epilepsy medicine – may be viable for reducing the use of cocaine.
“Epilepsy medication shows promise in reducing cocaine use in rats”
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-11-epilepsy-medication-cocaine-rats.html
The Incas—with nothing surviving colonization to suggest a written record—still had an elaborate system to encode information. Khipus were knotted, colored, spaced, ordered ropes (lots of strands descending off a main line, themselves possibly branching). For tax collecting, censuses, calendars, etc. At least, numeric relations have been easiest to decipher in the dearth of outside context. It’s a positional decimal system: 1s 10s 100s in knots up a cord. A loop attached at both ends might straddle a span of several cords to express their sum on an offshoot cord of its own. Or a number may represent an indexed noun like zipcodes.
A third of extant khipus don’t follow number rules. Of the 1600 khipus known, half have had assorted measurements entered into databases, just to mine for correlations. Even the fiber and construction of the cords might have significance for all anyone knows.
One such correlation was recently announced. The largest khipu (1800 cords) and another, the most complex, ‘layered’ khipu (600 cords) apparently contained mostly the same values, merely presented differently: 10 groups of 7 cords (with colored divider cords) versus 7 groups of 10. Of course, with some as yet undeciphered cords left over for another purpose. Whatever was tallied, someone went to a lot of effort to make a fancy summary.
Wikipedia – Quipu
An amateur historian YouTuber’s tretise (44:40)
The announcement
The paper
Sweden urges Chinese ship to return for undersea cable investigation
@290
Lauren Boebert Cameo page disappears amid House ethics concerns
Reginald @316, yep. And Giuliani made a point of saying that he is not sorry.
Washington Post:
Associated Press:
Followup to comment 322: Video of Rudy Giuliani speaking, along with commentary in text.
Link
Excerpt:
Mediate:
Bluesy does not do that.
Followup to Reginald @317.
North Carolina Dem Gov Vetos Republicans’ ‘Sham’ Power Grab. But This Isn’t A Victory.
Behold Marjorie Taylor Greene’s latest ridiculous threat
@315. Reginald Selkirk : “President Biden announces ceasefire to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.”
Aussie ABC news has live coverage of that & developments there in live blog form here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-27/israel-hezbollah-ceasefire-proposal-live-blog/104651020
Trump is big mad everyone found out he gave his cringe super fan a job
Russia withdraws from Kupyansk
[…] Sweden stands up.
The UK stands up.
Germany steps up.
[…] NATO calls for medium-range missiles for Ukraine.
[…]
Source : https://www.space.com/the-universe/solar-system/a-super-earth-beyond-mars-would-have-made-earth-nearly-uninhabitable
Owen Jones US In Melktdown Over Netanyahu Arrest Warrants (12 mins long) note esp the outright gangster style threat to the ICC chief.
Of course if the USA wasn’t a rogue superpower already, it sure seems like its just about to become that as Trump takes over..
Three weeks too late and a billion dollars short.
Should Melania be worried?
Or relieved? 🤔
Re: Bekenstein Bound @ #333….
Re: Harp. Trump can have Melania deported and marry Harp.
Nancy Mace fights to keep transgender women out of bathrooms while her aide broke into a woman’s home
It seems pretty obvious that Netanyahu delayed this until after the election.
This is true, but it did so on barely 1/3 of the votes cast, due to the UK’s grossly undemocratic electoral system, and the intervention of Trump-worshipper Nigel Farage, who siphoned off Tory votes to his Reform Party UK Ltd. While several political mis-steps are mainly responsible for the complete absence of the “honeymoon period” a newly-elected UK government usually gets, its narrow and shallow (the election was overwhelmingly about getting the Tories out) support base has surely contributed and will continue to do so.
Hmm. I suggest you read a bit more history. Spain’s empire couldn’t really be said to end until most of Spanish America became independent in the early 1800s – as a consequence of Spain’s occupation by Napoleon’s France – and even then it hung on to Cuba, the Philippines, and other bits and pieces. But it lost its hegemonic position in Europe at least by 1648, when it conceded the independence of the Dutch Republic (and Portugal had de facto recovered its independence in 1640). France then became the dominant land power in Europe, while the Dutch Republic itself became the greatest sea power. England was already an established player, had been for centuries, and became even stronger (as Great Britain) after the Union with Scotland in 1707. It became undoubtedly the greatest European power after defeating France in the Seven Years’ War, (1756ish-1763), which effectively ended French power on the North American mainland and in India, and this position was confirmed by its victory in the Napoleonic Wars. But no European power had a position of global hegemony before the Industrial Revolution – Britain could not have coerced China, Japan, the Ottoman Empire, or Persia before the 1830s at the earliest (nor, for that matter, Russia), and the growth of its power in India resulted from the decline of the Mughal Empire due to Persian and Afghan attacks and the growth of the Maratha Confederacy. (Incidentally, the Roman occupation of (most of) Britain preceded the coming of the Anglo-Saxons; it was the Normans – Frenchified Vikings – rather than the French as such who conquered England in 1066; and for much of the medieval period England held parts of France rather than vice versa.) Whether Britain lost its hegemonic position as a result of WW1 or WW2 can be disputed, but in either case nobody thought the Ottomans (the “sick man of Europe” for decades before vanishing at the end of WW1) were a contender, and the USA was most certainly an established power (hegemonic in the Western hemisphere and extending its power across the Pacific to Hawaii, the Philippines, etc.), which in effect declined to take that global position after WW1 but did so after WW2.
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-27/payman-accuses-pauline-hanson-racism-in-senate/104651566
Senator Payman is right here.
@172 Lynna, OM
China has utterly pwned ‘thousands and thousands’ of devices at US telcos
Elon Musk Says He Owns Everyone’s Twitter Account in Bizarre Alex Jones Court Filing
Cuteness overload
Save A Fox:”Border Collie Fauna plays with rescued silver fox Piper”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=HVQL9906xOU
@243. Bekenstein Bound :
Some fascinating intriguing speculations and scenaios and possibilities outlined there. Intresting SF ideas and potential.
I fear you haven’t fully appreciated how bad Global Overheating is going to affect things with massive increases in global climate disasters, rising seas, desertification, flooding and a collapse of agriculture globally with all the starvation, war and horror that entails.
OTOH, Australia is a kinda bowl shaped with a lot of potential for Lake Eyre / Kati Thanda et al changing from salt pan to actual liquid water lake.- either naturally or digging a canal from say Port Augusta ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Augusta ) through to Lake Torrens or reversing the Pirie-Torrens corridor – an infrequent water course so dry we don’t even call it that. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirie%E2%80%93Torrens_corridor. )
Problem is israel’s WMD’s arsenal and their Samson option (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option ) which means Isreal won’t go quietky and will probly take much of the world a s we know it down with it. The ultimate and longest lasting scorched earth idea. I don’t think Israel will allow iran to exist and rise to become Neo-Persia if it falls due in part to them and becomes a smoking crater. I hope I’m wrong and you could I guess imagine that the prosepct of that is toohjorrible for Israel toactually go through with but.. yeah. Don’t bet on that.
Throw in nuclear war or wars plural on top of Global Overheating, pandemics and famines and the whole Mass Extinction event we’re already living though and I fear you’ve been way too optimistic and, fuck, does that thought ever suck. Sorry.
Oh, almost forgot there’s the Kessler syndrome with the implications of space junk making Low Earth Orbit deadly to add into the mix here as well.. Yes, I have been feeling extra gloomy lately..
@339. Update : Lidia Thorpe has also protested the notorious racist Senator Pauline Hanson and Lidia Thorpe, of course, is the one who gets punished. Grr..
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-27/labor-coalition-to-suspend-lidia-thorpe/104655454
On public health, Trump’s incoming team goes from bad to worse
A related video is available at the link. (4:51 minutes)
Yikes! Trump may let podcast bros into White House Briefing Room
Link
Embedded links are available at the main link.
New York Times:
Times of Israel:
Glenn Thrush:
As posted on X.
Link
Occupy and destroy: Israel’s systematic demolition of Lebanese border villages
Video at the link.
1.4 million Lebanese displaced from their homes.
What Sen. Mike Lee doesn’t understand about Jack Smith’s cases
[Subheader] The Utah Republican seems to think he has uncovered evidence of special counsel Jack Smith engaging in “politicized lawfare,” but his proof is absurd.
Wonkette published a recipe from Rush Limbaugh’s collection. The recipe includes jello (lime jello), stuffed olives, and Miracle Whip. Oh, yeah, Philadelphia creamed cheese is also included.
I just can’t.
Miracle Whip is mayonnaise blended with salad dressing.
The olives might be okay alone.
Re: StevoR @343:
Wikipedia – Samson Option:
Not quite as bad as what I imagined.
Wikipedia – Dead Hand
There there. The junk-disrupted magentosphere may irradiate everyone soon enough.
France believes Israel’s Netanyahu has immunity from ICC arrest warrant
* See also: my October comment about the Rome Statute and ICC jurisdiction.
Unexpected Dem wins in House races mean the GOP only has a two-seat majoity until the special elections in April (for the House seats vacated by Trump’s cabinet picks).
“WOW! Dems Take SHOCK LEAD in Races NO ONE EXPECTED”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=NWhco-p8bYc
Oops, I see Lynna, OM @ 350 made the same point.
@8, 66, 71, 320
Investigators suspect submarine data cables were deliberately cut.
Flashing Lights On Emergency Vehicles Can Cause ‘Digital Epileptic Seizure’ In Automated Driving Systems
Re: Reginald Selkirk @359:
Thinking as I read: I take it previously Teslas weren’t pulling over to give emergency vehicles wide berth then.
*headdesk* Of course. I shouldn’t be surprised at this point.
Arizona Mirror link
WTF?!
Link
The little girl is black, if that makes any difference.
Texas bill would reclassify abortion drugs as controlled substances
The Lost Medieval Library Found in a Romanian Church
Jim Abrahams, who pioneered spoof comedy films like Airplane and Naked Gun, dead at 80
Man suffers chemical burn that lasted months after squeezing limes
The Dogs of Chernobyl Are Experiencing Rapid Evolution, Study Suggests
Or, it could be the feral lifestyle.
This pyramid in Utah is a winery, a temple, and home to the mummy of a religious leader
Researchers show ability to remove toxic particles from end-of-life tires
Decontaminating is good. Plastic recycling, not so much.
Five firms in plastic pollution alliance ‘made 1,000 times more plastic than they cleaned up’
@368: This is some wacky stuff. I recommend reading the full article.
Several Trump picks for top jobs targeted with bomb and ‘swatting’ threats
“The threats were deemed to be not credible, three senior law enforcement officials told NBC News.”
Video available at the link.
Hmm. I expect to see a lot more reporting on this. Let’s figure out who initiated the threats.
NBC News:
Good news from the Biden administration.
@354. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain : “There there. The junk-disrupted magentosphere may irradiate everyone soon enough.”
Thanks. Nice to have something to look forward to eh?
Cheery thoughts for the future huh..
How the f*ck did Trump actually win? (36:49)
First 20 min are skippable. His stats were based on 99% of votes counted.
That’s interesting – I dislike all the first five in that list – celery, parsley and fennel particularly. I also dislike aniseed (which I find also contains furocoumarins, and is in the same family as celery, parsley and fennel), and identify it as tasting similar to those. Citrus fruits are fine, but maybe they contain different furocoumarins, or other substances that mask the taste I dislike.
“Trump has declared trade war and people in the US are going to suffer badly”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=uqQkByUuX5A
40% of all US oil comes from Canada and Mexico. There is not domestic production capacity to replace it with US oil. Half the fruit consumed in the US comes from Mexico.
The largest export from Mexico to USA is electronic consumer goods. There is not capacity in USA to replace this with domestically manufactured goods.
A long childhhod came before increase in cranial size. A long childhood to learn skills (culture) came first and morphology adapted to it.
“1.77-Million-Year-Old Fossil Challenges Human Big Brain Theory”
https://scitechdaily.com/1-77-million-year-old-fossil-challenges-human-big-brain-theory/
The road to fascism
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxfXRrDGXYJMWk1-ngoQkRTtJcEGr6VtAV
birgerjohansson@376-8,
There will be a procedure to apply for exemption from the tariffs – which will be granted to importers supporting Trump politically or financially. IOW, the whole “tariffs” issue is a way to licence corruption on an unprecedented scale.
Owen Jones YT Western Media covers up Israeli Finance Minister (Smotrich -ed) Call For Genocide (11 mins long.)
^ 109 aid trucks.
Just eleven made it though to dleiver their life-saving supplies.. ( 7 mins 23 secs mark.)
The ‘Christian Nation-ist’ Set To Take Control Of The Federal Government
Oh & ten thosuand tents housing starved families lost in just two days. (From same clip in #380.)
Link
Galaxy Garden at Paleuku Gardens
A scale model of the Milky Way galaxy, 1000 light-years per foot, on the island of Hawaii.
,
FFS.
Link
I think I’ll apply “Bah humbug!” to Thanksgiving.
FFS … again.
Link
Link
Link
Followup on the good news from Oregon: A State House District Flips in Oregon, Giving us a Supermajority and a Trifecta
If you are so inclined: Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade live updates: All the floats, performances, news and more
“Boo Hoo! GB News Cries About Have I Got News For You MOCKING [conservative] Allison Pearson”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=FtEf3wh-mMQ
Tory client media will tor without care or logic.
South-west France swelters in ‘staggering’ 26.9C November night heat | The Guardian
.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/28/south-west-france-sweltered-in-269c-november-night-time-heat
https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2024/11/28/building_a_new_road_through_the_glowing_lava/
More (plus interesting pictures) at the link.
Talk about building roads under difficult conditions….
A peaceful little short film to watch during thanksgiving: Le Bouffonne Orange (The Orange Buffoon)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=NT5QyzpttBo
The menu is out for the 21st Eastham Turnip Fest Taste of Turnip Day at local restaurants
Wait, wait, let me guess… does the menu feature turnips?
The Invisible Man, A firsthand account of homelessness in America
(CW: dental maladies, DV)
A very long read. By a former reporter/art-critic for The Boston Globe, The Narragansett Times, and Reuters, a bipolar novelist, car-dwelling since October 2023. It’s a series of short anecdotes with divider lines. Ends on a chilling note.
The fallacy of running a company to maximise shareholder value
.https://www.facebook.com/share/v/15npvFrmTa/
-It so happens that the hypothetical shareholder described – a functional psychopath only concerned with short-term profit – is now a president!
Donald Trump’s ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ Message Takes A Very Divisive Turn
Landslide, my left ventral thecal sac.
Furry, not-orange things to give you some rest from assholes and disasters.
Don’t mess with these kittens
.https://www.facebook.com/share/v/19SPouK14H/
BTW the Dexter prologue with a story from the perspective of a murderer seems apt for the zeitgeist. Next; Benito, The Early Years.
More anti-Trumpian relaxation photos.
P J Harvey, Björk & Tori Amos 1994
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14VY3q5m9L/
Artificial intelligence finds previously undetected historical climate extremes
.https://phys.org/news/2024-11-artificial-intelligence-previously-undetected-historical.html
.
Compensating for the lack of weather stations in the first half of the 20th century.
Glioblastoma treatment shows promise in mouse study
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-11-glioblastoma-treatment-mouse.html
“Israel’s best friend” in hs own words as seen here Lowkey exposes Donald Trump by Double Down News on YT,. 15 mins long
But, yay, Kamala Harris who as Veep had no real power and current though now irrelevant, useless* (?), old POTUS Biden have been punished by turning the world’s biggest military superpower over to literal Fascist Christianist Zionists so.. yeah. That showed ’em huh? . Now the consequences are gunna be.. ???
Said before, will say again no doubt, every single American who actually cares about Palestine shoulda voted for Kamala given the only actual alternative . Too few actually did.
Can’t say you weren’t warned.
(On so many other
thingslives as well as the Gazan genocide..).* Despite being given as much power as Medevial kings by SCOTUS becoz he’s too decent to use it to unto them what they’d do first the fool.
FWIW If I were Biden right now I’d use every last bit of the literal Emperor Palpatine Power!!! Unlimited POWER! that SCOTUS gavce me and arrest evcery lats Trumpist piece of shit inthe country and make the 20254 election null and void becoz reaslly US oA.. fuck that shit and sahem on everytone who vote danything other than the rational chgoice of Kamala given the alternative.
Democracy, just doesn’t work. VBrexcit, the Indigenous Voice to Parlt in Oz, ad nauseam keeps proving that.
If voters are willfully ignorant and deluded enough to vote for Trump then they are too willfully ignorant and deluded for their votes to deserve to count.
Democracy can ONLY work with an veducated, rational populace and right now, well United States of America, you do NOT pass that bar.
There’s a critical mass of deluded, brain-washed, Failures at critical thinking & rational analysis to allow actual democracy to work. Proof : 2024 election there..
Oh & if you think that seems tyranincal and unfair wait rtil yousee what the mionsters you colectively voted for are about to do.
PS. If you think there’s typos in my comment here (ok, yeah) wait till you see the senile old POTUS’es tweets or untruths or whatevs..
As Trump Touts Plans For Immigrant Roundup, Militias Are Standing Back, But Standing By
Media capture is no joke, by Mark Sumner.
Compare the maps!
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Bo3TdvbL5/
Washington Post link
U.K. backs assisted-dying law after emotional debate over end-of-life care.
“The bill, modeled after Oregon’s law, would apply to terminally ill patients .”
Insurgents breach Syria’s second-largest city in a bid to reignite long-simmering war
“The fighting is a significant escalation since rebels launched a surprise offensive earlier this week, seizing towns and villages as they cut a path toward Syria’s second-largest city.”
Disinformation Transformed Miami Politics. This Radio Station Is One Reason Why.
“Radio Mambí birthed Cuban politics in south Florida. Now it’s a platform for Trumpism […]”
More at the link. I snipped a lot of text.
Link
Video at the link.
Link
The text quoted above is an excerpt from a longer article.
Link
Brew with a view: Starbucks opens shop overlooking Korean DMZ
Photos at the link.
This is from a pro-Ukrainan podcast. The interesting thing is that despite having suffered heavy losses the Russians have not comitted nearby North Korean troops, apparently as they do not (yet) have the training to be useful.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=KHypEm3bc-0
The earliest SF film version of a Stanislaw Lem story;
‘Schweigende Stern’/’First Spaceship On Venus’ is described here in a film podcast, together with the American film The Bubble (itself an interesting film that has not received as much attention as lesser films of the era)
“The Bubble And First Spaceship On Venus – Hidden Gems!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=voLVUrR-HhE
Re: StevoR 380 405 406:
Your links are still doing that bad quote at the end thing.
I made a guess as to what was going on earlier.
The formula you got from silentbob contains a “right double quote” on the left and a “double prime” on the right.
Indeed your urls technically do end with a “double prime” in the blog source, enclosed by normal quotes.
What you need is a plain “quotation mark” such as when you write the formula yourself. The following formula ought to be amenable to copying if you prefer.
<a href="URL">LABEL</a>
.
.
/For this post only, I used special codes to make the formula visible and prevent the blog from mangling visible quotes. & < > "
If you need to decompress from political assholes (I know I do) here is some furry cuteness
“My Golden Retriever Protects Newborn Kittens Like They’re His Own”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=I1blpWR3MLA
Man dressed as baked bean rides first Eurostar
SunFed cucumbers sold in U.S. and Canada recalled due to salmonella risk
This food recall is just a small preview of what’s going to happen in the next 4 years… It’s not going to be pretty (or safe).I certainly will be checking more where my food comes from and avoid anything from the US if possible.
Remember that long Fermi paradox debate a couple months ago?
Looks like we have our answer. All you’ve got to do is look at the news this past three weeks, and it becomes fairly obvious. :(
Utrecht: Greening a City
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15jkYijty3/
GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT | TV
“The Best Gothic Horror Series Ever Made Needs More Recognition, Every Frame Is Art”
.https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/best-gothic-horror-series.html
Penny Dreadful
“Weird 80s Songs You’ve Definitely Never Heard Of”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=2bD0Bxf5owE
Naah. I recall “There’s a rat in me kitchen”, “Geil”, “Star Trekking” and “The Hitler Rap”. Especially the last one.
Man who found smooth Mars bar gets £2 compensation
“the Dull Men’s Club”?
I enjoyed Penny Dreadful myself, although I thought it got a little too overwrought and gothic as the series proceeded.
Also, back in the 1970s and onward, my brother and I would stay up late listening to Dr Demento. We’ve heard all the weird songs.
Oooh, the “Dull Men’s Club”? I should join.
Their web site:
Dull Men’s Club
Link
Link
Link
Senate Democrat defends Vindman against Musk’s ‘treason’ threat
As a sixtysomething I constantly worry about my brain morphing into a Reagan or Trump.
But when writing about films, I finally recalled that films with unnecessary violence have ‘gratuitous’ violence. Just like 1970s-1980s films had gratuitous nudity and topless actresses.
If Democrats and media people mean business about standing up to Trump, they should do a pilgrimage to Poland and other countries that successfully pushed back authoritarian regimes.
Under no circumstances should media or politicians agree to “normalise” the new situation. The only bipartisan cooperation should be with never-trumpers.
Addendum: I mean, they should learn from masters of practical resistance about saving democracy, instead of assuming they are the smartest people in the room. We have seen where that got the USA.
Israel kills charity worker in Gaza saying he was Hamas militant | Hezbollah | The Guardian
.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/30/israel-strikes-hezbollah-weapons-sites-on-lebanons-border-with-syria
Your anti-Trump soundtrack […] these 13 artists
Kamala Harris Canvasser’s Education. That’s a New Yorker link.
Excerpt from a longer article:
Trump selects Jared Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, for ambassador to France
Final paragraph from the article featured in comment 442:
I am familiar with all of those difficulties. Too much pain. Not enough affordable healthcare. Social security benefits that are inadequate. Concern about losing Social Security benefits, or about having those benefits reduced. Not enough public transportation.
American collegiate football:
Michigan stuns No. 2 Ohio State 13-10 before a massive postgame brawl at midfield
Gene behind orange fur in cats found at last
World’s Largest Gold Deposit Found, Worth Over US$80 Billion
Mayor Dies in Police Chase Days After Entire Force Resigns
Western quality vs Russian hardware
“How NORDIC Weapons Are Dominating Russia in Ukraine”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7gJmIfExGo0
Trump threatens 100% tariff on the BRIC bloc of nations if they act to undermine US dollar
I’ve got money down that he doesn’t know what the ‘R’ in BRIC stands for.
First up-close picture taken of star outside Milky Way
Maybe “up-close” isn’t the right term. Anyway…
SF film facts: ‘Soldier’ (with Kurt Russel) is supposed to play in the same universe as Blade Runner.
‘Nemesis’ came a year before the animated Ghost In The Machine and brings up similar philosophical issues.
Dammit. I warned him that smoking would kill him someday, but he just wouldn’t listen …
Great interview by Mehdi Hasan with Jan Egeland, Norwegian Refugee Committee secretary general and former UN humanitarian chief, here – 17 minutes long discussing the situations in Sudan and Gaza among other things.
@420-421. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain : Okay, thanks for that – very much appreciated.
Lessee :
When did the first ever stars form in the Universe? Dr Becky 25 mins length.
PS. What’s with youtubers capitalising whole words seemingly needlessly?
Trump picks loyalist Kash Patel to head FBI
I don’t see any mention of him ever having been accused of rape, which puts him ahead of most of Trump’s cabinet.
Now trying with one of those shorts things Dr Becky coolest science plot she’s seen in ages very breif and repeating.
Yes! That worked! Cheers again.
Mysterious Radio Signals Lead Astronomers to an Unlikely Cosmic Pair
Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ygn31ypdlo
Bloody hell ..
Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpwrw7j5vx0o
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8d5334vmyo
Not “boat people” but people. Individuals same as me, you, everyone , anyone but for luck of birth and circumstances.
This convicted felon just became the US ambassador to France
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxuWnN0H09zpFK_oBcTO76_YTegQzXB4Ej
Followup to Reginald @457:
Text above is quoted from an article in The Atlantic, by Tom Nichols.
CNN:
He thought he would die in Putin’s gulag. Now he has a message for the world.
“Leading Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza tells Vox the world needs to start preparing now for Putin’s fall.”
Much more at the link.
Followup to comment 466.
Another excerpt from the interview with Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/american-history-corner-the-enby
Followup to comments 457 and 465.
Washington Post link
@468 Lynna, OM
If you were interested by the “Universal Publick Friend”, you may also be interested in:
The Burned-Over District
“The Great Disappointment” marked the end of the Millerite sect but gave birth to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists. The Burned-Over District also saw the birth of Mormonism and Spiritualism, the birth of Robert Green Ingersoll (“The Great Agnostic”), and significant activity in social movements including abolitionism, the Underground Railroad, and the Women’s suffrage movement.
@470
I see there was a movie The Burned Over District in 2022. It doesn’t appear to be good.
Reginald, fertile ground for nonsense to sprout. Lots of money-making opportunities for charlatans.
In other news: For Rep. Delia Ramirez, Trump’s mass deportation plan is personal
@465 Lynna, OM:
It isn’t as much of a reversal as it might seem. The far right has always had a double think with the FBI. They liked the FBI when it was arresting protestors and infiltrating left wing organizations or bust drug dealers and smugglers. They hated it when it infiltrated right wing organizations or arrested right wing terrorists.
The thing to understand about this is that they don’t care about the FBI’s methodology or the actual guilt of the target. They care about who the FBI is targeting. A right wing group is too be protected, a left wing one attacked. This has been true since the 80s at least when the FBI began breaking up some of the right wing militia groups.
It is strangely reassuring to see that Canada also has its share of whacko nutjobs serving as elected politicians. Also disturbing at the same time.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/meet-the-canadian-george-santos-randy
JM @473, good points.
In other news: Iran throws its support behind Assad as rebels expand their shock offensive in Syria
“We firmly support the Syrian army and government,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was quoted as saying by state media.
CNN: Zelensky wants to ‘work directly’ with Trump on ending Ukraine’s war with Russia
This is Zelensky being practical. He has to deal with Trump and he knows Trump is easily manipulated. So he is trying to put on a friendly face and deal with Trump directly.
Again being practical. If the best Ukraine can get out of the war is a real guarantee of security for the currently free parts then they will have little choice but go with it. Ukraine isn’t big enough to face off Russia on it’s own.
ISW: Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 29, 2024
This is a good idea in theory but in practice for an army as badly organized and managed as the Russian army doing this while at war is likely to go badly. It will likely result in drones being distributed badly and too many hoarded by the central authorities.
There is a complex political game going on here. Russia is unhappy with how bad the North Korean soldiers have been but they need the man power and supplies from North Korea plus there are strategic advantages. North Korea is unhappy with seeing their soldiers used as cannon fodder but the government wants to secure trade and strategic alliances with Russia. Having angered China to ally with Russia, North Korea will be in a bad situation if it breaks down now.
The situation in Georgia has very obvious similarities to the one in Ukraine. The population wants to ally with the EU, the government fears being overthrown by Russia if they do. The population wants to move now when Russia’s ability to respond will be limited. The government wants to delay in the hopes things blow over.
Russia is pushing real hard to drive Ukraine out of Kursk. If the front is really frozen where it is the situation will look very bad for Putin. Losing Russian soil to Ukraine even if Russia took more then it lost will smash his image.
Along the rest of the front they continue slow progress where they are willing to throw away enough men to bludgeon their way forward.
AP: Trump threatens 100% tariff on the BRIC bloc of nations if they act to undermine US dollar
I suspect one of Trump advisors told him to make this threat because those countries are not going to do anything in the current global situation. They have talked about setting a finance system to go around the dollar but at the best of times it would be a very complex international deal, right now those countries are barely on speaking terms. Russia, China and South Africa all have their finances hosed and can’t implement what would likely be an expensive deal. This makes it an easy win for Trump, his followers like the threat and there is no risk he actually has to do anything.
NFL team asks fans to help clear snow before game as Arctic blast hits
Venomous snake slithers up driver’s leg on Australia motorway
My father is a woman and I’m proud to call her dad
Why orcas wear dead salmon as ‘hats’ remains a mystery, scientists say
Why Tech Billionaires Love the Author of Jurassic Park
How many times has the media you read settled a defamation lawsuit for 778 million dollars? It depends on which media you read, doesn’t it?
In other words, people like Elon Musk.
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #482…
Crichton is late to the game. Asimov pointed out just that problem with critiques of Velkovsky in the 1970s. In the relevant essay, he went on the criticize Velikovsky’s biochemistry because Asimov was, in fact, a biochemist. He pointed out that Velikovsky didn’t appear to know the difference between a hydrocarbon and a carbohydrate. (Carl Sagan did much the same in the Cosmos TV series. Criticizing Velikovky’s astronomy and orbital dynamics, which fall into Sagan’s expertise in astrophysics.)
Japan’s popular Princess Aiko turns 23 with her future as a royal in doubt
Maybe she could marry herself?
James Madison on Christianity
@289, 308 (Relevant to Gibson guitars, not T****)
More than 3,000 fake Gibson guitars seized at Los Angeles port
Engadget: Bluesky implements a ‘more aggressive’ impersonation policy
Bluesky is growing rapidly and has passed Threads for daily users by some counts. This means that impersonators and squatters are now piling up on Bluesky also. They have ramped up their moderation of such accounts to try and handle the situation.
They are running into other issues caused by growing so fast. They have a process for verification but it only works if you have a domain name, they will probably need a more general formal verification process at some point. Ramping up moderation in general is a problem because moderators need training but they are working on it. Bluesky is also running into some problems with the EU. Their sudden growth has changed what regulatory category they fall into and they are having problems keeping up requirements.
Putin is eager to reclaim all Russian territory in Kursk before the Trump inauguration to get a better negotiating position. He does not give a damn that the weather makes advances hard, or that Russian hardware, tactics and numbers are insufficient.
Even taking into account that this podcast is pro-Ukraine it looks like the Kursk region is turning into a mini-Verdun, or mini-Somme.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-O13gQVcG2Q
“This Sci-Fi Horror Movie Not Only Perfectly Combined ‘The Thing’ and ‘Alien,’ It Came Out at Precisely the Right Time”
.https://collider.com/sea-fever-alien-the-thing-horror-movie/
“Sea Fever”
Hegseth’s own mom is saying he abuses women.
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxP6b4KD2g3a76TebLRGR6nYXu-nh93_oT
The Brilliance of Modern Gyrocopters
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=tQ_D1IxwgtM
Very High Lift Coefficient Wings: The latest developments
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=UwEYSPCz28s
A possible change of wind at the DNC?
https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/winkler-for-chair?r=1502lc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Biden pardons his son Hunter despite previous pledges not to
Meh. I am tired of the double standard and do not care. Also, he is not appointing Hunter to be ambassador to France.
Nativity scene controversy: Local atheist says church’s new display takes it too far
That’s mighty Christian of them.
Depending on the source, Herod was either a Jew or a pagan (and conducted a ceremony at a temple to Jupiter, no less). It does not seem he was an atheist.
“There are ingroups the law must protect but must not bind, and outgroups the law must bind but must not protect; this is the sum total of conservatism.”
Minnesota and New Hampshire have the highest literacy rates
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DiBKQStmz/
Europe according to Danes.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/12JsGvD8WKE/
(ASOS is a Brit online fashion retailer)
(yes, I know Portugal does not have siesta)
Kantonspolizei Bern Star Wars Weihnachtsspot (Kantonspolizei büsst Stormtroopers auf der Bundesplatz)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=2BmhHyyzh9o