Stuttering Lede, Dec. 27th, 2024
The countdown to January 20th...
“America is in even greater danger because of its cult of toughness, its hatred of sensitivity, and someday it may have to pay a price for this, because atrophy of feeling creates criminals.” Anaïs Nin
Author’s Note: Recently, Substack announced a new enterprise media offering in partnership with Bari Weiss’ website “because of its commitment to pursuing high-integrity journalism.” If you’re still publishing there, it’s time to get the fuck out. Personally I am exploring moving my two newsletters to Beehiiv during/after the holidays.
I can't believe there's people finding out about THE ODYSSEY because of the new Nolan film and complaining about spoilers. It was written almost 3000 years ago, what spoilers are you talking about?
HBO has declined to renew “Sesame Street” for new episodes. The series that’s been teaching generations of little kids since 1969 now has no studio.
Please consider donating to Sesame Workshop to ensure the residents of 123 Sesame Street are still around to teach kids of all needs and backgrounds.
US
Steve Bannon floats an unconstitutional candidate: Trump in 2028.
It's almost impossible to grasp the magnitude of US wealth inequality & concentration:
Delta CEO says the Trump administration will reverse government ‘overreach’ seen under Biden.
The death spiral of the 4th Estate continues:
“LA Times owner, Patrick Soon-Shion, asks editorial board to ‘take a break’ from writing about Trump.”
Trump Sues The Des Moines Register, Escalating Threats Against the Media.
Gannett, owner of the Des Moines Register, won’t publicly commit to paying legal costs for Ann Seltzer, the pollster being sued by Trump. This is ominous, especially in light of the capitulation last week by Disney/ABC, which is vastly better resourced than Gannett. I am personally expecting Soviet style censorship within 12 months.
CNN is an undisputed champion of normalization and sanewashing fascism.
If you want to support Independent, Worker-Owned and Reader Funded media, here’s a good starter pack.
Trump’s Wish to Control Greenland and Panama Canal: Not a Joke This Time.
They’re choosing compliance with eyes wide open, trading their watchdog role for a seat at the billionaire’s table.” The media surrenders to Trump 2.0. The question isn’t whether mainstream media will hold Trump accountable in his second term — they’ve already decided not to try. The question is whether enough independent voices can survive to fill the vacuum they’re leaving behind."
From Sen. Elizabeth Warren: “As we confront a second Trump presidency, here’s a path forward.”
The problem with the Democratic Party is a total lack of accountability. The people responsible for the many failures which led to this moment will face zero consequences for their failures. Instead, they’re the same people leading us into lying down for fascists. We need a new class of leaders. How do we expect Dems to hold Trump and MAGA fascists accountable, when they do not care to acknowledge any responsibility for all of the failures over the last quarter century but especially the last decade. Democrats' playbook to beat Republicans in 2 years: work with them now.
A brief thread on how we got to the most recent government shutdown.
America’s Private Prison Complex Gears Up for Trump Deportation Bonanza.
You cannot and should not ever “meet people halfway” when it comes to your rights and/or your existence as a person. You will either be accepted as a human being who is different from them or they can fuck off.
Major Trump donors who complained of immigrant ‘invasion’ used Mexican workers illegally.
From Elie Mystal: “Institutional Resistance Is Futile.
It’s time for the Democratic Party to abandon its staid, rules-based resistance to Trumpism and wage a fierce, moral response.”
A visualization of the razor thin margin of this election. Of the 244+ million voting-eligible population:
31.5% voted for Trump
30.6% voted for Harris
37.7% did not vote
Popular is not a word that would accurately describe Trump or the MAGA movement.
Trump is already undermining the strong economy he inherited.
After backing Trump, low-income voters hope he doesn’t slash their benefits.
Yet again, Trump is not going to be held accountable: The Georgia State Court of Appeals has now ruled that Fulton County DA, Fani Willis, should have been disqualified by Judge McAfee and reverses his decision.
DOJ during the first Trump’s term secretly and illegally wiretapped multiple members of congress and their staffers. This what they will do this time around!
Kash Patel is about to seriously figure out what FAFO means.
The House Ethics Committee secretly voted earlier this month to release its report into the conduct of former Rep. Matt Gaetz before the end of this Congress, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter. The full Matt Gaetz ethics report has been released. Here it is.
Squeezed by high prices, a growing number of Americans find shelter in long-term motels.
Woke’ didn’t lose the US election: the patrician class who hijacked identity politics did.
From Jamelle Bouie, “Now Is Not the Time for Surrender.”
A federal judge has been found to have violated ethics rules … by criticizing Samuel Alito for MAGA flags flying at his houses. We really do have two if not three tier justice system.
In 2022, Biden issued an executive order to create a misconduct database for federal law enforcement. BJS has just issued the first report. It is . . . odd. The strangest bit is that the number of misconduct records dropped from 1,100 in 2019, to just 365 last year. The fed. database was supposed to be proof of concept for a possible national database of state and local police, so PDs could avoid hiring cops with abusive histories.
In theory it's a great idea! But state/local PDs are *really* bad with data. Doesn't bode well if the fed. model is already wonky.
Texas Governor Abbott unveiled a new advertisement campaign that literally warns migrants that they will be raped if they illegally cross the border.
It astonishes me that more people in politics and our media pretend to be concerned about kids having missed school than kids having been killed or sickened by Covid. COVID-19 is a leading cause of death in children and young people in the US. Elad Nehorai writes: “One is about "personal responsibility" and one is something that needs to be addressed structurally. It's the same logic of applying the label of murderer to a shooter and not to a CEO or company. Purposefully or not, the idea is to redirect all energy to the individual instead of the system.”
At one point, officers locked arms to allow Amazon vans through the line. 2 Teamsters were detained by NYPD today. Neither were charged, both were released on the scene an hour later.
Records Show DC and Federal Law Enforcement Sharing Surveillance Info on Racial Justice Protests.
Ex-D.C. Police Officer Convicted of Tipping Off Proud Boys Ahead of Jan. 6.
Americans are paying more for new cars mainly because they're trading up in size.
Mark Robinson logs in to state meeting as 'minisoldr,' the handle at the center of CNN allegations.
DOGE
Elon/Vivek trashed American workers: “Vivek really did stake out the "immigrant workers are better than American workers" position. Could anything be more at odds with Trumpism?”
MAGA confirmed they’re against all forms of immigration.
Elon confirmed he’s not a “free speech absolutist”
8 policies stripped from GOP bill after Trump, Musk rebellion:
Fix for stolen food stamp funds.
PBM overhaul.
RFK Stadium transfer.
Congress pay COLA.
Pediatric cancer research.
Ban on junk fees.
Criminalizing revenge porn.
Restrictions on investment in China.
In other words, Elon not only wanted to be able to make investments that would share tech with China, but he ALSO wanted to protect the publication of deep fake porn on X.
Speaking of two tier justice system: "Elon Musk and his rocket company, SpaceX, have repeatedly failed to comply with federal reporting protocols aimed at protecting state secrets, including by not providing some details of his meetings with foreign leaders."
Occupy Wall Street’s first tweet in nearly 5 years is kissing Elon Musk’s ass (this is not the main @occupywallstnyc account):
The tech bros & MAGA base have many things in common, but they diverge in key ways.
Elon Musk Is a Paid Subscriber to Shockingly Racist Pro-Apartheid South African X Account.
The Men and Women Swirling Around Elon Musk. If you don't count family members, there are about 44 people on this list: four women, all of whom work for Musk.
Luigi
A Manhattan grand jury has indicted Luigi Mangione on first-degree murder, second-degree murder as a crime of terrorism, and nine other offenses linked to the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The indictment alleges Mangione “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policies of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion, and affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping.”
Eleven counts. The first two both invoking terrorism. The ruling class is treating killing one of their own, with the motive being related to the evils of our health care system, as a fundamentally different act than if you or I were to be murdered. "Terrorism" is a socially constructed term. If Luigi murdered a homeless Black man, MAGA would call him a hero.
Luigi Mangione made no public statements, and the "civilian population" was *far* from "intimidated" by his actions.
The Manhattan DA's office is overcharging to make a point. One might even say to "intimidate or coerce a civilian population."
Dylan Roof gunned down 9 Black people in a church and he was not charged with terrorism. Luigi Mangione shot one white CEO and is charged with terrorism. If you ever wonder who runs our country just look at what the government defines as terrorism.
The police work for billionaires. They’ll attack a strike, they’ll arrest protesters, and they’ll devote themselves to making CEOs feel safe. Not only do cops defund our cities, they work overtime to stop us from building a better world.
Mangione arriving at the Wall Street helipad, where he was met by armed law enforcement and Mayor Adams — whose longtime top advisor until last Sunday is appearing in court across the street from Mangione on bribery charges:
Elon is now the richest person who has ever lived, even more than plutocrats who have plundered entire countries or the leaders of immense empires. Musk, as I’ve written before, is obviously a Nazi, but the main reason he spreads this ideology is because he is desperately afraid of being targeted in the way United's CEO was. Redirecting hate to the "other" is the way. Shouldn't surprise people that Mangione praised Musk. That was always part of the strategy.
Luigi Mangione retains high-profile former prosecutor as defense lawyer.
Luigi Mangione Prosecutors Have a Jury Problem: 'So Much Sympathy'
Europe
Putin blames the Jews. What a shocker! “They’re tearing the church apart but they’re not even atheists,” Putin said. “These are people without any beliefs, godless people, they’re ethnic Jews, but has anyone seen them in a synagogue? I don’t think so.”
Why is this unsurprising… Nigel Farage refuses to take parliament’s anti-bullying training as it’s ‘woke’. Meanwhile some 637 MPs managed to take it.
Macron completes the slide to the far right: "Emmanuel Macron swore during a furious exchange with residents of the cyclone-hit islands of Mayotte...telling a jeering crowd in the French territory “if this wasn’t France, you’d be in a bath of shit 10,000 times worse”." And it was already bad before the storm, this is from last year.
Death and injuries in Germany as car ploughs into crowd at Christmas market.
How Germany's far-right capitalizes on the Magdeburg attack.
Dr. Anna Ohanyan, explains how Georgia highlights outdated US policy in Eurasia.
Andrea Junker is absolutely correct when she writes: “The fact that I know more about Fani Willis’ and Nathan Wade’s relationship than I do about the crimes committed by Ginni Thomas and Clarence Thomas shows exactly what is terribly wrong with today’s political mainstream media.”
Nicely done Norwegian AirForce! Norway will train Ukrainian pilots and ground specialists on F-16 fighter jets in Portugal.
Middle East
Netanyahu says Israeli troops will occupy a buffer zone inside Syria for the foreseeable future. In plain English - “buffer zone” is annexation.
Freed prisoner who said he was a victim of the Assad regime was an intelligence officer. CNN now confirms the reporting of Syrian fact-checking site Verify-Sy. The man who was found in the prison cell was a lieutenant in the Assad regime’s Air Force Intelligence Directorate: Salama Mohammad Salama.
He was not an ordinary civilian as he had claimed in Clarissa Ward’s report.
US lifts bounty on Syrian rebel leader who helped oust Assad.
Defining genocide: how a rift over Gaza sparked a crisis among scholars.
Netanyahu says he held ‘friendly’ talks with Trump over Syria and Gaza hostages.
“Syria shows that Russia is not invincible," the EU's top diplomat Kaja Kallas said.
Today in "passive voice that I would subtract points for in an undergraduate essay," the AP and ABC News give us...
Israel plans to double population on occupied Golan, citing threats from Syria.
Russian military has begun large-scale withdrawal from Syria.
Good Riddance to America's Bungling Maestro of Middle-East Mayhem.
Women Rights
6 MAGA extremists have introduced a bill that would allow South Carolina to execute women who receive an abortion. If you haven't heard about SC H5357, it's because corporate media has completely ignored it. Here's the overview.
The bombshell lawsuit against Justin Baldoni is even bigger than it looks.
California forcibly sterilized hundreds of women. Then, it 'allowed' them to apply for compensation.
Women experiencing pregnancy loss in states with abortion bans told ProPublica they wished they had known what to expect and how to advocate for themselves. ProPublica created this guide for anyone who finds themselves in the same position. There are no words to express the concentrated mixture of deep sadness and burning anger that such a guide is as necessary as it is essential for survival. For Women. In America. In the year 2024.
All 51 defendants including ex-husband Dominique Pelicot found guilty in Gisèle Pelicot trial.
US has experienced a 7% increase in infant mortality post-Dobbs.
Tradwives, incels and cat ladies: The year MAGA broke heterosexuality.
Trans sports. Gender political polarization. Crashing birthrates. The world's richest man ranting about how boobs need to be bigger in videogames. These are not many crises, but one: a crisis in gender relations. Read the damn essay. it covers everything and more: why rightwingers are so nuts about birthrates, what the actual truth about them is, the scope and meaning of the patriarchal bargain… The ideology of separate spheres is a MODERN phenomenon that was invented during the Industrial Revolution, and only ever really applied to the bourgeoisie. It was was in fact a defining feature of middle-class identity that distinguished bourgeois from working-class & farm women.
LGBTQA+ Rights
President Joe Biden signs into law first federal anti-LGBTQ+ bill in decades.
Judith Butler, philosopher: ‘If you sacrifice a minority like trans people, you are operating within a fascist logic.’
UK’s CPS issues new guidance on 'deception as to sex.' This means a trans woman who lives as a woman, has a GRC, who has been stealth for decades - may be required to disclose her sex as recorded at birth to every sexual partner, else risk being found guilty of a criminal sexual offence. This standard applies to all sexual activity, not just penetrative sex.
That is to say - trans people would be required to disclose their sex as registered at birth before even engaging in a first kiss.
The year in trans politics: Has the gender-critical movement won?
Climate Change
Climate crisis exposed people to extra six weeks of dangerous heat in 2024.
Sea level rise in the U.S. South is blowing past expectations. Here’s what’s driving it.
Gun Violence
Most murders are committed by young men. A lot of young men suddenly found themselves out of school and out of a job in the spring of 2020, as the pandemic hit - often drastically exacerbating an already precarious socio-economic situation. The murder rate spiked. Why not elsewhere? Guns guns guns. New Brookings analysis offers a compelling argument for why murder started to surge in 2020.
Why did murders surge in 2020? Research says economics, not activism.
Fascinating murder data from the Real Time Crime Index:
NYC murders down 8% year-to-date
San Francisco down 37%
DC down 32%
Philadelphia down 41%
Atlanta down 10%
Baltimore down 28%
Detroit down 14%
New Orleans down 37%
Cleveland down 30%
Education
Can Immigration Agents Make Arrests and Carry Out Raids at Schools?
Reading silently and reading out loud in antiquity. Love to read a debunking of something that I didn't even know existed as a myth before I saw the debunking.
New Arizona charter school will use AI in place of human teachers.“Kids begin their day with two hours of instruction on standard topics like language, math and science, guided by an AI that continuously adjusts the learning plan based on how the child is doing in each subject.”
U.S. Students Posted Dire Math Declines on an International Test.
“Harvard Law enrolled 19 first-year Black students, or 3.4 percent of the class, the lowest number since the 1960s, according to the data from the American Bar Association.” FYI - Harvard law graduates alone comprise 8% of the federal judiciary
This will have massive downstream consequences on descriptive representation in the courts in 15-20 yrs.
Spying on Student Devices, Schools Aim to Intercept Self-Harm Before It Happens.
Tech
Uncontrolled data centre expansionism causes severe regional impacts.
Earlier this week, the UK government announced a proposal to change copyright law - for the benefit of AI companies - that would cause huge, irreversible harm to creators.
From a year ago: Elon Musk crosses the border to Nazi and now: Nach Wahlwerbung für AfD: Elon Musk stellt neuen Sprung vor. The AfD demands a “reversal” of Holocaust remembrance in Germany and states that the Nazi Schutzstaffel were “not criminals”
Dutch DPA to Netflix: "Your privacy notice doesn't say how long you'll retain data, only that you'll retain it 'as required or permitted by legislation and regulations.'"
Netflix: "Your privacy notice says exactly the same thing."
Dutch DPA: "That's not the point!"
Chuck Schumer is up in arms against the drones. This makes sense if you bear in mind that the notional Long Island couple that Schumer thinks about when he makes all his decisions got really weird during COVID, thinks Death Wish 3 happens in NYC daily, and read enough Nextdoor posts that they are both now clinically schizophrenic. They matter.
Can Blacksky Replace Black Twitter? What Huge Numbers Mean for the New Social Network Bluesky.
Musk seems to be pushing his own posts directly onto users' notification pages, even if they do not follow him, in a category comically labeled 'Elon Musk' above the breaking news that 'Elon Musk posted'
Misc.
Prisoner’s Self-Portraits of C.I.A. Torture Surface From Sealed Court Record.
"It's a Wonderful Life" Seems Less Wonderful In Trump's America.
Helen Viola Jackson died today in 2020. She was 101 years old.
In September 1936, aged 17, she had married James Bolin who was then 93. Bolin had served in the 14th Missouri cavalry during the Civil War. Ms Jackson was therefore the last widow of a Civil War soldier. THIS is how close the past is. This woman died in 2020. She was married to a Civil War veteran.
The Black Plastic Saga:
Damning studies of impact of Walmart on local economic well-being.
Forget soccer and samba. This caramel-colored street dog is Brazil’s new national icon.
From "Cats" to "Crazy Rich Asians": How airlines pick the movies on your flights..
What the ‘I Slept With 100 Men in One Day’ Doc Gets Right About Sex Work.
I feel seen: I thought I was a bad listener. Turns out, I couldn’t hear.
“I feel like I’ve caused mass hysteria,” says guy who started it all.
Nuclear bunker sales increase, despite expert warnings they aren’t going to provide protection. Fancy tombs. Expensive fancy tombs.
Pete Hegseth’s Guard Left the Army After the Beating of a Civilian During Training.
Guardian’s review of the Proposal from way back then. Hilarious.
Humor
The problem with the Democratic Party is a total lack of accountability. The people responsible for the many failures which led to this moment will face zero consequences for their failures. Instead, they’re the same people leading us into lying down for fascists. We need a new class of leaders. Exactly. How do we expect them (Dems) to hold Trump and MAGA fascists accountable, when they do not care to acknowledge any responsibility for all of the failures over the last quarter century but especially the last decade.
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
John Steinbeck