November 5, 2024

The Stuttering Lede, Nov 5th, 2024

Elections Day!!!

Remember, remember, the 5th of November,

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason

Why gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

Elections 2024

We are not likely to know the results tonight, perhaps not even tomorrow or the day after. The Anxiety Week is officially open.

• Trump has been told by some advisers and allies like Steve Bannon ensconced at the Willard hotel in DC that he should just declare victory if he’s ahead by a sufficient margin in places like Pennsylvania.

• The U.S. Capitol Police: “Our officers just arrested a man who was stopped during our screening process at the Capitol Visitor Center (CVC). The man smelled like fuel, had a torch & a flare gun. The CVC is closed for tours for the day, while we investigate. We will provide more information when we can.”

• What could possibly go wrong? Elon Musk plans to spend election night with Donald Trump, giving the former president direct access to the person controlling X, a key information platform, on what could be a chaotic evening.

• Golden statue erected in swing state mocks Trump by honoring 'lifetime of sexual assault'.

• Much of what Trump is planning is borrowed whole cloth from Russia, both the present day and the past it builds on. Look up the legend of Pavlik Morozov and how this myth inspired a government-imposed culture of betraying family members for wrongthink. Sleepwalking in a Snitch State: In Trump’s America, neighbors coerce and silence where the government lacks the resources to intrude.

• "It’s been suggested Putin has some sort of 'hold' over Trump. A more terrifying truth, though, is that Trump and other MAGA leaders consider Putin’s Russia a model of the 'anti-woke,' corrupt, patriarchal society they desire for America."

• An election denial group in N. Carolina is making lists of “suspicious” voters, targeting “Hispanic-sounding” names, intending to challenge them on + after Election Day.

• The surprising religious communities where Kamala Harris is getting support.

• This election is characterized by very, very rich men falling for truly outlandish hoaxes and pieces of very strange misinformation - call them The Men Who Swallowed Everything.

• Dr. Phil tells Piers Morgan he gave speech at Trump’s rally as an “act of rebellion” because Kamala Harris snubbed him: “That was an act of rebellion on my part. I requested 25-plus times to speak to Kamala Harris, I offered to give the identical speech at a Harris rally.”

• Rep. Matt Gaetz claims that the Barbie movie was released to brainwash men not to vote.

• Apparently, Mickey Rourke and I have the same internal monologue:

• More than a dozen fake electors from 2020 are back this time. And several election deniers are among the new prospective Trump electors.

• Elon Musk’s America PAC was warned back in September about door knocks in battleground states being flagged as potentially fraudulent.

• Louisiana health care workers and advocates sue state, claiming misoprostol law violates constitution.

• Elon Musk has posted more than 3,000 times on X in the last month — including dozens of unfounded claims about the election — according to a tally by The New York Times. The repercussions of his centrality on the platform while campaigning heavily for Donald Trump could be profound.

• RFK has been making grandiose claims about his role in a possible Trump administration, claiming Trump "promised me…control of the public health agencies,” including HHS, the CDC, FDA, NIH, USDA, “and a few others.

• The new Russian FSB calendar. Xi Jinping as Putin’s sidekick and a burning U.S. Capitol next January:

Politics

• Israel PM Netanyahu fires Defense Minister Gallant. This isn’t about Gallant. He wasn’t a “good” minister of an awful war. This is about Netanyahu getting rid of the last person in his cabinet who actually dared to somewhat challenge him, replacing him with a poppet. This is about Israel under Bibi taking another step to autocracy.

• Several suspects arrested amid probe of PM’s office over alleged classified intel leak.

• Since the start of the war, the IDF has killed at least 126 journalists in Gaza and many of their families.

• Teen raped by adoptive father is accused by cops of lying & prosecuted for filing false police report. So when it happened again, she gathered evidence on her own to prove that it DID happen.

• Maia Sandu wins Moldova presidential election.

• REPORTS emerge of widespread, coordinated election fraud during Georgia’s parliamentary elections.

• A usually reliable source tells Gideon Rachman that the North Korean soldiers who have deployed to Russia have never had unfettered access to the internet before. As a result, they are gorging on pornography.

• Kemi Badenoch's full shadow cabinet has now been announced. Here’s a great summary of the cabinet

• Argentina’s President Javier Milei has fired his foreign minister after the country voted for a resolution at the UN condemning US economic sanctions against Cuba.

• Alexander Dugin: “Deep State can be presented as Deep Underwater State hence Cthulhu State. Trump desperately seeks to disperse the shadow over Insmuth. Democrats are posthuman entities. These elections are deciding anthropological problem: still human or already not…” However bizarre, Dugin drawing the Cthulhu parallel is, it is one of the more sane and charming things he has ever said…

• Police ask prosecutors to charge Russell Brand for the sexual assault of four girls, one was 16-years-old at the time.

• Authorities in Spain have just confirmed there are one thousand nine hundred people missing after the floods.

Misc.

• Apparently flipping a coin is actually NOT 50-50 odds. Legit research.

• These fragile 18th-century containers, which likely held alcoholic beverages that were shared among passengers and crew members, survived for centuries at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

• When you think about it, trick-or-treating is kind of a weird thing. Where did it come from, anyway?

• A new exhibition in Paris demonstrates the influence Picasso had on the young American painter who would help usher in the Abstract Expressionist movement.

• I love everything about this story: Tony Hawk posted a ‘70s era image of a Black girl skateboarding in the rain. Jeremy Markovich tracked her down.

• Giant spiders that can grow the size of human hand are thriving in the UK.

• Elon Musk shared a video of a Cybertruck and a Lamborghini drag racing. Then Fairfax County Va cops shared a video of them arresting the two drivers.