October 23, 2024

The Stuttering Lede, Oct. 23rd, 2024

12 days until we find out if we can stop fascism

No animal has more liberty than the cat, but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the best anarchist. Ernest Hemingway

Elections 2024

• Everyone should read this. Riveting, chilling, horrifying. Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had.'

• Barack Obama raps Eminem lyrics on stage with star - and trolls Trump's crowd size.

  

• Trump: On November 5, we will be a liberated country. We will be liberated like never before. It will be liberation day.

• A fact-checking hobbyist has identified discrepancies and omissions in “Hillbilly Elegy” that complicate the family narrative upon which J. D. Vance has based so much of his conservative politics and ideology.

• Trump’s own chief of staff, retired general John Kelly, agrees that Trump is a fascist.

• The Los Angeles Times editorial board was preparing to endorse Kamala Harris for president, but then the owner of the paper ordered them not to make any endorsement in the most consequential election on the ballot.

• Trump evasive about raising Pa. minimum wage while pretending to work at McDonald’s in Bucks County.

• Allegheny County officials today said they were on track to count mail-in ballots by 8 p.m. on Election Night just as polls close, and have mail-ins tabulated almost immediately after. Allegheny County is the fastest in PA to count mail-in ballots.

• We know a lot about JD Vance, most of it tremendously worrisome. Given Trump's declining capacities, Vance could be president all too soon—at 40, with a very short 2 years in public office and a very long history of weird/bad ideas.

• Georgia Supreme Court UNANIMOUSLY REJECTS Republic Party's motion for expedited consideration to reinstate MAGA State Election Board rules targeting the post election.

• Bill Gates has said privately that he recently donated about $50 million to a nonprofit organization that is supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential run, according to three people briefed on the matter.

• A Republican county official in Arizona who delayed certification of the 2022 election pleaded guilty Monday to a misdemeanor charge of failing or refusing to perform her duty as an election officer.

• Who won the day? Trump.

• The GOP is recruiting an "army" to monitor the vote. Republicans have recruited 200,000 poll watchers—and one in five say Trump should do "whatever it takes" to seize office.

• Donald Trump's closing message to voters appears to be: I'm insane.

Politics

• On the people who want to end America.

• Recent polling shows that 77% of Americans see Hitler as evil.

• "52% of respondents said they favor allowing immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children to gain legal resident status — a 10-point decrease since the first time PRRI asked the question in 2018.

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• This Might Be the Worst Thing Happening in Texas Right Now.

• Despite Republicans' worst efforts and the media promising us a recession for years "today, the IMF reported that the United States is leading the advanced economies on growth for the second year in a row.”

• Trump's Racism Fuels The Never-Ending White Grievance Industry A new documentary "White With Fear" reveals how the GOP's embrace of racism and the Southern Strategy directly leads to Trump admiring Hitler's generals and being rewarded for it.

• How much golf can a president possibly play in one term? At the moment, the record of 261 rounds belongs to Trump. We’re unsure if that record is legitimate though since Trump is notorious for cheating at golf. Where should it fall on the top 100 list?

• The Supreme Court is going to overturn the National Labor Relations Act.

• The UAE was dismayed when the US rapper Macklemore pulled out of a concert in Dubai over its role in Sudan. Its keenness to burnish its international standing means that a cultural boycott and protests by sports stars and fans could have real impact.’

• If every US intelligence agency isn’t listening to every call Trump makes at this point….just add that to the list of problems this country is dealing with. U.S. presidential election: Why Trump's phone call with Netanyahu is so alarming.

• FTC's final rule banning fake online reviews and testimonials has come into effect.

• Moldova held a referendum yesterday on whether to join the EU, final result here: The 'yes' won with 50.4% of the vote.

• Eugenics, Border Wars & Population Control: The Tanton Network.

• "Charlamagne Tha God has issued a cease and desist order to Donald Trump in regards to a campaign ad attacking Presidential opponent Kamala Harris’ stance on funding surgical procedures for transgender prisoners using tax payers’ dollars."

• There’s an old saying: “As Texas Goes, So Goes the Nation.” And if Trump is indeed taking a page out of the Texas Republican playbook, there is real reason to be concerned that the rhetoric coming out of Trump’s world is no joke.

• North Carolina county surrounding Asheville overcounted Helene deaths by as many as 30.

Tech

• This is who Elon Musk promoted yesterday. The Austrian with a swastika linked to New Zealand's horrific mosque attack.

• There's so much going on here — you've got your "nobody likes elon" angle, your "can you copyright a guy in a duster," your "ok but is all AI art theft anyway." Even some shades of the torment nexus.

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• Elon Musk: MAGA Money man.

• Musk needs Trump to win because he’s now burned every bridge.

• At least three of Musk's businesses—electric car maker Tesla, space exploration company SpaceX, and social media platform X—face a total of at least 11 criminal and civil investigations over alleged fraud, labor violations, and other accusations.

Women Rights

• Infants died at higher rates in the US following the Supreme Court decision that revoked the federal right to an abortion.

• Republican Attorneys General to Court: We Demand More Pregnant Teens.

• A sexist viral video attempted to smear college girls as bimbos for valuing abortion rights. But "single issue" voters are the smartest of the bunch. As we see in Texas and Florida, abortion bans lead to a larger fascist crackdown.

• One theory of support for same sex marriage was a social cascade in which people coming out changed attitudes and created more room for others to come out. Might be similar pattern with abortion where overturning Roe has moved abortion “out of the closet.”

Climate Change

• "Scientists say the biodiversity crisis must be treated as urgently as climate."

Russia/Ukraine

• Explosive new report identifies NATO military and intelligence officers engaged in Russian Active Measures across the alliance. The entire Western world is under attack — via both subversion and full-spectrum information warfare.

• Remember the baseless conspiracy being pushed on here last week about Tim Walz abusing a former student? Turns out, it came from Russia...

• “Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov and his associates are removing and selling off [Mariupol’s] modern metallurgical equipment, shipping scrap metal to Russia for use by its sanctions-crimped carmakers and hawking industrial gases to Moscow’s space program."

Middle East

• Israel is considering a plan to deploy private US logistics and security companies to create a ‘gated community’ in Gaza where Palestinians would be subjected to biometric screenings to receive aid.

• This is the most comprehensive analysis of a single Israeli battalion in English-language media in years, or perhaps decades..

Misc.

• A video of the precocious pup is going viral on social media, with online commenters wondering how the pooch managed to reach the summit—and whether or not the dog made it back down safely.

• Brighton Beach goes Hollywood.

• Coincidence or poetic justice?

• McDonald’s shares plummet after the CDC links a fatal outbreak of E. coli to Quarter Pounders.

• Dublin and Philadelphia, together at last.

• The free speech people doing free speech stuff like suing each other over speech: TMZ: "Bill Maher just got dinged by one of Donald Trump's most ardent supporters ... he's being sued for a whopping $150 million by Laura Loomer for saying on national TV that she slept with the 45th president."

• Reader stumbles on Dracula’s ancestors in a Dublin library.

Humor