October 29, 2024

The Stuttering Lede, Oct. 29th, 2024

7 days until we find out if we can stop fascism

“Yeah, fascist id (Trump) meets fascist ego (Thiel and Musk).” Richard Yeselson

Election 2024

• President Biden in line to vote.

• President Obama in Philadelphia: "The man holds this big rally at Madison Square Garden, and the warm up speakers were saying the most— we're trotting out and peddling the most racist, sexist, bigoted stereotypes. What one guy called Puerto Rico? Quote, an island of garbage. Now, these are fellow citizens. He's talking about here in Philadelphia. They are your neighbors. They are your friends. They are your coworkers. Their kids go to school with your kids. These are Americans … Here's a good rule, if somebody does not respect you, if somebody does not see you as fellow citizens with equal claims to opportunity, to the pursuit of happiness, to the American dream, you should not vote for them."

• Republican President George W. Bush’s Daughter Barbara Breaks Silence on Election to Campaign for Kamala Harris.

• Lancaster County team finds and stops suspected voter registration fraud operation. This is one of the biggest voter registration fraud cases in PA.

• Here's over a thousand words of what speakers said at Trump's rally last night. Direct quotes, lots of them, no paraphrasing, no writing around the "fucks" and the racism and the violence.

• Trump held his Nazi rally at MSG on the 6th anniversary of the Tree of Life shooting. Some highlights:

  • Trump: “We had stupid generals, like Milley and Mattis, weak, stupid people.”

  • Trump: "The United States is now an occupied country"

  • Trump: “A lot of people are coming from the Congo prisons"

  • Stephen Miller: "America is for Americans and Americans only"

  • Tucker Carlson: “it's going to be pretty tough for them.. say.. Kamala Harris, she got 85 million votes because she's so impressive. As the first is a Samoan Malaysian low I.Q. former California prosecutor ever to be elected president..”

  • “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico”

  • “She is the devil. She is the antichrist." Coincidently:

  

  • "She is some sick bastard, that Hillary Clinton. What a sick son of a bitch. The whole fucking party. A bunch of degenerates. Lowlives, Jew-haters, and lowlives. Every one of 'em. Every one of 'em."

  • Trump on RFK Jr: "I'm gonna let him go wild on health. I'm gonna let him go wild on the foods. I'm gonna let him go wild on the medicines."

  • I swear to God, this is a real headline right now in USA Today.

• For comparison sake, here’s Michelle Obama’s full remarks in Michigan the day before.

• One precursor to the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden was George C. Wallace's rally there on October 24, 1968. If you click on the link, you can read the text of Wallace's speech there. You'll see it is far less racist than Trump's was yesterday.

• Trump’s Ugly Racist Rally Finally Unmasks His Real Closing Argument.

• “... Puerto Rican artists Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin [as well as Zoe Saldaña, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Rosie Perez, and Gina Rodriguez] derided the comments and supported Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris. ...”

• Allentown schools to close Tuesday for Trump rally ‘out of abundance of caution.’ Allentown has a majority Latino population and the arena Trump is speaking at is located in the middle of the city’s Puerto Rican neighborhood.

• Trump on Joe Rogan suggesting that he knows the polls showing him ahead are fake, and the data is made up. Take it from the guy who knows a little about fraud and ripping people off....

• Trump campaign staffer told rally speaker no to a joke calling Kamala Harris a cunt, but allowed all the others.

• Philly DA sues to halt Elon Musk’s $1 million voter giveaway in Pennsylvania.”

• Russian actors made a widely circulated video falsely depicting mail-in ballots for Donald Trump being destroyed in Pennsylvania, U.S. officials said Friday.

• Ex-Trump aides emerge to back Kelly’s harsh warnings.

• Trump went to Valdosta days after Helene hit and claimed he had brought truckloads of food, water and gasoline. Turns out the only thing he brought that day was traffic from his motorcade, which pulled dozens of cops away from storm cleanup.

• This week a conservative canvasser on X posted about voter fraud in Erie, PA. So we went and checked it out. Turns out nuns don’t love it when you falsely accuse them of crimes.

• Trump’s promise to fire Jack Smith is a final warning to voters that he is proudly and enthusiastically corrupt to his core."

• Six favorites media lies about the Biden-Harris economy.

• Advisers Propose That Trump Give Security Clearances Without F.B.I. Vetting.

• Election officials are under siege.

• Project 2025 would evict any US citizen child who lives in public housing with any undocumented family member. Kicking US citizen kids out on the street. That's their plan. 4.4 million US citizen children under 18 live with at least 1 unauthorized parent, according to Congressional Research Service.

• The thing about the Puerto Rico joke is that it evoked something real, remember that Trump wanted to trade Puerto Rico for Greenland because PR was 'dirty and poor.

• Like his American Nazi predecessors, Trump held a fascist rally in Madison Square Garden. It’s time to face facts. We’re dealing with a new axis of authoritarian leaders and countries, and a vote for Trump is a vote for Charles Lindbergh pre-WW II.

• Poll Workers Accuse JD Vance of 'Encouraging' Harassment.

• Chinese hackers are said to have targeted phones used by Trump and Vance, after infiltrating a telecomms system.

• Lancaster County commissioners send ‘cease and desist’ letter to Franklin & Marshall College over voter registration claims.

Politics

• Candace Owens was scheduled to begin a speaking tour of Australia in 3 weeks, but her Visa to travel to that country has been denied.

• CNN's Abby Phillip Ejects Panelist Mid-Show Over Ugly Comment Directed at Mehdi Hasan: 'That Is Not Going to Happen Here'

• Why a Trump administration 2.0 would be qualitatively different.

• A WaPo endorsement for president had been written and was ready to publish before Jeff Bezos decided the paper would not endorse.

• WaPo has lost 200,000 subscribers since Bezos pulled the Harris endorsement. That's 8% of its base in a few days. Keep in mind its net gain for most of 2024 was only 4,000 (not a typo) subscribers.

• Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen says EU countries need to exceed the 2% of GDP NATO military spending goal to deter Russia: “It’s time to grow up. Putin is a dictator, who only understands the language of power.”

• "In the Netherlands — where the Party for Freedom (PVV), led by the anti-Islam firebrand Geert Wilders, entered a coalition government in July — researchers are bracing for €1 billion (US$1.1 billion) in cuts to the budget, the worst in decades."

• Fracking in PA is not a complicated issue.

• Lauren Windsor spitting straight fire in Rolling Stone: My Undercover Quest to Expose Right-Wingers and Make America Gonzo Again.

• Democracy contains a paradox. It is premised on openness and competition. What happens if a candidate for office wants to dismantle it? There are five responses available. How is the U.S. faring?
  

Russia/Ukraine

• Neo-Nazi Rinaldo Nazzaro running US militant group The Base from Russia, possibly paid by Russia.

• Russia planned attacks with explosive charges on European civilian infrastructure. Just call Article 5 finally.

• US intelligence assesses that Russia was behind fake video of individual tearing ballots in Pennsylvania. US intel warns Russia plans more media content in coming weeks to erode trust in US systems & divide Americans.

• The Russians have no more shyness or hesitation and publish a video of a russian UAV hitting a residential building in Kherson.

• Moscow Telegram channels report that the sewage system in Moscow broke down. A "fountain" the height of a residential building is seen in one of Moscow's districts. A sh*t show, literally.

• Google has been fined 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (2 undecillion) rubles (equivalent to $204,871,202,000,00,000,371,569,396,369,326,080, or $204.8 octillion) by a Russian court for blocking the YouTube channels of 17 Russian state media companies. No, the numbers are NOT typos.

Women Rights

• An American hero.

Middle East

• A year ago, Vox asked five scholars if they considered Israel to be committing genocide in Gaza. One said yes, the others said no. Returning to the same scholars a year later, Vox found that three of those who said no have subsequently changed their mind.

Tech

• Apple put the Magic Mouse’s charging port on the bottom again. Whyyyyyyyyyy??

• If you’ve wondered “how are Waymos affecting energy consumption,” considering what we now know about the power demanded by AI, it’s been studied and the news is not great. Autonomous driving could increase net energy consumption from driving by up to 200%.

• Musk's super PAC defies DOJ warning, announces $1M giveaway winners.

• The AP reported that hours after the Post announced its endorsement decision, Trump greeted executives from Blue Origin, the space company owned by Bezos that has a $3.4bn contract with Nasa to build a spacecraft to carry astronauts to the moon and back.

• “When I used the hypothetical example of a tech CEO with a political agenda that would leverage his money and platform for that agenda, people said: “You watch too many movies.” And now we have Elon Musk.”

• Elon Musk wrote that he previously had "no legal right to stay in the country" in a 2005 email.

  

  His brother also lied to border agents. Now he is campaigning against “open borders.”

Climate Change

• "Fifty of the world’s richest billionaires on average emit more carbon through their investments, private jets and yachts in just over an hour and a half than the average person does in their entire lifetime." Tax the rich!

• From fish smoothies to oral antibiotics, researchers are taking matters into their own hands in a radical effort to save New Zealand’s yellow-eyed penguins.

Misc.

• Another reminder that for profit medicine is a scam.

• Why would someone from the West eat “Western” food when going to Japan? Well, because it’s delicious! And it’s also uniquely Japanese. Here’s how yoshoku became a trend in Japan and five of the top yoshoku foods you must have if you visit.

• Everything Alan Moore is saying here is so dead-on that it’s actually haunting.

• Cambridge University runs up £53m deficit ‘without knowing why.’

• Crocs shares plunge in premarket trading after the company warned of sales declines for its casual Heydude brand. Wait...a casual brand for Crocs implies that there is formal brand of Crocs....

• Sean 'Diddy' Combs accused in new lawsuits of sexually assaulting 10- and 17-year-old boys.

• PhD student finds lost city in Mexico jungle by accident.

• New species of tardigrade reveals secrets of radiation-resisting powers.

• £300,000 of cheese has been stolen from a London cheese specialist Neal's Yard Dairy.

Humor