October 2, 2024

The Stuttering Lede, October 2nd 2024

35 days until we know if we can stop fascism

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.” Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

Today in History

Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming its first African American member.

Election 2024

• 7 Layups Tim Walz missed in the debate.

• Good for Walz to bring up Trump’s dismissal of his own inactions that wounded over 100 American soldiers and pretend that they their injuries were simply a “headache.”

  • Reporter: Do you believe you should’ve been tougher on Iran after they had launched ballistic missiles in 2020 on US forces leaving more than 100 soldiers injured?

  • Trump: What does injured mean? You mean because they had a headache.. no one was tougher on Iraq..

• There is something qualitatively different about the new Trump lies. Once upon a time, he would exaggerate, often wildly, but there was at least a grain of something at the core.

  Nowadays, he's just inventing complete fiction and claiming it's real.

• Speaking of utterly vile and insane things Trump said yesterday:

  • Trump: Can you imagine that? Your child leaves for school and comes home and their gender has been changed… Not even believable.

  • Trump: "They come from the Congo in the Africa. Many people from the Congo. I don't know what that is, but they come out of jails in the Congo."

  • Trump: With other countries like China, you say it’s 1.4 billion.. with us, you don’t really know what the number is. You say how many do we have. Is it 320.. Nobody knows.

  • Trump: “I will shut down all entries through Kamala’s migrant phone app. She’s got a phone app. It’s meant for the cartel heads. The cartel heads call the app, and they tell them where to drop the illegal migrants… It’s not even believable.”

  • "Isn't it a nice to have a guy who doesn't need teleprompters?" -- Trump, with a teleprompter visible next to him.

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  • Trump: The planet has actually gotten little bit cooler recently. Climate change covers everything. It can rain, it can be dry, it can be hot, it can be cold. Climate change. I believe I really am an environmentalist. I’ve gotten environmental awards.

  • Trump: They wanted to rip down all the buildings in Manhattan and they wanted to rebuild them without windows. Take a look, you got to see the bathrooms. Basically water-free bathrooms, no water.

• Trump Campaign Links to Article Debunking Hurricane Claims

  Trump's own campaign can't keep up all with the lying.

• There are not 13,099 Illegal Immigrant Murderers Roaming Free on American Streets.

• Immigration, Project 2025, taxes - VP debate claims fact-checked.

• Vance refuses to admit that Trump lost the 2020 election.

• Trump backs out of a '60 Minutes' prime-time interview because they would fact check him live.

• JD Vance says women want abortions because RAPE IS “INCONVENIENT.”

• Vance lied a lot last night. Specific to abortion, this was on JD Vance's Senate campaign website until yesterday:

• Ross Douthat: “I would rate that the most successful Republican debate performance of this century, eclipsing Romney in the first debate with Obama in 2012.” The URL for debate reaction op-ed has a date in it, and it’s six days ago.

• It was not just a single rant about “childless cat lady,” there are at least 13 such rants.

• Why the "vetting" of Vance was a big failure

  "The dossier failed to present the most toxic material — Vance's recent conversion into a deeply misogynist crank decrying 'childless cat ladies.' Instead, it focused on his past criticism of Trump."

• JD Vance Is the Least Qualified VP Candidate in Modern American History.

• Trump has lost his mind, but so has the media that sanewashes him and the 46% of Americans who still vote for him

  Is calling for a National Day of Violence and more Hitler talk on immigrants not news? Does nothing really matter anymore?

• Nobody who rewatches Trump in 2016 and compares him with today could deny his memory is patchier and his vocabulary smaller. Even when he avoids familiar tangents about Hannibal Lecter, his decline is notable."

• Horror in NC: Trump Already Pushing Ugly, Hateful New Lie About Helene.

• Trump Is Making Americans Meaner.

• Foreign countries are not permitted to donate to American political campaigns. But there's probably nothing to stop, say, Saudi Arabia from buying 50 Trump Watches.

Politics

• Trump's GoFundMe Is Organized by His Own Campaign Finance Director, Fails to List a Charity. Trump's GoFundMe scheme doesn't offer any transparency.

• Jack Smith's memo is apparently so damning and detailed that Donald Trump's team is trying to prevent its release before the election.

• The FBI has agreed to pay more than $22 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging female recruits were singled out for dismissal in training and routinely harassed by instructors with sexually charged comments.

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• Claudia Sheinbaum took office on Tuesday, the first woman and Jewish person to lead Mexico in the country’s more than 200-year history as an independent nation. “For the first time, we women have arrived to lead the destinies of our beautiful nation.”

• New German ‘Remigration’ song ‘Wir schieben sie alle ab!’ that was played at the AfD Election Celebration Party this week - straight up Nazi stuff.

Middle East

• Round-up of verified videos of Iranian strikes in Israel.

• Meanwhile it doesn't stop in Gaza: Israeli military strikes "killed at least 60 Palestinians overnight, including in a school sheltering displaced families.

• There's a video tonight (very graphic; I won't link it) of a man in Jericho being killed by a falling Iranian missile fragment. It highlights how dangerous air defence debris is - it killed thousands of British civilians in WW2.

• Military Aid to Israel Is Immoral Because It’s Immoral, Not Because It's Expensive.

• “The feeling inside the administration is a mix of perturbed and intrigued," one U.S. official said. "On the one hand, the Israelis really are playing with fire here. But on the other hand, what if it works?"

• Netanyahu strengthens post-Nasrallah killing, but coalition falls short of Knesset majority.

• I was traveling with Kamala Harris as the Iran-Israel news broke. This is what happened next.

Ukraine/Russia

• Russian forces have raised their flag over the town of Vuhledar in eastern Ukraine, paving the way for further advances as Kyiv’s struggle to increase their manpower and secure long-term western support. Ukraine has confirmed the withdrawal.

• The Russian military executed 16 (!!!) surrendered Ukrainian soldiers at sight. This is the worst incident of POW execution known so far in this war.

• The Biden administration needs to realize that a Ukrainian victory advances U.S. interests.

• Romania scrambles fighter jets because of Russian nighttime drone attack on Odesa Oblast.

• Putin signed a law that bans a national census of Russian citizens for the next five years. This is how he plans to hide how many millions Russians he slaughtered.

• ‘Putin 2025’ calendars have gone on sale in Russia featuring Putin quotes such as “Russia’s borders never end.”

• Russia is planning to establish diplomatic missions in Niger, Sierra Leone, and South Sudan, according to Alexey Klimov, head of the Consular Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, in an interview with TASS.

• Enough talk of Ukrainian surrender or compromise: let’s talk about a Ukrainian victory.

• Prigozhin’s children: the new wave of Russian PMCS and the implications.

Tech

• Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong believes the U.S. is in “decline” and embraces a cultish tech movement to build “network” societies beyond the reach of nation-states—and he’s got Congress eating out of his hand.

• ESSENTIAL NODE IN GLOBAL SEMICONDUCTOR SUPPLY CHAIN HIT BY HURRICANE HELENE — COMPANY SAYS IT HAS “TEMPORARILY HALTED OPERATIONS” AFTER VIDEO REVEALS ENTRANCE TO MINE HAS FLOODED.

Misc.

• Daniel Day-Lewis ends retirement from acting to star in film 'Anemone' directed by son Ronan.

• An attorney announced that 120 accusers have come forward to say they were sexually abused by Sean Combs and his associates. including a 9 (!!!) year old!

• All I want for Christmas is the entire Beltway media class to lose their jobs.

• Olivia Nuzzi is accusing Ryan Lizza of harassment, blackmail, hacking in court.

• The most depressing article you will read all day. You can tell me that I sound like an old man lamenting the "kids these days," and I will tell you there is nothing good about entire generations of children who cannot sit through a serious book.

• The law school named after Antonin Scalia has been running multimillion dollar deficits the last four years. And its enrollment is less than half what it was in 2021.

Humour