September 21, 2024

The Stuttering Lede, Sept. 21st, 2024

45 days until we know if we can stop fascism

“Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.” Jean-Paul Sartre

Today in History

On this day in 1958, Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed in New York City. King was signing his first book, his account of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, “Stride Toward Freedom,” when a well-dressed woman shouted, “Is this Martin Luther King?” King, then 29, answered, “Yes, it is.” The woman, Izola Curry, who was later diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia, walked up and stabbed him with a 7-inch knife.

Election 2024

• Kamala Harris did something truly remarkable in her speech yesterday: She normalized abortion.

• Trump called for “remigration,” a term with a deep fascist history, and which has always been a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.

• Trump setting up a narrative that the Jews stabbed him in the back as the far-right marbles through with Holocaust denial and Nazi apologia seems really bad.

• What does trump think about the fact that the leader of the American Nazi party enthusiastically supported trump's campaign in 2016?

• JD Vance, yet again, refuses to condemn a Nazi. This is at least second time this month: “My comment on Mark Robinson is that Kamala Harris cast the deciding vote on the Inflation Explosion Act and because of that a lot of Americans can't afford groceries.” It's been 18 days since Tucke rCarlson

  aired the Nazi apologetics of a Holocaust denier, saying he "may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States." Yesterday, Tucker released a new JD Vance

  interview. Tomorrow, Vance will campaign with Tucker in PA.

• North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson didn’t just call himself a Black Nazi. Robinson also praised Adolf Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf,” which laid the foundation for the Shoah and the systematic torture and murder of six million Jews. “Mein Kampf is a good read. It’s very informative and not at all what I thought it would be. It’s a real eye opener,” Robinson said from his porn account username.

• Trump once called Mark Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids,” but old posts on a porn site make him sound more like a perverted Louis Farrakhan. Could he drag Trump down just enough in must-win NC?

• The American Jewish Committee: “Jews – roughly 2 percent of the U.S. population – cannot and should not be blamed for the outcome of the election. Setting up anyone to say “‘we lost because of the Jews’ is outrageous and dangerous.”

• The SAVE act would actually prevent some married women from casting a ballot. It would make it difficult for most of us to vote. The Republicans always joke about keeping women from voting and it looks like they were serious.

• Love too live in a country where presidential races can be decided by whether a guy thinks his chances of running for mayor of Omaha in the future are hurt by switching the electoral vote count of his state within 45 days of Election Day.

• Absolutely wild and ridiculous that the outcome of the presidential election could hinge on one Nebraska senator's mayoral race strategy.

• Looks like Nebraska's still short of votes on scrapping its electoral vote system. Key supporter in legislature says they're 2 or 3 off and no minds changed.

• 3 weeks before early voting MAGA majority on Georgia state election board votes to require hand count of ballots, which will make counting longer, costlier & more inaccurate. Will be used as yet another pretext for GOP boards not to certify election if Harris wins.

• The Georgia Attorney General issued a stark warning to the MAGA Election Board today that their rules changes may exceed their authority & violate state law. The AG's warning came just before the pro-Trump board's Friday meeting to further change election rules.

• If no candidate gets majority in Electoral College, election would be thrown to House, where Republicans could install Trump as winner. That's why Trump allies working so hard to block certification in Georgia & rig electoral votes in Nebraska at 11th hour.

• The Uncommitted Movement announces that it won’t endorse anyone. That’s taking a stand! /sarcasm

• The Olivia Nuzzi bombshell is not unrelated to why Kamala Harris avoids legacy media.

• Maggie Haberman is apparently jealous of Olivia Nuzzi.

• Even before COVID, Trump signed $3.9T in debt:

  • -$1,969 billion in tax cuts

  • -$1,568 billion in busted discretionary caps

  • -$493 billion in other disc hikes

  • -$299 billion in repealed ACA taxes

  • -$201 billion in other tax cuts/spending hikes

  • +$684 billion in offsetting savings

  

• JD Vance says that if Europe tries to regulate Elon Musk’s platforms, the US government should end support for NATO. This is exactly why Musk is embracing the extreme right: he knows they’ll defend his power at all costs.

• Profile of possible Trump AG Mike Davis. This should scare everyone.

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• Doug Emhoff attacks Donald Trump over antisemitic comments.

• Sen. JD Vance claimed VP Kamala Harris and the immigrant influx have caused a big increase in murder in Springfield. Except…Springfield had significantly more murders under President Donald Trump than it has had under Biden-Harris.

• Nikki Haley's Iowa campaign co-chair is endorsing Kamala Harris.

• As anyone over the age of 40 can attest, American grocery stores weren’t always the global fantasylands they are today, "Trump’s plan to restrict food imports could drag us back to that era."

• Ohio Rep. Gov. Mike DeWine on Springfield.

Politics

• The Texas Observer, an excellent investigative outlet identifies neo-Nazis before they make threats against district attorneys.

• Absolutely disgusting. Anti-Arab bigotry and Islamophobia have become normalized in our media. The National Review ran this dangerous cartoon of Rashida Tlaib. This garbage was created by Henry Payne with the @detroitnews.

  

  When you wonder how racist cartoons of Rashida Tlaib can be published so haphazardly, note that such baked-in racism doesn’t come out of nowhere; the same Congress that censured Rashida Tlaib is doing nothing about a US Senator telling a Muslim witness to hide her head in a bag.

• Every time there’s a rightwing politician sex scandal, I have this love/hate experience of: enjoying them being exposed the fake hypocritical bigot they are, but then also seeing people demonize just enjoying porn and masturbating, which is a completely natural human thing to do. Here’s a perfect example: Chris Rufo actively espousing hypocritical views that have an impact on public policy and everyone else's sex lives. Stop trying to take away people's freedoms.

• For anyone else wondering, "who the hell is Chris Rufo, besides an Ashley Madison customer?"

• Here’s another example: Corey DeAngelis an anti-LGBTQ propogandist who promoted Educational Choice for Children Act which in his own words would “defeat the woke mind virus” is apparently a gay porn star. Nothing wrong with that. Just don’t espouse hatred and try to take other people rights and choices away because of your shame.

• Lina Khan strikes again: FTC report finds large social media and video streaming companies have engaged in vast surveillance of users with lax privacy controls and inadequate safeguards for kids and teens.

• Lina Khan strikes again! FTC filed an administrative complaint against the three largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs): Caremark Rx, Express Scripts, and OptumRx.

• MFA of Ukraine is getting into the dunking on MFA Russia.

Ukraine/Russia

• Ukrainian UAV swarms have destroyed 30-60 days of ammo for the Russian army in just a few days. That's more than half a year's production. That's also the equivalent of largest NATO ammo storage in Europe.

The site is around 300 km (185 miles) from the current frontline. Tell me again, please, why can’t Ukraine strike back with Western weapons??

• The Russian government has compiled a list of countries that "contradict traditional Russian spiritual and moral values." The list published by the Cabinet of Ministers includes 47 countries: Australia, Austria, Albania, Andorra, Bahamas, Belgium, Bulgaria, Great Britain (including the British Crown dependencies and British Overseas Territories), Germany, Greece, Denmark, Ireland, Iceland, Spain, Italy, Canada, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Micronesia, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Croatia, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Romania, San Marino, North Macedonia, Singapore, Slovenia, United States of America, Taiwan (China), Ukraine, Finland, France, Croatia, Montenegro, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Sweden, Estonia Japan.

• “It’s quite simple. Russia only employ Russians at its Embassy. Most staff at the British Embassy in Moscow are also Russian...When I left Moscow in February 2019, almost 90 per cent of the staff across the Russia and British Embassies were Russian.”

• Looks like Elon Musk — at least 60 times — amplified content from Tenet Media, the now-defunct Tennessee-based right-wing media outlet funded covertly by Russia Today.

Tech

• Cards Against Humanity is suing Elon Musk.

• Elon Musk is debasing American society.

Climate Change

• Microsoft wants Three Mile Island to fuel its AI power needs. Microsoft has signed a 20-year deal to exclusively access 835 megawatts of energy from a revived nuclear plant to power its data centers.

Middle East

• IDF soldiers throwing three Palestinians, who seemed to be dead, off of roofs in northern Qabatiya.

• A 25-year-old British Jewish man says he was instructed to leave Israel and had his immigration process halted after being arrested at a rally for a hostage release deal and filming the arrest of a Palestinian minor in the West Bank.

• To a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Latest column is on Israel, Hezbollah and when tactics triumph over strategy.

• An Israeli official told me Israel has reached the conclusion that it won’t be able to get a diplomatic solution to the situation on the northern border without going through a military escalation. “This is why we have been gradually taking our gloves off and increasing our attacks against Hezbollah”, he said.

• New evidence reveals Netanyahu's relentless efforts to block [a] hostage deal." He needs an endless war to hold his far-right coalition together, stay in power, and avoid his pending corruption charges.

Misc.

• Ridley Scott reveals he is already developing an idea for GLADIATOR 3.

• The music of Italian composer and multi-instrumentalist Caterina Barbieri shimmers and pulses at the intersection of ambient, new age, minimalist electronics, and drone.