September 30, 2024

The Stuttering Lede, Sept. 30th 2024

36 days until we know if we can stop fascism

“It doesn’t start with gas chambers. It starts with saying immigrants eat your pets.” Daniel Miller

Hurricane Helene Help

The internet is already boiling with misinformation about what the State of North Carolina and the feds are doing for Hurricane Helene response. Fact: Gov. Cooper mobilized the NC National Guard even before the storm hit. Hundreds are already engaged.

If you want to help, here’s a list of organizations:

• World Central Kitchen: When there is a disaster, Chef José Andrés is there with his teams to set up kitchen facilities and start serving thousands of meals to victims and responders. You can help by donating on their website.

• United Way: The United Way has launched a fund to help people impacted by Helene. Local United Way organizations are also accepting donations to help relief efforts for both short-term issues and to continue helping residents later. You can find your local chapter on the organization's website.

• All Hands and Hearts: This volunteer-based organization works alongside local residents to help by rebuilding schools, homes and other community infrastructure. It has a Helene fund started.

• Americares: Americares focuses on medical aid, helping communities recover from disasters with access to medicine and providing personal protective equipment and medical supplies. To help Hurricane Helene victims, Americares has set up a donation page.

• CARE: Provides relief through emergency cash assistance to families in underserved communities. Donate to their Helene fund on their website.

• The Community Foundation Tampa Bay: This local group maintains its own list of local charities that can use help providing critical needs, or you can donate to the Tampa Bay Rapid Response Fund which distributes money to nonprofits in the community that are addressing emergency needs.

• Direct Relief: Direct Relief brings long-term medical aid specifically needed by local officials and agencies. The organization has just made more than $74 million in medicines and medical supplies available for healthcare providers in the path of Hurricane Helene, according to an email. You can donate to their general fund or choose Hurricane Helene Response in the dropdown at their donation page.

• Global Giving: This disaster relief charity provides immediate aid after emergencies to people, animals, and front-line workers and helps displaced families, but also addresses long-term assistance with a focus on local organizations. Donate to its Helene Ida fund on their website.

• International Medical Corps: This organization works with state agencies and local healthcare providers to offer critical care and medical supplies. Donate to their Helene fund detailed on their website.

• Mutual Aid Disaster Relief: A grassroots disaster relief network dedicated to getting help directly to the underserved communities who are often left out. Donate at mutualaiddisasterrelief.org.

• Operation Blessing: This group works with emergency management and local churches to bring clean water, food, medicine and more supplies to people with immediate needs in disaster areas. Donate to their Helene fund on their website.

• Save the Children: This organization works to get child-focused supplies into the hands of families hardest-hit by the storm including hygiene kits, diapers and baby wipes as well as classroom cleaning kits to schools and assistance in restoring child care and early learning centers. Donate to the Children's Emergency Fund.

RIP Kris Kristofferson

• Kris Kristofferson "borrowed" a helicopter from work, flew to Johnny Cash's house and landed on his front lawn. Cash told him to leave, but Kristofferson got him to listen to "Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down." Cash recorded it and Kristofferson won country songwriter of 1979. Badass.

• The time Kris Kristofferson consoled Sinead O'Connor after she was booed mercilessly for telling the truth on SNL in 1992. It costs nothing to be a decent human being.

• “I was in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas. I’ve argued for Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the United Farm Workers. I’ve been a radical for a long time. I guess it’s too bad. I’d be more marketable as a right-wing redneck. But I got into this to tell the truth as I saw it.” Kris Kristofferson.

Elections 2024

• Trump’s rhetoric continues to be openly Nazi: “They will walk into your kitchen, they'll cut your throat." One thing we've learned from studying genocides is that language like this often precedes the mass killing. Otherize, dehumanize, and fearmonger about the target group. This is well documented in Rwanda in 90s and in the 1930s Nazi Germany. This is historical fact, not hyperbole.

• Trump openly calling for Kristallnacht: “If you had one really violent day.. .. … One rough hour. And I mean real rough. The word will get out and it will end immediately”. Trump is proposing a state pogrom in which police are empowered to murder marginalized people. If Kristallnacht seems too distant, there are American analogs. He's proposing mass lynchings. He's proposing the Tulsa massacre on a national scale.

• Union members should pay attention: "I hated to give overtime. I hated it. I shouldn't say this, but I'd get other people in. I wouldn't pay."

• I am actually shocked… NYT Editorial Board Endorses Kamala Harris: The Only Patriotic Choice for President.

• J.D. Vance said his two young sons “eat about 14 eggs every single morning.” Does this guy even know his own children, or is he just making up more stories to keep it in the media as he admits he does?

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• JD Vance says adults without children should have their taxes raised because we should "punish the things that we think are bad."

• Could Trump end democracy? A very optimistic perspective.

• Donald Trump condemned Fox News for airing Vice President Harris's speech in Arizona: “They shouldn't be allowed to put it on”, said the wannabe dictator.

• As Kamala Harris Passes the Two-Thirds Mark, Trump Adopts Apocalyptic Language.

Politics

• A “freedom” party founded by a former Nazi SS officer won the most votes in Austria today. Among its winning message points:

  • Anti-immigrant

  • COVID conspiracies

  • Global warming denialism

  • Pro-Russia

  • Anti-“woke”

• This year has seen the 80th anniversary of the three most notorious Nazi-fascist massacres in Italy during World War II : Fosse Ardeatine, Sant'Anna di Stazzema and Marzabotto/Monte Sole. Italian PM Giorgia Meloni has failed to show her face at any of them. I wonder why.

• Dark money, anonymous companies, and secretive elites with hidden wealth aren’t limited to distant dictatorships on palm-fringed islands. They’re here in America, now—and they’re enabling democracy’s decay.

• Japan's next Prime Minister, Ishiba Shigeru, will announce tomorrow that he is going to dissolve the Diet and call an general election. Election day will be October 27th.

• There's a bigger Eric Adams scandal than his 'Turkish delight' of alleged bribery. This NYC strongman had two lawbooks - no rules for City Hall elites, but repressive policing for the masses The 'law and order' mayor has always been a lie.

• Mark Zandi on economy: I’ve hesitated to say this at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, but with last week’s big GDP revisions, there is no denying it: This is among the best performing economies in my 35+ years as an economist. Economic growth is rip-roaring, with real GDP up 3% over the past year. Unemployment is low at near 4%, consistent with full employment. Inflation is fast closing in on Fed’s 2% target - grocery prices, rents and gas prices are flat to down over the past more than a year. Households’ financial obligations are light, and set to get lighter with the Fed cutting rates. House prices have never been higher, and most homeowners have more equity in their homes than ever. Corporate profits are robust, and the stock market is hitting a record high on a seemingly daily basis. Of course there are blemishes, as lower-income households are struggling financially, there is a severe shortage of affordable homes, and the government is running large budget deficits. And things could change quickly. There are plenty of threats. But in my time as an economist, the economy has rarely looked better.

• The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy.

• How many migrants have crossed the US border illegally?

• Opus Dei, Leonard Leo and the rise of christofascism.

• Bad news for the book burners. A new report says sex censors are now in the minority, even among Christians: “Three in five Christians (62%) say they agree a person can regularly view p**nography and live a sexually healthy life” Nearly half of women say they view it.

• Leaked emails reveal the truth about Rasmussen Reports—and the way the Trump campaign is breaking election law.

Middle East

• Israel explicitly says they could’ve reached a diplomatic agreement w/Nasrallah, but instead chose to kill hundreds of innocent Lebanese civilians to assassinate him only because he wanted peace in Gaza. Israel doesn’t want peace, it wants submission to its regional dominance.

• France is the first country to bring aid to Lebanon in the wake of Israel’s attacks. Views in Lebanon on relations w/ regional powers like Iran & Turkey split heavily along sectarian lines. But polls have shown that relations w/ France are viewed as important across the board.

Ukraine/Russia

• Timothy Snyder: Russian invasion is on a world war scale, but Ukraine alone is fighting it, keeping us in a 1938-like historical moment. Meanwhile, the White House continues to accept Russia's arbitrary new rules of warfare, which is the only thing preventing Russian defeat.

• One Russian newspaper this morning reports on a recent study of history textbooks in former Soviet countries: “Russia is portrayed as a colonial state that persecuted people on the territories it incorporated.

• Russian Aerospace Forces Air Defence Reserves. A Thread.

• Russia downs over 100 Ukrainian drones in one of the largest barrages of the war.

• In Kursk Oblast, some stranded civilians still cling to Kremlin propaganda, while others begin to question everything they’ve been told about the war.

Tech

• The far right is using AI to sell Hitler to a new generation: The videos are gaining traction as Trump & Vance, have advanced conspiracy theories popular among online neo-Nazi communities, including baseless claims that Haitian immigrants are eating pets.

• Gavin Newsom vetoes sweeping AI safety bill, siding with Silicon Valley. How much money went into blocking this bill?

• Zuckerberg Augustus: Meta’s emperor rebrands in new clothes.

• Meta and Google have joined Elon’s censorship campaign against the JD Vance dossier. Google will not even allow you to share the pdf on Google Drive. Clearly, a lot of people complying in advance, as they fear reprisals from a fascist Trump admin.

• “Some argue that AGI is possible in principle, that it’s only a matter of time before we have computers that can think like humans think...Our paper explains why chasing this goal is a fool’s errand, & a waste of humanity’s resources.”

Climate Change

• Reminder that Western NC was considered a “climate haven” in the US. Don’t think the impacts of climate change won’t reach you. Asheville is over 250 miles inland and 2,000 feet above sea level. This isn’t normal and we need to address this as a climate crisis.

• Thread to show just how much flooding has happened around the world, and this is only for the month of September.

• “Melting glaciers force Switzerland and Italy to redraw part of Alpine border". This is just a taste of what is sure to come for multiple land borders and sea boundaries as climate change transforms geographies worldwide.

• Melting Faster Than Ever: Greenland Loses 610 Gigatons of Ice in One Summer.

• In the wake of "Biblical" flooding erasing countless villages in the heart of America - another climate change induced disaster - this article about oily bagman Leonard Leo's assault on teaching judges about climate science is disgusting and timely.

• The horrifying power of flood water.

• This winding LA highway is notoriously treacherous. Extreme weather is making it worse.

Gun Violence

• According to new CDC data, women are increasingly using guns to die by suicide in the US. In 2022, 20 out of every million women used a gun to die by suicide, up from 14 women in 2002 — a 43% increase.

• At least 73 people were hit by gunfire in Chicago this weekend, and at least 11 of them died, including a 17-year-old boy who was shot to death in a backyard.

Misc.

• “It was madness” working on MEGALOPOLIS, Aubrey Plaza told me. Between takes, she stayed in character as a survival mechanism. “My mentality every day was ‘every man for himself.’”

• I’ve worked in DEI for a decade—it won’t survive beyond 2025

Humor