August 28, 2024

The Stuttering Lede, Vol IV

”If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” Lewis Carroll

Today in History

On this day in 1963, 200,000 people marched on Washington, D.C., to hear “l Have a Dream” speech from Martin Luther King, Jr.

Russia

• Ukraine’s F-16s have scored their first aerial kills.

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• Many view Ukraine's Kursk offensive as a potential game-changer, here why it won’t have big long-term effects.

• A list and interactive map of known military and paramilitary objects to illustrate the extent to which US restrictions on Ukraine’s use of ATACMS constrain Ukraine’s ability to strike important military infrastructure in Russia.

  

• Another former Russian colony is potentially on a path towards breaking away. from the empire. Potentially is very key here.

• Belarus is amassing forces on the border with Ukraine. The equipment is marked with the letter "B". The equipment and personnel are being amassed under the guise of exercises in the Homyel region near.

Tech

• Pekka Kallioniemi, the creator of #vatniksoup introduces further details about South African-American businessman and social media figure, Elon Musk.

• He’s best-known for running companies like Tesla, SpaceX & Twitter/X, and for using the latter for political campaigning.

• The BBC has learned that Telegram refused to join international programmes aimed at detecting and removing child abuse material online.

• Does the Department for Education realize that it should be...supporting education?
  

Climate

• A crisis entirely of humanity’s making.

• Surging methane emissions could be a sign of a major climate shift.

• The Arctic is a ticking 'mercury bomb.'

• As Amazonian rivers recede under drought, manatees are left exposed to poaching.

• Environmental group calls for investigation of RFK Jr. chainsawing whale head.

2024 Election

• January 6 was just the warm-up.’

• Things have changed dramatically in the South. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton raids Latino Democrats' homes.

• Rolling Stone thinks Trump went full fascist in TruthSocial posting spree. Well yeah, but it’s not like he was part-fascist before.

• ‘Alien’s’ Ripley to Kamala Harris?

• More questions raised about vetting of J.D. Vance.

• Speaking of J.D. Vance, he has now escalated this to “of course the Trump campaign hooligans were right to attack the cemetery employee.”

• Erie is now 25% immigrant and it could flip the PA State Senate back to Democrats for first time since 1994.

• Colorado adopted legislation to try something that’s never been done in this country: automatically register Native tribal members to vote in U.S. elections. But to get there, the state is having to confront a long history of mistrust and state violence.

• Another analysis of the Project 2025 tax plan coauthored by Trump economic advisor Stephen Moore. TLDR: the plan cuts taxes for the wealthy and raises taxes on the middle class.

• Donald Trump’s campaign remains jittery about the prospect of a power struggle inside the inner circle that could become a major distraction just months until the 2024 election.

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• Kash Patel, a man who would do anything for Trump and most don’t even know who he is.

• Opinion in Huffington Post: RIP To 'When They Go Low, We Go High.' Yes, a very nuanced Obama’s dick joke is certainly not going high, but Democrats are far from going low.

• In the first three weeks of August, 128 Palestinians, including 26 children, were killed by airstrikes in the West Bank. Read that again. 128 Palestinians including 26 kids killed in the West Bank. Not Gaza. The West Bank.

• The GOP platform would define fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses as full legal persons protected under the 14th Amendment. But that would correspondingly reduce a pregnant woman's own legal status to womb first, person second.

• Trump’s 2024 Supreme Court shortlist is likely to be far more extreme than the one put out by the 2016 campaign. If that’s even possible.

Politics

• More analysis on the drastic turn to authoritarianism by Macron.

• A top executive from Kroger's admitted in court yesterday to raising prices on eggs, milk, and other staples, well above inflation while top national news companies all claimed 'greedflation' isn't real and universally panned Kamala Harris anti-price gouging plans. The fact checkers need to check themselves.

• A number of prominent figures on the right and far right are once again engaged in energetic antisemitism—and masculinity influencers are all in.

• US police use force on 300,000 people a year, with numbers rising since George Floyd: ‘relentless violence.’

• When perhaps the most knowledgeable expert on Jerusalem is this worried, it’s time to worry.

• The U.S. sets higher standards for those who want to join the country than to lead it. If Trump were an immigrant, here are 21 awkward questions he’d have to answer truthfully to get a green card or become a U.S. citizen.

• Senator Mike Lee of Utah shared a theory from Kim Dotcom last night that the CIA was funding pro-Ukraine online activist troll/meme group NAFO (known for dog profile pics and memes) and that former Rep. Adam Kinzinger was an organizer of the group. Kim Dotcom just lost a 12-year battle over extradition to the US on charges related to his file-sharing website and is known for sharing conspiracy theories on Twitter like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and numerous pro-Russia opinions.

• Chipotle illegally withheld raises from unionized workers in Michigan.

• BLS data is about right: grocery prices for me are up 20-25% over the past 4-5 years.

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sawed the head off a whale and drove it home.

• When DEI gets downgraded to I&D - a despicable trend fueled by bullshit from the far right.

Education

• The Supreme Court is allowing the Eighth Circuit to issue a nationwide injunction blocking all SAVE Plan student loan relief, including reduced payment amounts, during litigation over the SAVE Plan — despite conflicting appeals court rulings on the plan.

• NYU updated their anti-discrimination policy to make “Zionist” a protected trait, so using it negatively can subject students to disciplinary action.

• Pure piracy at the University of Florida from former Senator Ben Sasse: $1m golden parachute after he doled out over-inflated salaries to Republican allies —who didn’t even live in state. Yet another reminder that there are no good Republicans.

• Stanford summarily terminated the employment of twenty-three Creative Writing lecturers.

Misc.

• A 4-year-old boy broke a 3,500-year-old jar at the Hecht Museum in Israel on Friday. The child wanted to know what was in the jar, his father said. He and his family have been invited to return when the artifact is restored. WHAT WAS IN THE JAR?????

Humor, the RFK Jr. Edition