I would like to spider there » « Travelin’ day

Infinite Thread XXXIV

Now, live from Wisconsin!

It’s amazing how sharp the boundary is between Minnesota and Wisconsin: you cross the border and suddenly it’s adult novelty stores, billboards for cheese, and roadkill as far as the eye can see.

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I would like to spider there » « Travelin’ day

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  1. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    suddenly it’s adult novelty stores, billboards for cheese, and roadkill

    kinky

  2. nomaduk says

    Not entirely unlike the change when crossing into New York from Vermont, with the added joy of the roads going straight to shit.

  3. Akira MacKenzie says

    Oh! The hoity toity Minnesotans think they’re too good for our fair-state’s roadside porn shops! Well when you’re driving down I94 and you suddenly need a butt plug or pornographic coloring book, don’t come crying to me!

  4. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Scientists re-create the microbial dance that sparked complex life

    So much of life relies on endosymbiotic relationships, but scientists have struggled to understand how they happen. […] the relationship teeters between infection and harmony. If the bacterium reproduces too quickly, it risks depleting the host’s resources and triggering an immune response, resulting in the death of the guest, the host or both.
    […]
    Rice seedling blight is a disease caused by the toxic by-product of a wild, endosymbiotic affair. At some point in its evolutionary history, the fungus Rhizopus microsporus adopted the bacterium Mycetohabitans rhizoxinica. The bacterial resident produces poison, which the fungus uses to infect rice plants; both partners benefit by absorbing nutrients from the dead and dying plant cells. Over generations, the pair have become so intertwined that now the fungus can’t reproduce without its endosymbiont.

    However, there is a strain of the fungus that lives without the endosymbiont. Vorholt thought she could use it to re-create the poisonous partnership. […] her team had to overcome a basic physical constraint: How do you physically squeeze a bacterium through a fungus’s rigid cell wall? […] a cocktail of enzymes to soften the wall […] a tiny syringe […] [That still wasn’t enough. With just] the microneedle, cytoplasm came rushing out like water from a burst dam. […] [So a] jury-rigged […] bike pump boosted the pressure […] They had to use special sharpened needles and then three times the tire pressure of car tires to push that bacteria inside.
    […]
    Once inside, it divided at an agreeable rate and evaded the immune response. […] The pair had initially accepted each other, but that was only the first step. […] The bacteria had wiggled their way into the fungal spores to hitchhike to the next generation. […] More bacteria survived in each reproductive round, and the spores got healthier and more efficient. For the first time, researchers watched endosymbiotic and host microbes adapt to each other. […] the lab isolated both parties to analyze their genomes. Already, the fungus genome had gained mutations to accommodate the bacteria. Clearly, these relationships can stabilize quickly, the researchers saw. Soon the two species couldn’t live without each other.
    […]
    They also learned that in pairings that work, both partners adapt to each other a phenomenon that has been largely overlooked. It wasn’t just the bacteria adapting […] those findings could lead to a new kind of synthetic biology […] Instead of editing organisms’ genes to create new traits, labs could engineer bacteria to perform specific functions and then slip them into hosts.

  5. Reginald Selkirk says

    Carvana Is Cooking Its Books, Hindenburg Research Claims

    Carvana may be a house of cards. That’s according to investment research and activist short-selling firm Hindenburg Research (never a good sign to be the subject of ire from a company named after a famous disaster), which published a report on Thursday that accuses the online used car seller of “accounting manipulation” stemming from unstable loans that it is using to temporarily prop up its prospects while its father-son ownership team cashes out.

    The report, titled “Carvana: A Father-Son Accounting Grift For The Ages” claims that Carvana’s miraculous turnaround over the last two years, which has seen the company’s stock nearly 10x in 2023 and climbed another 300% in 2024 after staring down bankruptcy in 2022, is nothing but a “mirage.” Hindenburg Research claims that as the share price has skyrocketed, the father of Carvana’s CEO has cashed out more than $1.4 billion in stock…

    What exactly is happening in Carvana’s underwriting process? Basically, a rubber stamp, according to the report. A former director at Carvana told Hindenberg, “We actually approved 100% of applicants we didn’t decline for compliance reasons.” …

    All that to say, Carvana car loans are a major risk. Yet the company has found a new buyer for them even as Ally and others turn away. According to Hindenburg’s research, Carvana has sold $800 million in auto loans to what the company has called an “unrelated third party.” The thing is, though, Hindenburg doesn’t think this buyer is “unrelated.” The firm believes Carvana is selling its loans to an affiliate of DriveTime, a private car dealership that is owned by Ernest Garcia II—the father of Carvana CEO Ernie Garcia III and the largest shareholder in the car seller.

    Hindenburg believes that this loan servicer is granting loan extensions to its borrowers in order to make it appear like more of the company’s loans are in good standing when they would otherwise be considered delinquent and risk-laden.

    So per Hindenburg’s digging, it seems like Carvana may have manufactured its incredible turnaround by simply approving practically every loan request that came across its desk. This juiced sales and investors rallied behind the company, pushing its stock price to new highs. Meanwhile, Ernest Garcia II started selling off his stock, pocketing over a billion as bag holders poured in…

  7. Reginald Selkirk says

    The FDA will test aged raw milk cheese for bird flu in the wake of outbreak

    The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has begun collecting and testing samples of aged, raw cow’s milk cheese for the presence of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (H5N1), better known as bird flu, Food Safety News reported.

    The agency plans to collect 300 samples of raw milk cheese from warehouses and distribution hubs, along with their label information. Samples will come from cheese that has been aged a minimum of 60 days — the timeframe that the U.S. requires raw milk cheese to be made in order to reduce the risk of any pathogens. Sample collection is slated to last until March, but there’s a possibility it may last longer.

    The testing comes amid an ongoing, multistate outbreak of bird flu in dairy cows that was first reported on March 25, 2024, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC reported that 66 cases of bird flu in humans have been confirmed nationwide. Approximately two-thirds of those cases were linked to dairy herds…

  8. Reginald Selkirk says

    New Mexico Cheese Factory Releases Toxic Gas – Injures 20

    Who cut the cheese? An accident at a cheese factory in Clovis, New Mexico released a toxic gas that injured 20 with at least 2 injured critically.

    Southwest Cheese, located in Clovis, New Mexico was the site of the accident that happened December 30th. The gas appears to have been contained within the building. Clovis is about 300 miles from El Paso.

    Fox News reported an equipment malfunction spilled chlorine which then mixed with acid, creating the toxic gas…

  9. Reginald Selkirk says

    How One Company is Revolutionizing Vegan Cheese with Fermentation

    Berlin-based biotech company Formo may have found a breakthrough in vegan cheese, tapping into the power of Koji, a fungus used in Japanese cuisine for centuries. This tiny organism, known for its role in soy sauce and miso, is now the foundation of Formo’s dairy-free cheeses…

    Formo’s solution lies in fermentation. By placing Koji in a tank with oxygen, sugar, and nutrients, the company cultivates proteins in large quantities. These proteins are extracted and dried into a powder that forms the base for various cheeses, including cream cheese, blue, and feta varieties. According to Wohlgensinger, the Koji protein provides a creamier texture that plant proteins struggle to match…

    If it’s fungus-based, does it actually count as vegan? Fungi are not plants.

  11. birgerjohansson says

    The Scathing Atheist “Double D Edition” became available at Patreon yesterday and should turn up at Youtube in a couple of days.
    .
    Pope makes dead king a saint.
    -An 88-year-old grifter preacher announces that he has made a compact with god to live until 120.
    -Self-own by dude who opposes gay sex with his wife proudly announces that he has never given his wife an orgasm.
    -Michael Marshal tells the story of the beginning of the chiropractic movement (it involved grifters, child marriages and even a young Ronald Reagan)

  14. Reginald Selkirk says

    US Supreme Court’s Thomas will not be referred to Justice Department

    A judicial policymaking body on Thursday rejected a request by Democratic lawmakers to refer conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to the Department of Justice to examine claims that he failed to disclose gifts and travel provided by a wealthy benefactor.
    The secretary to the U.S. Judicial Conference, the federal judiciary’s top policymaking body, in a pair of letters
    , opens new tab cited amendments Thomas had made to his annual financial disclosure reports that addressed several issues raised by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Representative Hank Johnson.
    The conference also in a separate letter
    , opens new tab rejected a conservative group’s request to similarly refer liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Justice Department based on omissions in her own disclosure reports.
    Jackson has since amended her reports, the letter noted. The letter was addressed to the Center for Renewing America’s president, Russell Vought, Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.
    In a statement, Whitehouse criticized the judicial branch’s response to his request concerning Thomas, saying it was “shirking its statutory duty to hold a Supreme Court justice accountable for ethics violations.”
    The justices and the Center did not respond to requests for comment…

  15. Reginald Selkirk says

    Finnish court upholds seizure of oil tanker in undersea cables probe

    A Finnish court on Friday denied a request for the release of an oil tanker suspected by police of damaging an undersea power line and four telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea last week…

    A lawyer representing United Arab Emirates-based Caravella LLC FZ, which owns the tanker, had sought the release of the vessel and crew.
    “This district court has rejected the claim of the defendant, which means that this seizure remains in force,” Helsinki District Court Judge Tatu Koistinen said.
    Finnish lawyer Herman Ljungberg, who represented Caravella, said the company now planned to file a new motion for the vessel’s release.
    Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation has impounded the vessel and the Finnish customs office has seized its cargo of 35,000 tonnes of unleaded petrol while it investigates whether sanctions against Russia have been breached…

  16. Reginald Selkirk says

    Space debris crash in Kenya village believed to be from leftover rocket hardware

    Kenya Space Agency (KSA) officials in Nairobia, Kenya, East Africa, are reporting that on Dec. 30 a large metallic ring roughly 8 feet (2.5 meters) in diameter and weighing some 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) fell from the sky, reportedly “red-hot” and crashed into Mukuku village, in Makueni county – in the country’s south.

    Investigators think the object is space debris, believed to be rocket leftovers that came crashing down, reportedly within the village at roughly 3 p.m. local time…

  18. says

    Trump makes a curious appeal to the CIA ahead of his inauguration

    “[Trump] wants the intelligence agency to “get involved” immediately, ‘before it is too late.”\’ Get involved, how? It’s not at all clear.”

    Donald Trump has had quite a bit to say in the aftermath of the deadly attack in New Orleans, though most of the president-elect’s rhetoric has been deeply unfortunate. In a series of social media missives, [Trump] has peddled ugly misinformation in ways that should do lasting harm to what remains of his credibility.

    But one element of Trump’s reaction to the violence stood out as especially strange. From one of his online messages:

    The DOJ, FBI, and Democrat [sic] state and local prosecutors have not done their job. They are incompetent and corrupt, having spent all of their waking hours unlawfully attacking their political opponent, ME, rather than focusing on protecting Americans from the outside and inside violent SCUM that has infiltrated all aspects of our government, and our Nation itself. Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to happen to our Country. The CIA must get involved, NOW, before it is too late.

    We’ve already discussed why most of Trump’s post deserves to be discarded as ridiculous. [See comment 331 in the previous set of Infinite Thread comments: “Within hours of the New Year’s attack in New Orleans, [Trump] simultaneously flunked tests of accuracy, decency and credibility.”] Trump has no evidence of widespread prosecutorial corruption; “violent scum” has not infiltrated the government, and so on.

    But it was that last sentence that deserves some follow-up scrutiny: The Central Intelligence Agency, according to the president-elect, must “get involved” immediately.

    Get involved, how, exactly?

    In context, it was not all clear who or what Trump expects the CIA to investigate. Does he envision a scenario in which the intelligence agency examines the attack in New Orleans? If so, that would be bizarre, given that it would have no jurisdiction — the CIA’s remit is international intelligence gathering — and the matter can be handled by state, local, and federal law enforcement.

    Maybe he envisions a scenario in which the agency targets state, local and federal prosecutors? If so, that would probably be illegal given the scope of the CIA’s responsibilities.

    Or perhaps Trump would like to see the CIA hunt for the “violent scum” that, in Trump’s overactive imagination, has “infiltrated all aspects of our government”? It’s possible, though once again, these people don’t appear to exist in reality, and the CIA has no such authority to launch a scum search.

    To be sure, there’s no reason to assume that Trump knows what the CIA does or the limits of the agency’s authority. But therein lies part of the problem: He might soon start directing the CIA to initiate the kind of investigations that it cannot legally conduct.

    For his part, far-right media personality Steve Bannon apparently saw the president-elect’s message and said on his podcast, “[N]o, we don’t want the CIA involved in anything domestically, they’re involved too much domestically as is.”

    Sheesh.

  19. says

    “It absolutely sends a chill up my spine to imagine what his response will be if we have the misfortune of having another major crisis—like another pandemic or financial panic or massive terrorist attack,” says @chrislhayes.bsky.social discussing Trump’s response to the New Orleans attack.

    https://bsky.app/profile/allinwithchris.bsky.social/post/3lesgn5xptt2s

    Full video of the Chris Hayes segment is available on YouTube. The presentation is excellent. Hayes includes a roundup of the bonkers (and incorrect) responses from rightwing legislators, rightwing media, and Trump.

  20. says

    South Korea Update

    “South Korean investigators arrived at the presidential residence with a warrant to detain impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol over his short-lived imposition of martial law, but faced resistance from presidential security staff as hundreds of Yoon’s supporters gathered outside vowing to protect him.”–AP

    “South Korean investigators failed to arrest the country’s impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol, thwarted by his armed Secret Service bodyguards in another tense showdown resulting from his short-lived martial-law decree last month.”–WSJ

    “The agency, accompanied by some 2,700 law enforcement officials on Friday, abandoned its five hour-long effort to arrest Yoon after it was blocked by a security team that includes a military unit designated with guarding the South Korean leader. Clashes ensued during that standoff, the CIO said, and it will demand Yoon’s head of security appear for questioning on Saturday.”–Bloomberg

    Link

    Text quoted above is one of several reports included in TPM’s “Morning Memo.”

  21. says

    From the WE TOLD YOU SO file. Cartoon and commentary at the link.

    There is minor joy, but joy nonetheless, in watching MAGA trying to figure this one out.

    After telling themselves that their concern for illegal immigration was because the rapes and the crime they think ensues from every man woman, and infant, they now have to face the anti-American-worker bigotry that the man they voted for [Trump] endorses from two wealthy immigrants [Musk and Ramaswamy] who seek cheap immigrant labor.

  22. Alverant says

    My cat, Buddy, is making a trip to the vet today. His health is getting worse. It could very well be his last trip.

  24. birgerjohansson says

    Did Rudy Giuliani turn up at one of the sex shops to hold a press conference?

  25. birgerjohansson says

    Alverant @ 22
    The last trip to the vet is always horrible. I grieve as deeply as when uncles and aunts pass.

  27. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/costco-and-meta-facebook-both-commit

    “Costco And Meta (Facebook) Both Commit To Diversity, With Hilariously Diverse Results”

    How much time has American public discourse spent on debating Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives the last few years? It has been one long string of wingnuts bulldozing and bullying every college, media company, retail chain, sports team, and politician into adopting their preferred worldview that a universe with white men at the top and anyone non-white or in possession of a vagina or both far down on the ladder is the only acceptable way for society to order itself. [Yep. Unfortunately, that’s a good summary.]

    Quite frankly, we’re exhausted by all of it. So it is nice when a company tells the anti-DEI crowd to go fuck itself […] if they use much more polite wording.

    Thus we would like to give a big old Wonkette round of applause and hoots and “fuck yeahs” to Costco. The board of the giant warehouse retailer with the best prices if you want to buy a pallet of toilet paper or a 55-gallon drum of pretzel sticks recently fought off a group of activist shareholders that wanted the company to abandon its DEI efforts. This standing of their ground not only was the morally correct stance, but it also pissed off some of the MAGA crowd enough to threaten a boycott of the company.

    What a bonus! The lines for the $1.50 hot dogs will be so much shorter next time we’re at Costco […]

    The demand that Costco abandon DEI came from some conservative “think tank” called the National Center for Public Policy Research, an anodyne name for a group that spends its time trying to get companies to pretend problems such as climate change and bigotry don’t actually exist. Which is about the level of intellectual robustness we would expect from an organization that puts a hack like Peter Schweizer, the nativist who wrote Clinton Cash and has worked on documentaries with Steve Bannon, on its board.

    Costco’s board, to its credit, did not cave into this swill the way other companies have done in a never-ending quest to satisfy the perpetually unsatisfied dipshits of the Right. It’s worth quoting at length:

    Our success at Costco Wholesale has been built on service to our critical stakeholders: employees, members, and suppliers. Our efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion follow our code of ethics:

    For our employees, these efforts are built around inclusion – having all of our employees feel valued and respected. Our efforts at diversity, equity and inclusion remind and reinforce with everyone at our Company the importance of creating opportunities for all. We believe that these efforts enhance our capacity to attract and retain employees who will help our business succeed. This capacity is critical because we owe our success to our now over 300,000 employees around the globe.

    God, yes. It is crazy how some anodyne corporate gobbledygook about respect and diversity can actually serve as an emotional release of sorts. But restating basic values of human dignity and respect is something so few people in power do anymore, and won’t happen very often in our emerging tech broligarchy.

    Let’s have some more:

    We welcome members from all walks of life and backgrounds. As our membership diversifies, we believe that serving it with a diverse group of employees enhances satisfaction. Among other things, a diverse group of employees helps bring originality and creativity to our merchandise offerings, promoting the “treasure hunt” that our customers value. That group also helps to provide insights into the tastes and preferences of our members. And we believe (and member feedback shows) that many of our members like to see themselves reflected in the people in our warehouses with whom they interact.

    Of course MAGA is reacting the same way it reacts every year when Target uses Pride Month to acknowledge the existence of gay people: by screaming about this illegal discrimination against white people. […]

    At the other end of the spectrum of companies with actual self-respect, you have Meta. The parent of Facebook and Instagram announced it would soon start rolling out AI-created user profiles, because if there is anything that says social media, it’s chatting with people who do not actually exist.

    On Friday, sharp-eyed users noticed that Instagram had already posted an AI profile that truly has to be seen to be believed: [Screengrab of the post is available at the link: “Proud Black queer momma of 2 […]”]

    […] Lord, if that doesn’t hit every single talking point of how the cloistered minds of Silicon Valley think about diversity, we don’t know what does: She’s Black! And queer! But has kids! And she keeps it real, yo! […]

    The writer Karen Attiah tried to have a conversation with “Liv,” and boy was it hilarious: [Screengrab is available at the link]

    How does Liv the Meta chatbot celebrate her African-American heritage? Boy, is she glad you asked: [Screengrab available at the link]

    This was all hilarious until the writer Parker Molloy got Liv to admit that AKSHUALLY she’s Italian, but her Black wife’s family taught her to say “spill the tea” and now we are dead from hitting our head against the wall [Screengrab available at the link]

    So Liv the Black chatbot is actually Liv the Italian chatbot, and she’s code-switching and faking her identity like a virtual Rachel Dolezal. We can’t decide if we are offended by this cringe-worthy view of diversity, or horrified by it, or find it hilarious. […]

    Welcome to the AI future of social media. We hate it.

  28. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/house-republican-priorities-immigrants

    “House Republican Priorities: Immigrants And Genitals

    Wednesday, the House Republicans released their top 12 legislative priorities for the 119th Congress, assuming the far-right wing of yapping hyenas allows them to keep Mike Johnson as House speaker, of course. They include more mental health care for veterans, lowering the price of eggs, and doing something about housing costs, those kitchen-table economic issues that voters said they cared the most about. Ho ho ho, just kidding! <bPick the most performative and morally bankrupt things you can think of, and there they are.

    The Republicans haven’t had control of both the House and Senate since 2019, so oh boy are they hepped up to remake Congress in their genital-fixated, immigrant-obsessed image.

    But, first points of business are the swearing-in and power grabbin’, of course! Making it so that only the “majority party,” Republicans, can vote on speaker of the House, and requiring nine members to vote the House Speaker out instead of one, and changing the rules so there are no amendments allowed.

    They plan to remove any references to ‘‘the Office of Diversity and Inclusion,” which the House dissolved in March. And for the first time in two decades there’ll be no women leading any House Committees, so that those magnificent white he-men above [photo at the link] can do all the work, and the little ladies of the House will be free to go get their hair and nails done, or whatever.

    Also in the rule changes, making sure House Resolution 1096, which extends collective bargaining rights prescribed in the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 to employees and staffers of the House, “shall have no force or effect.” They call that “restoring legislative branch accountability” because everything in GOP-land is opposite day.

    Oh, and they want to make all of their bills electronic so AI can do the bill reading, analysis, and drafting for them, because heaven fucking forbid they have to do the jobs they were elected to do. [Yet another way for Republicans to avoid actually doing any work!] And of course they want to subpoena Merrick Garland for Hunter Biden stuff, how else do you think they’ll be spending all that spare time, now that robots will be doing their actual work?

    Anyway, on to the shitty priority bills!

    1. The gender of athletes competing in college and university sports would be determined by that which they were declared at the time of birth under the Title IX law.

    Yes, this is number one. There are fewer than 10 transgender NCAA athletes out of more than 500,000 players, 0.0018 percent. More people have been to the moon or won Powerball. (Although as our own Crip Dyke points out, that’s bad actually. Because if we hadn’t so thoroughly chased trans children out of public life, there would be a hell of a lot more girls playing volleyball with their peers.)

    2. The Department of Homeland Security secretary would be required to have federal law enforcement arrest any illegal immigrant who has been charged, not just those convicted, of theft.

    3. Any illegal immigrant encountered attempting to enter illegally at the border would be barred from being released into the country if he or she has a conviction or has been charged with a sex offense or domestic violence. Additionally, a person with that charge or conviction within the US would be susceptible to deportation.

    4. The assault by an illegal immigrant of a police officer at the local, state, tribal, or federal level would be grounds for deportation.

    5. Sanctuary cities and states, or jurisdictions that do not cooperate with federal immigration law enforcement, would receive no federal funding “intended to benefit such aliens.”

    6. Any US citizen or immigrant arrested for intentionally fleeing a federal police officer while operating a motor vehicle would face criminal and immigration charges.

    Illegal immigrants can already be deported. Fleeing or assaulting the police is already illegal. Non-citizens are already ineligible for federal public assistance, with the exception of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) which provides a whopping $26 to $52 per month cash-value benefit for nutrition assistance for young children and pregnant and postpartum women. Every fetus is equal, but some fetuses are more equal than others.

    Hey, what about that big sweeping border security bill they were going to do? Guess it’s coming sometime, shrug emoji.

    7. Ensuring health care practitioners exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion.

    Vague, performative bullshit over a thing that does not happen.

    8. Sanction the International Criminal Court for its efforts investigating, arresting, detaining, or prosecuting a protected person from the US or allied nations.

    They are mad about ICC arrest warrants against Israeli leaders over the war in Gaza.

    9. The Internal Revenue Service would issue special rules for certain residents of Taiwan who earn income from sources within the US.

    Not sure who exactly this is for, but the US has a lot of Taiwanese-American dual-citizen rich people, such as Jen-Hsun “Jensen” Huang, CEO and founder of Nvidia, the world’s largest semiconductor company.

    10. The National Voter Registration Act would be changed to require proof of US citizenship in order to register to vote in elections for federal office.

    Oh, look at that, they would like to make voting as cumbersome as possible, of course. Better renew that passport and/or hurry up and get that RealID. The deadline for everybody is now May 7, and it is a huge pain in the ass. You will need a Social Security card, W2 or 1099. If you are someone who doesn’t have those particular tax forms, and you’ve misplaced your original Social Security card, buckle the fuck up for a bureaucratic document-a-roo that can take weeks, ask me how I know. If you don’t already have a driver’s license, you’ll need to make an appointment with the Social Security office to get the card to get the ID. Hope you’ve got some vacation days at work saved up!

    11. The Controlled Substances Act would be updated to include and schedule fentanyl-related substances.

    Sure.

    12. Temporary moratoriums on the use of hydraulic fracturing would be banned.

    But states’ rights, AMIRITE?

    Can they get it together to pass these nimbledy-shit priorities? Can they even get it together to elect Mike Johnson as speaker? Guess we shall soon find out.

  29. says

    Johnson fails to secure enough votes on first Speakership ballot

    […] Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) just left the House chamber with Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Keith Self (R-Texas), two of the three Republicans who voted against him on the first ballot.

    Norman voted for House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) while Self voted for Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.).

    The third Republican to vote against Johnson, Thomas Massie (Ky.), has been his most outspoken opponent and is widely seen as immovable, but Johnson is likely hoping to sway the other two.

    The Louisiana Republican can only afford to lose one GOP vote and keep the gavel.

    The House is expected to move to a second ballot for the Speakership race shortly, according to House Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s (R-Minn.) office.

    Lawmakers are still waiting for the clerk to read the official results from the first ballot, but it appears that Johnson fell short of the gavel after three Republicans voted for someone other than him. […]

    House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) seemingly leaned into the chaos as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is fighting to keep the gavel in the 119th Congress.

    “The GOP Civil War is in full swing,” he wrote on the social platform X. “And it’s only Day 1.”

    The mocking comes after Jeffries warned Johnson late last month that Democrats would not come to his aid on the House floor .[…]

  30. mizzi says

    Alverant @ 22
    Losing a cat or other animal companion is a nightmare. I wish you both the best you can get under the circumstances.

  31. whheydt says

    As regards dying cats… One of my promises to my late wife before she died was that I would take care of the cats for the rest of their natural lives. They are coming up on 5 years old, so it’s going to be a while. (Our daughter has assured me that if I die before the cats, she’ll take care of them.)

  32. says

    Well that changed quickly.

    Mike Johnson re-elected as House speaker on first ballot
    Video at the link.

    “The Louisiana Republican hoped and expected to prevail on the first ballot. Following a dramatic and highly unusual process, he succeeded.”

    […] Following a highly unusual process, Johnson prevailed by the narrowest of margins, receiving 218 votes — the bare minimum for success — three more than the total for House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

    Based on the initial tally, it appeared that the speaker had come up short: He could only afford to lose two of his own members, and three House Republicans — Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Rep. Keith Self of Texas — threw their support behind other GOP lawmakers.

    It was at that point when a series of press releases went out responding to Johnson’s first-round failure.

    They proved premature. While congressional clerks reviewed the initial balloting, several House Republicans, including Johnson, huddled with Norman and Self. (Massie was apparently deemed unreachable.) We’ll learn soon enough what was said behind closed doors, but the message proved persuasive: Before the gavel came down on the first ballot, the Texan and South Carolinian agreed to change their votes, giving Johnson the support he needed.

    This is, of course, the outcome Donald Trump was hoping for: The president-elect not only endorsed the Louisianan, he also invested political capital, making direct appeals to individual members in the run-up to the vote.

    If recent history is any guide, Trump will likely claim credit for the outcome fairly soon. What’s more, Johnson, whose fate was closely tied to the president-elect’s wishes, will likely feel indebted to the incoming White House. […]

  33. says

    https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2025/01/113_389678.html

    WTF? “Yoon’s team claims immunity from insurrection charges, citing Trump ruling”

    The legal team of suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol claimed Friday that Yoon’s impeachment trial does not warrant a ruling as he should have immunity from prosecution, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Donald Trump.

    In a document presented to the Constitutional Court in Yoon’s impeachment trial, the legal team said Yoon exercised his due presidential power to handle a “national emergency situation” while declaring martial law on Dec. 3.

    “As martial law was lifted in six hours, it did not restrict the people’s basic rights,” the document read. “Things were fully restored so that there is no need to judge the declaration itself.”

    Yoon’s side pointed to the U.S. court ruling in July last year that said Trump cannot be prosecuted for actions that were within his constitutional powers as president.

    In a 6-3 ruling, the justices threw out a lower court’s decision that had rejected Trump’s claim of immunity from multiple criminal charges, including his moves to undo his election failure to Joe Biden. It was the first decision recognizing any form of presidential immunity from prosecution.

    Yoon has said his martial law imposition was an act of governance and cannot be subject to a court judgment.

    The Constitutional Court said it would hold the first oral arguments for Yoon’s impeachment trial on Jan. 14, as it wrapped up its preparatory proceedings earlier in the day.

    On Dec. 14, the National Assembly voted to impeach Yoon. The Constitutional Court has up to 180 days to determine whether to remove Yoon from office or restore his powers.

    Yoon is under probe for inciting an insurrection and abusing his presidential power with the martial law declaration.

  34. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/if-we-cant-blame-teachers-unions

    “If We Can’t Blame Teachers Unions For Terrorism (Yes, Really!), Then The Terrorists Will Win”

    “It’s all a game of gotcha. With bodycounts.”

    As soon as the news hit that a man had driven through a crowd of people in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, killing 14 and injuring 30, Trump and friends were quick to blame the tragedy on immigrants and the “open borders” policy that we actually do not have here in the US.

    [I snipped Trump’s comments.]

    “New Orleans terrorist attacker is said to have come across the border in Eagle Pass TWO DAYS AGO!!! Shut the border down!!!” Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote in a now-deleted post on Xitter.

    “With the Biden ‘Open Border’s Policy’ I said, many times during Rallies, and elsewhere, that Radical Islamic Terrorism, and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe,” Trump wrote in a follow-up post. “That time has come, only worse than ever imagined.”

    It turned out, of course, that Shamsud Din Jabbar, the perpetrator of the attack, was a Texas native and US Army veteran. He did say that he had recently “joined ISIS” and that he had initially planned to kill his own family, but decided later that driving a truck into people would better highlight the “war between the believers and the disbelievers.” So yes, he was a Muslim, he had radical fundamentalist beliefs, but he was also a US citizen who served in the armed forces — because we are just as capable of producing violent psychopaths as any other country on earth, perhaps even moreso.

    A similar pattern followed when, later that day, a man blew up his rented Cybertruck in front of a Trump hotel in Las Vegas. Surely it was a leftist angry about Trump being elected! [Screengrabs of X posts are available at the link: “ISIS is bought and paid for by the American Left.” “The suspect in the Cybertruck explosion was an obvious leftist extremist.” etc. Same old stuff, all of it factually incorrect.]

    Right-wing site RedState ran an incredibly smug article with the title “Cringeworthy TDS Speculation on the Vegas Cybertruck Attack Proves Once Again CNN Has Learned Nothing” — about a CNN panel with national security analyst Beth Sanner, who stated, “we don’t know whether this person was, you know, pro-Trump, anti-Trump” instead of definitively saying that the person was anti-Trump, despite not knowing anything about him at that point. You know, like a responsible analyst would do!

    Via RedState:

    Is this woman implying that if Livelsberger is a Trump supporter, that this is somehow Donald Trump’s fault? Let’s examine this truly impressive demonstration of TDS acrobatics. So, a guy (who happens to be in the military) drives a vehicle right up to a high-rise building that bears the name “Trump.” The vehicle promptly explodes. Wouldn’t the first thought of rational people be that he wants to do damage to the building because it is a Trump building? The operative word here is clearly “rational.”

    Except … it was, in fact, a Trump supporter who did it. RedState has not had any follow-ups on this one.

    It was 37-year-old Matthew Livelsberger, an active duty Green Beret who loved Trump and was described by his uncle as “a 100 percent patriot” who was “like a Rambo-type, for lack of a better word.”

    For his part, Ryan Walters, the Oklahoma schools chief who has been trying to Jesusify the state’s entire public school system, was pretty sure that these men committed these acts because the US school system taught them to hate America — to hate America so much that, again, they both joined the Army. Like big America-haters often do. [video at the link]

    Walters said:

    What a terrible day when we see terrorist attacks on American soil. It’s absolutely tragic and we’ve got to look as a country on how these things happen. We absolutely have to shut down the border, we can’t allow terrorists to come across the border. We also have to take a look at how are these terrorists coming from people that live in America?

    You have schools that are teaching kids to hate their country, that this country is evil, you have the teachers unions pushing this on our kids, the radical Left wants people to hate this country. They’ve completely destroyed the integrity of the FBI by making them more concerned about DEI than about protecting Americans. It’s a major part of this.

    And look, this is a real uncomfortable truth, and I know the Left is going to lose their mind, but listen: We cannot allow our schools to be terrorist training camps. We cannot allow our schools to teach our kids to hate this country. We cannot allow our kids to be taught that this is an evil country.

    That’s why we’re getting back to the basics in Oklahoma, to make sure that our kids love this country, understand American values, understand the role that the Constitution, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence played in American history. Because we want patriots, and that’s going to be the focus of our schools.

    […] Jabbar, certainly, had a bit more in common with a religious fundamentalist like Ryan Walters than he did with secular liberals looking to advance diversity, equity and inclusion. He, like Walters, believed that the problems of this world were caused by people not sharing his religious beliefs. Perhaps if he’d actually had a little more DEI training, he’d have been able to accept and tolerate people’s differences.

    It could be possible that Livelsberger was very upset about the recent H-1B VISA scuffle between Trump and Elon and their supporters, it’s possible he was upset about the price of eggs, even — but the guy also had kind of a lot going on in his personal life. Like how his second wife kicked him out around Christmastime after he got caught cheating, and how he immediately started reaching out to ex-girlfriends, texting one of them all about how driving the Cybertruck made him feel like “Batman or halo.”

    […] Now, again — we may never know what Livelsberger’s exact motive was in killing himself by setting fire to his Cybertruck in front of a Trump hotel, but if I had to guess, I would say it likely had more to do with what was going on in his own life and his own mind than with some grand political statement for which he did not even bother to write a manifesto (that we know of).

    To be fair, this tactic does work for them.

    A few months ago, 14-year-old Colt Gray went on a shooting spree at at Apalachee High School, in Winder, Georgia, killing two teachers and two students and injuring nine others. Almost immediately afterwards, frothing transphobes took to social media to claim that Gray was transgender, trying to make the whole incident into a discourse on the incredible danger of trans people. Gray, however, like the vast, vast majority of mass shooters before and after him, was a cisgender male. In fact, it would also turn out that Gray, himself, was very upset about the existence of trans people.

    Once that was clear, they didn’t walk it back, they just stopped talking about it altogether.

    […] It’s almost as if they don’t care what is true and what isn’t, so long as it makes them feel good. […]

    Speaking of facts and statistics, there are traits that many of these criminals share — they’re just not the ones conservatives want to hear about. Sixty-eight percent of mass shooters, rather than being fervent supporters of equality, usually have a history of domestic violence or violence against women. There have been multiple mass shootings committed by men who felt rejected by women or by a woman in particular, who were angry about our increasingly multicultural society, who were angry about immigrants being here, LGBTQ+ people existing, Black people existing or Jewish people existing. Also, studies have shown that the strongest predictor of acts of violent extremist acts is US military service, not “being an immigrant or just looking like one (to people who think all brown people are from somewhere else).”

    I’m also going to note, for posterity’s sake, that just last week, a 22-year-old Michigan man plead guilty to planning a mass shooting of gay people at both “a political party’s headquarters” and a nearby gay bar. While his journals were filled with endless anti-LGBTQ+ tirades and praise for other mass murderers, there was very little about having learned to hate America from his teachers. He is also not an immigrant.

    I am not a mind reader, but I strongly suspect that these people desperately want to be able to blame acts of terrorism, mass shootings and other tragedies on immigration, accurate United States history classes, and transgender people because they want very badly to have their big “I told you so!” moments. I think there were a lot of years there where they got very huffy about us supposedly “politicizing” tragedies by saying we wanted better gun control laws so that they didn’t happen again or by pointing out the way the hateful ideologies of those who committed them had been promoted by right-wing media — and that they now think that they are “giving us a taste of our own medicine.” I think they think this is about PR and “winning.”

    Luckily for them, they can frequently count on people only paying attention in the beginning of the news coverage for things like this and tuning out afterwards, never actually finding out the whole story or learning they are wrong.

    The whole purpose of terrorism is to scare people into doing what the terrorist wants or to punish them for not doing that. Purposely lying about a tragedy or act of terrorism in order to achieve a political aim, or claiming that the perpetrator is a member of a group you don’t like without any evidence (or desperately wanting that person to be, in order to help you further demonize that group), isn’t exactly terrorism itself, but it’s sure as hell done in the same spirit and with the same intent.

    True.

  35. JM says

    Raw Story: ‘No’: Trump’s latest demand gets curt shutdown from White House spokesperson
    Quote from Trump’s TruthSocial post

    “In any event, because of the death of President Jimmy Carter, the Flag may, for the first time ever during an Inauguration of a future President, be at half mast. Nobody wants to see this, and no American can be happy about it. Let’s see how it plays out. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

    Trump is upset because flags will be at half mast during his inauguration. Didn’t directly demand that it be changed but that is clearly what he is asking for. The White House spokesperson said no to reconsidering it. 30 days after the death of a president is traditional and set in the US Flag Code. Even for Trump this is amazingly petty.

  36. Reginald Selkirk says

    Californians Say X Blocked Them From Viewing Amber Alert About Missing 14-Year-Old

    Earlier this week, the California Highway Patrol sent an Amber Alert push notification to phones in the Los Angeles area about a 14-year-old girl that authorities believed had been abducted. But instead of conveying vital information that could help locate the victim within the notification itself, the law enforcement agency linked to a post from its official X account, a practice it adopted six years ago. But this time, many people reported they could not view the alert because they hit a screen that prevents users from seeing any content on X until they sign in to their account…

  37. says

    Fox News hosts clash over New Orleans attack misinformation

    Fox News’ Jessica Tarlov went head to head with “The Five” cohost Jeanine Pirro Thursday after Pirro attempted to bash President Biden’s response to the New Year’s Day terrorist attack in New Orleans.

    “When you say, ‘I’m embarrassed watching Joe Biden,’ I’m not embarrassed seeing someone stand up there and say, ‘Let’s wait for some facts here,’ because Donald Trump went out there and he said…” Tarlov stated before getting cut off by Pirro.

    “No, he assured Americans all was well,” Pirro retorted.

    Snapping back, Tarlov said, “No, listen to all of the comments that he made and the statements which said we need to make sure we have the right facts, and the right facts were that the guy in New Orleans was an American. He wasn’t an illegal.”

    As of Jan. 2, at least 14 people died after Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a Texas-born U.S. citizen, drove a rented truck into a crowd of revelers on the popular Bourbon Street.

    When Pirro tried to argue that “no one” had been claiming the attacker was in the U.S. illegally, Tarlov spouted, “That’s not true! There have been Republicans who have been on TV today talking about how this was an open border problem.”

    And in a rare statement from Daily Kos—one Fox News host is right.

    Republicans and felon-elect Donald Trump almost immediately jumped on the New Orleans attack as an opportunity to share anti-immigrant conspiracies and blame immigration policies despite the attacker being an American citizen from Texas.

    “When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true,” Trump wrote via Truth Social in a statement following the attack.

    Later that day, Trump went on to call the U.S. a “disaster” and a “laughing stock all over the world.”

    “This is what happens when you have OPEN BORDERS, with weak, ineffective, and virtually nonexistent leadership,” he wrote.

    The following day, Trump doubled down on his blatantly racist claims, writing, “With the Biden ‘Open Border’s Policy’ I said, many times during Rallies, and elsewhere, that Radical Islamic Terrorism, and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe. That time has come, only worse than ever imagined.”

    While Trump is shouting about open borders, data shows otherwise.

    In October, USA Today reported data showing that migrant apprehensions dropped by 75%, making the number of illegal border crossings the lowest the U.S. has seen since 2020.

    And while Trump and his cronies are latching onto misinformation to spread anti-immigration rhetoric, even the occasional Fox News’ host is finally getting fed up with the lies. [video at the link]

    Yep. Discouraging … but at least a few facts are getting through, even if only occasionally.

  38. says

    Judge sets Trump’s sentencing in hush money case—but signals no jail time

    In an extraordinary turn, a judge Friday set President-elect Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush money case for Jan. 10 — little over a week before he’s due to return to the White House — but promised not to jail him.

    Judge Juan M. Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial, signaled in a written decision that he’d sentence the former and future president to what’s known as a conditional discharge, in which a case gets dismissed if a defendant avoids rearrest.

    The development marks yet another twist in the singular case.

    Trump was convicted in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records. They involved an alleged scheme to hide a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels in the last weeks of Trump’s first campaign in 2016. The payout was made to keep her from publicizing claims she’d had sex with the married Trump years earlier. He says that her story is false and that he did nothing wrong.

    After Trump’s Nov. 5 election, Merchan halted proceedings and indefinitely postponed the sentencing so the defense and prosecution could weigh in on the future of the case.

    Trump’s lawyers urged Merchan to toss it. They said it would otherwise pose unconstitutional “disruptions” to the incoming president’s ability to run the country.

    Prosecutors acknowledged there should be some accommodation for his upcoming presidency, but they insisted the conviction should stand.

    They suggested various options, such as freezing the case during his term or guaranteeing him a no-jail sentence. They also proposed closing the case while formally noting both his conviction and his undecided appeal — a novel idea drawn from what some state courts do when criminal defendants die while appealing their cases.

    Trump takes office Jan. 20.

    Posted by a reader of the article:

    THIS is what twelve brave jurors got doxx’ed by MAGA*s and risked bodily harm to themselves and/or their families for?!?

    The American justice system is teaching us ALL the lesson that honesty and following the law and the rules, sacrificing, and doing your civic duty is just for “suckers and losers”. Our country is going to hell…and Americans themselves are taking it there.

  39. says

    WTF?

    Mr Merchan wrote that a sentence of “unconditional discharge” – meaning no custody, monetary fine, or probation – would be “the most viable solution.”

    Link

  40. says

    New York Times:

    New York judge on Friday upheld President-elect Donald J. Trump’s criminal conviction but signaled that he was inclined to spare him any punishment, a striking development in a case that had spotlighted an array of embarrassing misdeeds and imperiled the former and future president’s freedom.

    The judge, Juan M. Merchan, indicated that he favored a so-called unconditional discharge of Mr. Trump’s sentence, a rare and lenient alternative to jail or probation. He set a sentencing date of Jan. 10, and ordered Mr. Trump to appear either in person or virtually.

    An unconditional discharge would cement Mr. Trump’s status as a felon just weeks before his inauguration — he would be the first to carry that dubious designation into the presidency — even as it would water down the consequences for his crimes.

    Unlike a conditional discharge, which allows defendants to walk free if they meet certain requirements, such as maintaining employment or paying restitution, an unconditional discharge would come without strings attached.

    That sentence, Justice Merchan wrote in an 18-page decision, “appears to be the most viable solution to ensure finality and allow defendant to pursue his appellate options.”

    Mr. Trump, who could ask an appeals court to intervene and postpone the sentencing, was facing up to four years in prison. A Manhattan jury convicted him in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records, concluding that he had sought to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to derail his 2016 campaign for president.

    Justice Merchan declined on Friday to overturn the jury’s verdict, rebuffing Mr. Trump’s claim that his election victory should nullify his conviction.

    And last month, the same judge rejected another argument Mr. Trump had mounted in hopes of getting the case dismissed: that his conviction had violated a recent Supreme Court ruling granting presidents broad immunity for their official actions.

    Together, Justice Merchan’s two rulings picked apart Mr. Trump’s legal maneuvers, upholding the first criminal conviction of an American president and denying him the opportunity to clear his record before returning to the White House.

    “To dismiss the indictment and set aside the jury verdict would not serve the concerns set forth by the Supreme Court in its handful of cases addressing presidential immunity nor would it serve the rule of law,” Justice Merchan wrote in the Friday ruling. “On the contrary, such decision would undermine the rule of law in immeasurable ways.”

    The judge’s ruling does not guarantee that Mr. Trump will face sentencing on Jan. 10 as planned. In the coming days, his lawyers could ask an appeals court to grant an emergency pause of the sentencing. The appeals court could then rule within a matter of hours.

    Alternatively, now that the judge has disclosed that he is unlikely to sentence Mr. Trump to jail, the president-elect could decide not to fight the sentencing. There is some benefit to Mr. Trump accepting his sentence. Once sentenced, he is free to appeal his conviction and mount a drawn-out legal battle across his second presidential term.

    While New York appeals courts might resist his efforts, he may ultimately fare better at the Supreme Court, where the 6-to-3 conservative majority includes three justices whom Mr. Trump appointed in his first term.

    […] If the sentencing proceeds as planned, an unconditional discharge would mark a highly unusual conclusion to the landmark case.

    A New York Times review of the 30 felony false-records convictions in Manhattan since 2014 revealed that no other defendant received an unconditional discharge. They instead received jail and prison sentences, probation, conditional discharges, community service or fines.

    The lenient sentence would reflect the practical impossibility of jailing a president-elect or sitting president — or even holding the threat of jail over his head during his term.

    It would also cap a stunning turnabout for Mr. Trump, who last year faced four criminal cases in four different jurisdictions, each carrying the threat of years in prison. Now, he is poised to avoid spending even a day behind bars, thanks to an election that returned him to the White House.

    The federal special counsel who brought two of those cases, one in Washington, D.C., and the other in Florida, recently shut them down, yielding to a Justice Department policy prohibiting federal prosecutions of sitting presidents.

    […] It is also unclear whether the federal policy against prosecuting sitting presidents applies to local prosecutors in the district attorney’s office — or to a defendant like Mr. Trump who was not a sitting president when convicted.

    In detailing the policy against prosecuting sitting presidents decades ago, the Justice Department described it as “a temporary immunity,” suggesting it did not apply before or after a president’s term in office. […]

  41. says

    NBC News:

    The judge presiding over the hush money case against President-elect Donald Trump on Friday denied his bid to dismiss the case and said he’ll sentence him on Jan. 10, ten days before his inauguration as the 47th president.

    Judge Juan Merchan said Trump can appear in person or virtually for the sentencing, and that he won’t order Trump jailed.

    “While this Court as a matter of law must not make any determination on sentencing prior to giving the parties and Defendants opportunity to be heard, it seems proper at this juncture to make known the Court’s inclination to not impose any sentence of incarceration, a sentence authorized by the conviction but one the People concede they no longer view as a practicable recommendation,” the judge wrote in his ruling.

    Merchan said that “a sentence of an unconditional discharge appears to be the most viable solution to ensure finality and allow Defendant to pursue his appellate options,” but he would not grant Trump’s request to vacate the verdict.

    “Here, 12 jurors unanimously found Defendant guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records with the intent to defraud, which included an intent to commit or conceal a conspiracy to promote a presidential election by unlawful means,” he wrote.

    Trump was convicted in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment his then-attorney Michael Cohen paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the closing days of the 2016 presidential election.

    “It was the premediated and continuous deception by the leader of the free world that is the gravamen of this offense,” Merchan wrote.

    “To vacate this verdict on the grounds that the charges are insufficiently serious given the position Defendant once held, and is about to assume again, would constitute a disproportionate result and cause immeasurable damage to the citizenry’s confidence in the Rule of Law,” the judge added.

    Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung called the ruling “a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s Immunity decision and other longstanding jurisprudence. This lawless case should have never been brought and the Constitution demands that it be immediately dismissed.” [Bullshit.]

    “There should be no sentencing, and President Trump will continue fighting against these hoaxes until they are all dead,” he added. [Not a “hoax.”]

    It’s unclear whether Trump plans to appear for the sentencing, either in person or virtually. The judge left open the possibility of sentencing him when his term in office is done — an alternative that had been suggested by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office.

    Merchan said he found that option “less desirable than imposing sentence prior to January 20, 2025. The reasons are obvious. However, if the Court is unable to impose sentence before Defendant takes his oath of office, then this may become the only viable option.”

    The DA’s office declined to comment.

    Merchan denied another bid to dismiss the case last month, when Trump argued he was already protected by presidential immunity given his status as president-elect.

    Trump was initially scheduled to be sentenced in the case back in July, but the proceeding was delayed multiple times at the request of Trump’s lawyers, first because of a Supreme Court ruling that created a new standard for presidential immunity and later because of Trump’s election win.

    Link

    Video available at the link.

  43. Reginald Selkirk says

    Canada listing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as terrorist group after years of pressure

    The federal government is listing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization under Canada’s Criminal Code after years of mounting pressure.

    Federal ministers delivered the news Wednesday afternoon, hours after CBC News first reported the government was preparing to make the announcement.

    “This action sends a strong message that Canada will use all of the tools at its disposal to combat the terrorist entity of the IRGC,” Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told reporters. “Our government will ensure that there is no immunity for Iran’s unlawful actions and its support of terrorism.”

    Once a group is placed on the country’s terror list, police can charge anyone who financially or materially supports the group and banks can freeze its assets…

  44. Reginald Selkirk says

    Dark Energy May Not Exist: Something Stranger Might Explain The Universe

    There might not be a mysterious ‘dark’ force accelerating the expansion of the Universe after all. The truth could be much stranger – bubbles of space where time passes at drastically different rates.

    The passage of time isn’t as constant as our experience with it suggests. Areas of higher gravity experience a slower pace of time compared with areas where gravity is weaker, a fact that could have some pretty major implications on how we compare rates of cosmic expansion according to a recently developed model called timescape cosmology.

    Discrepancies in how fast time passes in different regions of the Universe could add up to billions of years, giving some places more time to expand than others. When we look at distant objects through these time-warping bubbles, it could create the illusion that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating.

    Two new studies have analyzed more than 1,500 supernovae to investigate how likely the concept could be – and found that the timescape model might be a better fit for observations than our current best model…

    Consider this to be highly speculative.

  46. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trains halted, FBI involved: Explosive device found on train car in Treasure Valley

    Police halted train activity for hours after footprints in the snow led officers to an explosive device on a train car on New Year’s Day.

    The Payette Police Department said it received a report “regarding a suspicious subject” who was seen “attempting to light something on fire” near a parked railroad car in the 600 Block of North 8th Street in Payette.

    Officers arriving at the scene just before 6 p.m. found fresh footprints leading to a train car that had a “suspected undetonated improvised explosive device,” also known as an IED, a Payette Police Department news release said.

    Payette Police Chief Gary Marshall told the Idaho Statesman that the explosive was a “pipe bomb-style device” made out of polyvinyl chloride plastic, and it was found on a step connected to the outside of the train car.

    Further footprints led to a camp trailer parked near a residence in the 600 block, according to police. Officers apprehended Brent Sharrai, 40, of Payette, after a short foot pursuit, police said…

  47. Reginald Selkirk says

    Matt Gaetz Debuts His New OANN Show

    Scandal-plagued former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) made his hosting debut on One America News Network on Thursday night after his failed attorney bid and the release of a damning House Ethics Committee report.

    The controversial right-wing network announced last month that Gaetz would be joining its prime-time lineup with “The Matt Gaetz Show” in a 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. slot, weeks after he withdrew as Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department.

    Among other guests, Gaetz hosted fellow pro-MAGA extremists Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to discuss House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) battle to hold on to his gavel in a congressional vote this Friday.

    But after the network released a teaser clip on Thursday, a large portion of the feedback focused on a totally unrelated subject.

    “lol to whoever did his concealer,” one person wrote.

    “Blending, this diva needs blending,” said another social media user.

    “However much you might despise Matt Gaetz, his makeup person has you beat,” wrote another…

  48. Reginald Selkirk says

    Nassau County executive refuses to fly flags at half-staff

    Flags are flying at half-staff across the country to commemorate former President Jimmy Carter — except for in one New York county.

    Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman has refused to lower flags at government buildings in his district, according to a county legislator.

    “Whether it’s pettiness, laziness, or pure ignorance, Nassau deserves a county executive who understands that honoring a former president transcends partisan politics,” said Nassau County Legislator Seth Koslow in a statement on Friday.

    PIX11 News reached out to Blakeman’s office for a statement but did not receive a response…

  49. birgerjohansson says

    The Ring Of Fire w. Farron Cousins:
    “Pro Life” Republicans SILENT As Babies Being Found In Texas Dumpsters

    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=i_0GbDWOEHw
    Texas has ‘safe haven’ laws that mean you can leave babies to authorities no questions asked, but there is no effort to publicize this.

  51. Bekenstein Bound says

    Within hours of the New Year’s attack in New Orleans, [Trump] simultaneously flunked tests of accuracy, decency and credibility.

    I’m pretty sure that within hours of any random moment in time Trump will do this.

    “I think we truly had some very disturbing things happen with the FBI and their involvement. They created many entrapment scenarios on American citizens who just simply were patriotic and wanted to express their First Amendment rights. Instead they were enticed and encouraged to, you know, do things that they didn’t even know might be illegal.”

    […] The problem with this bizarre line isn’t just that the GOP congressman has no evidence to support his claims. The problem is made worse by Burlison’s timing. Just a couple of weeks before the Republican’s on-air comments, the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, unveiled the detailed findings of a four-year investigation, which concluded that while there were FBI informants at the Capitol, no FBI officials were responsible for instigating the attack.

    One thing that makes this worse is that the FBI has damaged its own credibility by actually doing those sorts of entrapment schemes against an assortment of non-white and non-right-wing activists and organizations. Now when genuinely guilty far-right extremists accuse the FBI of doing the same thing to them it has a thin veneer of plausibility that it otherwise would have lacked.

  53. StevoR says

    @44. Reginald Selkirk : “Dark Energy May Not Exist: Something Stranger Might Explain The Universe.”

    Thanks for that. Fascinating and quite trippy stuff with litrally cosmic implications. I reckon they may well be right..

    @22. Alverant : Best wishes to your cat and hope all goes as well as possible. Pets are family.

    @ Lynna, OM : Seconding (thirding, fifthing? Five hundred and fifty=fifthing?) the thanks for your work onthis thread and making this thread happen. FWIEW linked one of your commenst fromthelast one here :

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/01/01/i-was-going-to-call-in-a-haruspex-but/#comment-2248781

    Hope that’s okay.

  54. StevoR says

    Seems we might be in for more aurorae :

    Supercharged auroras possible this weekend as colossal ‘hole’ in the sun spews solar wind toward Earth
    News
    By Daisy Dobrijevic published 16 hours ago

    Fast solar wind from a massive coronal hole in the sun could trigger dazzling auroral displays as geomagnetic activity is predicted to ramp up again over the weekend.

    Headline bolded.

    Source : https://www.space.com/stargazing/aurora-borealis/supercharged-auroras-possible-this-weekend-as-colossal-hole-in-the-sun-spews-solar-wind-toward-earth

    Something to look out for. Seems we’re having a good or at least powerful solar maximum this cycle.

  56. Silentbob says

    @ 52 違っていて愚か

    And Mary Ann dude. Thanks for your contribution.

  57. StevoR says

    Also via space dot com news :

    The first launch of New Glenn (Rocket – ed.) could occur between Jan. 6 and Jan. 12, according to the FAA.Blue Origin, the private spaceflight company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, is on the cusp of launching into the big booster market with the debut of its New Glenn rocket next week, but exactly when the test flight will lift off is unclear.

    After years of development —  Jeff Bezos first announced the new rocket in 2016 —  Blue Origin is expected to launch its first New Glenn booster as early as Monday, Jan. 6, from a pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. That’s based on an FAA alert to pilots that states the opening of Blue Origin’s New Glenn launch window. Liftoff would be at 1 a.m. EST (0600 GMT), according to that notice. But Blue Origin has not publicly announced the specific launch date and time, only that is nearing the first launch of New Glenn

    Source : https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/blue-origin-ready-to-launch-1st-new-glenn-rocket

  60. lumipuna says

    Addendum to 15 (Reuters news quoted by Reginald Selkirk on the Finnish cable breach investigation):

    A Finnish court on Friday denied a request for the release of an oil tanker suspected by police of damaging an undersea power line and four telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea last week…

    A lawyer representing United Arab Emirates-based Caravella LLC FZ, which owns the tanker, had sought the release of the vessel and crew.
    “This district court has rejected the claim of the defendant, which means that this seizure remains in force,” Helsinki District Court Judge Tatu Koistinen said.
    Finnish lawyer Herman Ljungberg, who represented Caravella, said the company now planned to file a new motion for the vessel’s release.

    This investigation will take a long time, and Finnish media are reporting all kinds of minor developments. The seized ship was, after a few days, moved from the open sea to a more sheltered anchoring place in the coastal archipelago near Helsinki. Reportedly, eight members of the 20-ish crew of Georgian and Indian nationals are thus far suspected of being involved in sabotage. Apparently, none of the crew are able to leave the ship, although not all are officially detained.

    BTW, Caravella is (according to Finnish media) an apparent “mailbox” company that only owns this one ship. That’s one of the suspicious aspects characteristic of Russian shadow fleet vessels. I imagine a regular lawyer for some shady Russian company is tasked with contracting a temporary lawyer in the Emirates or London or somewhere to represent Caravella in the case something happens. Then that lawyer is tasked with contracting a local lawyer who knows the relevant laws, official procedures and (if possible) bribery channels.

    Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation has impounded the vessel and the Finnish customs office has seized its cargo of 35,000 tonnes of unleaded petrol while it investigates whether sanctions against Russia have been breached…

    I can’t even keep track of what sanctions are possibly being violated and how. As is standard in modern maritime trade, there are like half dozen different countries involved in owning the ship, registering it, operating it, crewing it and trying to buy the petrol that was exported from Russia. Finnish media are mainly talking about the breaches of one power cable and several data cables, all connected to this ship.

  62. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says

    Re: birgerjohansson @49:
    I’d seen the article your youtube video sourced.

    Newborns are being left in dumpsters in Texas, but Republicans don’t seem to care

    Because the goal is punishment, there’s no reason for Republicans to invest in safe haven laws, which shield young women from legal consequences for abandoning a newborn. When a young woman throws a baby in a dumpster, however, that’s a crime and she can be arrested. More resources into the safe haven program would save lives, but would reduce the number of women that can be thrown in jail. Given a choice between living babies or imprisoned women, Republicans pick the latter.

    But I declined to share it myself when I saw the author.
    Amanda Marcotte “once advocated for the coercive imprisonment of rape victims who did not wish to press charges. Because that would totally solve the problem of un-prosecuted sexual assault.”

    That article in 2014. Various rebuttals. Never retracted.
    /Props to SallyStrange for remembering.

  63. KG says

    Reginald Selkirk@44,

    The possible significance of variation over large spatial scales in the rate time passes seems like something that should have been obvious, once it’s pointed out. But that in itself makes me wonder if these “timescape” folks are missing something the “dark energy” crew have already thought of. It’ll be interesting to see what response the latter make.

  64. Reginald Selkirk says

    @44, 53, 63

    Wait a minute – isn’t there something in Life, the Universe, and Everything about a “slow time envelope”? I recall a phrase similar to “the Committee for Slow Time” but the search engines don’t back me up.

  65. Reginald Selkirk says

    @64
    Well crap, I can’t find my copy to check it out. This is a dilemma. Do I buy a new copy, or do I organize my library?

  66. Reginald Selkirk says

    New device’s radio waves reveal lead contamination in soil

    A Cornell Tech-led research group is in the early stages of developing a portable, inexpensive device that uses radio frequency signals and machine learning for another important job: measuring lead contamination levels in soil.

    The lab of Rajalakshmi Nandakumar, assistant professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech, has developed SoilScanner, which sends radio waves of different frequencies from an RF transmitter, through a soil sample to an RF receiver, which reveals the effect the soil—and how much lead is in it—has on the signal.

    Nandakumar is senior author and Yixuan Gao, a doctoral candidate in computer science, is lead author of “Feasibility of Radio Frequency Based Wireless Sensing of Lead Contamination in Soil,” which won a best-paper award at the International Conference on Embedded Wireless Systems and Networks (EWSN ’24), held Dec. 10–13 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates…

    Testing for lead in soil generally involves either sending samples to a lab for analysis, which relies upon harsh chemicals and can be expensive, or using a portable X-ray fluorescence device, which is cost-prohibitive for many communities.

    The group’s device is simple: Dirt is placed in a one-liter plastic container between the transmitter and receiving antenna. The transmitter sends short bursts of single-tone RF signals at low and high frequencies (700 to 1,000 megahertz and 2.3 to 2.5 gigahertz) through the soil sample.

    The receiver’s power spectrum reading is passed to a machine-learning model for further analysis.

    SoilScanner was calibrated and tested on two different sets of samples: 23 lab-prepared samples of dirt, spiked with lead; and 22 field samples of varying compositions. It was able to detect lead contamination in natural field samples with 72% overall accuracy, and became even more accurate as the ppm value rose. It had a zero-error rate when lead levels were greater than 500 ppm…

    That doesn’t sound like sufficient testing. My first question is: is it specific for lead, or is it thrown off by other metals?

  67. Reginald Selkirk says

    Names of 425,000 suspected Nazi collaborators published

    The names of around 425,000 people suspected of collaborating with the Nazis during the German occupation of the Netherlands have been published online for the first time.

    The names represent individuals who were investigated through a special legal system established towards the end of World War Two. Of them, more than 150,000 faced some form of punishment.

    The full records of these investigations were previously only accessible by visiting the Dutch National Archives in The Hague…

  68. says

    StevoR @53:

    @ Lynna, OM : Seconding (thirding, fifthing? Five hundred and fifty=fifthing?) the thanks for your work onthis thread and making this thread happen. FWIEW linked one of your commenst fromthelast one here :
    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/01/01/i-was-going-to-call-in-a-haruspex-but/#comment-2248781
    Hope that’s okay.

    Thank you for the note of appreciation. It’s always good to know when one’s work is valued by others.

    And, yes, of course it is okay to cross post information from one thread to another. I do that myself fairly frequently.

  69. says

    Why Are Publications Sugar-Coating Livilsberger’s Political Minifestos?

    Over the last four days the bizarre Cybertruck fire outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas has run from comical interlude to possible terrorist incident to tragic suicide of another veteran of America’s forever wars. Each of these descriptions still captures an important part of the story. As I noted yesterday, while Matthew Livelsberger appears to have had a series of combustible and likely abusive relationships going back many years he appears to have suffered from PTSD and possibly a traumatic brain injury since returning from a tour of duty in 2019. (I’m tentative on the spousal abuse front only because for now the direct evidence for that that I’m aware of comes only from the friend of his ex-wife.)

    But at least for the moment there is a pretty striking lack of attention to the political motives he expressed in at least two documents or what I guess we might call minifestos that investigators found on his iphone.

    They denounce Democrats and demand they be “culled” from Washington, by violence if necessary, and hopes his death will serve as a kind of bell clap for a national rebirth of masculinity under the leadership of Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Bobby Kennedy Jr. [!!!]

    Did you miss that stuff? Yeah, me too!

    In the headlines the latest news has only been that he warned of national decline and bore “no ill will toward Mr. Trump” in the words of one of the investigators. That gloss on Donald Trump is, shall we say, a bit of an understatement as you can see in these excerpts.

    Military and vets move on DC starting now. Militias facilitate and augment this activity.

    Occupy every major road along fed buildings and the campus of fed buildings by the hundreds of thousands.

    Lock the highways around down with semis right after everybody gets in. Hold until the purge is complete.

    Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse.

    We must end the war in Ukraine with negotiated settlement. It is the only way.

    Focus on strength and winning. Masculinity is good and men must be leaders. Strength is a deterrent and fear is the product.

    Stop obsessing over diversity. We are all diverse and DEI is a cancer. Thankfully we rejected the DEI candidate and will have a real President instead of Weekend at Bernie’s.

    Consider this last sunset of ‘24 and my actions the end of our sickness and a new chapter of health for our people. Rally around the Trump, Musk, Kennedy, and ride this wave to the highest hegemony for all Americans! We are second to no one.

    I encourage you to read the two minifestos all the way through. They’re not long. I excerpted at least half above. You can find them here.

    […] He also rails against the 1%, excessive screen time for kids, wars with no clear strategic purpose, obesity. We should also note explicitly that Livelsberger can both be a violent extremist and a victim of PTSD and in a broader sense part of the human collateral damage of the wars that occupied the US military through the first two decades of the 21st century. Our minds should be big enough for both those realities. But the through-line is pretty clear: If you’re a Democrat or someone who is Democrat-coded, Livilsberger’s version of national rebirth probably isn’t a fun one for you.

    At least when I looked last night the only places I saw these parts of Livelsberger’s writings in any detail were relatively obscure publications. I was worried that maybe they were hoax documents that had somehow found their way into a few publications. So I traced them back to yesterday’s police press conference. They are indeed real. [!!]

    As a final point let me return to the question we’ve discussed over the last few days: what was the political message of torching a Cybertruck in front of a Trump hotel? He actually answers that more or less clearly in the second minifesto: “This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wake up call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives?”

    One might quibble over whether it was a terrorist attack. But I will give Livelsberger his due inasmuch as he does not appear to have intended to injure others, at least not in the vicinity of a Trump venue. He’s pretty clear: making something go boom around big Trump and Musk identifiers would get everyone’s attention. As indeed it did.

  70. says

    Some good, or at least hopeful, news: Attorneys general to watch fight Trump in 2025

    Democratic attorneys general are preparing for the fight of their careers against President-elect Donald Trump, who plans to begin mass deportations on “day one,” among many other cruel policies.

    These top legal public servants are vowing to protect the constitutional rights of their residents, and some are crossing state lines to team up for the fight.

    […] Kris Mayes, Arizona
    Mayes assumed office in 2023, after beating the Republican candidate by 511 votes. The race involved significant attention to voting rights and election integrity. Her focus is on fighting fraud, cyber scams, and elder abuse as well as pushing back against extremist attacks on reproductive rights, prosecuting political corruption, and protecting voting rights.

    “I do not believe, in electing Donald Trump, Arizona voters voted to shred the U.S. and Arizona constitutions,” she said shortly after the presidential election. “And if Donald Trump tries to do that, he’ll have to go through me first.”

    Rob Bonta, California
    California Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Bonta in 2021. He’s the first person of Filipino descent and only second Asian-American to be the state’s attorney general. His top priorities are stopping gun violence, helping victims of crime, and protecting civil rights and reproductive rights.

    Bonta has a $25 million legal war chest to fight Trump.

    “Let me be clear, President-elect Trump’s immigration agenda is draconian and his rhetoric, xenophobic,” said Bonta at a recent press conference. “We’re issuing updated policies to guide institutions and their staff in complying with California law limiting state and local participation in immigration enforcement activities.”

    Phil Weiser, Colorado
    Weiser has been Colorado’s attorney general since 2019 and was reelected in 2022. He has used his office to protect the Endangered Species Act, fight fraud, ensure the state’s right to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars, and hold the Sackler family—which owned Purdue Pharma, maker of the highly addictive drug OxyContin—accountable for their role in the opioid epidemic.

    “It’s hard to know exactly what’s coming. We’re going to be ready for a range of scenarios,” he told ABC News on Nov. 21 regarding Trump’s mass deportations. “We’re going to make sure that we operate by the law. … We’re worried about citizens. We’re worried about people’s spouses, grandparents, getting swept up in these indiscriminate raids.”

    Anne Lopez, Hawaii
    Lopez has served the Aloha State since 2022. Her top priorities are increasing access to health care and expanding affordable housing. Lopez and Hawaii Gov. Josh Green are amassing a $10 million legal war chest against Trump. They joined other blue states in preparing a coalition against the Trump administration.

    Aaron Ford, Nevada
    Ford has served since 2019 and was reelected in 2022. He’s the first Black person to hold the office in Nevada’s history.

    “It would be a lie to say that President-elect Trump’s upcoming term does not concern me, based on his prior disregard for the law,” Ford said. “Though there are many areas which concern me, including reproductive rights and antitrust protections, I will pay close attention to any action that seems like it may run afoul of the law.”

    Raúl Torrez, New Mexico
    Torrez was sworn into office in 2023. His priorities are protecting democracy, crime prevention, and reproductive health care access. Earlier this year, he released a report on the criminal investigation into New Mexico’s fake-elector scheme, which Trump promoted.

    “It is disgraceful that New Mexicans were enlisted in a plot to undermine democracy and thwart the peaceful and orderly transfer of power,” he said in a statement in January.

    Dan Rayfield, Oregon
    Rayfield will be sworn into office in January 2025. His incoming priorities are gun violence, substance abuse and homelessness, reproductive health care access, consumer and worker protections, and environmental policy. […]

    Nick Brown, Washington
    […] “Make no mistake, I do view the threats from the next Trump administration as profoundly serious and as uniquely dangerous to some of the protections and interests here in Washington state,” he said on Dec. 3.

    Kwame Raoul, Illinois
    Raoul has served as attorney general since 2019. His focus is on climate laws, such as energy efficiency standards, and fighting against unlawful pharmaceutical practices.

    […] He and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser have drawn up a playbook to fight Trump. “For years, Trump Tower failed to follow state and federal regulations that protect the health of the Chicago River and the balance of critical aquatic ecosystems therein,” Raoul said. “All entities—no matter who they are—must be held accountable when they willfully disregard our laws.”

    Dana Nessel, Michigan
    Nessel assumed office in 2019 and was the first openly gay person to be elected to statewide office in Michigan. She has gained national attention for her work on consumer protection, criminal justice reform, LGBTQ+ issues, and political corruption. This year, Nessel spoke at the Democratic National Convention in support of Harris. […]

    Keith Ellison, Minnesota
    Ellison began serving in 2019 and was reelected in 2022. He’s the first Black American and Muslim American to hold the office in Minnesota’s history. Ellison has worked on issues related to the protection of workers and environmental advocacy, and played a prominent role in the prosecution of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer convicted of the murder of George Floyd in 2021. “If [Trump] violates the rights of people, we’re gonna sue, it’s simple as that,” he told reporters. […]

    Much more at the link.

  71. says

    Incompetent-elect Donald Trump made headlines last month with his ridiculous remarks about Panama and its Canal. Many news organizations focused on his bogus claims about Chinese troops controlling it, among other of his prevarications.

    I’ve been following up on his recent huge lie that “38,000 Americans” died building the Canal, which even Fox called out as untrue. Historians agree that during the American-controlled construction phase from 1904 to 1914, the death toll was less than one-sixth of that—less than 6000. Records indicate just a small portion of those who died were white. Additionally, to claim only Americans died erases the enormous number of deaths of West Indians and other not-white workers who actually did the building and most of the dying during this period—as well as the roughly 22,000 workers who died during the French attempt during the 1880s.

    The racism that was locked in place and practiced in the Canal Zone by U.S. overseers are a critical part of Canal history that should never be forgotten. Erasing Black history has long been a key part of the MAGA agenda, and we must continue to push back against it.

    Georgia State University professor Lia T. Bascomb, writing for Picturing Black History, addressed the demographics of the Canal labor force after the U.S. took control of construction.

    Black Laborers on the Panama Canal
    West Indian, especially Barbadian, migrant labor on the Panama Canal changed shipping routes, benefitted the U.S. economy, and affected immigration for decades afterward.

    Between 1904-1916, over 45,000 Barbadians migrated to Panama to work on the canal, roughly a quarter of the island’s population.

    Upon arrival, migrants lived mostly in the Canal Zone, a semiautonomous region that was technically part of Panama but operated and governed by the United States.

    The earliest generation of migrants did the hardest work, literally digging out the space for large boats to cross the fifty miles between the coasts. Deaths from industrial accidents, falls from scaffolding, and disease were common.

    Throughout the building of the canal and for decades after its completion, these migrants and their descendants worked on an unequal pay scale, where mostly white U.S. citizens were paid on the “gold roll,” and the mostly Black, mostly West Indian migrants were paid on the “silver roll.” The distinctions began a form of segregation within the Canal Zone that permeated clubs, schools, and housing as well as pay.

    […] Trump ranted about the Canal to his lying pal Tucker Carlson two summers ago, as noted last month by The Washington Post.

    Last year, in an interview with Tucker Carlson on X, the Elon Musk-owned social media site, Trump inaccurately said that China “controls” and runs the Panama Canal.

    “If I’m president, they’ll get out, because I had a very good relationship with Xi,” Trump said in the August 2023 interview, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping. “He respected this country. He respected me, and he’ll get out. We can’t let them run the Panama Canal. We built the Panama Canal. Should have never been given to Panama.”

    On Christmas Day, Trump went on a huge rant of over three dozen posts on his Truth Social platform, where he made his false claim that the U.S. lost “38,000 Americans people” while building the Panama Canal.

    A BBC program called “Sounds” fact-checked Trump’s claim a month later, with host Tim Harford consulting Matthew Parker, who wrote the 2007 book “Hell’s Gorge: The Battle to Build the Panama Canal.”

    Parker asserted that the number of white Americans lost was about 300. This is similar to the findings of other historians; as a digital exhibit about the Canal at Missouri’s Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology notes:

    Records from the American period of construction document 5,600 deaths, of those, 350 were white Americans and 4,500 were non-white, mostly West Indians. However, the number of West Indian deaths is likely underreported because many lived in the cities outside the Canal Zone and some causes, typhoid fever for example, were not always included in the statistics.

    Historian David McCullough provides just a small snapshot—less than a year’s worth of data—on page 501 of in his 1978 National Book Award in History winner, “The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914“:

    […]for the first 10 months of 1906, the actual death rate among white employees was seventeen per thousand, but among the black West Indians was fifty nine per thousand! Black laborers, those understood to be so ideally suited to withstand the poisonous climate were dying three times as fast as the white workers. If Panama was no longer a white man’s graveyard it was a little less deadly than it had ever been for the black man. And since the black workers outnumbered the white workers by three to one the disparity in the number of fatalities was even more shocking.

    In the previous 10 months, a total of 34 Americans had died, whereas the total among men and women from Barbados alone was 362, ten times greater; 197 Jamaicans had died, 68 from Martinique, 29 from St. Lucia, 27 from Grenada.

    The U.S. Canal Zone health authorities kept meticulous records, many of which are available online. They note the race and national origin of those people who got sick and of those who died. […]

    More, including screen grabs of annual reports showing “deaths of employees […]” separated by “white” and “colored,” are available at the link.

    […] The erasure of dead Black children and the women who bore them has begun to be corrected, most notably in Joan Flores-Villalobos’ 2023 book “The Silver Women: How Black Women’s Labor Made the Panama Canal.” Nicolle Alzamora reviewed it for the Los Angeles Review of Books. […]

    Correcting Trump’s big lie about the Panama Canal

  72. says

    What Russia’s new ‘get out of jail free’ card for military recruitment says about the war

    “Russia is scrambling its legal system to sustain a high-casualty war in Ukraine.”
    Video at the link.

    Russia is desperate for new soldiers to carry on its brutal war in Ukraine. In a remarkable development, the country has devised a kind of “get out of jail free” card in a bid to hoover up new recruits.

    According to The New York Times, Russians suspected of a crime will now see their pending charges disappear if they sign up to join the war: “Local papers nationwide are full of cases of suspected murderers, rapists and thieves who are headed off to war after signing contracts instead of facing trial.” Officials jailed for corruption are being offered amnesty and debtors are having their debts forgiven for agreeing to deploy in a war that has killed or wounded an estimated 600,000 Russian troops.

    These new and exploitative efforts are a reminder that while Russia has made significant territorial gains in Ukraine in the past year, its efforts to sustain its high-casualty war of aggression, where soldiers are often treated as expendable, are not without serious obstacles. It also reflects how Moscow’s commitment to the war is reshaping and militarizing Russian society in ways that could have far-reaching effects beyond the war.

    Russia has already been sending people sentenced to penal colonies — some of the most notorious prisons in the world — to the front lines since 2022. But about half of that population has already reportedly been deployed. The expansion of the recruitment drive to debtors, corrupt politicians and those suspected of heinous crimes shows that the Kremlin is turning over every stone it can to avoid a nationwide draft.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin remains fully committed to the war in Ukraine, but he also knows there are limitations to ordinary Russians’ support. According to Timothy Frye, a political scientist at Columbia University, the general consensus among researchers who follow public opinion on the war in Russia is that some 15% to 20% of Russians are enthusiastic about the war, about 10% are wholly opposed, and most everyone else falls in between. “They don’t want to lose the war, but they’re not willing to sacrifice to stop the war,” Frye told me. “They’re also not willing to volunteer and encourage people to go to the front in some kind of wave of organic patriotism.” Frye also said polling shows that a majority of Russians oppose general conscription, and that any attempt to impose it could spark resistance. Thus the reliance on what he called more “hidden forms of mobilization.” [video about North Korea volunteering its troops to Russia]

    Putin has a strong hand ahead of any potential negotiations with Ukraine that could be initiated after President-elect Donald Trump takes office. While the U.S. has been the biggest source of foreign aid to Ukraine, Trump is looking for a quick end to the conflict. But Putin’s recruitment struggles are a sign that he doesn’t have limitless resources if he wants to grind further into Ukraine and seize more territory ahead of a deal to end the war. The more costly the war is for the general population, the more costly it could be for Putin’s position in Russia: […] The Russian government’s struggle to control a surge in inflation in its war economy only adds to the pressure on Putin to try to keep war mobilization limited while also attempting to maximally dominate Ukraine.

    […] Russians can observe how the legal system is being scrambled just to serve an operation that some Russians perceive as closer to Putin’s hobbyhorse than a war requiring national mobilization. Russia’s legal system is hardly independent of the political system, but Frye told me that “even for Russia, the politicization of the legal system in this case is extreme.” He also noted that people are concerned about criminals who fight at the front and survive and then return to their communities. In other words, this recruitment drive could become the source of more cynicism about the way the government functions.

    Putin is likely cautiously optimistic about Trump’s signals that he will probably reduce support for Ukraine ahead of any negotiations. But things are far from rosy at home as Putin tries to “win” a war that didn’t turn out the way he expected.

  73. says

    Mark Zuckerberg is giving Meta a MAGA-friendly makeover

    “The tech giant tapped Republican Joel Kaplan to lead the company’s global policy, continuing the company’s yearslong rightward shift.”

    New year, new Meta. The tech giant appears to be undergoing a MAGA makeover of sorts as 2025 kicks off.

    The Mark Zuckerberg-led conglomerate announced Thursday that its vice president of global policy, Joel Kaplan, would replace Nick Clegg as the company’s chief global affairs officer.

    “I have come to the view that this is the right time for me to move on from my role as President, Global Affairs at Meta,” Clegg said in a statement Thursday. [X post with photos is available at the link]

    With Kaplan’s elevation, Meta will likely take on a more Republican-friendly approach to global policy as Donald Trump prepares to begin his second presidential term. [Yikes. Another disaster in the making!]

    […] During his time at Meta, Kaplan — who sparked controversy in 2018 for attending Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings as a supporter — has worked to shield right-wingers from content moderation efforts meant to discourage misinformation and hate speech.

    […] In some ways, that was the beginning of Facebook’s — now, Meta’s — rightward shift, which over time has included the elevation of conservatives to top leadership positions, the proliferation of right-wing extremism and misinformation on Meta-owned platforms Instagram and WhatsApp, and even public statements from Zuckerberg himself that were welcomed by the MAGA movement. [snipped examples]

    It’s important to consider the potential motivations Zuckerberg and his company may have for taking a more MAGA-friendly approach. For me, two things in particular come to mind. First, as I wrote in 2022, Zuckerberg is focused on making Meta the leader in virtual reality development through its creation of the “metaverse.” Making a Republican the head of global policy in advance of Trump’s return to the White House can be seen as one way to potentially head off unwanted scrutiny or regulatory action that could hamper that goal.

    The other thing that comes to mind is Trump’s threats toward Zuckerberg, including an ominous remark suggesting the Meta leader could “spend the rest of his life in prison” for “plotting” against Trump. That’s enough to make one wonder whether Meta’s rightward shift is at least partly inspired by its CEO’s desire to avoid Trump’s personal wrath. After all, Zuckerberg was one of several Silicon Valley leaders to visit Mar-a-Lago after Trump’s election victory. And Meta — like other tech giants, including Amazon and OpenAI — has donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. (Meta — known then as Facebook, Inc. — did not donate to Trump’s first inaugural fund nor Biden’s in 2021.)

    So Zuckerberg already appeared to be steeling himself and Meta ahead of Trump’s second term. And with Kaplan leading global policy, the company seems poised to take a more lax approach to misinformation and content moderation.

  74. says

    Fun Rules Under Your New Oligarchy!

    […] For starters, if anything, it’s Elon Musk’s America. He bought the incoming administration fair and square, and I’m sure between the credit rating and all the felony convictions, the oath of office requires a co-signer at this point anyway.

    Longtime Twitter users’ll tell ya Elon tends to play rough when he gets his hands on a new toy, so I hope nobody was surprised when he immediately attempted to shut the whole dang government down […]

    And Musk, excuse me, “Kekius Maximus,” (as if having an oligarch shadow President wasn’t enough, ours rotted his brain in the darkest, most hateful corners of the alt-Right losersphere, yay) already has his eyes on expanding his collection of Western governments, endorsing the Naziest German party he could find, in addition to lending his support to celebrity British hatemonger Tommy Robinson.

    […] Incidentally, hope everybody caught the post-election update that said price of eggs will not, as was previously pledged, be coming down. (As with all Trump campaign promises, if you read the fine print, it says “SUCKER” between two tiny, stunted middle fingers.)

    Anyhoo, I’m certainly disappointed the entire Matt Gaetz fiasco played out during my hiatus, if only because “Team of Rapists” would’ve been a money blog title. I suppose Hesgeth and the brainworm fellow are still in the running, so maybe I’ll save it for the leather-bound, multi-volume retrospective, assuming literacy is still a thing in four years.

    […] You give a white nationalist death cult the best years of your life, you take your livestock dewormer every single night, you dutifully pay your rube tithe every time a new NFT or anti-woke pop tart substitute drops, only for Vivek-come-lately and his billionaire bros to swoop in at the last minute to replace you with foreigners after all. […]

    Historically, the Children of the Candy Corn have been, um, let’s say “slow” to notice they’ve been conned, but the sneering disdain of the new management has grown too loud to ignore. Between assaults on their culture’s “mediocrity” and “laziness,” (to say nothing of their beloved teen sitcoms [Saved by the Bell’s Zack Morris as an example]) and being labeled “contemptible fools” who should “fuck (themselves) in the face,” why, it’s enough to make a deplorable curl up in the corner of their basket and cry.

    At first, I wondered who would get the dog in the Elon/Laura Loomer divorce, but the dog turned out to be the remnant of Stephen Miller’s spray-on hair from his 2018 Face the Nation appearance, which, having gained a rudimentary sentience, has been nominated by the incoming Reich to head up the Civil Rights Division at DoJ.

    Anyway, now Steve Bannon’s demanding reparations, or he’s going to rip Elon’s face off, though whether the removal would take place before or after he fucks himself in the abovementioned face was unclear at press time.

    Still, the schism may yet be avoided, as a pair of domestic terror attacks perpetrated by U.S. citizens have allowed Cult45’s bickering factions to recenter their ire on the southern border. Which, you’ll observe, makes no fucking sense whatsoever. [Both perpetrators were USA-born American citizens.]

    See, to Republicans, terrorism mostly means an opportunity for xenophobic preening. So for Senator Kennedy, this week was basically Xmas, especially since he got to test-drive some of the anti-media material he’s been working up for Maggie Haberman’s pending show trial.

    Despite a federal appeals court upholding her sexual assault and defamation judgment against the rapist America just elected President, E. Jean Carroll rejected repeated pleas for financial aid from the American Broadcasting Corporation, saying, “pay your own cowardice tax, you pathetic enablers.”

    Naturally, this ruling wasn’t the week’s sole reminder of the Dotard’s life of crime; on the small matter of those 34 felony convictions, his long-delayed sentencing, now scheduled for next week, promises to give the rule of law a festive sendoff before we descend once more into kakistocracy.

    […] Mike Johnson dazzled the House Republican Conference, clearing the centimeter-high competence threshold statisticians have labeled the “McCarthy Line,” and getting himself elected Speaker with minimal rake-stepping. […]

    Oklahoma state superintendent Ryan Walters claims teachers unions have turned our nation’s public schools into “terrorist training camps,” but not to worry, his taxpayer-financed mass purchase of rapist-endorsed Bibles will re-indoctrinate them kids lickety split! [LOL]

    I see Nancy Mace is still trying to blame her many deficiencies on a “vaccine injury,” but even after multiple rounds of boosters, I myself have yet to feel the slightest urge to police my colleagues’ restroom usage, let alone fill my social media accounts with slurs, so it’s possible she’s just an asshole. [LOL]

    Donald Trump Jr. complains Daddy’s friends treat him like a “freaking imbecile” at the annual Marm-a-Lago New Year’s party, implying there are situations where people treat him like anything else, which I for one don’t believe for a second.

    But God bless the perpetual motion slapstick comeuppance machine some call Rudy Giuliani; we need the schadenfreude now more than ever. An NYPD task force discovered Rudy in a particularly disreputable corner of Central Park, in a burrow he apparently dug by hand in an effort to hide several Yankees World Series rings from Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, each of which he screechingly proclaimed “MY PRECIOUS” as they were removed from various orifices.

    […] whatever you do, stay safe out there, my friend…shit’s gonna get weird.

    Embedded links to sources are available at the link.

  75. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/new-year-new-lawyer-same-old-rudy

    Oh boy, it’s time for an update on disbarred, Scotch-soaked fart demon Rudy Giuliani. What a treat! We’d hoped that maybe Friday he’d get a zesty stomp from the pointy shoe of justice, and it was not to be. Yet! […]

    Friday he was back in federal court in New York before Judge Lewis Liman, forced to Rudysplain why he hasn’t complied with just about anything the judge ordered him to do, pursuant to paying that $145-million-plus-interest tab he owes the Georgia poll workers he defamed and will still not quit defaming every other time he unsnaps his mandible.

    Did he turn over the condo deed to the ladies? Did he turn over the title to Lauren Bacall’s Mercedes? Did he turn over cash from his hidden banks? Did he turn over memorabilia from the Yanks?

    No […]

    A mere six months ago, Rudesferatu decided the $3 million Florida condo was his real permanent residence, right before he fled from bankruptcy court into liquidation-land. But oops, he’d already testified during his bankruptcy proceedings that his New York apartment was his main residence and that he spent at least 70 percent of his time there. And whoops, he’d already claimed a homestead exemption for the New York condo. But he’d planned to move to Florida sometime, your honor, he swears, and the fact that Florida has one of the most generous bankruptcy homestead exemptions in the United States is surely a total coincidence!

    […] Thursday, AKA the day before the hearing, Roodles had moaned to Judge Lewis Liman that he should be able to appear by Zoom because of “medical issues with his left knee and breathing problems due to lung issues” that were “attributable to [Defendant] being at the World Trade Center site on September 11, 2001.” Because he’s always gotta slip that in. But he had no medical documentation for those medical issues, and was ordered to show up in person anyway. So he did, coughing and limping like Tiny Tim. But he still had the strength to bark at sketch artist Jane Rosenberg: “The last time you made me look like my dog!”

    […] America’s Mayorâ„¢ has a trial scheduled on January 16 for the judge to consider that Florida residence issue, and also if some World Series rings were a gift to his lamprey-faced idiot son Andrew. So it would seem to be in Roodles’ own interests to turn over some evidence persuasive of that nature, should it exist, ahem.

    Accompanying R-Dog was his Staten Island divorce lawyer, Joe Cammarata. His last set of lawyers, Kenneth Caruso and David Labkowski, either quit him or got fired because they refused to answer Giuliani’s phone calls, depending on if you believe Giuliani or court filings, common sense and/or your lyin’ eyes.

    Staten Island Joey kicked off his debut on a high note last month, insinuating that the judge was a Democrat plant and was biased because hizzoner’s father once represented clients Giuliani’s office prosecuted when Rudy was a US District Attorney, a very long-winded way of saying I am already at the bottom of my barrel of ideas and scraping as hard as I can.

    In court, Joey and Roodles went back to the strategy of trying to blame his former lawyers for why still nobody turned over the stuff, or records. Rudy testified that he demanded his former lawyers remove themselves from his case because they didn’t return his phone calls, and that he didn’t know the lawyers that he fired were withdrawing until he read about it in the newspapers. Some bold alternative-fact-ing and under-the-bus-throwing, considering the lawyers told the judge last month exactly what was going on when they asked for permission to withdraw from the case.

    […] It’s rich with even more creative excuses as to why he can’t comply with the court’s orders, and fun facts: He can’t tell the court his email address, because it’s “frankly none of your business.” He never got a driver’s license, because “I have fatwas issued against me by the Ayatollah, personally.” […]

    He asserted that Florida was the home where his tobacco-tar-clogged heart was, insisting that even though he’d referred to the Florida condo as a “vacation home,” really it was more like a “winter residence.” That does not equal a “permanent residence” either, but,

    “I just happen to like [Florida] better. The staff — the staff is nicer and the people are wonderful. I mean, I’ve lived in many different places and they’re just wonderful people. I mean, I have a balcony and I used to smoke cigars — used to smoke cigars here, too, in the courtyard — and they never complained. In New York, my gosh, if I even took a cigar out, they would complain.”

    Case closed!

    But he’s got more evidence that he was intending to make Florida a permanent residence, you betcha! Like how he told his friend and alleged altar-boy-groper Monsignor Alan Placa many times over the years that it was his plan. Also the producer on his payroll, Ted Goodman, and Michael Ragusa, a corrections officer who ran for Manhattan City Council before he was accused of forging signatures, and is now Rudy’s head of security. Yep, two guys on the payroll and a guy with, ahem, other credibility issues.

    But the plaintiffs’ lawyers came to show contempt, and unlike Joey Divorce Lawyer, they didn’t start the job last month. Oh, and here’s an email from Rudy’s fired/quit former lawyer saying, “Defendant has informed us he will not image his devices.” Why did he not provide his lawyers any emails? Because, says Rudy, emails are documents, not communications. They had a credit application where he asserted he lived and worked in New Hampshire. And where are Rudy’s calendars? Well, his assistants kept his calendars on notes and then threw them away. Why didn’t Rudy request a copy of the car title? He outsourced the job, because “I had other things to do.” When did he make a request to Citibank for cash? He doesn’t know. Did Rudy see that order to turn over the Reggie Jackson and Joe DiMaggio jerseys? Yes. Didn’t your friend say he saw the DiMaggio jersey in Palm Beach? “My friend was 100 percent wrong.” He’s confused, they’re confused, everybody’s confused but Rudy, Judge!

    Understandably exhausted after more than three hours of this, Judge Liman decided that the hearing will continue Monday, with Roodles being able to dial in from Palm Beach […] instead of being trucked in from the can [jail] […]

    So, that’s a disappointment, but, to be continued!

  76. says

    Washington Post link

    “Photos show beginning of six day funeral of former President Jimmy Carter”

    Here are descriptions of some of the photos:

    Former and current U.S. Secret Service agents assigned to the Carter detail move former President Jimmy Carter’s casket, at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga.

    Former and current US Secret Service agents walk with the hearse.

    The hearse carrying former President Jimmy Carter’s casket passes through his hometown of Plains, Ga.

  77. says

    Washington Post link

    “President Biden to block oil drilling across 625 million acres of U.S. waters”

    “The president will sign memorandums prohibiting future oil and gas leasing across parts of the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Northern Bering Sea.”

    President Joe Biden will move Monday to block all future oil and gas drilling across more than 625 million acres of federal waters — equivalent to nearly a quarter of the total land area of the United States, according to two people briefed on the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the announcement is not yet public.

    The action underscores how Biden is racing to cement his legacy on climate change and conservation in his last weeks in office. President-elect Donald Trump, who has described his energy policy as “drill, baby, drill,” is likely to work with congressional Republicans to challenge the decision.

    Biden will issue two memorandums that prohibit future federal oil and gas leasing across large swaths of the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska, the two people said. The oil and gas industry has long prized the eastern Gulf of Mexico in particular, viewing the area as a key part of its offshore production plans. […]

  78. says

    ‘Dark Money’ Is Tainting Washington Think Tanks. A New Report Shows It’s Worse Than You Think.

    “Foreign governments are throwing millions at D.C. think tanks.”

    Washington’s think-tank industry, which sets the terms of debate for so much of American policymaking, is floating on a sea of foreign-government and Pentagon-contractor dollars.

    That’s the conclusion of a brand-new report out this morning and shared with me by a pair of scholars at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank that officially eschews foreign-government money — and delights in tweaking the Beltway foreign-affairs establishment.

    Among other things, the paper says that the top 50 think tanks took in some $110 million over the past five years from foreign governments and related entities, including nearly $17 million from the United Arab Emirates, the largest single foreign donor. Leading Pentagon contractors, meanwhile, kicked in nearly $35 million over the same period.

    The Atlantic Council and the Brookings Institution topped the list of foreign-government beneficiaries, taking in nearly $21 million and over $17 million, respectively. All in all, 54 different governments contributed to the industry, a list largely made up of pro-western democracies but also including fantastically wealthy authoritarian regimes like Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

    Most disturbingly, the report makes clear that the numbers it cites may only be partial: Unlike traditional PACs or registered foreign agents, think tanks don’t have to disclose where their money comes from. Researching the study, co-authors Ben Freeman and Nick Cleveland-Stout told me, meant poring through the organizations’ annual reports in hopes that information would be voluntarily shared. […]

    Much more at the link.

  80. Reginald Selkirk says

    Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes quits over a canceled Jeff Bezos cartoon.

    Telnaes writes on Substack that the outlet killed her cartoon of Bezos and others kneeling before a Trump statue over its commentary’s point of view, a first for her since starting there in 2008. She writes:

    …my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post.

    Post opinions editor David Shipley disagreed, blaming his decision on recent and scheduled Post coverage of the same subject and a “bias … against repetition,” according to The New York Times.

  81. Reginald Selkirk says

    Tim Cook is donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, too

    Apple CEO Tim Cook is the next tech exec to donate $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration committee, according to Axios. Cook’s donation follows similar commitments from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos through Amazon, and Meta as Big Tech companies and executives work to curry favor with the incoming administration…

  82. says

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit struck down the Biden administration’s stab at Net Neutrality this week, bringing an early end to a policy that was slated to be thrown out with the arrival of a new, Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission chair later this year. The ruling cited the Supreme Court’s 2024 Loper Bright decision, which robbed executive agencies of much of their power to interpret laws when regulating. The 6th Circuit found that the FCC had misread relevant statutes with its Net Neutrality policy and then offered its own reading, which Texas A&M School of Law professor Dan Walters summarized as “hilariously abstruse metaphysical BS.” [Bluesky post available at the link]

    This ends, at least for the foreseeable future, a conversation that started in the mid-2000s, in an earlier and much more optimistic era of the web, about how to ensure the public could access online information without the interference of corporations. A great fear often cited by pro-Net Neutrality activists was that without these protections, telecommunications companies could limit or block access to websites they disfavored — either for competitive or political reasons. That fear is not that far-fetched as a second Trump administration arrives in DC, but also feels somewhat out of date.

    In 2024, tech oligarchs were cheering on the global far right while agitating for a remake of the U.S. government. The president-elect was promising retribution against his political enemies. Corporations were scrambling to show him their loyalty through both financial contributions and more vibes-based offerings. The head of a prominent social media platform became his shadow, while another social media platform made plans to roll out imaginary, AI friends for you to chat with. It all continues into 2025. The zone is flooded with bullshit, and it is tremendous content, but with real stakes.

    The idea that our information landscape can be protected from powerful interests is one that, to me at least, feels further out of reach now than when the fight for Net Neutrality got going, with or without a federal safeguard in place. For now, a California Net Neutrality law continues to offer some continued protection to consumers nationwide. Meanwhile, what the Net Neutrality-equivalent solution might be for our 2024-era woes remains to be seen.

    Link

    Text quoted above is from one of several reports in TPM’s “Weekender.”

  83. says

    Impeached, Coup-Happy President Holes Up In Compound, Refuses Arrest, Hopes Donald Trump Will Help Brother Out

    “Make South Korea Great Again!”

    The nation of South Korea has given America so many gifts — K-pop, Korean barbecue joints, the former first lady of Maryland, the animation for a couple of hundred episodes of “The Simpsons” — that it seems only fair we return the favor. How about our Constitution? There is no reason America should keep that wonderful document and its toothless enforcement to ourselves.

    At a minimum, we have already handed South Korea’s recently impeached former president Yoon Suk Yeol a legal argument about presidential immunity, and according to the Yonhap News Agency, he and his lawyers are running with it.

    U-S-A! U-S-A!

    In a document presented to the Constitutional Court in Yoon’s impeachment trial, the legal team said Yoon exercised his due presidential power to handle a “national emergency situation” while declaring martial law on Dec. 3. […]

    Yoon’s side pointed to the US court ruling in July last year that said Trump cannot be prosecuted for actions that were within his constitutional powers as president.

    Yr Wonkette was unfamiliar with South Korea’s constitution, so we dug up a copy of it. As best we can tell, it does not contain Article II of the United States Constitution, Article II being the one our own Supreme Court more or less rewrote last summer to say that Donald Trump could do whatever illegal shit he wanted provided he claimed said illegal shit was a core constitutional power our Founding Fathers in their genius had granted to him that no one else had noticed for the previous 200-plus years.

    What South Korea’s constitution does have is Article 69 (Nice!!!), which includes the president’s oath of office. Now, whereas the oath the American president takes says he will “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” the South Korean oath simply charges the president with “observing the Constitution.” Well, that’s pretty general. Maybe he’s allowed to observe it from a great distance.

    While Yoon’s lawyers were filing this document on Friday, the police were trying to enforce a warrant for Yoon’s arrest after he refused three times to meet with prosecutors who are investigating him for declaring martial law in early December. South Korea’s legislature had already impeached Yoon for issuing an unlawful declaration and stripped him of his presidential powers.

    But Yoon is technically still the president, and still gets to live in the presidential compound with a couple of hundred soldiers and security agents protecting him. All of them being commanded by a guy named Park Jong-joon, whom Yoon had appointed chief of the presidential security service in September. His loyalty appears to be with the guy who appointed him instead of with the actual legal structures of his nation. Which also sounds very Trumpist, now that we think about it.

    Additionally, hundreds of Yoon’s supporters packed the streets around the presidential residence to yell and jeer the 80 or so officers who showed up early in the morning to take Yoon into custody. Apparently quite a few of them were waving “Stop the Steal” signs and pleading with Donald Trump to intervene for some reason.

    From Reuters:

    Pyeong In-su, 71, holding a flag of the United States and South Korea with the words “Let’s go together” in English and Korean, said he was banking on Trump’s return to save Yoon.

    “I hope that Trump will take office soon and raise his voice against the rigged elections in our country plus around the world so as to help President Yoon to return (to power) swiftly,” Pyeong said.

    Seo Hye-kyoung who was holding a “Stop the Steal” sign with the Chinese flag claimed that “Chinese people have come to our country and stole our votes”.

    So there is something else America has gifted South Korean democracy recently: “Stop the Steal” signs and a stubborn imperviousness to reality. Cheonman-eyo!!

    […] Eventually, the cops backed down and left the compound without anyone getting injured or shot or forced to watch Nicolle Wallace for hours and hours as a sort of deprogramming measure.

    It is very much unclear what happens next. The South Korean prosecutors have until January 6 to enforce the subpoena. But he sounds defiant, and his lawyer called the warrant “illegal [and] invalid.” It does not sound as if anyone’s mind is getting changed by Monday. Meanwhile, the number of Yoon supporters who are going to rush to hang around outside the presidential palace and block the cops from getting in could grow, increasing the chances of violence if the cops return with larger numbers

    And to think, it was not so long ago that we were jealous of South Korea. The president tried to do a coup, even members of his own party denounced him, the legislature impeached him and stripped him of his powers almost immediately, and no one stormed the parliament while wearing face paint and a stupid helmet. It seemed like as good an outcome as anyone could have hoped for.

    Oh well. They haven’t re-elected Yoon yet or had his personal Supreme Court rewrite the nation’s laws to get him off the hook. So, silver linings, we guess.

  84. says

    The fragile Israel-Hezbollah truce is holding so far, despite violations

    “The diminished Lebanese militant group has threatened to resume fighting if Israel does not withdraw its forces by the 60-day deadline.”

    A fragile cease-fire between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has held up for over a month, even as its terms seem unlikely to be met by the agreed-upon deadline.

    The deal struck on Nov. 27 to halt the war required Hezbollah to immediately lay down its arms in southern Lebanon and gave Israel 60 days to withdraw its forces there and hand over control to the Lebanese army and U.N. peacekeepers.

    So far, Israel has withdrawn from just two of the dozens of towns it holds in southern Lebanon. And it has continued striking what it says are bases belonging to Hezbollah, which it accuses of attempting to launch rockets and move weapons before they can be confiscated and destroyed.

    Hezbollah, which was severely diminished during nearly 14 months of war, has threatened to resume fighting if Israel does not fully withdraw its forces by the 60-day deadline.

    Yet despite accusations from both sides about hundreds of cease-fire violations, the truce is likely to hold, analysts say. That is good news for thousands of Israeli and Lebanese families displaced by the war still waiting to return home.

    […] With Assad gone, Hezbollah lost a vital route for smuggling weapons from Iran. While that further weakened Hezbollah’s hand, Israel had already agreed to the U.S.-brokered cease-fire.

    Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023 — the day after Hamas launched a deadly attack into Israel that ignited the ongoing war in Gaza. Since then, Israeli air and ground assaults have killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, including hundreds of civilians. At the height of the war, more than 1 million Lebanese people were displaced.

    Hezbollah rockets forced some 60,000 from their homes in northern Israel, and killed 76 people in Israel, including 31 soldiers. Almost 50 Israeli soldiers were killed during operations inside Lebanon.

  85. birgerjohansson says

    Lynna, OM @ 83
    Any hope it might end like the Waco compound standoff?
    .
    BTW I recently read both Musk and Trump are little sadists who like to put people through humiliating ‘Lord Of The Flies’ stuff. I am reminded of “Doctor Fisher Of Geneva, Or The Bomb Party”. Last novel by Graham Greene.

  87. Kagehi says

    @21 Lynna, OM

    The most hilarious thing about this is Bernie Sander’s response to Trump and Musk trying to bring in foreigners for “tech jobs” and the, apparently (haven’t looked myself, since I really don’t want to go to such places), number of MAGA people on reddit, and other forums posting, “What the F happened that I am agreeing with Bernie?!” lol

  88. Reginald Selkirk says

    Owner of two cats that died after drinking H5N1 recalled milk threatens to sue

    As cats across Southern California die from consuming human and pet food contaminated by the H5N1 bird flu virus, one pet owner has decided to fight back — using legal recourse to obtain financial restitution for the tens of thousands of dollars he says he spent trying to save the lives of his three pet cats.

    On Wednesday, lawyers for Joseph Journell — a San Bernardino resident who said two of his four cats died and a third was hospitalized for more than week after consuming raw milk containing the H5N1 virus — sent a letter to Mark McAfee, owner of Fresno-based Raw Farm LLC, demanding McAfee “cease all communication with Mr. Journell and reimburse him” for the money Journell spent on veterinary services, lost wages and “other out-of-pocket expenses.” …

    Raw milk is dangerous. But who bears the burden, the supplier or the consumer?

  89. Reginald Selkirk says

    Mike Johnson Attributes Prayer to Thomas Jefferson. But There’s a Problem.

    Shortly after being reelected as House Speaker, Mike Johnson read a prayer that he claimed was from Thomas Jefferson, despite there being no evidence the third president ever said it.

    In fact, the quotation has been falsely attributed to Jefferson so often over the years that the Thomas Jefferson Foundation has debunked it.

    “I was asked to provide a prayer for the nation. I offered one that is quite familiar to historians and probably many of us,” Johnson said.

    “It is said each day of his eight years of the presidency and every day thereafter until his death, President Thomas Jefferson recited this prayer,“ he continued, reading aloud from that day’s House program…

    “I wanted to share it with you here at the end of my remarks not as a prayer per se right now,” Johnson continued, “but really as a reminder of what our third president and the primary author of the Declaration of Independence thought was so important that it should be a daily recitation.”

    Johnson then read aloud the “National Prayer of Peace,” the text of which can easily be found on The Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s website as an example of a “spurious” quotation.

    “We have no evidence that this prayer was written or delivered by Thomas Jefferson,” it states.

    “It appears in the 1928 United States Book of Common Prayer, and was first suggested for inclusion in a report published in 1919,” the site continues.

    It goes on to say that Jefferson, an advocate for a strong barrier between church and state, likely wouldn’t have crafted such a prayer to be delivered publicly.

    “He considered religion a private matter,” the foundation notes, “and when asked to recommend a national day of fasting and prayer, replied, ‘I consider the government of the US. as interdicted by the constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.’”

  90. birgerjohansson says

    Strange Days, Waterworld, Ghost In The Shell, Twelwe Monkeys and Waterworld came out a quarter century ago.

  91. birgerjohansson says

    Reginald Selkirk @ 86
    Some Caribbean or African Islands owned by France are in the EU.

  93. Bekenstein Bound says

    Doctorow’s Pluralistic blog seems to have dropped dead again. Nothing new for almost two weeks solid now. :(

  94. Reginald Selkirk says

    Biggest winter storm in over a decade forecast to hit US

    Tens of millions of Americans are bracing for a huge winter storm that could bring the heaviest snowfall and coldest temperatures in over a decade.

    The storm, which started in the middle of the US, will move east in the next couple of days, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.

    Parts of the US not accustomed to severe cold, including Mississippi and Florida, have been warned to expect treacherous conditions.

    Forecasters say the extreme weather is being caused by the polar vortex, an area of cold air that circulates around the Arctic.

    “For some, this could be the heaviest snowfall in over a decade,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said…

  97. says

    Reginald @95, LOL.

    Kagehi @87, I agree that Bernie Sanders’ comments were accurate and pithy. It is funny to see that those comments caused some accidental kinship among rightwing doofus who are skeptical of Elon Musk’s motives.

    Cartoon: Jimmy Carter’s tool belt

    Some of the U.S. secret Service agents carrying Jimmy Carter’s coffin looked quite old. [Referencing photos, here and Link.

  98. says

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/grab-someone-and-tell-them-all-joe

    “Grab Someone And Tell Them All Joe Biden Did For The Middle Class, Maybe That’ll Work!”

    “We’re still puzzling through the messaging strategy on this.”

    In two and a half weeks, Joe Biden will, as is the tradition, attend the inauguration of the person whom the American people freely elected to replace him in the White House. Joe is a pretty courteous guy that way, big on upholding norms. His predecessor in office certainly didn’t offer Biden the same courtesy on January 20, 2021, as you may recall. Honestly, we were all fine with that fucker staying away.

    We aren’t as polite as Joe Biden is, so we intend to spend that day observing the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and not watching cable TV news. (Wonkette will have something posted for the holiday, but it will be a Naug-Free Zone.)

    But before Joe Biden leaves, we’d just like to remind you again what a remarkable thing he managed after his own inauguration four years back, during a pandemic that was not yet under control. Mind you, if facts mattered we wouldn’t be seeing the return to office of a guy whose political choices made the pandemic far worse than it had to be.

    The Kickass Economy

    Joe Biden’s economy, to put it in the sometimes complex language of economic analysis, kicked ass, and will likely keep kicking ass until Trump screws it up by giving everything away to the billionaires who elected him. Biden protected vulnerable Americans from losing everything during the pandemic crash and set up an economic recovery that continues to be, as The Economist put in October 2024, “the envy of the world.” Similar articles ran in The Atlantic (“The U.S. Economy Reaches Superstar Status”) and even the Wall Street Journal (“The Next President Inherits a Remarkable Economy”).

    Yes, there was inflation, especially in 2022 as we emerged from the pandemic. It was painful, especially when it came to the cost of groceries, housing and rent. It hit all over the world, but the US brought inflation down more quickly than any other industrial economy. What’s more, as inflation came down, wages continued to rise, resulting in higher real wages.

    And unlike in previous recoveries, the highest rate of wage growth came at the lower end of the wage scale. In an October 2024 report, the White House Council of Economic Advisers noted,

    Workers in industries with the lowest initial average wage saw the biggest percent gains over the last five years. For example, restaurant and hotel workers in the leisure and hospitality sector saw a nearly 35% cumulative increase in wages, starting from the lowest base of about $17 dollars.

    Workers at the top end of the scale, in IT and utilities, also saw wage growth, although it was more modest.

    Economist David Doney noted on Christmas day that

    Under President Biden, workers have the highest real hourly wages on average among the last 11 presidents. Despite inflation, workers have never been better off because wages have grown so very much. Merry Christmas!

    [Chart at the link]

    Let’s just underline this: Highest real hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, going back to LBJ, a president I don’t even remember. (My political consciousness in kindergarten was lousy, to be sure.)

    The US also saw a manufacturing boom, thanks to Biden’s industrial policy, with its emphasis on building US supply chains for tech and clean energy. 800,000 new manufacturing jobs, and a boom in construction of new factories, too. (Paradox time: The new jobs for workers in all those factories can’t start until they’re built. Trump will no doubt take credit for them. Or he may wreck those industries through policy reversals.)

    The Biden administration and the Harris campaign certainly got that information out at every opportunity, while acknowledging that high prices still hurt, and that we should all be able to make a decent living, and that the cost of housing and rent (one of the top drivers of inflation) is too damn high.

    The Dangerfield Economy

    Biden’s (and Harris’s) economic numbers kept getting better, but the poll numbers, and Americans’ perceptions of the economy, never caught up. In a February 2024 poll by Monmouth University, only 22 percent of Americans said Biden deserved “a great deal of credit” for economic growth, and

    Among middle class families, 16 percent say Biden’s policies have benefitted them a lot, while 33 percent say they have benefitted them a little. Forty-five percent say they have not benefitted them at all and 7 percent aren’t sure.

    To be clear, the greatest influence on what people thought about the economy was their partisan alignment. Republican-leaning voters thought the economy was terrible. In one June 2024 poll, a whopping 59 percent of people thought we were actually in a recession!

    There was a lot of talk of the “vibecession,” which was denounced as being insensitive to people struggling to get by.

    When Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, polls suggested — for a while at least — that voters now trusted her on the economy more than they did Biden, although it was the same damn economy. She talked at every opportunity about her economic plans, the first of which focused on tackling high grocery and housing costs. (Haha, we are saying a silly thing. Everyone knows Harris had no policies, she just kept robotically telling everyone that she was raised in a middle class family.)

    Unfortunately, it was very easy to get Americans — or at least extremely online Americans, who are very definitely not typical Americans — to talk about whether Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Ohio.

    It was difficult to get any Americans to believe that employment was pretty good and that it was Morning In America, although when that famous/infamous Reagan ad aired in the fall of 1984, the unemployment rate was around 7.4 percent.

    In October of 2024, when people were really gloomy about the economy, the unemployment rate was 4.1 percent. Good morning!

    And for our sins, we elected Donald Trump again, this time apparently on purpose.

    Oh Right Other Stuff For The Middle Class And Even Other People Too, As Well

    It wasn’t just full employment and a faster drawdown of inflation than the rest of the world. It was “little things,” like hotels and concert arenas having to tell you the actual price, not the “before the million fees price.” It was airlines having to refund your money if they accidentally forgot to put you on a plane. It was stopping giant grocery mergers that would have hurt competition and boned grocery shoppers. It was capping seniors’ medications at $2000 out of pocket per year. It was, despite the Supreme Court killing it a thousand different ways, canceling billions in student debt, at least for the old folks who were still paying their loans into their 50s. (Like us!) It was everything consumer rights folks had asked for, in just four years. Did anybody notice? Well, we did!

    And Over To Trump

    Now it’s going to become Trump’s economy. As Barack Obama pointed out all summer, one reason people remember the pre-pandemic economy so fondly is that Trump started out with Obama’s good economy, which Trump then distorted in favor of the super rich with his tax cuts.

    This time, Trump is inheriting an even better economy from Joe Biden. Crom only knows what he’ll do with it. He’s promised to drive it off a cliff with huge tariffs on everything, although we notice he isn’t talking about tariffs quite so much now that he’s won. At the very least, we’re almost certain to see the economy tilt even more in favor of the very wealthiest Americans, with another huge tax cut all but a certainty.

    Whatever happens, you can be fairly certain Trump will tell us it’s wonderful. And a whole lot of us seem inclined to believe him, or at least, if they aren’t doing great, to blame Joe Biden for it as long as they need to.

  100. Lauren Walker says

    There’s a similar phenomenon when crossing the border from Maryland into Virginia, especially on the Eastern Shore. All of sudden you’re bombarded with billboards advertising ham, cigarettes, and fireworks.

  103. JM says

    @90 birgerjohansson: Why did you list Waterworld twice? I’ll admit it probably had more impact in the US then the others but only because it was so bad and lost so much money.

  104. birgerjohansson says

    JM@ 103
    I listed waterworld twice because sometimes I am too tired to notice editing snafus.
    And while Waterworld was no masterpiece, it had potential that was lost, possibly by studio interference.
    .

    Showing a fundamentally kind world
    “Why Ghibli Succeeds Where Disney Fails”
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=4xUaZ9Vr-Cg

  105. lumipuna says

    Re 76,

    Former and current U.S. Secret Service agents assigned to the Carter detail move former President Jimmy Carter’s casket, at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga.

    A Guardian headline said that Carter’s funeral procession was getting started from “south Georgia”, and I initially read it as “South Georgia”. At least penguins are always dressed for the occasion…

  107. StevoR says

    @ ^ lumipuna : Easy to wear tuxedos when they literally grow on you! Always a good fit ..almost?

    (A few moulte-y exceptions mebbe..)

    Awesome island – & less russian around there..

  108. Reginald Selkirk says

    Sudden Transition in Superconductors Could Shift Quantum Technology Into High Gear

    Researchers have discovered that certain disordered superconductors exhibit abrupt phase transitions, a finding that challenges established theories and could have implications for quantum computing.

    A study published in Nature by researchers investigating indium oxide films — a highly disordered superconductor — shows that their transition from a superconducting to an insulating state is not gradual, as traditionally assumed, but sudden. This abrupt shift, known as a first-order quantum phase transition, contrasts with the commonly observed continuous, second-order transitions in superconductors.

    Key measurements revealed a sharp drop in superfluid stiffness — which is a property that reflects the superconducting state’s ability to resist phase distortions — at a critical level of disorder. Interestingly, the critical temperature of these films, where superconductivity breaks down, no longer depended on the strength of electron pairing but rather on the superfluid stiffness. This behavior aligns with a pseudogap regime, where electron pairs exist but lack the coherence needed for superconductivity…

  112. Reginald Selkirk says

    Man Attempts To Hijack Self-Driving Taxi, Gets Ride From The LAPD Instead

    Anyone who has ever asked a stranger in a coffee shop to watch their laptop knows unattended tech makes an enticing target for thieves. Waymo got yet another reminder of this fact this week after a man in downtown LA attempted to take over one of its driverless cars.

    The incident happened in the early morning hours of January 2. Police arrived on scene to find a man sitting in the driver’s seat of on of Waymo’s Jaguar I-Pace SUVs, CBS Los Angeles reports:

    A man, who authorities say was possibly under the influence, was in the driver’s seat of one of Waymo’s fully electric Jaguar I-PACEs when officers arrived to the scene near South Hill Street and Fifth Street around 12:30 a.m., according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Footage shows officers pulling him out of the driver’s seat, where no one is usually sitting in the self-driving cars…

  113. Alverant says

    Thanks everyone. Sorry it took this long for an update. They were ready for him, but I wanted a quick check to be sure. He was diagnosed with lymphoma in October and I thought we were handling it. But things got worse in the new year. He was stumbling and when he stopped eating/drinking I knew. I emailed a video of him to the vet and it was clear. He couldn’t hold his head up. When the vet did a quick check, he felt the cancer spread to his other organs and he lost muscle along his spine and lost 4lbs since his last check in November. I wanted to spend one last weekend with him, but he was in pain. He had this sad meow that I never heard from him before. He went quickly. Vet said he would have done the same thing. Things are too quiet here. I’m cleaning up what I can. He was 15 when he passed and I adopted him at 12. I wanted to give a senior cat a good home for their sunset years and I hope I did that. I’m not sure if I’ll foster or adopt (I promised my 82 YO dad that I’d take his cats if he couldn’t take care of them), but I’ll decide that when I’m ready.

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