Well you know it's a shame and a pity

The Rising Son Records account (Arlo Guthrie?) on Facebook posted this photo and said, in the first person, that in September of 2013, "As I watched the clouds go by before the Harvest Moon, I caught one I liked... I called this 'Witch Moon'. [...] People are starting to learn about the 66 years of failed US policy against Cuba. People are learning about the trade restrictions that prevent medicine, food, and fuel from getting to the island. People are learning about the starvation, pain, disease, and death that come from these policies. And people are also beginning to notice that Cubans across the political spectrum want something different than what the US provides!"

He's not the only one who's saying so. "We're Tired of Marco Rubio Speaking for Us: A New Cuban-American Movement: What we share is the belief that the future of Cuba should be left to Cubans on the island to decide without US interference and meddling. [...] Like many Cuban Americans growing up in Florida, I was taught countless criticisms and failures of the government of Cuba by family members. But my proudly capitalist father also raised his children to lobby against the US embargo on Cuba."

And here's a little something I didn't know: "Exclusive: Cuba Is Prepared to Offer Compensation to Americans Who Lost Property in the 1959 Revolution: Cuba is willing to put the 'lump sum' compensation measure on the table in talks with the U.S., a Cuban official told Drop Site." The interesting thing about this is it's not a new offer, but a second chance for the US to take the deal: "After the revolution, Cuba negotiated lump sum compensation agreements with countries such as Canada, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Spain, and France, but the United States refused to participate, planning to overthrow Fidel Castro's government instead. '[Cuba made] lump sum agreements with the six governments whose property was nationalized in Cuba, all of them had compensation schemes, all of them were compensated with the exception of the U.S.,' said Cossio."

"'Serious Threat to the First Amendment' as Trump Admin Wins First Antifa Terror Charge: 'A case like this helps the government kind of see how far they can go in criminalizing constitutionally protected protest,' one legal advocate said. The government has largely won its first case bringing material-support-for-terrorism charges against protesters alleged to belong to 'antifa,' which President Donald Trump designated as a domestic terror group in 2025 despite the fact that no such organized group exists and the president has no legal authority to designate organizations as domestic terror groups. A federal jury in Fort Worth, Texas agreed on Friday to convict eight people of domestic terrorism because they wore all black to a protest outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas on July 4, 2025, at which one of the protesters shot and wounded a police officer. Legal experts say the verdict could bolster attempts by the administration to stifle dissent."

And speaking of stifling dissent, "Trump's FCC Chair Threatens to Pull Broadcast Licenses Over Negative Iran War Coverage: 'Brendan Carr is threatening the media to cover the war the way the Trump regime wants. It's one of the most anti-American messages ever posted by a government official,' one news network said. In a move one administration critic described as 'fragrantly unconstitutional,' Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr wrote a post on social media on Saturday that appeared to threaten the broadcast license of any media outlet that reported information concerning President Donald Trump's war on Iran that the president did not like." Is Matt Taibbi on this story?

Robert Kuttner on "Elizabeth Warren's Amazingly Progressive Housing Bill" and how she's been getting things passed by enlisting Republican help. It's actually pretty impressive. But one fly in the ointment was a little performance by a guy who looks set to be Chuck Schumer's successor, with "Brian Schatz's Signals of Comfort With Big Money: The Hawaii senator and heir apparent to Chuck Schumer attacked a bipartisan housing bill without trying to fix it, merely to show support for private equity." This is a worrying sign, but there doesn't seem to be anyone in the Senate who is lined up to replace the current leadership with anything to offer to those of us who want substantive change. Bizarrely, the part of the bill he was objecting to was something Trump himself had insisted on as the price of his signature, and it was a restriction on private equity purchasers—something you'd expect Trump to oppose and Democrats to be the biggest supporters of. Luckily, he doesn't seem to have done any harm this time, but that's not always the case. "Some Democrats are upset about this attack on a bill that had near-universal support and see it as part of a pattern. One former top-level Hill staffer told the Prospect: 'In some circles, to 'Schatz' something is starting to be used as a verb, by which I mean undermining bills that take on corporate power, pretending to be motivated by progressive concerns, when it is transparent to everyone involved that he is just trying to build chits with powerful industries.'"

"'Now We Know Why Trump Fired the Inspector General at Social Security,' Says Watchdog Group: New revelations show an IG report about wait times for people seeking help or services was altered after it was submitted to the administration. [...] Altman then argued that the attack on inspectors general was part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to dismantle government transparency all together. 'Inspectors general are the American peoples' eyes and ears in these agencies,' said Altman. 'The Trump administration is undermining that oversight at every turn. Under this administration, the IG has no ability to conduct independent oversight. There is no meaningful check on the Trump administration's Social Security sabotage.'" I think that was obvious from the first—I mean, why else would you just fire all those IGs?

I keep forgetting that Dday and Stoller have a podcast called Organized Money, which I should have reminded you of, too. Things are interesting again in the Ticket Master/Live Nation case, and they had some fun telling us about it in "Robbing Them Blind, Baby: The Live Nation Case".

So, the cops who raided Afroman's house, kicked down his door and terrified his kids, were all upset when he made videos about it and sued him for defamation. The jury didn't buy it and the whole thing entertained the hell out of the internet. ImNotALawyerBut recapped the trial in about half an hour on YouTube.

"Trump State Dept. Accused of 'Largest Fee Fraud in History' of US Immigration System: An immigration researcher at the Cato Institute found that the Trump administration is 'raking in billions of dollars in immigration fees and not providing the adjudications that applicants are entitled to.' [...] A report published last week by the Cato Institute, written by director of immigration studies David J. Bier, found that the State Department and Department of Homeland Security were receiving millions of applications from immigrants whom Trump has made ineligible for legal status and pocketing the fees without ever processing the requests."

"Nearly One-Third Of Gen Z Men Think Wives Should Obey Their Husbands, New Global Study Finds: The study revealed new details about how young men view gender, marriage and relationships in contrast to their Boomer counterparts. [...] This is in stark contrast to Baby Boomer men (born between 1945 and 1965), who agreed with those same statements at just 13% and 17%, respectively. Despite women overall giving drastically different responses to the same questions, Gen Z women were still more likely than their Boomer counterparts to say a woman should always obey her husband, with 18% of Gen Z women answering yes, compared to only 6% of Boomer women."

I thought the first sentence of this article in The New Republic was a bit disturbing, and it kept doing that. "Guess What Moderate Democratic Voters Aren't Anymore? Moderate. Two new polls suggest that moderate Democrats too want higher taxes on the rich and some measure of economic populism. Moderate isn't what it was in 1992. The center-left group Third Way held a conference last week where moderate Democratic strategists and politicians blasted progressive ideas and the party's left wing. Third Way and other centrist Democratic groups espouse positions such as opposing Medicare for All and wealth taxes. In Washington, the idea that these groups speak for moderates across the country is never questioned. But now, some evidence is emerging that suggests Democratic voters who describe themselves as moderate are in a different place. They want Democrats to push harder to increase taxes on the wealthy and corporations and don't think the party is overly liberal on issues such as abortion and transgender rights." I mean, seriously, everyone knows Third Way is right-wing, not "center-left". They vote with Republicans. They slam Democrats and echo right-wing talking points you can easily get from Fox or Newsmax. And it was never, ever "moderate" by any reasonable definition of the word to oppose positions held by more than half the country and support positions held by only 3.8%. Come to think of it, the title of the article is pretty disturbing, too. Third Way was always "moderate" in the same way that the Nazis were "socialist" and Grapenuts are made of grapes and nuts. It's a lot of counterproductive rhetoric but at least they admit that "moderates" who disagree with Third Way can win elections.

The much more reliable American Prospect tells it straight, except that they neglected to put "moderates" in the scare-quotes they deserve. "Centrists: Better Things Aren't Possible: Third Way's strategy session for Democratic moderates lacked any vision other than a hatred for progressives. A group of Democratic Party moderates gathered in Charleston, South Carolina, last Sunday and Monday for an event organized by Third Way, an influential group in the party's moderate wing. The event, entitled 'Winning the Middle,' brought together elected officials, prominent pundits, data gurus, communication savants, and industry figures with one goal in mind: how to block a progressive from winning the party's nomination for president in 2028. The event's speakers celebrated their claim that a similar conference hosted by Third Way in the same location back in 2019 helped power Joe Biden—whom they touted as 'the most conservative Democrat in the 2020 field'—to the White House, recalling that South Carolina served as both the last refuge of and launching pad for the then-former vice president's flailing presidential campaign. With Democratic popularity at an all-time low, Third Way's event hoped to galvanize a moderate resurgence and stave off any potential progressive insurgency. What is immediately apparent watching the event is a total lack of any positive vision. Rather than propose a worked-out centrist platform, or even suggest opposition to the Trump administration, the event largely defined itself in opposition to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party."

"The Democratic Party Has Made a Religion of Curated Facts: Centrist Democrats claim to be the bearers of hard facts, dismissing leftist dissent as emotional and naive. But their 'facts' are often a mishmash of consultant data, selectively interpreted focus groups, and big donor priorities. [...] But a closer look at this dynamic reveals less about the Left's naivete and more about the modern Democratic Party's criteria for deciding who's worth listening to. As Simon Schaffer and Steven Shapin argue in their book, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, establishing the 'matter of fact' is a long and combative process. Facts aren't discovered but are materialized, and this process of materialization is never neutral. It involves technological systems, information networks, and assumptions about power and authority. And for the Democrats, it almost always involves consultants, donors, and focus groups — to the exclusion of other data sources."

"Iranian Officials Say They Have Been Ignoring Witkoff's Private Requests to Talk: Trump's special envoy has been texting Iran's foreign minister asking to start talks. Tehran says the war will end only when Iran believes it has established long-term deterrence. President Donald Trump has been leading a double life in prosecuting his war against Iran. In public, he regularly boasts that Iran's military might has been decimated, its leadership killed off, and that the few officials remaining alive in Tehran are begging him to talk. 'They want to negotiate. They want to negotiate badly,' Trump said Sunday night. 'We're talking to them. But I don't think they're ready, but they're getting pretty close.' Behind the scenes, it is the Trump administration that has been asking for talks. Two Iranian officials told Drop Site that Trump's Special Envoy Steve Witkoff personally sent messages to officials in Tehran, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, last week exploring possibilities for resuming negotiations. Iran has not replied to Witkoff. The Iranian officials told Drop Site that Iran has also received messages from the White House via third countries."

RIP: "Country Joe McDonald, Woodstock star and anti-war singer, dies aged 84: 'Country Joe' McDonald, a hippy rock star of the 1960s whose protest track 'I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag' rebuked the Vietnam war and became a highlight of the Woodstock music festival, died on Sunday. He was 84. McDonald died in Berkeley, California. His death from complications of Parkinson's disease was reported by Kathy McDonald, his wife of 43 years, in a statement issued by his publicist." Country Joe McDonald roped me into the first poker game I ever played for money. Peter Albin staked me 50 cents and when I won they all looked at me. I loved his music. He even had a fun website. And it was cool when he turned up on the TV show of Tales of the City. I think I've posted "Couleen Ann" (Country Joe and the All-Star Band) before, but one of my favorites from Joe was "Janis".

RIP: "Bernard LaFayette, Selma voting rights organizer, dies at 85: NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Bernard LaFayette, the advance man who did the risky groundwork for the voter registration campaign in Selma, Alabama, that culminated in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has died. Bernard LaFayette, III, said his father died Thursday morning of a heart attack. [...] 'We lived through this, but this was our daily lives,' he told The Associated Press in a 2021 interview. 'When you think about it, we weren't trying to make history or trying to rewrite history. We were responding to the problems of the particular time.'"

"AI autocomplete doesn't just change how you write. It changes how you think: AI-powered writing tools are increasingly integrated into our e-mails and phones. Now a new study finds biased AI suggestions can sway users' beliefs [...] Across all the different topics in the survey, participants who saw the AI autocomplete prompts reported attitudes that were more in line with the AI's position—including people who didn't use the AI's suggested text at all. Overall, the study participants who saw the biased AI text shifted their positions toward those espoused by the AI."

In 1994, Mike Godwin discussed and reflected on creating Godwin's Law.

"Two Missing Episodes from The Daleks' Master Plan Found" — That still isn't all of them, but apparently it's enough to put something on iPlayer at Easter.

Read Geoff Ryman's "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter" for free on the internet.

Country Joe & The Fish, "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine"

It was a time when strangers were welcome here

Alison McGhee posted this photo to go with an essay on Facebook* about the occupation of Minneapolis. The essay was fine, but she's no slouch as a photographer, either.

You already know what Trump's State of the Union message contained (lies), but what drove Cory Robin crazy was the Democratic response: "I spent yesterday tearing my hair out over the Democrats' response to Trump's State of the Union Address. I could say a lot about their choice of respondent and the substance of the response. But I want to focus only on style, rhetoric. Long story, short: I was appalled. I don't think I've ever encountered, outside academia, people with such a bottomless appetite for mountainous piles of meaningless, unnecessary, empty words, each of which seems genetically engineered to make any sentient being stop paying attention. Reading this speech, that is the only conclusion I can come to: that its sole and entire purpose is to make people stop paying attention. Again, forget substance, forget ideology, forget what the Democratic Party is, just focus on the style, the words, the impact on you, the listener, the reader. I'll dwell on just a few moments (which seemed like more than moments) in the speech, a few passages that do the opposite of what a passage is supposed to do—that is, get you from one place to the next."

Scahill and Hussain at Drop Site News, "As Trump Launches 'Massive' Regime Change War, Iran Strikes Back at U.S. Bases and Vows Not to Capitulate: Diplomacy was weaponized as an 'instrument of deception,' an Iranian official tells Drop Site. Tehran promises to inflict losses on the U.S. At approximately 9:40 a.m. local time in Iran, President Donald Trump launched what he bluntly characterized as a regime change war aimed at eliminating the Iranian leadership, destroying the country's missile system and naval forces, and calling on Iranians to rise up and seize control in the aftermath of the attacks. The bombing campaign was initiated by Israel but Trump's statement announcing U.S. involvement made clear the stakes to Iranians: 'Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,' Trump said in a taped statement on Truth Social soon after Operation Epic Fury began. 'This will be probably your only chance for generations.' In what has now become a signature component of Trump's approach to Iran, the U.S. constructed a false veneer of continuing diplomatic negotiations, only to turn around and launch a major attack."

And for some quick history, Jean-Luc Szpakowski on "What happened in the Iran demonstrations." You will not be surprised to learn that the US and Mossad all played their role.

Don Moynihan, "Trump's weak justifications for attacking Iran: Why is American attacking Iran? It helps to have a coherent reason, to justify to the American public the costs in money and blood, to allies about the potential long-term risks, and to Iranians about the future of their country. After 9/11 there was broad support for invading Afghanistan because the country hosted the attack's mastermind. In 2003 there was less support for what turned out to be the false claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They didn't, but Saddam stuck a belligerent tone and kicked weapons inspectors out. In 2026…Iran was at the negotiating table and we invaded…for reasons." But it's pretty clear that, Pete Kegsmith to the contrary, we did start this war, because we let Israel push us into it. But why?

"AIPAC Coordinates Donors in Illinois House Primaries: Three Democratic candidates are benefiting from dark-money super PACs, and they share hundreds of donors who have previously given to AIPAC and its subsidiaries. With Israel's reputation reaching record lows among Democrats, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is resorting to ever more sophisticated methods to support its preferred candidates while cloaking its own involvement."

At Columbia, ICE impersonated police officers and claimed to be searching for a missing child as a ruse to invade a college dorm and kidnapped a student. Mamdani picked up the phone and got Trump to release her.

"'Great villains': Law firms that 'groveled' to Trump scorched as revenge bid dropped: President Donald Trump's Justice Department backed down on Monday on a huge monthslong legal battle, no longer defending a series of executive orders that attacked prominent law firms that represented anti-Trump clients in the past. It's a huge victory for the rule of law, voting rights attorney Marc Elias told MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace — but also a huge black eye for the law firms that made deals with Trump to avoid similar regulatory action against them."

David Dayen finds "The Quintessential Epstein Files Email: Jeffrey Epstein and his friends standing up for Mary Jo White against Elizabeth Warren tells you everything about the class war at the heart of the files. On June 5, 2015, Kathy Ruemmler, then a corporate lawyer for Latham & Watkins but just one year removed from her stint as White House counsel for Barack Obama, emailed her good friend Jeffrey Epstein. Ruemmler, who was once under consideration to become Obama's attorney general, wrote, 'I am working on a PR strategy for MJ White v. Elizabeth Warren.' Epstein responded, 'Good[.] mj is good.' And Ruemmler followed on in a response, 'Yes, and EW is the worst.' This is the perfect Jeffrey Epstein email, with as much explanatory power about this man, and more important the world he associated with and cultivated, than anything to do with child sex abuse. It shows that there is in fact an Epstein class, which not only believes in their own personal impunity, but seeks to protect their fellow travelers as well. And that ultimately lines up with a political and economic vision that favors corporate domination over the public interest. But you have to unravel all the backstory to best understand it."

RIP: "Neil Sedaka, a Pop Hitmaker Across Two Eras, Dead at 86: The songwriter and performer broke through with early Sixties hits like 'Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,' then mounted a Seventies comeback with 'Laughter In the Rain' [...] Alongside his neighbor and longtime songwriting partner, Howard Greenfield, Sedaka set up shop at the famous Brill Building and helped define the pop style that emerged from the New York City hit factory. Their success with songs like 'Stupid Cupid' for Connie Francis helped Sedaka secure a record deal of his own. He notched his first Top 10 hit in 1959 with 'Oh! Carol,' then followed it up with notable tunes like 'Stairway to Heaven' (not that one), 'Calendar Girl,' 'Little Devil,' and 'Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen.' The run culminated in 1962 when 'Breaking Up Is Hard to Do' went to Number One, and 'Next Door to an Angel' peaked at Number Five." I've always been a sucker for doo-wops, and these songs were always such fun.

RIP: "Robert Duvall, Apocalypse Now and Godfather star, dies aged 95." Yes, he was great in a lot of things, but lets's not forget his genre credit for The Twilight Zone, and most of all, that moment, early in his career, but at the end of the film, when Scout Finch looks up and sees him in the shadow behind the door, and their faces change in one of the finest acting duets on film, with virtually no dialogue. (In the book, Boo Radley had one short line of dialogue, though he is a huge, invisible presence from the beginning. That line was cut from the movie, to no ill effect.)

RIP: "Blues Icon John Hammond Dies At 83 [...] With more than six decades devoted to the blues, Hammond stood as one of the music's most committed and enduring champions. [...] For generations of artists and listeners, John Hammond represented a living bridge to the roots of American blues. His dedication preserved a lineage that might otherwise have faded from mainstream view. He is survived by his wife Marla. His recordings remain a testament to a life spent in service of the blues."

"Newspapers Did Not Kill Themselves: New docs say Jeffrey Epstein collaborated with the Russian mob to loot the New York Daily News, then tried to help Mort Zuckerman discard it when reporting became inconvenient. Almost nobody noticed earlier this month when the New York Daily News announced what felt like a 500th round of layoffs. Not long ago, the venerable working-class tabloid behind “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD” would have been the ideal outlet for demystifying the prodigious evils of the Uptown Epstein network for outer-borough New Yorkers who elected Zohran Mamdani. But the latest iteration of “New York's Hometown Newspaper” has all of four reporters covering national news."

"A Running Count of How Many People ICE Has Killed and Injured: ICE doesn't share its violent incidents with the public. So here's our list. The Trump regime's deportation monomania has left far more people dead and wounded than it wants you to know. Agents' public executions of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have rightly drawn widespread fury, heartbreak, and action. And they are just two of the many more agents have murdered or caused to die in the field since January 2025. Even more people have died in immigration prison. And as for the people federal agents have merely injured? An official count doesn't exist. There is no doubt that the regime is working overtime to hide the full scope of the terror campaign spreading across our country. The Prospect launched this tracker to do our part to stop them from getting away with it. We are collecting data to bring the real harm into sharper focus and to counterbalance the mainstream media's sanitation of what we would call “pogroms” if they were happening in any other country. "

"Phil Ochs' Sharp, Satirical Protest Songs Still Resonate Today: Fifty years after his death, the protest singer's music is more relevant than ever. [...] 2026 marks half a century since Ochs' death, yet his lyrics are more relevant now than perhaps even he could have imagined. Ochs' career achievements, by any reasonable measure, were substantial—he wrote hundreds of songs, recorded seven albums for two major record labels, consistently sold out Carnegie Hall and other medium-sized concert venues, successfully organized several large-scale rallies, and always provoked an enthusiastic response from crowds at the countless political events at which he performed." Since I went to a lot of those rallies I saw him many times, and always loved him, so I was glad to see this appreciation of work that, yes, still resonates with me.

Neil Sedaka dedicated "The Immigrant" to John Lennon, but hearing it now makes me cry.

We will protect our home

This photograph was posted by Radley Balko in his amazingly comprehensive round-up post of February 3rd. He called it "Too Much Ice", and of course, the overwhelming content is about ICE's rampage, particularly in Minneapolis, but there's a bunch of other things, too, including the weather.

I thought I'd try to post this while I'm not watching the State of the Union speech. I'm sure the snippets in the morning will be less stressful. Trying not to think about Iran.

"Most Conservative Students Don't Feel Persecuted on Campus: A new survey of college students contradicts Republican rhetoric that campus culture is hostile to right-wing views. Despite widespread political rhetoric claiming that colleges suppress conservative viewpoints, new data shows that most college students feel free to express themselves regardless of their political affiliation. According to a report that Gallup and the Lumina Foundation published today, just 2 percent of all college students—including 3 percent of Republicans—say they feel they don't belong on campus due to their political views. That's one of the many disconnects between public perceptions about higher education's climate and value and what students say is actually happening on campus, according to the report, 'The College Reality Check: What Students Experience vs. What America Believes.'"

A Democrat flipped a seat in Texas in a district Trump won in 2024 by a wide margin. And no, this was no Harold Ford "Democrat", this was a union leader, Taylor Rehmet, more Berniecrat than Blue Dog or Dixiecrat, with a 14-point margin. Most articles treat it as a warning for Republicans, but perhaps it should say more to Democratic consultants who insist that only a Joe Manchin can win in these red seats.

"Every Single Participant in NYT Focus Group Preferred Progressive Candidates Over Moderate Ones: 'The Democratic Party needs to embrace voices that resonate with people,' said one participant [...] 'Spineless' was one word a participant had for the Democratic Party when asked to describe it. Another said the party appears 'paralyzed' while a 46-year-old Latina woman from Nevada said Democrats in Congress are 'sellouts and suckers.'"

"Don't Be Fooled By the Corrupt Court's Tariff Decision [...] This is a case where the legal merits of the President's action were just too transparently bogus even for this Court to manage and — critically — his actions and the theories undergirding his claims to the power were, for the Corrupt majority, inconvenient. The architect of the current Court — the Federalist Society's Leonard Leo — was behind the litigation that undid the tariffs. That tells you all you need to know. In this case Trump's claim to power was neither in the interests of the Republican Party — the Court's chief jurisprudential interest — nor any of their anti-constitutional doctrines. So of course they tossed it out. This may sound ungenerous. It's simple reality."

Dday, "Trump Justice Department Poised to Preserve Ticketmaster Monopoly: Settlement talks on a monopolization case against Live Nation are under way, with Kellyanne Conway and other MAGA lobbyists seeking a sweetheart deal. [...] The imminent settlement of the high-profile case has once again triggered tumult inside the Justice Department between Antitrust Division lawyers who are more wary of lobbyist-driven decision-making and Attorney General Pam Bondi's office, which is eager to please Trump allies and vested interests. [...] President Trump issued an executive order last year demanding a crackdown on price-gouging in event ticketing, making Davis's advocacy for Live Nation, the company that dominates the space, even more embarrassing."

"Reporting Says Rubio 'Deliberately' Lying to Trump About US-Cuba Talks: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has long sought regime change in Cuba, and new reporting from Drop Site News on Monday suggested he may be intentionally misrepresenting the Trump administration's current policy in the communist country to achieve his goal. The outlet reported that, based on the accounts of five Cuban and US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, the 'deal' that President Donald Trump has said is likely to be finalized soon is not being pursued in any high-level, official diplomatic discussions. Soon after issuing an executive order that labeled Cuba an extraordinary threat, accused it of harboring terrorists, and threatened other countries with sanctions if they provide oil to the Cuban government, Trump said his administration is 'talking to the people from Cuba, the highest people in Cuba, to see what happens.' But one senior White House official explained to Drop Site that 'he's saying that because that's what Marco is telling him.'

"Attorney General Schwalb Files RICO Lawsuit to Dismantle Razjooyan Slumlord Empire: First-Of-Its-Kind Lawsuit Aims to Permanently Shut Down Sprawling Real Estate Fraud Scheme That Exploits Tenants, Lenders, and District Government & Worsens DC's Affordable Housing Crisis. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb today filed a first-of-its-kind civil lawsuit under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to dismantle an extensive real estate fraud scheme led by slumlord Ali 'Sam' Razjooyan, his brother Eimon 'Ray' Razjooyan, and their mother Houri Razjooyan. The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) alleges that the Razjooyans are operating a vast, illegal real-estate empire that controls dozens of apartment buildings in DC. Over the past decade, the Razjooyans have acquired over 70 primarily rent-controlled buildings – 90% of them in Wards 7 and 8. Through a Ponzi-like scheme, the Razjooyans deceive lenders with fake financial documents and false promises to renovate the buildings and then rent them to tenants who receive housing subsidies that are reliably paid by District government and that are above the rent-stabilized amounts. Instead of fixing up the properties, the Razjooyans use the loan proceeds to enrich themselves, pay off loans from previously purchased buildings, and buy new properties to perpetuate the scheme. The buildings then fall into disrepair, forcing hundreds of the District's most vulnerable tenants to live in horrific conditions, including rodent and insect infestations, gas leaks, electrical hazards, mountains of trash, mold, and flooding. At the same time, the Razjooyans are defrauding the District agencies that pay their tenants' housing subsidies—more than $16 million to date—by falsely claiming that the properties are safe and habitable, a required condition for receiving the rent subsidies. By allowing so many apartments to become uninhabitable, the Razjooyans are decreasing the housing supply in DC and worsening the District's affordable housing crisis."

"The 'Most Massive Attack On Free Speech' Is Happening Right Now, And The Twitter Files Crew Is Mighty Quiet: For the last five years, we had to endure an endless, breathless parade of hyperbole regarding the so-called 'censorship industrial complex.' We were told, repeatedly and at high volume, that the Biden administration flagging content for review by social media companies constituted a tyrannical overthrow of the First Amendment. n the Missouri v. Biden (later Murthy v. Missouri) case, Judge Terry Doughty—in a ruling that seemed to consist entirely of Twitter threads pasted into a judicial ruling—declared that the White House sending angry emails to Facebook 'arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States' history.' Never mind that the Supreme Court later reviewed the evidence and found that the platforms frequently ignored those emails, showing a lack of coercion, leading them to reverse the lower courts for lack of standing. To the 'Twitter Files' crowd and the self-anointed 'free speech absolutists,' the mere existence of government officials simply requesting private companies to look at terms of service violations was a sign of the end of the Republic. So, surely, now that the Department of Homeland Security is issuing administrative subpoenas—legal demands that bypass judges entirely—to unmask the identities of anonymous political critics, these same warriors are storming the barricades, right?" No, no more than they had a word to say when during Trump's first term someone ended up in jail for a political opinion on social media.

Again, the NYT wrote another article claiming it's "moderates" for the win, so have a rebuttal from Noah Berlatsky called, "If Moderates Overperform, How Do You Explain Sinema? [...] I'm hesitant to offer any one rationale here, but there are a few points worth noting. First of all, a lot of moderate policy positions poll very badly. For example, increasing the minimum wage is popular with Democrats, with Independent, and even with Republicans—in branding herself as a moderate by elaborately opposing a minimum wage hike, Sinema actually embraced an incredibly unpopular position."

RIP: "Chuck Negron, Founding Member of Three Dog Night, Dies at 83: Negron's lead vocals powered many of the band's biggest hits, including 'Joy to the World,' 'One,' 'Easy to Be Hard,' 'Old Fashioned Love Song', and 'The Show Must Go On.'" I saw them at a festival at Atlantic City and they put on a helluva show. They were a cover band, which many people disdained, but boy, they sure picked the songs.

RIP: "Bud Cort, star of Harold and Maude, dies aged 77." Yeah, he did other stuff, but this is one of our most beloved movies of all time and he will always be Harold to us.

RIP: "Jesse Jackson, civil rights leader, dies aged 84: A trailblazer in the civil rights movement and Democratic politics, Jackson championed the rights of Black, poor and working-class people with his 'rainbow coalition'The Rev Jesse Jackson, the civil rights campaigner who was prominent for more than 50 years and who ran strongly for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, has died. He was 84. 'Our father was a servant leader – not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,' the Jackson family said in a statement." I will never forgive the Clinton gang for deliberately sidelining him in favor of Al Sharpton.

Mark Kermode pulled no punches in his review of Melania.

Spider-Noir - Official Black & White Teaser Trailer (2026) Nicholas Cage, Brendan Gleeson

In case you missed it, here's Bruce Springsteen's song "Streets Of Minneapolis".

And Billy Bragg's "City of Heroes".

All you gotta do is call

Neat, short little memo with useful graphs:
"To: Interested Democrats
From: Senators Chris Murphy, Adam Schiff, Tina Smith, and Elizabeth Warren
Date: January 12, 2026
Re: Democrats can't run on affordability without calling out billionaires and big corporations
We write today to lay out the case for why the Democratic Party should adopt an affordability platform rooted in an economic populism that is willing to confront concentrated corporate power. Billionaires and corporate interests have captured our political system, but our party's anemic response to the rigging of our democracy and economy in favor of the ultra-wealthy has eroded our credibility with working people. Donald Trump's brazen corruption and billionaires first economic policy has exposed him as a fake populist, offering Democrats an opportunity to return to our roots as the party that values hard work and stands with working people. But that will happen only if we demonstrate a real willingness to take on corporate power and the billionaires who are making it impossible for the American people to provide for themselves and their families. A raft of recent research demonstrates that this platform is popular across the political spectrum and especially with working-class voters"

ICE are terrorists and must be stopped. Atrios called them America's Worst Murderers. "ICE Agent Kills Woman, DHS Tells Obvious, Insane Lies About It: On Wednesday in Minneapolis, masked government agents apparently representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surrounded a stationary vehicle stopped in the middle of a residential street. One of them demanded that the driver "get out of the fucking car," and yanked violently on the driver's-side door handle; another, stationed near the left headlight of the vehicle, drew his pistol. The driver, after briefly reversing, swerved away from the agents, apparently attempting to drive away. As the vehicle moved forward, the agent with the drawn pistol stepped aside while firing three shots directly at the windshield and open driver's-side window, killing the driver." Anyone can see that in the videos which went viral immediately. (The still frames in this article make it pretty clear.) But DHS told an entirely different story.

And since that happened, there have been so many stories about ICE and Border Patrol snatching kids, murdering Americans, breaking down doors and kidnapping people in their underwear, preventing parents from rushing their child to the E.R., and numerous other outrages while Bondi tries to blackmail Walz to illegally acquire voting information and the administration issuing memos of illegal instructions and trying to defend them in court that I just can't keep up.

Pareene, "You Cretins Are Going To Get Thousands Of People Killed: Here's what you have to understand about the sort of people who become anchors, nonpartisan pundits, centrist columnists, and cable news political correspondents: They didn't sign up to be the resistance. They don't want Donald Trump to fail. They want him to 'pivot' and 'act presidential.' Yeah, there are guys (and it is guys, for the most part) out there who spend their whole careers trying to be Dan Rather staring down Nixon or Cronkite turning on Vietnam—or even just Tim Russert making some elected mediocrity stammer with a patented 'tough question'—but mostly these guys want to be witnesses to Great Men Making History. They want to Respect The Office Of The Presidency. Here's another thing you should understand about these guys: The only thing the elite Washington press corps likes more than a bipartisan commission on debt reduction is a stack of flag-draped coffins."

"Venezuela Regime Change and the Theater of the Absurd" — Josh Marshall finds it interesting that though Maduro has been kidnapped by the US, and the White House seems to be claiming they now run Venezuela, Maduro's government is still standing and operating. (And that's about as far as I got with international news before my brain started to melt, so look elsewhere for that.)

Robert Kuttner reckons "Trump's Attack on Powell Backfires: Even Trump's allies are disgusted by the clumsy power grab. [...] The attack on Powell and the Fed's independence was quickly denounced by people from both parties. Former Federal Reserve chairs Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke, and Alan Greenspan, the latter two Republicans, as well as four former Treasury secretaries representing both parties issued a statement supporting Powell and denouncing the 'unprecedented attempt' to undermine the Fed's independence. Republicans in Congress, who have been reluctant to criticize Trump on other issues, joined in. Rep. French Hill of Arkansas, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, called the inquiry 'an unnecessary distraction,' adding that the charges 'could undermine this and future Administrations' ability to make sound monetary policy decisions.'"

Ian Welsh, "Keep Your Eyes On The Long Game of Imperial Collapse [...] But nothing has changed in the fundamentals. The US is in auto-catabolic collapse and so far there is no sign of the oligarchy losing control, which is the pre-condition for any attempts to change the trajectory. I've now seen data indicating China is leading in 89% of key tech fields, up from 80% a couple years ago. US industry is still collapsing. Research funding has been slashed. Final bastions like chips, AI, civil aviation and biotech/pharma are all under assault and will fall like dominoes over the next five to ten years. The US has no ship building capacity to speak of, is behind on drones and missiles (the key weapon systems of modern war) and can't even make key components in its military chain without Chinese help. Dollar hegemony is no more than five years out from being lost."

"Victory for Corporate Tax Dodgers as OECD Approves Watered-Down Global Minimum Tax: 'The Trump administration has chosen to prioritize maintaining rock-bottom taxes for big corporations to the detriment of ordinary Americans and our allies across the globe,' said one critic. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development is facing criticism for buckling under US demands when finalizing an update to the global minimum corporate tax agreement. As reported by Reuters on Monday, the OECD agreed to amend a 2021 deal to enforce a 15% global minimum corporate tax to include 'simplifications and carve-outs to align US minimum tax laws with global standards, accommodating earlier objections raised by the Trump administration.' Under the original framework, OECD members agreed to apply a 15% corporate tax on multinational corporations that book profits in jurisdictions that have lower tax rates. President Donald Trump objected to this, however, and insisted that some US corporations be given exemptions that have subsequently been granted by OECD states."

"Zohran Mamdani Has More Jewish Support Than You Think: While attention is on the new mayor's revocation of pro-Israel executive orders, analysis reveals age and income shaped the Jewish vote more than ethnicity, religion, or support for Israel Ask anybody about the Jewish vote for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in the election, and they'll tell you he lost it badly. If they saw the news coverage, the headlines put a number on it: One-third went to Mamdani, and two-thirds went to his opponent Andrew Cuomo. To backers of Israel, the support for Mamdani was too high. To others, it was read as a sign that Mamdani was too divisive for the Democratic Party coalition—alienating large segments of New York City's Jewish electorate. [...] A closer block-by-block analysis, in fact, reveals an entirely different story. Whether a voter was Jewish or not turns out to have little to do with their preference for Mamdani or his opponent. Jewish voters, like New York City as a whole, were split between New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his erstwhile opponent Andrew Cuomo based on culture, denomination, age, and income. Block-level results show that Jewish voters routinely voted in line with their neighbors. [...] Pulling Trump voters out of the analysis, it turns out that among Jewish Democrats, Mamdani performed far better than the exit-poll headlines suggested. Among Jewish voters who were genuinely up for grabs, Mamdani and Cuomo split them roughly 50-50. Among voters in Jewish surname (10%+) precincts that voted for Kamala Harris (60%+)—i.e. Jewish Democrats—Zohran Mamdani ran less than three points behind Andrew Cuomo: 47% to 49.5%."

David Dayen has "Six Important Stories for 2026' from war to party politics to the economy to Hollywood.

"Activists Fight to Salvage the 'Sistine Chapel of New Deal Art': President Trump's plans to sell a federal building housing works of art about Social Security is an attempt to erase the country's history, a new petition argues. [...] But these are unprecedented times. After tearing down the East Wing to build a new ballroom without approvals from a national planning commission or Congress and affixing his name on the Kennedy Center, President Trump is seeking to liquidate four federal buildings by auctioning them to private developers."

RIP: "R.I.P. Bob Weir: Grateful Dead co-founder dead at 78." I can't even remember how many times I saw The Grateful Dead play, and I wasn't even trying—there was a time when they seemed to be everywhere. There are so many tributes to him on the web I don't feel like there's anything I can add.

RIP: "Scott Adams, Dilbert creator, dead at 68: Adams satirized the world of cubicle-based IT and engineering in Dilbert, which at its height appeared in 2,000 daily newspapers and was later anthologized in numerous books." It wasn't just engineers who'd suffered under bosses who were more of a hindrance than a help, so I used to get a good laugh out of Dilbert, but then he turned into a public right-wing crackpot and destroyed his cartooning career. A famously outspoken atheist, his final message said he'd done the reward-risk calculation when he realized death was impending and accepted Jesus into his heart.

RIP: Thelma Beall, co-founder of Ledo's Pizza, at 101. Ledo's wasn't exactly like a proper pizza, bur it was so delicious I didn't care. It's one of the things I miss most from back home.

What is past is prologue: Rick Perlstein, January 20, 2021, "This Is Us: Why the Trump Era Ended in Violence: The Capitol insurrection was born of a violent minoritarian tradition that is as American as apple pie—and it isn't done yet. [...] Any schoolchild can recite the story's opening chapter: The Southern states refused to sign on to a new constitution absent veto power over the rest of the states that did not organize their economies around the institution of chattel slavery. The veto took the form of the Senate, the Electoral College, and the 'three-fifths compromise,' inscribing reaction into the nation's charter at the level of the human soul. With that victory, something was institutionalized within the psyche of the South itself: the region's entitlement to an equal say, or even a dominant one, in the governing of the nation, no matter its share of the population. [...] When rule by right can be achieved through legal means, they're glad to rule that way; when politics fails, they pursue the same goal through violence. In the longue durée of American history, one can predict it with nearly Newtonian precision."

Sometimes I've wished for a real life Wallace & Gromit contraption to get me up in the morning, but I didn't realize it might actually work.

The Beatles, "Any Time At All"

Waiting for Twelfthnight

It has not been my merriest Christmas since I lost two important comrades on the day, so I'm going to ignore most of the other grim stuff for a bit and go straight to the traditional Christmas links while there are still a few days of Christmas left:
• Mark Evanier's wonderful Mel Tormé story, and the man himself in duet with Judy Garland.
• Joshua Held's Christmas card, with a little help from Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters.
• Brian Brink's tour-de-force performance of "The Carol of the Bells"
• "Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime."
• Ron Tiner's one-page cartoon version of A Christmas Carol

Mayor Mamdani's inauguration speech was pretty inspirational: "I stand alongside over one million New Yorkers who voted for this day nearly two months ago—and I stand just as resolutely alongside those who did not. I know there are some who view this administration with distrust or disdain, or who see politics as permanently broken. And while only action can change minds, I promise you this: if you are a New Yorker, I am your Mayor. Regardless of whether we agree, I will protect you, celebrate with you, mourn alongside you, and never, not for a second, hide from you. [...] In writing this address, I have been told that this is the occasion to reset expectations, that I should use this opportunity to encourage the people of New York to ask for little and expect even less. I will do no such thing. The only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations." He gave namechecks to many groups and neighborhoods and Fiorello and The New Deal, too. I think Harold Meyerson liked it.

There was internet buzz about a Substack piece claiming that white men were getting a particularly bad break in media these days, but Matt Bruenig and Carl Beijer find that the numbers don't back it up. But some people want to cling to it anyway and refuse to acknowledge that the real reason some guys are finding it hard to break into lefty journalism is that it's an incredibly tiny field and there just isn't much room for many people in it. And things keep getting harder by the day, for everyone.

I pulled down this map of the area I grew up in but I wanted a picture of an area I don't really know, West Virginia. And what set me on that path was that people always say the deep red states are the old slave sates, but West Virginia exists because they didn't want to join the rest of Virginia in fighting to defend slavery in the civil war. (Conversely, Maryland, the state where I was born and raised, is below the Mason-Dixon Line and was definitely a slave state but was nevertheless a Union state and is now deep blue.) And I really think people ought to take on board the fact that there was something else going on that took West Virginia down the deep red path.

The people at The American Prospect have collected their favorite stories of the year as the Best of 2025.

At the Guardian, "The photographs that defined 2025 – and the stories behind them".

World Nature Photography Awards

REST IN POWER: "Howie Klein, Visionary Music Executive & Anti-Censorship Activist, Dies at 77: Howie Klein, whose career took him from concert presenter and radio DJ to heading up prominent record labels and fighting censorship, died Dec. 24, 2025, after a long battle with cancer. His death was confirmed by numerous associates in social media posts; the place of death was not noted but Klein lived in Los Angeles for many years. He was 77" Long-time readers of The Sideshow will of course remember Howie's blog Down With Tyranny and his regular Thursday appearances on The Nicole Sandler Show, where he excoriated bad Democrats and the leadership's feckless performance on the party's — and the people's — behalf.

REST IN POWER: Nettie Pollard, British sexual freedom activist, early member of Gay Liberation Front, a founding member of Feminists Against Censorship, and former staff member of the National Council for Civil Liberties (Liberty) in its heyday, of cancer. She died peacefully on Christmas morning at 72.

"When Miscarriages Become Crimes: 412 women faced criminal charges for pregnancy outcomes. This is what fetal personhood looks like. [...] As it turned out, she was right to be fearful. The day after her miscarriage, Sasha continued to bleed and suffered from severe abdominal pain, so she returned to the hospital. There, her medical providers reported her to the state's Department of Social Services, whose staff alerted the county sheriff's office about a possible 'child abuse' case, as they complied with South Carolina's reporting mandates. According to the hospital, failure to report any suspicion of harm to a fetus, viable or not, can result in the provider being criminally liable. The sheriff's office began an investigation and eventually found the pregnancy remains in a trash receptacle near the motel. The Mayo Clinic estimates that 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. Nonetheless, Sasha was arrested and jailed for the improper disposal of hers. A local abortion fund that had heard about the arrest on the news provided Sasha's $10,000 bail."

"Power, Not Economic Theory, Created Neoliberalism: Neoliberalism didn't win an intellectual argument — it won power. Vivek Chibber unpacks how employers and political elites in the 1970s and '80s turned economic turmoil into an opportunity to reshape society on their terms."

"Trina Robbins: Cartoonist, Historian and Lady of the Canyon: A three part Oral History of Trina Robbins, interview conducted by Heidi MacDonald of The Beat. This interview was recorded May 10, 2023 at Robbins' home in San Francisco."

Tom Baker's Christmas message 2025

Stop all the firing and the fighting

Look, it's manifestly obvious that bombing small boats making local transit in the Caribbean is unjustifiable and no one should have to explain it, but here's a link just to be sure. We all know what it's really about, which is why Atros titled his post about the oil tanker seizure with, "Is It Filled With Drugs" But just in case you need it, here's every reason not to believe a word of it. "104 murders in 107 days The Trump administration's assault on alleged drug boats has killed about one person per day since early September. These are murders, and basic humanity demands that we not get complacent about them. One of the more surreal phenomena of the last year is the way in which our fleeting news cycle and plodding legal system combine to distract us from this administration's atrocities. On the legal side, the federal courts operate on a 'doctrine of regularity' that presumes the executive is always acting in good faith, even when it clearly isn't. The courts end up negotiating balances between constitutional rights and government power based on a reality that doesn't exist. Even when they do get it right, that can take weeks or months, leaving the administration to continue its harmful policies in the meantime. Meanwhile, on the news side, we have only a day or two to be outraged at the latest horrific thing before we're inured to it and analysts start breaking it down into its component parts. So instead of focusing on the insanity of snatching people off the street and sending them to an overseas torture prison, to give one example, discussion quickly turns to whether the prisoners can be brought back with a habeas petition or class action, which federal court has jurisdiction over them, how many of them really do have a violent criminal record, or the meaning of their tattoos. It isn't that these things aren't important. It's that the rapid zooming in to a granular level shifts our focus away from the shocking inhumanity of what was done to these men in our name." This is a long read, but if your right-wing friends and relatives are trying to get you to support a war on Venezuela, just send this to them.

"New Face of GOP Healthcare Fix Is Senator Linked to Largest Medicare Fraud Scheme in US History: US Sen. Rick Scott, former CEO of the company that was at the center of the biggest Medicare fraud scheme in American history, has emerged as the most vocal Republican proponent of healthcare reform, warning his fellow GOP lawmakers that continued refusal to engage with the issue risks a 'slow creep' toward single-payer healthcare. On Thursday, according to Axios, Scott (R-Fla.) is 'convening a group of House and Senate conservatives on Capitol Hill to pore over fresh polling to develop GOP alternatives to the Affordable Care Act.' Late last month, Scott unveiled his own proposal titled the More Affordable Care Act, which would keep ACA exchanges intact while creating 'Trump Health Freedom Accounts' that enrollees could use to pay for out-of-pocket costs. Scott's plan, as the health policy group KFF explained, would allow enhanced ACA tax credits to expire and let states replace subsidies in the original ACA with contributions to the newly created health savings accounts. 'Unlike ACA premium tax credits, which can only be used for ACA Marketplace plans, the accounts in the Scott proposal could be used for any type of health insurance plan, including short-term plans that can exclude people based on preexisting conditions,' KFF noted. 'States could also waive certain provisions of the ACA, including the requirement to cover certain benefits.' 'While ACA plans would still be required to cover people with preexisting conditions under the Scott proposal,' the group added, 'it is likely that the ACA marketplace would collapse in states that seek a waiver under his approach.' Last month, amid the longest government shutdown in US history, Scott leapt at the opportunity to champion possible Republican alternatives to the healthcare status quo, despite his ignominious record."

"Why Is Warner Bros. for Sale at All? Its product has never been more critically or financially successful. Why is it auctioning itself off? THE SIMPLEST ANSWER FOR WHY Warner Bros. wants a merger is to cover for other failed mergers. [...] But more than that, it presumes that Warner Bros., a historic American company that is doing about as well as it ever has, simply must sell itself. This 'there is no alternative' mindset, sold by Wall Street for 40 years, has warped our thinking. Especially if the cable channels are split off, Warner Bros. can be a profitable company, with no need to indulge its executives' dreams of a quick payout." And no matter who wins, this kind of consolidation will absolutely hurt not just the mythic "Hollywood" but all those creators our entertainment depends on. And even fewer oligarchs will have even more control of what stories will be told.

You know, another reason I don't want her winning the Maine primary is that I don't think the Democratic Party should have another high-profile official who votes like this. "Janet Mills' Veto Record: Corporations Over Workers, Renters, And Tribal Rights: The Democratic Party leaders' choice for a key 2026 Senate race has spent six years vetoing collective bargaining rights, wealth taxes, renter protections, and tribal sovereignty protections. [...] Since entering the race, Mills' campaign has highlighted her stances on a host of progressive causes, including her labor advocacy and her efforts to protect health care and abortion rights. But the governor's veto pen tells a different story, say her critics."

"'Feckless' Ken Martin Rebuked Over DNC Decision to Bury Autopsy of 2024 Election Disaster: [...] The New Republic's Greg Sargent argued in a Thursday piece that the decision by the DNC to bury the report 'should unleash harsh criticism and recriminations' because it 'could end up protecting key actors inside the party from accountability over the blown but winnable contest.' Sargent then pointed the finger at Future Forward, a super PAC that he said has earned a reputation for blowing large sums of money on ineffective television ads. [...] 'Ken Martin seems determined to become the Merrick Garland of DNC Chairs,' added Hauser, 'a feckless amiable sort unwilling to take on the powerful people who scream out for stringent accountability. Democrats ought to re-center their entire party around holding elites, be they from Big Tech, the Democratic Party establishment, Big Oil, or Trump's kleptocratic regime, accountable.'"

There's a UK magazine also called Prospect, but it claims to be unbiased, which I never believe. I don't want my news to say it's unbiased so much as I want it to be honest about what its biases actually are. In an article discussing charges of left-wing bias at the BBC, it would be nice to see some acknowledgement that anyone on the left will tell you that the BBC has become increasingly right-wing. But there is this, anyway: "A firestorm has ripped through the BBC—but no one will say why: Called before MPs, none of the characters who supposedly see so much wrong with the corporation would make a case for institutional bias. It may not have been a coup, but whoever leaked the so-called Prescott dossier on allegations of BBC bias to the Telegraph three weeks ago—'Not Me Guv!'—certainly pulled off a PR coup. You will remember the outpouring of seismic outrage earlier this month as the Telegraph skillfully dribbled out selected highlights from a report written by Michael Prescott, a former adviser to the BBC, suggesting that the national broadcaster was woke to its roots and more or less beyond salvation."

Jordan Baraab on "Washington Post's Road to Anti-Union Perdition: potential future housemates announced that the Post was banned in a group house I visited when I moved to Washington DC. The reason: its opposition to a staff organizing campaign. But since last year when the Jeff Bezos-owed Post refused to endorse a Presidential candidate, and then later announced that the paper's new north star would be 'free markets and personal liberties,' the Post has accelerated its journey down the anti-union rabbit hole — safety or human rights be damned."

RIP: Steve Cropper 1941-2025: Cropper, who has died aged 84, demonstrated in his early recordings as a member of the instrumental quartet Booker T and the MGs – notably their first hit, "Green Onions" – and in his backing work with singers such as Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett that a single chord, struck with exquisite timing, could say as much as the longest, loudest solo. He also enjoyed success as a songwriter, co-writing "In the Midnight Hour" for Pickett, Knock on Wood for Eddie Floyd, and, most significantly, "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay", a reflective ballad recorded a few days before Redding died in a plane crash in December 1967. Cropper and Redding had worked together on the song, whose gentle introspection seemed to suggest a new artistic direction for the singer. Released within a month of Redding's death, it went straight to the top of the charts." And just for fun, a clip from The Blues Brothers.

RIP: "Arthur D. Hlavaty (1942-2025). Twelve-time Best Fan Writer Hugo nominee Arthur D. Hlavaty died December 9. He is survived by his spouses Bernadette Bosky and Kevin Maroney. Bosky announced his passing with full medical details in a public Facebook post. The specific cause of death is not known, other than it must have had 'much to do with his long-time, severe COPD.' The Fancyclopedia has a long list of his apazines and other publications. Some of his best-known personalzines were: Derogatory Reference [1990-], The Diagonal Relationship [1977-82], The Dillinger Relic [1980s]" I was delighted when I first received an issue of The Diagonal Relationship and looked forward to meeting him. For a long time such encounters at conventions were normal occurrences, before I moved across the pond. He's still been a presence on Facebook, but his health has been a rollercoaster in this last year. He will very much be missed.

RIP: "John Varley (1947-2025) Acclaimed sff writer John Varley died December 10 'at his home in Beaverton, Oregon, with his sisters Kerry and Francine and his brother-in-law Jerry by his side. He had been suffering from COPD and complications of diabetes, and had been failing badly, with several stays in the hospital, over the past few weeks'. [...] Varley was a 15-time Hugo finalist, winning for his novella 'Persistence of Vision' (1979; also a Nebula winner), short story 'The Pusher' (1982), and 'Press Enter[]' (1985, and another Nebula winner). He has also won multiple Locus Awards and Seiun Awards. He was presented the Robert A. Heinlein Award by the Heinlein Society in 2009 for hard SF inspiring space exploration. His 1977 short story 'Air Raid' was expanded into the 1983 novel Millennium, which he also adapted for the 1989 movie of the same name." I can't tell you how much we loved those early short stories of his. A world where you could pop down to the local shop to get a new lung installed in minutes, where everyone tried a sex change now and then and you could even get alterations for living in otherwise hostile environments. He was a great guy and very forthcoming about what he was doing. Chip Delany once asked me to introduce them and he happened to be across the room chatting with Stephen Donaldson at the time, so I dragged him over and we were instantly dwarfed between those two redwoods.

RIP: Rob Reiner (1947-2025), actor and director; and Michelle Singer Reiner (1967-2025), photographer and producer; stabbed to death, apparently by their son. We first met Rob as the "Meathead" son-in-law of Archie Bunker on All in the Family but soon came to know him as the director of stellar films that made us feel and laugh. It's not an accident that comedy-writer Carl Reiner's son had the same first name that Carl had given the character he originally wrote for himself, comedy-writer Rob Petrie, who was ultimately played by the now 100-year-old Dick Van Dyke. Michelle Singer met her husband when he was making When Harry Met Sally, which changed the ending of the film, and she went on to produce movies he directed. The link is to the timeline we have so far of the discovery of their deaths and the police investigation (and the shocking insistence of the president of the United States that this, too, is all about him).

"Pepsi and Walmart's Monopolization Machine Revealed: Today on TAP: An unsealed lawsuit that Trump's FTC tried to bury puts the pricing schemes of business on full display. Before Lina Khan exited the Federal Trade Commission, the agency sued Pepsi for violating the Robinson-Patman Act, which bars suppliers from price discrimination, i.e., charging retailers different wholesale prices for their goods. That was about the extent of what we knew: The lawsuit was heavily redacted, as is customary in government cases against business. Typically, the two sides will argue about what the public can see and what constitutes proprietary business information, and a judge decides what to release. In this case, Khan's replacement at the FTC, Andrew Ferguson, sided with Pepsi lobbyists and dropped the case right before it could be unsealed. Ferguson and his Republican colleagues then demeaned Khan's efforts, claiming that the lawsuit was 'purely political' with 'no evidence,' and an 'insult to the Commission's credibility.' This was easy to say when the case that could serve as a rebuttal was primarily blacked-out lines on a page. If it ever became public, the name-calling might look foolish. Funny story: The Institute for Local Self-Reliance just got the case unsealed. We now know what Khan had on Pepsi. And yes, Andrew Ferguson looks foolish. Here is the lawsuit, now with minimal redactions. It shows that Pepsi was diligently working to create a 'price gap' between retail giant Walmart and its competitors. Robinson-Patman Act opponents often claim that enforcing the law simply denies consumers discounts at big-box, low-cost retailers. But the lawsuit shows how this went in both directions.

Oh, look, you can make your complaints about Media Bias to the White House! I don't suppose they'd be interested in the fact that The Seven Richest Billionaires Are All Media Barons.

"The Authoritarian Stack: How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic America — And Why Europe Is Next In late July 2025, deep within the Pentagon's bureaucratic machinery, the U.S. Army quietly signed away a piece of its sovereignty. A ten-billion-dollar contract with Palantir Technologies—one of the largest in the Department of Defense's history—was framed as a move toward 'efficiency.' It consolidated seventy-five procurement agreements into a single contract." All of the worst people in the world belong to this club that you're not in.

Max Sawicky reckons "U.S. Democratic Socialism Has A Future: I wouldn't have thought so, but now I think I can see a path. The recent electoral successes are attracting thousands of supporters to Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) to join its most famous member, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. I'm told just the New York City chapter is up to 13,000 members."

Adam Bonic says, "Money Doesn't Buy Elections. It Does Something Worse: Campaign ads barely move the needle. The real influence is hiding in plain sight. For fifteen years, I've tracked the flow of political money in America—who gives, who gets, and what it buys. After all that, I can say this with confidence: the narrative most Americans hear about money in politics largely misses the real story. The real story isn't about the ads you see but the power you don't. It's about the candidates who never run, the policies that never get debated, and the slow, systemic drift of our democracy away from the will of the majority. We tend to imagine corruption as a transaction: money buying votes, quid pro quos in backrooms. But money's real power is quieter and deeper. It decides which candidates get to run, which policies are thinkable, and whose voices get amplified or ignored. It has rewritten the rules of self-government—slowly, invisibly, and almost entirely within the law."

I can't quite work out the trajectory of these people unless it's just the money. Suddenly people who are doing just fine create a victimology of themselves and go all-out on being monsters. How does it happen? "The Inconvenient Scholarship of Kevin Roberts: Samuel G. Freedman traces the long and contradictory intellectual journey of the man behind Project 2025. IN THE WANING DAYS of 2023, several months before Project 2025 catapulted Kevin Roberts into political infamy, the Heritage Foundation president was chatting on his podcast with a similarly polarizing figure, psychologist Jordan Peterson. At Peterson's prompting, Roberts took on the subject of what 'so-called progressivists' have done to higher education. Without naming the institution or the exact years, Roberts alluded to New Mexico State University, where he had been an assistant professor from 2003 through 2005. He described a symposium on Ronald Reagan in which he and a fellow conservative asked to be included on the panel to 'offer a balanced opinion.' But rather than include the dissidents, Roberts continued, the other members of the history department, all 'big libs,' canceled the conference altogether. 'I think they were fearful of the facts that we would bring to the table,' Roberts told Peterson. 'And so, […] if that anecdote's helpful, it's helpful in this way: that is just emblematic of everything that's wrong with [the] university.' In the same portion of the podcast, Roberts provided another account of his persecution. This anecdote referred to his scholarly expertise in Black enslavement, which had been the central subject of both his master's degree at Virginia Tech University and his doctorate at the University of Texas's flagship campus in Austin. 'I'm decidedly a middle-aged bald white guy,' Roberts said, 'which means that I could no longer, according to the powers that be in academia, be a specialist or an expert in African American history.' On one level, the stories that Roberts shared in the podcast were entirely predictable examples of a victimization narrative favored by certain conservatives. His depiction of universities so dominated by left-wing ideologues that they cannot bear even one opposing voice on the faculty, his portrayal of a hiring and promotion process deformed by racial bias against white males—these are assertions entirely consistent with Project 2025." But it doesn't seem to have happened like that at all.

He promised that he'd just be calling balls and strikes, but nobody believes that anymore. "This Is All John Roberts' Fault: Trump owes his corrupt and abusive reign to one man. [...] The Roberts court has spent Trump's second term not applying the law so much as clearing it out of his way. In a matter of months, the court's 6–3 GOP-aligned majority has permitted a long list of lawless actions, including firing independent agency commissioners, using racial profiling in immigration sweeps, disappearing immigrants to authoritarian and war-torn nations, and defying Congress' power of the purse. But the court's acquiescence to an antidemocratic America didn't start in 2025. Roberts has been embedding white-dominant authoritarianism into the country's source code for two decades. It's impossible to imagine today's crisis without the Roberts court having first undermined the foundations of our democracy."

"Extrajudicial Killings From Barack Obama to Donald Trump: If Obama could kill a 16-year-old American boy without accountability, why wouldn't Trump believe he has the same power to snuff out the lives of civilians with no due process?"

"Paul McCartney's 6 best guitar solos with The Beatles: Though he was technically their bassist, Paul McCartney was responsible for many fine six-string moments in The Beatles catalog"

Tom Robinson, "Truce"

Throw cares away

It's that time of year again! And nothing starts the season off like "The Carol of the Bells", so here's a nice flash-mob version from the streets of Paris to get into the spirit. I wish you warmth and light and fellowship to help you face the cold and dark.

"86 Democrats Join GOP in Voting for ‘Very, Very Stupid’ Resolution Condemning Socialism: 'House Minority Leader Jeffries voting with the GOP in favor of this resolution is showing his ultrawealthy donors exactly who he fights for,' said one progressive leader. 'It’s not the people.' [...] 'A bunch of people with taxpayer-funded salaries, doing a job that is impossible to outsource to the private sector, are condemning the evils of socialism,' said Casten. 'Either they are stupid, or that they think you are.' 'We have a mixed economy,' he added. 'We benefit from free markets and competition in lots of sectors, and also have a judicial system, border security, national defense, economic security for seniors and those who can’t work that is socially funded. That’s a good thing! Condemning one half of that equation has no more logic—and is no more deserving of finite House floor time—than condemning defensive linemen because they never score touchdowns.'"

"Sarah Hurwitz Profanes the Holocaust: Holocaust education has worked too well for the Obama speechwriter, since when she rationalizes Israel's genocide, "I sound obscene." Maybe sit with that, Sarah [...] What Hurwitz objects to is that Holocaust education works. She is not upset that TikTok is driving misperceptions of the genocide. She is upset that the various social media vectors through which people hear directly from Palestinians drive accurate perceptions of the genocide. She is upset that those perceptions are unavoidable because of Holocaust education. Fearful of activating antisemitism, she doesn't want Israelis, or any Jews, to be thought of as rapacious murderers. I sympathize. But the only way that will happen is for Israel, whose flag displays the Star of David, to stop murdering Palestinians (and Lebanese, and Syrians, and Iranians, and Yemenis, and and and), and for Jewish institutions beyond Israel to stop rationalizing it. Hurwitz is caught in the pincer of that recognition on one side and her Zionism on the other. For her, the lesson of the Holocaust is: Never again to us. And it's darker than I can bear for someone who sat upon the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council to say these things. We can safely assume that Hurwitz is not delivering off-the-cuff remarks. She's thought about this. She has chosen the abyss. She is far from the only one."

"Former Black Panther leader H. Rap Brown dies in prison hospital at 82: BUTNER, N.C. (AP) — H. Rap Brown, one of the most vocal leaders of the Black Power movement, has died in a prison hospital while serving a life sentence for the killing of a Georgia sheriff’s deputy. He was 82. Brown — who later in life changed his name to Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin — died Sunday at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, his widow, Karima Al-Amin, said Monday." To this day, it is unclear whether he was framed, but it's not unbelievable.

I know I've talked before about how the poverty line is too low. "How a Broken Benchmark Quietly Broke America: [...] So when I say the real poverty line is $140,000, I’m being conservative. I’m using optimistic, national-average housing assumptions. If we plug in the actual cost of living in the zip codes where the jobs are—where rent is $2,700, not $1,900—the threshold pushes past $160,000."

Chris Hedges at Truthdig, "The Creed of Objectivity Killed the News: Don't blame the Internet. The bloodless and soulless journalism of the traditional media left newspapers on the wrong side of the growing class divide and their readers. [...] 'The very notion that on any given story all you have to do is report what both sides say and you’ve done a fine job of objective journalism debilitates the press,' the late columnist Molly Ivins once wrote. 'There is no such thing as objectivity, and the truth, that slippery little bugger, has the oddest habit of being way to hell off on one side or the other: it seldom nestles neatly halfway between any two opposing points of view. The smug complacency of much of the press — I have heard many an editor say, ‘Well, we’re being attacked by both sides so we must be right’ — stems from the curious notion that if you get a quote from both sides, preferably in an official position, you’ve done the job. In the first place, most stories aren’t two-sided, they’re 17-sided at least. In the second place, it’s of no help to either the readers or the truth to quote one side saying, ‘Cat,’ and the other side saying ‘Dog,’ while the truth is there’s an elephant crashing around out there in the bushes.'"

Everybody's crying justice, just as long as it's business first

Here's a picture of my Second Life avatar in a sexy gown, just to spice things up.

I hope no one's forgotten that Common Dreams is about as close as you can get to reading something that feels like a sane newspaper. No deep dives or heavy think pieces, but just plain major news stories delivered as if human life and democracy might actually matter. The algorithms are back-paging them and they are treated as either wildly left-wing or else non-existent by most media mouthpieces, so they don't get the traffic they used to, but if you miss the days when you could pick up what you once believed was a reliable newspaper from your front step and have a handle on what's going on without having to get too deep into the weeds (and maybe see which issues you'd like to look up for more in-depth coverage), they're really a good, non-toxic source. And they could use your support, especially now. Here's a look at today's top headlines:
• "'Contrary to Law': Judge Orders Halt to Trump's DC Military Takeover: 'Normalizing the use of military troops for domestic law enforcement sets a dangerous precedent,' said DC's attorney general. 'This federal overreach is not normal or legal.'"
• "Trump Ripped Over 'Reckless' Plan to Drill for Oil Off California, Florida: 'Donald Trump and Doug Burgum are once again trying to sell out our coastal communities and our public waters in favor of corporate polluters' bottom line.'"
• "Sanders Denounces Trump-GOP Healthcare Proposal as 'Absurd'—and Deadly: 'Trump's approach would lead to more medical bankruptcies, more unaffordable care, and more Americans dying unnecessarily in the richest nation on Earth.'"
• "'Potent Metaphor': Fire Forces Evacuation of UN Climate Conference: 'Between the booths flooding and a fire breaking out in the Blue Zone, feels like maybe someone is trying to tell us something at COP30,' said one journalist."
• "Top Military Lawyer's Objection to Trump Boat Bombings Off Venezuela Were Sidelined: Report: 'There is no world where this is legal,' a current judge advocate general said."
• "'Maybe It's Time to Pick a Fucking Side,' Says Murphy After Trump Calls for Execution of Lawmakers: 'Clearly, Trump has learned something from his good friend MBS: If you don't like what your political opponents say, execute them,' said Sen. Bernie Sanders. 'Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, that's not what we do in America.'"
• "Executive Order Attacking State AI Laws 'Looks a Lot Like' Industry Dictating Trump's Policies: 'Big Tech companies have spent the past year cozying up to Trump,' said one critic, 'and this is their reward. It's a fabulous return on a very modest investment—at the expense of all Americans.'"
• "'Time for Them to Leave': Charlotte Communities Rise Up Against ICE Invasion: 'I want to keep my neighbors protected because they deserve protection and they deserve to live in a world where they're not scared,' said one woman patrolling the streets of Charlotte with a whistle."

Paul Krugman is Talking With Margaret Sullivan about the current state of the media. Things don't look good. Which is another reason to remember Common Dreams when you're in a gift-giving mood.

Also Krugman, "The Plutocrats Who Cried 'Commie' [...] Seriously, the reaction of plutocrats to the Mamdani campaign — histrionic freakout before the election, with promises to flee the city if he won, followed by a big 'never mind' when he did — can teach us a couple of things. First, ignore billionaires when they threaten to take their marbles and go home. The big money always responds to threats of tax hikes, or even mere verbal criticism, by threatening to go all Ayn Rand and move to Galt's Gulch. In reality, they won't even move to Florida."

"Feds Tell Faith Leaders 'No More Prayer' Outside Broadview Facility: In a possible violation of the First Amendment, federal officials instructed demonstrators to stop holding religious gatherings outside the immigration processing facility in suburban Broadview after faith leaders were denied entry to the building for the third time on Friday." This is either off-brand or on-brand, depending on what you think their brand is.

"How Many People Were Charged After DHS Claimed Chicago Building Was Filled With 'Terrorists'? Zero.: Late at night on September 30, over 300 federal agents stormed an apartment building in one of Chicago's lowest-income neighborhoods. After descending from Black Hawk helicopters, they broke down residents' doors, destroyed furniture and belongings, deployed flash-bang grenades, and dragged sleeping people—some naked—out into the cold evening. Dozens of people, including children and American citizens, were held in zip ties and detained for hours. As part of the highly publicized raid at the South Shore complex, which was filmed and edited into a miniature action film by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), at least 37 Venezuelan residents of the apartment complex were taken into custody. [...] The report found that contrary to the government's claims of their rampant criminality, federal prosecutors have not filed criminal charges against a single person who was arrested. They have also not provided any evidence that two of the men arrested were part of the Tren de Aragua gang."

Epstein had connections everywhere, even to Iran-Contra. Murtaza Hussain has been going through the evidence and has unearthed a number of interesting stories for Drop Site News:
• "Jeffrey Epstein Helped Israel Sell a Surveillance State to Côte d'Ivoire"
• "Jeffrey Epstein and the Mossad: How The Sex-Trafficker Helped Israel Build a Backchannel to Russia Amid Syrian Civil War"
• "Jeffrey Epstein Helped Broker Israeli Security Agreement With Mongolia"
• "Israeli Spy Stayed for Weeks at a Time With Jeffrey Epstein in Manhattan"

Weird story hour: "Starmer's backers never meant him to be prime minister – his leadership was doomed from the start: His alliance with the party's anti-Corbyn faction was a shotgun marriage that totally lacked vision. Now Labour is paying the price. Wes Streeting was always meant to be their Labour prime minister. The plan, hatched by a tiny clique of rightwing faction fighters, was this: find a candidate on whom they could fake a continuation Corbynism project to win the leadership. Then kick the ladder away from the people who backed them and the promises they made. At the next general election, given the scale of the Tory majority after 2019, get Labour back in the ring with more MPs and then hand over to Streeting. The real grownups would then be in charge and the subsequent election would be secured. But no one reckoned with Covid, Tory turmoil and the collapse of the SNP. Suddenly Keir Starmer wasn't going to just lead Labour to a better defeat and a springboard for victory next time. Against the odds, he was going to win. Just as Jeremy Corbyn was Labour's accidental leader in 2015, Starmer was the party's accidental prime minister in 2024. It was not a marriage made in heaven. Starmer and the Blairites made awkward bedfellows. Under their breath, the Blairites despised Starmer because he had aligned himself with the Corbyn project. While Streeting and Rachel Reeves stayed firmly on the outside, right up until the protracted Brexit negotiations that began in 2018, Starmer had remained loyal to the party leader, whom the Blairites loathed even more than him. But they needed Starmer as the only person who could break the grip of Corbynism precisely because he had promoted it. What the membership wanted was a professional version of Jeremy Corbyn. Starmer was the man. But it was only meant to be a temporary deal. [...] It was not a marriage made in heaven. Starmer and the Blairites made awkward bedfellows. Under their breath, the Blairites despised Starmer because he had aligned himself with the Corbyn project. While Streeting and Rachel Reeves stayed firmly on the outside, right up until the protracted Brexit negotiations that began in 2018, Starmer had remained loyal to the party leader, whom the Blairites loathed even more than him. But they needed Starmer as the only person who could break the grip of Corbynism precisely because he had promoted it. What the membership wanted was a professional version of Jeremy Corbyn. Starmer was the man. But it was only meant to be a temporary deal."

And speaking of Starmer, here's a book review of The Fraud: "How Keir Starmer conned the British electorate [...] As with 'Get In', the central focus is on Morgan McSweeney, protégé of the disgraced Peter Mandelson and now Starmer's chief of staff. Before 2020 McSweeney was head of Labour Together, a think tank which posed as an innocent forum for debate while working assiduously behind the scenes to undermine Corbyn and replace him as leader with Starmer. It did so using hundreds of thousands of pounds in undeclared donations from hedge fund managers and supporters of Israel. The Electoral Commission fined Labour Together just £14,250, apparently accepting the omission was accidental. Holden argues convincingly that this is unlikely. The failure to declare funding enabled Labour Together to fly beneath the radar as it conducted polling and established the astroturf organisations that were used to destroy Corbyn. The story of how Labour Together and others encouraged and covertly exploited what, for many, was genuine confusion between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is now painfully familiar to those who were victims of it. [...] What emerges as particularly distasteful is the frequency with which Jews were targets. The Labour Files exposed Euan Philipps, head of media at Labour Against Antisemitism, who adopted the Jewish sounding name David Gordstein to file antisemitism complaints to the Labour Party. The activities of this faux Jewish activist, revealed by Holden for the first time, encapsulate the surreal absurdity of the antisemitism hysteria. In 2019 the celebrated London School of Economics professor David Graeber wrote an article complaining non-Jews were spreading 'rancour, panic and resentment' in the Jewish community with unfounded allegations of antisemitism. The actor Miriam Margolyes shared this on her Facebook page. Unlike Philipps/Gordstein both Margolyes and Graeber are Jewish. Holden reveals that, with no apparent sense of irony, 'David Gordstein' immediately fired off a complaint to the Labour Party accusing Margolyes of antisemitism. On this occasion no action was taken. Other targets were not so fortunate."

Bonnie Raitt with Mose Allison's "Everybody's Cryin' Mercy"