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"

Declinin' numbers at an even rate

"Au Reveil" by Clara Bergel is from the Life Everyday collection.

Most of the links below were collected before Tuesday when there was "A Democratic Sweep: Riding on the public's pervasive economic anxiety and its substantial but not quite so widespread fury and fear of Trump's trashing of American democracy, the Democrats won big from coast to coast yesterday." Dems won back some of the black and Latino votes they'd been bleeding, flipped seats even in Tennessee, and Mamdani won New York City's mayoral race with over 50% of the vote despite having the Democratic vote split by one of the city's highest-profile names. Billionaires there are having a meltdown in public, but no one's worried about any of them running off to live in some red state, despite their threats to do so. (They always threaten it, and they never do it.) Mario Cuomo himself, who didn't live in NYC to begin with, claimed he'd run away to Florida if Mamdani won, and has been given many offers to help him pack. The Onion Fact-Checking Claims About Zohran Mamdani here.

It seems clear that Schumer understood that they couldn't afford to cave until after the election. Democrats fighting against Republicans looks good to voters; Democrats caving does not. So they held off until after the elections — and then arranged to cave. It seems vital to kick him out of the leadership as soon as possible, because he's not up for re-election until 2028. "'Next Step Is Primaries': Calls for Schumer Ouster After Leading Shutdown Surrender: 'Until we elect Democrats that understand that fighting is what we need to do,' US Senate primary candidate Graham Platner said, 'we're going to find ourselves in this position over and over and over again.' One public opinion researcher said Sunday that there may be one positive aspect of the capitulation of eight Senate Democratic Caucus members—none of whom will face voters in a reelection campaign next year—who joined Republicans in voting to end the government shutdown without securing concessions on the central issue of healthcare. 'The only silver lining about this completely pointless, cowardly, and tone-deaf cave is that it'll accelerate the complete overhaul of the leadership—and god willing, direction—of the Democratic Party,' said Adam Carlson of Zenith Research."

I don't know if this link will work, but Charlie Savage's important piece is worth reading. "The Peril of a White House That Flaunts Its Indifference to the Law: The White House has made no legal argument explaining its bald claim that the president has wartime power to summarily kill people suspected of smuggling drugs. Since he returned to office nine months ago, President Trump has sought to expand executive power across numerous fronts. But his claim that he can lawfully order the military to summarily kill people accused of smuggling drugs on boats off the coast of South America stands apart. A broad range of specialists in laws governing the use of lethal force have called Mr. Trump's orders to the military patently illegal. They say the premeditated extrajudicial killings have been murders — regardless of whether the 43 people blown apart, burned alive or drowned in 10 strikes so far were indeed running drugs. The administration insists that the killings are lawful, invoking legal terms like 'self-defense' and 'armed conflict.' But it has offered no legal argument explaining how to bridge the conceptual gap between drug trafficking and associated crimes, as serious as they are, and the kind of armed attack to which those terms can legitimately apply. The irreversible gravity of killing, coupled with the lack of a substantive legal justification, is bringing into sharper view a structural weakness of law as a check on the American presidency."

In Maine, Graham Platner surprised a lot of people by getting some good poll numbers against Schumer's recruit for the primary, sitting governor Janet Mills, who is running to be the oldest freshman US Senator ever elected. So the Democratic establishment released some oppo research in an attempt to get Platner "cancelled". It doesn't seem to be working. "Voters Weigh In: From Waterville to Ogunquit, Mainers Are Standing By Graham Platner: A new survey finds the anti-genocide Platner with a blistering lead over sitting Gov. Janet Mills. Our correspondent finds the energy on the ground matches the numbers in the spreadsheet. [...] Platner opened his address by discussing the skull tattoo. Just a day earlier, Platner sent the internet into a frenzy over a skull tattoo revealed to be inked on his chest resembling Nazi iconography. He claimed ignorance of the tattoo's links but apologized and fully covered the tattoo with Celtic knots and dogs. 'I got it covered because I do not want something on my body that represents in any way the antithesis of my politics,' Platner said. 'I grew up as a little punk rock kid listening to Dead Kennedys and Dropkick Murphys. So, I would say hating and fighting Nazis has been a big part of how I see myself. My continued disgust of racism, anti-semitism and Nazism has been a constant throughout my life. And still today anchors much of my politics.'" And I would say it's stretching it to say that some kid would know that a skull & crossbones tattoo was necessarily a Nazi symbol. The only reasons anyone does know it is because they were looking for a way to make that association. (And this tattoo was revealed at a Jewish wedding where nobody noticed it was a "Nazi symbol". If they didn't notice, why should he?)

Anyway, Branko Marcetic says, "You're Being Lied to About Graham Platner: We read Graham Platner's whole Reddit archive. The vilification of the Maine candidate for Senate doesn't square with what he actually wrote in his posts."

Meanwhile, Andrew Cuomo is right at home on Fox pretending that Mamdani is pushing for Sharia Law, that London's mayor has got all the women wearing Burqas and that electing Mamdani will do the same to New York — you know, a bunch of bigotry. No More Mister Nice Blog reports.

"Trump Is Illegally Withholding Food From Needy Families: The White House claims it cannot fund food stamp benefits for November. But the legal authority to tap a contingency fund is quite clear. The 42 million Americans who rely on nutrition assistance are in danger of going without benefits to help them afford food if the government shutdown drags on after November 1. But that's not because the government lacks the money to fund benefits. It's because the Trump administration is flouting the law by refusing to release the funds."

"Corporate Democrats Falsely Claim Medicare for All Is 'Unpopular': This and other idiocy of the elites shows why the Democratic Establishment hasn't learned a damn thing from losing to Trump—not once, but twice. This week began with the release of a report titled 'Deciding to Win,' claiming to light the way 'toward a common sense renewal of the Democratic Party.' But the first mention of healthcare is so far from reality that the authors might have more accurately titled their report 'Deciding to Lie.' The report declares that Medicare for All is in the category of 'unpopular economic policies.' The claim is false. But it's in sync with the corporate sensibilities and wishful thinking of party operatives like James Carville, whose praise of the document appears on its first page."

The New York Times published another stupid "centrist" editorial, and McSweeny's couldn't resist. "The Partisans Are Wrong: Holding No Sincere Beliefs Is the Way to Win: American politics today can seem to be dominated by extremes. President Trump is carrying out far-right policies rooted in white supremacy and open brutality, while some of the country's highest-profile Democrats identify as democratic socialists—two exactly equal sides of the same coin. To those of you who are not writing this editorial, moderation probably feels a little outdated. It is not. So stop thinking that. Candidates who don't exhibit or reflect real beliefs, from both parties, continue to fare better in most elections than those farther to the right or left. This pattern may be the strongest one in electoral politics today, but it is one that many partisans try to obscure and many voters do not fully grasp. From our vantage point as a fundamentally innumerate body of milquetoast thinkers who are wrong about everything, holding fewer sincere beliefs is the key to electoral success."

"China found in U.S. archives an energy source that could power its future for 20,000 years - and made it work: I'm not exaggerating. In the 1960s the U.S. - specifically Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee - invented a revolutionary type of nuclear reactor that could run on thorium instead of uranium (much more abundant and cheaper), with no meltdown risk, generating 50x less waste, and requiring no water. Then, due to messy politics, they killed the program in 1969 and fired the visionary behind it. Afterwards the declassified blueprints for the project sat forgotten in archives for decades. That is until Chinese scientists found them and decided in 2011 to run an experimental project in the Gansu desert to see if they could make it work. A few days ago, after 14 years of work, they finally did."

"Ex-DOJ employee who hurled sandwich at federal agent learns fate after jury verdict" — The Sandwich Man not guilty of assault.

"Baltimore-born Pelosi won't seek reelection, ending a bicoastal political dynasty" — At last!

REST IN POWER: The legendary civil rights lawyer "Guy Saperstein (June 20, 1943 - October 28, 2025) died peacefully in his sleep in Seattle, Washington surrounded by his loving family. He was a loving and faithful husband to Jeanine, and caring father of two sons, Leon and Jacobus, and one daughter, Unmi. He will be missed by many. A true freedom fighter who lived life unabashedly to its fullest. He had a remarkable career as a civil rights attorney and mentored many while not only teaching us, but showing us how to be daring, be generous with others, appreciate nature, love music and dance, enjoy time with family, and that freedom and equality must be fought for and earned and should never be taken for granted. If you havent read one of his 3 award winning books, please do so (they are available on Amazon). If you are interested, there will be one Memorial Celebration in the Bay Area in the spring and one in Paris in the summer of 2026, so stay tuned." I'm not sure how, but he found me on the internet and kinship was instant. A lot of us are going to miss him.

RIP: "Actor June Lockhart of Lost in Space and Lassie fame dies aged 100: She achieved particular fame for her leading role on Lassie beginning in 1958. From 1965 to 1968, she portrayed the matriarch of a family of space explorers in Lost in Space. Decades later, in 2021, she made a voice cameo in Netflix's reboot of the same series." Yes, she was one of our moms, or two of them, depending on how old you were. I'm old enough to still be impressed by how well she understood Lassie's warnings.

ROT IN PERDITION: "Dick Cheney, one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents, dies at 84" — Too little, too late. He was a terrible man who did enormous damage and was basically like Trump, but more effective at it, and if I get started I will probably collapse in a bonfire of apoplexy so I'll leave that to others.

"Centrist Democrats Have Already Forgotten About Kamala Harris: Pivoting to the right didn't work in 2024. It won't work now. [...] Democrats' 1992 win is often attributed to Bill Clinton's embrace of 'Third Way' neoliberal politics, seasoning conservative economic policy with a pinch of putative social liberalism. However, as his secretary of labor (Robert Reich) recently observed, the 1992 campaign was far more heterogeneous than that telling lets on. In line with his iconic 'it's the economy, stupid' declaration, Clinton ran on significant fiscal stimulus, raising taxes on the wealthy, and public health care. Crediting moderation for the 1992 win misstates the order of events; tacking to the right followed winning the election. Moreover, Clinton's 'New Democrats' did worse in congressional elections following the party's embrace of Third Way politics over the course of early 1993, when advisors like Robert Rubin successfully pushed for abandoning more populist campaign promises in favor of austerity. From 1930 to 1994, Democrats controlled the House of Representatives for all but four years, or about 94 percent of the time. From 1994 to the present, the party has held a House majority only 27 percent of the time—eight years total. Democratic dominance in the Senate in the 20th century was less pronounced, with Republican majorities for 12 years between 1930 and 1994. Since 1994, Democrats have held Senate majorities for 12 years. That's a drop from controlling the upper chamber 81 percent of the time to just 40 percent." And Harris was winning with her populist messaging in the early days of her campaign, but when billionaires attacked her for it, she instantly dropped it and ran to the right and she sank like a stone. But it hasn't stopped the "moderates" from pushing a swing to the right.

Margaret Sullivan, the much-missed "Public Editor" of The New York Times, has a Substack, American Crisis, where she recently noted that The media is largely ignoring the trauma of millions. Here's why.: I don't know about you but I'd be happy never to read another story or see another TV segment exploring the deeper feelings of Trump followers. These are easy to find, and have been for many years. Do Trump voters still like Trump? (Yes.) Why do they like Trump? (Because, don't you know, he's a businessman at heart.) Would they vote for a Democrat? (When hell freezes over.) Yes, we know. But there are a lot of people in this country — most of the 75 million who voted for Kamala Harris last year and a whole lot of others — who are disgusted, appalled and frightened by the first nine months of Trump's second administration. By the way he's turned the Justice Department into his vendetta machine, by ICE's vicious treatment of immigrants and journalists, by his damaging and whimsical decisions about tariffs and much more. But do we hear much about those regular citizens who disagree? I read and watch and listen widely, and I sure don't. Not in mainstream media, at any rate." She wrote that just before the No Kings protest weekend after noting that the only mentions of it in the media quoted Republicans on their opinions of it.

I've mostly stayed away from this story, but it makes some interesting background. "Jeffrey Epstein and the Mossad: How The Sex-Trafficker Helped Israel Build a Backchannel to Russia Amid Syrian Civil War: Hacked emails show how Jeffrey Epstein and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak tried to engineer a Russian-led solution to remove Bashar al-Assad."

"What the Fascist Tech Bros Get Wrong About Prometheus: Those crypto boys are at it again, this time proposing a giant, 450-foot-tall statue on of San Francisco Bay's Alcatraz Island, according to local outlet KRON4. The statue would be of Prometheus, which the promoters call 'the symbol of bold transgression in service of human advancement,' according to the promotional website, who 'imbued Man with ingeniousness, indefatigable optimism and grit in service of great vision' and 'represents the spirit of innovation and courage for the purpose of building.'"

A friend of mine pointed me to a clip of the closing credits for The Other Guys and, knowing nothing about it, I said, "I have to see this movie!" Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson are the supercops, but our heroes, such as they are, are the other guys. Adam McKay was really angry when he made this hilarious flick. No one can blame him.

The Beach Boys, "Shut Down"

I'm just a wandering on the face of this earth

Very seasonal photo of a tree near Glastonbury Tor by Mike Jeffries.

"Trump's Blueprint to Crush the Left Draws from Decades of Counterterrorism Policy: Trump's NSPM-7 is a pivotal policy endangering free expression in the United States. [...] It was in this atmosphere that the Trump White House issued two pivotal policies for the future of free expression in the United States. On the evening of September 22, Trump signed an executive order designating 'Antifa' as a 'domestic terrorist organization.' Antifa is short for 'anti-fascist.' It refers to an ideology. Although there may be groups that would classify their beliefs as 'anti-fascist,' there is no singular or central 'Antifa' organization. Nevertheless, on some parts of the right, the mythical Antifa has started to play the role of boogeyman formerly reserved for the Communist Party. Whereas Communists were argued to be the hidden driving force behind everything from Civil Rights to peace activism, the nonexistent Antifa is now fingered as the secret, sinister mover of domestic protest—and the legally dubious move of declaring Antifa a domestic terrorist organization has become a major rallying point on the right."

The suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, and his restoration, was a great opportunity for Matt Stoller to talk about media monopolization and what to do about it, so he had a good natter with David Dayen on the Prospect Weekly Roundup, where they discussed his article at Big, "On Jimmy Kimmel: It's Time to Destroy the Censorship Machine and Repeal the Telecommunications Act of 1996: In 1996, Bill Clinton set the stage for what Donald Trump is doing now by creating a censorship machine of consolidated media, broadband, and tech firms. It's time to break it apart. [...] The second problem is that the tools exist for Trump to engage in a coercive censorship regime because Bill Clinton and a Newt Gingrich-led Republican Congress helped consolidate the media with the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which supercharged a wave of media and telecom consolidation kicked off by Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. As More Perfect Union noted, 'In 1983, 50 companies controlled 90% of the U.S. media market. That number is now down to 5.' If the ability to wield power over content exists, it will likely be purposed, and Trump isn't the first one to do it."

"Citizens Unlimited: The Inside Plan To Deliver Citizens United 2.0: The Trump Justice Department is reversing the federal government's Supreme Court defense of longstanding campaign finance laws and is now urging justices to strike down some of the last remaining limits on election spending."

Local Portland station KATU decided to illustrate how "war ravaged" Portland is to justify Trump's invasion, so they set up a 24-hour webcam outside ICE HQ

"Recognition of Palestine is a repeat of the West's Oslo 'peace' fraud: Britain's Keir Starmer is already pulling the rug from under his own grudging declaration. The only hope of change is of the unintended consequences variety." The "state" Starmer is talking about is the same one Israel has "offered" and Palestinians have rejected for decades — one with no sovereignty, no right to self-defense, no contiguous lands, and no control of their air apace, borders, or water. Bantustans within Israel's control.

Hamas has a question: "Senior Hamas Leader Mousa Abu Marzouk on Trump's Gaza Plan and the Future of Hamas [...] 'President Trump said 25,000 members of Qassam were killed,' he said, adding that this number is equivalent to public estimates of the total size of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas's armed wing. 'Israel also recently announced that most of Hamas's military capabilities were destroyed—they said 90% of Hamas's capabilities were wiped out. So if they destroyed 90% of Hamas's military capabilities and killed most of Qassam's fighters, as President Trump says, whose weapons are you going to disarm and where are the weapons you claim you'll remove when you already destroyed them?'"

Like Atrios says, "The idea that widespread voter fraud could exist, let alone does, understandably persists in the minds of people likely doing it." "MAGA's Top 'Voter Fraud' Watchdog Votes in a Swing State. He Doesn't Live There. A long paper trail shows that Jack Posobiec votes in one state and lives in another.

Drop Site News has a story on how the Mamdani campaign is handling media smears that try to paint him as some kind of anti-Jewish activist, "Inside Zohran Mamdani's Campaign [...] Andrew Epstein, Zohran's communications director during the primary, vividly recalls his reaction to Politico's Holocaust smear. 'I said, "Wtf?" and started firing off texts and emails,' explained Andrew, who is in his late thirties and lives near Zohran in Astoria. Along with Mamdani's then-political director Julian Gerson and the campaign's media strategist Morris Katz, Andrew is Jewish."

"What the general election campaigns against Larry Krasner and Zohran Mamdani say about the Democratic Party [...] 'The reason Larry Krasner won is because the people like his policies,' Gavio said, pointing to Krasner's embrace of criminal justice reform and his attacks on Trump. 'What moderates who are running in the general election are basically saying to the Democratic base is: We don't support these policies that you support.'

"Elon Musk's SpaceX Took Money Directly From Chinese Investors, Company Insider Testifies: The newly unsealed testimony marks the first time direct Chinese investment in the company has been disclosed, raising new questions about foreign ownership interests in one of America's most important military contractors." The very idea that any part of your country's defense should be in the hands of an internationally-owned company is insane. (And that goes for your water supply, too, dammit.)

David Loftus has been back on his beat of trying to disabuse people of the myth that Portland was burned to the ground during the BLM police riots, and he thought the issue was improving in search results, but then he had a terrible realization. "The Age of AI = No Right Answer."

Imagine my surprise at seeing the very first sentence in an MSN article: "British historian explains why he was 'shaken every day' during US visit: Feminist Avedon Carol, a Maryland native who has lived in London for many years, once commented that the United States has an even closer relationship with the UK than it has with its neighbor to the north, Canada. UK media, from the BBC to the Times of London, typically cover U.S. politics extensively — and British historian Timothy Garton Ash explains why he is so worried about the U.S. in a Guardian column published on September 16." (Via Ansible.)

RIP: "Jane Goodall, world-renowned primatologist, dies aged 91: [...] The Jane Goodall Institute announced that she had died of natural causes while in California as part of a US speaking tour. 'Dr Goodall's discoveries as an ethologist revolutionised science,' the statement read. 'She was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world.' Born in London in 1934, Goodall began researching free-living chimpanzees in Tanzania in 1960. In 1977 she founded the Jane Goodall Institute, which works to protect the species and supports youth projects aimed at benefiting animals and the environment."

RIP: "Moody Blues singer and bassist John Lodge dies aged 82 [...] Lodge, who was born in Birmingham, played on some of the group's best-known songs including 'Nights in White Satin', 'Question' and 'Isn't Life Strange'. [...] 'John peacefully slipped away surrounded by his loved ones and the sounds of the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly. We will forever miss his love, smile, kindness and his absolute and never-ending support.'"

RIP: "Diane Keaton, Oscar-winning star of Annie Hall and The Godfather, dies aged 79." I remember when the whole gang went to see Annie Hall together and for months we were quoting it. And of course, that iconic Marshall McLuhan moment.

Radley Balko has started posting a series on how a brave informant exposed widespread police malfeasance in, "Collateral Damage: In 2006, a 92-year-old Atlanta woman was gunned down in her own home by police during a drug raid. The police initially claimed the woman was a marijuana dealer who fired a gun at them. The story might have ended there. But an informant bravely came forward to set the record straight. Subsequent investigations and reports revealed that the police had raided the wrong home, killed an innocent woman, then planted marijuana in her basement to cover up their mistake. In the ensuing months, we'd learn that the Atlanta Police Department's narcotics unit routinely conducted mistaken raids on terrified people. The problem was driven by perverse federal, state, and local financial incentives that pushed cops to take shortcuts in procuring warrants for drug raids in order to boost their arrest and seizure statistics. Most of those incentives are still in place today. The raids haven't stopped. And neither have the deaths."

"The Myth of the Campus Snowflake: The students I encounter as a university president aren't afraid of free speech—quite the contrary. [...] Critics of universities might counter that, even if true episodes of campus censorship are rare, what matters is that students are afraid to express themselves. In making that claim, however, they rely on poorly constructed polls, typically produced by advocacy groups, that paint a misleadingly dismal picture of student attitudes toward free speech. For example, a common question asks students whether they feel comfortable expressing their opinion about controversial topics. 'Comfort,' however, is the wrong metric for judging a free-speech climate. Speaking up is often hard, especially in a setting where professors and peers may challenge your viewpoint. Justice Louis Brandeis, one of the great figures in the history of American free speech, wrote in Whitney v. California that the Constitution's First Amendment presupposes a 'courageous, self-reliant' people. The point of college should be to build that courage, and to teach the skills that enable people to listen to and learn from one another. That should feel uncomfortable."

The right wing can build its own youth movement because they're more willing to pay their youths. It's a little different on the other side. "The Right-Wing Millennial Machine: Conservatives are building an army of fired-up young people. How? By offering them salaries. After he graduated from college, it took Nathan two years, three unpaid internships and six bartending and retail jobs before he got his first paid gig in progressive politics. His employer was a small, millennial-focused outreach nonprofit, and his job was to supervise four interns — young kids, fresh out of school, working the same day job/night job, 80-hour-a-week cycle he had just exited. Nathan, who wouldn't give his real name out of fear of retaliation, asked his boss if he could start paying the interns. 'I didn't think I was going to get them federal minimum wage — that's impossible in Washington,' he said. 'But at least they could get a stipend.' His boss refused, without offering much of a case for why they couldn't afford to pay them." If only George Soros was half of what they say he is.

The American Prospect doesn't usually do this kind of thing, but they have a piece up called "Why Winning Is Bad for Democrats" by Anonymous Democratic Consultant: "Oh, you want life to get better now, do you? Do you even understand politics?"

The Moody Blues, "I'm Just A Singer (In A Rock And Roll Band)"

It may sound good to you, not to me

Suddenly Facebook seemed to be accusing me of being a robot, and it presented me with a button to prove I wasn't, but when I clicked it, nothing happened. Then it told me it had disabled my account and offered me a button to ask for a review, which did work and they said I didn't pass and they'd permanently disabled my account. They didn't respond to my efforts to contact them, so I started a new one using the same name which it let me do, but it's nearly impossible to reconstruct an account that's over a decade old, and of course I've lost all my data (they offered me a button to download my data, but that didn't work, either.) It breaks my heart that I can no longer read all those memories with discussions that included friends who are no longer with us. And I can't remember all those names. Took two weeks for my sister to notice my friend request, and she's the whole reason I ever joined Facebook in the first place, dammit.

Once again, events are leaving me speechless. Someone shot Charlie Kirk. To me, that fact alone meant it was probably a right-winger, since most people on the left didn't rate him as important enough to want dead, and anyway the right-wingers are the ones with the guns. But right-wingers instantly started inventing reasons why the entire "left" should be rounded up for killing Charlie Kirk (and so much for free speech), while some gamers all said he was a Groyper. It makes more sense to think this was right-on-right violence, but the alleged killer apparently shared a landlord with a transperson so this is obvious definitive proof that there are vast left-wing violence networks funneling money from George Soros to the Democratic Socialists of America through AOC and Mamdani. No, I am not the person who made that up. Next to that one, even the theory that Mossad took him out doesn't sound so absurd. But now, suddenly, we have a text between the alleged shooter and his alleged lover that supplies all the evidence needed to wrench the whole story back to the story everyone was trying to tell on day one that got derailed when the "He wrote 'trans' on the bullet" story turned out to be a misunderstanding of the letters TRN engraved on the casing in its manufacture. So we had this whole "It was a trans!" story floating around for more than a day, then it got debunked and he seemed to be part of gamer-Groyper culture, and then we got redirected right back around to, "Oh, what a relief, it was the queers and trannies after all!" I've got whiplash.

Meanwhile, late-night television is taking hits because, bottom line, conservatives never, ever, want to be criticized. Making sure that critics get fired is their version of "free speech". Stephen Colbert is fired, Jimmy Kimmel is swept off the air, and small publications are nuisance-suited out of existence while Trump himself launches utterly laughable suits against The New York Times, even though it's a pretty conservative paper. Trump has now called for the firing of Seth Myers and Jimmy Fallon.

I wanted Obama put on trial for killing Americans without charge or trail, and I want Trump put on trial for making up reasons to shoot up a Venezuelan boat on an even more dubious pretext.

"Bernie Sanders claims Israel is committing genocide in Gaza: Sanders, who is Jewish and had previously refrained from saying that Israel was committing a genocide against the Palestinians, called the Gaza War 'a genocide'. 'Many legal experts have now concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza,' US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) said Wednesday. In an article published on his personal website, he cited several human-rights groups and international organizations that said the Israel-Hamas War qualified as a genocide. They include the International Association of Genocide Scholars and Israeli groups B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel." I'd wondered why he hadn't already, but I guess the UN making it official may have tipped the balance.

Joe Wrote, "A Winning Strategy? The DNC Tells Its Voters to F&#ck Off: 'Why don't people like us?' The Democrats do not have a 'young voter problem.' Nor do they have a 'Latino voter problem,' a 'working-class voter problem,' or a 'male voter problem.' The Democratic Party's poor performances with various demographics can be traced to an underlying cause: The Democrats have a Democrat problem. With exceptions, the party is composed of officials, staffers, pundits, donors, and politicians who do not believe in politics, at least not in the literal sense of the word. While most parties try to build support by turning their constituents' wishes into policy, the Democrats take the opposite approach. The political objective is determined by wealthy party and media insiders, who then try to convince their constituents that the elite-decreed platform is in their best interest. This was best illustrated in the concluding chapter of Abundance, which outlined a top-down political theory: the policies are decided by the donor class, and the job of Democrat-aligned media and politicians is to sell those policies to American voters."

"'What Other Country Gets Away With All of This?': Israel Bombs Hamas Ceasefire Negotiating Team in Doha: 'The whole point was to gather people together to discuss the peace offer to kill them,' said one journalist. The government of Qatar slammed Israel for a "cowardly" attack in violation of international law on Tuesday, an assassination attempt which targeted members of Hamas' negotiating team in the capital city of Doha who had gathered to discuss a new Gaza ceasefire proposal put forth by US President Donald Trump. As they attacked the negotiating team, the Israel Defense Forces also demanded the evacuation of 1.3 million Palestinians from Gaza City and areas north of it, as they intensify attacks there. The assassination attempt came hours after Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Israel had accepted the US proposal, many of the details of which have not been disclosed. According to Al Jazeera, the proposal was similar to one previously proposed by the US which would require the release of half of the living Israeli captives who were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023, after which a 60-day ceasefire would begin with negotiations for a permanent end to the war. That deal was agreed to by both parties before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed out."

A must-read at Infinite Jaz, "Israel might annex the West Bank—what would that actually mean? A brief explainer. For weeks now, stories about Israel's looming declaration of sovereignty over the West Bank have been breaking almost daily. I've argued—along with others—that annexation has in many ways already happened. Yet what's actually unfolding on the ground, and what would change with a formal declaration, remains shrouded in mystery to most observers, like so much of the occupation, long buried under euphemism. This explainer is meant to get you up to speed." They can't just declare the whole West Bank a part of Israel without coming up with some explanation for why the Palestinians who live there can't vote in their "democracy". But they can't let them vote, either. So watch for them trying to provoke a third intifada.

Cory Doctorow on "The worst possible antitrust outcome [...] But Judge Mehta turned his courtroom into a Star Chamber, a black hole whence no embarrassing information about Google's wicked deeds could emerge. That meant that the only punishment Google would have to bear from this trial would come after the government won its case, when the judge decided on a punishment (the term of art is 'remedy') for Google. Yesterday, he handed down that remedy and it is as bad as it could be. In fact, it is likely the worst possible remedy for this case: Let's start with what's not in this remedy. Google will not be forced to sell off any of its divisions – not Chrome, not Android. Despite the fact that the judge found that Google's vertical integration with the world's dominant mobile operating system and browser were a key factor in its monopolization, Mehta decided to leave the Google octopus with all its limbs intact. Google won't be forced to offer users a "choice screen" when they set up their Android accounts, to give browsers other than Chrome a fair shake. Nor will Google be prevented from bribing competitors to stay out of the search market. One of the facts established in the verdict was that Google had been slipping Apple more than $20b/year in exchange for which, Apple forbore from making a competing search engine. This exposed every Safari and iOS user to Google surveillance, while insulating Google from the threat of an Apple competitor. And then there's Google's data. Google is the world's most prolific surveiller, and the company boasts to investors about the advantage that its 24/7 spying confers on it in the search market, because Google knows so much about us and can therefore tailor our results. Even if this is true – a big if – it's nevertheless a fucking nightmare. Google has stolen every fact about our lives, in service to propping up a monopoly that lets it steal our money, too. Any remedy worth the name would have required Google to delete ("disgorge," in law-speak) all that data." And then it gets worse.

"'They Roll Right Over': Poll Finds Many Democrats Call Party Weak And Ineffective: Nine months after Trump won a second term, Democrats appear to harbor more resentment toward their party than do Republicans, an AP-NORC poll says [...] Respondents were asked to share the first word or phrase that came to mind when they thought of the Republican and Democratic parties. Answers were then sorted into broad categories, including negative and positive attributes. Overall, U.S. adults held a dim view of both parties, with about 4 in 10 using negative attributes, including words such as 'dishonest' or 'stupid.' But nearly nine months after Republican Donald Trump won a second presidential term, Democrats appear to be harboring more resentment about the state of their party than do Republicans. Democrats were likelier to describe their own party negatively than Republicans. Republicans were about twice as likely to describe their own party positively. 'They're spineless,' Cathia Krehbiel, a 48-year-old Democrat from Indianola, Iowa, said of her party."

Radley Balko, "A warning from a friend [...] At one point during the conference I chatted with a friend and former colleague I've known for 25 years. (I'm not using his name because it was a casual conversation.) He might be the most well-read person I know. He's a scholar who has studied authoritarianism for decades, but he's also an activist who has provided aid and support for dissident movements fighting authoritarian governments dating back to the Cold War — at times at some risk to himself. Because of that work, he's seen the abuses of authoritarian states firsthand. So he's been scornful over the years when Americans have hyperbolically likened their political opponents to Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pinochet, or some other totalitarian figure. I suspect that once you've seen real authoritarianism on the ground, that sort of posturing probably seems insulting. In other words, I've always found him to be a sober realist about these things. So at the conference I asked him straight up, on a scale of one to ten, how worried he is about what's happening in the U.S. right now. I was hoping he'd give me a historical reality check — that he'd tell me my own fears are exaggerated. He answered, 'I think I'm at eleven.' I spoke with another old friend and colleague who works in AI and data systems. I asked her if DOGE's access to health records, financial records, and other sensitive data is as bad as it seems. 'However bad you think it is, it's worse,' she answered. 'They have everything.'"

RIP: "Mark Volman, Co-Founder of the Turtles and Vocalist on Flower Power Classic 'Happy Together,' Dead at 78: With longtime friend Howard Kaylan, Volman formed the duo Flo and Eddie, who worked with Frank Zappa, T. Rex, Alice Cooper, and more" I've been gratified to see a lot of tributes to him in the last few days, I hadn't realized he was as fondly remembered by so many others as he is by me.

RIP: " Bobby Hart, co-writer of Monkees hits like Last Train to Clarksville, dies aged 86." Of course, they wrote for other people and Boyce & Hart's "Hurt So Bad" was a hit for Little Anthony & The Imperials, and "Come A Little Bit Closer was an enormous hit for Jay & The Americans, but everyone remembers those Monkees hits like "Last Train To Clarksville and their title music, "Hey Hey We´re The Monkees". (I hadn't realized, though, that they also wrote "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight".)

RIP: "Robert Redford, Legendary Leading Man and Oscar-Winning Director, Dies at 89: The founder of the Sundance Institute died early Tuesday morning at home in Utah surrounded by those he loved." I know I've mentioned before that Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid is still my favorite porn movie, but I don't think I've said anything about how much I loved Sneakers. But when I saw that he had died, I wasn't really thinking of those movies, but him. How could they not realize that this is what we had to compare them to, and no matter how high they rise or how much money they make, they could never measure up?

Doctorow on the connection between Wilhoit's Law and everything that's going on, "By all means, tread on those people: The thing that makes Wilhoit's Law so apt to this moment – and to our understanding of the recent history that produced this moment – is how it connects the petty with the terrifying, the trivial with the radical, the micro with the macro. It's a way to join the dots between fascists' business dealings, their interpersonal relationships, and their political views. It describes a continuum that ranges from minor commercial grifts to martial law, and shows how tolerance for the former creates the conditions for the latter."

Adolph Reed, Jr. in 2014, "Nothing Left: The long, slow surrender of American liberals For nearly all the twentieth century there was a dynamic left in the United States grounded in the belief that unrestrained capitalism generated unacceptable social costs. That left crested in influence between 1935 and 1945, when it anchored a coalition centered in the labor movement, most significantly within the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). It was a prominent voice in the Democratic Party of the era, and at the federal level its high point may have come in 1944, when FDR propounded what he called 'a second Bill of Rights.' Among these rights, Roosevelt proclaimed, were the right to a 'useful and remunerative job,' 'adequate medical care,' and 'adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.'" And then something terrible happened.

Weldon Berger seems to be getting back into blogging. He has the latest on how George Santos Finds Prison Distasteful, Plus a number of other things old blog-readers might remember.

"Collapse of critical Atlantic current is no longer low-likelihood, study finds" — Please wait until I'm dead.

"Apparently this video was shown to the public in London"

The Turtles, "Let Me Be" (Shindig - Nov 13, 1965)

I got wounds to bind

"The Calm Summer Evening by Serghio Ghetiu

The day after I posted it, I woke up and found an email from Blogger saying they'd deleted my previous post from its Blogspot site due to content violations. The only way you can respond to that is to push a button at the site asking for a review. So I did. I figured some troll from a certain country that has a highly-funded program to censor criticism all over the world had reported the post but that if a human looked at it they'd realize the post didn't violate any rules, and a few hours later I got email saying it had been reinstated. Hm.

Dday, "UnitedHealth Merger Approval Again Shows Lobbyist Power: Today on TAP: Another merger settlement allows consolidation in health care; UnitedHealth's lobbyist was MAGA's biggest firm. As I've been reporting, what was a promising start to antitrust enforcement in the second Trump administration has now become a pay-to-play operation where influential MAGA lobbyists paid millions by large corporations use their clout with the president and Attorney General Pam Bondi to overrule the enforcers and push through mergers. As a result, cases prosecuted but unresolved in the Biden years are under threat. Yesterday, another leftover Biden case was settled, which will allow the colossal UnitedHealth Group monopoly to swallow Amedisys, the second-largest provider of home health care in the nation, after already purchasing the third-largest provider in 2023. At a time when even investors are begging off UnitedHealth's consolidated business model, the Justice Department's Antitrust Division saw no problem with the insurance giant eating a top player in one of the fastest-growing sectors in health care." As usual, they have an excuse for why it's okay, but, also as usual, it doesn't add up.

"Israel Is Turning Gaza Famine Into a Hasbara War. It Won't Make It Less Real" — It's almost like deja vu reading first the intense campaign of famine denial from Israel itself and then seeing Media Matters' lengthy list of incidents of right-wing explainers producing identical "reason" to disbelieve your lyin' eyes in "As experts warn of a famine unfolding in Gaza, here's how right-wing media are reacting."

Hamas' response to the hasbara after "Israel Blames Hamas for Malnourishment of Israeli Captives as It Deliberately Starves Gaza: In a letter to the UN Security Council, Hamas blasted Israel for gaslighting the world on its forced starvation policy. [...] Ahead of the meeting, Hamas is vigorously rejecting Israel's allegations that Palestinian forces in Gaza are abusing Israeli captives by depriving them of food. 'For the Israeli prisoners held by the resistance in Gaza, they are experiencing the same conditions as the people of Gaza,' Hamas officials wrote in an August 4 letter to the council obtained by Drop Site. 'The famine—caused by the occupation regime—affects all areas of the Strip, and inevitably its effects are reflected upon the 'Israeli' captives, just as they are reflected upon their captors, their families, and the overwhelming majority of Gaza's population.'"99

Israel never intended for there to be a two-state solution, and world leaders knew it. "Israel's plan for 'full control' of Gaza heralds a new Nakba - so the West is panicking: Netanyahu's mass ethnic cleansing strategy pulls the rug out from under their cherished pretext for supporting Israeli criminality: the fabled two-state solutionIf you thought western capitals were finally losing patience with Israel's engineering of a famine in Gaza nearly two years into the genocide, you may be disappointed. As ever, events have moved on - even if the extreme hunger and malnourishment of the two million people of Gaza have not abated. Western leaders are now expressing 'outrage', as the media call it, at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to 'take full control' of Gaza and 'occupy' it. At some point in the future, Israel is apparently ready to hand the enclave over to outside forces unconnected to the Palestinian people."

"'Self-termination is most likely': the history and future of societal collapse: 'We can't put a date on Doomsday, but by looking at the 5,000 years of [civilisation], we can understand the trajectories we face today – and self-termination is most likely,' says Dr Luke Kemp at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. 'I'm pessimistic about the future,' he says. 'But I'm optimistic about people.' Kemp's new book covers the rise and collapse of more than 400 societies over 5,000 years and took seven years to write. The lessons he has drawn are often striking: people are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites, while past collapses often improved the lives of ordinary citizens."

"The Illusion of Choice: Republicans say that VA patients can get equivalent private-sector care anywhere in the U.S. Here's a 50-state reality check. At his confirmation hearing in January of 2025, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins, a former congressman from Georgia, assured the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee of his commitment to provide specialized, high-quality medical care for the roughly nine million veterans enrolled in the nation's largest and only truly integrated public health care system, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). But Collins, a chaplain in the Air Force Reserve, also explained that his mandate from President Trump is to make it 'easier for veterans to get their health care when and where it's most convenient for them,' by giving them greater choice between in-house and outsourced care. To do this, he planned to lean on the network of 1.7 million private-sector providers who are part of the Veterans Community Care Program (VCCP), created by the VA MISSION Act of 2018. Annual reimbursement of these non-VHA doctors, therapists, hospitals, and clinics now costs the federal government more than $30 billion per year, nearly one-third of the VA's entire direct care budget." Spoiler: There are not enough physicians available outside of the VA to do the job for the rest of us, let alone absorb thousands of VA patients.

"The The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine: How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns. The digital deluge is a familiar annoyance for anyone on a Democratic fundraising list. It's a relentless cacophony of bizarre texts and emails, each one more urgent than the last, promising that your immediate $15 donation is the only thing standing between democracy and the abyss. The main rationale offered for this fundraising frenzy is that it's a necessary evil—that the tactics, while unpleasant, are brutally effective at raising the money needed to win. But an analysis of the official FEC filings tells a very different story. The fundraising model is not a brutally effective tool for the party; it is a financial vortex that consumes the vast majority of every dollar it raises." Interestingly, the author told Sam Seder that, while he's heard from numerous people who were aghast, he had not heard from the DNC, the DSCC, or the DCCC.

"Palestine Action protest arrests rise to more than 500: The Metropolitan Police said the majority of arrests - 521 - were for displaying placards in support of Palestine Action at Westminster's Parliament Square, and one at a Palestine Coalition march." But the part I thought was most interesting was that "The average age of those arrested was 54, and the most arrests - 147 of them - were of people aged between 60 and 69."

"Didn't Take Long To Reveal The UK's Online Safety Act Is Exactly The Privacy-Crushing Failure Everyone Warned About [...] Yes, you read that right. A law supposedly designed to protect children now requires victims of sexual assault to submit government IDs to access support communities. People struggling with addiction must undergo facial recognition scans to find help quitting drinking or smoking. The UK government has somehow concluded that access to basic health information and peer support networks poses such a grave threat to minors that it justifies creating a comprehensive surveillance infrastructure around it."

"Judge Rules Ohio's Voucher System Unconstitutional: The ruling could end the siphoning of funds to private and parochial schools. In June, Ohio's sweeping EdChoice Scholarship Program suffered a near-fatal blow after a Franklin County Common Pleas Court judge ruled the program unconstitutional. That ruling found that using public funds to subsidize tuition at private religious schools violates the Ohio Constitution's ban on directing 'school funds' to religious or sectarian institutions. The judge also found that the expansion of EdChoice undermines the state's duty to maintain a 'thorough and efficient' school system, especially as public schools remain underfunded. An appeal by the state attorney general is in the works. Project 2025 posited that a second Trump administration would usher in the dismantling of K-12 public education from the inside out by doubling down on 'parental choice' and continuing to encourage states to redirect tax dollars toward private and, especially, conservative religious schools. What happens next may reveal if Ohio can continue to expand school choice programs without significant changes that address growing concerns about funding and accountability."

It can't be forgotten that Gavin Newsome is not a great guy, but I can't help but be entertained by the way he is trolling Trump and the reaction it's getting. But then, I remember how much fun it was when Fetterman was trolling during his campaign for his Senate seat, and look how that turned out.

RIP: "Loni Anderson, WKRP in Cincinnati Star, Dies at 79: She received two Emmy noms for being 'the smartest person in the room' on the CBS sitcom and tons of tabloid attention for her 1988-94 marriage to Burt Reynolds. [...] Anderson liked the concept of the sitcom but had a problem with her role, 'so I refused,' she explained in a 2020 interview. 'I went in and sat on my little soapbox and said, 'I don't want to play this part because she's just here to deliver messages and is window dressing.' Then Hugh said, 'Well, how would you do it?' … He said, "Let's make her look like Lana Turner and be the smartest person in the room."'" And Jennifer was perfect. I just loved her come-backs when Herb was trying to impress her, she really got the best lines.

"The Faux Intellectuals of Silicon Valley: There exists in Silicon Valley a particular species of intellectual fraud so brazen, so systematic, and so dangerous that it demands the kind of moral clarity that cuts through pretense like a blade through silk. We are witnessing the corruption of human thought itself—not by crude propagandists or obvious charlatans, but by a sophisticated ecosystem of oligarchs and their courtiers who have weaponized the very concept of expertise against the democratic discourse they claim to serve. At the apex stands Peter Thiel, whose genuine brilliance serves a moral emptiness so complete it takes your breath away. When asked by Ross Douthat whether the human race should survive, this man—this creature of extraordinary wealth and influence—paused to compute the variables. Not because he lacks intelligence, but because he possesses it without the slightest trace of love for the species that created the conditions making his intelligence possible."

"The Symbolism Survey: In 1963, a sixteen-year-old San Diego high school student named Bruce McAllister sent a four-question mimeographed survey to 150 well-known authors of literary, commercial, and science fiction. Did they consciously plant symbols in their work? he asked. Who noticed symbols appearing from their subconscious, and who saw them arrive in their text, unbidden, created in the minds of their readers? When this happened, did the authors mind?"

We Five, "You Were On My Mind"