From a self-help charlatan to a $140 billion-a-year Medicare Advantage scam, here’s a roundup of our reporting from the past week.
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We can’t even bury fascism Yesterday’s first post explains why I’m not up to speed on what’s happening in Israel and Gaza and likely won’t catch up for a day or two. Compounding the problem is the inherent complexity of what’s happening there on the ground and what’s now happening with the internet. Digby tweeted (to hell with Musk) yesterday, “I used to turn to twitter at times like these but now I have no clue what’s real and what isn’t…” A couple of observations about that. Washington Post: Amid concerns the rise of artificial intelligence will supercharge the spread of misinformation comes a wild fabrication from a more prosaic source: Amazon’s Alexa, which declared that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Asked about fraud in the race — in which President Biden defeated former president Donald Trump with 306 electoral college votes — the popular voice assistant said it was “stolen by a massive amount of election fraud,” citing Rumble, a video-streaming service favored by conservatives.
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Hamas has staged a dramatic series of attacks against Israel. This is an act of resistance against the brutal Israeli occupation.
The post Palestinians are right to resist Israeli terror first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Joe Biden didn’t make a WMD designation, but federal agencies acted anyway — kicking off a panic among police.
The post The U.S. Government Is Preparing for a Fentanyl WMD Attack appeared first on The Intercept.
For the first time, there is the real possibility of a unity coalition with the Democratic minority and a block of moderate Republicanism, writes Grant Stern
It’s become a perennial question and there aren’t a lot of good answers. But they should at least try to do something different. I’m not sure I agree with all of these suggestions by Tom Rosenstiel in the LA Times but it’s worth considering. I do think that Trump absolutely must be covered because it’s vitally important that the normal people in this country do not lose sight of what a monstrous imbecile he really is, which is easy to do if he just becomes a regular candidate and they only cover him as some sort of a phantom from a vaguely remembered past. People must be relentlessly reminded of his current statements, which are even worse in many ways than those we recall from the last two elections. He is not a has-been clown we don’t need to worry about anymore, he is running again with a full-blown cult backing him up and it’s going to be close. I have my doubts about what Rosenstiel says about journalists confronting Trump in interviews — he prevails by spewing a fire hose of bullshit that runs over even the best reporters. I think interviews are overrated anyway.
An insane man says Democrats kill babies after they’re born if the mother doesn’t want them Trump says this is Democrats’ position on abortion: “If it’s after the 9th month and the baby was born you put the baby aside. You discuss with the mother and if the mother doesn’t want the baby we execute the baby. This is part of their thing.” pic.twitter.com/1bZlO9MWQI — Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 7, 2023 And that’s not all: Trump claims Hamas would not have attacked Israel if he was president, and Russia would not have invaded Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/GkoD9sIeyX — Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 7, 2023 Trump on Biden going shirtless at the beach: “I have a much better body than him.” pic.twitter.com/tjFXCcUH65 — Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 7, 2023 Trump says grocery stores make people show photo ID to buy food. pic.twitter.com/Q2psGqL0Lz — Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 7, 2023 Aaaaand: Trump on Hannibal Lecter: You know why I like him?
For once I was taken by surprise. I didn’t expect this attack and despite my low opinion of the Israeli military, would not have expected it to be so successful.
Hamas actually captured the Israeli southern command base briefly. It was retaken with massive air strikes (meaning Israel was willing to hit its own people.) In the initial 12 hours or so they wiped the floor with local Israeli forces.
This is the most successful Palestinian military operation I can think of.
Hamas could not, of course, hold the ground it took and is retreating to Gaza. Israel has declared war and stated that they will invade Gaza.
A ground invasion will be extremely bloody, Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on Earth, and Hamas has had plenty of time to prepare. Bombing and shelling urban areas does not make invasion significantly easier.
Let’s drawn out some specific points:
Complete Mossad Intelligence Failure
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If you’re in earshot of Donald Trump, chances are you’ll hear him blurt out some classified information Our best satirist Alexandra Petri makes a good point here: The more that comes out about Donald Trump’s post-presidency conduct, the clearer it becomes that the real challenge was not prying confidential information out of Trump but avoiding receiving confidential information. I think I see the problem. Donald Trump has two modes of conversation. He is either ranting about all the things he intends to do when he becomes dictator of the country — so many rights to strip away! so much vengeance to extract against his enemies! so many guardrails to dismantle! — or he is volunteering classified information. Those are really it. If you don’t want one, you have to buckle in for the other. Which brings us to the news from special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation that Donald Trump apparently shared sensitive information about U.S. nuclear submarines with an Australian billionaire. You might be wondering: Is this a private party, or can anyone play? Yes!
50 years ago, Kissinger said that Nixon was too drunk to talk to the British Prime Minister when the Yom Kipper War broke out. During Yom Kippur War fifty years ago this week, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger tells aide Brent Scowcroft that President Nixon is “loaded” and thus cannot speak to British Prime Minister: pic.twitter.com/RgbWnD9Evl — Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) October 7, 2023 Right wingers are attacking Joe Biden all over the internet for waiting a couple of hours to issue a statement about the Israeli crisis, suggesting that he’s “in his basement” (which would be correct since that’s where the Situation Room is. ) Anyway, I think they need to shut their pieholes.
Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
Doctor Who #WhoSpy is back with another teaser image, offering us a little Gallifreyan in the process. Is it a preview of the TARDIS console?
This could be a syntax problem but that doesn’t make any sense either. Is he saying that “many reports are that American taxpayer dollars helped fund the attacks?” What does that mean? All the “reports” said that the money released recently to Iran was from a frozen account in South Korea that was sent to Qatar and hasn’t been released yet. In any case, this garbled nonsense is typical for the putative GOP nominee for president. I’m not going to be commenting too much on the Israel situation today because it’s very hard right now to get real information from social media and the mainstream media is also difficult to sort out. This was obviously a massive intelligence failure which is a condemnation of the current Israeli government as well as those supposed new Middle Eastern allies that Trump is so proud of creating. This is going to turn out to be more complicated than usual and that’s saying something.
Wind and solar roll-outs are increasing globally but Australia and other Climate Wreckers are ignoring the science and developing new oil and gas fields. Wind and solar investments and roll-outs increasing Some countries had by 2022 achieved high rates of penetration of wind and solar into their electricity supply (Denmark 61% and Lithuania 48%) and Continue reading »
‘It is no longer possible to doubt the human origin of climate change’ (Pope Francis). Popes in the past usually quoted ancient theologians, or themselves, as footnote authorities in official documents. So, you know something’s changed when a pope’s footnotes quote the IPCC, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or the UN Climate Change 2023 Continue reading »
Culturally most events seem random. But sometimes there are a constellation of events that seem meaningful. Which makes this month’s triptych of Ted Gurner, Russell Brand and Rupert Murdoch so intriguing. Now who do these three remind us of? If one name doesn’t spring to mind, then really we are not paying attention. For anyone Continue reading »
In Northumbria, a majestic Sycamore Gap Tree has flourished at the site of Hadrian’s Wall for some 300 odd years. Last week it was cut down by some vicious, uncaring vandal. From the moment the trunk of that beautiful old tree hit the ground the thud of destruction turned into a thunder of condemnation across the Continue reading »
Things did not go so well this time around. When the worn Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy turned up banging on the doors of Washington’s powerful on September 21, he found fewer open hearts and an increasingly large number of closed wallets. The old ogre of national self-interest seemed to be presiding and was in no Continue reading »
Tel Aviv is estimated to have up to 400 nuclear warheads in its arsenal, making it the sole possessor of non-conventional arms in West Asia. First published in THE CRADLE September 30, 2023 Qatar has called for intensifying international efforts to subject all Israeli nuclear facilities to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards and for Continue reading »