We are living in a deadly nightmare, right here in the USA This epic analysis of the horrific carnage caused by the AR-15 by the Washington Post is essential reading for every American with a conscience. It’s not easy. You may want to pour a drink or save some time to take a walk afterwards. But it’s important to bear witness. Mass shootings involving AR-15s have become a recurring American nightmare. The weapon, easy to operate and widely available, is now used more than any other in the country’s deadliest mass killings. Fired by the dozens or hundreds in rapid succession, bullets from AR-15s have blasted through classroom doors and walls. They have shredded theater seats and splintered wooden church pews. They have mangled human bodies and, in a matter of seconds, shattered the lives of people attending a concert, shopping on a Saturday afternoon, going out with friends and family, working in their offices and worshiping at church and synagogue. They have killed first-graders, teenagers, mothers, fathers and grandparents. But the full effects of the AR-15’s destructive force are rarely seen in public.
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There is no debating what this is We can argue all day about whether supporting Palestinians or criticizing Israel is antisemitism but this is the real deal and can’t be denied. And it was disseminated by the man who owns one of the world’s most powerful social media platforms directly to his 160 million followers. Media Matter writes: The conspiracy theory, that Jewish populations are pushing “hatred against whites” and supporting “hordes of minorities” coming into the country, is the same one that motivated the 2018 Tree of Life shooter in Pittsburgh, as noted by The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg. Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and other figures linked to white nationalism are cheering on Musk.
We need it The world is exhausting right now and I’ve reached my bandwidth for the day. So here’s a little something less important that might bring a little happiness: Chinese President Xi Jinping signaled that China will send new pandas to the United States, calling them “envoys of friendship between the Chinese and American peoples.” “We are ready to continue our cooperation with the United States on panda conservation, and do our best to meet the wishes of the Californians so as to deepen the friendly ties between our two peoples,” Xi said Wednesday during a dinner speech with business leaders. The gesture came at the end of a day in which Xi and President Biden held their first face to face meeting in a year and pledged to try to reduce tensions. Xi did not share additional details on when or where pandas might be provided but appeared to suggest the next pair of pandas are most likely to come to California, probably San Diego. The bears have long been the symbol of the U.S.-China friendship since Beijing gifted a pair of pandas to the National Zoo in Washington in 1972, ahead of the normalization of bilateral relations.
I know it’s mean to say it, but it’s important to acknowledge. Jill Filipovic writes about “that which cannot be mentioned” in her great newsletter today. It has to be said: One basic rule of being a person who opines on politics is that you are not allowed to disrespect voters. Voters, you are supposed to say, are very smart and thoughtful people; it is the politicians who are bad, who do not deliver, who do not give them what they want or need. If politicians behaved differently, then voters — good people, rational people — would respond accordingly…. But also, a lot of people are stupid, paranoid, incompetent and irrational. I know, this is a very disrespectful thing to say (“deplorable” would have been more polite). And there are of course some Trump voters who are perfectly kind of their neighbors and I am sure are, in many contexts, utterly decent people. There are some Trump voters who aren’t cult loyalist but normie Republicans who want normie Republican things, like tax breaks for the rich, unfettered capitalism, and women forced into submission.
Philip Bump took a deep dive into Trump (and Barr’s) successful effort to turn Russia’s manipulation of him into a “fake news” story. There’s a lot there and I can only excerpt a piece of it. But you can read the whole thing with this link: Out there in the broader world, the “Russia collusion hoax” skeptics are abundant, if not a plurality of the public. There has perhaps been no sales pitch offered by Donald Trump that has paid larger dividends than his immediate, long-standing push to cast any questions about Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 campaign as the deranged rantings of weirdo liberals. He’s inculcated an immediate, visceral reaction from members of his base as well as Americans more broadly that when they hear “Russia” in the context of “Trump,” they should dismiss what follows as false and defamatory. This reaction has provided him an enormous amount of space to avoid very serious questions about the ways in which Russia worked to his benefit while he was in office — and may continue to do so. There is news on this front.
Judge Luttig tweet this today, writing, “Prophetic words from Alexander Hamilton to George Washington in 1792 — as apt and timely today as they were over 230 years ago.” “A people so enlightened and so diversified as the people of this Country can surely never be brought to [monarchy], but from convulsions and disorders, in consequence of the acts of popular demagogues. The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy, or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security. Those then, who resist a confirmation of public order, are the true Artificers of monarchy—not that this is the intention of the generality of them.
A hundred years later, they still want to root around in your medicine cabinet Trump wants to have it both ways in the election but I have no doubt that he will take revenge on the abortion rights movement the moment he gets into office. Here’s how he might do it: The next Republican president could effectively ban most abortions through a simple policy change at the Department of Justice, experts and advocates on both sides of the abortion debate say. While Republicans disagree about whether to pursue a national abortion ban that would face long odds in Congress, a GOP president may be able to unilaterally curb access to medication abortion across the country using an obscure 19th-century law. At issue is the meaning of the 1873 Comstock Act, which banned the mailing of “obscene” material like pornography, as well as abortion drugs and contraception. While the law has been cut down over the years, the abortion provision remained but was ignored while Roe v. Wade was in place.
What happens when you gut the liberal arts Finally: an explanation for how the United States of America could elect an under-educated, grandiose, narcissist reality TV star to the presidency. Social media (especially TikTok) is a digital Petri dish for breeding them. This TikTok freak show is completely nuts. The Wrap: The Guardian made the unusual move Wednesday to delete a 21-year-old letter written by Osama bin Laden from their site after several TikTokers urged followers to read the al Qaeda leader’s missive, causing “Letter to America” to go viral on the social media platform. Guardian readers are now met with the message, “This page previously displayed a document containing, in translation, the full text of Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to the American people,’ as reported in the Observer on Sunday 24 November 2002. The document, which was published here on the same day, was removed on 15 November 2023.” In a statement to TheWrap, a spokesperson for the U.K. outlet said, “The transcript published on our website 20 years ago has been widely shared on social media without the full context.
THE 2025 SOCIAL JUSTICE KITTENS CALENDAR HAS ARRIVED! It’s 2025, and the Social Justice Kittens are back with twelve inspiring new months, each one a stern, colorful reminder that while you enjoy a life of privileged comfort enabled by oppression, these defiant darlings continue their selfless fight for real progress! Never in human history has…
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You know, the ones that have been right instead of wrong Abby Livingston at Puck talks to Tom Bonier about the polling. Bonier happens to have been one of those who’s been consistently right about the elections the last few years in contrast to pundits, pollsters and the media. Abby Livingston: So, what happened last night? Tom Bonier: In November 2022, we learned that abortion rights and the Dobbs decision was politically salient, but that it had its limitations, that it simply wasn’t a magic wand whereby people would universally vote more Democratic. We thought that the effect was uneven in places where the issue was literally on the ballot. One of the challenges for Democrats over the intervening year was, how do we draw the connection between voting for Democratic candidates and protecting abortion rights? The most interesting takeaways last night were in Ohio and Virginia. In Ohio, where there was a literal ballot initiative on guaranteeing abortion access, we saw very high turnout and a very wide margin for the “yes” vote to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution.