Well I knew there was gonna' be trouble, when I heard that callin'

I've just discovered the art of Laurent Parcelier and I love to look at it.

"The Supreme Court effectively abolishes the right to mass protest in three US states: It is no longer safe to organize a protest in Louisiana, Mississippi, or Texas. The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The decision not to hear Mckesson leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act. It is possible that this outcome will be temporary. The Court did not embrace the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit's decision attacking the First Amendment right to protest, but it did not reverse it either. That means that, at least for now, the Fifth Circuit's decision is the law in much of the American South."

"Self-Destructive College Presidents: They are making a fraught situation worse by letting the far right define antisemitism and the necessary campus responses. Last December, the presidents of Penn and Harvard did not grovel sufficiently in trying to appease Republican inquisitors claiming that they were insufficiently sensitive to episodes of antisemitism. So with some crude prodding from large donors of the 'Israel right or wrong' camp, Liz Magill and Claudine Gay were pushed out of their jobs by panicked trustees. In the latest round of this self-abasement, other college presidents are hoping to out-grovel the earlier batch and outdo each other in sacrificing civil liberties. This never ends well. At last week's hearing before the same House Education subcommittee that destroyed Magill and Gay, Columbia's beleaguered president, Nemat 'Minouche' Shafik, who was born in Egypt, brought with her three senior Jewish colleagues for the grovel-fest. At one point, Rep. Rick Allen, a Republican from Georgia, asked Shafik whether she knew Genesis 12:3. She didn't. Allen explained: 'It was the covenant that God made with Abraham, and that covenant was real clear: 'If you bless Israel I will bless you, if you curse Israel I will curse you,'' he said. 'Do you want Columbia University to be cursed by God?' Allen demanded."

"U.S. Senate and Biden Administration Shamefully Renew and Expand FISA Section 702, Ushering in a Two Year Expansion of Unconstitutional Mass Surveillance: One week after it was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate has passed what Senator Ron Wyden has called, 'one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history.' President Biden then rushed to sign it into law. The perhaps ironically named 'Reforming Intelligence and Security America Act (RISAA)' does everything BUT reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). RISAA not only reauthorizes this mass surveillance program, it greatly expands the government's authority by allowing it to compel a much larger group of people and providers into assisting with this surveillance. The bill's only significant 'compromise' is a limited, two-year extension of this mass surveillance. But overall, RISAA is a travesty for Americans who deserve basic constitutional rights and privacy whether they are communicating with people and services inside or outside of the US."

"Ron DeSantis Signs Florida Bill Limiting How Close Bystanders Can Get to Police: The law makes it a misdemeanor to approach within 25 feet of a first responder after receiving a verbal warning to stay away. [...] However, the right to observe and film police has been upheld by multiple federal appeals courts as a fundamental First Amendment activity, and civil liberties groups and press organizations argue that such laws are overly broad and chill the free speech rights of citizens and reporters."

"An Indiana court ruled that Jews have a religious liberty right to abortion. Here's why that matters. The idea of a Jewish right to abortion being enshrined in U.S. law could, at first, sound strange. But in the wake of Dobbs, as states have adopted new abortion restrictions, Jews and Jewish organizations have filed suit arguing that these restrictions put them in a bind. Jewish laws approach to abortion is generally understood — as much as anything within Jewish law is 'generally understood' — to place the well-being of the mother, including physical and emotional well-being, at the center of its analysis. As a result, where an abortion is necessary to protect the well-being of a mother, broadly construed, Jewish law sanctions — and often requires — the termination of the pregnancy. If a mother, motivated by these underlying Jewish values, were to seek an abortion in a state that imposed significant restrictions on such procedures, her religious commitments could run afoul of state law."

"The Trade War Within the U.S. Government Why does the National Security Council keep trying to wrest control of trade policy to help Big Tech? The tug-of-war within the Biden administration continues over whether to use trade policy to restrict the very kinds of regulations of tech that the administration is championing at home. These include protections of privacy from data mining and sale; regulation of AI; antitrust enforcement of excessive concentration and price-gouging; as well as keeping Americans' data secure from Chinese snooping. [...] If anything, you would expect the NSC to be even tougher, especially given the concerns over China using its own technology to spy on Americans and on the U.S. government. But the NSC wants to retain language that allows digital regulation to be treated as a trade barrier. This stance happens to chime perfectly with that of the tech lobby and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber declared in a recent statement, 'By dropping U.S. objections to trade violations, USTR risks giving a green light to foreign governments to raise barriers against U.S. exports or otherwise discriminate against U.S. companies.' This is the old discredited argument that because the tech behemoths most likely to be regulated happen to be U.S. companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon, regulating tech is discriminatory against U.S. exports."

"Republicans Are Objectively Pro–Junk Fee: A new congressional resolution aligns Republicans with the financial industry's fight to preserve sky-high credit card late fees. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's $8 cap on credit card late fees has had a wild ride on the road to implementation. After being finalized last month, the rule drew a lawsuit from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which sought an injunction in Fort Worth. No credit card companies are located in Fort Worth; the venue choice was made purely to ensure that the case would be heard by a right-wing federal judge. The first district court judge assigned to the case owned a bunch of credit card company stocks and recused himself; the second judge, a Trump appointee, showed remarkable candor in saying the case had no business being in Fort Worth and should be heard in Washington. Then the far-right Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed with the Trump judge and tried to pull the case back to Texas. Then one of the authors of that opinion, it turned out, also owned a bunch of credit card company stocks. He has asked for briefings on whether he should recuse himself, basically seeking outside opinions on his own personal corruption. That's not the only attack on the late fee rule. Now congressional Republicans are coming after it, in the process finally setting up a partisan fight over the popular issue of junk fees, which the Biden administration has been pushing for the past few years. Republicans, it turns out, are objectively in favor of junk fees. And by next week, they'll be on the record for them."

RIP: John Pease March 8, 1936-March 12, 2024. For the last several years I've made it a practice to check his Wikipedia page to see if he is still with us. This time, I found he'd left in March, just a few days after his 88th birthday. I didn't know when I sat down that first day for his Stratification class that he was already beloved and legendary among his students (though the guy who surprised him in an ape suit just as class was beginning should have tipped me off.) I didn't know that I'd spend the rest of my life recalling the things he'd do in that class that made him special. I didn't understand just how special he really was, which is why I stupidly didn't sign up for all his other courses and bring my camera and take notes of every remarkable thing he said and did. Of all the terrific profs I had at the University of Maryland, several of whom I still cherish, Professor Pease, who had looked so unassuming and dull on first glance, is the one I remember most of all. I'd rather be studying with you, Professor.

Can this be true? "The Myth of the Molly Maguires: The Myth of the Molly Maguires became international news on June 21, 1877, when the authorities hanged ten Irish miners in a single day in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. Known as Black Thursday, or Day of the Rope, it was the second largest mass execution in U.S. history. (The largest was in 1862, when the U.S. government executed 38 Dakota warriors). The authorities accused the Irishmen of being terrorists from a secret organization called the Molly Maguires. They executed ten more over the next two years, and imprisoned another twenty suspected Molly Maguires. Most of the convicted men were union activists. Some even held public office, as sheriffs and school board members. However, there is no evidence that an organization called the Molly Maguires ever existed in the U.S. James McParland, an agent provocateur who worked for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and who provided the plans and weapons the men purportedly used in their crimes, provided the only serious evidence against the men. The entire legal process was a travesty: a private corporation (the Reading Railroad) set up the investigation through a private police force (the Pinkerton Detective Agency) and prosecuted them with their own company attorneys. No jurors were Irish, though several were recent German immigrants who had trouble understanding the proceedings."

"How the Fed Keeps Getting Inflation Wrong: Today on TAP: More than 400 economists work for the Federal Reserve Board. Far too many are intimidated by the echo chamber of bad economics created by Chair Jay Powell. President Biden made two catastrophically bad appointments. One was Attorney General Merrick Garland. The other was Fed Chair Powell. Either could literally cost Biden his presidency and the country its democracy—Garland by having slow-walked Trump's prosecution and Powell by needlessly slowing the economy. The latest inflation report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, released Wednesday, showed the Consumer Price Index ticking up by 0.4 percent in March, the same as in February, but slightly higher than expected. This in turn set off signals from the Fed that expected rate reductions would have to be postponed, and near-hysterical media commentary. The Dow duly dropped more than a thousand points. According to one press report after another, the economy was stuck with high inflation; high interest rates would persist; and Biden's election-year good-news economy would be stuck with a bad-news story. But if you bother to take a close look at the details of the actual price increases by sector, they have nothing to do with the kind of inflation that justifies high interest rates. Some of the Fed's own research confirms that. Nearly all of the price hikes came from a few sectors, none of which have anything to do with overheated demand.

"The Racial Wealth Gap Is About the Upper Classes [...] What this means is that the overall racial wealth disparity is being driven almost entirely by the disparity between the wealthiest 10 percent of white people and the wealthiest 10 percent of black people." So if you put the top 10% of black people and the top 10% of white people on Mars, there'd be hardly any racial wealth gap between those left in America.

"What Really Happened on October 7? And why, wonders a new Al Jazeera documentary, did the media go to such lengths to concoct gruesome X-rated versions of an attack that was harrowing enough to begin with?"

Tom Tomorrow on your liberal media.

The Bourbon Tabernacle Choir - "Death Is The Great Awakener"

She fills her drawing book with line

All I know is it was identified as "Bobilo art" and I liked it.

My favorite video from this eclipse is not of the sun itself, but of the pinhole camera images left by the light through the leaves.

I haven't processed the fact that Netanyahu is trying to start Armageddon, yet. So far, Iran has been restrained, and Biden has apparently told Israel it "will not participate in any retaliatory strikes" on Iran, but he's still saying he backs Israel and a lot of people are holding their breath to see if he's going to show any backbone.

The Likud-backed Israeli government has been busy rubbing our faces in their murderous arrogance. I first noticed the story of the targeted assassination of World Central Kitchen workers, which underscored their real beef with UNWRA, which is not any imagined relationship with Hamas but that they are bringing aid to ordinary people in Gaza. Or did I notice the massacre at Al Shifa hospital first? (Electronic Intifada has a number videos and reports from on the ground.) And then I saw that they'd bombed the Iranian embassy in Syria. Then I saw that they'd banned Al Jazeera. They all seemed to happen at once, like a one-two-three-four punch, each one leaving people gasping. There's no question of the WCK murders being "accidental" — this is yet another case of clearly identified vehicles who had coordinated with IDF so they knew exactly who and where they were. Meanwhile, foreign policy commentators were incredulous at seeing anyone bomb an embassy, which they regard as an attack on the very idea of diplomacy itself. And of course, since the defenders of Likud's policies regard any journalist that isn't embedded with IDF as "Hamas mouthpieces" anyway, of course they are continuing their program of clearing any of the world's real journalists out of Gaza. As Eric says in his Forward piece, "The decision was announced Monday, on the basis of a law, passed after Oct. 7 and recently renewed, which gives the prime minister and communications minister the authority to order the closure of foreign networks operating in Israel and confiscate their equipment if they are seen to pose 'harm to the state's security.' But while Al Jazeera poses a significant nuisance to Israel, it cannot be said to constitute any kind of genuine 'threat.' Meanwhile, by banning the news service, Israel has shown itself ready to employ the typical tactics of an undemocratic dictatorship to keep its own people, and much of the world, in the dark about its own often-indefensible actions."

"Israel Created 'Kill Zones' in Gaza. Anyone Who Crosses Into Them Is Shot: The Israeli army says 9,000 terrorists have been killed since the Gaza war began. Defense officials and soldiers, however, tell Haaretz that these are often civilians whose only crime was to cross an invisible line drawn by the IDF"

Surprisingly, this appeared in The Washington Post: "I'm Jewish, and I've covered wars. I know war crimes when I see them. How does it feel to be a war-crimes reporter whose family bankrolled a nation that's committing war crimes? I can tell you. [...] As Israeli forces grind through Gaza in what the International Court of Justice defines as a 'plausible' case of genocide, my family's history of philanthropy runs into my familiarity with war crimes. When Israel bombs and shoots civilians, blocks food aid, attacks hospitals and cuts off water supplies, I remember the same outrages in Bosnia. When people in a Gaza flour line were attacked, I thought of the Sarajevans killed waiting in line for bread, and the perpetrators who in each case insisted the victims were slaughtered by their own side. Atrocities tend to rhyme."

This story by Dave Ettlin in 1980 tells us that when giant ships that didn't exist way back when the Francis Scott Key Bridge was built started swirling around in Baltimore's harbor, this was gonna happen. In the right-wing-o-sphere, of course, it's all about wokery.

"Suicide Mission: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane. John Barnett had one of those bosses who seemed to spend most of his waking hours scheming to inflict humiliation upon him. He mocked him in weekly meetings whenever he dared contribute a thought, assigned a fellow manager to spy on him and spread rumors that he did not play nicely with others, and disciplined him for things like 'using email to communicate' and pushing for flaws he found on planes to be fixed. 'John is very knowledgeable almost to a fault, as it gets in the way at times when issues arise,' the boss wrote in one of his withering performance reviews, downgrading Barnett's rating from a 40 all the way to a 15 in an assessment that cast the 26-year quality manager, who was known as 'Swampy' for his easy Louisiana drawl, as an anal-retentive prick whose pedantry was antagonizing his colleagues. The truth, by contrast, was self-evident to anyone who spent five minutes in his presence: John Barnett, who raced cars in his spare time and seemed 'high on life' according to one former colleague, was a 'great, fun boss that loved Boeing and was willing to share his knowledge with everyone,' as one of his former quality technicians would later recall."

"Prison-tech company bribed jails to ban in-person visits: Beware of geeks bearing gifts. When prison-tech companies started offering "free" tablets to America's vast army of prisoners, it set off alarm-bells for prison reform advocates – but not for the law-enforcement agencies that manage the great American carceral enterprise. The pitch from these prison-tech companies was that they could cut the costs of locking people up while making jails and prisons safer. Hell, they'd even make life better for prisoners. And they'd do it for free! These prison tablets would give every prisoner their own phone and their own video-conferencing terminal. They'd supply email, of course, and all the world's books, music, movies and games. Prisoners could maintain connections with the outside world, from family to continuing education. Sounds too good to be true, huh? Here's the catch: all of these services are blisteringly expensive. [...] The future isn't here, it's just not evenly distributed. Prisoners are the ultimate early adopters of the technology that the richest, most powerful, most sadistic people in the country's corporate board-rooms would like to force us all to use."

The blockade of Cuba has imposed terrible hardship on its people, but Biden hasn't reversed Trump's reversal of one of the few good things Obama did: relaxing the embargo. Interestingly, Cuban Americans supported Obama's policy until they didn't. Why didn't they? Larry Lessig enlightens me: "Yet if we dig a bit deeper, there may be a way to understand the economy of influence that pushes Cubans in America to punish Cubans in Cuba. Because it turns out that our government gives tens of millions of dollars in government contracts to Cubans in Florida to spread the anti-Cuban message. These contracts are extremely lucrative: This year's budget promises $25 million (a 25% increase) to 'promote democracy' in Cuba, which means millions to run websites or Twitter feeds meant to rile up native Cubans and drive hatred toward the Cuban government. We spend another $25 million on radio and TV broadcasts targeting Cuba. Normalization would obviously starve the beneficiaries of this propaganda welfare. So Cubans in Florida feeding at this trough are keen to avoid that subsidy disappearing. It's good money in exchange for very little work. Who wouldn't fight to keep it?"

"Trina Robbins, Creator and Historian of Comic Books, Dies at 85: Trina Robbins, who as an artist, writer and editor of comics was a pioneering woman in a male-dominated field, and who as a historian specialized in books about female cartoonists, died on Wednesday in San Francisco. She was 85. Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by her longtime partner, the superhero comics inker Steve Leialoha, who said she had recently suffered a stroke." I'm glad I knew it was coming because hearing about that stroke was painful. I loved being around her, she was so vibrant and energizing. I guess that's why Joni Mitchell put her in the first verse.

RIP: "Louis Gossett Jr, first Black man to win supporting actor Oscar, dies aged 87." I really liked that guy, and I howled out loud when re-watching an old episode of The Rockford Files and seeing him turn up in an afro. "Is that... Lou Gossett with hair?" Luckily, when the same character turned up in a later episode, they'd ditched the wig.

RIP: "Vernor Vinge (1944-2024): Vernor Vinge, author of many influential hard science fiction works, died March 20 at the age of 79. Vinge sold his first science-fiction story in 1964, 'Apartness', which appeared in the June 1965 issue of New Worlds. In 1971, he received a PhD (Math) from UCSD, and the next year began teaching at San Diego State University. It wasn't until almost thirty years later, in August 2000, that he retired from teaching to write science-fiction full time. His 1981 novella True Names is often credited as the first story to present a fully fleshed-out concept of cyberspace. He won Hugo Awards for his novels A Fire Upon the Deep (1993 — tie), A Deepness in the Sky (2000), Rainbows End (2007), and novellas Fast Times at Fairmont High (2002), and The Cookie Monster (2004). A Deepness in the Sky also won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and in translation won Spain's Ignotus Award, Germany's Kurd Lasswitz Preis, and Italy's Italia Award." For a long time I was only peripherally aware of him as the former husband of my friend Joan Vinge, but A Fire Upon The Deep changed all that.

RIP: The legendary "John Sinclair, MC5 Manager and Activist, Dies at 82: John Sinclair, a counterculture icon who managed Detroit rockers MC5 during their peak years, has died. He was 82. His representative confirmed that the Michigan native died of congestive heart failure, The Detroit News reported. In addition to managing MC5, Sinclair was known as a poet, a political activist, a vocal marijuana advocate and the leader of the White Panther Party, an anti-racist group named in response to the radical Black Panther Party."

ROT IN PERDITION: "Joe Lieberman, Iraq War Cheerleader and Killer of Public Option, Dead at 82: 'Joe Lieberman's legacy will live on as your medical debt' [...] 'Up until the very end, Joe Lieberman enjoyed the high-quality, government-financed healthcare that he worked diligently to deny the rest of us. That's his legacy,' said Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, which advocates for universal, single-payer healthcare. As Warren Gunnels, majority staff director for Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), explained, 'Joe Lieberman led the effort to ensure the Affordable Care Act did not include a public option or a reduction in the Medicare eligibility age to 55.'"
"Joe Lieberman and the Venality of Elite Bipartisanship [...] Lieberman was a reliable Bush ally on the 'war on terror' and other issues, and had long been a suspect Democrat, let alone progressive lawmaker in general. His entire career was built on his conservatism, having beaten (with the support of William F. Buckley) liberal Republican Lowell Weicker in 1988 in a campaign where he supported bombing Libya, invading Grenada, and maintaining the US freeze-out of Cuba, all of which Weicker opposed. Lieberman also supported the death penalty for drug traffickers, a stealth form of school prayer, and strict spending cuts for the purpose of balancing the budget."
Jeet Heer commenting to Rick Perlstein on Facebook: "There are many good people who died younger than they should have because Lieberman put the kibosh on the public option. Not to mention the many dead because of the criminal wars he supported. So I say that speaking ill of him is the best way to honor the innumerable dead." (Rick had posted a link to his own little tribute to Lieberman.)
This gallery was described to me as, "Joe Lieberman with a bunch of people I'd like to punch in the face," and wow, it's breathtaking!

"Subprime gadgets: The promise of feudal security: "Surrender control over your digital life so that we, the wise, giant corporation, can ensure that you aren't tricked into catastrophic blunders that expose you to harm": [Link] The tech giant is a feudal warlord whose platform is a fortress; move into the fortress and the warlord will defend you against the bandits roaming the lawless land beyond its walls. That's the promise, here's the failure: What happens when the warlord decides to attack you? If a tech giant decides to do something that harms you, the fortress becomes a prison and the thick walls keep you in."

Department of Great Deals: Camp David: "But wait. Didn't Barak, as his defenders say, offer Arafat land from Israel proper in return for the annexed 9 percent? Yes. But the terms of the trade bordered on insulting. In exchange for the 9 percent of the West Bank annexed by Israel, Arafat would have gotten land as large as 1 percent of the West Bank. And, whereas some of the 9 percent was choice land, symbolically important to Palestinians, the 1 percent was land whose location wasn't even specified. I'm trying to imagine Yasser Arafat selling this 9-to-1 land swap to Palestinians—who, remember, are divided into two camps: the 'return to 1967 borders' crowd and the 'destroy the state of Israel' crowd. I'm not succeeding. And Arafat would have had to explain other unpalatable details, such as Israeli sovereignty over Haram al-Sharif (site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque), which had been under Arab control before 1967 and is the third-holiest site in Islam. The Camp David offer also had features that kept it from amounting to statehood in the full sense of the term. The new Palestine couldn't have had a military and wouldn't have had sovereignty over its air space—Israeli jets would roam at will. Nor would the Palestinians' freedom of movement on the ground have been guaranteed. At least one east-west Israeli-controlled road would slice all the way across the West Bank, and Israel would be entitled to declare emergencies during which Palestinians couldn't cross the road. Imagine if a mortal enemy of America's—say the Soviet Union during the Cold War—was legally entitled to stop the north-south flow of Americans and American commerce. Don't you think the average American might ask: Wait a minute—who negotiated this deal?"

"Burning Man Was Never Radical: How the world's most famous countercultural event is actually a preeminent evangelist of traditional neoliberal values [...] Our modern neoliberal system eschews disciplinarian control in favour of a significantly more effective prison built on the principle of ubiquitous freedom. When everyone is believed to be free to lead any life that they choose, then the life that they are living must be a result of personal choices. Individual choice is seen — above all else — as the primary driver of change. Concerned about the warming climate? Shop local and drive less, never-mind the corporate emitters. Worried about waste in our oceans? Stop buying plastic straws, never-mind the disposable nature of continuous consumption. Systemic solutions to these problems are seen as either impossible, or made up entirely of the individual choices of independent consumers. If change isn't happening, consumers must not want it badly enough."

Chris Hedges interviews the general's son, "The IDF's war crimes are a perfect reflection of israeli society: Miko Peled, author and former member of IDF Special Forces, explains how Israel indoctrinates its citizens in anti-Palestinian racism from the cradle to the grave. [...] That's what this so-called heroism was, it was no heroism at all. It was a well-trained, highly motivated, well-indoctrinated, well-armed militia that then became the IDF. But when it started, it was still a militia or today they would be called a terrorist organization, that went up against the people who had never had a military force, who never had a tank, who never had a warplane, who never prepared, even remotely, for battle or an assault. Then you have to make a choice: How do you bridge this? The differences are not nuanced, the differences are enormous. The choice that I made is to investigate for myself and find out who's telling the truth and who isn't. And my side was not telling the truth."

Could it be true? Could ice cream be good for you? "Nutrition Science's Most Preposterous Result: Studies show a mysterious health benefit to ice cream. Scientists don't want to talk about it. [...] But the international media coverage didn't mention what I'd seen in Table 5. According to the numbers, tucking into a 'dairy-based dessert'—a category that included foods such as pudding but consisted, according to Pereira, mainly of ice cream—was associated for overweight people with dramatically reduced odds of developing insulin-resistance syndrome. It was by far the biggest effect seen in the study, 2.5 times the size of what they'd found for milk. 'It was pretty astounding,' Pereira told me. 'We thought a lot about it, because we thought, Could this actually be the case?'"

As God is my witness, I thought eggs could fly!

Play xkcd Machine.

Joni Mitchell - "Ladies of the Canyon"

Come now, gentleman, I know there's some mistake

"Pink Flower 11" by Rosi Roys is from the rose collection.

Some excellent news to get rid of judge-shopping: "Conference Acts to Promote Random Case Assignment: The Judicial Conference of the United States has strengthened the policy governing random case assignment, limiting the ability of litigants to effectively choose judges in certain cases by where they file a lawsuit. The policy addresses all civil actions that seek to bar or mandate state or federal actions, 'whether by declaratory judgment and/or any form of injunctive relief.' In such cases, judges would be assigned through a district-wide random selection process." Ryan Cooper explains why this is such a big deal, here.

"Confusion in Texas after appeals court blocks border arrest law: State law that would allow local officers to arrest migrants halted hours after US supreme court allowed it [...] [Judge] Hidalgo said many members of law enforcement she dealt with were not prepared to enforce the law. She told CNN she could imagine a scenario where she herself went for a jog and was stopped by local police saying, 'You look like you may be here on an undocumented basis,' and said: 'This is a terrible precedent.'" Crackpot legislators making crackpot laws and a crackpot Supreme Court making crackpot rulings and, yeah, you're gonna get confusion...and disbelief.

"The Strange Death of a Boeing Whistleblower: There's no way America's last great manufacturer murdered a prominent critic … is there? [...] But the end was almost in sight. 'He was in very good spirits and really looking forward to putting this phase of his life behind him,' Turkewitz said. 'We didn't see any indication he would take his own life. We need more information … No one can believe it.'"

Mapping Police Violence: Law enforcement agencies across the country are failing to provide us with even basic information about the lives they take. So we collect the data ourselves. Scroll to explore."

"The Spectacle of Policing: 'Swatting' innocent people is the latest incarnation of the decades-long gestation of an infrastructure of fear. On February 25, an active-duty airman named Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., while yelling, 'Free Palestine.' I'll leave it to others to analyze the politics. I want to focus on something else that emerged from that most harrowing event: what first responders did on the scene before anyone even knew what was going on. The first first responder, according to a witness, either a security guard or a cop, asked the man before him who was on fire, 'May I help you, sir?' Then he ordered him to the ground. The second first responder—a Secret Service agent, it turns out—then approached 'with a gun drawn on the man after he collapses, still consumed by flames.' A picture of that moment emerged. It looks like he thought he was keeping a murderer from fleeing the scene of the crime. It was the third responder who tried to actually put out the fire. As he did, he cried something that ought to live on in popular lore for the way it concentrates attention on just how sick our weapons-addicted society has become—like when a University of Florida student cried, 'Don't tase me, bro,' when six officers assaulted him for asking an embarrassing question of a politician in 2007. He told the guy aiming the pistol, 'I don't need guns, I need fire extinguishers!' By the time enough of those arrived, it was too late. Bushnell died in the hospital."

I can't imagine why some people think the economy is not so great.
• "Nearly 50% of US parents financially supporting adult children, study finds"
• "American dream of owning a home is dead, majority of renters say"
• "HUD: Homelessness Up by 12 Percent"

"Man of Steel: Today on TAP: President Biden's blockage of the proposed purchase of U.S. Steel by Japan's Nippon Steel is unprecedented and magnificently pro-union. You'd think it would be hard for Biden to top his full-on embrace of the UAW and their stunningly successful strike against the Big Three automakers. But Biden has just done it by declaring that he opposes the takeover by Japan's Nippon Steel of U.S. Steel. The U.S. needs to 'maintain strong American steel companies powered by American steel workers,' Biden declared, adding: 'U.S. Steel has been an iconic American steel company for more than a century, and it is vital for it to remain an American steel company that is domestically owned and operated.' This move doubles down on Biden's commitment to rebuild domestic industry and rejection of corporate-driven 'free trade' and his alliance with the labor movement. There is a process for government evaluation of proposed foreign takeovers of American companies on national-security grounds. A review is conducted by an interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS). The final decision whether to allow a deal to proceed is made by the president."

"UNRWA report says Israel coerced some agency employees to falsely admit Hamas links [...] The document says several UNRWA Palestinian staffers had been detained by the Israeli army, and added that the ill-treatment and abuse they said they had experienced included severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members. 'Agency staff members have been subject to threats and coercion by the Israeli authorities while in detention, and pressured to make false statements against the Agency, including that the Agency has affiliations with Hamas and that UNRWA staff members took part in the 7 October 2023 atrocities,' the report says. UNRWA declined a Reuters request to see transcripts of its interviews containing allegations of coerced false confessions. In addition to the alleged abuse endured by UNRWA staff members, Palestinian detainees more broadly described allegations of abuse, including beatings, humiliation, threats, dog attacks, sexual violence, and deaths of detainees denied medical treatment, the UNRWA report says."

"Allegations UNRWA collaborated with Hamas are 'flat-out lies': Van Hollen: Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) ripped into Israel's allegations that the U.N.'s Palestinian refugee agency, commonly referred to as UNRWA, is a proxy for the Palestinian militant group Hamas, arguing the accusations are an attempt by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to eliminate the agency. There's no doubt that the claim that Prime Minister Netanyahu and others are making, that somehow UNRWA is a proxy for Hamas, are just flat-out lies,' Van Hollen said Sunday in an interview on CBS News's 'Face the Nation.' 'If you look at the person who's in charge of operations on the ground for UNRWA, it's about a 20-year U.S. Army veteran. You can be sure he's not in cahoots with Hamas.'" Nice to see my Senator saying it out loud.

"AIPAC Talking Points Revealed: Documents show that the powerful lobby is spreading its influence on Capitol Hill by calling for unconditional military aid to Israel and hyping up threats from Iran. [...] The Prospect has obtained documents from the conference that preview the PAC's lobbying blitz on Capitol Hill this week. The documents reveal AIPAC's legislative strategy and the talking points it will use to support an unconditional $14 billion military funding package that has thus far been held up, among other policy changes. They also include numerous positions on aspects of the U.S. response to the war that have not previously been made public, from abolishing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to opposing recent restrictions imposed by the Biden administration on Israeli settlers. There is no mention of a two-state solution. [...] THOUGH THE PRIMARY MOTIVATION FOR THE CONFERENCE was lobbying, the event also informed members about the PAC's congressional spending plans. AIPAC has pledged to drop over $100 million on campaigns this election cycle to defeat any congressional candidates critical of Israel." Those candidates will, of course, be progressives. AIPAC has been funding right-wing candidates in Democratic primaries as well as supporting Republicans in general elections. "AIPAC is instructing members to make assertions of fact to congressional staff that are not supported by credible evidence other than statements by the Israel Defense Forces, according to experts who reviewed the documents. 'They're going to the Hill to repeat a foreign government's talking points,' said Matt Duss at the Center for International Policy, a former policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders."

"Oregon Gov. Kotek to Sign 'Unconscionable' Bill Recriminalizing Drugs: The landmark decriminalization measure passed by state voters in 2020 "now stands as a cautionary tale about the failure to match bold policy reform with competent administration," said one reporter. [...] Oregon voters passed Measure 110, also called the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, by a 17% margin in 2020, and it took effect the following February. The state was the first and only in the country to take the decriminalization and treatment approach, a shift widely lauded by drug policy groups."

"CNN changed a headline about EV sales from a success story to a failure: On February 25, CNN published a piece on electric vehicles outlining the reasons that sales, which are trending upward and reached record levels in 2023, are not as high as analysts once predicted they'd be. The next day, a new headline appeared above the article that radically altered the main takeaway of the story without any new information added. Why did CNN change 'No, electric vehicle sales aren't dropping' to 'How EVs became such a massive disappointment'?"

The thing about these people is, they have money. They have money and it puts them at the top of a hierarchy that they don't simply want to enjoy, but want the rest of us to revere. They can't stand it that we don't respect their place. "Inside A Secret Society Of Prominent Right-Wing Christian Men Prepping For A 'National Divorce': A secret, men-only right-wing society with members in influential positions around the country is on a crusade: to recruit a Christian government that will form after the right achieves regime change in the United States, potentially via a 'national divorce.'"

"The Lie That's Inflating Your Credit Card Bills: Credit card companies doubled interest rates on the false claim of inflated financial risk — and now to fight new late-fee rules, they're threatening to raise them even higher. Over the last decade, credit card companies have jacked up interest rates to a record high, costing Americans $25 billion each year, even though regulators say lenders' risk of losses has declined. Now, in response to a new ban on excessive credit card late fees, the banking industry is threatening to punish debtors with even higher interest rates as lenders' profits skyrocket. In response to new late-fee caps announced on Tuesday, the banking industry's largest trade group is arguing that consumer penalties and sky-high interest rates account for the risk of people failing to pay their credit card bills. But as a recent federal report showed, credit card companies have nearly doubled the interest rates they charge to consumers — far outpacing the financial risk they're taking on by lending people money. This means that corporate greed, not financial hazards, is behind the soaring credit card fees that cardholders face."

From 2018, "Meet the Hidden Architect Behind America's Racist Economics: Ask people to name the key minds that have shaped America's burst of radical right-wing attacks on working conditions, consumer rights and public services, and they will typically mention figures like free market-champion Milton Friedman, libertarian guru Ayn Rand, and laissez-faire economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. James McGill Buchanan is a name you will rarely hear unless you've taken several classes in economics. And if the Tennessee-born Nobel laureate were alive today, it would suit him just fine that most well-informed journalists, liberal politicians, and even many economics students have little understanding of his work. The reason? Duke historian Nancy MacLean contends that his philosophy is so stark that even young libertarian acolytes are only introduced to it after they have accepted the relatively sunny perspective of Ayn Rand. (Yes, you read that correctly). If Americans really knew what Buchanan thought and promoted, and how destructively his vision is manifesting under their noses, it would dawn on them how close the country is to a transformation most would not even want to imagine, much less accept."

I had no idea this version of "Memo From Turner" existed: "The first version of Memo From Turner recorded by Mick Jagger with Steve Winwood on all instruments and Jim Capaldi on drums. This version has never been officially released, the vocals from this track was used for the final mix produced by Jack Nitzsche, I slowed down the track to go with the clip (From Performance) and also slowed some clips down as well. Enjoy!"

I can bring whole cities to ruin

"Roses and Strawberries" by Sergey Sovkov is from the Rose Period collection.

Oops! I bounced my computer on the kitchen tiles and lost February! My data seems to be okay, but having to get a new computer made recovery pricey, and I do have a PayPal button on the sidebar, but if there's someone who deserves it more (Common Dreams sounds like they're balancing on a knife-edge at the moment), I'll survive without it.

And I would have posted a few days ago but EMTs insisted on getting me to the hospital for a scan of my foot and leg so I had a complicated few days of tests and dope and lots of sleep there before they pronounced me "fine", which was a surprise to us all.

Meanwhile, right-wing war-monger and big-time beneficiary of AIPAC largess Adam Schiff ruined it for us by beating Barbara Lee and Katie Porter in the California Senate Primary. This means he will be running against Republican Steve Garvey for the DiFi's old Senate seat. How did he do it? "The primary broke records as the most expensive Senate race in California. Schiff's campaign is widely seen as having engineered Garvey's strong primary performance by spending millions of dollars to air ads attacking Garvey, the former first baseman for the LA Dodgers and an inexperienced Republican candidate, thus elevating his name recognition among Republican voters in a way the Garvey campaign itself was not able to afford. Schiff's strategy appeared to be effective at boxing out his two Democratic progressive competitors. Neither Porter nor Lee are expected to return to Congress next year, after choosing to compete in the Senate race rather than run for re-election in their House districts."

"A State Supreme Court Just Issued the Most Devastating Rebuke of Dobbs Yet [...] This week the Pennsylvania Supreme Court responded to that conclusion: no. On Monday, the court issued a landmark opinion declaring that abortion restrictions do amount to sex-based discrimination and therefore are 'presumptively unconstitutional' under the state constitution's equal rights amendment. The majority vehemently rejected Dobbs' history-only analysis, noting that, until recently, 'those interpreting the law' saw women 'as not only having fewer legal rights than men but also as lesser human beings by design.' Justice David Wecht went even further: In an extraordinary concurrence, the justice recounted the historical use of abortion bans to repress women, condemned Alito's error-ridden analysis, and repudiated the 'antiquated and misogynistic notion that a woman has no say over what happens to her own body.'"

"The Nixonian New York Times Stonewalls on a Discredited Article About Hamas and Rape: The newspaper of record botches an important story about sexual violence on October 7. [...] On December 28, 2023, the Times published a major investigative report headlined ''Screams Without Words': How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.' Written by veteran foreign correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman along with two younger freelancers, Anat Schwartz and Adam Sella, the article dealt with one of the most painful stories to emerge from the Hamas massacre of October 7, the allegations of widespread rape. Based on more than 150 interviews, the article contended that the Hamas systematically used rape as a weapon of war. The question of rapes on October 7 had been simmering since the Hamas attack, gaining increasing urgency by November, when the Israeli government made it a centerpiece (along with unverified reports about beheaded babies) in its case for war. While leading pro-Israel advocates emphasized accounts of rape that they insisted amounted to a systematic campaign deliberately organized by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups, some pro-Palestinian commentators took a more skeptical stance, noting the lack of forensic evidence to cast doubt on the narrative of a systematic campaign of sexual violence. The danger of the skeptical stance, sometimes played out in polemics, is that it sometimes seemed to shift over to the suggestion that all the testimonies of rape were mere 'stories' without evidentiary basis. 'Screams Without Words' initially seemed like a searing and irreproachable indictment that settled this debate. But doubts soon emerged about the article, both on account of the unacknowledged biases of the reporters (in particular Anat Schwartz) and also the shaky nature of the evidence presented. Key sources for the article had a history of false claims. The family of one allegedly raped murder victim spoke out against the article, claiming it presented an impossible story. A fierce internal debate emerged inside the Times itself as reporters not part of the original team found it difficult to verify many of the claims of the article. The reporting behind the Times article has been questioned both by the Times podcast The Daily and The Intercept." But instead of investigating how they'd made such a mess, they decided to investigate staff who'd "leaked" the fact that many Times staffers were outraged at the bias and unsubstantiated nature of the claims of the authors.

From In These Times, "The ADL Wants to Conflate Critiques of Israel with Antisemitism. That Won't Make Jews Safer. As conservative pundits mainstream antisemitic tropes, the ADL is instead focused on silencing expressions of Palestinian solidarity. [...] The truly dangerous rise in American antisemitism since October 7 has nothing to do with activists calling for a ceasefire, or chanting ​'from the river to the sea' or arguing (in concurrence with dozens of scholars in Holocaust and Genocide Studies) that Israel is engaged in genocidal violence against Palestinians in Gaza. The serious threat here, which the ADL under Greenblatt continually deemphasizes, is the proliferation of antisemitic ideology coming from the U.S. Right, where influential figures are rapidly normalizing racist, misogynistic, antisemitic and otherwise bigoted ideas long considered taboo in mainstream political discourse."

"The Neglected History of the State of Israel: The Revisionist faction of Zionism that ended up triumphing adhered to literal fascist doctrines and traditions. [...] One of Chotiner's best interviews ran this past November. A leader of the militant West Bank settlement movement told him that Jews have a sacred duty to occupy all the land between 'the Euphrates in the east and the Nile in the southwest,' that nothing west of the Jordan River was ever 'Arab place or property,' and that no Arabs, even citizens, should have civil rights in Israel. Stunning stuff, and extremely valuable to have on the record, especially given the settler movement's close ties to Benjamin Netanyahu's government. I praise Chotiner, however, as a bridge to a separate point: Even the most learned and thoughtful observers of Israel and Palestine miss a basic historic foundation of the crisis. [...] In 1928, a prominent Revisionist named Abba Ahimeir published a series of articles entitled 'From the Diary of a Fascist.' They refer to the founder of their movement, Ze'ev Jabotinsky (his adopted first name is Hebrew for 'wolf'), as 'il duce.' In 1935, his comrade Hen Merhavia wrote that Revisionists were doing what Mussolini did: 'establish a nucleus of an exemplary life of morality and purity. Like us, the Italian fascists look back to their historical heritage. We seek to return to the kingdom of the House of David; they want to return to the glory of the Roman Empire.' They even opened a maritime academy in Italy, under Mussolini's sponsorship, for the navy they hoped to build in their new Israeli state. '[T]he views and the political and social inclinations of the Revisionists,' an Italian magazine reported, 'are absolutely in accordance with the fascist doctrine … as our students they will bring the Italian and fascist culture to Palestine.'"

From 2021, a story few seem to have heard, "How did it happen that Israel's Jews and Arabs rose up against each other?: The endless rocket attacks no longer shock, but the divisions that have come violently to the surface in Israeli towns have horrified the country. [...] But the deterioration of the political status of Palestinians in Israel hangs heavily over social and economic problems. Over the last decade, Israel has passed laws targeting Palestinian citizens' rights, culminating in the 2018 'nation state' law, elevating Jews to a superior status in Israel. Anti-Arab rhetoric from rightwing politicians has crossed the line to incitement." Like so much else, the claim that Arabs in Israel live as equals is a sham. For a deeper dive, it's worth watching "The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine." You might also want to read a little about Plan Dalet.

"WMD, Part II: CIA "Cooked The Intelligence" To Hide That Russia Favored Clinton, Not Trump In 2016: Russia didn't fear Hillary Clinton. 'It was a relationship they were comfortable with,' some CIA analysts believed, but intelligence was suppressed. On the fall of the last great Russiagate myth [...] Russia didn't fear Hillary Clinton. 'It was a relationship they were comfortable with,' some CIA analysts believed, but intelligence was suppressed. On the fall of the last great Russiagate myth"

Radley Balko on "The retconning of George Floyd: Bari Weiss's Free Press is the latest outlet to tout a conspiratorial documentary alleging that Derek Chauvin was wrongly convicted. It's all nonsense. For a few precious days after the death of George Floyd, there was at least a clear consensus across the political spectrum — there was near-unanimity that what Darnella Frazier captured on her cell phone was a crime. An outrage. A thing to be denounced. As Floyd lay handcuffed on his stomach, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd's back for nine minutes as Floyd became unresponsive, then went limp, then died. Even the most vocal police supporters condemned Chauvin's actions, though with obligatory disclaimers that Chauvin was a rogue, aberrant bad apple, and that no one should judge all law enforcement officers by his actions. The consensus wouldn't last. As protests heated up around the country, far-right pundits began to break away. They pointed to Floyd's criminal record, the violence at some of the protests, and the allegedly radical positions of the organizers. Dennis Prager, the radio host and founder of a fake university, marveled to his audience how 'decent' MPD officers had been to Floyd."

RIP: "The Prestige author Christopher Priest dies aged 80: Internationally acclaimed novelist died from cancer on Friday after being diagnosed with small-cell carcinoma last summer" (I saw the Telegraph story first so I could post it here right away, but now I see that his close friend and colleague John Clute got the Guardian obit.) Chris also did a great fanzine called Deadloss and later wrote The Last Deadloss Visions about Harlan Ellison's failure to produce the promised third in the Dangerous Visions series in a timely fashion. He also had a long-time friendship and collaborations with Dave Langford in both sf and their private enterprises. There's so much I could say about Chris, but what I'll tell you is that one time he drove us home and sat on our couch and told us about the time he went up to Liverpool and discovered an as-yet unknown rock band called The Beatles and George insulted his suit, and we made him write that story down and we built a whole one-shot fanzine around it. That fanzine was called Chuch, and you can go there now and read Chris' story, "Thank You, Girls."

RIP: Brian Stableford 1948-2024, British SF author of 80 novels and a lot of other things. He was one of those people who Dave Langford alerted me to early as one of the Good Guys, and he was. My heart really goes out to Dave, losing such close, long-time friends at once.

RIP: Liaden Universe Co-Author Steve Miller. (1950-2024). I really liked this guy back in the BaltiWash days, and I was really happy to hear he'd married Sharon Lee and they were writing together up in Maine. I'd always meant to look at their stuff but I never saw it on shelves locally, and then a chance remark from a friend made me put them on my wishlist. It didn't take me long to realize I wanted all of the Liaden novels, they ring all my chimes. I stayed in contact with Steve, and got to know Sharon better, on Facebook, and was right chuffed about it all. I'm sorry to say I took no photos of him but one day shortly after a party at his place, he presented me with this photo of me being leered at by two guys, which had amused him. So here's a nice old shot of his sofa and me being thin, once upon a time. But there's a nice pic of him and Sharon on that obit page.

RIP: "Hinton Battle, Three-Time Tony Winner and Original The Wiz, Actor, Dies at 67: Hinton Battle, the Tony-winning performer who originated the role of The Scarecrow in Broadway's The Wiz, has died. He was 67. The actor died Tuesday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles following a lengthy illness." But of course, we loved him as the dancing demon.

"Moral Bankruptcy: The constitutional grant of a second chance for the destitute has become an enabler of reverse wealth redistribution. One wild case in Houston tells the story. [...] THE NATION'S BANKRUPTCY CODE, the constitutionally enshrined system by which Americans are theoretically afforded the chance to discharge unmanageable debts, has over the past decade or two quietly metamorphosed into a vast enabler of reverse wealth redistribution. Corporations have exploited the tremendous privileges of bankruptcy protection to abrogate union contracts, cram down unilateral wage and benefit cuts, eject lawsuits filed by customers and community members killed by toxic products and manufacturing processes, back out of funding pensions and zero out the savings accounts of workers they pressured into investing in company stock as a condition of keeping their jobs, settle wrongful death claims for less than a penny on the dollar, evade responsibility for cleaning up after oil spills or refinery explosions or poisoning groundwater with benzene, and, of course, discharge debt incurred in the process of defrauding vulnerable students into taking out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans they are practically barred by law from discharging in bankruptcy themselves."

Kuttner presents the depressing news of "The Return of Tony Blair: The former prime minister has all but taken over the Labour Party and pushed it to the right. Didn't Tony Blair, nicknamed Tory Blur, do enough damage last time? When Bill Clinton was the U.S. president and Tony Blair was the British prime minister, they were soulmates. They brought us neoliberalism. Both Clinton's New Democrats and Blair's New Labour turned away from progressivism and working families in favor of globalist corporate financial elites. Neoliberal deregulation of finance in turn produced the economic collapse in 2008. The failure of the center-left party to maximize the moment, contain capital, and rebuild a pro-worker economy led to the defection of working-class voters and ultimately to Trump in the U.S. and Brexit in the U.K. At home, Joe Biden has at last broken with Democratic neoliberalism. In Britain, the Conservative Party has lurched from blunder to blunder and from failed leader to failed leader, setting up a return to Labour. The Labour Party, under Keir Starmer, is the odds-on favorite to win the next general election, which could be as early as May or as late as next January. But Starmer, rather than rebuilding a progressive party, has virtually outsourced his entire program to Tony Blair. Based on its recent pronouncements, a Starmer government, if anything, would be worse than Blair's."

This article is good, but it doesn't get to the heart of the matter, which is that the publisher in question shows no interest in presenting the unvarnished facts he so claims he wants the public to have so we can make up our own minds. You might get one rigorously researched article with nothing-but-the-facts on a particular issue, but when you have half a dozen articles that are clearly propaganda for one side full of widely-debunked nonsense as their foundation, you just might suspect a bias is in effect. And why do you print dozens of articles on an issue hardly anyone cares about when they don't even carry any illumination, let alone when they are full of holes? And, you know, everyone already knows Biden is old, why harp on it constantly? Even in an environment where The Times was rooting for Biden, you'd get the occasional reference to his age, but you really don't need to mention it that often — more often than Trump's visible dementia is mentioned. It's like that. "Why is New York Times campaign coverage so bad? Because that's what the publisher wants."

Ryan Cooper learned about "The Best Tax System on Earth: What America and the world can learn from the Faroe Islands [...] The Faroes have a tax system that is unique even among their Nordic neighbors, and probably the best in the world. Its operating principles are centralization, efficiency, and simplicity. It's not the most riveting subject for a travel holiday, I'll readily admit. But it's beautiful in its own way—and it makes a major difference in the lives of every Faroese person, from the lowest worker to the owners of the biggest businesses. It's hard to imagine fully implementing such a system in the United States, but we still might learn from their example."

Dave Johnson in 2013, "The 1983 Strategy Behind Today's Social Security Attacks: Suppose you're in a bar and you overhear a couple of guys in the next booth talking about a plan to steal from people's houses. As you eavesdrop the plan unfolds: one will come to the front door pretending to be from the gas company warning the homeowner about a gas leak down the street. While he distracts the homeowner at the front door, the other one will sneak in the back door and take stuff. So the next day the doorbell rings, and there's a guy saying he is from the gas company. He says he wants to talk a while to warn you about a gas leak down the street... This is what is happening with this constant drumbeat of attacks on Social Security. The attack on Social Security never goes away, it only escalates. As we go into this next round of attacks -- this time it is even coming from the President* -- it is more than useful to understand the background of this campaign against the program."

It's a wind that lingers long enough to be fed

"Ice outside my window," by Libby Spencer.

"International Court of Justice Rules Forcefully Against Israel in Landmark Genocide Ruling, Including Restricting Military Action [...] Of critical importance, and a huge smackdown to Israel, is the Court came as close as it reasonably could to calling for a ceasefire in ruling for the provisional measure (which it devised itself) for Israel to cease military action against Palestinians as members of a protected group under the Genocide Convention.1 I had opined that the Court could not call for a ceasefire since it could not bind Hamas to comply. It would not be sound or shrewd to give Israel an easy pretext for defying the court by saying that a one-sided ceasefire would leave it defenseless. But impressively, the court went as far as it could, and way way further than I expected, in constraining Israel military operations against the Palestinian population." The fact that it didn't demand a ceasefire in specific isn't interesting, since to comply with the order they'd still have to stop doing what they're doing.

"The NYPD Spent $150 Million to Catch Farebeaters Who Cost the MTA $104,000: Overtime pay for cops in New York's subway system increased from $4 million in 2022 to $155 million over the same period in 2023, according to an analysis by Gothamist. If that sounds like an excessive amount of money to be spending on cops who are famously mostly on their phones or GETTING STURDY, that's probably because you don't believe in public safety. For your information, that extra $151 million in overtime spending, a nearly 4,000 percent cost increase and the result of adding 1,000 additional cops to patrol the subway system, bought us a whopping two percent decrease in 'major' crime, amounting to a total of 48 fewer serious crimes like murder, rape, and robbery. The number of assaults on the subway, on the other hand, actually went up, raising the question of whether that decrease can even be attributed to the increased police presence underground." Atrios remarked on Christmas that, "A whole range of people - from centrist 'good government' types to libertarians to 'fiscal conservatives' - are just completely silent on absurd cop budgets."

"PRESS Act unanimously passes the House. Now on to the Senate! Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) applauds the House of Representatives for unanimously passing the PRESS Act, a bipartisan federal reporter's shield law that would protect journalists from being forced to name their sources in federal court and would stop the federal government from spying on journalists through their technology providers. The PRESS Act is the strongest federal shield bill that Congress has ever proposed. It's vigorously supported by major media outlets and civil society organizations."

"New Baltimore Sun owner insults staff in meeting, says paper should mimic Fox45: In a tense, three-hour meeting with staff Tuesday afternoon, new Baltimore Sun owner David Smith told employees he has only read the paper four times in the past few months, insulted the quality of their journalism and encouraged them to emulate a TV station owned by his broadcasting company. Smith, whose acquisition of the paper from the investment firm Alden Global Capital was announced publicly Monday evening, told staff he had not read newspapers for decades, according to several people who attended the meeting but were not authorized to speak publicly. [...] Smith, who is the executive chairman of Sinclair Inc., which operates more than 200 television stations nationwide, told New York Magazine in 2018 he considered print media “so left-wing as to be meaningless dribble.” Asked Tuesday during the meeting whether he stood by those comments now that he owns one of the most storied titles in American journalism, Smith said yes. Asked if he felt that way about the contents of his newspaper, Smith said “in many ways, yes,” according to people at the meeting. The Baltimore Sun won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. Smith is a major political player in the region, having donated heavily to campaigns. He recruited candidates to run against Mayor Brandon Scott and funded ballot initiatives that altered the city charter. [...] Smith's company owns the local station Fox45, and he praised its Project Baltimore, which focuses on the shortcomings of Baltimore City schools, as an example Sun reporters should follow." Of course he does! "Sinclair exec, Sun owner David Smith behind lawsuit against Baltimore schools: Fox45 says reporters didn't know owner is financing high-profile suit and station will add disclosure to stories. New Baltimore Sun owner and Sinclair Broadcast Group Executive Chairman David Smith has been quietly involved in a lawsuit accusing Baltimore City Public Schools of defrauding taxpayers, documents show." This man is one of the great public menaces of our time.

"A School Bought Solar Panels And Saved Enough To Give All Its Teachers Raises: 'The Sun Is Going To Be Shining Anyway, So Why Not Cash In On That?' A rural school district in Batesville, Arkansas generated enough solar energy to give every teacher a raise, CBS News reports. Salaries were only averaging around $45,000 at the Batesville School District, with many teachers leaving as a result. It was also proving difficult to attract new teachers to the town of just 10,000 people. But then the school district, which included a high school and five other education centers, turned an unused field into a solar energy farm back in 2017. It also covered the front of the high school in 1,500 panels. After installing the solar array and investing in other new energy infrastructure, Climatewire reports that the district turned a $250,000 annual budget deficit into a $1.8 million surplus — enough, according to CBS, to give every teacher a raise of up to $15,000."

Rick Perlstein is writing a new series for The American Prospect from the three-legged torture device of American politics, "You Are Entering the Infernal Triangle: Authoritarian Republicans, ineffectual Democrats, and a clueless media."
• "First They Came for Harvard: The right's long and all-too-unanswered war on liberal institutions claims a big one."
• "Metaphors Journalists Live By (Part I): One of the reasons political journalism is so ill-equipped for this moment in America is because of its stubborn adherence to outdated frames."
• "Metaphors Journalists Live By (Part II): The conclusion of our story of the bad things that can happen when journalists refuse to criticize themselves"
• "American Fascism: Author and scholar John Ganz on how Europe's interwar period informs the present"

"Democratic Lawmakers Plan Push To Get Controversial Biden Adviser Out Of Office: House Democrats have drafted a letter seeking the resignation of White House aide Brett McGurk, whose Middle East policies are seen as worsening the Gaza crisis." (You might want to deep-dive this guy a little more here.)

"'Disturbing': Australian Journalist Fired After Push by Pro-Israel Lobbyists [...] The Herald reported Tuesday that "dozens of leaked messages from a WhatsApp group called Lawyers for Israel show how members of the group repeatedly wrote to the ABC demanding Lattouf be sacked, and threatened legal action if she was not." One Lawyers for Israel member called Lattouf's lawyer, who is Jewish, a traitor."

In this thread on the Boeing scandal, Matt Stoller points out that the right-wing deflection to DEI is a red herring from "1998 fights between white guys - finance vs engineering." He cites "this note from 21 years ago from a group of Boeing engineers predicting the crisis we're in. It's a function of the McDonnell Douglas merger, not race." Matt also says, "I don't like DEI, because it's what a civil rights movement looks like when no one has any rights except through identity grievance and that's a very bad thing. But it's extremely obvious that DEI is used by the right to avoid looking at problems implicating their establishment."

"With Overdraft Fee Crackdown, 'CFPB Is Doing What It Was Designed to Do': The CFPB is proposing clear, enforceable rules that will reduce overdraft fees and save Americans billions, closing another lucrative regulatory loophole banks use to prey on consumers,' said one advocate."

At long last, Tom Tomorrow has joined forces with The American Prospect, who will now be carrying This Modern World.

RIP: Glynis Johns, Mary Poppins star and 'Send in the Clowns' singer, dies aged 100"— Sondheim actually wrote the song for her, and she was also the best mermaid ever. Lotta good photos here.

RIP: "Mary Weiss, lead singer with '60s girl group the Shangri-Las, died on Jan. 19 at the age of 75. Confirming the singer's death, Miriam Linna of Weiss' label Norton Records said: 'Mary was an icon, a hero, a heroine, to both young men and women of my generation and of all generations.' Formed in 1963, the quartet is remembered for their first Top 5 single, 'Remember (Walking in the Sand)' and its follow-up, the classic death disc 'Leader of the Pack,' both released in 1964."

RIP: "Melanie, Singer Who Performed at Woodstock and Topped Charts With 'Brand New Key,' Dies at 76: The singer, who wrote 'Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)' based on her experience at Woodstock, had been at work this month on a covers album." Good, she did what she loved right up to the end.

At Informed Comment, a review of Avi Shlaim's Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew [...] After the Nakba that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948 and the new state's victory against the Arab armies, the climate for Jews in Iraq significantly worsened. The defeat of the Iraqi army in Palestine was a deep humiliation for a nation that expected an easy military success. It was in this context, Shlaim remarks, that 'the distinction between Jews and Zionists, so crucial to interfaith harmony in the Arab world, was rapidly breaking down.'[2] Ella Shoat, who has researched the history of Arab Jews and provided feedback to Shlaim for his book, captures another side of the same problem when she writes that 'as the Palestinians were experiencing the Nakba, Arab Jews woke up to a new world order that could not accommodate their simultaneous Jewishness and Arabness.'"

One thing that really spooked me was hearing Israelis talk about what they had been taught about Palestinians. The level of propaganda is astonishing. Israelis claim that "Palestinians teach their children hate," but what Israeli children are taught is horrific - not just about Palestinians, but about everyone. I'd seen hints of this before, but Nurit Peled-Elhanan, the Israeli professor who studies and writes about education, still managed to shock me. It's worth your time to listen to this video about how racist the Israeli educational system is — and how it traumatizes Israeli children from an early age. She also says Palestinians can't educate children to hate Jews because Israel controls all their educational processes and materials.

This is a good, solid piece of writing by Jeremy Scahill that I opened in December but it got lost in the deluge: "This Is Not a War Against Hamas: The notion that the war would end if Hamas was overthrown or surrenders is as ahistorical as it is false. [...] Israel has imposed, by lethal force, a rule that Palestinians have no legitimate rights of any form of resistance. When they have organized nonviolent demonstrations, they have been attacked and killed. That was the case in 2018-2019 when Israeli forces opened fire on unarmed protesters during the Great March of Return, killing 223 and wounding more than 8,000 others. Israeli snipers later boasted about shooting dozens of protesters in the knee during the weekly Friday demonstrations. When Palestinians fight back against apartheid soldiers, they are killed or sent into military tribunals. Children who throw rocks at tanks or soldiers are labeled terrorists and subjected to abuse and violations of basic rights — that is, if they are not summarily shot dead. Palestinians live their lives stripped of any context or any recourse to address the grave injustices imposed on them."

"Why is the media ignoring evidence of Israel's own actions on 7 October?" has a too-long introductory section, but the meat of the story is that Hamas planned a commando raid on military installations that became chaos because a festival had been moved into the area and now a large number of civilians were thrown into the mix. The question is how many of the dead civilians were actually killed by Hamas, because the evidence is that a significant proportion of those deaths were caused by the IDF.

"What the New York Times Gets Wrong About Lemkin's Work on Genocide: Words matter, but the paper of record has ignored our letter of clarification about historical misrepresentation and the important role of the Armenian genocide in the thinking of the man who coined the term."

Doctorow with a deep-dive on how Apple gets away with its evils, "The Cult of Mac: Apple's most valuable intangible asset isn't its patents or copyrights – it's an army of people who believe that using products from a $2.89 trillion multinational makes them members of an oppressed religious minority whose identity is coterminal with the interests of Apple's shareholders. [...] These regulators couch their enforcement action in terms of defending an open market, but the benefits to app makers is only incidental. The real beneficiaries of an open app world is Apple customers. After all, it's Apple customers who bear the 30% app tax when it's priced into the apps they buy and the things they buy in those apps. It's Apple customers who lose access to apps that can't be viably offered because the app tax makes them money-losing propositions. It's Apple customers who lose out on the ability to get apps that Apple decides are unsuitable for inclusion in its App Store. That's where the Cult Of Mac steps in to cape for the $3 trillion behemoth. The minority of Apple customers for whom their brand loyalty is a form of religious devotion insist that 'no Apple customer wants these things.'"

"Institutional COVID denial has killed public health as we knew it. Prepare to lose several centuries of progress. Public health cannot be individualized. Abandoning collective approaches to disease mitigation is a recipe for disaster."

"Millionaires and Billionaires to Davos Elites: 'We Must Be Taxed More'; 'Even millionaires and billionaires like me are saying it's time," said Abigail Disney. "The elites gathering in Davos must take this crisis seriously.'ms Survey results released Tuesday as corporate CEOs, top government officials, and other global elites gathered in Davos, Switzerland show that nearly three-quarters of millionaires in G20 countries support higher taxes on extreme wealth, which they view as an increasingly dire threat to democracy. The poll was conducted by the London-based firm Survation on behalf of the Patriotic Millionaires, an advocacy group that campaigns for a more progressive tax system. The survey, which polled over 2,300 millionaires in G20 nations, found that 74% 'support higher taxes on wealth to help address the cost-of-living crisis and improve public services.'" It's not clear to me that other billionaires are on the bandwagon, but quit a few millionaires are.

Dan Froomkin, "My proposed additions to the New York Times style guide to improve its political coverage: The New York Times repeatedly abuses the English language in its political reporting. I decided it needs some additions to its style guide. Here are my initial suggestions." You are invited to add your suggestions.

From the Roosevelt Institute, "How Topline Economic Indicators—like Low Unemployment—Miss Struggling Communities: Current macroeconomic indicators and labor market statistics paint a picture of a resilient economy underpinned by a robust labor market. The United States has enjoyed historically low unemployment rates, bottoming out at a mere 3.4 percent in January and April 2023. Unemployment remained relatively low throughout 2022 and 2023 despite a gradual upward trend, standing at a still-respectable 3.7 percent in December. When one turns attention to the state level, however, it becomes clear that the labor market is fragmented. Some of the nation's most populated states are reaping minimal or no benefits from the tightness of the national labor market. Instead, these populous states, such as New York, New Jersey, Illinois, California, and Nevada, are contending with escalating unemployment rates that surpass pre-pandemic levels."

"How a Big Pharma Company Stalled a Potentially Lifesaving Vaccine in Pursuit of Bigger Profits: A vaccine against tuberculosis, the world's deadliest infectious disease, has never been closer to reality, with the potential to save millions of lives. But its development slowed after its corporate owner focused on more profitable vaccines."

Keanu Reeves gives the one true answer to the question, "What do you think happens when we die?"

Nazz, "Under the Ice"

Peace on Earth

And here we are with the traditional Christmas links:
• Mark Evanier's wonderful Mel Tormé story, and here's the man himself in duet with Judy Garland.
• Joshua Held's Christmas card, with a little help from Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters. (And I've been charmed to see that most new covers of the song are using this arrangement, so thanks for that, Joshua!)
• Brian Brink's tour-de-force performance of "The Carol of the Bells"
• "Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime."
• Ron Tiner's one-page cartoon version of A Christmas Carol

"Jury Finds That Google Is a Monopolist [...] A jury in Northern California, after deliberating for just a few hours, found Google guilty of anti-competitive practices in the app market for Android phones. The suit was not brought by the FTC, but by Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite. Epic argued that Google forced app developers to use its Play Store for distribution, leveraging this power to charge fees on in-app purchases of up to 30 percent. When Epic tried to encourage users to pay them directly for their games instead, Google and Apple kicked them out of their respective app stores. A separate case against Apple resulted in a mostly negative verdict for Epic, but it's still on appeal. It says something that this jury (which maybe wasn't composed of New York magazine readers) rather quickly agreed that Google was exercising monopoly power, when the judges in the Apple case tied themselves in knots denying it."

The American Economic Liberties Project has a nice rundown of more good news on that front in "Morgan's Monopoly Digest – December 2023".

"Colorado Supreme Court bars Donald Trump from the state's ballot in 2024, ruling he's disqualified by Jan. 6 actions: Legal challenge, which alleges Trump engaged in insurrection, is likely headed to U.S. Supreme Court. [...] 'We conclude that because President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three (of the 14th Amendment), it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Secretary to list President Trump as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot,' the court's majority opinion says. 'Therefore, the Secretary may not list President Trump's name on the 2024 presidential primary ballot, nor may she count any write-in votes cast for him.'"

The Lever's "You Love To See It" list for the week links to some hopeful stories: "Good things are happening! Southwest gets fined for its 2022 holiday meltdown, and the EPA could institute a ban on the chemical that burned in the East Palestine derailment disaster. What's more, the Biden administration will stop most commercial logging in old-growth forests, and federal regulators demand that Starbucks reopen stores it closed after workers started organizing."

Atrios sees something funny about "Cop Budgets: A whole range of people - from centrist "good government" types to libertarians to "fiscal conservatives - are just completely silent on absurd cop budgets. Even if one buys into the "law and order nonsense, spending this kind of money on cop overtime to catch a few fare evaders is not a good use of tax money!" He quotes from an article that says, "NYPD overtime pay for extra officers in the subway went from $4 million in 2022 to $155 million this year, according to city records obtained by Gothamist." And he continues, "Almost all they did was arrest and ticket fare evaders. For some reason arresting people for skipping a subway fare makes sense to people while no one would consider doing so for the identical crime of not feeding a parking meter."

"Microsoft, Musk, and the Question of Unions: Suddenly, a leading American corporation appears to be OK with the idea of collective bargaining. Hint: It's not Tesla. Last week, Microsoft announced that it wouldn't oppose efforts by any of its roughly 100,000 employees to form or join a union. In other parts of the world, there'd be nothing earthshaking about such an announcement; it's actually common practice in Europe and elsewhere. In these United States, however, it makes Microsoft 'a unicorn' among its peers, as one union official put it. The last major American corporation to pledge it would let its employees decide whether to unionize free from corporate opposition was—well, I can't think of one, though I've been on this beat for roughly 45 years." Musk, on the other hand, is keeping to form.

"US, Venezuela swap prisoners: Maduro ally for 10 Americans, plus fugitive contractor 'Fat Leonard'" — or, as Anya Parampil put it, "The US swapped Alex Saab—a Venezuelan diplomat whom US authorities quite literally kidnapped in June 2020—for two ex Green Berets who participated in a failed plot to kill Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro."

"Tesla blamed drivers for failures of parts it long knew were defective: Wheels falling off cars at speed. Suspensions collapsing on brand-new vehicles. Axles breaking under acceleration. Tens of thousands of customers told Tesla about a host of part failures on low-mileage cars. The automaker sought to blame drivers for vehicle 'abuse,' but Tesla documents show it had tracked the chronic 'flaws' and 'failures' for years."

I really didn't expect this from him, or from any Senator from Connecticut, but, "Sen. Chris Murphy: 'This Party Has Not Made a Firm Break From Neoliberalism': Connecticut's junior senator launches a new interview series focused on monopoly power, part of his quest to understand American unhappiness. [...] To Murphy, the issue of corporate concentration runs deeper than just consumer pricing and equitable growth. It strikes at the core of why Americans feel powerless about the fate of the country. People have a palpable, though not always articulable, sense that the most crucial decisions governing their daily lives are now being made far away from their communities in corporate boardrooms, rather than by elected officials in the halls of government or by extension themselves. Many of the country's morbid symptoms, in Murphy's estimations, trace back to this friction between the public and their corporate overlords."

RIP: "Tom Smothers of sibling comedy duo the Smothers Brothers dies at age 86: Tom Smothers, half of the comedy group the Smothers Brothers, has died at the age of 86. Smothers was described as 'not only the loving older brother that everyone would want in their life', but as 'a one-of-a-kind creative partner', according to a statement by his brother Dick Smothers on Wednesday shared by the National Comedy Center. Dick also shared that Tom, who died after a battle with cancer, was at home with his family when he died." We knew they were going to get kicked off the air because they criticized the war, and they were our heroes. Tommy Smothers played guitar on "Give Peace A Chance" and he said, "It's hard for me to stay silent when I keep hearing that peace is only attainable through war."

RIP: "André Braugher Dies: Star Of Homicide: Life On The Street, Brooklyn Nine-Nine & Other Series And Films Was 61 [...] While Braugher peppered his résumé with comedies, many will remember him for his ferocious portrayal of Detective Frank Pembleton in the NBC drama Homicide: Life on the Street. Put him in 'the box,' sweating out and outsmarting crime suspects in the interrogation room, and you were looking at a weekly dose of tour de force acting, as good as it got on television during that time. He won an Emmy for that show he starred in from 1992-98. His wife, Ami Brabson, recurred as Pembleton's wife on Homicide." He was a magnificent actor who brought intensity to the screen, and also could be downright hilarious.

RIP: Dale Spender, 80: "Dale Spender, who has died aged 80 after suffering from Alzheimer's disease, was the author of the internationally acclaimed Man Made Language (1980), in which she argued that language is highly gendered and both reflects and perpetuates a male worldview. The book was an instant classic and is considered by scholars and feminists to be highly relevant today. As well as an accomplished author, Spender was a feminist activist, researcher, broadcaster and teacher in her native Australia and during a period of some 15 years in London. She edited more than 30 books and was involved in founding a number of publishing imprints, series and journals – most notably, in 1983, Pandora Press, a feminist imprint of Routledge, where she was editor-at-large."

"In a Major Snub to Obama, Biden Is Sticking With Trump When It Comes to Cuba Policy: One of Obama's most significant foreign policy achievements was his move toward normalizing relations with Cuba. Trump and Biden have torn that up." This was one of the few things Obama did that I actually approved of, and it broke my heart when Trump undid it, but you really can't justify this administration failing to get back to the Obama policy.

"Anti-Palestinian racism is inherent to Zionism and you're not allowed to talk about it [...] In his article, Charles Blow seems perplexed that anti-Zionists will not give a straight yes or no answer to the question, 'Does Israel have a right to exist?' The problem with the question is the subtext— what is it actually asking? Is it asking if you support a state that places the rights of Jews over the rights of Palestinians? Is it asking whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state by way of ethnic cleansing? If you can only have a Jewish state by expelling Palestinians, and you endorse that notion either openly or tacitly, then that is clearly racism, yet you are not supposed to say it. So the question here seems to be asked in bad faith."

Cory Doctorow reviews "Nathan J. Robinson's Responding to the Right: Brief Replies to 25 Conservative Arguments: In "Responding to the Right: Brief Replies to 25 Conservative Arguments," Current Affairs founder Nathan J. Robinson addresses himself in a serious, thoughtful way to the arguments advanced by right-wing figures, even when those arguments aren't themselves very serious"

If you're looking for a Substack you should probably subscribe to, Sy Hersh has one where he's still writing about what's going on around Israel, and also had a few things to say about Kissinger.

Lisa Tuttle rounds up "The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup: The Reformatory by Tananarive Due; The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow; Him by Geoff Ryman; Audition by Pip Adam"

I missed this last year but it's nice to go back and enjoy "Rating Jonathan Turley's Wildest, Thirstiest, Most Embarrassing Bids For Attention In 2022." I can vaguely remember when he just seemed like a normal guy.

I can't believe I didn't know about this ad before: "Leonard Nimoy vs. Zachary Quinto - The Challenge"

"It's a Wonderful Life: How a festive classic helps a Glasgow cinema thrive: It is a much loved festive film - and for one cinema It's a Wonderful Life is the Christmas gift that keeps on giving. The 1946 classic, which stars James Stewart as a put-upon everyman considering suicide one snowy Christmas Eve, is such a fixture at the Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) that it has been the venue's biggest earner for 12 of the last 15 years. Much like Stewart's character George Bailey, the impact of the film has far-reaching consequences, as it raises funds that support the GFT's remit to spotlight independent and alternative cinema."

Someone sent me this link for "a new Swedish Christmas carol."

Maybe I can replace my now lost ancient midi of "Carol of the Bells" with Jamie Dupuis's version on harp guitar.

John Lennon, "So This Is Christmas, War Is Over"