The Spirit of Jezebel

One may dream of a culture where everyone bursts into laughter when someone says: “This is true, this is real!”

– Jean Baudrillard, Radical Thought

+ Before Biden revealed his incompetence at the debate with Trump, he’d already lost his reelection bid by showing his gross immorality in arming the genocide in Gaza. Biden had been trailing Trump in the polls since last October and deservedly so. His withdrawal won’t redeem his reputation, which will forever be stained by the mounds of dead Palestinian children he helped kill and showed no remorse for.

+ As of last Saturday night, Biden remained firm that he wasn’t leaving the race, fuming to aides and family members that Pelosi was behind the plot to evict him from the ticket. Then Sunday morning his staff finally presented him with the internal polling he’d been shielded from for weeks showing the President losing in every swing state and collapsing in Virginia and New Mexico.

+ Biden, true to character (or his lack thereof), didn’t even tell his staff he was withdrawing. They found on Social Media: “We’re all finding out by tweet. None of us understand what’s happening.”

+ In fact, Biden didn’t even give Harris much of a heads-up. According to Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, Biden’s announcement caught them by surprise. He’d spent the morning in West Hollywood taking a SoulCycle class with friends. Afterward, they went for coffee and someone showed him a copy of Biden’s letter. Emhoff ran off to his car and got his phone, which was overflowing with messages to “Call Kamala.” When he finally reached her, he said she told him: “Where the —- were you? I need you!”

+ It proved a fatal mistake for Biden to RSVP this invite…

+ For the last three years, Biden has been so befuddled and inarticulate that his staff has kept him from meeting with the House Democratic Caucus about legislative issues. The president’s deteriorated condition became obvious to House Democratic leaders in October 2021, when Pelosi invited Biden to the HIll to make the pitch for his infrastructure bill. But, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, “in 30 minutes of remarks on Capitol Hill, Biden had spoken disjointedly and failed to make a concrete ask of lawmakers…After he left, a visibly frustrated Pelosi told the group she would articulate what Biden had been trying to say.”

+ In his resignation letter, Biden brags about having led the nation to “overcome Covid” … while having Covid.

+ Adam Tooze: “So monarchical is American conception of Presidency that Biden is feted as a ruler who ‘gave up power’ in favor of anointed successor, rather than a vain politician who misjudged his sell by date & has been belatedly persuaded to spare himself humiliation & give Dems a chance.”

+ The Biden team circulated memes this week saying that he was retiring from politics without ever having lost an election. True, if you don’t count his failed presidential runs in 1984, 1988, 2008 and the first three primaries of the 2020 campaign, until Obama cleared the field for him…

+ Ken Burns: “History recognizes actions that are bigger than self. Joe Biden will go down as one of the great ones, having led the country out of the disastrous term of his predecessor and quietly doing good things for all Americans, red state as well as blue, accomplishments that put him up there, in terms of legislative action, with LBJ and FDR. Joe, I can’t imagine where we’d be without your selfless service.”

+ This is precisely why Ken Burns should never have been given $$ to make documentaries, especially about baseball and jazz…

+ Eileen Curtright: “We’re 0 for 2 on second term Catholic presidents.”

+ Apparently, it wasn’t an “elite” coup after all…

+ Nikki Haley: “If Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, we will get a President Kamala Harris. You mark my words. He cannot win a general election…He can’t get independents. He can’t get suburban women.” (Jan. 2024)

 + Biden in his adios address: “I’m the first president this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.” 

+ What world was he talking about? Only hours before Biden spoke, the Pentagon announced airstrikes in Yemen. Odd also because three weeks ago, when he was trying to prove he still had the mental capacity to govern the Empire, Biden told George Stephanopoulos: “Oh, sure, I had months [to challenge Trump], but I was also doin’ a hell of a lot of other things, like wars around the world, like keeping NATO together, like working––anyway, But look…”

+ This will be the first US presidential election since 1976 without a Biden, Bush, or Clinton on the ticket. But we’re not an oligarchy, honest!

+++

+ Without saying a word (and maybe she shouldn’t), Harris is going to bring the latent racism and misogyny of the GOP into a full-scale abreaction (sorry for the Freudianisms). Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI): “A lot of Democrats feel they have to stick with her because of her ethnic background.”

+ Christian nationalist Lance Wallnau warns that Kamala Harris represents “the spirit of Jezebel in a way that will be even more ominous than Hillary because she’ll bring a racial component and she’s younger.”

+ Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick: “Donald Trump’s going to win in November, and we will be rid of all this DEI woke culture BS nonsense. I won’t use the word that America’s been subjected to.” What’s the word you’re alluding to, Lt. Gov.?

+ Brian Kilmeade on Fox and Friends this morning: “She [Harris] will not show up for the Prime Minister’s speech at the Joint Session of Congress. She’d rather address in the summer, a sorority, a COLORED sorority, like she can’t get out of that!” (Somehow escaped Kilmeade’s attention that JD Vance also skipped Bibi’s speech, perhaps to address a white frat.)

+ Kellyanne Conway on Harris: “She doesn’t speak well and doesn’t work hard.” “Doesn’t work hard” is FoxNews speak for the “lazy n-word.”

+ Trump couldn’t resist jumping into the fray, calling Harris: “Laughing Kamala,” “Crazy,” “Nuts,” “Real Garbage” and “Dumb as a Rock”…

+ Here’s how Alex Lace described Kamala Harris on Fox Business News: “There’s the DEI press secretary [Katrine Jean-Pierre] telling us the DEI Vice President is the future of the party here. The future looks kind of dim for the Democrats here. But this is no shocker either. Kamala Harris is the original ‘Hawk Tuah’ girl. That’s the way she got where she is and the party’s going downhill if it’s in her hands.”

+ For those of you who don’t follow what’s trending on TikTok, Hawk Tuah is a street euphemism for fellatio. The original “Hawk Tuah girl” was a blonde woman with a southern accent who after being asked in a street interview: “What’s the one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time?” responded, “Oh, you gotta give him that hawk tuah and spit on that thang.”

+ According to Kitty Kelly, this Hollywood backlot skill is how Nancy Davis hooked Ronnie Reagan.

+ JD Vance told Tucker Carlson that Kamala Harris is a “childless cat lady” who is “miserable” because she didn’t have children and not having children means that she doesn’t have “a direct stake” in America. George Washington didn’t have any children of his own either, at least none that he admitted to, though there were persistent rumors that like Jefferson he fathered at least one son after raping one of the women he and Martha enslaved at Mt. Vernon…

+ Does Vance have any idea how many “cat ladies” there are in the US? And that they vote…

+ One of them might well be Jennifer Aniston, who I’ve never heard make a single notable political statement. This week Aniston lashed out at JD Vance for his assertion that the Democratic Party is led by “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.”

“I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States. All I can say is…Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day. I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”

+ Vance even got a rise out of Meghan McCain: I have been trying to warn every conservative man I know – these JD comments are activating women across all sides, including my most conservative Trump-supporting friends. These comments have caused real pain and are just innately unchristian. This is not who we are.”

+ When they tell you who they are, you should listen, Meghan.

+ In an interview on Thursday with Megyn Kelly, Vance tried to explain his “cat-lady” rant by saying, “Obviously it was a sarcastic comment. I’ve got nothing against cats. … People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance … and the substance of what I said, Megyn — I’m sorry, it is true.” To be clear, he’s got nothing against cats, but still derides childless women and gays as the sinister driving forces behind the ruination of the country.

+ Harris’ childlessness never seemed to bother Trump, who sent a $5,000 check to re-elect Kamala Harris as AG of California….

+++

+ The intractable problem for the Democrats is that no level of erudition can explain away the pro-genocidal policy they’ve endorsed as a party.

+ In order to be considered a legitimate candidate for ruling the Empire, Harris will be required to publicly pledge her willingness to kill on demand, which I assume she is more than willing to do. The big question is: Will her primary target be Russians or Palestinians?

+ Looks like we got the answer on Thursday, when Harris sent out this harsh condemnation of the anti-genocide protests in DC that took place when Netanyahu, a soon-to-be indicted war criminal, gave his lie-littered speech to an obsequious Congress…

+ This is no surprise, really. Harris was asked during an AIPAC conference in 2018, why she supports Israel. “It is just something that has always been a part of me. It’s almost like saying when did you first realize you loved your family, or love your country, it just was always there. It was always there.”

+ Harris has her own considerable baggage to carry in this campaign, compounded by carrying Biden’s as well. Hard to see her pulling this off, unless she’s willing to leave Biden’s behind at Union Station–which she’s just shown us she’s unwilling & likely doesn’t even want to do.

+ It was always a political fantasy that Harris would deviate too far from the AIPAC-approved policies on Israel and Palestine. But a more gifted politician would have fed the fantasy a little longer. As a friend told me, the honeymoon is over before the wedding.

+ Josh Shapiro, who is said to be considered for the VP spot, compared student protesters for Gaza to the KKK: “We have to query whether or not we would tolerate this if this were people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia making comments about people who are African American in our communities.”

+ House Speaker Mike Johnson on Harris’s decision not to preside over Netanyahu’s speech: “I think it’s inexcusable. She professes to want to be the leader of the free world and our commander-in-chief and yet she can’t bring herself to sit on the rostrum behind arguably our most strategic ally in this moment at its most desperate time. So I think … these questions need to be asked of her and I don’t think she’s going to have acceptable answers.”

+ In fact, Harris met separately with Netanyahu on Thursday.

+ Harris emerged from her face-to-face with Netanyahu reiterating her “unwavering support” for Israel and its “right to defend itself” with the caveat that “how it does so matters.” Reading cautiously from a prepared text, Harris said:

I just had a frank and constructive meeting with PM Netanyahu. I told him that I will always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself, including from Iran and Iran-backed militias. From when I was a young girl, collecting funds to plant trees for Israel, to my time in the United States Senate and now at the White House, I’ve had an unwavering commitment to the existence of the State of Israel, to its security and to the people of Israel. I’ve said it many times, but it bears repeating: Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters.

On October 7, Hamas triggered this war when it massacred 1200 innocent people, including 44 Americans. Hamas has committed horrific acts of sexual violence and took 250 hostages. There are American citizens who remain captive in Gaza. I have met with the families of these American hostages multiple times now. I have told them each time they are not alone and that I stand with them. And President Biden and I working every day to bring them home. I also expressed to the Prime Minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the deaths of far too many innocent civilians. As I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there with over 2 million people facing high levels of food insecurity and half a million people facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity. What has happened in Gaza over the last nine months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate hunger people fleeing for safety, sometimes for the second, third or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent.

Thanks to the leadership of our President Joe Biden, there’s a deal on the table for a ceasefire and a hostage deal. And it is important that we recall what the deal involves. The first phase of the deal would bring about a full ceasefire, including a withdrawal of the Israeli military from population centers in Gaza. In the second phase, the Israeli military will withdraw from Gaza entirely and it would lead to a permanent end to the hostilities.

It is time for this war to end, and in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released; the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity and self-determination.

There has been hopeful movement in the talks to secure an agreement on this deal. And as I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done. So to everyone who has been calling for a ceasefire, and to everyone who yearns for peace, I see you and I hear you. Let’s get the deal done.

So we can get a ceasefire to end the war. Let’s bring the hostages home. And let’s provide much-needed relief to the Palestinian people. And ultimately, I remain committed to a path forward that can lead to a two-state solution. And I know right now, it is hard to conceive of that prospect. But a two state solution is the only path that ensures Israel remains a secure Jewish and democratic state and one that ensures Palestinians can finally realize the freedom, security and prosperity that they rightly deserve.

And I will close with this then. It is important for the American people to remember, the war in Gaza is not a binary issue. However, too often, the conversation is binary, when the reality is anything but. So I ask my fellow Americans to help encourage efforts to acknowledge the complexity, the nuance, and the history of the region.

Let us all condemn terrorism and violence. Let us all do what we can to prevent the suffering of innocent civilians. And let us condemn anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and hate of any kind. And let us unite our country.

+ This pretty much follows the faux-humanitarian script the White House has been deploying for months now, public expressions of concern as the body count mounts, while the arms packages continue to flow unimpeded even as Netanyahu ignores every call for a ceasefire, even the one he supposedly told Biden and Harris he supported.

+ The only words Harris should have spoken to Netanyahu were these:  “Stop your killing, withdraw your troops, return the detainees or the arms shipments will stop and I will back the ICC’s arrest warrants for you and your regime.”  

+ Presumably, Harris is a more skilled politician today than she was when she called it quits in the 2020 primaries, after polling behind Andrew Yang in her home state.

+ The problem with Harris, if she’s elected, won’t be her incompetence to enact good things but, like Clinton and Obama, her competence to jam through bad policies that less persuasive or coherent politicians couldn’t.

+ Identity Politics reaches terminal velocity…

+++

+ Ohio state Sen. George Lang at JD Vance’s rally: “I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country.” Young Republican snipers will have to improve their accuracy if they expect to win the next civil war…

+ JD Vance in his first major post-convention speech: “It is the weirdest thing to me, Democrats say that it is racist to believe–well, they say it’s racist to do anything. I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday. And one today. They’ll probably call that racist too.” Does he write his own material?

+ JD Vance in Virginia to Kamala Harris: “What the hell have you done other than collect a government check for the past 20 years?” This is, of course, a line that’s been regularly invoked by GOP politicians since Reagan, often by people, like Vance, who are currently “collecting” a government check.

+ Kamala Harris on the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025: “Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda… Can you believe they put that thing in writing? Read it. It’s 900 pages. When you read it, you will see Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare, give tax breaks to billionaires, end the Affordable Care Act, and more.”

+ Trump advisor Chris LaCivita to the Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey on Project 2025: “It makes no sense to put all the crazy things you’ll be attacked for down on paper while you’re running.  Who thinks, let’s put it all down on paper so we can get attacked in advance, even though we haven’t run it by the president?”

+ John Kenneth Galbraith: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

+++

+ On Tuesday, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) introduced impeachment articles against Vice President Kamala Harris. Being impeached & convicted may be the only way to free Harris from Biden’s genocidal policies, assuming she wants to be free of them…

+ In other performative legislative maneuvers, the House voted 220-196 to condemn Vice President Kamala Harris’ handling of the border, even though she wasn’t the “Border Tsar.”

+ Six Democrats joined Republicans in a theatrical condemnation of their own presidential candidate. They are:

Perez (WA)
Golden (ME)
Cueller (TX)
Peltola (AK)
Caraveo (CO)
Davis (NC)

+ In a couple of speeches she’s given this week, Harris seems intent on playing up her years as a former prosecutor, the same way Kerry emphasized his years as a Swiftboat gunner and with similar results, since tough-on-crime rhetoric will turn off her own base and be viewed with ridicule by the Trump-weary right voters she wants to win over.

+ Democratic Silicon Valley billionaire Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn) gave $7 million to Harris, then went on CNN to demand that she fire FTC Chair Lina Khan, who’s investigating the monopolistic predations of Big Tech. But more than a million small donors gave Harris $10 or more in the days after Biden’s withdrawal. Who do you think she’ll listen to?

+ According to the NYT, “[Harris] has expressed skepticism of Ms. Khan’s expansive view of antitrust powers, according to a donor who has spoken privately with the vice president.”

+ Eric Holder, who helped get Chiquita Banana off the hook for hiring death squads to kill union organizers in Colombia, is leading the search for Kamala’s Vice-Presidential nominee, hardly a reassuring choice for labor activists and human rights advocates.

+ Another of the leading candidates for the Veep slot is Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, who has opposed organized labor’s top legislative priority, the PRO Act.

+ Harris is apparently also considering Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for VP. Mayor PeteBot is good at debating, but not so good at stopping train derailments, airport closures, doors blowing off Boeing jetliners, bridge collapses or cloud infrastructure mega-crashes…

+ Colorado Governor Jared Polis asked if he’d accept an offer to serve as VP for Harris: “Look, if they do the polling and it turns out that they need a 49-year-old, bald and gay Jew from Boulder, Colorado, they got my number.”

+ Marist/NPR just released a poll conducted Monday…

—Trump 46%-Harris 45%
—In the broader field, Harris and Trump tied at 42%
—Harris favorability: 40/44
—Trump favorability: 43/49
—87% say Biden made the right decision

+ Does the GOP really think this will alienate voters?

+ Meanwhile, Harris will be the first Democratic nominee from the West in the history of the party. She was the party’s first VP from beyond the 100th meridian, as well. Before Harris, the farthest-west Democrats were George McGovern from South Dakota (1972) and William Jennings Bryan from Nebraska (1896, 1900, 1908).

+ Kamala’s father Donald Harris, a Marxist economist from Jamaica, was a radical. He wrote on the war economy in 1967: “The current expansion has been variously described as ‘the greatest upsurge in economic well-being in the history of any nation.'” But since early 1965 “the major further impetus for expansion came with the announcement of escalation in the Viet Nam war.”

+++

+ Christopher Hale: “JD Vance is to Appalachia what Olive Garden is to Italy.”

+ According to a CNN poll, JD Vance is the least liked non-incumbent vice presidential nominee since 1980. He’s also the first to have a net negative favorable rating.

+ Palin was everything Vance claims to be but actually reviles. She exuded authenticity–until she became a prop for FoxNews and a reality show caricature of herself. But it doesn’t take long to see right through Vance. Too bad Opie couldn’t…

+ JD Vance’s favorability in his home region – IL, IN, MI, OH & WI – is just 28%, compared to 44% unfavorable. (CNN/SSRS poll).

+ Take heart, JD. Frederic Jameson has some interesting observations on the common man’s opinions about opinion polls in his new book from Verso, The Years of Theory:

What is public opinion, the object of public opinion polls? I would like to use an example which will be, for you, ancient history. In Eisenhower’s elections, his opponent was a former governor of Illinois named Adlai Stevenson, who was a very literate and very witty man. Nobody ever doubted that Eisenhower would win these elections, but the question was always raised: Stevenson’s speeches are so elegant–who’s going to understand them? Will the ‘common man’ understand them? That was a common term of the period, so please don’t blame me for using it in this form. So the pollsters went out and asked people who were precisely, on an economic definition, a common man. And the preponderance of common men said, “Well, I like his speeches, but the common man will never understand them.”

+ A CNN report documented how JD Vance repeatedly said in 2016 that he believed Trump committed multiple sexual assaults, found Trump’s accusers more credible than Trump, and Tweeted, “What percentage of the American population has @realDonaldTrump sexually assaulted?”

+ Vance: “Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of those children. When you go to the polls as a parent, you should have more power, you should have more of a chance to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids. Let’s face the consequences and the reality, if you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.”

+ Isn’t this the MAGA electoral version of the rightwing critique of so-called “welfare mothers,” who they charged were having more kids to add a few bucks to their meager government checks? Of course, Vance pathologizes the poor whites of Appalachia the same way the Gipper and Daniel Patrick Moynihan pathologized urban Blacks.

+ Adam Johnson: “Vance was a great pick, every day some old video of him giving a speech in a basement surfaces where it sounds like he’s reading the manifesto of a school shooter.”

+ Blake Masters: “Political leaders should have children. Certainly, they should at least be married. If you aren’t running or can’t run a household of your own, how can you relate to a constituency of families, or govern wisely with respect to future generations? Skin in the game matters.”

+ The father (alleged) of the country had no (known) children of his own & neither did the primary author of the Constitution. But one of the worst presidents, John Tyler, had at least 15 he claimed as his own and probably one or two more he didn’t.

+ This makes me long for the days when Ralph Nader was asked about gay marriage during the 2004 elections and responded definitively: “I don’t do gonadal politics.”

+ Move over, Kim Jong-Un!

+ In his new memoir, Trump’s nephew, Fred Trump III, said that following a White House meeting with disability advocates, Trump told his nephew, whose son is disabled, “Maybe those kinds of people should die” given “the shape they’re in, all the expenses.” Later, Trump told his nephew about his son: “He doesn’t recognize you. Maybe just let him die.”

+ FBI Director Christopher Wray testifying before Congress on the shooting at the Trump rally: “With respect to former president Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel [from the teleprompter] that hit his ear.” Close-ups of Trump’s post-shooting ear don’t show any hole that a doubting Thomas might poke his pinky finger in.

+ Since Monday, Trump and pro-Trump PACs have outspent Harris’ campaign on television and radio advertising, with the Republicans shelling out more than $68 million compared to just $2.6 million for the Democrats. Then on Thursday, Trump’s team suddenly announced he’s backing out of the scheduled debate with the “Marxist” Harris.

+ What a wimp. Does Trump really think Harris is a skilled debater or a “Marxist”? Gabbard destroyed her in the 2020 Democratic debates and set the template for how to do it. HRC was a more formidable debater, though she oozed off-putting arrogance with almost every line. 

+ Laura Bassett: “Calling a woman ‘dumb as a rock’ and then being afraid to debate her is pretty funny.”

+ In an interview with Fox News Trump doubled down on his pledge to bomb Mexico, saying cross-border “strikes” against drug cartels are “absolutely” on the table. His running mate JD Vance chimed in: “It’s funny that people accuse of being bombastic for saying, the cartels, we need to go after them.”  Vance blamed Mexico for his mother’s addiction to opioids, prescription drugs she acquired by stealing them from the hospital where she worked.

+ Trump on flag burning: “You should get a one-year jail sentence if you do anything to desecrate the American flag. Now, people will say, ‘Oh, it’s unconstitutional.’ Those are stupid people. Those are stupid people that say that. We have to work in Congress to get a one-year jail sentence. When they’re allowed to stomp on the flag and put lighter fluid on the flag and set it afire, when you’re allowed to do that — you get a one-year jail sentence, and you’ll never see it again.”

+ Has he seen the way people dress at his rallies? Talk about desecrating the flag.

+ Burning the American flag is one of the most American things an American can do. Even the Supreme Court agreed in the 1989 case of Texas v. Johnson. Martha-Ann Alito has even hung it upside down as a fuck you to her neighbors.

+++

+ A right that applies everywhere except on American college campuses, eh Chuck?

+ Jeff Stein at the Washington Post has written a very important piece about the US’s quiet warfare on nations it doesn’t like through the imposition of economic sanctions. According to Stein’s report, “The US is imposing sanctions at a record-setting pace again this year, with more than 60% of all low-income countries now under some form of financial penalty, according to a WaPo analysis.”

+ Here’s a list of countries under US sanctions ranked by the severity of the sanctions and the year they began:

High Severity

North Korea–1950 (Truman)
Cuba–1962 (JFK)
Iran–1979 (Carter)
Syria–1979 (Carter)

Medium Severity

Afghanistan–1999 (Clinton)
Yemen–2012 (Obama)
Russia–2014 (Obama)

Medium-low Severity

Libya–1986 (Reagan)
Sudan–1997 (Clinton)
Burma–2003 (Bush 2)
Belarus–2006 (Bush 2)
China–2014 (Obama)

Low Severity

Zimbabwe–2002 (Bush 2)
DR of Congo–2006 (Bush 2)
Lebanon–2007 (Bush 2)
Somalia–2010 (Obama)
Nicaragua–2018 (Trump)
Mali 2019 (Trump)
Ethiopia–2021 (Biden)

+ According to the Post story, “60% of all poor countries are under US sanctions of some kind.”

+++

+ What an uplifting story from the NYT on the American dream in action. Most couples their age come to Manhattan, if they can afford the bus fare, with a combined $800,000 in debt from student loans and credit cards…

+ Since the wretched Grants Pass decision by the Supreme Court gave the green light for states and cities to criminalize the houseless, the Democrats, from Portland to NYC to the entire State of California, have moved the most swiftly and ruthlessly to “ethnically cleanse” homeless people from their encampments …

+ Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said that most recent immigrants who have come across the U.S.-Mexico border are “garbage. They come from jails and prisons in other countries.”

+ On the other hand, Human Rights Watch just released a report documenting how thousands of people in the United States are being deported every year for drug offenses that in many cases no longer exist under state laws.

+ The U.S. Department of Labor found 10 Blaze Fast Fire’d Pizza locations in Las Vegas and Henderson had employed 23 children, ages 15-17, to operate industrial pizza dough mixers as late as 10:30 PM on school nights.

+ Nearly half of Amazon’s warehouse workers are injured during Prime Day.

+ The Ohio Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that chicken wings advertised as ‘boneless’ can contain bones. The case, which constitutes yet another body blow to consumer rights, was brought by Michael Berkheimer, who had ordered his favorite dish, boneless wings with parmesan garlic sauce, at a wing place in Hamilton, Ohio. Three days after the meal, Berkheimer, who’d been unable to keep any food down, went to the emergency, after developing a fever, where the doctor found that a thin bone from the “boneless” wing had lodged in Berkheimer’s throw, ripping his esophagus and causing a dangerous infection.

+ USA as Failed State Update…1 out of 4 cancer patients in America either declared bankruptcy or lost their homes to eviction or foreclosure as a result of medical debt in 2022.

+ JW Mason: “The business case against AI: Sure, it can replace writers. But it’s not like there’s any money in writing.”

+ After Tesla’s second-quarter net income tumbled 45% as the company’s global electric vehicle sales fell despite price cuts, Elon Musk said he was reconsidering his pledge to donate $45 million a month to the Trump campaign, apparently realizing that a reelected Trump, whose hostility to electric vehicles has become a cornerstone of his campaign, would kill off Tesla once and for all.

+ Already among the highest-paid cops in the country (world), San Francisco police could soon see their pay get bumped again with the average officer getting nearly $500,000 a year (not counting overtime).

+ James Baldwin: “A cop is a cop. And he may be a very nice man, but I haven’t got the time to figure that out. All I know is he’s got a uniform and a gun. And I have to relate to him that way. That’s the only way to relate to him at all.”

+ Sue Mi Terry, the wife of the Washington Post’s neocon national security columnist, Max Boot, was just arrested as a foreign agent…(“Sue Mi Terry” is a name right off the pages of a Tom Robbins novel.)

+++

+ Last Sunday was the hottest day ever recorded on Earth. Monday was even hotter.

+ Bidenmentalism in Action: “No country in history has extracted as much oil as the US has in each of the past six years.” Will Harris stop the drilling?

+ Oil production in the US has more than doubled in less than a decade.

+ Since the world started to get “serious” about global warming, coal demand has only increased–rising by 75% since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and by nearly 15% since the Paris Agreement in 2015.

+ Every six hours the world burns enough coal to build a new replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

+ On July 15, Chicago issued 16 tornado warnings, the most sent on a single day since 2004. In an average year, Illinois only experiences 50 tornadoes. This year it’s been hit more than 100, already.

+ The Park Fire outside Chico grew by 100,000 acres in a mere 24 hours. It ignited when someone lit a car on fire and rolled it into a forested ravine, but it blew up because the forest is parched bone-dry by year after year of searing summer heat.

+ Here in Oregon’s Willamette Valley we tied a record for the most consecutive 100F-degree days, which, sandwiched between an even longer string of 90+ days, prompted a “flash drought,” pushing the wildfire danger from “low” to “high” in the span of a few days. Oregon has effectively dried out. There are currently at least 27 wildfires burning in Oregon across more than 256,500 acres of land.

+A map of occupied bald eagle nests in Wisconsin in 1974 and 2019, largely a consequence of the implementation of the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act, both of which are on the hit list from Project 2025.

+ A new study in Nature on Brazil’s Amazon found that “Indigenous territories reduced deforestation more between 2000 and 2010 relative to all other land uses, including strict protected areas and sustainable-use protected areas.”

+ This winter was the third deadliest yet for Yellowstone wolves in the decades since the wild canids were reintroduced to the park in 1995. Overall, at least 13 Yellowstone wolves were shot by legal hunters, caught by trappers, killed by poachers or died of suspected hunting-related injuries.

+ Oxygen levels in the midwaters of the Pacific off the California coast have dropped by a stunning 40 percent since 1960.

+++

+ Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) was duped by a fake letter announcing Jimmy Carter’s death, which quoted the former president as calling his late wife a “baddie” and the “original Brat” who “throat goat Nancy Reagan had nothing on.”

+ According to a report in the Washington Post, RFK Jr. conferred with Trump only hours after the failed assassination attempt about endorsing his campaign and taking a position overseeing health and medical issues in a Trump administration. The Trump team declined the offer. Even they don’t want Bobby….

+ During a fundraising speech Minnesota State Sen. Calvin Bahr (R-East Bethel) blamed women for their own unwanted pregnancies: “If you’re going to party, you got to pay the consequences.”

+ The late, great Bob Newhart: Newhart: “At a Xmas gathering, my sister M.J. was seated next to my Mom. Mom’s memory was beginning to fade. My Mom said, ‘Is Dad with us?’ M.J. said, ‘No, Mom, Dad died a few months ago.’ Mom said, ‘There were times I could have killed him…I didn’t, did I?'”

+ Hey, kids, you still have a chance to indulge some pagan deities, buy a few graven idols, blow off the sabbath, and say, goddammit without getting any demerits!

+ The great Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki (Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Boy and the Heron): “I strongly feel that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an insult to life itself.”

+ The late Shelley Duvall planted her hook in me as Millie in Robert Altman’s neglected masterpiece 3 Women.

+ Pauline Kael on Shelley Duvall: “Shelley Duvall melts indifference. You’re unable to repress your response; you go right to her in delight, saying ‘I’m yours.'” (1976) And later: ‘There are no forebears or influences that would help to explain Shelley Duvall’s acting; she doesn’t seem to owe anything to anyone. She’s an original who has her own limpid way of doing things—a simplicity that isn’t marred by conventional acting technique.” (1980)

Booked Up

Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire
Adam Greenfield
(Verso)

A Body Made of Glass: a History of Hypochondria
Caroline Crampton
(Ecce)

Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States
Matthew D. Morrison
(UC Press)

Sound Grammar

Across the River of Stars
Beachwood Sparks
(Curation Records)

Can’t Seem to Come Down: American Sounds of 1968
Various Artists
(Grapefruit)

Caracoles
Orquesta Akokán
(Daptone)