Last Call For Mitch Better Have My Money, Con't

GOP Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has long-controlled the big campaign money for Senate Republicans, and with Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley waiting in the wings to dethrone him, McConnell is suddenly facing a fight with Hawley that Democrats are all to willing to engage in.

 

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell bluntly warned Republican senators in a private meeting not to sign on to a bill from Sen. Josh Hawley aimed at limiting corporate money bankrolling high-powered outside groups, telling them that many of them won their seats thanks to the powerful super PAC the Kentucky Republican has long controlled.

According to multiple sources familiar with the Tuesday lunch meeting, McConnell warned GOP senators that they could face “incoming” from the “center-right” if they signed onto Hawley’s bill. He also read off a list of senators who won their races amid heavy financial support from the Senate Leadership Fund, an outside group tied to the GOP leader that spends big on TV ads in battleground Senate races. On that list of senators: Hawley himself, according to sources familiar with the matter.

McConnell has long been a chief opponent of tighter campaign finance restrictions. But there’s also no love lost between McConnell and Hawley, who has long criticized the GOP leader and has repeatedly called for new leadership atop their conference. Just on Tuesday, Hawley told CNN that it was “mistake” for McConnell to be “standing with” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, in their push to tie Ukraine aid to an Israel funding package.

Hawley’s new bill, called the Ending Corporate Influence on Elections Act, is aimed at reversing the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that loosened campaign finance laws – an effort that aligns the conservative Missouri Republican with many Democrats. Hawley’s bill would ban publicly traded corporations from making independent expenditures and political advertisements – and ban those publicly traded companies from giving money to super PACs.

In an interview, Hawley defended his bill and said that corporate influence should be limited in elections.

“I think that’s wrong,” Hawley told CNN. “I think it’s wrong as an original matter. I think it’s warping our politics, and I see no reason for conservatives to defend it. It’s wrong as a matter of the original meaning of the Constitution. It is bad for our elections. It’s bad for our voters. And I just think on principle, we ought to be concerned.”

 

Now, this is far less about corporate influence in elections as it is Josh Hawley trying to critically damage Mitch McConnell's power in Senate GOP politics. But there should be 51 Democratic votes for Hawley's bill on principle, and I'm betting Hawley can find 8 other Republicans to beat a filibuster. Mitch is betting he can too, hence the warning. 

Still, if Hawley's willing to chokeslam dark money over a grudge against Mitch, Democrats should be scrambling to get this bill passed in both the House and Senate and put it on Biden's desk ASAP.

Coal Plant Collapse In Kentucky

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has declared a state of emergency in Martin Count on the border with WV after a coal plant facility building collapsed last night and officials are telling folks to expect the worst.

One is confirmed dead following a building collapse at an idled coal production plant in Martin County that trapped two workers Tuesday evening, according to the Martin County Sheriff’s Office.

Early Wednesday morning, Gov. Andy Beshear declared a State of Emergency as crews continued to search for the trapped workers.

Gov. Beshear announced the State of Emergency on social media.

The collapse at the idled coal production plant was reported around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Just more than 15 minutes later, first responders arrived to find a more than 10-story coal preparation plant had collapsed while the men were working inside to prepare the structure for demolition.

Sheriff Kirk explained that the coal preparation plant had been idle for some time. He said the two workers were salvaging the plant, taking some machinery out of it when it collapsed.

The sheriff said, to the best of investigators’ knowledge, the workers were on the bottom floor when the collapse happened. The building essentially toppled all around the two workers.

Around 11 p.m., at least four firefighters were inside the building and maintained contact with the one trapped worker.

The Martin County Sheriff confirms the worker crews had made contact with is the one that passed away Wednesday morning. That rescue mission has now turned into a recovery mission, officials say.

No word if any contact has been made with the second worker trapped under the collapsed building.

The family of the deceased worker has been notified, but officials have not released a name.

Crews from a number of agencies are on the scene, including Pikeville, Ashland, Warfield, Inez, Martin, and Prestonsburg.

The American Red Cross is providing canteen services for first responders on scene.

A warming station is being opened for the families of the two men trapped at Buck Branch Church in Pilgrim, Kentucky. Donations are also being accepted at the church for the families.

 

King Coal is a hard monarch. Certainly this part of Kentucky is used to industrial and mining accidents, but it's never a good thing when it happens. Even cleaning up after coal can lead to tragedy, and the last thing Eastern KY needs is more tragedy after fires, floods, mine disasters, and even a tornado or two over the time I've lived in the state. 

Coal keeps on taking.

Vote Like Your Country Depends On It

More than a few Muslim groups in the US are telling Joe Biden to broker a cease fire between Israel and Hamas now or else they will hand the country over to Trump and the GOP.

 

The National Muslim Democratic Council, which includes Democratic Party leaders from hotly contested states that can decide elections, such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, urged Biden to use his influence with Israel to broker a ceasefire by 5 p.m. ET (2100 GMT) on Tuesday.

In an open letter entitled "2023 Ceasefire Ultimatum," Muslim leaders pledged to mobilize "Muslim, Arab, and allied voters" to "withhold endorsement, support, or votes for any candidate who endorses the Israeli offensive against the Palestinian people."

"Your administration's unconditional support, encompassing funding and armaments, has played a significant role in perpetuating the violence that is causing civilian casualties and has eroded trust in voters who previously put their faith in you," the council wrote.

Emgage, a Muslim American civic group, found that nearly 1.1 million Muslims voted in the 2020 election. Associated Press exit polls showed 64% of Muslims voted for Biden, a Democrat, and 35% for his Republican rival, Donald Trump.

The Arab American Institute estimates 3.7 million Americans "trace their roots" to an Arab country; its poll results issued on Tuesday show support for Biden and Democrats has dropped significantly in this group.

The White House has scrambled to address concerns raised by community members and political appointees within the administration. Biden met with a handful of Muslim leaders last Thursday, a White House official said.

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on the poll, but told reporters that Biden was aware that American Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim had "endured a disproportionate number ... of hate-fueled attacks" and respected their perspectives.

She said the Biden administration had been engaging with Arab and Muslim community members, along with Jewish leaders, as well as political appointees within the administration on their different concerns, and would continue those efforts.

Biden has spoken out against rising antisemitism and Islamophobia, but Muslim leaders say the war must end.

Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Minnesota, said he had no option but to vote against Biden in 2024 unless he worked to end the fighting. He said he was speaking as an individual, not on behalf of CAIR, which is barred from political campaigning.

Local pro-Palestinian groups have scheduled a protest in Minneapolis on Wednesday during a visit by Biden to Minnesota to tout his administration's investments in rural America.

Arab and Muslim American communities have voiced frustration that Biden has not condemned Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip after an Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian Hamas militants from Gaza that Israel says killed 1,400 people and took 240 hostages.

Biden has said Israel has a right to defend its citizens but should protect innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza who are victims of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Gaza health authorities say that 8,525 people, including 3,542 children, have been killed in Israeli attacks since Oct. 7. U.N. officials say more than 1.4 million of Gaza's civilian population of about 2.3 million have been made homeless.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he would not agree to any cessation of the attacks on Gaza. U.S. national security spokesman John Kirby said, "Hamas is the only one that would gain from that right now."

 

Needless to say, that 5 PM deadline yesterday passed without said ceasefire, and as a matter of fact, Israeli Defense Forces bombed a Gaza refugee camp in order to kill a top Hamas leader, and killed hundreds of civilians while they were at it.

 

Support for Biden has dropped from nearly 60% in 2020to the upper teens among Arab Americans in the latest Zogby poll, with support for Donald Trump up to 40%.

 

Believe me, I understand the rage of American Muslims right now, and I understand the rage of American Jews right now. I'm telling everyone that the solution to this problem in now way involves another Donald Trump term.

 

But I guess when Trump gets back in the White House and starts mass detainment of Muslims and closures of mosques, CAIR and company will have really shown Biden who's boss. 

That boss being Donald Trump. Keep thinking you'll even be able to vote at all under a GOP regime. Virginia purged more than 3,000 voters ahead of next week's elections by "accident". Republicans in NC and Mississippi are doing the same, except they're omitting the whole accident excuse.

Once these autocrats get into power, they will never relinquish it. But feel free to be on the side of the devils to make your bargain, folks. Trump's flunkies are gearing up for fascism as we speak, and you want to threaten the rest of us with that?

The rest of us will certainly remember.

Last Call Fof The GOP Circus Of The Damned, Con't

With Mike Johnson as Ringmaster, the House GOP Clown Show is back, extorting American taxpayers coming and going in the name of owning the libs and protecting billionaire tax cheats.

The White House quickly dismissed a proposal Monday from House Republicans to pay for aid for Israel amid its war with Hamas by cutting funds for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

“Politicizing our national security interests is a nonstarter. Demanding offsets for meeting core national security needs of the United States — like supporting Israel and defending Ukraine from atrocities and Russian imperialism — would be a break with the normal, bipartisan process and could have devastating implications for our safety and alliances in the years ahead,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

The White House last week outlined a roughly $106 billion national security supplemental funding request that included money for Israel and Ukraine, which is fighting off invading Russian forces, as well as investments in the Indo-Pacific, humanitarian aid and border security measures.

Jean-Pierre argued there is “strong bipartisan agreement” in providing funding for each of the areas included in the White House proposal.

“Threatening to undermine American national security unless House Republicans can help the wealthy and big corporations cheat on their taxes — which would increase the deficit — is the definition of backwards,” Jean-Pierre said.

“Playing political games that threaten the source of funding for Israel’s self-defense — now and into the future — would set an unacceptable precedent that calls our commitment to one of our closest allies into question,” she added. “We cannot afford to jeopardize that commitment as Israel defends itself from the evil unleashed by Hamas.”

 

As Jon Chait points out, the House GOP bill would eliminate the $30 billion in money in last year's infrastructure bill for the IRS, and send a fraction-- $4 million -- to Israel as aid.

House Republicans have framed this demand for weakening the IRS as a deficit-cutting measure. Johnson “has said the new expenditure must be covered by other spending reductions to avoid adding to the debt,” reports the Washington Post. Representative Chip Roy, a right-wing Republican, claims, “I support Israel, but I am not going to continue to go down this road where we bankrupt our country and undermine our very ability to defend ourselves, much less our allies, by continuing to write blank checks.”

But cutting IRS funding does not avoid bankrupting our country. In fact, it hastens it. IRS funding is used to increase collection of tax payments. In theory, the IRS could be funded so lavishly that additional funding does not yield any net tax revenue, but reality is nowhere close to this level.

Research suggests that every additional dollar in IRS funding yields many times more dollars in revenue, through both direct enforcement and by deterring fraud. One recent paper estimates that a dollar of funding yields $12 in revenue.

The Congressional Budget Office, which issues official budget estimates, is required by law to use far more conservative estimates of the budgetary impact of IRS funding. Even so, its conservative methods would predict the GOP plan to reduce IRS funding will increase the deficit by about $30 billion.

So Republicans are saying this is a plan to “pay for” Israel aid. But that description is close to the opposite of the truth. It’s not a pay-for, it’s an add-on. Democrats and anti-Russia Senate Republicans want to add Israel spending to spending for defending Ukraine. Johnson and the House Republicans want to take out the Ukraine spending and throw in a big handout to rich tax cheats.

 

Nobody likes the IRS, so the Clown Show figures this is an easy win on paper.In practice, this won't get past the Senate and everyone knows it, but the point is to run out the clock in 2.5 weeks and crash the economy as we near the shutdown point on Nov. 17.

It's taking hostages. Meet the new Ringmaster, same as the old Ringmaster.

The Earl Of Rose City Retires

Long-time Oregon Democratic Congressman Earl Blumenauer, who has represented Portland and environs for a quarter-century, is hanging up his bike shoes and retiring.

 

“I have dedicated my career to creating livable communities where people are safe, healthy, and economically secure,” Blumenauer, 75, said in a Facebook post announcing his upcoming retirement. “This mission has guided my involvement on a wide range of issues that have been very rewarding for me and productive for our community. Now, it is time to refocus on a narrower set of priorities.”

In a half a century of public service — roughly two-thirds of his life — Blumenauer has also served as a state legislator, county commissioner and city council member in Oregon. He was first elected to Congress in a special election in 1996 to succeed then-Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who had been elected to the Senate.

Known for his signature bow ties and bike lapel pins, Blumenauer has been a policy advocate for public transportation, housing, sustainability and marijuana reforms. He currently serves as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, and is the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Trade. He also founded the Congressional Bike Caucus, which advocates for safer streets and other pro-bicyclist policies.

Blumenauer’s congressional district, which includes Portland and Mount Hood, has been a Democratic stronghold and he is expected to be succeed by another Democrat.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) tweeted that Blumenauer has long “been a powerful force in the policy and politics of Oregon and America.”

“He is a national leader on issues from urban transportation and housing to climate and cannabis. I so thank him for his over 50 years of public service,” Merkley said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) credited Blumenauer with helping craft key legislation.

“As a senior Member of the Committee on Ways and Means, he was an architect of the single largest investment in addressing climate change in our nation’s history,” Jeffries said in a statement, adding that “as Chair of the Subcommittee on Trade, Earl ensured that the bipartisan United States Mexico Canada Trade Agreement protected American workers.”

“Earl and his bicycle pins will be greatly missed after the conclusion of this term and I wish him and his family the best as he begins this next chapter,” Jeffries said.

 

"From cycling to cannabis" is a hell of an epitaph for a career. Blumenauer has certainly seen both expand nationwide to the benefit of millions of Americans.

 

The good news is this being a safe seat for the Dems, that we can see a new generation of progressive faces represent Rose City, and hopefully they'll do just as good a job or better.

 

Did Nazi That Coming, Con't

The good thing about Germany is that they actually arrest their neo-Nazi politicians. Here in the states, we agonize over their rights to be antisemitic assholes and occasionally elect one to the White House.

 

A legislator with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party was arrested on Monday on charges including displaying forbidden totalitarian symbols, with neighbours of his fraternity complaining of often hearing the Nazi “Sieg Heil” victory salute.

Newly elected Daniel Halemba, 22, was due to take up his seat in the Bavarian regional parliament later on Monday. He is a member of the Teutonia Prague student fraternity, whose premises were raided by police in September.

During the raid, officials said, they found forbidden symbols – Germany’s constitution forbids the display of symbols of totalitarian regimes such as the swastika – and neighbours complained of hearing “Sieg Heil” (Hail Victory) from inside.

A prosecution spokesperson said Halemba would be brought before court later on Monday or Tuesday. Charges include inciting racist abuse.

A national conversation that is increasingly dominated by discussion of migration has helped the AfD to a series of strong electoral showings far beyond its old heartlands in the post-industrial east, with voters seemingly unperturbed by its rightward drift.

The party, second in polls in several eastern states, achieved record results in the western states of Bavaria and Hesse on 8 October.

The party and its youth wing are under observation in several states, with prominent figures such as the lead European parliament candidate Maximilian Krah comparing immigration to colonialism and stating that “oriental landgrabs” lead to “sexual abuse of European girls”.

Halemba, who joined the fraternity as a law student in Würzburg, has named Björn Höcke, leader of the AfD’s far-right wing, as his political role model.

“They want to arrest me, an elected state parliament member, three days before I take my seat, using a totally lawless arrest warrant,” said Halemba in a video shared on his lawyer’s Telegram channel.

 

"Maybe the Nazis were on to something" is certainly a political position you could take, but so it "Maybe neo-Nazis should be punched in the junk and arrested."

 

I'm a fan of the latter.

Last Call For Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Yet another 2022 GOP state redistricting gerrymander struck down as unconstitutional for disenfranchising Black voters, and this time the state in question is Georgia.

 

A federal judge ruled Thursday that Georgia’s district lines must be redrawn to ensure adequate representation of Black voters in Congress and the General Assembly, finding that the state’s maps illegally weakened their political power.

The decision could result in the election of additional Black representatives next year, with Democrats hoping to gain a seat in the U.S. House, where Republicans currently hold a 222-212 majority and control nine of 14 Georgia congressional seats. Before the General Assembly’s 2021 redistricting, the GOP held an 8-6 advantage in Georgia.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones concluded that the Republican-controlled General Assembly violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits racial discrimination in elections.

Jones’ order requires legislators to create an additional majority-Black congressional district west-metro Atlanta by Dec. 8. His ruling also calls for two more state Senate districts and five more state House districts with Black majorities in the Atlanta and Macon areas.

“Georgia has made great strides since 1965 towards equality in voting,” Jones wrote in his 516-page order. “However, the evidence before this court shows that Georgia has not reached the point where the political process has equal openness and equal opportunity for everyone.”

Georgia Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikema Williams called Thursday’s ruling a “resounding victory” for democracy.

“Republicans knew they couldn’t win on their ideas, so they resorted to redrawing the maps in their favor instead,” she said.

Josh McKoon, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, called Jones a “partisan Democrat ally.” Jones was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in 2011 by then-President Barack Obama.

“It is simply outrageous that one far left federal judge is invalidating the will of the elected representatives of the people of Georgia who drew fair maps in conformity with longstanding legal principles,” he said.

 

If by "conformity with longstanding legal principles" you mean "the centuries-long history of Southern states disenfranchising Black folk" then yes, Goergia's GOP is definitely conforming.  

Black voters in Georgia accounted for nearly half of the state’s sharp population growth — over 1 million new residents during the past decade — but state legislators shaped districts in a way that resulted in Democrats losing a seat in Congress during last year’s elections. Black voters overwhelmingly support Democrats while most white voters back Republicans.

Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, who leads more than 500 African Methodist Episcopal churches in Georgia and was a witness in the redistricting trial, said Thursday’s order was a “long march to justice.” His organization, the Sixth District of the A.M.E. Church, was a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

“It is unfortunate that, decades after the Civil Rights Movement, we still need to defend and promote the right for the African-American community to vote (but) make no mistake that we will continue to fight for these causes, not only because the facts and the law are on our side, but because democracy is our country’s most important tenant and is always worth fighting for,” Jackson said.

 

You're damn right they are worth fighting for.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

Ridin' With BidenGPT

The White House has issued a long-anticipated executive order involving the regulation of artificial intelligence systems, which I know absolutely sounds like part of the opening exposition in the first five minutes of a Terminator franchise movie, but this is a dose of necessary reality here in 2023.

 

President Joe Biden signed a wide-ranging executive order on artificial intelligence Monday, setting the stage for some industry regulations and funding for the U.S. government to further invest in the technology.

The order is broad, and its focuses range from civil rights and industry regulations to a government hiring spree.

In a media call previewing the order Sunday, a senior White House official, who asked to not be named as part of the terms of the call, said AI has so many facets that effective regulations have to cast a wide net.

“AI policy is like running into a decathlon, and there’s 10 different events here,” the official said.

“And we don’t have the luxury of just picking ‘we’re just going to do safety’ or ‘we’re just going to do equity’ or ‘we’re just going to do privacy.’ You have to do all of these things.”

The official also called for “significant bipartisan legislation” to further advance the country’s interests with AI. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., held a private forum in September with industry leaders but has yet to introduce significant AI legislation.

Some of the order builds on a previous nonbinding agreement that seven of the top U.S. tech companies developing AI agreed to in July, like hiring outside experts to probe their systems for weaknesses and sharing their critical findings.

The order leverages the Defense Production Act to legally require those companies to share safety test results with the federal government.

It also tasks the Commerce Department with creating guidance about “watermarking” AI content to make it clear that deepfaked videos or ChatGPT-generated essays were not created by humans.

The order adds funding for new AI research and a federal AI hiring surge. The White House has launched a corresponding website to connect job seekers with AI government jobs: AI.gov.

Fei-Fei Li, a co-director of Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, said in an interview that government funding is crucial for AI to be able to tackle major human problems.

“The public sector holds a unique opportunity in terms of data and interdisciplinary talent to cure cancer, cure rare diseases, to map out biodiversity at a global scale, to understand and predict wildfires, to find climate solutions, to supercharge our teachers,” Li said. “There’s so much the public sector can do, but all of this is right now starved because we are severely lacking in resources.”

 

And while this is a start, these remain guidelines without real enforcement consequences. Actual laws have to be written by Congress, and they keep dragging their feet as AI keeps getting further and further ahead. Ethical, social, and environmental concerns are great to have, but all this lacks any real hard and fast penalties for companies that violate them.

As it is, the major players in AI like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, all have a long history of violating federal antitrust, commerce and labor regulations. Asking them to play nicely here is not going to hold up for much longer when trillions are at stake in the years ahead for whichever company masters the process of successfully stealing a planet's worth of intellectual property to feed their Frankenstein's Monster first.

We're going to need something much, much stronger, if not an international treaty with watchdog organizations and monitoring the way we have for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons currently.

 

On top of that, we have to make it stick. We're not going to of course, not until it's well far past being too late. 

We may already be past that point now, to be frank.

Israeli A Serious Problem Here, Con't

While the Israeli ground war ramps up and the death toll in Gaza is now well over 8,000, the world is not standing idly by as Palestinians are bombed and Israelis are hit with rockets, and while the most obvious candidate and route for this disaster to expand is Hezbollah and Iran, it turns out the more immediate threat may in fact be Turkey.

President Tayyip Erdogan addressed hundreds of thousands of supporters at one of the largest pro-Palestinian rallies since the Israel-Hamas war began, courting his Islamist political base a day ahead of the centenary of Turkey's secular republic.

"Israel has been openly committing war crimes for 22 days, but the Western leaders cannot even call on Israel for a ceasefire, let alone react to it," Erdogan told the crowd in Istanbul, who waved Palestinian flags.

"We will tell the whole world that Israel is a war criminal. We are making preparations for this. We will declare Israel a war criminal," he said.

In an hour-long speech, Erdogan also repeated his assertion that Hamas was not a terrorist organisation, describing Israel as an occupier.

Turkey has condemned Israeli civilian deaths caused by Hamas's Oct. 7 rampage through southern Israel, which killed 1,400, but Erdogan this week called the militant group Palestinian "freedom fighters".

He also criticised some Western nations' unconditional support for Israel, drawing sharp rebukes from Italy and Israel.

Unlike many NATO allies, the European Union and some Gulf states, Turkey does not consider Hamas a terrorist organisation. It has long hosted its members, supports a two-state solution and has offered to play a role in negotiating the release of hostages abducted by Hamas during the Oct. 7 assault.

Political analysts said Erdogan was keen to reinforce his criticism of Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip and to overshadow Sunday's celebrations marking Turkey's secular roots.

Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat and director of the Centre for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies, an Istanbul-based think-tank, said Gaza's worsening humanitarian crisis and pressure from political allies had prompted Erdogan to sharpen his rhetoric.

Turkey "will protect its principles and share these with the international community, but it needs to do this with a more delicate diplomacy if it expects to play such a diplomatic role," Ulgen said.

The heads of allied nationalist and Islamist parties - which helped Erdogan secure victory in tight May elections - attended the rally at Istanbul's old airport. Erdogan criticised opposition parties for not calling Netanyahu a "terrorist" and for using the same term with reference to Hamas.

Needless to say, a NATO ally coming in on the side of Hamas against Israel right now would be the definition of catastrophic. Erdogan spouting saber-rattling rhetoric is one thing, but if this gets worse, or gets military, all bets are off. 

Turkey could in fact be the key to brokering a cease fire, but not if Ankara continues down this path.

Of course, there's always the usual suspects who could make things worse as well

We'll see.

Last Call For America's Kids Getting Zucked Up

A huge multistate lawsuit against Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta was announced this week as 41 states are suing the social media giant over addicting tens of millions of kids on purpose. 

 

Dozens of states sued Instagram-parent Meta on Tuesday, accusing the social media giant of harming young users’ mental health through allegedly addictive features such as infinite news feeds and frequent notifications that demand users’ constant attention.

In a federal lawsuit filed in California by 33 attorneys general, the states allege that Meta’s products have harmed minors and contributed to a mental health crisis in the United States.

“Meta has profited from children’s pain by intentionally designing its platforms with manipulative features that make children addicted to their platforms while lowering their self-esteem,” said Letitia James, the attorney general for New York, one of the states involved in the federal suit. “Social media companies, including Meta, have contributed to a national youth mental health crisis and they must be held accountable.”

Eight additional attorneys general sued Meta on Tuesday in various state courts around the country, making similar claims as the massive multi-state federal lawsuit.

And the state of Florida sued Meta in its own separate federal lawsuit, alleging that Meta misled users about potential health risks of its products.

Tuesday’s multistate federal suit — filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California — accuses Meta of violating a range of state-based consumer protection statutes, as well as a federal children’s privacy law known as COPPA that prohibits companies from collecting the personal information of children under 13 without a parent’s consent.

“Meta’s design choices and practices take advantage of and contribute to young users’ susceptibility to addiction,” the complaint reads. “They exploit psychological vulnerabilities of young users through the false promise that meaningful social connection lies in the next story, image, or video and that ignoring the next piece of social content could lead to social isolation.”

The federal complaint calls for court orders prohibiting Meta from violating the law and, in the case of many states, unspecified financial penalties.

“We share the attorneys generals’ commitment to providing teens with safe, positive experiences online, and have already introduced over 30 tools to support teens and their families,” Meta said in a statement. “We’re disappointed that instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use, the attorneys general have chosen this path.”

The wave of lawsuits is the result of a bipartisan, multistate investigation dating back to 2021, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said at a press conference Tuesday, after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen came forward with tens of thousands of internal company documents that she said showed how the company knew its products could have negative impacts on young people’s mental health.

“We know that there were decisions made, a series of decisions to make the product more and more addictive,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti told reporters. “And what we want is for the company to undo that, to make sure that they are not exploiting these vulnerabilities in children, that they are not doing all the little, sophisticated, tricky things that we might not pick up on that drive engagement higher and higher and higher that allowed them to keep taking more and more time and data from our young people.”

Tuesday’s multipronged legal assault also marks the newest attempt by states to rein in large tech platforms over fears that social media companies are fueling a spike in youth depression and suicidal ideation.

“There’s a mountain of growing evidence that social media has a negative impact on our children,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta, “evidence that more time on social media tends to be correlated with depression with anxiety, body image issues, susceptibility to addiction and interference with daily life, including learning.”

The suits follow a raft of legislation in states ranging from Arkansas to Louisiana that clamp down on social media by establishing new requirements for online platforms that wish to serve teens and children, such as mandating that they obtain a parent’s consent before creating an account for a minor, or that they verify users’ ages.

 

I predict a big multibillion dollar settlement, followed by hefty new rules for social media in the US concerning children for Meta in order to head off federal regulations, but I don't think that will hold for long. If Meta really did make as an addictive product as possible, they're going to deserve all the legal smoke they can get.

The Auto Loan Crisis Is Back, Too

High interest rates, chip shortages, and high auto prices are resulting in the worst auto loan market in three decades.

 

Higher car prices and rising interest rates are hindering car owners’ ability to afford their vehicle payments, as 6.1% of subprime auto borrowers are at least 60 days past due on their loans, the highest percentage in data dating back to 1994, according to Bloomberg, which cited Fitch Ratings.

The 6.1% of borrowers behind on auto loans last month marks a surge from the 2.6% reported in May 2021, after the federal government significantly lowered interest rates in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Higher vehicle prices and borrowing costs—along with continued higher than usual inflation—have fueled the rising number of Americans behind on their auto loans, a problem that might persist given forecasts from Federal Reserve officials who believe high interest rates will continue through 2026.

Margaret Rowe, a senior executive at Fitch, told Bloomberg subprime borrowers can be the first indication of “where we start to see the negative effects of macroeconomic headwinds.”

Generation Z and millennials may account for a significant amount of the borrowers behind on their auto loans, as the two generations recorded auto loan delinquency rates last year that were significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels, according to an NBC News report that cited TransUnion.

Interest rates for used cars are 13.5% on average for those with fair credit but can rocket up to around 21% for those with the worst credit, according to Bankrate.

Rising car prices have in part been caused by a pandemic-induced computer chip shortage, and some chip shortages could continue into 2024, according to J.P. Morgan.

I know we've managed to avoid a recession so far with this week's stellar GDP report and we have more protections in place than we did fifteen years ago, but I'll be damned if this doesn't all feel like the Great Recession is coming. More likely, the massive economic damage from Trump and Covid is only playing out now and the medicine is painful, but the alternative really is another Great Recession, and if we don't stop the guy who got us into this mess in 2019 and he wins in 2024, we are absolutely sunk as an economy.

We've avoided the crack-up for now, but it's going to take years to dig ourselves out of the Trump mess. If we put ourselves back in it, we're not coming up for air.

Sunday Long Read: Scare Apparent

For Halloween this week, our Sunday Long Read is Scientific American's look at why we love to be scared and the science behind it. From Darwin to today, researchers say "scary play" is a necessary way to explore our world as social creatures.

Chain saws roar, and spine-chilling screams echo from behind a dense wall of trees. You know you're at a scary attraction in the woods of Denmark called Dystopia Haunted House, yet everything sounds so real. As you walk into the house, you become disoriented in a dark maze filled with strange objects and broken furniture; when you turn a corner, you're confronted by bizarre scenes with evil clowns and terrifying monsters reaching out for you. Then you hear the chain saw revving up, and a masked man bursts through the wall. You scream and start running.

This might sound like the kind of place nobody would ever want to be in, but every year millions of people pay to visit haunts just like Dystopia. They crowd in during Halloween, to be sure, but show up in every other season, too. This paradox of horror's appeal—that people want to have disturbing and upsetting experiences—has long perplexed scholars. We devour tales of psychopathic killers on true crime podcasts, watch movies about horrible monsters, play games filled with ghosts and zombies, and read books that describe apocalyptic worlds packed with our worst fears.

This paradox is now being resolved by research on the science of scary play and morbid curiosity. Our desire to experience fear, it seems, is rooted deep in our evolutionary past and can still benefit us today. Scary play, it turns out, can help us overcome fears and face new challenges—those that surface in our own lives and others that arise in the increasingly disturbing world we all live in.

The phenomenon of scary play surprised Charles Darwin. In The Descent of Man, he wrote that he had heard about captive monkeys that, despite their fear of snakes, kept lifting the lid of a box containing the reptiles to peek inside. Intrigued, Darwin turned the story into an experiment: He put a bag with a snake inside it in a cage full of monkeys at the London Zoological Gardens. A monkey would cautiously walk up to the bag, slowly open it, and peer down inside before shrieking and racing away. After seeing one monkey do this, another monkey would carefully walk over to the bag to take a peek, then scream and run. Then another would do the same thing, then another.

The monkeys were “satiating their horror,” as Darwin put it. Morbid fascination with danger is widespread in the animal kingdom—it's called predator inspection. The inspection occurs when an animal looks at or even approaches a predator rather than simply fleeing. This behavior occurs across a range of animals, from guppies to gazelles.

At first blush, getting close to danger seems like a bad idea. Why would natural selection have instilled in animals a curiosity about the very things they should be avoiding? But there is an evolutionary logic to these actions. Morbid curiosity is a powerful way for animals to gain information about the most dangerous things in their environment. It also gives them an opportunity to practice dealing with scary experiences.

What doesn't kill us only makes us stronger...or at least it gives us working data on how to handle things that go bump in the night. 

Last Call For A Pence-ive Retreat

Former VP Mike Pence has dropped out of the 2024 GOP primary contest, to the surprise of nobody, and to the loss of no great value.

 

Former Vice President Mike Pence suspended his 2024 presidential campaign Saturday, with his campaign running low on money and the Republican Party moving in a different direction than the longtime Indiana conservative.

He made the unexpected announcement at the annual Republican Jewish Coalition convention in Las Vegas.

"I came here to say it’s become clear to me this is not my time. So after much deliberation I have decided to suspend my campaign for president effective today," he said onstage. "I have no regrets. The only thing that would have been harder than coming up short would have been if we never tried at all."

His spokesperson Devin O’Malley said Pence chose the convention for the announcement because “the conflict in Israel is a microcosm of what Pence has been evangelizing regarding populism and traditional conservative values."

“RJC provided him one last opportunity to make that case and do so in front of a supportive audience," O'Malley added.

Republican candidates praised Pence following his announcement. "He’s been a good man of faith. He’s been a good man of service," said former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tweeted: “Vice President Mike Pence is a principled man of faith who has worked tirelessly to advance the conservative cause."

 

For all the (unfair) flak that current VP Kamala Harris gets about people not liking her (which is untrue) it's important to remember that Pence's party is currently eulogizing him even though he's you know, still alive.

 

His political career is quite dead however, and I'm sure he'll get a lobbyist job somewhere soon where he can be on the letterhead and give speeches where a whole 16 people will show up. Maybe he can hang out with Dan Quayle some more.

Nobody really cares, and good riddance to a man who took Trump's 30 silver in order to betray the country.

Bye.

Israeli Getting Serious Out There, Con't

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu failed miserably to protect the Jewish state from Hamas, and whether it was intentional or not, the world will pay a heavy price in the weeks and months ahead.

 

Hamas’ massacre of more than 1,400 Israelis and kidnapping of over 200 others on Oct. 7 was more than a national tragedy for Israel — it was also a massive intelligence failure. Now, as Israel goes to war against Hamas, vital questions abound: Why didn’t Israeli leadership see this coming? If Israel defeats Hamas, what will take its place? And what are the odds that Israel’s greatest ally, the United States, could get pulled into a direct role in the conflict?

Amos Yadlin has unique insights into all these questions. The 71-year-old former Israeli intelligence chief, who oversaw the destruction of Syria’s nascent nuclear program and the serial sabotage of Iran’s, has emerged as a key voice on the crisis, briefing members of Israel’s war cabinet. For the last 12 years, he’s served as the head of Israel’s highly influential Institute for National Security Studies, and he remains a security eminence grise.

In a new interview with POLITICO Magazine conducted via Zoom over two days last week, Yadlin offered a useful window into official Israeli thinking on the escalating war — from solutions to the ongoing hostage crisis to the challenge of avoiding Palestinian civilian casualties.

Yadlin made clear that Israel’s policy in this war was not simply to retaliate for the massacre or weaken Hamas, but to definitively end the jihadist group’s 16-year rule in Gaza.

“We are going to destroy Hamas, as Nazi Germany was destroyed,” he said, adding that Israel would mount a global assassination campaign against Hamas leaders akin to the one it launched following the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.

Aligned politically with the country’s center left — he was the Labor Party’s candidate for defense minister in the 2015 elections — Yadlin attributed much of the blame for the catastrophe to the national distraction of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s push to overhaul the country’s judiciary: “Netanyahu got all the warnings — from his defense minister, from the chief of staff, from the head of intelligence, from the head of Shin Bet and from independent writers like me, like others — that this is weakening Israel deterrence and endangering Israeli national security.”

Complicating matters in recent days, the Israeli media has been abuzz with reports of internal Israeli government deliberations over a second front with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, with the defense minister and other Israeli officials reportedly advocating a preemptive strike on the militant group and the U.S. cautioning against it.

Yadlin said Hezbollah’s “very cautious” behavior indicated a low likelihood of a second front developing. But while declining to go into details, Yadlin — who is privy to recent discussions between U.S. and Israeli officials — hinted that, in the event Hezbollah were to initiate a full-blown war with Israel, the U.S. might join “shoulder to shoulder” with Israel: “If Hezbollah attacks first, don’t be surprised — the U.S. may participate in this war.”

 

So yeah, expert after expert agree on two things: Bibi dropped the ball, and that the odds of a much bigger -- if not global -- conflict are ridiculously high as a result. This should all look familiar to Americans after 9/11, because we're headed down the same path with the same results.

Meanwhile, the ground invasion in Gaza is getting underway.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Friday that they are "expanding ground operations" in the Gaza Strip, according IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.

“In addition to offensive operations we carried over the past few days, the IDF ground forces are expanding their ground operation this evening,” Hagari said.

“Hundreds of thousands of IDF soldiers are all around the borders of the state — in the air, ground, and the sea — to protect the state," he added.

The announcement comes as CNN reports a large series of explosions rocked Gaza City on Friday night. 

 

Gaza is without power, telecommunications, or internet and is being bombed to ashes.

Large swaths of buildings around Gaza City, Beit Lahya and Beit Hanoun have been destroyed. A big amount of the damage that CNN was able to confirm is in northern Gaza.

Hundreds of craters across northern Gaza have also been identified.

CNN was able to identify the areas of destruction in Gaza through satellite imagery from Planet Labs, and by working with Synthetaic — a company that utilizes AI to identify and classify data, including satellite imagery.

Using imagery of the entire Gaza Strip from Planet Labs, Synthetaic is analyzing and comparing it through its proprietary AI-driven Rapid Automatic Image Categorization (RAIC) system, looking for destruction such as damaged and destroyed buildings, as well as impact craters. Aided by what RAIC identified as destruction, CNN is taking the Planet Labs imagery and conducting its own analysis to independently confirm the destruction.

The result is a snapshot of the destruction that's occurred across Gaza.

 

Hundreds, if not thousands of foreign nationals remain trapped. 

More than two weeks of intense negotiations to evacuate foreign nationals out of Gaza have yielded few signs of progress, leaving hundreds of desperate civilians stranded inside the war-torn strip of land as Israeli ground operations expanded amid a barrage of airstrikes on Friday.

Multiple sources involved in the diplomatic talks tell CNN that the effort to open a key border crossing in southern Gaza remains stymied by Hamas’ control of the enclave, Israel’s blockade and bombing, as well as Egyptian security concerns.

Now that the Israeli defense forces have announced an expansion of their ground operations, the situation for civilians and foreign nationals who remain trapped in Gaza has become even more dire. Aid officials and other individuals on the ground had expressed fears even before the expansion of operations that nowhere in Gaza was safe, and despite US officials saying they were working with Israel to establish civilian safe zones, such areas have not been fully stood up.

People who have family in Gaza told CNN on Friday they have not been able to make contact with them after communications went down in the strip amid the barrage of strikes.

Negotiators have been furiously working to find a solution to appease Egypt’s concerns about refugees entering the country through the Rafah crossing in southwestern Gaza, the border between Egypt and the Sinai. Complicating things are Israeli and American claims that Hamas has blocked the way out, as well as the inherent difficulties that come with processing thousands of people who claim to be foreign nationals.

The US had also been rushing to negotiate the release of hostages held by Hamas ahead of the incursion, talks that the US government insisted will continue amid Friday’s intensified airstrikes.

The Biden administration said Thursday it was hopeful that a deal will be reached in the coming days to allow US citizens to evacuate Gaza through Egypt, though the State Department had previously issued an alert saying the crossing into Egypt would open but it never did.

 

The catastrophe continues as the UN demands a cease fire, falling on deaf ears in Tel Aviv and Washington.

 

The U.N. General Assembly approved a nonbinding resolution Friday calling for a “humanitarian truce” in Gaza leading to a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers, the first United Nations response to the ongoing war.

The 193-member world body adopted the Arab-drafted resolution by a vote of 120-14 with 45 abstentions after rejecting a Canadian amendment backed by the United States. It would have unequivocally condemned the Oct. 7 “terrorist attacks” on Israel by Hamas and demanded the immediate release of hostages taken by Hamas.

The votes came part way through a list of 113 speakers at an emergency special session on Israeli actions in occupied Palestinian territories. Jordan’s U.N. Ambassador Mahmoud Hmoud, speaking on behalf of the U.N.’s 22-nation Arab group, had called for action on the resolution because of the urgency of the escalating situation on the ground.

The Arab group went to the General Assembly after the more powerful 15-member Security Council failed to agree on a resolution after four attempts over the past two weeks. While council resolutions are legally binding, assembly resolutions are not, but they do serve as a barometer of world opinion.

 

Things always get darker right before it goes pitch black.

Unimpeachable Me, Con't

Lost in the Clown Show was news that Kentucky GOP Rep. James Comer continues to be the dumbest hammer in the box with his attempted "President Biden took direct payments" story last week. And Biden did...getting a loan repayment from his brother Jim in 2018, when Joe Biden was not in government at all.

 

Republicans announced Friday that they had uncovered a “direct payment” to President Joe Biden — exactly the kind of evidence they’ve sought linking Biden to his family’s foreign business deals.

But the March 2018 payment came from Joe Biden’s brother James, not a Ukrainian oligarch or Chinese tycoon, and the check was marked as a “loan repayment.”

Still, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), who obtained the records via subpoena, said the $200,000 check looks suspicious for the president.

“Does he have documents proving he lent such a large sum of money to his brother,” Comer said in a video, “and what were the terms of such financial arrangement?”

Comer has been leading Republicans’ investigation and impeachment inquiry into President Biden, which so far hasn’t implicated Biden himself and in recent weeks has been overshadowed by infighting among Republicans that has paralyzed the House of Representatives.

Democrats on the Oversight Committee say the personal bank records recently provided to the committee do show that Biden loaned his brother the money.

“These records actually show that President Biden was the one who stepped in to help family members when they needed support, including by providing short term loans to his brother,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the committee’s top Democrat, said in a statement.

Raskin added that the 1,400 pages of records Republicans got from their subpoenas, which asked banks for several years of records relating to the president’s brother and son, show no wrongdoing, but do reveal “payments for things like groceries, vet visits, and plumbing repairs.”

 

Yeah, 200 grand is a lot of money to most of us. I wish I had that kind of scratch, sure. But there's the thing: Joe Biden helped out his brother, and his brother paid him back. That's not illegal, and in fact Joe Biden reported it on his income taxes.

 

Unlike, you know, Trump.

 

Clowns. Absolute clowns. James Comer is yet another Republican member of Congress I have to apologize to the rest of America for and I'm tired of these assholes.