sky | Donald Trump has signalled his intention to send troops to Chicago to
ramp up the deportation of illegal immigrants - by posting an
AI-generated parody image from Apocalypse Now on social media.
There were protests in the city, the largest in Illinois, on Saturday night, with thousands of people marching past Trump Tower to demonstrate against possible immigration raids.
That came as the US president ramped up his threats to deploy federal
authorities and military personnel in Chicago, as he has done in Los Angeles and Washington DC.
In a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump
shared an AI-generated image of himself as a military officer in the
movie Apocalypse Now, with the title changed to "Chipocalypse Now" over
flames and the city skyline.
The post - a screenshot from X - said: "'I love the smell of deportations in the morning...'. Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR."
▶️ Powerful video here: revealing the deep and dark corruption which has been fueling this disastrous proxy war from the first moment of its inception. Zelensky is a media creation - a puppet of the West, designed to empty Ukraine of its sovereignty, and ultimately its resources… pic.twitter.com/5xH0vbGool
CTH | Yes, the Govt is in crisis, and just as
sure as you are reading this, the administrators within the IC already
have the solution ready to roll.”
♦ RESULT
– “We will use advanced technology and non-partisan AI programming, to
make the government more efficient and ensure this level of corruption
and wasteful spending never happens again.”
Every dollar will be tracked, monitored
and oversight will be transparent and available for everyone to see.
Just ignore the part where the same efficiency system is monitoring your
real ID, connecting your personage to the new govt and private sector
interfaces, and click “I agree” on your next federal tax filing. Trust
us Comrade citizen, the new technologically advanced DODGE approved govt
system cares about responsible stewardship and you. Swear.”
The process starts by downloading government data to an AI enhanced database for review and filtration.
Good Stuff – […] Trump created DOGE through
a day one executive order with a stated mission to cut government
waste. Musk and his aides have assumed control of federal IT
infrastructure as his team swiftly blitzes through departments and
agencies. Trump, with Musk’s guidance, this week gutted the
United States Agency for International Development and merged it into
the State Department. The president has signaled he might try to eliminate the Department of Education by executive order next.
“They’re
putting a shot across the administrative state’s bow,” Steve Bannon,
Trump’s former chief strategist, said last week of the mass federal
buyout plan on his “War Room” podcast. “That’s DOGE signaling to you
that they’ve got a plan of how to take the personnel down.”
[…] Federal
employees who want to remain in the federal workforce were told in the
“Fork in the Road” email they must return to in-person work, embrace new
“performance standards” and be “reliable, loyal and trustworthy” in
their work. The email also warned that most federal departments and
agencies will be “downsized through restructurings, realignments, and
reductions in force.”
Some federal employees said they were alarmed at the short timeframe they were given to make their decisions.
“I
have invested way too much time and energy and interest into my career
to just say, ‘hell with it’ and leave when I only have, like, five to 10
years left before I retire,” one federal worker said. “I’m not taking
the resigning bait. So, I guess I’ll essentially just ride down with the
ship if they decide to get rid of us,” the worker added, though he
acknowledged some less experienced colleagues might take the buyout. (more)
The streamlining and
downsizing of government through the use of AI systems is a good thing,
perhaps a very good thing. However, watch out for deployment into the
DHS apparatus because that will give rise to the newly expanded
Surveillance State.
Peaceniks don’t build
bombs; and those who genuinely believe in liberty do not build nor
support domestic surveillance networks that can be weaponized depending
on who is in power.
thebulletin | Since the emergence of generative
artificial intelligence, scholars have speculated about the technology’s
implications for the character, if not nature, of war. The promise of
AI on battlefields and in war rooms has beguiled scholars. They
characterize AI as “game-changing,” “revolutionary,” and “perilous,”
especially given the potential of great power war involving the United
States and China or Russia. In the context of great power war, where
adversaries have parity of military capabilities, scholars claim that AI
is the sine qua non, absolutely required for victory. This
assessment is predicated on the presumed implications of AI for the
“sensor-to-shooter” timeline, which refers
to the interval of time between acquiring and prosecuting a target. By
adopting AI, or so the argument goes, militaries can reduce the
sensor-to-shooter timeline and maintain lethal overmatch against peer
adversaries.
Although understandable, this line of
reasoning may be misleading for military modernization, readiness, and
operations. While experts caution that militaries are confronting a
“eureka” or “Oppenheimer”
moment, harkening back to the development of the atomic bomb during
World War II, this characterization distorts the merits and limits of AI
for warfighting. It encourages policymakers and defense officials to follow what can be called a “primrose path of AI-enabled warfare,” which is codified in the US military’s “third offset” strategy. This vision of AI-enabled warfare is fueled by gross prognostications and over-determination of emerging capabilities enhanced with some form of AI, rather than rigorous empirical analysis of its implications across all (tactical, operational, and strategic) levels of war.
The current debate on military AI is largely driven by “tech bros”
and other entrepreneurs who stand to profit immensely from militaries’
uptake of AI-enabled capabilities. Despite their influence on the
conversation, these tech industry figures have little to no operational
experience, meaning they cannot draw from first-hand accounts of combat
to further justify arguments that AI is changing the character, if not
nature, of war. Rather, they capitalize on their impressive business
successes to influence a new model of capability development through
opinion pieces in high-profile journals, public addresses at acclaimed security conferences, and presentations at top-tier universities.
To the extent analysts do explore the implications of AI for warfighting, such as during the conflicts in Gaza, Libya, and Ukraine, they highlight limited—and debatable—examples of its use, embellish its impacts, conflate technology with organizational improvements provided by AI, and draw generalizations about future warfare. It is possible that AI-enabled technologies, such as lethal autonomous weapon systems or “killer robots,” will someday dramatically alter war. Yet the current debate for the implications of AI on warfighting discounts critical political, operational, and normative considerations that imply AI may not have the revolutionary impacts that its proponents claim, at least not now. As suggested by Israel and the United States’
use of AI-enabled decision-support systems in Gaza and Ukraine, there
is a more reasonable alternative. In addition to enabling cognitive warfare, it is likely that AI will allow militaries to optimize workflows across warfighting functions, particularly intelligence and maneuver.
This will enhance situational awareness; provide efficiencies,
especially in terms of human resources; and shorten the course-of-action
development timeline.
Militaries across the globe are at a moment or strategic inflection point
in terms of preparing for future conflict. But this is not for the
reasons scholars typically assume. Our research suggests that three
related considerations have combined to shape the hype
surrounding military AI, informing the primrose path of AI-enabled
warfare. First, that primrose path is paved by the emergence of a new
military industrial complex that is dependent on commercial service
providers. Second, this new defense acquisition process is the cause and
effect of a narrative suggesting a global AI arms race, which has encouraged scholars to discount the normative implications of AI-enabled warfare. Finally, while analysts assume that soldiers will trust AI, which is integral to human-machine teaming that facilitates AI-enabled warfare, trust is not guaranteed.
What AI is and isn’t. Automation, autonomy, and AI are often used
interchangeably but erroneously. Automation refers to the routinization
of tasks performed by machines, such as auto-order of depleted classes
of military supplies, but with overall human oversight. Autonomy
moderates the degree
of human oversight of tasks performed by machines such that humans are
on, in, or off the loop. When humans are on the loop, they exercise ultimate control of machines, as is the case for the current class of “conventional” drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper. When humans are in the loop, they pre-delegate certain decisions to machines, which scholars debate
in terms of nuclear command and control. When humans are off the loop,
they outsource control to machines leading to a new class of “killer robots”
that can identify, track, and engage targets on their own. Thus,
automation and autonomy are protocol-based functions that largely retain
a degree of human oversight, which is often high given humans’ inherent
skepticism of machines.
NC | The goal of the political leadership in the US, the EU, the UK, and
other ostensibly liberal democracies is simple: to gain much greater,
more granular control over the information being shared on the internet.
As Matt Taibbi told Russell Brand in an interview last year, both the EUçs Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Biden Administration’s proposed RESTRICT Act (which Yves dissected
in April, 2023) are essentially a “wish list that has been passed
around” by the transatlantic elite “for some time,” including at a 2021
gathering at the Aspen Institute.
The same goes for the UK’s Online Safety Bill, which Kier Starmer would like nothing better than to beef up.
Likewise, Canada has introduced sweeping new internet regulation
through its Online News Act, which includes, among other things, a link tax, and Online Streaming Act. So, too, has Australia through a censorship bill that
is strikingly similar to the EU’s DSA and even includes a punitive fine
of up to 2% of global profits for social media companies that do not
comply.
It’s not hard to see why. With economic conditions deteriorating
rapidly across the West, after decades of rampant financialisation,
kakistocracy, and corporatisation, to the extent that even the United
Nations is now one giant private-public partnership, the social contract is, to all intents and purposes, worthless. Even the WEF admits
that corporations, its main constituency, have turbocharged inequality.
Populism is on the rise just about everywhere and angry and fragmented
protest movements have been growing since at least 2019.
Thanks largely to the countervailing information still available on
the internet, governments are rapidly losing control of the narrative on
key issues, including the war in Ukraine and Israel’s ongoing genocide
in Gaza. Their stock response has been to clamp down on the ability of
citizens to use the internet to generate, consume and share important
news, dissenting views and uncomfortable truths.
theatlantic |strange thing
has happened on the path to marijuana legalization. Users across all
ages and experience levels are noticing that a drug they once turned to
for fun and relaxation now triggers existential dread and paranoia. “The
density of the nugs is crazy, they’re so sticky,” a friend from college
texted me recently. “I solo’d a joint from the dispensary recently and
was tweaking just walking around.” (Translation for the non-pot-savvy:
This strain of marijuana is not for amateurs.)
In 2022, the federal government reported
that, in samples seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration, average
levels of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC—the psychoactive compound in
weed that makes you feel high—had more than tripled compared with 25
years earlier, from 5 to 16 percent. That may understate how strong weed
has gotten. Walk into any dispensary in the country, legal or not, and
you’ll be hard-pressed to find a single product advertising such a low
THC level. Most strains claim to be at least 20 to 30 percent THC by
weight; concentrated weed products designed for vaping can be labeled as
up to 90 percent.
For
the average weed smoker who wants to take a few hits without getting
absolutely blitzed, this is frustrating. For some, it can be dangerous.
In the past few years, reports have swelled of people, especially teens,
experiencing short- and long-term “marijuana-induced psychosis,” with
consequences including hospitalizations for chronic vomiting and auditory hallucinations of talking birds.
Multiple studies have drawn a link between heavy use of high-potency
marijuana, in particular, and the development of psychological
disorders, including schizophrenia, although a causal connection hasn’t been proved.
“It’s
entirely possible that this new kind of cannabis—very strong, used in
these very intensive patterns—could do permanent brain damage to
teenagers because that’s when the brain is developing a lot,” Keith
Humphreys, a Stanford psychiatry professor and a former drug-policy
adviser to the Obama administration, told me. Humphreys stressed that
the share of people who have isolated psychotic episodes on weed will be
“much larger” than the number of people who end up permanently altered.
But even a temporary bout of psychosis is pretty bad.
One
of the basic premises of the legalization movement is that marijuana,
if not harmless, is pretty close to it—arguably much less dangerous than
alcohol. But much of the weed being sold today is not the same stuff
that people were getting locked up for selling in the 1990s and 2000s.
You don’t have to be a War on Drugs apologist to be worried about the
consequences of unleashing so much super-high-potency weed into the
world.
The
high that most adult weed smokers remember from their teenage years is
most likely one produced by “mids,” as in, middle-tier weed. In the
pre-legalization era, unless you had a connection with access to
top-shelf strains such as Purple Haze and Sour Diesel, you probably had
to settle for mids (or, one step down, “reggie,” as in regular weed)
most of the time. Today, mids are hard to come by.
The
simplest explanation for this is that the casual smokers who pine for
the mids and reggies of their youth aren’t the industry’s top customers.
Serious stoners are. According to research by Jonathan P. Caulkins, a
public-policy professor at Carnegie Mellon, people who report smoking
more than 25 times a month make up about a third of marijuana users but
account for about two-thirds of all marijuana consumption. Such regular
users tend to develop a high tolerance, and their tastes drive the
industry’s cultivation decisions.
The
industry is not shy about this fact. In May, I attended the National
Cannabis Investment Summit in Washington D.C., where investors used the
terms high-quality and potent almost interchangeably.
They told me that high THC percentages do well with heavy users—the
dedicated wake-and-bakers and the joint-before-bed crowd. “Thirty
percent THC is the new 20 percent,” Ryan Cohen, a Michigan-based
cultivator, told me. “Our target buyer is the guy who just worked 40
hours a week and wants to get high as fuck on a budget.”
Smaller
producers might conceivably carve out a niche catering to those of us
who prefer a milder high. But because of the way the legal weed market
has developed, they’re struggling just to exist. As states have been
left alone to determine what their legal weed markets will look like,
limited licensing has emerged as the favored apparatus. That approach
has led to legal weed markets becoming dominated by large, well-financed
“multistate operators,” in industry jargon.
Across the country, MSOs are buying up licenses, acquiring smaller brands, and lobbying politicians to stick prohibitions
on home-growing into their legalization bills. The result is an
illusion of endless choice and a difficult climate for the little guy.
Minnesota’s 15 medical dispensaries
are owned by two MSOs. All 23 of Virginia’s are owned by three
different MSOs. Some states have tried to lower barriers to entry, but
the big chains still tend to overpower the market. (Notable exceptions
are California and Colorado, which have a longer history with legal
marijuana licensing, and where the markets are less dominated by
mega-chains.) Despite the profusion of stores in some states and the
apparent variety of strains on the shelf, most people who walk into a
dispensary will choose from a limited number of suppliers that maximize
for THC percentage.
But that was the lowest point ever recorded. It was a really, I mean,
I was very proud of those numbers. And then you see what happened with
these people, Kamala and Joe, you see what happened. They just let it
go. I remain in Mexico policies. I had all these different policies that
were so good. Guys like Tom Holman and Brandon Judd from Border Patrol.
These are all people that they’ve been on television. They say it’s the
best numbers we’ve ever had. We had so many different checks, catch and
release in Mexico, not the United, we had catch and release in the
United States. We had it in Mexico. We had so many things.
(19:16)
We had things where if many people come in there, they have contagious
diseases. We had everything passed. If you have a contagious disease,
I’m sorry, but we cannot allow you into the country. So we were setting
literally records. And all I was doing is showing that. And I used it
sometimes. And in this case, I’m glad I used it. I can tell you that.
But there were fantastic numbers. But I’m going to sleep with that chart
always. I’ll be sleeping with that chart. That chart was very
important, very important for a lot of reasons.
Would it be accurate to say that you’re supportive of legal
immigration, but we obviously need to shut down illegal immigration, and
especially unvetted illegal immigration?
And that’s not the same as saying that everyone who’s an illegal
immigrant is bad. In fact, I think most people who are illegal
immigrants are actually good. But you can’t tell a difference unless
there’s a solid vetting of who comes across the border.
Because look, Kamala was the Border Czar. Now she’s denying it.
Everything that I do, she’s saying she was strong on the border, we’re
going to be strong. Well, she doesn’t have to say it. She could close it
up right now. They could do things right now. It is horrible. No tax on
tips. And all of a sudden she’s making a speech, she’s saying, “There
will be no tax on tips.” I said that months ago. And by the way, they
had just the opposite. They had not only tax on tips, but they hired
88,000 IRS agents. And many of them were assigned to go get waitresses
and caddies and all of this on tips. They have a policy. They had a
policy, they were really going to go after you and we’re really
harassing people horribly. And then all of a sudden for politics, she
comes out with what I said, which I think is terrible.
(21:14)
And I think it’s also hitting them very hard. These people are fake. Now
they’re also saying they did a good job in the border. We had the worst
numbers in the history of the world, not of our country. There’s never
been a country in history that has had a catastrophe like this. We’ve
had, I believe, and I think you believe this too, you hear 12 million,
13, I believe it’s over 20 million people came into our country. Many
coming from jails, from prisons, from mental institutions, or a bigger
version of that is insane asylums. And many are terrorists. And I’ll
tell you what, they’re coming not just from South America, they’re
coming from Africa. They’re coming from all over the world. They’re
coming from Asia. They’re coming from the Middle East. They’re coming
from countries that are stupidly and horribly bombing Israel, October
7th. They’re coming from all over the world. And you look at, it’s so
sad, October 7th, because it should have never happened.
Slate | Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is reportedly under serious consideration to become vice president and presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ running mate. And, in a certain sense, there are good reasons for this: Democrats badly want (some would argue need) to win Pennsylvania. Shapiro is, by all accounts, quite popular in the state he runs. He won the governorship handily in 2022 against Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, proponent of Christian nationalist ideas—which Shapiro proved unafraid to tackle head-on.
Shapiro is Jewish and has spoken strongly about and against antisemitism, which will surely be a theme in the 2024 presidential election. Republican candidate Donald Trump wonders aloud how any Jew could vote for a Democrat even as his son hosts a fundraiser with pundit Tucker Carlson, promoter of antisemitic conspiracy theories. Republicans reportedly see Shapiro as a threat, while progressive Pennsylvania state Sen. Nikil Saval touted his “strong willingness to build coalitions with people that he also disagrees with, and to change his views and policies through that act of coalition-building.”
And yet, for all of this, there are demerits to Shapiro, too. In the New Republic, the leftist Jewish writer David Klion made the case that Shapiro could threaten Democratic unity. Some of this is for domestic reasons. (More than two dozen public education advocacy groups wrote a letter asking Harris not to select Shapiro over his support for private school vouchers.) And some of this is because of Shapiro’s stance on Israel: As Klion notes, Shapiro, when attorney general, backed the state’s anti–boycott, divestment, and sanctions law, describing BDS as “rooted in antisemitism.”
The Forward described Shapiro as having been “been a fixture at local rallies supporting Israel during its repeated wars in Gaza.” And his support has remained constant in this war, too: During a radio show on Oct. 11, Shapiro said, “We need to gird ourselves for what appears to be, you know, going to be a long war and we need to remain on the side of Israel.” Since then, as the Philadelphia Inquirer put it, he has “resisted” calls for a cease-fire. This past spring, as pro-Palestinian protests took place on campuses across the United States, the governor called on the University of Pennsylvania to “disband the encampment and to restore order and safety on campus” and implied a parallel between white supremacists and students protesting their university’s policies vis-à-vis Israel and the war in Gaza.
All of this could very well hurt Democratic unity and suppress voter turnout on the political left. Nominating Shapiro would also signify an embrace of an understanding of antisemitism that some American Jews contest, issuing a ruling on American Jewish political identity that many would chafe against (though so too could the selection of another rumored veep contender, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who signed into law a bill that includes in its definition of antisemitism “the denial of Jewish people’s right to self-determination and applying double standards to Israel’s actions”). But this policy or way of thinking, if embraced by the Harris campaign—regardless of who her running mate is—could do something else, too: It could undercut the core of Harris’ very compelling argument, which is that her campaign is standing up for American freedoms.
Harris is using Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” as her campaign anthem. In her first campaign ad, one can hear the song in the background as Harris speaks about the various freedoms she’s aiming to protect and expand on: “The freedom not just to get by, but to get ahead. The freedom to be safe from gun violence. The freedom to make decisions about your own body.”
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If this list of freedoms is to mean anything, it has to include the freedom to speak out and protest against the United States and its foreign policy, including with respect to Israel. It’s fundamental to the very concept of American liberty.
I do not mean to pit Jewish candidates reportedly under consideration to be Harris’ running mate against each other, nor do I want to suggest that all Jews should take the same position. (As you may have heard, we’re not a monolith.)
But this is a needle that Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has managed to thread. Back in May, he said that he supported Jewish organizations, but he also said, with respect to calls to oust university administrators, “I’m not about calling for people to step down.” Some protesters were anti-war, he said, and some were anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, and, yes, some were antisemitic. But, he stressed, “What I support is the fact that we need to protect not just Jewish students but all students on campuses where there are protests.” That’s how it should be in America: We all have a right to speak out, and we all have a right to be safe.
jewishinsider | The decision by Vice President Kamala Harris to choose Minnesota Gov.
Tim Walz as her running mate is raising questions among some Jewish
leaders about whether a pressure campaign led by anti-Israel activists
to thwart Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s nomination ultimately played a
part in influencing the selection process.
Harris formally announced her pick in a text message
to supporters of her campaign on Tuesday morning. “Tim is a
battle-tested leader who has an incredible track record of getting
things done for Minnesota families,” she said. “I know that he will
bring that same principled leadership to our campaign, and to the office
of the vice president.”
The selection comes amid Democratic concerns over anti-Israel
protests at the party’s convention in Chicago this month. Harris will
appear with Walz at a campaign rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening.
In recent weeks, Shapiro had faced mounting resistance from an
outspoken coalition of far-left organizers who expressed vehement
opposition to Shapiro over his staunch support for Israel and his
criticism of extreme anti-Israel campus protesters, among other issues.
The campaign drew allegations of antisemitism
for targeting Shapiro, an observant Jew whose positions on Israel were
largely aligned with other contenders who emerged on the vice
presidential short list, including Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Walz, the latter of whom had been favored by progressives. The rhetoric used by the left-wing campaign, including tagging Shapiro as “Genocide Josh,” also faced criticism for singling out the only Jewish candidate under serious consideration.
For some observers who had been cautiously excited by the possibility
of a Jewish running mate — the first since 2000 — the organized
campaign was a dismaying confirmation of concerns that Shapiro’s rise
as a vice presidential prospect could be derailed amid a recent surge
of antisemitism in the wake of Hamas Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the
subsequent war in Gaza.
“There are all kinds of legitimate factors that go into a
vice-presidential pick, but there was an obvious and concerted
anti-Shapiro effort that tapped into the antisemitic fervor coursing
through our country,” said Nathan Diament, the executive director of
public policy for the Orthodox Union. “Irrespective of the reasons Ms.
Harris had,” he told Jewish Insider, Shapiro’s far-left opponents “will surely declare victory.”
With that in mind, Diament cautioned that Harris “will have to take
other steps to undermine those extremists to show their claims are
false.”
Brett Goldman, a founder of Democratic Jewish Outreach Pennsylvania
and a political consultant in Philadelphia, said in an interview with JI
that he viewed the Shapiro snub as a sign that Harris “is succumbing to
pressure from the left” — whose relative electoral power, he suggested, has been overstated.
But despite his disappointment, Goldman clarified that his group
would still back Harris’ campaign. “It’s unfortunate, and it sucks that
it’s not Josh,” he said, describing the effort to block Shapiro as
“based in” antisemitism and anti-Zionism. “But we still have an election
to win.”
Jared Solomon, a Jewish state representative in Philadelphia now running
for attorney general, a role previously held by Shapiro, said he
regarded the popular Pennsylvania governor as “by far the best pick” for
vice president, citing how he “brings faith into the conversation in an
approachable, inclusive way.”
“I would say to the critics, specifically on his position regarding
Israel, I would be hard-pressed to see much daylight between Josh and
the other contenders,” he told JI. “I believe that he, like the others,
thinks the United States is a friend of Israel” and “like the others,
believes in a two-state solution.”
The anti-Shapiro campaign, Solomon added, “begs the question: Why is he, unlike the other candidates, facing so much pushback?”
To hear Eric Weinstein's entire "shut it down, the goyim know" drunken rant, - in which he repudiates everything he's professed about the DISC as well as placing himself squarely in the Epstein psy-op camp - go to the 3 hour 30 minute mark on the spotify podcast with Rogan.
Guardian | A prominent member of the progressive “Squad” in Congress, Cori Bush,
has lost her Democratic primary in St Louis after pro-Israel pressure
groups spent millions of dollars to unseat her over criticisms of Israel’s war in Gaza.
St
Louis prosecutor Wesley Bell defeated Missouri’s first Black female
member of Congress with about 51% of the vote. Bush took about 46%.
Bell’s
win marks a second major victory for the powerful American Israel
Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) after it played a leading role in unseating
New York congressman Jamaal Bowman, another progressive Democrat who
criticised the scale of Palestinian civilians deaths in Gaza, in a June
primary.
Aipac pumped $8.5m into the race in
Missouri’s first congressional district to support Bell through its
campaign funding arm, the United Democracy Project (UDP), after Bush
angered some pro-Israel groups as one of the first members of Congress
to call for a ceasefire after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel.
Much of the UDP’s money comes from billionaires who fund hardline pro-Israel causes and Republicans in other races, including some who have given to Donald Trump’s campaign.
Bush
condemned Hamas for the killing of 1,139 people, mostly Israelis, and
for abducting hundreds of others in October. But she also infuriated
some Jewish and pro-Israel groups by describing Israel’s subsequent
attack on Gaza and large scale killing of civilians as “collective
punishment against Palestinians” and a war crime.
During
the campaign, the UDP flooded St Louis with advertising hostile to Bush
– although, as in other congressional races targeted by pro-Israel
groups, it rarely mentioned the war in Gaza that has claimed nearly 40,000 Palestinian lives, mostly civilians, or her call for a ceasefire.
Instead, the campaign focused on Bush’s voting record in Congress, particularly her failure to support Joe Biden’s trillion-dollar infrastructure bill in 2021
and her support for the “defund the police” campaign. Bush struggled to
get her message across that the UDP is misrepresenting both situations.
The UDP accounted for more than half of all the money spent on the race outside the campaigns themselves.
Bell
has denied being recruited by pro-Israel groups to run against Bush,
but suspicion lingered after he abandoned a challenge for the US Senate
and entered the congressional race not long after Jewish organisations
in St Louis began to seek a candidate to take on Bush after accusing her of “intentionally fuelling antisemitism”.
Bell is expected to win what is one of the safest Democratic congressional seats in November’s general election.
The wealthy want wage pressure on those below them in society. One way to do this is to import people from different cultures, and replace workers with others. This results in a low trust society: low trust in policing, media coverage, justice, the puppeticians and even the functioning of democracy.
This wage pressure is leading working people to not have children, because children are expensive and hard to combine with one or more precarious jobs. Instead the imported people, who have better family networks, and who have no compunctions in demanding welfare support, produce the next generation of children, making the above 37% estimate an underestimate. Many of these children with foreign born parents are brought up thinking their parents ways are better than their new country’s.
Children with native ancestry find themselves surrounded by children from other countries, and either give up (British White boys have among the lowest educational results), or try to fit in by adopting foreign religions or expressions (e.g. Inshallah is common parlance among young French kids these days). The “DEI History curriculum” doesn’t encourage them to strive either. To quote Battlestar Galactica, “All this has happened before, and will happen again”: the US is not Native American, Australia is not Aborigine, and Israel is not Palestinian.
Pensions are a red-herring, brought out to divide the public and particularly to keep the old (voting) electorate on board. Why? Because Western companies could have been automating since the 1970s, just like the Chinese are doing. Xiaomi is building a factory that requires no people to pump out 60 high end cellphones a minute. Instead our ruling classes decided they could better line their pockets by outsourcing, investing in stock buybacks instead of technology, allowing in many uneducated people to do the “menial labour” & playing financial games.
So I lay the blame for this crisis solely on the ruling classes.
The entire thing is short-termist self-destructive insanity, but I guess that’s what happens when economies contract and the people at the top can’t stop living in the manner to which they have grown accustomed.
theindependent | A far-right candidate for Missouri’s
Secretary of State posted an ad filmed on the iconic Speaker’s balcony
in the US House of Representatives, where campaign and political
activities are banned.
Valentina Gomez posted the video on Tuesday afternoon, which was filmed on the iconic balcony looking over Washington, DC connected to Speaker Mike Johnson’s office in the US House of Representatives.
“I
am at the Speaker’s Balcony, and they don’t like me here, and neither
in Jefferson City. But I don’t give a f***,” Gomez said in the video. “I speak the truth, catch pedophiles, and I will be Missouri’s 41st Secretary of State.”
However, there are a few exceptions to this rule. For example, a
representative’s scheduler may coordinate with a campaign scheduler. A
representative’s press secretary may also “answer occasional questions
on political matters.”
The Independent has contacted Johnson for comment.
When reached for comment, Gomez told The Independent she wants critics to “stop the hypocrisy” and re-affirmed her support for Donald Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance.
“For
all of those crying about a 15 second video. Be upset about the 20
million illegals the Biden-Harris Administration allowed into the United
States that are raping and killing American women, or the billions sent
to Ukraine’s useless war where brave men and women in uniform are being
killed, or the J6’rs that are being persecuted and prosecuted, or the
grandmas jailed for praying outside of an abortion clinic,” Gomez wrote.
There is no evidence to support the claim that 20 million undocumented immigrants have committed violent crimes. Peer-reviewed studies
also indicate that undocumented immigrants are less likely than people
born in America to commit violent, drug and property crimes.
In
addition, Gomez’s claim that “grandmas” were “jailed” for “praying
outside of an abortion clinic” appears to be a reference to the arrest
of 75-year-old Paulette Harlow, who was convicted of federal civil
rights offenses after she participated in a blockade of an abortion
clinic. Her case has been widely misrepresented online, the Associated Press reports, with many falsely claiming she was arrested for praying.
This isn’t the first time Gomez has come under fire for a campaign video.
Last
month, Gomez posted a video calling Juneteenth, the national holiday
that commemorates the end of slavery in the US following the Civil War,
the “most rachet” of holidays.
“Reparations from slavery and Black
victimization is about to be shoved down our throats for the most
ratchet holiday in America,” she said.
Live Updates: Biden Drops Out of Presidential Race, Endorses Harris
President
Biden wrote on social media that he was ending his campaign for
re-election after intense pressure from within his own party. He
subsequently endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him atop
the Democratic ticket.
mage
President Biden announced on Twitter on Sunday that he will no longer seek re-election.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times
President
Biden, 81, abandoned his bid for re-election and threw the 2024
presidential contest into chaos on Sunday, caving to relentless pressure
from his closest allies to drop out of the race amid deep concerns that
he is too old and frail to defeat former President Donald J. Trump.
After calling Vice President Kamala Harris an “extraordinary partner,”
he endorsed her to take his place atop the ticket.
“It
has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president,” he
wrote on social media. “And while it has been my intention to seek
re-election, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the
country for me to stand down and focus entirely on fulfilling my duties
as president for the remainder of my term.”
After
three weeks of often angry refusals to step aside, Mr. Biden finally
yielded to a torrent of devastating polls, urgent pleas from Democratic
lawmakers and clear signs that donors were no longer willing to pay for
him to continue.
Mr.
Biden’s decision abruptly ends one political crisis that began when the
president delivered a calamitous debate performance against Mr. Trump
on June 27. But for the Democratic Party, Mr. Biden’s withdrawal
triggers a second crisis: who to replace him with, and specifically
whether to rally around Ms. Harris or kick off a rapid effort to find
someone else to be the party’s nominee.
The announcement by Mr. Biden, who is isolating with Covid, came just three days after Mr. Trump delivered an incendiary, insult-laden speech
accepting his party’s nomination for a chance to return to the White
House for a second term. Mr. Trump, who has been preparing for a rematch
with Mr. Biden for years, will now face a different — and as yet,
unknown — Democratic opponent, with only 110 days left until Election
Day.
Here’s what else to know:
A political first:
No sitting American president has dropped out of a race so late in the
election cycle. The Democratic National Convention, where Mr. Biden was
to have been formally nominated by 3,939 delegates,
is scheduled to begin Aug. 19 in Chicago. That leaves less than a month
for Democrats to decide who should replace Mr. Biden on the ticket and
just under four months for that person to mount a campaign against Mr.
Trump.
Spotlight on Harris:
The president’s decision puts the vice president under renewed
scrutiny, with some Democrats arguing that she is the only person who
can effectively challenge Mr. Trump this late in the election. And they
say the party will fracture if Democratic leaders are seen as passing
over the first Black vice president. But others argue that the
Democratic Party should avoid a coronation, especially given Ms.
Harris’s political weaknesses over the last three-and-a-half years.
Age a chief concern:
Mr. Biden’s re-election bid was brought down by longstanding concerns
about his age and whether he remains physically and mentally capable of
performing the job. Even before the debate, polls consistently showed
that people thought he was too old, and majorities — even of Democrats —
wanted someone younger to be president. Mr. Biden was born during World
War II and was first elected to the Senate in 1972, before two-thirds
of today’s Americans were even born. Mr. Biden would have been 86 at the
end of a second term.
The debate moment:
The White House and aides closest to Mr. Biden denied for years that
his age was having any impact on his ability to do his job. But the
debate with Mr. Trump in late June, which was watched by more than 50
million people, put his limitations clearly on display. He appeared
frail, hesitant, confused and diminished, and was unable to make the
case against Mr. Trump, a convicted felon who tried to overturn the last
presidential election.
Ron Klain, the former chief of staff to President Biden, blamed “donors and electeds” for having “pushed out the only candidate who has ever beaten Trump.”
Now that the donors and electeds have pushed out the only candidate who has ever beaten Trump, it’s time to end the political fantasy games and unite behind the only veteran of a national campaign — our outstanding @vp, @KamalaHarris!! Let’s get real and win in November!
As President Biden recovered from Covid this week, Vice President Kamala Harris had already assumed the starring role on the campaign trail.
She hosted rallies in two battleground states, Michigan and North
Carolina, and headlined a fundraiser that brought in $2 million in
Massachusetts on Saturday.
Vice President Kamala Harris at a campaign event in Las Vegas in July. Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
With
Vice President Kamala Harris being eyed as a potential replacement for
President Biden on the Democratic ticket, her stances on key issues will
be scrutinized by both parties and the nation’s voters.
She
has a long record in politics: as district attorney of San Francisco,
as attorney general of California, as a senator, as a presidential
candidate and as vice president.
Here is an overview of where she stands.
Abortion
Ms.
Harris supports legislation that would protect the right to abortion
nationally, as Roe v. Wade did before it was overturned in 2022, in
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
After
the Dobbs ruling, she became central to the Biden campaign’s efforts to
keep the spotlight on abortion, given that Mr. Biden — with his personal discomfort with abortion and his support for restrictions earlier in his career
— was a flawed messenger. In March, she made what was believed to be
the first official visit to an abortion clinic by a president or vice
president.
She consistently supported abortion rights during her time in the Senate, including cosponsoring legislation
that would have banned common state-level restrictions, like requiring
doctors to perform specific tests or have hospital admitting privileges
in order to provide abortions.
As a presidential candidate in 2019, she argued
that states with a history of restricting abortion rights in violation
of Roe should be subject to what is known as pre-clearance for new
abortion laws — those laws would have to be federally approved before
they could take effect. That proposal is not viable now that the Supreme
Court has overturned Roe.
Climate change
Ms.
Harris has supported the Biden administration’s climate efforts,
including legislation that provided hundreds of billions of dollars in
tax credits and rebates for renewable energy and electric vehicles.
“It is clear the clock is not just ticking, it is banging,” she said in a speech last year,
referring to increasingly severe and frequent disasters spurred by
climate change. “And that is why, one year ago, President Biden and I
made the largest climate investment in America’s history.”
During her 2020 presidential campaign, she emphasized the need for environmental justice,
a framework that calls for policies to address the adverse effects that
climate change has on poor communities and people of color. She has emphasized that as vice president as well.
In 2019, Ms. Harris, then a senator, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, introduced legislation
that would have evaluated environmental rules and laws by how they
affected low-income communities. It would have also established an
independent Office of Climate and Environmental Justice Accountability
and created a “senior adviser on climate justice” within several federal
agencies. In 2020, Ms. Harris introduced a more sweeping version of the bill. None of the legislation was passed.
Democracy
Ms. Harris was tasked with leading the Biden administration’s efforts to secure voting rights legislation, a job she asked for. The legislation — which went through several iterations but was ultimately blocked in the Senate
— would have countered voting restrictions in Republican-led states,
limited gerrymandering and regulated campaign finance more strictly.
This year, she met with voting rights advocates and described a strategy that included creating a task force on threats to election workers and challenging state voting restrictions in court.
She has condemned former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. In a speech in 2022
marking the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, she
said that day had showed “what our nation would look like if the forces
who seek to dismantle our democracy are successful.” She added, “What
was at stake then, and now, is the right to have our future decided the
way the Constitution prescribes it: by we the people, all the people.”
Economic policy
In
campaign events this year, Ms. Harris has promoted the Biden
administration’s economic policies, including the infrastructure bill
that Mr. Biden signed, funding for small businesses, a provision in the
Inflation Reduction Act that capped the cost of insulin for people on
Medicare and student debt forgiveness.
She indicated at an event
in May that the administration’s policies to combat climate change
would also bring economic benefits by creating jobs in the renewable
energy industry. At another event,
she promoted more than $100 million in Energy Department grants for
auto parts manufacturers to pivot to electric vehicles, which she said
would “help to keep our auto supply chains here in America.”
As a senator, she introduced legislation that would have provided a tax credit of up to $6,000
for middle- and low-income families, a proposal she emphasized during
her presidential campaign as a way to address income inequality.
Immigration
One
of Ms. Harris’s mandates as vice president has been to address the root
causes of migration from Latin America, like poverty and violence in
migrants’ home countries. Last year, she announced
$950 million in pledges from private companies to support Central
American communities. Similar commitments made previously totaled about
$3 billion.
In 2021, she visited the U.S.-Mexico border and said:
“This issue cannot be reduced to a political issue. We’re talking about
children, we’re talking about families, we are talking about
suffering.”
More recently, she backed a bipartisan border security deal that Mr. Biden endorsed but Mr. Trump, by urging Republican lawmakers to kill it,
effectively torpedoed. The legislation would have closed the border if
crossings reached a set threshold, and it would have funded thousands of
new border security agents and asylum officers. “We are very clear, and
I think most Americans are clear, that we have a broken immigration
system and we need to fix it,” Ms. Harris said in March.
Israel and Gaza
Ms. Harris called in March
for an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza and described the situation there
as a “humanitarian catastrophe.” She said that “the threat Hamas poses
to the people of Israel must be eliminated” but also that “too many
innocent Palestinians have been killed.”
In an interview later that month,
she emphasized her opposition to an Israeli invasion of Rafah, the city
in southern Gaza to which more than a million people had fled. “I have
studied the maps,” she said. “There’s nowhere for those folks to go, and
we’re looking at about 1.5 million people in Rafah who are there
because they were told to go there, most of them.”
She has said on multiple occasions that she supports a two-state solution.
Racial justice
Racial justice was a theme of Ms. Harris’s presidential campaign. In a memorable debate exchange in 2019, she denounced Mr. Biden’s past work with segregationist senators and opposition to school busing mandates.
She has called for ending mandatory minimum sentences, cash bail and the death penalty, which disproportionately affect people of color.
Amid the protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, she was one of the senators who introduced
the Justice in Policing Act, which would have made it easier to
prosecute police officers, created a national registry of police
misconduct and required officers to complete training on racial
profiling. It was not passed.
Her record as a prosecutor also came into play during her presidential campaign. Critics noted that as attorney general of California, she had generally avoided stepping in to investigate police killings.
Senator
Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, says in a statement:
“Joe Biden has not only been a great president and a great legislative
leader but he is a truly amazing human being. His decision of course was
not easy, but he once again put his country, his party, and our future
first.
“Joe, today shows you are a true patriot and great American.”
Gov.
Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan says she will not be running for president
with Biden out. “My job in this election will remain the same: doing
everything I can to elect Democrats and stop Donald Trump,” she wrote on
social media.
In
a post on X, President Biden has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris
as the Democratic nominee. “Today I want to offer my full support and
endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year," he
wrote. "Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do
this."
Gov.
Gavin Newsom of California put out a statement on X saying that Biden
“will go down in history as one of the most impactful and selfless
presidents.” Before Biden dropped out, Newsom was often considered a
contender to take his place on the ticket.
The
conversation will immediately move to Vice President Kamala Harris and
how much support she will have within the party, and whether Biden will
offer a full-throated endorsement of her as his replacement on the
ticket.
As Maggie Haberman and I reported yesterday,
the Trump team has been preparing for an advertising onslaught against
Kamala Harris, who they assume will be the Democratic candidate. They
have also been paying close attention to Josh Shapiro, who governs a
state — Pennsylvania — that the Trump team is focused on winning to
block Democrats’ path to the White House.
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