Killer whales make seaweed ‘tools’ to scratch each other’s backs Phys.org
Clear understanding of social connections propels strivers up the social ladder EurekAlert!
Climate/Environment
US heat wave exposes infrastructure, health vulnerabilities – and it’s not quite over yet CNN
Another warning about heat and crops Art Cullen’s Notebook
China?
China’s shipments of hi-tech goods to EU surge as its exports to US plunge South China Morning Post
Trade War scoreboard: Obesity drug imports balloon, China rare earth magnets plunge Inside China / Business
Southeast Asia Is Starting to Choose Foreign Affairs
Old Blighty
UK buys new F-35 fighter jets to carry nuclear warheads The Independent
PM vows to press on with welfare cuts as rebellion grows BBC
Syraqistan
Israel kills dozens in Gaza as aid runs dry, baby formula shortage puts babies at risk The New Arab
Washington green-lights $30m for Gaza aid scheme tied to mass killings of Palestinians The Cradle
Seven Israeli Soldiers Killed in APC Blast in Southern Gaza’s Khan Yunis Haaretz
“Waiting Mode”: After the Iran Ceasefire, Is a Gaza Deal on the Horizon? Drop Site
Israel not sending delegation for hostage deal talks to Qatar, Egypt for now, sources tell ‘Post’ Jerusalem Post
***
Mark Sleboda – What the Hell Just Happened in the Middle East You May Ask? Moon of Alabama
The War on Iran is Not Over Larry Johnson
Months are needed to assess damage, but Israel must prepare for another round with Iran Ynet
Israel will be in Iran for years to come, Mossad head David Barnea says Jerusalem Post
Senior Israeli source: Any scientist who joins Iran’s nuclear program will be eliminated. via @amirbarshalom
— Israel Radar (@IsraelRadar_com) June 25, 2025
‘This is a time to change the regime,’ @GhorbaniiNiyak says in the wake of the 12-day Israel-Iran war, calling for the son of the deposed shah to return to power pic.twitter.com/3AlgSrbVDO
— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) June 25, 2025
Iran says 700 arrested for wartime ties with Israel; 3 alleged Mossad agents hanged Times of Israel
***
Trump says Israel sent agents into Iran’s Fordo nuclear site, saw ‘total obliteration’ Times of Israel
US didn’t destroy Iran’s nuclear programme: Here’s what new intel says Al Jazeera
Hegseth: So if you want to make an assessment of what happened.. you better get a big shovel and go really deep because Iran’s nuclear program is obliterated pic.twitter.com/o4ZLRuPOHL
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 25, 2025
THE BURIAL PLAN Seymour Hersh
Seymour Hersh, who correctly reported that the USA would strike Fordo last weekend (and has correctly reported pretty much everything since the 70s), reports that the bombing mission at Fordo was a success, despite other reports to the contrary: pic.twitter.com/IakKttIy2l
— Harold Bracy (@harold_bracy) June 25, 2025
***
Trump calls for Netanyahu to be pardoned, corruption trial canceled The Hill
CENTCOM Nominee: U.S. Military Presence in Syria Remains Crucial to Confront ISIS Threat Kurdistan24
How Turkey’s Erdogan navigated Trump ties and instability risks from Israel-Iran war Al Monitor
European Disunion
Germany’s dangerous submission Thomas Fazi
Digging Deeper. Aurelien
New Not-So-Cold War
Trump will look at giving Ukraine more Patriot missiles as he calls on Putin to end war The Independent
Europe wants Trump to sanction Russia. Rubio says not yet. Politico
NATO members’ leaders snubbing Zelensky at key summit – Orban RT
New Medvedev Note Karl Sanchez
***
Trump threatens tough trade deal for Spain after it refuses to meet NATO defense spending target CNBC
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte refers to Trump as “Daddy”
– European leaders are pushing us toward reckless militarism, economic decline, and political irrelevance – we should at least preserve some dignity pic.twitter.com/dPa6nnkVBc— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) June 25, 2025
Daniele Ganser: NATO’s Dirty Wars – The Legacy of Operation Gladio Glenn Diesen (Video)
URGENT MESSAGE TO ICC PROSECUTORS:
The world’s most dangerous terrorists and war criminals are meeting right now at The Hague, only steps away from the International Criminal Court.
This is likely to be your best chance to arrest them all in one fell swoop.#NATO pic.twitter.com/f00YaF7xUa
— Dimitri Lascaris (@dimitrilascaris) June 25, 2025
BRICS
Putin to skip Rio BRICS summit over ICC warrant as Xi signals no-show Intellinews
Imperial Collapse Watch
U.S. Used Up 15-20 Percent of its Global THAAD Anti-Missile Arsenal in Just 11 Days of Mid-Intensity Combat: Cost Over $800 Million Military Watch Magazine
Trump 2.0
Justice Dept. whistleblower details senior officials’ efforts to stonewall judges, ignore decisions CBS News
Meet the D.C. Bigwigs Literally Profiting Off Trump’s Deportations The Bulwark
Scoop: Trump to limit sharing classified info with Congress after leak on Iran bombing damage Axios
Mike Johnson Suggests War Powers Act Is Unconstitutional Truthout
***
Voters Will “Get Over It,” McConnell Tells GOP Colleagues About Medicaid Cuts Truthout
People in wheelchairs are getting arrested right now in the Russell Senate Office Building in DC. They showed up to tell Congress not to cut their Medicaid, because they cant afford health care without it. If you look closely you can see the zip ties on their hands.… pic.twitter.com/UPF5oSVq3M
— Aaron Black (@ABlackPolitical) June 25, 2025
MAHA
CDC vaccine advisory committee to review long-approved immunizations STAT
This is a travesty and a nightmare. The US was a founder of @Gavi. It lowers vaccine costs for the world, has vaccinated 1B children, and averted 19M deaths. This pull out will cost 100s of thousands of children’s lives a year — and RFK Jr will be personally responsible. https://t.co/CGdtauhrOl
— Atul Gawande (@Atul_Gawande) June 25, 2025
Snake Venom, Urine, and a Quest to Live Forever: Inside a Biohacking Conference Emboldened by MAHA Wired
How Fast Is Too Fast for FDA Drug Review? MedPage Today
Democrats en déshabillé
Correlates of the Mamdani Vote Policy Tensor
Mamdani won a higher % of votes from Jewish NYers than from many other ethnic or religious demographics, won the endorsement of Lander & Nadler. It seems the bourgeois press will not stop until Jews conform to their Zionist, Islamophobic narrative. This shit is tired. pic.twitter.com/rDuAWOydkU
— Benjamin Balthaser (@BL_Balthaser) June 25, 2025
Zohran’s Historic Win: 16 Takeaways Labor Politics
Folks, let’s be clear-eyed about Zohran Mamdani: No Democrat will fix what’s broken with our duopoly. Nevertheless, his win is a GIGANTIC middle finger to Zionist propaganda and to Democratic elites.
— Peter Daou (@peterdaou) June 25, 2025
***
Lamont Vetoes Bill Allowing Unemployment For Striking Workers CT News Junkie
Gov. Mills again vetoes bill protecting farmworkers’ right to discuss work conditions Maine Morning Star
Wars Come Home
As I’ve said before: what we’re all experiencing is a cultural apartheid successfully exported by Zionists from the actual apartheid state and its attendant killing fields. Threats from various officials to expel protestors/strip visas/citizenship are forms of this, too. pic.twitter.com/alwHB60Pty
— Omar Sakr (@omarsakrpoet) June 26, 2025
Antitrust
A Democratic Socialist Smashes Wall Street in New York: What Zohran Mamdani Means for the Anti-Monopoly Movement BIG By Matt Stoller
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Computer-vision research is hiding its role in creating ‘Big Brother’ technologies Nature
AI
The Hot, New Plan to Bribe States Into Deregulating Artificial Intelligence Boondoggle
AI Killed My Job: Tech workers Blood in the Machine
Police State Watch
‘Who are these people?’ Masked immigration agents challenge local police, sow fear in L.A. Los Angeles Times
Alleged accomplice of Palm Springs bomber dies in Los Angeles prison KTLA
Our Famously Free Press
What Am I For? Matt Taibbi
The National Archives at College Park is about to go dark; effective July 7, it’s becoming a restricted-access federal facility, meaning everyday Americans will no longer have public access to the very records that hold our government accountable.
This is where the receipts… pic.twitter.com/5fDwMpttBb
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) June 24, 2025
Healthcare?
The Fox Guards the Hen House – Translating AHIP’s Commitments to Streamlining Prior Authorization HEALTH CARE un-covered
Guillotine Watch
The Bezzle
Second study finds Uber used opaque algorithm to dramatically boost profits The Guardian
Class Warfare
Federal judge finds LA failed to create enough shelter for unhoused people as required in agreement LAist
How Hotels, Once a Last Resort, Became New York’s Default Answer to Homelessness New York Focus
Guest Post: Can money buy happiness? Working Class Storytelling
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
The Ballad Of Israeli Strays
(melody borrowed from The Ballad Of The Green Berets written and performed by Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler way back in 1966)
War on Iran has gone awry
Our Iron Dome has gone bye bye
This place ain’t safe, and we won’t stay
We’re heading out without delay
Iran is East; we’re heading West
Driven by self interest
Our sneak attack, our power play
We thought Iran would melt away
It didn’t work like it was planned
Israel did not expand
Mossad worked with CIA
We don’t care; we leave today
For two weeks we have been oppressed
Victimized, and so distressed
We may strike back some distant day
Some dirty deeds, some foul play
Iran can close the Hormuz Straits
Watch the West as it deflates
With total chaos manifest
So much for the Collective West
Leave your bed and go get dressed
Brooklyn waits—you’ll be impressed
Those Hebrew words you’ve learned to say
Forget them all as of today
Trump calls for Netanyahu to be pardoned, corruption trial canceled The Hill
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Benjamin, the two of us need look no more
We both found what we were looking for
With a friend to call my own
I’ll never be alone
And you, my friend, will see
You’ve got a friend in me
(You’ve got a friend in me)
Benjamin, you’re always killing Palestinians here and there (here and there)
You feel you’re not wanted anywhere (anywhere)
If you ever look behind
And don’t like what you find
There’s something you should know
You’ve got a place to go
(You’ve got a place to go)
I used to say “I” and “me”
Now it’s “us”, now it’s “we”
(I used to say “I” and “me”)
(Now it’s “us”, now it’s “we”)
Benjamin, most people would turn you away (turn you away)
I don’t listen to a word they say (a word they say)
They don’t see you as I do
I wish they would try to
I’m sure they’d think again
If they had a friend like Benjamin
Like Benjamin
(Like Benjamin)
Like Benjamin
Ben, by Michael Jackson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7TTSzfs2kw&list=RDi7TTSzfs2kw
Good job, Wuk. Trump calling for Netanyahu to be pardoned and the corruption trial to be canceled is not how it works. Here Biden could give him tips. Just threaten to withhold billions from Israel unless the chief prosecutor is fired and give them only a few hours to do it. Works like a charm.
(twofer Thursday)
The love between the two of them was dying
And it got so bad, I knew we had to leave
Halfway down that war highway when I turned around, I saw
A little Zionist leader running after he
Crying
“Daddy, don’t you walk away so fast
Daddy, don’t you walk away so fast
Daddy, slow down some ‘cause you’re making tears run
Daddy, don’t you walk away so fast”
Well, it broke his heart to tell his little Bibi
That his daddy had to run to catch a plane
He had no way of knowin’ he was leavin’ being leader for good
He turned around, there he was again
He cried and said
“Daddy, don’t you walk away so fast
His darling Bibi cried, daddy, don’t you walk away so fast
Daddy, slow down some ‘cause you’re making tears run
Daddy, don’t you walk away so fast”
If only for the sake of his sweet Zionist
He just had to turn back home right there and then
And try to start new lies after the leaker divulged the truth
He couldn’t bear to hear those words again
Bibi cried and said
“Daddy, don’t you walk away so fast
His darling Bibi cried, daddy, don’t you walk away so fast
Daddy, slow down some ‘cause you’re making tears run
Daddy, don’t you walk away so fast”
Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast, by Wayne Newton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5EESSLuzqA&list=RDU5EESSLuzqA
Of course this is not the first time Trump has attempted to interfere in the legal system of a foreign country. During his first term, Trump demanded that Sweden drop the assault trial of American rapper ASAP Rocky, despite video evidence of genuine assault. In the end, the rapper was found guilty but only given a suspended sentence. Apparently Trump was then annoyed Rocky did not grovellingly thank him.
In the case of Netanyahu, were the trial to be cancelled, no doubt any subsequent grovelling would be from Trump to Bibi. One has to wonder what the Epstein files hold on the Donald.
Alternative view, given Trump chastising and irritation with Ben N, especially after prior comments about how he was behind fomenting the various ME wars.
Publicizing the issue for all to see and to start more discussions. Now Ben is isolated in the spotlight.
Don’t have a song to offer but Trump obviously sees Crazy Corruption trials as something that might even land on his stable genius doorstep. If you can’t be corrupt what’s the point of being an oligarch, much less a politician? Fortunately Attorney General Pam Bondi is a lot more under control than the Israeli High Court. Don has it all worked out…for the moment.
He probably has written up his own Presidential pardon and it is waiting in his desk for when he leaves office.
Needs be sung by Streisand, since at the moment of Benjamin having wrought destruction on his own house, Donald reminds everyone about his corruption.
As for that song, Ben is the sequel to Willard, the more meaningful since it’s about the relationship tween rat and boy. Having grown up in rat labs, it hit my demographic just right. And I learned a squeak that would make all the rats in the room jump, maybe not so good for not stressing test subjects, but our local plague means I can run off the ‘Sumatran Long-Tailed Hamsters’ from the seed so the chipmunks and cardinals can clean up.
The idea that I chose a song about a rat, made the fit all the better.
‘Aaron Black
@ABlackPolitical
People in wheelchairs are getting arrested right now in the Russell Senate Office Building in DC. They showed up to tell Congress not to cut their Medicaid, because they cant afford health care without it. If you look closely you can see the zip ties on their hands.’
If you look really close, you can see those police getting ready to put small, Denver Boots on those wheel chairs.
Pity Tulsi Gabbard. She’s learning the old adage that reputation can take a lifetime to build, but it can be lost in a few moments. Her transformation from courageous truth-to-power speaker to Trump stooge is complete:
We need a laugh track for this
Is it really a surprise? She’s been migrating in that direction for years, and this is just the culmination of it.
As for pity, save it for those more deserving.
I guess not, but part of me is shocked at how fast she went from having morals and good character to basically becoming just another stooge.
At least Karoline Leavitt can say she’s doing her job, awful as it is to get up in front of a podium and lie to the world as your job description.
Larry Flynt had more honor than Tulsi.
What Gabbard has become is tragic. She should have resigned. She’ll never have a shred of credibility again. I wonder why it is that people don’t value their honor more these days – it’s priceless and you can’t get it back once you’ve sullied it. I guess its part of the gawdawful world we live in.
If you want someone talking truth to power, then you are going to have to listen to Marjorie Taylor Greene-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0d6ILvkRkY (14:53 mins)
Who here had that on their bingo card at the beginning of this year?
We should probably pray for her as there is no doubt that someone is going to try to shut her up, either with promises of filthy lucre or threats to her family.
These apparatchicks of his are all the same, they crave power and acceptance within the fold and will do whatever it takes to appease him, the country itself being of little importance in the scheme of things.
What evidence was there of her morals and good character?
Judge Nap and some of his guests also seem to have gotten this impression and to be disappointed but I have no idea what it was based on.
Lie down with the dogs, get up with fleas.
I’d add this for priors adjustment about who Tulsi Gabbard is:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/01/is-tulsi-gabbard-a-mystery/681398/
I should add, her soft corner for RSS/BJP ought to, but isn’t seen with enough raised eyebrows in the US.
She knew what she was trading in when she signed up to be a Trump sycophant.
Anyway, what reputation? She had shown competence at political opportunism and presents herself well but little else. The more charming and smooth the politician’s performance, the more we mistrust them, don’t we?
1) If you made it to be DNI you really are gonna give that up? Voluntarily?
2) Tulsi wants to run for POTUS.
Maybe, just maybe Gabbard is playing a longer game here. She has never struck me as a person who would willingly allow her moral compass to be diverted off what she sees as true north. She is no doubt aware that she is out of step with the clown show of the rest of the presidential advisors who surround her, and that they’re trying to get rid of her. And as the actions Trump takes based on their advice continue to backfire, she may believe the best way to do her duty is to do whatever it takes to still be standing nearby with the most reality-based intelligence her office can produce when the president with the glass ego finally realizes he is not being well served by the dominant ultra-Zionist, Russia & China-loathing rest of the crew. If she has to take a hit to her reputation in this process, so be it for the higher goal. It’s my understanding that although she issued that pro Iran bombing statement, there’s been no change to the language of the DI statement regarding Iran not being far down the path to nuclear weapons.
This situation reminds me of how the pathologist Thomas Noguchi handled the autopsies of both the “suicide” Marilyn Monroe by ingestion of an overdose of barbiturates and the murder of Robert F Kennedy “by Sirhan Sirhan.” While the executive summaries of the reports places the blames as was demanded by the powers that be, the fine print on subsequent pages in both cases contain detailed evidence that is incompatible with those statements.
>>>Second study finds Uber used opaque algorithm to dramatically boost profits The Guardian
water is wet. film at 11.
FFS, US and global municipalities made a deliberate choice not to enforce pre-existing jitney laws…..cuz Uber was the “clean future” versus the vinyl seats and potluck driver of the primitive cabs. And riders loved shareholder-subsidized fares, like the first free hit from a dealer.
now shocker, Uber is exploiting its defacto monopoly. gee, it makes you wonder why taxis/jitneys were so heavily regulated in the first place.
PS, sometimes taxi regulations go too far too and are just as much of a racket. see the taxi system in Cancun, Tulum, lol.
‘Harold Bracy
@harold_bracy
Seymour Hersh, who correctly reported that the USA would strike Fordo last weekend (and has correctly reported pretty much everything since the 70s), reports that the bombing mission at Fordo was a success, despite other reports to the contrary:’
‘None of the US bombs was meant to strike the enriched-uranium storage
facility or the centrifuges spinning away. The measure of success came later
when American sensors reported no increase in the atmospheric radiation
levels after the attack. Iran’s uranium was intact and simply buried.’
Ummm. Of course there is the likelihood that the Iranians shipped out that material weeks ago and all that was hit was an empty facility and that was why there was no spike in radiation detected. In short, the Iranians baited the US and Israel. If Trump wants to find that enriched uranium, then maybe he should put a notice on the side of milk cartons.
I don’t know if Hersh is correct or not. But this claim that Hersh “has correctly reported pretty much everything since the 70s” really irritates me. Hersh has always been as good as his sources in the intelligence community, and that depends on what’s going on in the behind the scenes power struggles. He has been very good at times, exposing crucial information about important events. At other times, his exposes have been correct but limited hangouts. And sometimes he has been terrible (the worst example was his book on Kennedy, which was an atrocious CIA/mafia smear job universally panned by everyone – except those on the worshipful “left”). Again, this story may be true, but he is as good as his sources – and those sources always have their own agendas.
Indeed. Given that the latest generation of sensors can detect radiation from uranium for as far as 100 meters away, I wonder what American sensors he’s talking about? Maybe IAEA sensors, which are actually the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran sensors, which would likely be on site.
Anyway, as you said, of the four possibilities – no destruction and no nuclear material, destruction but no nuclear material, destruction with leakage and destruction witho<ut leakage – the last one is the most unlikely.
Roads are buckling from the heat all over the country. There are power outages, and affects on transit.
https://www.nj.com/news/2025/06/part-of-i-287-closed-down-again-as-heat-causes-pavement-to-buckle.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/roads-buckling-extreme-heat-grips-005912717.html
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/25/weather/heat-wave-infrastructure-health-global-warming-climate
Asphalt buckling due to The Big Heat® wasn’t on my list of probabilities although it should have been.
The only scorecard of humanity in written form we really have for sudden change in the climate is the Little Ice Age*, and it was amazing what went down with just -.5C from the norms we were used to.
We’re already at 3x the other direction, and growing food was problematic in the Little Ice Age, but its gonna be awful when Hades hangs around for a long spell.
Perhaps a better gauge might be the Grindelwald Fluctuation in a period (in a wider cooling phenomenon) when glaciers in Grindelwald, Switzerland, expanded significantly. Temperatures were 1-2 degrees Celsius lower than twentieth-century averages during this period, which is thought to have lasted from the 1560s to the 1630s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grindelwald_Fluctuation
* coined by imminent Sierra geologist and an expert in topographic mapping, glaciers, and climate change: François E. Matthes
That CNN article missed our little outage in Cleveland. A battery overheated and burned up a substation about 1/2 a mile from us. It knocked out our power for 18 hours, but we weren’t alone. A lot of downtown, including the county jail, were out along with the federal building, the county courthouse, and somewhat ironically, the Science Center on Lake Erie.
Our back-fence neighbor ran a generator to keep our friend with COPD alive. We hung out with our granddaughter at our daughter’s house during the day, but her power went out after we went home.
Life in a shithole country. What’s good for Generac is good for GDP?
‘Dimitri Lascaris
@dimitrilascaris
URGENT MESSAGE TO ICC PROSECUTORS:
The world’s most dangerous terrorists and war criminals are meeting right now at The Hague, only steps away from the International Criminal Court. This is likely to be your best chance to arrest them all in one fell swoop.’
If you look, you cannot miss the woman in a colourful dress front and center in that photo. Alex Christoforou says that that woman is actually Zelensky’s wife while he himself is stuck in the second row. If true, then why is she in a photo shoot of all those world leaders? And why in the front row with people like Trump and Macron? Most mysterious.
Zelensky put on a suit of some sort. If he dropped his pyjama, something must be going on.
Otherwise, if you look at the picture, the empty, bovine eyes in the heads of these war criminals is what strikes me the most.
She’s the queen of the Netherlands (along with the king).
https://apnews.com/photo-gallery/nato-ukraine-zelenskyy-trump-iran-israel-rutte-966e958e2722510ccec0fe356c8e97ed
Thanks. Since the Netherlands is hosting this meeting, it would explain why they get the right to be front and center. And my respect to her for being stunningly dressed to the point that all those world leaders just became her own personal wallpaper. :)
Sorry for going off-topic, but Dimitri Lascaris looks a lot like actor Slavko Labovic. :)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425379/mediaviewer/rm1961110016/?ref_=ttmi_mi_23
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425379/mediaviewer/rm133809921/?ref_=ttmi_mi_13
NYC mayoral race: Mamdani actually won the financial district and was endorsed by Lina Khan. Took all of NYC except Upper East Side and Upper West Side of Manhattan. Weak with older African Americans who went for Cuomo. If you would like to feel some joy and hope I recommend watching any of the videos put out by fans and his campaign. When was the last time you laughed watching anything political? Anyway, he looks like a real one and I hope he can stand up to the haters in November. I recommend that people outside of NYC get to know Zohran Mamdani—for the positive vibes now and possible national presence later.
The takes on Mamdani’s primary win (which make many good points) seem to ignore the own goal aspect of this for the establishment.
They annointed Cuomo in spite (because?) of his repeated demonstrations of both executive incompetence and manifest moral and ethical unfitness for any office of public trust whatsoever. And not way back in the dim and misty past, either.
The leading candidate not named Andrew Cuomo was going to have a decent shot.
Harris was under 1% in California back in 2020. New Democrat style candidates are going to face more scrutiny even from the MSDNC zombies than names from the Glorious Past.
The “reasoning” behind New Democrats has largely been exposed. They don’t win. They don’t accomplish anything. There will be places where trash will be around for a while, but the loss of the Kennedy spawn a few years ago was the first step. Kennedy trash failed to win in Massachusetts, largely due to the under 40 vote. There are less people alive who saw Clinton on Arsenio today than a week ago.
Re Taibbi “What Am I For?”–he calls himself a good government moderate but the preceding partly paywalled Racket piece perhaps tells us more.
https://www.racket.news/p/socialism-wins-its-american-normandy
This is the flip side of Trumpism, inevitable for similar reasons, and absent full catastrophe in coming Mamdani-ruled Gotham (not impossible), the electoral mainstreaming of dingbat campus socialism has only begun
“Dingbat socialism” sounds more like Walter Kirn or the Wall Street adjacent ZH. What Taibbi fails to realize is that it was the threat of Soviet socialism–whatever it’s very many flaws–that kept capitalism under control through much of the 20th. FDR gave us the New Deal to keep out the Reds and once the Soviet Union went down–the great capitalist goal–the oligarchs of the 90s felt free to let their freak flag fly. We have TINA because the alternative was defeated. Now that our society has been morally wrecked even High Broderism moderates may have to admit their fence sitting doesn’t work. The powerful are never going to reform themselves.
Carolinian: Thanks for this. I have a comment below on my take of what a U.S. moderate would favor these days.
Your last paragraph in fact is an explanation and indication of how far U.S. politics have shifted to the right. Taibbi’s protestations of being a moderate mean that he places himself exactly among those white moderates whom Martin Luther King criticized in Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Yet because of the rightward drift of U.S. politics, Taibbi would find Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society somehow not acceptable — it sought to solve more than the “one or two” problems that Taibbi recognizes.
My only quibble with you would be to call it fence sitting, What Broder was, and what Taibbi now seems to aspire to, is gate keeping. Which is part of the current wreckage of U.S. culture and the U.S. economy.
I believed Taibbi was a lefty disgusted by Democratic neoliberalism up until the summer of 2023, when he and Kirn ridiculed the concern over the smoke from the Canadian wildfires. So concern over climate change and its effects was just an example of liberal hysteria to them. It was true he had spent most of his time criticizing the Democrats but I told myself this was because at the time they had most of the power. I was wrong. He might have valid points to make here and there and he can coin a phrase, but you can get better analysis in a lot of places.
From Benjamin Balthaser on X; “Jewish Democrats suggested that concerns about their community’s safety are being dismissed…”
I think their concerns about safety is not true and I think there is an explanation why it’s not true.
Almost immediately after Oct 7, and beginning with Israel’s assault on Gaza, there was a tsunami of anti-Israel protests like I have not seen in my lifetime, and I think Israel supporters were stunned.
The peaceful protestors were labeled pro-Hamas, pro-terrorists, and students were arrested, university presidents ousted, people deported, and as Israel supporters tried to label anything anti-Israel as anti-semitic, it still didn’t work because there was no rise in anti-semitism after Oct 7, and many protestors were Jewish Americans.
If I were Jewish, I would be shocked too. This anti-Israel public protest rose rapidly and I’m not surprised some Jews would interpret this as anti-semitic, but it’s not.
The problem, imo, is that the US is a nation that tolerates and permits the expression of views that differs from other views. But, in this case, it was different. It was a seemingly overnight wave of anti-Israel views and some Jewish Americans, imo, misinterpreted it as anti-semitic and, in many cases, they still do.
Victor Sciamarelli: You brought up this quote:
From Benjamin Balthaser on X; “Jewish Democrats suggested that concerns about their community’s safety are being dismissed…”
I would add that this argument of “not feeling safe” is a constant in U.S. society. As you write, there have been no anti-semitic outbursts. No one is burning down synagogues in the U.S. of A.
Here in Italy, the right-wing leaders of the Jewish communities in Roma and Milano keep trotting out similar accusations. They don’t wash either. Sure there was pushing and shoving and flinging of insults at some demonstrations. But anti-semitism? No. Italians are acutely conscious of anti-semitism, given the moral disaster of fascism, but the Italian Jewish community is highly integrated and very successful.
But this “uncomfortable” argument is a staple of upper-middle-class feminism and of the woke. It is starting to sound awfully whiny to me.
The problem is that the full power of the State was turned on all those that protested against Israel’s actions, even if it meant gutting the First Amendment. Foreign students were banished back to their home countries, the US is ready now to examine the social media of all people entering the US to see if they criticize Israel and in fact tourists have already been turned back at airports for precisely that. University presidents have been fired for not being radical enough to crack down on staff and students. The America First movement is now being twisted to become the Israel First movement. The list goes on. Wanna know the worse thing about this? It may long term make antisemitism acceptable again through resentment which would be a horrible outcome. And worse of all it would be all Jewish people that would get tar brushed by this. There is a reason why people should be all treated equally because when you treat any group as ‘special’, you can be guaranteed of blowback.
I hesitate to pick on Matt Taibbi, for whom I have a good deal of respect. He has uncovered many stories and has been dogged in pursuing stories.
What is he for?
Not much: “In short I’m what used to be called a moderate, and believe society isn’t that far from being in great shape, if we could just calm down, find fixes for a problem or two, and learn to appreciate what we have.”
Let’s all hold hands, make s’mores, sing the seventy-three verses of Amazing Grace, avoid talking about politics, religion, and sex, not mention the cost of health insurance, not mention the disaster that is the murderous U.S. foreign policy, particularly since the passage of the Patriot Act, and not examine the Gini Quotient or the decline in life expectancy.
Lime jello with canned pears for all!
PS: What was that line about “Not with a bang but with a whimper”?
PPS: Like Curro Jimenez and Nat Wilson Turner, I have been preoccupied with the upsurge of nihilism, the desire to destroy things simply to destroy. What we are seeing is widespread collapse of the moral authority of institutions and individuals — even their figleaves have shredded — and Taibbi’s maundering is an admission of defeat.
I started reading Taibbi around Griftopa, read the books since and his posts on Rolling Stone, subbed to his substack when that started, and cancelled the sub after he did two podcast episodes equivocating about the Palestinian holocaust and a cheap, sarcastic smear review of Stephanie Kelton’s book. He made clear then what he is for: himself. Scratch a American civil libertarian and what do you find?
On Youtube interviews with people like Carlson Taibbi is uniformly sharp when talking about the journalism biz. So in that sense it doesn’t matter what he is “for” ideologically.
So why take shots at Mamdani? The popular Kirn, Montana populist when not hanging out in Vegas or LA, pulls Matt to the right. Presumably this helps with his subscriptions but their rambling shtick has gotten old for some of us.
Agreed Carolinian. The America this week podcast was indispensable in last year’s election, but the last 6 months or so it’s become more and more useless and is now unbearable for me.
Well put.
Have been about to unsub from Racket for weeks.
I hadn’t picked up on Taibbi’s complacency before, and gave him some grace
though I was disappointed in some of his takes.
I’m finding him increasingly distasteful
I just went looking for an image of Musk riding in a flaming dumpster fire through floodwaters with the quote “This is Fine”. Eventually I found it. But first I got long lists of people selling the image on Etsy and etc. Kind of like Taibbi. Maybe it does seem fine if you make a really nice living describing the dumpster fire.
Earl McKee was the old man of the mountain here, born in 1931 and had a fabulous memory which I liked to pick as if his brain was a combination safe…
The flood of record here happened in 1955, and 3x as many cubic feet per second came down from on high, compared to the impressive 2023 flood, boy howdy!
About a decade ago we’re eating lunch at the Mexican restaurant in town and I ask him: ‘Earl tell me about the ’55 flood’ and out pours enough words to submerge the table…
My favorite was Mr. Jenkins who owned a small cabin and was able to flee just in time as the Kaweah River decided to take over ownership and down the river it went, and to add insult to injury it caught fire en route. I have a visual of that in my mind.
Pity it wasn’t a crisis clinic rather than just a cabin-
https://au.pinterest.com/pin/the-far-side-by-gary-larson–432134526740400890/
Kunstler is another one I’ve quit clicking on. Twenty years ago, he was making good points about Happy Motoring, the ‘burbs and societal complexity. Now he’s just another MAGA-ite yelling for people to get off his suburban lawn.
Blinded by Righteous Outrage: From the 1994 Crime Act to Trump 2.0
by Touré F. Reed
June 14, 2025
https://nonsite.org/blinded-by-righteous-outrage-from-the-1994-crime-act-to-trump-2-0/
Nothing short of a full military intervention is going to prevent the Gaza holocaust.
Re baby formula, not only would any lactating mothers be unable to provide sufficient milk being on a starvation diet themselves, I suspect clean uncontaminated water to mix any baby formula that beat the blockade would also be in short supply too. It is increasingly clear that babies, young children and women are the biggest targets of the Israeli genocide to destroy the possibility of a future generation of Palestinians, let alone generations. And western world politicians look on and sit on their hands, feigning impotence while miming ‘sorry guys, nothing to see and nothing we can or wish to do’.
Re: Hersh. I think Hersh is currently being used, maybe unwittingly, as a limited hangout vendor. His name and apparent exile status lend weight to his reporting. But there are some glaring flaws here.
Firstly, bunker busters were not used in the attack. The B2s would have been unable to enter Iranian airspace, and most assessments put the strike down to submarine launched missiles which are large, but not bunker buster types.
Secondly, released satellite evidence is highly unconvincing that any deep installations have been affected. The hits are dispersed and imprecise, far from tunnel entrances, and the entrances were revealed to have been plugged with earth beforehand suggesting extensive Iranian preparation for the attack. We would have to believe that the individual bomb dropped were enough to collapse facilities likely +100m underground.
I don’t think Hersh is getting good information or accurate information from his sources anymore. Unironically, I will have to stick to twitter users.
It’s obvious or at least suspicious that Hersh keeps getting these scoops. It would be naive to think that his sources aren’t demanding a price in exchange for the juicy information they leak to him.
The price is likely fealty.
According to Dima’s Military Summary Channel, the Russian army took control of the town of Svevchenko in the Donbas. The significance of this is that the town includes the largest lithium mine in Europe. One that undoubtedly had been pledged as part of the “rare erfs” deal that Orange Julius was blathering about back in March.
Unconfirmed reports state that Larry Fink (Blackrock Chairman) was seen kicking his dog and punching holes in the walls of his mansion in the Hampton’s.
“U.S. Used Up 15-20 Percent of its Global THAAD Anti-Missile Arsenal in Just 11 Days of Mid-Intensity Combat: Cost Over $800 Million”
I heard on a video a different twist to this article. They talk about 15-20% of global THAAD missile supply used up but the video I heard said that the THAAD battery in Israel itself was about to run on empty. Fortunately Iran was out of missiles which was why they quit. /sarc
I think these ancestors are a good fit for the Knesset Assassination Bureau, and what an endgame!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicarii
“Trump says Israel sent agents into Iran’s Fordo nuclear site, saw ‘total obliteration”
Well that can’t be right. Iran isn’t letting in any IAEA inspectors at all right now or for the foreseeable future. And what could they have possibly seen on the surface? ‘Yes sir, we definitely saw a lot of blackened rocks. Mission accomplished!’
Nope. It’s to avoid having mysterious airplane-falling-into-the-ocean incident, that USA/UK/etc. would have nothing to do with, and no prior knowledge of.
Yeah, they just tried to kill him a few weeks ago which would have been catastrophic – for the west. I don’t think that he considered that they would have been so stupid as to try but try they did.
“Trump will look at giving Ukraine more Patriot missiles as he calls on Putin to end war”
More Trump bluster. Sure he can send those Patriot batteries back to the Ukraine but what about missiles for them? Most of them got used up over Israel. And you can’t print the out like you can dollars.It will take the US years to get back to pre-war stocks and that is assuming that they don’t keep on being sent to places like the Ukraine.