United States | News & Politics

Michael Moore October 16, 2024

Yesterday, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong pledged another $25 million to the crypto super PAC Fairshake, bringing the company’s total spending in the 2024 election up to more than $76 million. Public Citizen, along with researcher and author Molly White, submitted a complaint to the FEC in August alleging that a large portion of these contributions are illegal because Coinbase is a federal contractor (and federal law bars campaign contributions to political parties, committees, or candidates from federal contractors). The FEC has not yet responded.

Public Citizen research director Rick Claypool released the following statement in response to the news: "Coinbase has spent more than $50 million in what appears to be illegal campaign contributions from a federal contractor to attack candidates who might stand up to Big Crypto; meanwhile, the FEC is snoozing through the election. The time to hold campaign finance violators accountable is now — not after illegal election spending has corrupted our democracy."

By Simon J. Levien
Reporting from Erie, Pa.
Oct. 31, 2024, 5:04 a.m. ET

[gift article - expires in 30 days]

The number of E. coli cases linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounders has risen to 90, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday, up from 75 reported cases Friday.

The slivered onions used on the burgers are the “likely source” of the outbreak, the CDC said.

A spokesperson for McDonald’s said all Quarter Pounders in affected states had been pulled from the restaurants by Oct. 22, when the outbreak was announced.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former Republican congressional candidate was charged with stealing ballots during a test of a voting system in Madison County, Indiana, state police said on Tuesday.

During the test on Oct. 3, which involved four voting machines and 136 candidate ballots marked for testing, officials discovered that two ballots were missing, according to the Indiana State Police.

Voter fraud is rare in the United States, and courts dismissed multiple lawsuits of alleged electoral fraud brought by former President Donald Trump and some of his Republican allies who accused Democrats of stealing the 2020 election.Trump faces Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in a Nov. 5 presidential election.

For four years, Trump has maintained his false claim, supported by a majority of Republicans in Congress, that the 2020 election was stolen. As a result, some states and counties have stepped up precautions.

Surveillance video showed Larry Savage, 51, a precinct committeeman, folding and placing both ballots in his pocket after receiving instructions about the validity of the test ballots, the police said.

Many who oppose the current administration’s unconditional support for Israel have argued that, with Trump as the alternative, Biden and Harris still represent the “lesser evil.” But this reasoning ignores both the consequences of their empty, distracting rhetoric on domestic and international opposition, and the fact that the Biden and Harris administration’s policy resume, even long before October 7, closely mirrors its predecessor’s.

Since day one, the Biden administration has upheld Trump’s most controversial moves: keeping the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, failing to reopen the PLO mission in Washington, and desperately seeking normalization agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors that erase Palestinians entirely. While Biden restored funding to UNRWA, his administration promptly cut it again under pressure from an Israeli smear campaign.

To this day, the biggest difference has been the rhetoric. But when Trump says that he would let Israel “finish the job” in Gaza, at least he is honest, making U.S. complicity impossible to ignore. Trump’s blunt, jarring racism — using “Palestinian” as a slur, for instance — creates a clear target. In contrast, Biden and Harris cloak their support for Israel behind the language of humanitarianism, lulling voters and activists into complacency while allowing Israel to “finish the job” anyway.

https://www.marcelroman.com/pdfs/wps/latinx_project.pdf

Chris McGreal in Saginaw, Michigan Sun 27 Oct 2024 09.00 EDT

[Excellent, wide-ranging article on challenges facing Harris, including Gaza.]

We have entered a strange, late-stage Empire era, comparable to the Soviet Union’s Glasnost, in which elements of the US imperial braintrust can see with blinding clarity Washington’s entire hegemonic global project is stumbling rapidly and irreversibly towards extinction, and announce so publicly - but their insight does not translate into evasive governmental action at home. The RAND Commission report elicited no mainstream coverage or comment whatsoever, proof positive there isn’t a concomitant effort to manufacture consent for its radical, far-reaching prescriptions.

Were the Commission’s recommendations remotely plausible, a multipronged PR campaign would’ve immediately ensued to convince Americans of the righteousness of the Empire’s mission, and the necessity of investing in US “defense” to the tune of trillions. The media’s silence on the report’s damning findings definitionally reflects an omertà among the US political class. They well-know American reindustrialisation can’t happen. So, the fatal “disconnect” between Pentagon operational and industrial planning identified by RAND will endure, and with it ever-intensifying US military impotence. We’re spectating the Empire’s final acts in real-time.

A right-wing panelist was removed from CNN anchor Abby Phillip's show on Monday after a "vile attack" he made against journalist and political commentator Mehdi Hasan on the show.

Conservative commentator Ryan Girdusky, founder of the anti-critical race theory the 1776 Commission, told Hassan: "I hope your beeper doesn't go off" during a discussion on the rhetoric from former President Donald Trump's New York City rally on Sunday.

"Did you just say I should die?" Hasan asked in apparent disbelief. "Did you just say I should be killed on live TV?"

"No, I did not say that," Girdusky responds.

"You said you hope my beeper doesn’t go off," Hasan pointed out.

Girdusky asked Hasan if he supported the Palestinian armed group Hamas, to which Hasan responded that he supported Palestinians.

Hassan then said: "This is America in 2024.. [...] Forget the racism. It's I should die."