Still from footage of Israeli missile strikes in Iran posted to X.
For years, I’ve kept a copy of Primo Levi’s If This is Man on the night table. It’s not exactly the kind of reading that eases you into a restorative sleep, but who can slumber soundly at my age and in this time of mass death and disappearances? Last night at 2 AM, the broken spine of Levi’s memoir of Auschwitz opened to this apposite passage:
“Everybody must know, or remember, that when Hitler and Mussolini spoke in public, they were believed, applauded, admired, adored like gods. They were ‘charismatic leaders ‘; they possessed a secret power of seduction that did not proceed from the soundness of things they said but from the suggestive way in which they said them, from their eloquence, from their histrionic art, perhaps instinctive, perhaps patiently learned and practised. The ideas they proclaimed were not always the same and were, in general, aberrant or silly or cruel. And yet they were acclaimed with hosannas and followed to the death by millions of the faithful.”
+ Using Israel’s logic for attacking Iran (to protect itself from (non-existent) Iranian nuclear weapons), every country in the Middle East (and beyond) would be justified in attacking Israel and destroying its (still undeclared) arsenal of 90 nuclear warheads. Trump’s assertion that if Iran developed a nuclear weapon, it would automatically use it against Tel Aviv is preposterous, since Iran doesn’t want to be annihilated and surely would be if it did so. Israel, on the other hand, could nuke Iran and get away with it, as the US did Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
+ Just to be clear about who the real nuclear menace in the region is…
Map by the indefatigable Stephen Semler at Polygraph.
+ Trump’s Iran negotiations–a brand of diplomatic trickery usually deployed in Hollywood movies by Nazis, mobsters and alien invaders (from Alpha Centari not San Salvador)–served the same function as the food distribution stations in Gaza, using the cover of “humanitarianism” to lure Iran into a kill zone.
+ Jeet Heer: “What’s driving this war is not the fear that Iran won’t sign a nuclear deal but the fear that it will.”
+ The Transition is complete…(I don’t know if it required hormones.)
+ Trump: “I think Iran was a few weeks away from a nuclear weapon… I believe Iran would use a nuclear weapon if they had one. We’re long beyond [a] ceasefire” with Iran, “We’re looking for a total complete victory…You may have to fight. And maybe it’ll end. And maybe it’ll end very quickly. There’s no way you can allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon because the entire world would blow up.”
REPORTER: Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that the intelligence community said Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon.
TRUMP: I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one.
+ Tulsi should’ve gotten off the Trump bus before he threw her under it…
+ Gabbard’s assessment is backed up by reporting from CNN that US intelligence assessments had concluded that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon and that “it was also up to three years away from being able to produce and deliver one to a target of its choosing.”
+ The US intelligence assessment is supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s own analysis. The IAEA’s Director General Rafael Grossi said “What we reported was that we did not have any proof of a systematic effort (by Iran) to move toward a nuclear weapon.”
Iran, however, accused the IAEA of complicity in Israel’s attacks, saying it waited too long to make its views public and that its biased reported in the past had provided a pretext for Israel’s attacks.
+ NBC News reported on Thursday that Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, is now being excluded from White House discussions about whether or not to strike Iran.
+ The War on Iran, Made in the USA…(Bush didn’t gloat like this until six weeks after Shock and Awe. Then got his ass kicked from Mosul to Fallujah for the next five years.)
+ Having “complete control of the air” meant nothing in Afghanistan or Iraq. It will mean even less in Iran.
+ Only 16% of Americans think going to war against Iran is a good idea. But the Democrats still can’t come out against it. (You know why.)
+ Stephen Semler: “A political party that has built its identity around opposing Trump is not opposing Trump’s march to war with Iran.”
+ To this point, only 37 members of Congress have endorsed any of the pending resolutions designed to keep the US out of a war with Iran.
+ Instead, the Democrats have allowed the resistance to be led by the likes of Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Alex Jones, Matt Gaetz, Rand Paul, Steve Bannon, and Thomas Massie.
+ An Ipsos poll earlier this week asked Democratic voters:
“Democratic party leaders should be replaced.”
Agree: 62%
Disagree: 24%
Ipsos / June 16, 2025
+ In which Ted Cruz is exposed by Tucker Carlson as an arrogant ignoramus, who knows nothing about the country whose regime he wants to decapitate…
Tucker Carlson: How many people live in Iran, by the way?
Ted Cruz: I don’t know the population.
Carlson: You don’t?
Cruz: No. I don’t know the population.
Carlson: You don’t know the population of the country you seek to topple?
Cruz, with a dismissive wave of his hand: I uh…How many people live in Iran?
Carlson: 92 million.
Cruz: Ok. Yeah, I, uh,..
Carlson: How could you not know that?
Cruz: I don’t sit around memorizing population tables.
Carlson: Well, it’s kind of relevant because you’re calling for the overthrow of the government.
Cruz: Why is it relevant, whether it’s 90 million or 80 million or 100 million? Why is that relevant?
Carlson: Well, because if you don’t know anything about the country…
Cruz, belligerant now: I didn’t say I didn’t know anything about the country…
Carlson: Okay. What’s the ethnic makeup of Iran…
Cruz: They are Persians, predominantly Shia…
Carlson: You don’t know anything about Iran.
Cruz: I’m not the Tucker Carlson expert on Iran…
Carlson: You’re a senator who is calling for the overthrow of a government, who doesn’t know anything about the country.
Cruz: No. You’re the one who doesn’t know anything about the country. You’re the one who claims they’re not trying to murder Donald Trump.
Carlson: No. I’m not saying that…
Cruz: You’re the one who can’t figure out if it was a good idea to kill General Suleymani and said it was bad…
Carlson: You don’t believe they’re trying to murder Trump, because…
Cruz: Yes, I do!
Carlson: … because you’re not calling for military strikes against them in retaliation.
Cruz: We’re carrying out military strikes today!
Carlson: You said Israel was.
Cruz: Right. With our help. I said “we.” Israel is leading them. But we’re supporting them.
Carlson: You’re breaking news here. Because last night the US government denied, the National Security Council spokesman, Alex Pfeiffer, denied on behalf of Trump that we were acting on behalf of Israel in any offensive military capacity.
Cruz: We’re not bombing them. Israel’s bombing them.
Carlson: You just said, “We were.”
Cruz, totally defeated now: We are supporting Israel…
Carlson, smirking: I’d say, if you’re a senator who is saying that we’re at war with Iran right now, people are listening…
Then Ted and Tucker move on to a discussion of the theological justification for bombing Iran…
Cruz: Growing up in Sunday school, I was taught that the Bible said, “Those who bless Israel will be blessed, those who curse Israel will be cursed.” And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of this.
Carlson: Those who bless the government of Israel?
Cruz: Those who bless, Israel. It doesn’t say the government, but it says the nation of Israel. That’s in the Bible. As a Christian, I believe that.
Carlson: Where is that?
Cruz: I can find it for you. I don’t have the scripture off the top of my…pull out your phone and use the Google…
Carlson: It’s in Genesis. But…So you’re quoting a Bible phrase, you don’t have context for it and don’t know where it is, but that’s your theology. I’m confused. What does that even mean?
Cruz: Tucker…
Carlson: I’m a Christian. I want to know what you’re talking about.
Cruz: Where does my support for Israel come from? Number one, because Biblically we are commanded to support Israel, but number two…
Carlson: Hold on, hold on…
Cruz: I’m not, I’m not…
Carlson: Hold on. You’re a senator, and you’re throwing out theology, and I’m a Christian, and I am allowed to weigh in on this. We’re commanded as Christians to support the government of Israel?
Cruz: We are commanded to support Israel.
Carlson: What does that mean, “Israel”?
Cruz: We are told that those who bless Israel will be blessed…Carlson: But hold on. Define “Israel.” This is important. Are you kidding? This is a majority Christian country.
Cruz: Define Israel? Do you not know what Israel is? That would be the country you’ve asked about 49 questions about…
Carlson: That’s what Genesis, that’s what God is talking about in Genesis?
Cruz: The nation of Israel. Yes.
Carlson: That’s the current borders. The current leadership. He was talking about the current political entity called “Israel”?
Cruz: He’s talking about the nation of Israel. Nations exist. And he’s discussing a nation—a nation with the people of Israel. Carlson: Is the nation God is referring to in Genesis? Is that the same as the country run by Benjamin Netanyahu right now?
Cruz: Yeah.
Carlson: It is?
Cruz: And by the way, it’s not run by Benjamin Netanyahu as a dictator, it’s…
Carlson: I’m not saying he’s a dictator, he’s a…
Cruz: But but…
Carlson: He’s the Prime Minister…
Cruz: But, just like, America is the country run by Donald Trump. No, the American people elected Donald Trump, but it’s the same principle….
Carlson: This is silly. I’m talking about the political entity of modern Israel…
Cruz: Yes…
Carlson: Do you believe that is what God was talking about in Genesis?
Cruz: Yes, I do. But…
Carlson: That country has existed since when?
Cruz: Thousands of years. There was a time when it didn’t exist and it was recreated just over 70 years ago.
Carlson: But I’m saying, I think most people understand that line in Genesis to refer to the Jewish people, God’s chosen people…
Cruz: That’s not what it says.
Carlson: Israel. But you don’t even know where in the Bible it is.
+ Memo to Ted and Tucker: Despite the Supreme Deity’s pontifications in Genesis, it wasn’t at all clear that the present Zionist country was going to be called “Israel” until two days before the nation state was declared. In fact, Theodore Herzl and many other Zionists preferred the name…wait for it… “Palestine,” which is what the geographical region had been called for centuries, even by Jews. In his book The Jewish State, Herzl, the father of Zionism, wrote: ‘Palestine is our ever-memorable historic home. The very name Palestine would attract our people with a force of marvelous potency.”
+ One more golden (perhaps lithium, since it will keep on giving and giving) nugget from the Ted/Tucker interview. Cruz: “My father was imprisoned and tortured in Cuba. I hate communism! Well, actually, it was Batista who tortured my dad. But…” (Cruz isn’t the only one to pull this scam, of course. Marco Rubio has also pretended that he was the “son of exiles” who fled to America to escape communism “following Castro’s takeover.”)
+ Mouin Rabbani:
“I’ve just watched the Carlson-Cruz interview, and can readily understand why it has generated so much comment. I think the most important issue it raised is why a figure as distasteful as Carlson is doing the work and asking the types of questions that his peers in the US media are systematically avoiding. A genuine scandal.”
+ Want a good reason to have a rough idea of how many people live in Iran, Ted? A regime change war against Iran would cause the largest refugee crisis in human history.
+ By “close calls,” is Mitchell, the Christian nationalist, referring to Nat Turner’s rebellion, the failed levitation of the Pentagon, or the Sanders campaign?
+ A plausible explanation for why Netanyahu ordered the bombing of Iran when he did…
+ After the Israeli strikes on Iran, the Netanyahus retreated into tunnels under Jerusalem’s streets, using the civilians living above them as human shields. Almost every allegation Israel has made against Palestinians in Gaza has been a confession of their own tactics…
+ Mohammad Safa: “Netanyahu said that an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel would be like ‘80,000 tons of TNT falling on a country the size of New Jersey (22,610 km2).’ Yet, Israel has dropped ~80,000 tons of explosives on Gaza (365 km2) – the equivalent of 8 nukes on 1.6% of the size of New Jersey.”
+ $50 million: what it costs the US to shoot down one Iranian missile using the THAAD interceptors.
+ Israeli media reports that air defense is costing Israel $285 million per day. Don’t worry, Tel Aviv, Congress will make more cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and SNAP to pick up the tab.
+ It took the New York Times a year to run headlines like this about Gaza, but it’s good to see, nonetheless.
+ Who they(we)’re killing..
+ I realize John Fetterman had a stroke, and I felt bad for him. But strokes don’t deaden your moral sensibility. His rabid hatred of Muslims is pathological. Fetterman on Tim Kaine’s resolution to invoke the War Powers Act on US military involvement against Iran: “I’m going to vote it down.. I really hope the president finally does bomb and destroy the Iranians.”
+ The Handmaid’s Tale may be the YA version of what we’re in for…(Huckabee reminds me of one of the characters in Robert Stone’s novel The Damascus Gate, on American end-time Xtians and millennialist Jews in Jerusalem trying to jumpstart the Apocalypse by blowing up the Dome of the Rock…)
+ Pope Leo from the Southside: “Peace is not a utopian ideal. Peace is a humble path made up of daily actions, and is woven with patience, courage, listening, and action. Today, more than ever, peace requires our vigilant and creative presence.”
+ Is Trump wagging the dog? The decline of Trump’s approval ratings on his signature issues since taking office suggests that he might feel the need to…
Jobs & the economy +12 | -12
Inflation/prices +6 | -22
Immigration +11 | -8
Abortion -4 | -14
Crime +12 | -1
+ Laleh Khalili on Eric Prince, who is angling even now to get contracts for his mercenary services during the war on Iran: “He is just a rich nepobaby coasting on the history of his war crimes which make him loved in all the really shittty political spaces, even as he fails at every project he sets his eyes on.”
+ German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to ZDF network at the G7 summit: “Israel is doing the dirty work for all of us.”
+ Macron in Canada at the G7: “Does anyone think that what was done in Iraq in 2003 was a good idea? Does anyone think that what was done in Libya the previous decade was a good idea? No. I think the biggest mistake today is to use military means to bring about regime change in Iran, because that would mean chaos.”
+ Looks like it’s down to the G2: “It’s absolutely unacceptable that military means were used amid ongoing diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful solution” to the Iranian nuclear issue, Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told reporters while at the G7 meeting in Canada. “This is extremely regrettable, and we strongly condemn it.”
+ John Bolton must be apoplectic that he’s missing out on this…
+ It’s about time. Who are we surrendering to, Don? Greenland, Panama, Mexico or Canada?
+++
+ The people who freaked out over (non-existent) Black Helicopters fully support these masked men roaming through their towns and cities, dragging people out of churches, schools, courthouses and hospitals, arresting people at Home Depot and 7/11, in strawberry fields and construction sites, tackling senators, members of congress, judges and mayoral candidates…
+ Don Winslow, author of The Cartel and The Border: “They’re using PRIVATE CONTRACTORS and claiming they’re official agents. They’ve deputized questionable people which is why they are all wearing masks. It is crazy to me that this is not being covered by the media – WHO ARE THE “AGENTS,” who deputized them and what are their BG [backgrounds]?”
+ Even though they’re often kitted out like Delta Force members about to seize Saddam’s bunker, the last time a deportation officer of any kind was killed “in the line of duty” was…1949.
+ As if ICE abducting people who’ve committed no crimes isn’t bad enough, people impersonating ICE are now abducting and shaking down people who’ve committed no crimes. The masking of federal agents has opened new opportunites for thieves, rapists and racists…
+ Of course, South Carolina has a harrowing history of masked vigilantes and racists lynching people of color. There were at least 187 lynchings in the Palmetto State from the end of the Civil War until 1950. One studiy estimated that South Carolina lynching parties killed people at a rate of 18.8 victims per 100,000 people.
+ DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin: “There’s no safe harbor, whether it be a church or a courthouse or a worksite. We will come for you. We will arrest you. You will be deported.”
+ You want to know what kind of people work for ICE, they’re the type that mocks and laughs at a mother, sobbing on the street outside her house while holding her infant son in her arms as masked men haul away her husband for no explicable reason: When Roberto Diego Alvarez left for work in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, he was seized by ICE officers, thrown to the ground, then hauled away in handcuffs, while his wife Nicole, a 35-year-old US citizen, watched and cried as she clutched their 8-month-old son. Nicole later told Newsweek: “I learned from Diego that they were laughing at me in the car before leaving, pointing and saying, ‘I bet she is recording.’ I was hysterical. I had our son, Denver, who is 8 months old, in my arms. I couldn’t stop crying.”
+ Last Saturday, the management of the Los Angeles Dodgers told the singer Nezza to “do the national anthem in English tonight.” Instead, Nezza put on a Dominican Republic t-shirt and sang the anthem in Spanish. (Nezza was born in the US and is an American citizen.) Word of the Dodgers’ attempt to suppress Nezza ignited outrage among many in the LA Hispanic community. This is, after all, the team that evicted a predominantly Mexican community of 300 families from their homes in Chavez Ravine (without compensation) to build Dodger Stadium. Nezza’s defiant act and the local response to it almost certainly prompted the Dodgers to take this action on Thursday…
Protesters and Dodgers staffers fend off ICE on the road leading up Chavez Ravine to Dodger Stadium.
+ This was followed by the Dodgers agreeing to donate $1 million to “immigrant families” who have been traumatized by the ICE raids in LA…(Way to go, Nezza!)
+ There are reports out of LA that a group of tow truck drivers are shadowing ICE convoys, then towing away unmarked ICE vans and SUVs that are parked illegally after the agents get out to start looking for people to abduct and deport.
+ Pedro Luis Salazar-Cuervo was detained by Texas cops, who asked if he had tattoos. Salazar-Cuervo told the cops he didn’t, and in fact, he had none. Then the cops searched his phone and found a photo of Salazar-Cuervo standing next to a man who did have a tattoo. That was enough for ICE to label him a Tren de Aragua and have him deported to Bukele’s concentration camp prison in El Salvador without any trial or hearing. This week, a Texas judge agreed that he must be returned to stand trial in August for trespassing on private property, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison. The Trump administration has not indicated whether it will act on the court’s order.
+ Julio Noriega, a U.S. citizen, was walking around a suburb handing out his resume to local businesses when ICE surrounded him, handcuffed him, and detained him for 10 hours before checking his ID and releasing him.
+ A couple of notable cases from Immigration Defense, which is representing dozens of people arrested by ICE in LA in the last week: One of their clients is a man named Javier, a cancer patient who has lived in LA for more than 20 years without any criminal record. If he isn’t released soon, he will miss his scheduled chemotherapy treatments. Another case is that of a day laborer who was granted asylum in the US 8 years ago. He was arrested twice by ICE this week. During the first arrest, he was held for eight hours and was on the verge of being transferred out of LA until ImmDef was able to prove his legal status. Then he was detained again.
+ Brad Lander, the comptroller of NYC (and NYT-endorsed mayoral candidate), was arrested by ICE at Immigration Court this week, after asking to see a warrant for people who were detained after an immigration hearing…
+ Lander after his release from ICE custody:
I’m happy to report I’m just fine. I lost a button. But I’m gonna sleep in my bed tonight, safe, with my family… At that elevator, I was separated from someone named Edgardo… Edgardo is in ICE detention and he’s not going to sleep in his bed tonight…There were posters on the wall… it said in English, ‘Are you detained and separated from your children?’ … We are normalizing family separation, we are normalizing due process rights violations, we are normalizing the destruction of constitutional democracy.
+ One of the kids seized by ICE in NYC after dutifully showing up for his immigration hearing, who Lander asked to see a warrant for and was arrested for having the temerity to do so…
+ At an event honoring Pope Leo XIV in Chicago, Cardinal Blase Cupich didn’t mince words: “It is wrong to scapegoat those who are here without documents, for indeed they are here due to a broken immigration system.”
+ Before Stephen Miller ordered ICE to start arresting people who showed up to their immigration hearings, almost everyone did. Who would do so now that they know they’re walking into a trap?
+ TACO…to Stephen Miller, whose demand that ICE arrest at least 3,000 people a day, apparently couldn’t be met by rounding up people working in nursing homes and garmet sweatshops, at construction sites, mowing lawns or replacing roofs, so they’re going to start raiding agricultural and hotel workers again, despite the protests from business leaders who claim it will devastate their industries.
+ Former ABC News anchor Terry Moran on his post about Stephen Miller that resulted in his termination from the network: “You don’t sacrifice your citizenship in journalism and your job is not to be objective. What you have to be is fair and accurate. And I would say that this is an observation that is accurate and true.”
+++
+ In the United States, the CDC estimates that 12,000 to 15,000 people die each year from asbestos-related diseases. Globally, asbestos-related deaths may top 250,000 a year.
+ Since the Paris Climate Accords in 2015, international banks have financed fossil fuels by $7.9 trillion, including loaning $869 billion to fossil fuel firms in 2024 (the hottest year ever) alone.
+ The Trump administration has slated 25 climate databases for removal: “The databases include historic earthquake recordings, satellite readings of cloud radiative properties, and a tool for studying billion-dollar disasters.”
+ In the last 12 months, the US has spent nearly $1 trillion on disaster recovery and other climate-related needs, which is more than 3% of the US’s GDP.
+ A new study suggests that if the Atlantic Current collapses, it will trigger extreme winters in northern Europe, with temperatures in Norway falling to -40 °C and in London to -20 °C.
+ With dry grasses, parched forests, scorching temperatures, and little rainfall, the fire outlook for California this summer is extreme…“In the last 10 years, the total number of acres burned by significant wildfires has varied from year to year. In 2020, when dry lightning sparked an outbreak of wildfires across Northern California, more than 4.3 million acres burned, but in 2022 and 2023, only about 300,000 acres burned each year. On average, about 1.4 million acres burn a year.”
+ JoDe Goudy, former chief of the Yakama Nation, on Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw from the billion-dollar pact with four Pacific Northwest states and native tribes to restore and protect the salmon runs of the Columbia River basin:
What’d you expect? I will share again for those that haven’t heard or seen me share before. In the summer of 2014 a major drought happened and one the consequences of that drought was a spike in water temperature on the N’Chi’Wana [Columbia River]. When that happened, the water temperature became too hot for the salmon to survive. There were over 500,000 sockeye and other species that died because of this.
When the report came to the council, there was a climate change team of scientists that also came in with the fisheries team. The lead climate change scientist stated to us that even though “science” is not exact. As they forecast the water temperature into the future, 50 years from that time the water temperature that resulted in the massive die off of the salmon will be the normal water temperature of the N’Chi’Wana (Columbia River). Upon hearing this I called for a special session with all of our fisheries team. When they were all in chambers I said I have a simple question. “What is the sense of all of the hatchery work and habitat restoration that we are doing as a Nation if 50 years from now the water temperature may be so high that none of the salmon will survive anyway?” I didn’t receive an answer from anyone that day.
A year or so later we were in another fisheries discussion at the table, before we started the lead fish biologist asked to address the council. He stated “Mr. Chairman you had asked us all a question about the relevance of hatchery & habitat work in spite of a future where the water temperature may be so high that nothing will survive. I apologize for not having an answer for you that day. I had to think long and hard about your question. The truth is the future of the salmon is so dark that we refuse to discuss it and we refuse to acknowledge it.”
Of course I had some choice words after that. But this is how the “business” of fisheries has become one of the challenges that exist in sustaining the survival of the salmon. The science of fisheries has helped that is not the question.
Dam removal is the only option that exists in properly addressing the water temperature question.
+++
+ Another headline (and story) that would have been rejected as too ridiculous by The Onion 8 months ago…
+ Fed Chair Jerome Powell: “The labor market is not crying out for a rate cut.”
+ Policymakers at the Federal Reserve predict that by the end of 2025 inflation will be 3.0% compared to 2.7% in March, with core inflation at 3.1% instead of 2.8%. They predict 1.4% GDP growth in 2025, down from 1.7% in March, with long-term growth holding at 1.8%.
+ Trump on Powell: “We have a stupid person, frankly, at the Fed. He probably won’t cut today…Maybe I should go to the Fed. Am I allowed to appoint myself at the Fed?”
+ May housing starts in the US fell by 9.8%, slumping to 1.256 million.
+ 65.7: average age of a billionaire.
+ The World Bank has cut its US growth forecast in 2026 to 1.6%, down from 2%.
+ Globally, 38% of companies say they will increase prices in response to the tariffs, according to a survey by Allianz.
+ Unemployment among recent degree-holders aged 22 to 27 has hit 5.8%.
+ According to the New York Fed, more than 35% of manufacturers and 40% of service firms raised prices within a week of seeing tariff-related cost increases.
+ Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro, while Trump was north of the border for the G7 meetings: “Canada has been taken over by Mexican cartels.”
+ According to his own Government Ethics Office, Trump hauled in $57,355,532 for his stake in his World Liberty Financial crypto-scam, launched last year and another $12 million from a variety of grifts, including selling sneakers, colognes, watches, guitars and Bibles…
+ There’s something terribly amiss with this country…
+ Trump Mobile, which will be made in China, is marketing a golden iPhone knockoff for $499, even though the phone’s base model (without the gilded age sheen or Trump logo) is sold on Amazon for only $169. Don’t worry, MAGA, Don Jr. promises that most of the “call centers” will be based somewhere in the US.
+ 24.4: the percent of all advertising minutes on evening news broadcasts across major networks — including ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and NBC–devoted to pharmaceuticals.
+ Benjamin Balthaser: “One of the funny things about the rise of Silicon Valley eugenic theory is that much of it relies on the idea of “productivity,” the national “use value” of a (non) working body. And yet I can think of nothing that should be euthanized faster than the rentier. Capitalism of bitcoin & AI, which literally consume w/o any useful social purpose. It is a perfect example of “reification,” in which an ensemble of objects built for exchange value take on a greater life & reality than the ppl who make, consume & are consumed by them.”
+ In a Juneteenth message, Trump declared that Americans should go to work on more “holidays”…(No wonder they’re re-naming military bases after Confederate generals.)
+++
+ Here are some the current US politicians who are benefiting with aerospace and defense stocks if the US goes to war with Iran:
John Boozman
Rob Bresnahan
Gil Cisneros
James Comer
John Curtis
Patrick Fallon
Lois Frankel
Scott Franklin
Josh Gottheimer
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Bill Hagerty
Diana Harshbarger
Kevin Hern
Julie Johnson
William Keating
Greg Landsman
Michael McCaul
Kathy Manning
Jared Moskowitz
Markwayne Mullin
Carol Devine Miller
Carol Miller
Blake Moore
Dan Newhouse
Jefferson Shreve
Mike Simpson
Thomas Suozzi
Bruce Westerman
+ There used to be a name for this. Now it’s just business as usual.
+++
+ There are nearly 24,000 American citizens serving in the Israeli military.
+ Israeli casualties received 33 times more coverage per death than Palestinians in BBC articles, despite a 34:1 disparity in the overall death toll.
+ Javier Bardem on Gaza: “Thousands of children are dying… It’s a genocide happening before our eyes. The American support has to stop.”
+ Dr. Mark Brunner, an American surgeon from Oregon, who is volunteering in Gaza, spoke from the Nasser Medical Complex. He described the Israeli massacre of 71 Palestinians trying to get food today, some of whom were slaughtered by tank shelling:
Every time there’s a so-called food distribution, we know there’s going to be annihilation. I don’t see any evidence of warriors. I see malnourished fathers and daughters. I see pregnant women with their babies ripped from their womb by shrapnel. I see small children, comfortable in their red sweaters, having their sweaters ripped off and their arms completely annihilated. The first couple of days, we were seeing isolated injuries — head, chest, abdomen. Today, it’s reported that tanks have been used at food distribution centers. Which makes sense… We’re seeing multi-trauma. This is something that’s just got to stop.
+ Mahmoud Khalil met with acting University President Claire Shipman over a year before he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to express concerns over the safety of Palestinian students, according to emails obtained by the Columbia Spectator.
+ After the false hope of last week, when the same judge ordered Mahmoud Khalil’s release, then stayed it after Trump’s people filed an appeal, on this Friday Federal Judge Michael Farbiarz found that the allegations against Khalil did not require him to be detained. Calling the government’s efforts to keep him in ICE detention”highly, highly unusual,” the judge wrote that there is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish Mr. Khalil. And of course that would be unconstitutional.”
+ 104 days after being abducted by ICE from his apartment on the Columbia University campus, Mahmoud Khalil is free, having beaten back the efforts of Trump, Miller and Rubio to deport him merely for speaking out against an ongoing genocde Mahmoud said the first thing he’ll do is “hug his wife and child,” whose birth he was forced to miss after being incarcerated even though he’d committed no crime.
+ Australian journalist Alistair Kitchen was denied entry into the Land of the Free and deported because of articles he’d written on campus protests against Israel’s genocidal slaughter in Gaza:
Many people are detained at U.S. airports for reasons they find arbitrary and mysterious. I got lucky—when I was stopped by Customs and Border Protection last week, after flying to Los Angeles from Melbourne, a border agent told me, explicitly and proudly, why I’d been pulled out of the customs line. “Look, we both know why you are here,” the agent told me. He identified himself to me as Adam, though his colleagues referred to him as Officer Martinez. When I said that I didn’t, he looked surprised. “It’s because of what you wrote online about the protests at Columbia University,” he said.
+++
+ The Lever reports that “a secret group chat reveals that Democratic strategists plan to support the pro-crypto GENIUS Act for political gain, despite acknowledging it’s a Trump corruption giveaway” Avichal Garg, a managing partner at the venture capital firm Electric Capital: “If Dems bail on [the GENIUS Act], they will get 0 dollars going forward, It would be political suicide for them not to support it.”
+ Right on cue, 18 Democratic senators voted to support the Genuis Act, Trump’s Crypto-Scam bill…
Alsobrooks (MD)
Booker (NJ)
Cortez Masto (NV)
Fetterman (PA)
Gallego (AZ)
Gillibrand (NY)
Hassan (NH)
Heinrich (NM)
Hickenlooper (CO
Kim (NJ)
Lujan (NM)
Ossoff (GA)
Padilla (CA)
Rosen (NV)
Schiff (CA)
Slotkin (MI)
Warner (VA)
Warnock (GA)
+ On the same day, six Democrats just voted to confirm Gary Andres, RFK Jr’s anti-public health pick to serve as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services…
Maggie Hassan (D-NH)
Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
Raphael Warnock (D-GA)
Pete Welch (D-VT)
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
+ Why?
+ “Do you support Democrats like Sanders and AOC who call for a more aggressive stance towards Trump, or moderate Democrats who are willing to compromise with Trump issues important to their base?”
AOC/Bernie: 70%
Moderate Dems: 30%Harvard-Harris / June 12, 2025
+++
+ This almost perfectly captures the absurd logic of life under the Trump regime…
+ Has Trump indicated a willingness to pardon the Minnesota shooter yet? (Yes, I know he can’t issue pardons for state crimes. But he may not…)
+ Trump on why he didn’t (and still won’t) call Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz about the MAGA shooter who shot two Democratic members of the Minnesota state legislature and their spouses, killing two:
I don’t really need to call him. He’s slick — he appointed this guy to a position. I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out. I’m not calling him. Why would I call him? I could call him and say, ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ The guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a, he’s a mess. So, you know, I could be nice and call him, but why waste time?
+ Amy Klobocop is such a dud as a politician. For the past three days, Utah Sen. Mike Lee has literally been on the run from his disgusting tweets on the MAGA shooter, where he called the Trump-loving Christian nationalist a Marxist Democrat and blamed Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz for the shootings. On Tuesday, Sen. Klobocop had a private meeting with Lee and convinced him to take the tweets down rather than letting them stand as a sign of the repulsive character this guy is. Lee took Klobocop’s advice and quietly deleted his scurrilous tweets. But he was still too much of a coward to face the press, so Amy did it for him, saying, “Senator Lee and I had a good discussion” and she was glad he took the libels down. But she refused to recount what was said or how Lee defended posting such vile lies. How can you have “a good discussion” with this senatorial ingrate? Why would you want to and why would you want to run cover for him? Don’t they know anything about politics and who (or what) they’re playing politics against?
+ From Sotomayor’s pen-point dissent in the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care…
+ Federal Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee in Massachusetts, has ruled that the Trump administration’s cuts to NIH grants — ostensibly over Trump’s EOs on gender ideology and DEI — are “illegal” and “void.” He’s ordered many grants restored.
I am hesitant to draw this conclusion, but I have an unflinching obligation to draw it – that this represents racial discrimination. And discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community. That’s what this is. I would be blind not to call it out. My duty is to call it out…
It is palpably clear that these directives and the set of terminated grants here also are designed to frustrate, to stop, research that may bear on the health – we’re talking about health here, the health of Americans, of our LGBTQ community. That’s appalling…
I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable. I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this … I ask myself, how can this be? I have the protection that the founders wrote into the Constitution, along with imposing upon me a duty to speak the truth in every case. I try to do that. What if I didn’t have those protections. What if my job was on the line, my profession… Would I have stood up against all this? Would I have said, ‘you can’t do this?’ You are bearing down on people of color because of their color. The constitution will not permit that.
Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?
Sen. Hirono: If ordered by the president to shoot peaceful protesters in the legs, would you carry it out?
Def Sec. Pete Hegseth: Of course, I reject the premise of your question
Hirono: Considering that the president in his first term actually ordered such a thing, it’s not a premise you can reject.
Later in the same hearing…
Sen. Slotkin: “Have you given the order to shoot at unarmed protesters in any way? Don’t laugh. [Your predecessor] was asked to shoot at their legs. He wrote that in his book.”
Hegseth: “Senator, I’d be careful what you read in books and believing it. Except for the Bible.”
+ I guess this explains why Hegseth didn’t believe the intelligence briefings that Iran wasn’t close to building a nuclear weapon. If it’s not in the Bible, you can’t trust it…
+ Another Alt American History Moment from Donald Trump, who appears to confuse the Gettyburg Address (or, perhaps, the Emancipation Proclomation) with the Declaration of Independence: “You look up there and you see the Declaration of Independence and I say, I wonder you, you know, if the Civil War, it always seemed to me that maybe it could’ve been solved without losing 600,000-plus people.”
+++
+ Jacob Leibenluft: “What DOGE has done, what the Administration has done, is cause a remarkable exodus of talent–of people who have built years and years of knowledge that is critical to the government functioning and who would, under normal circumstances, pass that knowledge on to the next generaion of civil servants.”
+ A study by Stanford professor of Education Thomas S. Dee, found that daily absences from public schools in California’s Central Valley jumped 22 percent around the time the ICE raids occurred.”
+ Dr. Adam Becker, astrophysicist and author of More Everything Forever, on the Martian fantasies of the Tech Lords: “Musk talks about Mars as a lifeboat for humanity, which is among the very stupiest things that someone could say. There are so many reasons this is a bad idea, and this is not about, ‘Oh, we’ll never have the technology to live on Mars.’ That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that Earth is always going to be a better option no matter what happens to Earth. Like, we could get hit with an asteroid the size of the one that killed off the dinosaurs, and Earth would still be more habitable. We explode every single nuclear weapon, and Earth would still be more habitable. We could have the worst-case scenario for climate change, and Earth would still be more habitable. Any cursory examination of any of the facts about Mars makes it very clear.”
+ And then this happened…
+++
+ An analysis by Politico found that more than 40 percent of New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo’s top endorsements by elected officials have come from people who publicly condemned him four years ago.
+ Under New York campaign finance laws, the maximum amount an individual can donate to a mayoral candidate is $2100. But former Mayor Michael Bloomberg has now donated $8.3 MILLION to the Cuomo campaign by circumventing the law and giving the money to a pro-Cuomo SuperPAC.
+ You can bet Obama’s behind this…
+ Obama’s chief legacy–beyond killing Bin Laden, deporting more people than Reagan-Bush-Clinton-and-Bush combined, or using drones to kill American citizens abroad–will be the role he played in suppressing the campaigns of progressive Democrats and enforcing neoliberal austerity as the principal ideology of the party.
+ Take it from the man who did more damage to Harvard’s bottom line ($1.8 billion) than Trump (so far)…
+ Let’s recall exactly who the Obama people are throwing their weight behind in order to defeat Mamdani…
+ Bill de Blasio on why Cuomo is running for mayor of NYC: “He is a vindictive person. He’s a bully. He’s obsessed with revenge.”
+ Dirty Harry Callahan: “Make my day.”
+++
+ The Los Angeles Press Club says law enforcement officers have violated press freedoms of reporters more than three dozen times during recent protests. Veteran photographer Michael Nigro was shot in the head with a non-lethal bullet while covering anti-ICE protests in LA. “It felt very very intentional,” Nigro told NPR, “a chilling effect to convince us to go away.”
+ Only human editors, not AI, could possibly come up with this…
+ Speaking of the journalism profession, if the Newseum were still around, this from Politico would have surely ranked high in the Hall of Fame for Corrections…
+++
+ Johnny Marr on Kneecap, Glastonbury and Gaza…
+ There are some really funny sequencing skewering Bob Dylan in One-to-One, the documentary on John and Yoko’s time in Greenwich Village during the early 70s. Lennon keeps trying to persuade Dylan to join him on a tour of the country where the proceeds from their concerts would be used to fund bail for black people in county and city jails. Dylan, whose retreat from politics is nearly complete by this point, is absolutely horrified by the idea. But instead of admitting his regression to Lennon, he uses as an excuse the fact that the Lennon/Onos (living in a two-room apartment in the Village) have befriended AJ Weberman and David Peel. Weberman is the Ginsburg-like street poet, who having fused Garbagology with Dylanology, keeps poking through Dylan’s garbage and turning the labels of food packaging and receipts from his consumer purchases into mocking poems, which Peel then puts to music and plays in Washington Square nearly every day.
Later, Lennon produces a recording of Peel’s song, The Pope Smokes Dope (which he probably does now). At this point, Lennon doesn’t really get who Dylan is and that he’d rather do almost anything than be associated with the likes of Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and John Sinclair. He keeps telling his manager–the notorious thief, Alan Klein, who, like Dylan, is aghast at the prospect of Lennon going on tour and giving all the gate receipts to poor incarcerated blacks–that it will be alright, Dylan will surely join the tour once he gets Weberman to stop going through the prodigy from Duluth’s garbage. Ultmately, this delicate task falls to Yoko, who while agreeing with Weberman that Dylan is indeed a sellout and a corporate whore, convinces the anarchist poet to stop prowling through his garbage and even write a letter to the Mighty Bob apologizing. Which Weberman does, amazingly. (Yoko’s very persuasive.) To no avail, of course. Dylan shall not be moved. And the tour never materialized.
I can’t imagine Dylan playing with Plastic Ono or Elephant’s Memory any more than I could McCartney, they were heading toward a kind of music Dylan couldn’t relate to. When punk was breaking out, Dylan was trying to be Neil Diamond, down to wearing leisure suits at his shows. I saw him twice on that 1978 tour (Cap Center and MSG), embarrassing performances that were out of tune with the times.
These episodes are recounted on taped phone calls, which Lennon had been recording since he learned the FBI had tapped their line: “I want to make sure what we said matches what the FBI says we said.” It’s truly madcap. The whole affair makes me love Yoko even more. Her performance during the One-to-One concert at Madison Square of “Don’t Worry, Kyoko,” her song for her daughter, who her ex- absconded with, is one of the most intense I’ve ever seen. Totally punk and impossible to “imagine” McCartney ever trying to keep up with.
A tour raising money to bail out people who are stuck in jail only because they are poor is still a great idea, though perhaps the only living artist with the stature, balls and heart to do it is 90-year-old Willie Nelson.
Looks like a Collision Ain’t the Worst That You Could Do
Booked Up
What I’m reading this week…
Thirst: the Global Quest to Solve the Water Crisis
Filippo Menga
(Verso)
In-Law Country: Emmylou Harris, Rosanne Cash, and Their Circle Fashioned a New Kind of Country Music, 1968-1985
Geoffrey Himes
(Illinois)
Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History
Moudhy Al-Rashid
(Hodder & Stoughton)
Sound Grammar
What I’m listening to this week…
Blackthunder
Brittany Davis
(Loosegroove)
Gadabout Season
Brandee Younger
(Impulse!)
Talkin’ to the Trees
Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts
(Reprise)
We Belong to the Places We’ve Never Been Before
“What they don’t know is that we all belong to the places we’ve never even been before. If there’s any kind of legitimate nostalgia, it’s for everything we’ve never seen, the women we’ve never slept with, never dreamed of, the friends we haven’t made, the books we haven’t read, all that food steaming in the pots we’ve never eaten out of. That’s the only kind of real nostalgia there is.”
Paco Ignatio Tiabo II, The Shadow of the Shadow