Christmas Eve Caturday Reads

Good Morning!!

By Camille Pissarro

I’m still coughing constantly, so not at my best; but I’ll see what news I can find to share with you on this freezing cold Christmas Eve.

First up, I want to recommend this lengthy article at the New York Times Magazine by Dan Draper and Luke Broadwater: Inside the Jan. 6 Committee. Power struggles, resignations and made-for-TV moments — the untold story of the most important congressional investigation in generations.

The story is really fascinating and reads like a political thriller. The authors explain how the Committee carefully structured its presentations with the help of former TV executive James Goldston. Everything in the hearings was very deliberate and planned out. From the article:

One afternoon in early May, a lanky, bespectacled and mostly bald 53-year-old British American named James Goldston sat in a conference room in the Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. House Office Building before the expectant gazes of 25 or so men and women: the staff of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. For almost a year, they had been amassing evidence against former President Donald J. Trump and his associates. In less than a month, the committee would be presenting this evidence in a succession of live televised hearings. Goldston, who had left his position as president of ABC News a year earlier, had just been hired by the committee to assist in this endeavor.

“So what have we got?” he asked the staff members.

Quite a lot, replied the committee’s lead investigator, Tim Heaphy, a former U.S. attorney. The committee staff had conducted nearly 1,000 witness interviews. It had collected over a million pages of documents from the National Archives and other sources. It had obtained hundreds of phone records, in addition to thousands of text messages sent by and to Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff. The committee’s cache of visual material included hundreds of hours of never-before-seen footage that security cameras captured during the attack.

The committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, and its vice chairwoman, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, had worked with the staff to organize the hearings around seven specific methods by which Trump and his allies sought to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election: the willful spreading of lies that the election had been stolen; trying to coerce the Department of Justice into disputing the election results; pressuring Vice President Mike Pence; pressuring state and local officials; seeking to recruit phony electors in several contested states; summoning a mob to Washington; and then, upon inciting that mob, sitting back for more than three hours and doing nothing to stop the violence. The idea, Heaphy said, was for every hearing to include a significant audiovisual representation of the evidence the staff had gathered.

I can’t possibly summarize this long story, but here’s just a bit more. I do hope you’ll go read it; it’s really excellent.

The most consequential congressional committee in generations was immersed in high drama from beginning to end. It originated six months after a domestic siege of the Capitol. It devoted a year to seeking evidence from sources who were often reluctant or even hostile. It then presented that evidence in the form of captivating televised hearings that were watched by more than 10 million Americans at a time, leading up to the November 2022 midterms in which a clear majority cast their ballots against election denialism. And then the committee concluded its work by making history with its criminal referrals of a former president to the Department of Justice.

Mujer con gato – Sonya Grassman

But the inner workings of the Jan. 6 committee — members of Congress, lawyers, video producers and assorted staff members totaling about 80 people tasked with investigating a violent attack on American democracy and a sitting president’s role in that attack — have been almost completely shrouded from public view. Through extensive interviews with all nine of the committee’s members and numerous senior staff members and key witnesses, we have been able to reconstruct a previously unreported account of the committee’s fevered, fraught and often chaotic race to a finish line that has always been understood to be Jan. 3, 2023, when the new Congress is sworn in and a new Republican majority in the House would immediately dissolve the committee. Those same efforts took place at a time when the Republican Party was resolutely united behind the committee’s principal target, Trump, with politicians and voters alike joining the former president in lustily condemning the inquiry at every opportunity.

The committee’s first few months were rocky, even “tumultuous,” in the words of one member, as the lawmakers struggled to plot out a strategy to investigate what they saw as a sprawling, complex conspiracy. It was only after they hired around a dozen former federal prosecutors, including two U.S. attorneys and a lawyer who helped put the drug lord known as El Chapo in prison, that things began to get serious: The committee sent requests to telecommunications companies to preserve phone and text records of some 700 potential witnesses. Soon, witnesses started agreeing to testify, with dozens of interviews coming in a week. If a high-ranking Trump official refused to comply, the committee tried to bring in an aide. If the aide refused, the former prosecutors went after the aide’s aide.

Some of the most interesting parts of the story focus on Nancy Pelosi’s decision to ask Liz Cheney to join the Committee and Cheney’s very important role in the investigation. Whatever you think of her politics, Cheney is a remarkable woman.

Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post: The Jan. 6 report’s most important finding: Trump enabled extremist groups.

It will take weeks to absorb the massive, 845-page report from the House Jan. 6 select committee. No doubt, certain sections will receive more attention than others, such as Chapter 1, about Donald Trump’s role in constructing election lies, and Chapter 7, about the near-total absence of White House records during the four-hour siege of the U.S. Capitol. (Was any evidence destroyed?)

But from a historical, legal and national security perspective, the most alarming information comes in Chapters 6 and 8 and Appendix 1. Those sections cover the right-wing extremists who jointly planned and executed the violent uprising — and the degree to which Trump enabled their attack.

First and foremost, the report busts a myth promoted by right-wing apologists that because some insurrectionists began the assault on the Capitol before Trump concluded his “Stop the Steal” speech, he was not the inspiration for the attack. Wrong.

Chapter 6 details the degree to which members of extremist groups (e.g., Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Three Percenters) seized upon Trump’s “big lie” of a stolen election. They heard his call to come to D.C. and believed he wanted them to do what was needed to keep him in power. The Proud Boys planned to move ahead of the crowd, which later — at Trump’s instruction — followed them down Pennsylvania Avenue.

In Chapter 8, the report details the early removal of barricades at the Peace Circle by the Proud Boys and their associates. That cleared the way for thousands of protesters to move down Pennsylvania Avenue directly to the Capitol. That provides evidence of the meticulous preparation that went into the assault.

Much of the country experienced a huge winter storm yesterday, and today millions of people are being hit with record cold temperatures. 

Read more at the WaPo.

CNN: At least 9 dead as massive winter storm leaves more than a million without power and bitter cold across much of US.

A massive winter storm battered the US on Friday with frigid temperatures, high winds and heavy snow, leaving at least nine people dead, knocking out power to over a million customers and wrecking holiday plans from coast to coast.

By Pierre-John Maurel

The storm – expected to intensify throughout Friday as it barrels through the Midwest and East – is making for grim road conditions with poor visibility and ice-covered streets. Coastal flooding is also an issue, particularly along the shorelines of the Northeast.

All modes of travel – planes, trains and automobiles – were being disrupted: There were hundreds of miles of road closures and flight cancellations were growing rapidly. In New York, flooding along the Long Island Rail Road forced part of the Long Beach branch to temporarily shut down.

“Christmas is canceled,” said Mick Saunders, a Buffalo, New York, resident who was two hours into blizzard conditions that are expected to last through Sunday morning. “All family and friends agreed it’s safer this way.”

At least 9 deaths have been reported since Wednesday.

In north-central Kansas, three people were killed in separate car crashes on Wednesday evening; one death was confirmed to be weather-related, and two were believed to be weather-related but need more investigation, according to Kansas Highway Patrol spokesperson Lt. Candice Breshears.

In Kansas City, one person died after losing control of their Dodge Caravan on icy roads Thursday afternoon, according to the Kansas City Police Department. “The Dodge went down the embankment, over the cement retaining wall and landed upside down, submerged in Brush Creek,” police said in a statement.

In Kentucky, three people died due to the storm, including two in vehicle crashes and the other a “housing insecure” person in Louisville, Gov. Andy Beshear said. The man’s body was found outside with no obvious signs of trauma and an autopsy would determine the cause of death, police said.

And in Ohio, four people have died “as a result of weather-related auto accidents” and several others have been injured, according to Gov. Mike DeWine.

Life threatening cold has pushed all the way to the Gulf Coast and the Mexican border, with below zero wind chills reported as far south as Austin and Atlanta. Many locations in the eastern US are in for their coldest Christmas Eve in decades as the Arctic blast reaches its peak.

More than one million customers in the US are experiencing power outages amid the winter weather and frigid temperatures, according to the website PowerOutage.US. Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania have the most outages.

Mother and Cat, by Mine Ocubo

In Georgia, Fulton County DA Fani Willis’s grand jury investigating the Trump gang’s interference in the state’s 2020 presidential election has finished its work.

AP: Georgia special grand jury wraps up probe of Trump, allies.

A special grand jury investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies illegally tried to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election in Georgia appears to be wrapping up its work, but many questions remain.

The investigation is one of several that could result in criminal charges against the former president as he asks voters to return him to the White House in 2024.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who began investigating nearly two years ago, has said she will go where the facts lead. It would be an extraordinary step if she chooses to bring charges against Trump himself.

“Even if he’s acquitted by a jury, for him to face trial and to have a public trial with evidence on the record would be an epic thing for American history,” Georgia State University law professor Clark Cunningham said….

Over about six months, the grand jurors have considered evidence and heard testimony from dozens of witnesses, including high-profile Trump associates and top state officials. A prosecutor on Willis’ team said during a hearing in November that they had few witnesses left and didn’t anticipate the special grand jury continuing much longer.

The grand jurors are expected to produce a final report with recommendations on potential further action. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who’s supervising the panel, will review the report and recommend to the court’s chief judge that the special grand jury be dissolved. The judges of the county Superior Court will then vote on whether to let the special grand jurors go or whether more investigation is necessary.

The special grand jury cannot issue indictments. Willis will decide whether to go to a regular grand jury to pursue criminal charges.

Click the link to read the rest.

This seems like a big deal. The New York Times: The F.D.A. Now Says It Plainly: Morning-After Pills Are Not Abortion Pills.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday significantly changed the information that will be in every box of the most widely used emergency contraceptive pills to make clear that they do not prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb. The agency explained in an accompanying document that the products cannot be described as abortion pills.

Up to now, packages of the brand-name pill, Plan B One-Step, as well as generic versions of it have said that the pill might work by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb — language that scientific evidence did not support. That wording led some abortion opponents and politicians who equate a fertilized egg with a person to say that taking the morning-after pill could be the equivalent of having an abortion or even committing murder.

By Paul Kulsha (the mysterious P.A.R.K., the artist behind last week’s illustration of the cat in an overcoat, walking a pet mouse.)

The F.D.A. revised the leaflets inserted in packages of pills to say that the medication “works before release of an egg from the ovary,” meaning that it acts before fertilization, not after. The package insert also says the pill “will not work if you’re already pregnant, and will not affect an existing pregnancy.”

In a question-and-answer document posted on the F.D.A.’s website, the agency explicitly addressed the abortion issue. In answer to the question, “Is Plan B One-Step able to cause an abortion?” the agency writes: “No.” It added: “Plan B One-Step prevents pregnancy by acting on ovulation, which occurs well before implantation. Evidence does not support that the drug affects implantation or maintenance of pregnancy after implantation, therefore, it does not terminate a pregnancy.”

Since the Supreme Court overturned the ruling that ensured the national right to abortion, advocates of abortion rights have warned that some conservative states may outlaw or restrict morning-after pills on the erroneous grounds that they might cause abortions. Advocates and reproductive health providers have also worried that people who are misinformed about how the pills work may decline to use an effective tool to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

For at least a decade, the pills have figured in political debates about abortion. During the 2012 presidential election, Mitt Romney called emergency contraceptives “abortive pills,” and two other Republican presidential candidates, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, made similar statements.

The crazies won’t buy it, but it’s still a good thing.

Speaking of enabling crazies, Elon Musk continues to make a mess of Twitter.

Reuters: Exclusive: Twitter removes suicide prevention feature, says it’s under revamp.

Twitter Inc removed a feature in the past few days that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources to users looking up certain content, according to two people familiar with the matter who said it was ordered by new owner Elon Musk.

After publication of this story, Twitter head of trust and safety Ella Irwin told Reuters in an email that “we have been fixing and revamping our prompts. They were just temporarily removed while we do that.” [….]

The removal of the feature, known as #ThereIsHelp, had not been previously reported. It had shown at the top of specific searches contacts for support organizations in many countries related to mental health, HIV, vaccines, child sexual exploitation, COVID-19, gender-based violence, natural disasters and freedom of expression.

Its elimination had led to increased concerns about the well-being of vulnerable users on Twitter. Musk has said that impressions, or views, of harmful content are declining since he took over in October and has tweeted graphs showing a downward trend, even as researchers and civil rights groups have tracked an increase in tweets with racial slurs and other hateful content….

Boy with Cat, by Ivan Generalic, 1959

Eirliani Abdul Rahman, who had been on a recently dissolved Twitter content advisory group, said the disappearance of #ThereIsHelp was “extremely disconcerting and profoundly disturbing.”

Even if it was only temporarily removed to make way for improvements, “normally you would be working on it in parallel, not removing it,” she said.

Washington-based AIDS United, which was promoted in #ThereIsHelp, and iLaw, a Thai group mentioned for freedom of expression support, both told Reuters on Friday that the disappearance of the feature was a surprise to them.

AIDS United said a webpage that the Twitter feature linked to attracted about 70 views a day until Dec. 18. Since then, it has drawn 14 views in total.

Damar Juniarto, executive director at Twitter partner Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network, tweeted on Friday about the missing feature and said “stupid actions” by the social media service could lead his organization to abandon it.

The Guardian: Twitter restores suicide-prevention hotline feature after outcry.

Twitter has restored a feature that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources to users looking up certain content, after coming under pressure from users and consumer safety groups.

The feature, known as #ThereIsHelp, placed a banner at the top of search results for certain topics, listing contacts for support organizations in many countries related to mental health, HIV, vaccines, child sexual exploitation, Covid-19, gender-based violence, natural disasters and freedom of expression.

Reuters said on Friday the feature had been taken down this week. Citing two people familiar with the matter, the report said the removal was ordered by the social media platform’s owner, Elon Musk.

After publication of the story, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, confirmed the removal but said it was temporary….

Musk then denied the feature had been removed, and called the Reuters report “fake news”.

Nonetheless, the report appeared at the start of the Christmas holiday, a fraught time for many, prompting widespread concern. The anonymous sources cited by Reuters said millions had encountered #ThereIsHelp messages on Twitter….

“This is the worst time of the year to remove the suicide prevention feature,” wrote Jane Manchun Wong, a software developer and Twitter user. “Instead of leaving a time gap without suicide prevention feature for a revamp, they could’ve kept the old prompt and replaced it with a new one when it’s ready.”

Early on Saturday, Musk responded, tweeting: “1. The message is actually still up. This is fake news. 2. Twitter doesn’t prevent suicide.”

What an asshole. I hope Tesla stock drops to zero.

That’s all I have for you today. I hope you all have a nice holiday weekend, celebrating in whatever manner you wish.

Thursday Reads

Good Morning!!

This will be an abbreviated post, because I’m down with a bad chest cold–at least it isn’t Covid.

Top stories in the news today: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech to Congress last night, Trump’s taxes and the IRS, the January 6 Committee, and Republicans in disarray, including an incoming Congressman whose backstory seems to be completely fictional.

Reactions to Zelensky’s Speech

The New York Times: U.S. Aid Is ‘Not Charity,’ Zelensky Tells Congress as a Lengthy War Looms.

The Washington Post: In Washington, Zelensky seeks to rally support for grueling war with Russia.

Toluse Olorunnipa at The Washington Post: Zelensky’s visit yields remarkable moment for two presidents.

Cathy Young at The Bulwark: Putin’s Useful Idiots: Right Wingers Lose It Over Zelensky Visit.

Mediaite: Tucker Carlson Rips Zelensky Speech, Says It’s ‘Humiliating’ for Congress to Give Aid to a ‘Ukrainian Strip Club Manager.’

Trump’s Taxes and the IRS

The New York Times: Trump’s Taxes: Red Flags, Big Losses and a Windfall From His Father.

The New York Times: I.R.S. Routinely Audited Obama and Biden, Raising Questions Over Delays for Trump.

Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent at The Washington Post: How the release of Trump’s taxes blows up a big GOP myth.

https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1605770416122777600?s=20&t=ddq3_RbYDklDTn-NUtSgBA

January 6 Committee News

Vox: Read the January 6 committee’s damning summary of Trump’s election subversion efforts.

NBC News: Faces of the Investigation: Through televised hearings and rare Republicans willing to publicly criticize Donald Trump, the House Jan. 6 committee tried to get accountability for the Capitol attack.

George Santos and Republicans in Disarray

The Daily Beast: ‘Openly Gay’ Rep.-Elect George Santos Didn’t Disclose Divorce With Woman.

K File at CNN: Incoming congressman’s claims his grandparents fled the Holocaust contradicted by genealogy records.

Insider: Incoming GOP congressman George Santos reportedly lied about his employment, his education, losing four employees in the Pulse shooting, his residence, and his religious background.

That’s my brief summary of today’s news. Please share your thoughts and links in the comment thread and have a nice Thursday!

Lazy Caturday Reads

Winter’s Day, by Lucie Bilodeau

Happy Caturday!!

Late last night, after receiving widespread condemnation from the likes of the EU and the UN, Elon Musk restored the Twitter accounts of some of the journalists he had impulsively suspended on Thursday. Supposedly he did this based on an unscientific poll of Twitter users.

The Washington Post: Musk’s suspension of journalists on Twitter spurs U.S., international condemnation.

U.S. and international officials condemned Twitter and Elon Musk on Friday after the social media company abruptly suspended several U.S. journalists, expressing concern about retaliation and the potentially chilling effect on free speech.

The moves invited sharp rebuke from public officials at the European Commission and the United Nations, as well as criticism from a U.S. senator. Even some of Musk’s own supporters, who advocate a broad interpretation of free speech, appeared taken aback by the about turn….

Accounts that were suspended include @ElonJet, which tracks the location of Musk’s private plane through the use of publicly available data, as well as other accounts that track helicopter and plane locations. Twitter suspended the accounts of several journalists on Thursday night, including from The Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN.

Musk later accused the reporters of posting “basically assassination coordinates” for him and his family — although he provided no evidence that any of the journalists had done so.

Also on Friday, the account of Linette Lopez, a journalist who has written critically of Musk and Tesla, also appeared to be suspended. It was not immediately clear what had prompted the suspension….

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) tweeted in defense of the reporters Friday, saying Musk’s actions “are a fast track to Twitter becoming obsolete.”

European Commission Vice President Vera Jourová, whose brief includes the rule of law and disinformation, tweeted that the “arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying.”

“EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced under our #MediaFreedomAct,” she wrote. “@elonmusk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon.”

Thursday Reads: Extreme Weather and Random News

Good Afternoon!!

There was an outbreak of tornadoes in Southern states yesterday, including in New Orleans. Fortunately they missed Dakinikat, although she heard the nearby hits as she sheltered under her desk. She can tell us all about it in the comments. There’s also a huge winter storm crossing the country. It’s very bad in the Midwest and we are getting a lot of snow in parts of Massachusetts later today and tomorrow. It looks like those of us on the coast will get mainly wind driven rain, but you never know.

CBS News: At least 3 killed, multiple people injured after tornadoes tear through Louisiana.

At least three people have died and multiple people have been injured after tornadoes touched down in Louisiana on Tuesday and Wednesday. 

On Wednesday afternoon, a tornado passed through the New Orleans area, killing one and leaving over 42,000 without power in the New Orleans area, according to utility company Entergy. 

A 56-year-old woman was found dead outside of her house in St. Charles Parish and eight people were taken to St. Charles hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, Parish president Matthew Jewell said. The Louisiana Department of Health earlier on Wednesday confirmed that two people, a 30-year-old woman and her 8-year-old son, had been killed in Caddo Parish after a tornado touched down in the area Tuesday.

Jewell said that tens of homes were damaged by the tornado, the second in just two weeks that touched the parish.

The tornado also touched down in Arabi, causing “major damage” to St. Bernard Parish. Officials asked that people avoid the area as authorities assess the damage.

“Parish officials have confirmed a tornado touched down in Arabi causing major damage,” St. Bernard Parish tweeted. “Firefighters and police are assessing the damage. Please stay out of the area until further notice. Thank you,”

According to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, several homes and businesses suffered “catastrophic damage” and at least one of the sheriff’s office’s facilities suffered “severe damage,” but there were no reported injuries at the facilities, authorities said….

Earlier in the day, at least two tornadoes tore through New Iberia, Louisiana, causing “significant damage” to the Southport Boulevard subdivision and the Iberia Medical Center, New Iberia Police Capt. Leland Laseter said in a Facebook video post.

Journalists are still evaluating the impact of the thousands of text messages to an from Mark Meadows that Talking Points Memo obtained and released. This is from David Corn at Mother Jones: Newly Revealed Texts Show Mark Meadows Is a Liar.

Mark Meadows is a liar—at least by omission. And newly revealed text messages prove it. 

In 2021, the former White House chief of staff for Donald Trump released a book, The Chief’s Chief, which offered a sycophantic account of his tenure serving the reality-TV-star-turned-president. It made little news because it provided little news. In the book, Meadows fawns over Dear Leader. He blames Trump’s 2020 loss on Fox News’ less-than-enthusiastic coverage of Trump, other purported media conspiracies, and massive fraud. Of course, he cites no confirmed instances of significant voter fraud. But he insists it was clear Trump won. “I knew he didn’t lose,” he writes. How? Well, because of all the “palpable” excitement at the Trump rallies and the “feeling I got during the final days of President Trump’s campaign.” Alrighty, then. But there’s more: “If you looked at the social media traffic from that night—which, I did, constantly—there was no doubt about it: President Trump was going to be reelected by a healthy margin.” Talk about reality bias.

No savvy reader would expect Meadows to present an honest and accurate depiction of what transpired in the weeks after the election and on January 6. But he strives mightily to provide a phony recounting. He cites debunked allegations of fraud and claims the Democrats and the liberal media had plotted for years to set up a pretext in which Trump’s assertions of fraud could be dismissed as conspiracy theory nonsense and labeled “crazy” or “paranoid.” He calls this the “long con.” In Meadows’ telling, Trump and his attorneys merely engaged in legitimate court challenges to “uphold the Democratic process.” (Meadows mistakenly capitalizes “democratic.”) The problem, apparently, was that the courts, including the Supreme Court, didn’t have the guts to support these challenges. And then Trump, on January 6, simply made a farewell address to his followers that “did not call for violence,” and afterward he left the stage, informing Meadows he had no intention to head to the Capitol himself. When moments earlier he had told his loyalists that he would march with them toward Congress, Trump “had been speaking metaphorically.” (According to testimony provided to the House January 6 committee, Trump was intent on leading the throng and even got into a physical altercation with a Secret Service agent who would not allow him to do so.) Meadows shares not a single detail about his or Trump’s actions—or inaction—during the ensuing riot. 

Meadows was peddling disinformation. His book says nothing about Trump’s multiple efforts after Election Day to overturn the results. Missing from these pages: Trump pressuring Georgia election officials to “find” him enough votes to win that state (an effort in which Meadows participated); the fake electors scheme; Trump’s attempt to force the Justice Department to declare the election corrupt; the crazy conspiracy nutters who met with Trump and pushed him to seize voting machines; Trump muscling his vice president to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory; Trump’s refusal to take steps to quell the January 6 riot; and much more. 

Read the rest at Mother Jones.

Rolling Stone has a creepy scoop about Kanye West and his love of Hitler.

Cheyenne Roundtree at RS: Kanye West’s Love of Hitler Allegedly Goes Back 20 Years.

FOR THE PAST two months, Kanye West has dominated headlines for a nonstop stream of reprehensible behavior. What started out as a controversy over the rapper’s ‘White Lives Matter’ T-shirts descended into a torrent of antisemitic remarks before he appeared on Alex Jones’ show in early December to praise Nazis and Hitler. “I see good things about Hitler,” West said during the bizarre three-hour interview where he falsely claimed Hitler had invented highways and microphones. 

West’s remarks mirrored earlier claims former business and music industry sources had told CNN and NBC this fall — that the musician had lauded Hitler and made several antisemitic comments within the past five years, paying at least two settlements to former employees who allege he made such remarks in the workplace. 

But as nearly half a dozen sources who worked with West tell Rolling Stone, his alleged obsession of Hitler and Nazis dates back even further than previously reported. They claim that West has been discussing his admiration for Hitler and what he sees as positive achievements of Nazi Germany for nearly two decades, describing it as a well-known but well-kept secret within the rapper’s inner circle. 

Beyond just fascination, two sources claim, West allegedly took inspiration from Nazi propaganda strategies and power-gaining tactics to achieve his own fame and success. “It’s not a stretch to now compare Kanye’s ‘by any means necessary’ methods and tactics with Adolf Hitler’s,” a former longtime collaborator says. “To know that a Hitler/[Joseph] Goebbelsplaybook has been a central inspiration to Kanye’s own media playbook helps bring a great deal of clarity to the exact types of moves he’s been making over his career.” (West did not reply to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.)

In the years before the release of West’s 2004 Grammy-winning debut album The College Dropout, West’s success as a rapper was unclear. While he was a wonderkid producer, music label executives believed West’s semi-preppy look and suburban upbringing wasn’t a fit for the gangster rapper image of the early 2000s. West’s persistence won out when he was signed to Roc-A-Fella in 2002 and quickly began working on his first album. It was in those early studio sessions the then-26-year-old frequently discussed Hitler and Nazis and quizzed others on their thoughts, according to a 2003 music industry source who claims to have witnessed the conversations firsthand. “It was like a daily thing,” the source says.

The topic wasn’t couched in general conversation, the music source says. Instead, West allegedly would approach collaborators and industry executives and ambush them with questions — seemingly trying to catch people off-guard. “Going up to somebody like, ‘So what do you think about the Holocaust?’ the music source explains. 

That is sooooo creepy. 

Speaking of creepy people, Elon Musk is still a bully and a hypocrite. 

The Washington Post: Musk bans Twitter account tracking his jet, threatens to sue creator.

Jack Sweeney, a sophomore at the University of Central Florida, was a big fan of the billionaire industrialist Elon Musk. In 2020, Sweeney launched a Twitter account, @ElonJet, that used public air-travel data to map the flights of Musk’s private jet, thinking it’d be cool to track how Musk managed his business empire.

But when Sweeney woke up Wednesday morning, he was stunned to see that the 530,000-follower account on Twitter, the social media platform Musk bought in October, had been “permanently suspended” without explanation. A notice on Sweeney’s Twitter account said only that the company had, “after careful review … determined your account broke the Twitter rules,” without saying which rules it broke.

On Wednesday evening, the account was briefly restored, with Twitter outlining new rules seemingly designed to prevent Sweeney from posting the real-time locations of planes used by Musk and other public figures as long as he included a slight delay. Sweeney, over Twitter, asked Musk how long he’d have to delay the data to comply.

But Wednesday evening, Musk threatened to escalate the conflict against Sweeney, saying a car carrying Musk’s son, X Æ A-12, had been “followed by [a] crazy stalker” in Los Angeles, implying without providing evidence that location data had been a factor in the purported episode. “Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family,” Musk tweeted.

Sweeney, 20, shared publicly available information about Musk’s flights, not his family members or his cars. The records stopped and ended at airports, and Musk has provided no further detail as to what legal basis Musk would cite in a lawsuit.

Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” had been critical of Sweeney’s account but pledged last month to keep it online, tweeting, “My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk.” [….]

Sweeney’s other Twitter accounts, which tracked the air travel of college sports teams, celebrities and politicians, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, climate envoy John F. Kerry and former president Donald Trump, remained online for several hours after the Musk jet account was suspended.

But on Wednesday afternoon, after Sweeney began discussing the issue publicly, those accounts as well as Sweeney’s personal account were suspended.

Twitter also blocked people from tweeting a link to a version of the account Sweeney runs on Instagram. When a user tries to tweet the link, Twitter says, “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.”

Meanwhile, Musk has been selling more Tesla stock. Is it wrong that I hope he keeps losing big?

It looks like Rudy Giuliani could soon be disbarred.

From the WaPo article:

An arm of the D.C. Bar found Thursday that Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and personal attorney to President Donald Trump, violated the terms of his license to practice law in the nation’s capital when he filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania trying to block certification of the results in the 2020 presidential election.

The preliminary finding by the D.C. Bar’s Board on Professional Responsibility means Giuliani and his legal team will have to file additional briefs detailing his defense and his role in the lawsuit, as officials consider what discipline he should face. Robert Bernius, the board’s chairman, said after a private 15-minute discussion Thursday that the finding was “preliminary and nonbinding.”

Hamilton “Phil” Fox III, the lead prosecuting attorney for the D.C. Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, told the board that Giuliani’s conduct “calls for only one sanction, and that’s the sanction of disbarment.”

“What Mr. Giuliani did was use his law license to undermine the legitimacy of a presidential election, to undermine the basic premise of the democratic system that we all live in, that has been in place since the 1800s in this country,” Fox said.

But Bernius asked whether disbarment was extreme, noting that former D.C. administrative law judge Roy Pearson Jr. was suspended from practicing law in the city for only 90 days when he sued a dry cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants. That D.C. case garnered national attention.

In hearings last week, Fox argued thatGiuliani had “weaponized” his law license in filing the lawsuit in Pennsylvania that falsely claimed that the November 2020 presidential election in that state was riddled with fraud. Those claims, Fox said, were “unfounded.”

He told the board that Giuliani had a “distinguished” career as a former federal prosecutor and a former U.S. attorney in New York. But “that was 20 years ago,” he said. “It’s like there are two different people. I don’t know if something happened to Mr. Giuliani or what.”

I’ll end there, because I’m late again. Insomnia is playing havoc with my life! What stories are you following today?