Welcome to The Now

 These attractions are either taking a hiatus or a permanent leave in 2024.

 

 

 Cinemawins reviews the Truman Show:

 

 Whether you like the person/group or not, if they challenge (or question) those in power, there will be retaliation. Just remember that the low hanging fruit, those who the masses would barely miss or support, are typically targeted first:

 

 

 

 While we need to remember that the Democrats are so schizophrenic that they complain about Joe Biden's age and competency yet refuse to entertain the idea of having real primaries, the GOP is not the alternative option : The Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference often lures a who’s who of GOP power players to Michigan. Wealthy donors shake hands with presidential candidates, who give rousing speeches to packed audiences in hopes of winning the conference’s straw poll. The event is typically a money-maker for its sponsor – the Michigan Republican Party – helping to fund get-out-the-vote efforts and support campaigns to get Republicans elected throughout the state. But this year’s conference was decidedly different. The only presidential candidate to show up was Vivek Ramaswamy, who was mostly polling in the single digits. The line-up of speakers included failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake; Zuby, a British rapper who occasionally appears on Fox News; and, conservat...

 

 

 

  Also, the link to the scheerpost article.

 

 Very. Very Fast.

 

 Via CNN : Tesla is recalling nearly all 2 million of its cars on US roads to limit the use of its Autopilot feature following a two-year probe by US safety regulators of roughly 1,000 crashes in which the feature was engaged. The limitations on Autopilot serve as a blow to Tesla’s efforts to market its vehicles to buyers willing to pay extra to have their cars do the driving for them. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the Autopilot system can give drivers a false sense of security and be easily misused in certain dangerous situations when a Tesla’s technology may be unable to safely navigate the road. The over-the-air software update will give Tesla drivers more warnings when they are not paying attention to the road while the Autopilot’s “Autosteer” function is turned on. Those notifications will remind drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and pay attention to the road, according to a statement from NHTSA After the recall, Teslas with Autosteer turned on...

 

 

 

 Here's Rachel Blevins on the "carrot" (begging): And here's Jimmy Dore on the "stick" (threatening): Of course, none of this will help Biden's polls, the US economy or what moral standing America has left, especially considering that the Russia-Ukraine war is all but over. If an inkling of what's been given to Ukraine (and Israel) for war was used for infrastructure (remember when Congress were arguing over how expensive that was), universal healthcare or total student loan forgiveness, there'd be a lot more happy Americans. 

 The propaganda can't hold:

 As the "Lets Screw Over Russia!" Crowd discovered: Bonus: Rachel Blevins also reviews the Russia-Saudi connection:

 On top of Black Americans, people under 30, union-supporter, and other various groups:

 Lives and careers are being impacted by these increasingly punitive responses:

 

 Easier to claim that babies were beheaded when the video that can confirm it no longer exists:

It's been mentioned over and over again that the Pentagon is bad at managing money, which explains (in part) their inability to pass an audit in last year .  This year's no different : The Pentagon just failed its audit — again. For the sixth time in a row, the agency that accounts for half the money Congress approves each year can’t figure out what it did with all that money. For a brief recap, the Pentagon has never passed an audit. Until 2018, it had never even completed one. Since then, the Pentagon has done an audit every year and given itself a participation prize each time. Yet despite this year’s triumphant press release — titled “DOD Makes Incremental Progress Towards Clean Audit” — it has failed every time. In its most recent audit, the Pentagon was able to account for just half of its $3.8 trillion in assets (including equipment, facilities, etc). That means $1.9 trillion is unaccounted for — more than the entire budget Congress agreed to for the current fiscal yea...

 Wow:

  Very touching .

 But not for any moral reasons:

 

Nick Cruse from RBN: 

 With the Ukraine/Russia conflict all but over, the United States has resorted to using the courts to fight Russia: 

 Rachel Blevins and guest Mark Sleboda discuss the actor-turn-president's increasingly erratic actions: 

 

Hopefully this will influence another, more permanent one: Fresh off historic contract victories, the United Auto Workers on Friday became the largest U.S. union to endorse a cease-fire in Gaza as Israel resumed its bombardment of the Palestinian territory following a weeklong pause. “I am proud that the UAW International Union is calling for a cease-fire in Israel and Palestine,” UAW president Shawn Fain wrote in a social media post on Friday. “From opposing fascism in WWII to mobilizing against apartheid South Africa and the Contra war, the UAW has consistently stood for justice across the globe.” The union’s cease-fire endorsement was made public by Brandon Mancilla, director of UAW Region 9A, in remarks outside the White House, labor activist Mindy Isser reported for In These Times. “Mancilla was at a news conference where labor leaders and union members from across the country had journeyed to Washington, D.C. to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a broad, multiracial coalition of p...

 Lee an Eleanor explain: Ironic that the DNC is cancelling democracy for their own party, but during the general election will claim that "democracy is at stake."

 She currently operates out of New York. Here's a story of her on Now This back in 2021:

 

 Mint Press News: The Western countries who are giving Israel military aid .  CT Mirror: the medicine(s) being used to battle Opioid deaths . CNN: Spotify firing around 1,500 employees .

 Apparently releasing hostages is fine as long as you turn around and take the same number from other locations:

 The lesson is to not jump to conclusions:

  He was 100 .  OK...Marc Lamont Hill has more: An here's RJ Eskow and Professor Richard Wolff: 

 Always nice to see these two team up: The sad thing is instead of learning their lesson about conducting proxy wars, the US is trying to pivot to recreating the Ukraine/Russia dynamic with Taiwan and China (but the Israel-Palestine conflict is getting in the way). 

  Apparently there are still holdouts : In early November, drone video surfaced online appearing to show a targeted strike blowing up three antennas on the roof of an apartment block. The Ukrainian drone commander who posted it claimed to have destroyed a Russian Pole-21 electronic warfare system on the eastern front near Donetsk. Ukraine is already racing to catch up with Russia when it comes to electronic warfare. This attack also shows how Kyiv is rushing to destroy Moscow’s technology on the battlefield – a sign of how important it may be for the future of the war. Electronic warfare, or EW, involves weapons or tactics using the electromagnetic spectrum. It is being employed by both militaries in this conflict, predominantly through electronic jammers that throw off GPS guided targeting systems, causing rockets to miss their targets. After almost six months of Ukraine’s slow and grinding counteroffensive, it’s clear Russia has not just built up physical defenses but formidable ...

 I'm sure Barak Obama was not expecting s omeone from his State Department getting arrested for going off on a New York street vendor , but here we are: Scary to think that people who think like Stuart Seldowitz does have been influencing America's foreign policy. 

  Very odd story :

 I'm pretty sure it has been up for awhile, but they have a new URL now .

 

 

 Lee Camp (via Breakthrough News) explains:

 Claiming to have a "higher support solution" than doctors to treat "obesity-care management," WeightWatchers will soon push pills .

  Project 2025 is real and coming to an administration near you. 

 Because the police is becoming more and more militarized, even peaceful protestors need to be prepared. Dangerous Ideas provide some tips:

  I imagine that the mainstream media will be saying " Hannibal Directive " more in about six month or so, but people need to hear about it now.

 In an emotional (yeah, there's some swearing) and informative clip, the two activists push back against one congressperson's propaganda:

In addition to begging the Us for more weapons (and money), Ukraine's leader is dealing with a reduction of manpower:  On the global stage, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been consistently on message: In visits to Washington and other Western capitals, he has focused on keeping Kyiv supplied with more advanced arms, ammunition and financing. At home, however, he faces a human resources problem. The war is approaching the end of its second year, and Ukraine’s military needs more manpower to sustain a bloody war of attrition against Russia, a country with more than three times the population of Ukraine. In a recent essay, Ukraine’s top military commander, Valery Zaluzhny acknowledged that training and recruiting troops was becoming a serious challenge. “The prolonged nature of the war, limited opportunities for the rotation of soldiers on the line of contact, gaps in legislation that seem to legally evade mobilization, significantly reduce the motivation of citizens to se...

 

  Not something you want to read if you've been a patient in the last two years : Nearly 450 patients at a hospital in Massachusetts could have been exposed to hepatitis and HIV due to improper administration of IV medication within the past two years, according to hospital officials. The possible exposure at Salem Hospital affected patients who were seeking an endoscopy, a type of procedure where a doctor inserts a tubelike instrument into the body for examination, the hospital said in a statement Thursday. The hospital did not provide further details about how the possible exposure may have occurred. Salem Hospital has notified all patients who may have been exposed and tested people for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV, which are “standard tests for a potential exposure of this kind,” a hospital spokesperson told CNN in an email. “There is no evidence to date of any infections resulting from this incident,” the hospital said in the statement. “We have determined that the infecti...

 

 

You know about how the "Hamas" Hospital is somehow some base of operations , right? Of course you do. But there's more to this story than you think. First, let's hear about the history of the Shifa Hospital : The idea that one of Hamas’ main command bunkers is located beneath Shifa Hospital in Gaza City is one of the worst-kept secrets of the Gaza war. So why aren’t reporters in Gaza ferreting it out? The precise location of a large underground bunker equipped with sophisticated communications equipment and housing some part of the leadership of a major terrorist organization beneath a major hospital would seem to qualify as a world-class scoop—the kind that might merit a Pulitzer, or at least a Polk. So why isn’t the fact that Hamas uses Shifa Hospital as a command post making headlines? In part, it’s because the location is so un-secret that Hamas regularly meets with reporters there . On July 15, for example, William Booth of the Washington Post wrote that the hosp...

So there's been a story that Hamas is operating in a hospital, and to support this theory, video was shared of what looked like a chart of terrorist activity.  Come to find out that it was really an Arabic Calendar:

 RBN reviews: 

 Of course the question of why did CT need pandemic funds for education instead of just asking for money specifically for education should be asked.

 From The Times of Israel : Dozens of pictures and videoclips have emerged over the past week showing IDF soldiers abusing and humiliating Palestinians apprehended in the West Bank, often while they are blindfolded and handcuffed. In one of the most brutal videos, which has been blurred, IDF soldiers filmed themselves as they abused seven West Bank laborers who were caught as they attempted to enter Israel without a permit, in an area south of the South Hebron hills. The footage shows the Palestinian men stripped naked or half-naked, blindfolded and handcuffed, and screaming in pain. One of them is being dragged on the ground. A screenshot from the video shows a soldier stepping with his boot on the head of one of the Palestinians, while another is pointing a weapon at him. The Whole World Is Watching.

 Looks like the original stated list of casualties (in terms of who and who was responsible) was not quite accurate:

 Lee Camp goes over this surreal story:

 Apparently, only his aides and donors thought he was in it for the long haul .

 

  Whether it's ex-GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough complaining about Jill Stein, or CNN letting Democrat Congressman James Clyburn write a piece claiming that because third partis haven't won people shouldn't support them , the mainstream media is all in for discouraging voters from supporting candidates and/or parties that are outside the duopoly.  

 

 The wildly successful musician who happens to be of Palestinian decent has not talked at all about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (the attacks, the bombings, the comments/takes surrounding everything) and he is being called out for it . 

 Apparently, the fact that many people in the world see the retaliatory actions in Palestine as at best disproportional is lost on some .

 Simon Ateba talks to Jimmy Dore about what those White House briefings don't show/tell the public:

Status Coup covers the fail and flip: Just a reminder that unless you're at least a millionaire, watching financial shows are a waste of time and energy.

 Al Jazeera shares a video .

 As she should, especially considering that Turner's group has some heavy Act Blue (read: Democratic Party) affiliations:

 Lee Camp reviews:

 Rachel Blevins reports:

 In particular, his most recent stances:

 Apparently the former Prime Minister of Israel understands what an actual objective media means:

 From a PR, military and economic perspective: Israel's campaign against Hamas (which has become a campaign against virtually all of Palestine) is not going as planned.  Hezbollah's leader has just finished giving his first speech since the 10/7 Hamas attack, and it boiled down to: if the West wants to play stupid games, they will win stupid prizes. One prevailing theme is that despite their bravado, the Israeli military cannot survive with out Western (read: United States) aid. Of course, Israel issued a pre-speech warning to Hezbollah .  With the speech still cooling off and this conflict touching many sensitive nerves, it may take some time to link to more credible stories. UPDATE: here's at least one .

 Lee Camp shows us how America's National Security spokesperson feels about the loss of Ukrainian lives versus the loss of Palestinian lives:

 Mintpress News has the breakdown (but you'll need to log on to YouTube):

 Hint: it's not something organic.

 When you get praise from Lindsey Graham , change course.

 Looks like Mike Johnson is slipping into his role quite nicely (for the military-industrial complex):

 Republicans who were against the Ukraine-Russia war (mostly because Democrats were for it) being all in for the Israel-Palestine conflict, even using some of the same arguments that Democrats used for supporting Ukraine. Pundits calling the new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson "boring," when history show that sometimes the "boring" politician in power is often the most dangerous. Religious people (particularly some Christians) who embrace Israel's actions in Gaza because they believe this is the first step to them entering Heaven.  The American government believing that it's military can simultaneously fight China, Russia and Iran. American voters who believe that participating in the two-party system is more democratic than supporting unions, strikes and worker protests.  Not making the connection about the advancements in AI and how various video/audio productions shared by the government and the media should be questioned.  Those of different creeds, ba...

 

The cruelties of property and privilege are always more ferocious than the revenges of poverty and oppression. For one aims at perpetuating resented injustice, the other is merely a momentary passion soon appeased - C.L.R. James .

 On Strike talks about the phenomenon of politicians "suddenly" forgetting about Medicare For All after Biden won the White House:

 Now that the US House of Representatives has elected a Speaker who just happens to believe that Donald Trump should still be president, CNN's Zachary B. Wolf wants to put to rest the "uniparty myth," namely that the daylight between Republicans and Democrats is negligible: Republicans’ House speaker morass continued Tuesday with a little help from former President Donald Trump. Yet another lawmaker with support from most House Republicans – Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, who was picked as their party’s nominee – failed to get the support of nearly all Republicans. He dropped out of the running Tuesday afternoon, leaving Republicans again back at square one. Late Tuesday, the GOP conference selected a fourth nominee, Rep. Mike Johnson, who faces a floor vote Wednesday. Emmer, who supports military aid to Ukraine and who voted to certify the 2020 election, saw his chances fade in the most bizarre possible way hours after being picked. Trump lobbied against Emmer with a soci...

 Richard Medhurst talks about the "diplomacy myth" between Israel and Palestine, as well as the end of the "two-state solution:"

  You would think that with everything going on in Ukraine, YouTube would be as vigilant about making sure ads like this do not pop up as they are about actual videos criticizing the Ukraine government. You would think. 

 

 " Freaks and Geeks " and " Popular " shared two things: both were set in high school and dealt with characters/topics that were a little ahead of their time. Also, apparently the stars of both shows went head-to-head on Family Feud:

 There are two competing answers to this question. On one side, there are those who share The Times of Israel 's Tal Schneider's argument that Netanyahu saw the rise of Hamas as a way to prevent a unified Palestinian state from becoming reality and enabled Hamas towards that end. On the other side there's Business Insider 's Rebecca Rommen who writes that Netanyahu simply took a less active approach to dealing with Hamas .  So who is correct? Or more specifically: who is more correct? Rommen cites Middle East analysts like Laura Blumenfeld ("The approach was more of a seasonal mowing of the grass rather than scorched earth")  and Jonathan Spyer ("Netanyahu has never said he prefers Hamas, so people are extrapolating from his supposed behavior.") to support her argument. Schneider points to the uptick of work permits to Gaza since 2021 and Israel allowing "suitcases holing millions in Qatari cash to enter Gaza through it's crossings since 2...