Liz Pelly’s exposé on Spotify’s internal program to promote fake artists to minimize royalties to real ones

Liz Pelly’s exposé on Spotify’s internal program to promote fake artists to minimize royalties to real ones:

in other news, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is now richer than any musician, more than 4x Taylor Swift's net worth #

Musk Changes X Name In Tribute To Extremist Icon

Musk Changes X Name In Tribute To Extremist Icon:

The Independent reports:

Right-wing billionaire Elon Musk has changed his name to “Kekius Maximus” on X, the social media platform he owns. The world’s richest man changed his name on X on Tuesday and updated his profile photo to an edited picture of “Pepe the Frog,” a meme that has been co-opted by hate groups.

As he changed his name and photo, Musk shared a photo of the meme Pepe the Frog. The caption reads: “Kekius Maximus will soon reach level 80 in hardcore PoE.” “PoE” likely refers to Path of Exile 2, a video game Musk has previously said he plays.

Read the full article. Pepe The Frog, which first surfaced on the far-right board 4chan, has appeared here countless times for its usage by extremists.

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Elton John reveals what ended his cocaine addiction in Time’s “Icon of the Year” interview

Elton John reveals what ended his cocaine addiction in Time’s “Icon of the Year” interview:

In an interview with Time magazine celebrating his latest honorific as the legacy publication’s “Icon of the Year”, legendary pop star Elton John mused on his 60-year career in show business, how he hopes he’ll be remembered, the comforts of home after giving up touring in 2023, and what convinced him to go into drug rehab after becoming addicted to cocaine.

While John is recovering from near total blindness, he’s still writing music, lately for two Broadway shows in what he calls “a third act” in his career. John, who is now 77, says he prefers to spend his time discovering.

Related

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No matter who wins this election, he wants them to know that they can end this epidemic.

“I’ve never lost the excitement of buying a new record, a new book, a new photograph,” he shared, saying that if he had to choose between never playing music again and never listening to it again, he’d opt to keep listening. “I just think that’s kept me going,” he says.

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John, his husband David Furnish and their two children call a three-story red-brick Georgian pile in the English countryside home. The property of the Knight Bachelor — a title awarded to John by Queen Elizabeth II for “services to music and charitable services” — has been owned by him for more than 50 years. However, it sat mostly vacant during his five-year “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour.

From the garden of his estate, the Queen Mother once remarked that it provides a good view of the British monarchy’s ancestral home.

John’s genteel life in the country is the latest chapter in what he called “an incredible” “hell of a life,” and “a slog.”

The singer racked up 57 U.S. Top 40 hits over his career, the majority in his “wild child” youth. From 1970 to 1975, he released 13 albums, seven of which went platinum. He was the first artist ever to have an album debut at Number 1 on American charts, and he performed more than 4,500 concerts over half a century before stepping off the road last year.  

A new documentary from Furnish and RJ Cutler, called Elton John: Never Too Late, bookends John’s career with his meteoric first five years on tour in the U.S. and his final roadshow which ended at Dodger Stadium in 2023.

In between the start and end of his touring career, John confronted drug addiction, loneliness, and the scourge of AIDS.

In the midst of those “wild child” days, John says he was introduced to cocaine by his ex-lover and then manager John Reid, and he took to it. The drug freed him of his crippling shyness, he says, but eventually took over his life.

“You make terrible decisions on drugs,” he says. “I wanted love so badly, I’d just take hostages. I’d see someone I liked and spend three or four months together, and then they would resent me because they had nothing in their life apart from me. It really upsets me, thinking back on how many people I probably hurt.”

His longtime writing partner, Bernie Taupin, has said that the period in John’s life was “absolutely horrible” and affected their working relationship.

“I was terrified for him,” Taupin says. “A lot of the work that we did in the times when he was at his worst wasn’t the best of both of us.”

It was his experience with Ryan White, the teenager diagnosed with AIDS in the early days of the epidemic, which helped John turn his life around. Spending time with White, who used his last years advocating for people with AIDS as he was dying from the disease, showed John how selfishly he was living.

When White died, he was at the hospital with him.

“It all came to a climax, really, at the Ryan White funeral in Indianapolis — a really sad and emotional week — and I came back to the hotel thinking I’m just so out of line,” John says. “It was a shock to see how far down the scale of humanity I’d fallen.”

Six months later, he checked into rehab. Two years later, he started the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

As for his legacy, John says, “If people remember that we tried to change the world a little bit, we were kind, we tried to help people,” that would be enough. He added, “and then, apart from that, there was the music.”

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CBS: Tesla Among Companies With Most Visa Workers

CBS: Tesla Among Companies With Most Visa Workers:

CBS News reports:

In helping instigate a heated debate over H-1B visas, Elon Musk is speaking both from personal experience and as a business owner. That’s because his company, electric car maker Tesla, is among the U.S. companies that bring thousands of foreign engineers and other skilled workers into the U.S. each year.

After not placing in the top 25 H-1B visa employers in prior years, Tesla now ranks No. 16, according to the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) a nonpartisan think tank focused on trade and immigration issues.

While well behind the likes of technology giants such as Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Google, Tesla in 2024 significantly increased its count of employees hired through the visa program, with its 742 approved H-1B petitions for initial employment more than double the 328 it recorded in 2023, NFAP found.Tesla also had 1,025 H-1B petitions for continuing employment approved in 2024.

Read the full article. Yesterday it was reported that Tesla recently replaced hundreds of laid off US workers with H-1B visa holders.

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CO Rep Celebrates Death Of “Despot” Jimmy Carter

CO Rep Celebrates Death Of “Despot” Jimmy Carter:

Colorado Politics reports:

Thanking the Almighty for the death of a 100-year-old man best known for building houses and farming peanuts is a step beyond even most of the uncharitable eulogies we’ve seen from anyone in the barely a day since former President Carter’s death. Rep. Matt Soper has a reputation as one of the more intellectual members of the Colorado House GOP minority caucus, wherein the bar is admittedly low – but from blaming Dominion Voting machines for the results of a city council election he didn’t like to threatening a civil war over gun safety bills, it’s a reputation that our experience hasn’t borne out.

Read the full article.

Soper appeared here last year when he refused to co-sponsor a Martin Luther King Jr. Day resolution because of “critical race theory.” He has deleted the tweet below and offered the standard fauxpology.

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Pete Buttigieg remembers warmth and kindness of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter

Pete Buttigieg remembers warmth and kindness of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter:

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, the first Senate-confirmed gay Cabinet member, has shared a warm remembrance of former President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at age 100.

Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100. He invited the first gay activists to the White House

Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100. He invited the first gay activists to the White House:

Former President Jimmy Carter died today at the age of 100.

Carter was an ex-president for so long that you’d have to be in your sixties to have voted to elect him to the White House. By the time of his passing, he achieved a platonic ideal of what a former commander-in-chief should be: a thoughtful advocate for human rights who was willing to pick up a hammer to build houses for the poor.

When it comes to gay issues, Carter is probably best known for saying at the age of 93 that Jesus would have been perfectly fine with marriage equality (Carter came out in favor of marriage equality in 2012). His comments attracted some attention, particularly from anti-LGBTQ+ evangelical leader Franklin Graham, who said  Jesus would kill gay people, not marry them. 

At one time, however, Carter represented a diversity of thought in the evangelical movement. Hard as it is to consider now, there was a time in the 1970s when someone like Carter could be considered an evangelical in good standing, even though in many ways he was liberal on social issues.

Carter was relegated to the category of elder statesman for so long that what he thought didn’t stir up much controversy anymore, but what he stood for while in office certainly mattered. Even his most ardent admirers would be hard-pressed to place him in the top echelon of presidents, but when it comes to gay rights, Carter deserves a fair amount of credit. He was really the first president to take positive and concrete steps toward acknowledging the importance of gay rights.

During his administration, the Foreign Service lifted its ban on gay and lesbian personnel, a huge step in removing the lingering stain from the McCarthy-era witch hunts.  In addition, the Internal Revenue Service lifted its requirement that any LGBTQ+ nonprofit state that homosexuality was “a diseased pathology.”

At the height of the Anita Bryant fear-mongering, his administration was also the first to invite gay activists to the White House. The move was controversial and ultimately contributed to Midge Constanza, the closeted lesbian official who issued the invitation, deciding to step down. But Carter didn’t quash the meeting, either, which would have been the politically easy thing to do.

Like many other politicians, Carter went back and forth on gay issues. He was on record supporting gay rights as early as 1976, but he caved when it came to supporting a plank in the Democratic party platform. During his re-election campaign, he refused to commit to issuing an executive order prohibiting employment discrimination. The political reasons for his waffling were easy to understand, given that the Democrats were still stinging from George McGovern’s defeat in 1972, which pundits widely attributed to the party’s leftward drift.

Still, for at least two reasons, Carter’s willingness to support the cause was important. For one, the times were very different, and the modern LGBTQ+ movement was just beginning to emerge. The support of the president offered legitimacy that was much needed to spur the movement’s advance.

The other reason is that Carter was always candid about the importance of faith in his life. He proved that supporting gay rights didn’t fly in the face of all religious beliefs. Since Carter’s defeat in 1980, evangelicals have cast their lot with the Republican party (and somehow, Donald Trump) and evangelical leaders have made gay-bashing their bread and butter. But it wasn’t always so.

Carter may not have been anyone’s idea of the perfect president, but it’s not hard to imagine that the country’s early response to the AIDS epidemic would have been very different if Carter had been re-elected. (It could hardly have been worse.)

It’s worth remembering the groundwork that Carter laid as president for the gains we’ve seen in the past few decades – the ones that subsequent Republican presidents have kept trying to roll back. Carter was too timid at times, but he moved the argument for gay rights forward, and forty years later, he was still doing so.

For that, he deserves our respect.

Extensive cover-up effort revealed in L.A. County deputy's beating of trans man

Extensive cover-up effort revealed in L.A. County deputy's beating of trans man:

New reports on the beating of a transgender man by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy have revealed an extensive cover-up effort.

BREAKING: Biden administration abandons efforts to protect transgender student-athletes from discrimination

BREAKING: Biden administration abandons efforts to protect transgender student-athletes from discrimination:

President Joe Biden’s administration late on Friday abandoned efforts to protect the right of trans athletes to participate in sports based on their gender identity.

Carlson: Any Republican Senator Who Votes Against Confirming Gabbard Is An Enemy Of The United States

Carlson: Any Republican Senator Who Votes Against Confirming Gabbard Is An Enemy Of The United States:

“She served in the U.S. military for 20 years. So, by the way, if she was a foreign agent, how exactly was she carrying a gun in the U.S. military? It’s absurd. You will know who’s on which side by the reaction of Tulsi Gabbard.

“If there are Republican senators who are voting against Tulsi Gabbard confirmation, then either in the Intel committee or in the open Senate, you will know that person is not only my enemy as someone who voted for change, for openness, for transparency, for an end to corruption, for draining of the swamp.

“You will know that person is an enemy of the United States. Period. It’s really that simple. And you will get the same story. ‘It’s national security. We can’t let our enemies know. We can’t trust Tulsi Gabbard.’ No, we can’t trust you.” – Tucker Carlson, speaking today at Charlie Kirk’s Christian nationalist fest in Phoenix.

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Hate Group Leader Named Ambassador To The Vatican

Hate Group Leader Named Ambassador To The Vatican:

Politico reports:

President-elect Donald Trump said Friday that he is picking the head of a right-wing Catholic advocacy group and critic of Pope Francis to serve as ambassador to the Holy See, potentially teeing up tensions with the Vatican.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that Brian Burch, head of the group Catholic Vote, “loves his Church and the United States — He will make us all proud.” Trump also praised Burch for advocating for him and encouraging Catholics to vote for him in 2024.

Catholic Vote has engaged in tactics that have prompted criticism from more progressive factions of the U.S. church. In 2020, the organization used “geofencing” to identify Catholic voters who attended Mass in swing states and target them with ads boosting Trump.

Read the full article.

Catholic Vote first appeared on JMG in 2015 when they launched “40 days of prayer for one man/one woman marriage.” On the 35th day of the event, the Supreme Court issued its historic Obergefell ruling.

In 2020, Burch appeared here when he announced that Catholic Vote would spend $20 million on anti-Biden attack ads. Of note, Catholic Vote opposed Trump in 2016, calling him a promiscuous womanizing loser.

In June 2022, Catholic Vote appeared here for their “Hide The Pride” campaign for its followers to check out all LGBTQ-themed books from public libraries and them hide them in their homes.

In July 2022, Burch joined a hate group coalition in declaring that the Respect For Marriage Act would legalize polygamy, incestuous marriages, child marriages, and “open marriage.”

In 2023, Burch announced a $1 million ad campaign attacking the Los Angeles Dodgers for honoring the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at the team’s annual Pride Night.

Longtime JMG readers will recall Catholic Vote as the home of Thomas Peters, the vitriolic former spokesperson for the anti-LGBTQ hate group, the National Organization for Marriage [NOM].

Catholic Vote appeared here in January 2024 when one of its employees was sentenced to two years in federal prison for death threats against Human Rights Campaign staffers and a transgender Maryland state rep.

That employee had previously appeared here for a now-deleted Catholic Vote column about the Pulse Massacre titled “We Have Nothing To Apologize For.”

In August 2024, Catholic Vote launched an ad campaign claiming that Kamala Harris was responsible for the rape and murder of an Arizona girl by an “illegal alien.”

If you visit the Catholic Vote website today, you’ll find page after page of anti-LGBTQ hate, but not a peep about pedophile priests.

Trump’s previous ambassador to the Vatican was Callista Gingrich, who famously engaged in an adulterous affair with Newt Gingrich before they married.

It’s all what Jesus would want.

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Hear Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast from 1938: The Original Tale of Mysterious Objects Flying Over New Jersey

Hear Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast from 1938: The Original Tale of Mysterious Objects Flying Over New Jersey:

A month ago, drones were spotted near Morris County, New Jersey. Since then, reports of further sightings in various locations in the region have been lodged on a daily basis, and anxieties about the origin and purpose of these unidentified flying objects have grown apace. “We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus,” declared the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security in a joint statement. But the very lack of further information on the matter has stoked the public imagination; one New Jersey congressman spoke of the drones having come from an Iranian “mothership” off the coast.

If this real-life news story sounds familiar, consider the fact that Morris County lies only about an hour up the road from Grovers Mill, the famous site of the fictional Martian invasion dramatized in Orson Welles’ 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. Presented like a genuine emergency broadcast, it “fooled many who tuned in late and believed the events were really happening,” writes Space.com’s Elizabeth Fernandez.

The unsettled nature of American life in the late nineteen-thirties surely played a part, given that, “wedged between two World Wars, the nation was in the midst of the Great Depression and mass unemployment.” Some listeners assumed that the Martians were in fact Nazis, or that “the crash landing was tied to some other environmental catastrophe.”

In the 86 years since The War of the Worlds aired, the story of the nationwide panic it caused has come in for revision: not that many people were listening in the first place, many fewer took it as reality, and even then, drastic responses were uncommon. But as Welles himself recounts in the video above, he heard for decades thereafter from listeners recounting their own panic at the suddenly believable prospect of Mars attacking Earth.“In fact, we weren’t as innocent as we meant to be when we did the Martian broadcast,” he admits. “We were fed up with the way in which everything that came over this new, magic box — the radio — was being swallowed,” and thus inclined to make “an assault on the credibility of that machine.” What a relief that we here in the 21st century are, of course, far too sophisticated to accept everything new technology conveys to us.

Related content:

When Orson Welles Met H. G. Wells in 1940: Hear the Legends Discuss War of the Worlds, Citizen Kane, and WWII

Edward Gorey Illustrates H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in His Inimitable Gothic Style (1960)

Hear Orson Welles’ Radio Performances of 10 Shakespeare Plays (1936–1944)

Horrifying 1906 Illustrations of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds

Carl Jung’s Fascinating 1957 Letter on UFOs

The CIA Has Declassified 2,780 Pages of UFO-Related Documents, and They’re Now Free to Download

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.

Russia Stooge Tucker Carlson Is Now Shilling for Syrian Ex-President

Russia Stooge Tucker Carlson Is Now Shilling for Syrian Ex-President:

Tucker Carlson has officially started defending Syrian ex-President Bashar Al Assad because of course he has.

During an interview with economist Jeffrey Sachs on Tuesday, Carlson said he didn’t understand why he was supposed to hate Assad, the Syrian dictator who fled to Russia earlier this month after opposition forces overtook Damascus.

“I’m speaking for myself. I don’t have strong feelings about Assad one way or the other,” Carlson said. “Apparently he’s protected the Christians, so I’m grateful for that as a Christian. But, I don’t—why am I required to hate Assad?”

“Tulsi Gabbard went and met with Assad. She’s been attacked ever since. Has anyone ever explained why Americans should hate Assad?” Carlson asked.

“Because every regime change operation we ever do, we have to make sure that the opponent is the worst villain since Hitler or Hitler reincarnate,” Sachs replied, building on his argument that the United States had played a major role in the Syrian regime’s demise earlier this month.

Russian state media outlet RT, which paints the Syrian regime as merely the target of U.S. imperialist forces and not its own engine of mass imprisonment and murder, shared a video of the interview on X.

Carlson, supposedly a journalist, might know that Assad oversaw a brutal 14-year civil war reportedly, sparked in response to peaceful civilian protests, that killed more than 500,000 people, including upward of 164,000 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. If the death toll isn’t enough to turn Carlson’s stomach, perhaps he could read up on the series of the regime’s many torture prisons, used to stamp out rebellion and dissent.

Carlson’s blissful “ignorance” of these facts can be explained by his deferential treatment of the Russian state, which has backed the Assad regime’s military activities for years. Carlson is a known fanboy of the Russian state and its autocratic leader, Russian President Vladimir Putin, earning him some fans in Moscow.

Russian state media recently floated the theory that Carlson might act as a back channel between Donald Trump and Putin, after he performed an interview so blatantly sycophantic and weak that even Putin mocked him for it afterward.

As Carlson mentioned, Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee to lead national intelligence, has recently come under renewed fire for defending Assad.

They Thought They Were Free

They Thought They Were Free:

First published in 1955, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 (Bookshop) is a book by Milton Mayer for which he interviewed ten ordinary Germans about their experiences living in Nazi Germany. From the synopsis:

“These ten men were not men of distinction,” Mayer noted, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis. His discussions with them of Nazism, the rise of the Reich, and mass complicity with evil became the backbone of this book, an indictment of the ordinary German that is all the more powerful for its refusal to let the rest of us pretend that our moment, our society, our country are fundamentally immune.

And from an excerpt of the book describing how the road to fascism is like being a frog in a gradually heated pot of water:

“But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked — if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ‘43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ‘33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

“And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in — your nation, your people — is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

One is also reminded of Hemingway’s quote about how one goes bankrupt: “gradually and then suddenly”. See also Who Goes Nazi? and What Does Living in a Dictatorship Feel Like?

So if you’re waiting for the grand moment when the scales tip and we are no longer a functioning democracy, you needn’t bother. It’ll be much more subtle than that. It’ll be more of the president ignoring laws passed by congress. It’ll be more demonizing of the press.

I found this via Karen Attiah’s thread about personal foundational texts.

Tags: books · Milton Mayer · Nazis · They Thought They Were Free

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Judge forces Montana to let trans people correct their drivers licenses & birth certificates

Judge forces Montana to let trans people correct their drivers licenses & birth certificates:

A Montana judge has issued a preliminary injunction on a policy banning trans people from changing the sex markers on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates.

District Judge Mike Menahan wrote in his order on Monday that “if the challenged state actions discriminate against transgender individuals on the basis of their transgender status, they also necessarily discriminate on the basis of sex.”

Related

Montana Supreme Court becomes first in nation to uphold trans access to health care
No matter what the next president does, this protection will remain in place in Montana.

His decision echoes the Supreme Court’s ruling in the landmark case of Bostock v. Clayton County, which determined that workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity are forms of sex-based discrimination.

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The injunction stems from a class-action lawsuit filed by two transgender women against Montana and several state agencies over the government’s anti-trans policies. The plaintiffs argue that the inability to change their gender markers puts them at risk of discrimination and harassment.

The rule was established in 2022 by the Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) stating that the department would only change gender on birth certificates if an individual’s sex assigned at birth was misidentified or incorrectly recorded. DPHHS officials said they would not change birth certificate gender markers based on “gender transition, gender identity, or change of gender.”

In February 2024, the DPHHS said that any amendments on birth certificates would be subject to the provisions of Senate Bill 458. The bill declares, “In human beings there are exactly two sexes, male and female… The sexes are determined by the biological and genetic indication of male and female without regard to an individuals’ psychological, behavioral, social, or chosen or subjective experience of gender.”

“These two interwoven provisions have incorporated discriminatory definitional principles into Montana law,” the lawsuit states. “SB 458 is scientifically incorrect and improperly seeks to limit the meaning of sex without legal, medical, or scientific justification… sex consists of a complex set of biological, psychological, and social factors, including but not limited to the behavioral or subjective experience of sex.”

Additionally, the plaintiffs accused the state Department of Justice and Attorney General Austin Knudsen of implementing a new rule at the state Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) that revoked a previous policy allowing trans people to change the gender marker on their state-issued identification cards and drivers licenses if they had a letter from a doctor stating that the person seeking the change was in, or had completed, the process of changing their sex.

“After finally being able to live my life openly as the woman I know myself to be, I am frustrated that my birth state, Montana, is forcing me to carry around a birth certificate that incorrectly lists my sex as male,” plaintiff Jessica Kalarchik, a U.S. Army veteran, said in a statement. “I am being forced to use a birth certificate that is inaccurate and that places me at risk of discrimination and harassment whenever I have to present it.”

The temporary injunction comes just one week after the Montana Supreme Court upheld a temporary injunction against the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth, becoming the first state supreme court in the nation to do so.

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WSJ: Carlson Killed Pompeo’s Chances For DefSec Post

WSJ: Carlson Killed Pompeo’s Chances For DefSec Post:

The Daily Beast reports:

James Carville might be onto something. Two weeks after the Democratic strategist suggested Tucker Carlson was behind Trump’s wild-card Cabinet nominees, the Wall Street Journal has reported that Carlson was indeed the one who killed Mike Pompeo’s chances in the new administration. Trump insiders originally believed Pompeo, who served as secretary of state during Trump’s first term, was at the top of his former boss’s list to lead the Department of Defense.

Carlson argued Pompeo was a warmonger and claimed—without providing any evidence—that he had plotted to assassinate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Pompeo denied the story in October. Perhaps more importantly for Trump, Carlson and Donald Trump Jr. also argued Pompeo had failed to prove his loyalty to Trump by calling the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol “unacceptable” and refusing to say Joe Biden stole the 2020 election, the Journal reported.

Read the full article. Gift link to the original report below.

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Medical Journal Retracts Paper Supporting Quack Treatment For COVID That Was Promoted By Trump

Medical Journal Retracts Paper Supporting Quack Treatment For COVID That Was Promoted By Trump:

The journal Science reports:

A 2020 paper that sparked widespread enthusiasm for hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment was retracted today, following years of campaigning by scientists who alleged the research contained major scientific flaws and may have breached ethics regulations. The paper was pulled because of ethical concerns and methodological problems, according to a retraction notice.

The paper in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents (IJAA), led by Philippe Gautret of the Hospital Institute of Marseille Mediterranean Infection (IHU), claimed that treatment with hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, reduced virus levels in samples from COVID-19 patients, and that the drug was even more effective if used alongside the antibiotic azithromycin.

Then–IHU Director Didier Raoult, the paper’s senior author, enthused about the promise of the drug on social media and TV, leading to a wave of hype, including from then–U.S. President Donald Trump.

Read the full article. In March of this year, the cult raged at Trump for hailing the success of the COVID vaccine. Several months earlier, Trump had accused DeSantis of killing people with the COVID vaccine.

Infamous paper that popularized unproven COVID-19 treatment finally retracted

Study on hydroxychloroquine by Didier Raoult and colleagues gets pulled on ethical and scientific grounds
@cathleenogrady.bsky.social reports.

www.science.org/content/arti…

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— Elisabeth Bik (@elisabethbik.bsky.social) December 17, 2024 at 3:41 PM

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Musk And SpaceX Fail To Comply With Federal Rules On Protecting US State Secrets, Disclosing Foreign Contacts

Musk And SpaceX Fail To Comply With Federal Rules On Protecting US State Secrets, Disclosing Foreign Contacts:

The New York Times reports:

Elon Musk and his rocket company, SpaceX, have repeatedly failed to comply with federal reporting protocols aimed at protecting state secrets, including by not providing some details of his meetings with foreign leaders, according to people with knowledge of the company and internal documents.

Concerns about the reporting practices — and particularly about Mr. Musk, who is SpaceX’s chief executive — have triggered at least three federal reviews, eight people with knowledge of the efforts said. The Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General opened a review into the matter this year, and the Air Force and the Pentagon’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security separately initiated reviews last month.

The Air Force also recently denied Mr. Musk a high-level security access, citing potential security risks associated with the billionaire. Several allied nations, including Israel, have also expressed concerns that he could share sensitive data with others, according to defense officials.

Read the full article.

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GOP Rep. Cory Mills Under Mystery Ethics Investigation

GOP Rep. Cory Mills Under Mystery Ethics Investigation:

The Daytona Beach News-Journal reports:

U.S. Rep. Cory Mills, who was reelected to a second term by Florida 7th District voters in November, is under scrutiny by the House Ethics Committee. On Monday the committee stated it had “extended the matter regarding” Mills that had been provided by the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent, non-partisan entity charged with receiving and reviewing allegations of misconduct concerning House members and staff.

Mills’ Republican primary opponent, Michael Johnson, told The News-Journal in October – two months after the OCE’s referral to the Ethics Committee – he had mailed a 55-page “criminal complaint” against Mills to the Attorney General and FBI. Johnson, who declined comment to The News-Journal on Monday, and others had made allegations against Mills of “stolen valor,” claiming military accolades he had not received, earlier in the year.

Read the full article.

Locals have accused Mills of not living in Florida.

Mills first appeared on JMG in May 2022 when he threatened to attack journalists with the same tear gas that was used against Black Lives Matter protesters.

Mills’ company makes that tear gas as well as well as hand grenades, inert versions of which he handed out to House reps last year.

In January 2023, he appeared here when he gleefully posted about the near-fatal hammer attack on Paul Pelosi.

Later in 2023, Fox amplified Mills’ false claim that a Gold Star family was forced to pay $60,000 to retrieve their soldier son’s remains from Afghanistan. Fox then ignored pleas from the Marine Corps to retract their story.

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MI Court Upholds Felony Charges For Notorious Cultists

MI Court Upholds Felony Charges For Notorious Cultists:

Detroit’s CBS affiliate reports:

The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled to uphold charges against two men accused of issuing robocalls to intimidate Detroit voters during the 2020 election. The court ruled there was enough evidence to show that the robocalls issued by Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl were “intentionally false,” according to a news release.

The decision comes after the two men filed a motion in circuit court to quash the charges. The Michigan Supreme Court ordered the appeals court to review the case and determine if the robocalls included intentional false speech and attempted to influence a vote.

Burkman, 57, of Arlington, Virginia, and Wohl, 25, of Los Angeles, California, were charged with one count of bribing/intimidating voters, one count of conspiracy to commit an election law violation, one count of using a computer to commit the crime of election law and one count of using a computer to commit the crime of conspiracy.

Read the full article.

Wohl and Burkman last appeared here in September 2024 when they launched a lobbying firm under false names.

In April 2024, the pair were fined $1.25 million by the state of New York after a federal judge found that their racist robocalls violated the Ku Klux Klan Act.

In February 2024, they were hit with an $11 million racketeering lawsuit from a man who says they falsely accused him of being a child predator.  

In 2022, they were ordered to perform 500 hours of community service registering voters in minority neighborhoods. That same year the FCC fined the pair $5 million.

In 2019, Wohl as arrested on felony charges for allegedly illicit securities sales after having been banned for life from the National Futures Association.

Wohl appeared on JMG in September 2020 when he showed up outside the Supreme Court with a bullhorn to ridicule those mourning the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

As many longtime JMG readers will surely recall, during the 2016 presidential campaign Wohl and Burkman hired actors to falsely accuse multiple prominent Democrats and Robert Mueller of various sexual offenses.

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NY Post: Trump Org Wants To Buy Back DC Hotel

NY Post: Trump Org Wants To Buy Back DC Hotel:

The New York Post reports:

President-elect Donald Trump is weighing a bid to save the failing Waldorf-Astoria hotel in Washington, DC – and rebrand it once more as a Trump International Hotel, The Post has learned.

The incoming commander-in-chief’s company, the Trump Organization, is weighing options that include a licensing deal or even possibly buying back the lease on the government-owned, 125-year-old Old Post Office building.

“Our family has saved the hotel once. If asked, we would save it again,” Eric Trump told The Post. The luxury lodge at 1100 Pennsylvania Ave. – just a few blocks away from the White House – became a magnet for GOP insiders, DC lobbyists, and fundraisers after Trump opened the hotel in 2016.

Read the full article. Foreign governments and GOP candidates spent millions at the hotel in open attempts to curry favor with Glorious Leader. Saudi zillionaires sometimes booked an entire floor.

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Homocon Major Donor Named Ambassador To Belgium

Homocon Major Donor Named Ambassador To Belgium:

Politico reports:

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday tapped businessperson and major political donor Bill White to serve as U.S. ambassador to Belgium. White is the founder and CEO of Constellations Group, a Manhattan-based consulting firm, and previously served as president of the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York.

White abruptly stepped down from his post leading the Intrepid in 2010 amid a probe launched by New York’s then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo into a state pension scandal.

White allegedly acted as a middleman for investment companies hoping to win deals with the state fund, and “secretly” amassed fees from those deals — or as Cuomo put it, “used his access to fill his pockets.” White ultimately agreed to pay a $1 million settlement.

Read the full article.

White last appeared here in 2022 when Georgia lawmakers blocked his attempt to carve out a wealthy, mostly white Atlanta neighborhood into a standalone city.

He appeared here in 2021 when he launched a super PAC to unseat the ten Republican House reps who voted to impeach Trump.

You may recall the 2018 New York Times report on how White and his husband abandoned a lifetime of liberal advocacy to join the cult.

Donald Trump just tapped Bill White as Ambassador to Belgium.

You know, the guy who agreed to pay a $1,000,000 fine to settle charges that he was involved in the state pension fund pay to play scandal in 2010.

Did he pay to play this time too?

What an utter disgrace.

— Art Candee (@artcandee.bsky.social) December 14, 2024 at 2:27 PM

BREAKING

Trump picks Bill White as ambassador to Belgium

A major donor and surrogate to Trump’s 2024 campaign, White previously backed President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, both Democrats.

www.politico.com/news/2024/12…

[image or embed]

— Lauren Ashley Davis (@laurenmeidasa.bsky.social) December 14, 2024 at 3:55 PM

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NBC: Kennedy Has Said Polio Vaccine Does Not Work

NBC: Kennedy Has Said Polio Vaccine Does Not Work:

“There is not a vaccine that Kennedy thinks is safe or effective. These folks don’t believe the polio vaccine actually stopped polio. It’s true! They think it is a combination of better sewage, of refrigeration. They are polio truthers. That is what they believe. Robert F. Kennedy has told me this. And so, absolutely, they wanna get rid of all of them. And not just get rid of all of them. They say, ‘We don’t want to get rid of any vaccines. We just want to test them.'” – NBC News reporter Brandy Zadrozny, last night on MSNBC’s All In With Chris Hayes. There are indeed many “polio truthers” on X. A sampling is below.

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WATCH: A bullied queer kid blossoms into the electrifying queen Lady Camden in this joyful new doc

WATCH: A bullied queer kid blossoms into the electrifying queen Lady Camden in this joyful new doc:

Image Credit: ‘Lady Like,’ Freestyle Digital Media

Every queen is a lady, but what’s it take to make Lady a queen?

That question’s at the heart of Lady Like, a fascinating, intimate, and joyful new documentary from filmmaker Luke Willis about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 14 runner-up Lady Camden, a.k.a. artist & dancer Rex Wheeler.

The Camden Town, London-born performer (hence the drag name), has been subverting people’s expectations of him pretty much his entire life:

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“I remember you guys telling me that you thought I was going to be really kind of butch and sexy because my name is Rex,” he jokes to some people he’s working with early in the film. “And then I got here and you’re like, ‘Oh, he’s a sister!'”

That element of surprise has certainly played into his drag career, too. When Lady Camden first strutted into the Werk Room on Drag Race, she certainly had polished looks and some solid dance moves that proved she earned her spot there, but it took some time ’til she really showed what she was made of and blossomed into a real threat for the crown.

(For our money, the turning point was definitely the episode that featured her hilarious “Daytona Wind” acting performance, her immediately iconic faux-stumble on the runway, and her energetic winning lip-sync to Blondie’s “One Way Or Another.”)

So how did Wheeler go from classically trained dancer at the Royal Ballet School in London to the performing in drag on the biggest stages of the world? Well, that’s what Lady Like is all about!

Described as a “rags-to-riches origin story,” the documentary starts at the very beginning. Though he grew up around the electrifying nightlight & arts scene of Camden Town with a mother who has long supported his interest in the arts, it wasn’t always easy for Wheeler, who faced bullying and other challenges in his youth.

However, life’s troubles are what inspired him to turn to the fantasy and escapism of the performing arts, a place where he could become anything he wanted—even a glamorous drag queen named Lady Camden.

Image Credit: ‘Lady Like,’ Freestyle Digital Media

Lady Like also offer an unprecedented look at what its like to be a “local queen” suddenly thrust into the spotlight of a massively popular series like Drag Race. As someone who has always struggled with their self-confidence, Wheeler couldn’t quite anticipate what it’d be like for viewers of the show to suddenly be criticizing her every look, her every though. her every plie.

But just like Lady Camden sang in her Season 14 finale song, every time she fell down, she got right back up again. And though she may have come just short of the crown, her victory was something greater, which the film proves as it takes us with Wheeler on his whirlwind journey around the world to perform for—and connect with—adoring fans moved by his empowering message.

Related

The 10 best lip-syncs from ‘Drag Race’ Season 14 ranked
Check out the performances that had us gooped, gagged, and ready to hit that “replay” button.

“Following Lady Camden the past few years through her rise to international fame has been an incredibly healing journey for me,” director Luke Willis shares in a press statement. “Lady Camden/Rex’s journey to seek sanctuary in the theater is universal even beyond queer communities because it is a story of searching for one’s place in the world. Everyone in all walks of life knows what it is to feel like an outsider. It is incredibly powerful to witness someone harness the courage to strike out and find where they do belong despite the odds.”

Featuring narration by fellow Drag Race alum Nina West, Lady Like made its world premiere at the BFI Flare London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival last spring, and has since played festivals all over the world, now it’s finally heading to streaming VOD channels in the U.S. on January 3, courtesy of Freestyle Digital Media.

Check out the newest trailer for Lady Like below:

Related

Drag is everywhere, baby: Stream these movies & series featuring ‘Drag Race’ RuGirls this weekend
Your weekend streaming recs feature cameos from our favorite RuGirls—and, honey, the divas are acting down!

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Saudi Arabia kills its gay citizens. It will host the FIFA World Cup in 2034.

Saudi Arabia kills its gay citizens. It will host the FIFA World Cup in 2034.:

On Wednesday, FIFA, the international soccer federation responsible for organizing the quadrennial men’s World Cup, formally awarded the 2034 tournament to Saudi Arabia, the lone nation to submit a bid after Australia and New Zealand dropped out in 2023.

Homosexuality is punishable by execution in Saudi Arabia, and human rights organizations have condemned FIFA’s decision.

Related

Rod Stewart turns down Saudi Arabia gig over the country’s anti-LGBTQ+ human rights abuses
“I’d like my choice not to go…to shine a light on the injustices there and ignite positive change.”

“Today’s confirmation of Saudi Arabia as host of the 2034 FIFA men’s World Cup, despite the well-known and severe risks to residents, migrant workers and visiting fans alike, marks a moment of great danger,” read a joint statement from nearly two dozen groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

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“There is no shortage of evidence of migrant workers being exploited and subjected to [racial discrimination], activists sentenced to decades in prison for expressing themselves peacefully, women and LGBTQIA+ people facing legalized discrimination, or residents forcibly evicted to make way for state projects,” the statement added. “It is evident that without urgent action and comprehensive reforms, the 2034 World Cup will be tarnished by repression, discrimination and exploitation on a massive scale.”

Saudi Arabia’s winning bid comes two years after neighboring Qatar hosted a winter World Cup in 2022, where public displays of LGBTQ+ allyship — including rainbow attire — were banned by the government. Leading up to the tournament, FIFA said it would discipline players and teams with expulsion over plans to demonstrate against Qatar’s draconian anti-LGBTQ+ laws on the pitch.

At the time, FIFA urged federations to “focus on the football.”

As in Saudi Arabia, homosexuality in Qatar is also punishable by execution.

In its evaluation of the Saudi bid, FIFA scored the counrty 4.2 points out a possible 5, the highest score earned by any country in the organization’s history. Neither the bid nor FIFA’s evaluation mentioned LGBTQ+ rights specifically, and the football organization was vague in addressing the issue.

“As part of the Human Rights Strategy, the bidder commits to ensuring a secure and inclusive tournament environment free from discrimination through the implementation of policies, procedures and educational measures to address discrimination in the tournament context,” the evaluation stated.

Human rights groups accused FIFA of complicity in Saudi Arabia’s abuses.

“As expected, FIFA’s evaluation of Saudi Arabia’s World Cup bid is an astonishing whitewash of the country’s atrocious human rights record,” Steve Cockburn, Amnesty International’s head of labor rights and sport, told the Athletic. “There are no meaningful commitments that will prevent workers from being exploited, residents from being evicted, or activists from being arrested.”

“By ignoring the clear evidence of severe human-rights risks, FIFA is likely to bear much responsibility for the violations and abuses that will take place over the coming decade,” Cockburn added.

The victims of those violations include LGBTQ+ Saudis subject to the country’s lethal penalty for same-sex behavior.

“There is substantial evidence of the law being enforced in recent years, with LGBT people being frequently subject to arrest… some of those arrested have been executed by authorities,” wrote the Human Dignity Trust, a charity providing legal protections to the LGBTQ+ community globally.

In its evaluation, FIFA rated Saudi Arabia’s human rights record as “medium risk.”

Said one Saudi women’s rights activist, “We cannot say that Saudi Arabia is a ‘medium risk’ country, given that it has become a pure police state.”

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.

Latest California child to become ill after drinking raw milk does not have bird flu, CDC says

Latest California child to become ill after drinking raw milk does not have bird flu, CDC says:

A Northern California child who consumed raw milk and became severely ill did not have the bird flu virus, according to tests conducted by the CDC.

Tressie McMillan Cottom: “Whether you call it crony capitalism or just an...

Tressie McMillan Cottom: “Whether you call it crony capitalism or just an...:

Tressie McMillan Cottom: “Whether you call it crony capitalism or just an unfair economy, the market sets the rules for which lives matter. We have set up a system of interlocking ninth circles of hell for all of our basic needs.”

Upcoming 4th Anniversary of AZGOP Conspiring to Steal the 2020 election from voters

 

The Origin of Delay, Deny, Defend

The Origin of Delay, Deny, Defend:

In the wake of the murder of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, a book published in 2010 by Rutgers Law professor Jay Feinman has hit the bestseller charts: Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It. The book’s title is a reference to an insurance industry strategy of denying legitimate claims to boost profits. Bullet casings at the scene of the shooting referenced the same strategy: they were labelled “deny”, “defend”, and “depose”.

The introduction to the book is available online and it describes the origin of delay, deny, defend:

Delay, deny, defend violates the rules for handling claims that are recognized by every company, taught to adjusters, and embodied in law. Within the vast bureaucracy of insurance companies, actuaries assess risks, underwriters price policies and evaluate prospective policyholders, and agents market policies. The claims department’s only job is to pay what is owed, no more but no less. A classic text used to train adjusters, James Markham’s The Claims Environment, states the principle: “The essential function of a claim department is to fulfill the insurance company’s promise, as set forth in the insurance policy… The claim function should ensure the prompt, fair, and efficient delivery of this promise.”

Beginning in the 1990s, many major insurance companies reconsidered this understanding of the claims process. The insight was simple. An insurance company’s greatest expense is what it pays out in claims. If it pays out less in claims, it keeps more in profits. Therefore, the claims department became a profit center rather than the place that kept the company’s promise.

A major step in this shift occurred when Allstate and other companies hired the megaconsulting firm McKinsey & Company to develop new strategies for handling claims. McKinsey saw claims as a “zero-sum game,” with the policyholder and the company competing for the same dollars. No longer would each claim be treated on its merits. Instead, computer systems would be put in place to set the amounts policyholders would be offered, claimants would be deterred from hiring lawyers to help with their claims, and settlements would be offered on a take-it-or-litigate basis. If Allstate moved from “Good Hands” to “Boxing Gloves,” as McKinsey described it, policyholders would either take a lowball offer from the good hands people or face the boxing gloves of extended litigation.

I don’t know about you, but the violence implied by the “Boxing Gloves” metaphor is particularly galling — but also germane to the national conversation we’re currently having about violence, culpability, and who is and isn’t sanctioned by the state to decide who suffers or dies.

Tags: books · crime · healthcare · Jay Feinman · murder

Hegseth Attacks ProPublica Over Nonexistent Story

Hegseth Attacks ProPublica Over Nonexistent Story:

Mediaite reports:

Jesse Eisinger, a senior editor and reporter at ProPublica, hit back at President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon on Wednesday after Pete Hegseth attacked the news organization for inquiring about his acceptance to West Point.

Hegseth, a former Fox News morning show host and pro-MAGA culture warrior, wrote on X, “We understand that ProPublica (the Left Wing hack group) is planning to publish a knowingly false report that I was not accepted to West Point in 1999.”

Eisinger shared Hegseth’s attack on his publication and explained the back story. “Here’s a story about how journalism works. Spoiler Alert: This is how we decide *not* to publish,” Eisinger began in a thread.

Read the full article.

The cult is pouring into Eisinger’s replies with abuse.

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An Oregon teacher was chastised for supporting LGBTQ+ students. She sued and won $90,000

An Oregon teacher was chastised for supporting LGBTQ+ students. She sued and won $90,000:

An Oregon teacher has been awarded $90,000 after suing her district for creating a hostile work environment for her over her defense of LGBTQ+ students.