Douglas Caddy

Alito Took Unreported Luxury Trip With GOP Donor Paul Singer — ProPublica

Vital information from Prof. Juan Cole of the U. of Michigan for members of this Cooler: The difference between 106 °F and 110 °F is that at the latter temperature many aircraft can no longer take off. Fast moving air molecules make for thinner air and it can no longer provide the lift beneath the plane’s wings necessary for take-off. Likewise if it is both hot and humid, and you go out and exert yourself, you can get heat stroke, which happens if your body heats up to 104 °F (40 °C).

Judge slaps down MAGA lawyer John Eastman's attempt to call 'expert' witness at disbarment hearing - Raw Story - Celebrating 19 Years of Independent Journalism

Biden says Russian threat of Putin using nuclear weapons is 'real' - The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com)

Judge Aileen Cannon wants Trump's trial over his classified documents scandal to be wrapped up by September (msn.com) It will be an unusual inauguration with the Warden of the prison administering the oath of office to the newly re-elected president who has no chance of getting released early from incarceration for good behavior.

David Talbot posted this on Facebook today: The Most Dangerous Man in America -- There have been lots of tributes to the late Pentagon Papers whistleblower and truth activist Daniel Ellsberg, as there should. Dan was a heroic and exemplary man. I had the opportunity to interview Dan and to hang out with him -- mostly through his close friendship with my own friend and wise man Peter Dale Scott. I found Dan open-hearted and easy to talk with -- but he was not warm and cuddly. He had a sharp intellect, and when I knew him, he aimed it at those in power, the (mostly) men he had worked with in the national security establishment. Dan, who was a military adviser to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, was bluntly honest about the treasonous passions in uniformed circles against President Kennedy after the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. When I interviewed him for my 2007 book "Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years," Ellsberg told me: "There was virtually a coup atmosphere in Pentagon circles Not that I had the fear there was about to be a coup -- I just thought it was a mood of hatred and rage. The atmosphere was poisonous, poisonous." Dan thought long and hard about signing his name to a powerful public letter that Adam Walinsky, a close aide to Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and I wrote and unveiled in January 2019. The public statement declared that John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X -- the four leaders whose assassinations tragically changed the course of American history in the 1960s -- were victims of the national security state. The letter called on Congress to force the CIA and other security agencies to abide by the 1992 JFK Act and release all relevant documents and to open a new assassinations inquest by an independent commission modeled on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation hearings. https://www.facebook.com/legacy/notes/2211554989056103/ The public letter was signed by an impressive list of prominent public figures, including family members and close advisors of the Kennedy brothers, King and Malcolm X ; Dr. Robert McClelland, one of the surgeons who worked on the mortally wounded President Kennedy at Parkland Hospital and saw with his own expert eyes that he had been shot from the front and back; and G. Robert Blakey, the former chief counsel for the 1970s House Select Committee on Assassinations, who for a long time had pinned the JFK assassination solely on organized crime. (Mob figures like Jack Ruby did play important support roles in the crime, under the direction of their CIA handlers.) The public letter and its noteworthy signatories was a big news event. Only the Washington Post, among major news outlets, covered it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../kennedy-king-malcolm.../ Soon the letter disappeared into the dark void where all convulsive revelations about our violent country are buried. You should read the public letter and all those who signed it. As David Crosby, one of the letter signers, told the audience at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival between songs, You should know the truth as American citizens. As I said, Dan Ellsberg thought long and hard about signing his name to the letter about the violent deaths of the Kennedys, King and Malcolm X. He knew painfully well what those assassinations had done to the heart and soul of his country. But he also knew how important his name had become, and how it would add to the gravity of the topic, which the corporate media still hides from. But Dan Ellsberg -- who for years had read and listened to esteemed Kennedy researchers like his friend Peter Dale Scott -- in the end told the truth. Dan told me that I could add his name to the letter. To the end, Daniel Ellsberg stood for the truth, no matter what.

Reality Winner prosecutor provides roadmap for speeding up Trump's espionage trial - Raw Story - Celebrating 19 Years of Independent Journalism

Long was a big critic of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. I remember a Life Magazine article that preceded his death that focused upon this aspect. It sounds strange but about two weeks ago I thought about Long and his feud with the FBI.

Daavid Talbot just posted this on Facebook: Reader beware -- Once upon a time, Rolling Stone was the voice of its generation. Sure, founder Jann Wenner got lots of dooky from radicals who thought he had sold out. He did. He became a millionaire off the counterculture's music. But Wenner was also kind of one of us. In the early years, Rolling Stone covered traumatic events like the violent Altamont concert, the Patty Hearst kidnapping and Watergate, as well as the deep thoughts of musical icons like John Lennon and Bob Dylan and Pete Townshend. Wenner published writers like Hunter Thompson, Joe Eszterhas, Richard Goodwin ad Tom Hayden. He made photographer Annie Leibovitz a star. Rolling Stone, for all its creeping commercialism, was important. That’s why I was honored when Jann Wenner agreed to serve on my board at Salon. By then, he had moved RS to New York, but Salon had the feisty, early spirit of the San Francisco-era Rolling Stone. One afternoon in the early 2000s, I was meeting with Wenner in his sunny New York office on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, when he wheeled around to the computer on his desk and said, “I’ve got to come up with a headline for this article by Bobby Kennedy.” RFK Jr. – one of the country’s leading environmental lawyers at the time – had written a scathing essay for the magazine about how polluters and other corporations had captured Washington’s regulatory system, the network of federal agencies that are supposed to protect the American worker and consumer. “Call it ‘Crimes Against Nature,’” I suggested. And that became not only the title of Kennedy’s story, but also his 2005 book. As I said, Rolling Stone used to be important. But no more. In 2017, an aging Wenner finally cashed out and sold his media creation to Jay Penske, son of billionaire Roger Penske, the former racecar driver who built a transportation empire. The young Penske added Rolling Stone to his fledgling media empire – formerly prosperous brands that were now distressed, like Variety, Hollywood Reporter and even the once alternative SXSW festival in Austin. The overnight media mogul was suddenly hailed as “the Rupert Murdoch of the entertainment world.” Did Jay Penske turn to his rich daddy to crown himself king of the entertainment media? No, Penske went to hedge fund trader Dan Loeb, a financial backer of the charter school movement, conservative Democrats like New York Mayor Eric Adams and some Republican politicians too. In other words, public officials who advance Loeb’s corporatist agenda. Penske also took blood money from Saudi Arabia’s royalty. That’s how he built a media empire that includes Rolling Stone. Instead of advancing alternative viewpoints, Penske has given the CIA a platform at the annual SXSW conference to recruit young techies and hungry artists. That’s what the Rupert Murdoch of entertainment media stands for. And instead of featuring Robert Kennedy Jr. as a regular contributor, as Jann Wenner’s Rolling Stone used to, Penske now uses the magazine to smear RFK Jr. As for Salon, the online publication I founded in 1995, it too has fallen into sketchy hands. Salon now regularly attacks RFK Jr. when in my day we would’ve welcomed his presidential candidacy as one of the most important political insurgencies in many years. For the record, I don’t even know who owns Salon at this point. I never held the financial reins of the publication and I certainly didn’t profit handsomely from its sale as Wenner did with Rolling Stone. RFK Jr. is reportedly using podcasts as his alternative media platform. Rising quicky in the polls to some 20% of Democratic voters, and boasting a favorability rating that beats Biden and Trump, whatever media strategy he’s pursuing seems to be working. Whatever it is, he realizes that publications like Rolling Stone and Salon are no longer part of the solution – they’re part of the problem. PS CIA officials did kill JFK. Somebody break it gently to Rolling Stone.

Simulations show politically motivated gerrymandering mostly evens out on a national scale (phys.org)

Nusrat Chowdhury confirmed as the first Muslim female federal judge in U.S. history | AP News

Wal Street Journal News Report this morning Federal Probe Advances Into Trump’s Effort to Reverse 2020 Election - WSJ

Perceptive commentary by Peggy Noonan The Indictment Can Only Hurt Trump - WSJ

American Huckster - PREVAIL by Greg Olear (substack.com)

What Does the FBI Have on Hunter and Joe Biden? (theintercept.com)

RFK Jr suggests CIA assassinated JFK and says he takes 'precautions' to avoid the same fate - Raw Story - Celebrating 19 Years of Independent Journalism

Supreme Court Set to Rule on Affirmative Action, Student-Loan Forgiveness and Gay Rights in Final Weeks of Session - WSJ

Biden could lose first two '24 Democratic primaries to RFK Jr. (axios.com)

One nuclear-armed Poseidon torpedo could decimate a coastal city. Russia wants 30 of them. - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (thebulletin.org)