Homecoming Queen

Kentucky's Election Force, Control Issues, If Trump Wins...

We often wonder if one person can really make a difference in a democracy. When it comes to Hadley Duvall, the answer has been yes, and she may not be done yet. You probably haven't heard of Duvall if you don't live in Kentucky. In that state, she was the face of an ad that had a major impact on the state's gubernatorial race. As a child, Duvall was repeatedly raped by a relative and she decided to tell her story in a commercial when Kentucky moved toward adopting extreme abortion policies. The electorate of Kentucky reacted. So did her college classmates. "One month before the governor thanked her for his victory, Hadley Duvall had already won. Standing in the middle of a football field in mid-October, she looked out at the students of her small Christian university, stunned to be the one wearing the rhinestone tiara. Her classmates could have chosen to honor the student body president or a leading member of the local Bible study. Instead, they’d picked Hadley, the face of a viral ad about abortion and sexual abuse that had begun airing a month earlier, and would soon help Democrats hold the governor’s mansion in one of the most conservative states in the country. 'They don’t hate me,' Duvall, 21, recalled thinking as she accepted a bouquet of red roses from her college president. 'They made me homecoming queen.'" Caroline Kitchener in WaPo (Gift Article): ‘Everybody’s daughter’: The rape victim behind Kentucky’s viral abortion ad. "“I’m not pro-abortion ... I’m pro minding your own business."

2

Control Issues

They're part of a "fatigued, distracted and demoralized work force that is increasingly prone to making mistakes." OK, that might not sound too far off from your place of work. There were reports of people sleeping on the job and one about an employee who "went into work drunk this summer and joked about 'making big money buzzed.' Another routinely smoked marijuana during breaks. A third employee threatened violence and then 'aggressively pushed' a colleague." OK, but you could find evidence of such transgressions by combing through the scripts from The Office. But this is no ordinary place of work. There's more at stake at this office than whether or not Jim and Pam get together. The colleague who was aggressively pushed was an air traffic controller in the process of directing airplanes. "While the U.S. airspace is remarkably safe, potentially dangerous close calls have been happening, on average, multiple times a week this year ... Some controllers say they fear that a deadly crash is inevitable." NYT(Gift Article): Drunk and Asleep on the Job: Air Traffic Controllers Pushed to the Brink. (If you want to work buzzed, high, sleepy, distracted, and violent, I suggest you consider writing a daily newsletter, that way no one except the proofreader gets hurt.)

3

Jefferson Error Plain

"When Jefferson Davis doddered into that courtroom, many of the faces he saw were Black. Among the two hundred spectators, a quarter were Black freedmen. And then the grand jury filed in. Six of its eighteen members were Black, the first Black men to serve on a federal grand jury. Fields Cook, born a slave, was a Baptist minister. John Oliver, born free, had spent much of his life in Boston. George Lewis Seaton’s mother, Lucinda, had been enslaved at Mount Vernon. Cornelius Liggan Harris, a Black shoemaker, later recalled how, when he took his seat with the grand jury and eyed the defendant, 'he looked on me and smiled.' Not many minutes later, Davis walked out a free man, released on bail. And not too many months after that the federal government’s case against him fell apart." In The New Yorker, Jill Lepore with some history that's all-too applicable to the present: What Happened When the U.S. Failed to Prosecute an Insurrectionist Ex-President. "After the Civil War, Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, was to be tried for treason. Does the debacle hold lessons for the trials awaiting Donald Trump?"

4

Brand Campaign

Many of Israel's military "goals are plausibly achievable. But Israel’s larger stated aim—of utterly eradicating Hamas—is impossible. Hamas is a brand name, not a list of individuals and objects. Israel could destroy its leaders and all of its equipment, declare victory, and leave Gaza to its fate. Hamas, in some form, would still crawl out of the rubble and declare a 'divine victory' of its own." Israel has the right to defend itself and any nation in the world would react with force after Oct 7. But can an Israeli military victory also be a political one? Hussein Ibish in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Israel’s Impossible Dilemma.

+ The protesters shouted: "Goldie, Goldie, you can't hide. We charge you with genocide.' The dilemma for many American Jews includes the rampant rise of antisemitism. White House blasts protest of Israeli restaurant in Philadelphia as 'unjustifiable.' And Islamophobia is also on the rise. The Palestinian American student who was shot in Vermont is paralyzed from the chest down. In ways big and small, the battle over a sliver of land plays out across the world.

+ Here's the latest from CNN, BBC, and Times of Israel.

5

Extra, Extra

Another Winter is Coming: "The meeting in Brussels, less than two weeks into the campaign, illustrates how a counteroffensive born in optimism has failed to deliver its expected punch, generating friction and second-guessing between Washington and Kyiv and raising deeper questions about Ukraine’s ability to retake decisive amounts of territory." WaPo (Gift Article): Miscalculations, divisions marked offensive planning by U.S., Ukraine. It will take a few history books to place blame for what went wrong in the past few months. In the next few months, it could be a lot more clear. "The Biden administration on Monday sent Congress an urgent warning about the need to approve tens of billions of dollars in military and economic assistance to Ukraine, saying Kyiv's war effort to defend itself from Russia's invasion may grind to a halt without it."

+ Don't Ask, Don't Sell: Meanwhile, on the broader issue of defense spending... Congressional members want $26 billion for programs the Pentagon didn’t seek. "It is hardly new for Congress to add considerable funds for their favored defense programs. But the growing cost of lawmakers’ hundreds of additions to the defense bill each year has received little discussion as a distinct issue, partly because the vast majority of the projects are individually not top-dollar or high-profile."

+ Loyal to a Fault Line: "Even if mainstream Republicans did want to work for him again, Trump is unlikely to want them. He’s made little secret of the fact that he felt burned by many in his first Cabinet. This time around, according to people in Trump’s orbit, he would prioritize obedience over credentials." McKay Coppins in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Loyalists, Lapdogs, and Cronies. This is part of a new series from The Atlantic: If Trump Wins. And from the NYT (Gift Article): Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First. (I think NYT headline editors can safely replace the word May with the word Will.)

+ Consumers Not Spent: Here's something that has confused a lot of economists. "Throughout a period of sky-high interest rates, depleted savings and grinding inflation, Americans have spent with abandon."

+ Awaiting a Stipe End: The end of the world as Michael Stipe knew it came to an end when REM disbanded. Recently, he's been working on a solo album. But life keeps getting in the way. NYT Mag (Gift Article): Michael Stipe Is Writing His Next Act. Slowly.

6

Bottom of the News

The term is thought to be a shortened form of the word charisma and it's been named word of the year 2023 by Oxford University Press. Do you have any rizz? (Sadly, I'm rizz averse.)

+ "Kiss's avatars seem unlikely to be as grounded in reality as Abba's digital replicas. The characters that appeared in New York were 8ft tall, breathing fire and shooting electricity from their fingers, while floating above the audience." Kiss to become 'immortal' thanks to Abba's avatar technology. Uh, good?