To celebrate the Fourth of July, a few bits of news unrelated to happenings in legislature and courts:
In good news about the economy, the U.S. GDP grew at a two percent annualized rate in the first quarter, well above the 1.3 percent estimate and the Dow Jones 1.4 percent consensus forecast—another indicator that a recession is not eminent. Layoffs running well below expectations show the labor market strength is holding up. Consumer spending rose 4.2 percent, the highest quarterly pace since 2021’s second quarter, and exports rose 7.8 percent after falling 3.7 percent in the previous quarter.
Republicans always campaign against Democrats on the economy, and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), a presidential candidate, claims that after a “thriving” economy three years ago, “we’re all worse off under the Biden administration.” Three years ago, the unemployment rate was 11 percent; now it’s 3.7 percent. Three years ago, the U.S. economy was shrinking; now it’s growing. On June 29, 2020, exactly three years before Scott’s statement, the S&P 500 index closed at 3,053.24. Three years later, the S&P 500 index closed at 4,396.44. Manufacturing and construction are growing. Although inflation is still not satisfactory, it’s shrinking with the lowest inflation and strongest economic growth in the G7 countries.
Elon Musk seems determined to kill Twitter, this time by limiting the number of tweets users can read. Verified users are restricted to looking at 10,000 posts daily and unverified users only 1,000. Newly unverified users only 500, and not a user? None. Complaints from users that Twitter was not putting newer tweets on their feeds resulted in an endless loop of “rate limit exceeded” error.” Musk complained about unverified “extreme levels of data scraping” and “system manipulation” and threatened “lawsuit time” with a claim that Microsoft was “illegally” using Twitter’s data.
Meta’s launch of a Twitter rival called “Threads” set for release this week is looking better and better. A top Meta executive called Threads a “sanely run” competitor. Connected to Instagram, it has access to 2 billion monthly users compared to Twitter’s 264 million. Instagram historically copies key features from competitors.
For eight months, Musk permitted the fake account from a non-existent “liberal” who delivered offensive tweets providing grist for conservatives’ mill about how horrible the progressives are. Erica Marsh had 130,000 followers on a verified account when the viral account of a “proud Democrat” from Washington disappeared. The tweeter’s blue “verified” check mark means only that someone paid for it. Although Marsh said she worked as a field organizer, no record of her supposed volunteer work for either Biden or former President Barack Obama exists. Her Twitter-posted selfies appear to be digitally manipulated.
Musk’s desire for online engagement at any cost to Democrats overran his claim to eradicate scammers and spam. Marsh’s tactic of “rage baiting” was extensively used by Russian government trolls to create chaos during the 2016 presidential campaign. Troll farms in North Macedonia customarily run sensationalist websites and take over Facebook pages to obtain funding from angry U.S. readers. For months, the Marsh account included a Venmo account link where readers can send money.
The struggling financial partner of Deposed Donald Trump’s (DDT) media company running his Truth Social, Digital World Acquisition, has offered $18 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle an investigation into its merger with Media and Technology Group. After charges of fraud, Digital received a year’s extension which expires on September 8 before it would have to liquidate and return $300 million to investors without a merger. As part of the agreement, Digital promised to amend its registration filing to remove former falsehoods but would also have to satisfy the discrepancy between Digital’s valuation of up to $1.7 billion given to DDT in October 2021 and DDT’s value of $5 million to $25 million in his campaign finance filings in April 2023.
The British media regulator Ofcom is investigating broadcast standards in Rupert Murdoch’s UK television network, TalkTV. The question is whether the former Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) leader Alex Salmond violated “rules requiring news and current affairs to be presented with due impartiality.” Ofcom has another investigation into TalkTV’s rival, GB News, after Conservative lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg covered a breaking news story about DDT’s civil sexual assault verdict on May 9. Rules “prevent politicians from acting as newsreaders in any news programs, unless exceptionally, it is editorially justified.”
After the Tucker Carlson fiasco on Fox, also charged almost $787.5 million, the network continues to purge people, laying off eight of his show’s staffers after the departures of senior producers Alexander McCaskill and Thomas Fox. The producers were named in a harassment lawsuit by former producer Abby Grossberg, who settled for $12 million to dismiss her suit. In shuffling its stars, Fox dropped Geraldo Rivera as a host for 22 years on The Five; Rivera, 80, quit the network. In his last appearance on Fox, Rivera praised the effects that affirmative action had on his career after the Supreme Court decision eliminated it in higher education.
Fox’s programming reassignments to replace Tucker Carlson, set for July 17, keeps its pro-DDT lineup. Jesse Watters offensiveness and calls for violence paid off: he moves from 7:00 pm to Carlson’s old slot at 8:00 pm. Sean Hannity stays at 9:00 pm, but once popular Laura Ingraham was switched from the tails of Hannity at 10:00 to Watters’ old 7:00 pm slot. She is replaced by conservative comedian, Greg Gutfeld. The network hopes to regain its audience after its average of 2.6 million viewers dropped to 1.6 million, a 38 percent decrease. For the week of June 5, MSNBC’s prime time scored more viewers than on Fox.
In the 2019 film Bombshell about former Fox News chief Roger Ailes’ own sexual harassment scandal, a jaded producer at the network explains to a new hire the network’s required themes:
“The world is a bad place, people are lazy morons, minorities are criminals, sex is sick but interesting. Ask yourself, ‘What would scare my grandmother, or piss off my grandfather?’ And that’s a Fox story.”
Pro-choice advocates are using religious freedom in legal battles challenging state bans on abortion. Members of various religions have filed 15 lawsuits in eight states stating abortion bans and restrictions infringe on their faiths. Some of them want abortion in at least some prohibited circumstances and assert the bans violate religious liberty guarantees and the separation of church and state. Elizabeth Sepper, law professor at University of Texas at Austin, said that “religious liberty doesn’t operate in one direction.”
A few of the lawsuits are experiencing some success. In Indiana, a judge issued a preliminary injunction blocked the state’s abortion law because it violated Indiana’s 2015 Religious Freedom Restoration Act enacted under then-Gov. Mike Pence, a strong anti-abortion activist. Oklahoma and West Virginia amended their religion freedom restoration acts in preparation for similar lawsuits. Some faiths support women making their own decisions and support abortion in certain cases. Others don’t define life as beginning with contraception.
Florida lawsuits filed by Episcopal, Buddhist, Unitarian Universalist, Jewish, and United Church of Christ clergy state abortion restrictions violate “clerical obligations and faith” and impose “severe barriers” on religious belief, speech, and conduct. Many plaintiffs declare abortion bans embed conservative Christian ideology into state law. Sarah Baron, a 38-year-old mother of two and a board member of a conservative Louisville synagogue, said:
“The Torah teaches us that the fetus does not have the same personhood status as the mother until its first breath.”
Kentucky’s law violates her religious beliefs by not allowing her to make a decision about an abortion if she suffers severe physical or psychological harm or the fetus is nonviable.
The Satanic Temple, which the IRS recognizes as a religion, filed its first pro-choice lawsuits after the Supreme Court’s 2014 Hobby Lobby decision exempting family-owned corporations from the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that insurance cover contraceptives. The group, with lawsuits pending in Idaho, Texas, and Indiana, recently started the first telemedicine abortion service operated by a religion. A critic of the lawsuits used the argument that plaintiffs aren’t actually pregnant, but the DDT-appointed federal judge in Texas ruling against the use of mifepristone throughout the entire country didn’t require plaintiffs to exhibit any injury.
NRA’s “good guy with a gun,” the guard at Parkland High School in Florida too afraid to get involved, Scot Peterson, was acquitted on all charges of child neglect. He stayed 75 feet from the building where the murderer killed 17 people and injured another 17 until the massacre was over. Hiring school “security guards” seems a useless expenditure.
Mass shootings with the most deaths thus far in July 2023:
- July 3: Using an AR-15 and a handgun, a man wearing a bullet-proof vest killed five people and wounded two children on the streets of Philadelphia.
- July 3: Just before midnight, gunfire killed three and wounded eight in Fort Worth (TX). In another mass shooting on the same day, four people were injured.
- July 1: Multiple suspects killed two people and injured another 28 at a block party in Baltimore.
Other mass shootings commemorating the Fourth of July in 2023:
- July 4 (thus far): Charlotte (NC), four injured; Lansing (MI), five injured; Akron (OH), 4 injured.
- July 3: Indianapolis, three injured and one killed; Saint Ann (MO), three killed and one injured; Truman (MN), four injured.
- July 2: Bronx, four injured; Wichita (KS), nine injured.
- July 1: Tulsa (OK), four injured.
That’s 14 dead in 13 different shootings with another 80 injured. In one shooting, the suspect was killed; two suspects were arrested in two other shootings. Just another weekend in free America.
Nel's New Day 