March 11, 2024 - What No One's Telling You About Macy's

… Biden vs. Netanyahu … Netanyahu vs. Biden … Macy’s dies in darkness … crypto bros to pay cash for U.S. Senate …

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Israel to Occupy Biden’s Head, Rent-Free

On Saturday, Pres. Joe Biden said that an Israeli invasion of Rafah, the besieged city in the besieged strip of Gaza, would represent a “red line.”

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will invade Rafah. And in case Biden didn’t notice the finger-sausage in his eye, Netanyahu said, “You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is? That October 7 doesn't happen again.”

The line was an obvious attack on Biden, but it was in self-defense so it’s cool.

At the moment, about half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are sheltering in Rafah…where they were told to seek shelter.

Biden on Saturday escalated the conflict between him and Netanyahu, who Biden is also actively helping to fight Israel’s conflict with Hamas. Israel has now killed more than 30,000 mostly non-Hamas people to ensure that the death of 1200 people doesn’t happen again. In his remarks, Biden said he could not accept “30,000 more Palestinians dead.”

But Biden at the moment is facilitating exactly that outcome. And even Biden’s most vocal critics are stopping short of insisting on full enforcement of existing law.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) yesterday said the U.S. should start putting conditions on aid to Israel unless it lets more humanitarian aid into Gaza. But there are already conditions on U.S. military aid and we’ve opted — against the law, as far as I can tell! — not to enforce the conditions we’ve already put on this aid.

No one seems to give a shit that the State Department is not allowed to sign off on arms shipments that might be used to kill civilians. And is currently doing so anyway.

The question for Biden now is, with Netanyahu announcing a direct assault on Biden’s line, how extreme is Biden willing to be in self-defense? Because I’m told pretty much anything can be justified by self-defense.

U.S. MILITARY TO THE RESCUE With the Pentagon supplying Israel with materiel, it’s increasingly urgent that the Pentagon help relieve the suffering caused by supplying Israel with materiel.

Gaza lacks a deep-water port, which means to get large shipments of food and relief supplies, it needs a floating dock built offshore, where cargo ships can unload and then smaller ships can shuttle the supplies to shore.

Enter the U.S. Army. This week they’re going to start loading the pieces for the floating pier onto a vessel standing by in Virginia. All told, the operation will take weeks, possibly as long as two months, the AP reports.

Today would already have been too late for the confirmed starvation, malnutrition, and dehydration deaths reported at Gaza hospitals. What that death toll will look in two months, who knows.

As for his part, Netanyahu says the ongoing military operation in Gaza will last no longer than…two months.

Macy’s Parades Towards Its Doom

Perhaps the last, great, American retail chain is either circling the drain or swimming for its life from the piranhas. I didn’t get a Wharton master’s degree in extracting money from people, so I can’t quite make heads or tails or fins of this Axios piece with new reporting about a contentious bid to buy Macy’s, but it seems pretty clear some deadly water-based analogy is appropriate here.

As I previously told you, dear, precious Newsfuckers, private equity wants to buy get Macy’s, by borrowing someone else’s money and then…probably (that’s for the lawyers; suck it, lawyers)…making Macy’s pay off the debt that its new owners slapped on Macy’s to finance the purchase of…itself.

And then they can sell Macy’s off for parts…probably (suck it again, lawyers). What makes me think all this? Here’s Axios on how the buygetters plan to nail down the loans they need: “...arranging the debt won't be as difficult because it will be backed by real estate, the source says.”

Backed by real estate...meaning if the buyers have to pay off the loan themselves, they can raise the cash by…selling off Macy’s stores and properties! And as I warned before, some of the leaders of this private equity are not from the retail world (RIP)...they’re real estate guys.

And, reminder, when I (all too briefly) worked with Dan Rather we did two segments on exactly how this went down with two other former gargantuas: Sears and Toys ‘R Us.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not Macy’s-stanning here. Macy’s was part of an earlier wave of retail chains that decimated local, Main Street stores before getting decimated, in turn, by Amazon. I’m raising a stink because Macy’s is pretty much the last holdout before things get even worse than they already are…and no one’s even paying attention.

And that’s the other point I want to make here because apparently I. Will. Not. Shut. Up.

I only saw this story because this seemed like a good time to check up on Macy’s. So I googled it. And look what I found.

The top story that Google fed me (nom nom) was a local, bullshit story about stolen goods with a total, retail value of a whopping $1200, in other words a rounding error for Macy’s.

Meanwhile, the ONE article on vultures circling the multi-billion-dollar still-shambling corpse of affordable price-point fashion is listed fourth:

In other words, no one knows this is happening.

Which means that when millions of people — who don’t subscribe to The Fucking News — wake up next year trying to understand why Macy’s Maynotbe anymore...the reason they won’t have a clue is because the only people learning about it rightnowtoday are Wall Street assholes…definitely (suck it more again, lawyers).

Those millions of normal people not forward-thinking enough to subscribe to The Fucking News won’t have a clue because the mainstream corporate outlets they relied on were driven by instinct to feed audience instincts with utter garbage journalism about a suspect who stole $1200…retail. (PS: In real journalism land you don’t say suspects did anything criminal…because suspects are innocent until proven guilty even in this end-times Year of our Lord 2024ucked.) 

The algorithms that proscribe our collective knowledge are being written to exploit our unreasoning brains, our unevolved instincts. So we desperately need a conscious mass movement to reject instinct and feelings and champion reason and calculation because that’s how we got to the peaks this country once enjoyed (unequally, obviously, but we had seen the promised land and still know how to get there…).

Otherwise, we’ll keep fucking around on petty, trivial bullshit while systemic forces slowly but inexorably eat the future. And working my ass off to identify those systemic threats, and share awareness of the solutions to save us from those threats, and ignite the kind of movement we need to make those solutions reality is why I’m a goddamn fucking journalist, goddammit.

NEXT…NO, WAIT, STILL PISSED… I want to share a similar dissection of how this kind of “journalism” decision-”making” is warping crime coverage, too; specifically, the Stygian horrors of the New York City subway system. Essential Twitter thread here explains how New York’s subway ills get into even the national news bloodstream.

Campaign Watch

CRYPTO-REPUBLICANS As fucked up as this sounds to say, cryptocurrency leaders may be poised to determine which party controls the United States Senate in 2025 and 2026.

Politico reports that a group of crypto super PACs is targeting Senate races in Ohio and Montana, but won’t say which races. But TFN has learned that Ohio and Montana are where where Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Jon Tester (D-MT) live! And both face daunting races in arguably reddish-maroon states.

And both of those senators are not only crypto critics, they sit on key committees that can regulate crypto or, as crypto bros would prefer, not regulate crypto. Brown is literally the chair of the Banking Committee.

And who is Brown facing in the general election? We don’t know for sure yet, but the frontrunner endorsed by D4FRFP¹ Donald Trump is Bernie Moreno, a “businessman” (i.e., someone with no experience in government) who started his own…no points for guessing…blockchain startup.

The crypto super PACs have already raised $80 million for this campaign cycle. And the crypto-bros are also going to try to affect the outcomes of Democratic primaries in Maryland and Michigan.

Plus, they already poured more than $10 million of actual money — not that bullshit crypto bullshit — into taking down Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) in the Democratic Senate primary, which she lost to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA). Porter, of course, was one of the most fierce opponents of Wall Street generally.

So how do we know this crypto-campaign is coming? It was confirmed to Politico by the crypto super PAC group’s spokesperson. That’d be Josh Vlasto, former chief of staff to not-anymore-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) and former press secretary to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)...during the global economic crisis.

TCB

NICOLE SANDLER Join me Monday night, when I’ll be doing my weekly segment with Nicole Sandler on, shockingly, the Nicole Sandler Show!

SEO CLICKBAIT KEYWORDS OF THE DAY John Cena. Penis. John Cena’s Penis.

REMINDER I’m heading out of Dodge on Thursday, and returning on March 22, but in the meantime, I’m scrambling to make sure you’ve got some fresh fucking news from The Fucking News while I’m gone. Or at least some high-falutin’ blovating bullshit.

And I’m also hot on the trail of a potentially big story which I guarantee I won’t be able to help myself from working on during my “vacation.” So if you don’t already, please consider supporting my work — when I’m working, that is — by becoming a paid subscriber.

And either way, I always like to hear from folks on Twitter or Facebook or Bluesky or Mastodon or Frab or Applesauce.

Go get ‘em, kids…!

1. D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.