Aug. 27: Glacier collapse unleashes massive flood on China-Nepal border … Trump opens fire on American cattle ranchers … Facebook agrees to hurt millions of kids a little bit less, maybe … Military conscientious objectors seek to escape criminal enterprise due to its crimes …
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Rescue teams searched overnight for more than 1,300 people missing after a stunning flash-flood on the China-Nepal border that, based on videos of the flood, doesn’t appear to have used any CGI at all.
At least 168 270 353 people are known to have died, and, based on the horrific, Michael Bay scenes, it’s hard not to expect that to go a lot higher as it just did from 168 to 270 to 353 while I was writing this.
It’s believed to be the worst global tragedy since Dolly Parton died.
The flooding was caused by the collapse of a glacier in the Himalayas. Along with the Earth’s poles, the mountain range is one of the few places that’s home to more deposits of ice than Tucker Carlson’s heart.
Reportedly, the glacier melting rate in the Himalayas has doubled since 2000, because everyone thought Vice President Al Gore was so hilarious with his global-warming this and carbon-emissions that.
The fossil fuel executives and craven politicians who killed these people were not available for comment, except in the past, when they said Gore was lying and that it would be too expensive to transition Earth to sustainable energy and, okay, fine, fuck it, the human race would just have to adapt to a hotter planet because it’s not like species ever just go extinct.
Video from Wednesday tells a different story. Despite having entire seconds or even whole minutes of warning, not one of the Nepalese in videos of the flood can be seen evolving gills or wings or better lungs in order to survive. They don’t appear even to try getting bit by a radioactive spider.
But maybe something like this is what it takes to break humanity’s dam of stupidity and lack of imagination.
Because it’s one thing to see a flash flood. It’s another to see a flash-flood three stories high. Not just because of the height, but because of the stories.
When you see those buildings, even the subconscious mind of the stupid and unimaginative can understand on some level — I mean, I already said “subconscious” — that those houses were only there in the first place because flooding at this scale doesn’t happen there.
It should also be an eye-opener that the only people who adapted to climate change are the wealthy people who profitethed from selling out the world and evolved an exoskeleton of high-walled compounds and armed patrols to protect them if the masses ever comprehend what they did.
On the other hand, Pres. Donald Trump does seem to be doing pretty much what Gore suggested when it comes to reducing demand for two big emitters of carbon…
Trump Escalates War on Big Trucks, Big Beef
I fucked up on Wednesday and said that Trump’s plan to undercut U.S. cattle ranchers involved bringing in 300,000 cows to sell at 25% below market prices. It was actually just 25 cows to sell at 300,000% below market.
I’m kidding, of course: It was 300,000 metric tons of dead cow, specifically the dead-cow parts that get made into ground beef, or roughly a year’s worth of Big Macs for one (1) White House.
After I fucked up on Wednesday, so did Trump, signing the actual proclamation to bring in the 300,000 extra tons of dead-cow paste.
Amazingly, Trump still didn’t identify where the beef’s coming from or which humans will be processed into patties. Maybe Mitch McConnell could help! (And not with his vote.)
Among the reasons Trump gives for rising beef prices, I shit you not, is “growing consumer awareness of the health benefits.”
Yo, that’s a shoutout to Health (sic) and Human Services Secretary Robert Flank Kennedy, Jr., trying to get Americans eating more meat! So that U.S. herds will be bigger, so climate change will get worse, so there’ll be more drought, so there’ll be smaller U.S. herds.
But Trump is blaming Kennedy for demand, which = higher prices. Which, okay, why not. (In fairness, Kennedy is also reducing demand by thinning out the human herd with vaccine denial.)
But as I wrote not-fucked-uppedly on Wednesday, Trump still hasn’t figured out how to balance rancher desire for high prices with consumer desire for food they can afford. And Trump’s proclamation isn’t expected to do much for prices.
Plus, he’s breaking up the meat shipments over three months, starting Sept. 1 — so, too late to lower prices before the election, but early enough to piss off ranchers in swing states.
This leaves everyone pissed at Trump, but mostly the guys who are literally the cartoon stereotype of his supporters: Cowboys and the agri-overlords who cowsplay as cowboys.
Trump signed his proclamation even after getting a letter — pleading please don’t — from America’s biggest lobbyist organizations for America’s rugged individualist cowboys:
The American Farm Bureau Federation
The Livestock Marketing Association
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association
The United States Cattlemen’s Association.
THE TRUCKING NEWS Trump is also taking aim at his other cartoon base: Jerks with big trucks who don’t need big trucks and the truck-makers who make them. That’s thanks to Trump’s new threatened tariffs on Canada, giving Republican candidates a chance before the midterm elections to try out new slogans such as Yes, We Canada! And the GOP-to-Spanish translation: Si, Se Puedophile!
As Robert Kuttner writes for the American Prospect, Trump’s coming tariffs on Canadian-made autos and auto parts will make popular trucks like GM’s Chevy Silverado and Ford’s F-350 and F-450 a lot less popular by making them a lot more expensive.
Basically, Trump is doing to the U.S. auto industry that Pres. Barack Obama saved what Trump did to the Iran nuclear deal that Obama dealt.
The tariffs will be “cataclysmic,” one industry executive told Politico. Which would make Trump a cataclysmic converter! Made in the USA!
As Kuttner points out, Trump slashing the tires on American automakers’ truck businesses comes just a year after Trump let the air out of their investments in electric vehicles by killing Pres. Joe Biden’s subsidies, presumably because Biden once worked for Obama.
As Kuttner also points out (The Prospect is very good!) this is all playing out two months ahead of the elections, with Michigan (the sclerotic heart of America’s auto industry) poised to decide Senate control.
Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) is going from 0 to 60 fleeing questions about Trump’s tariffs, leaving former public-health official Abdul el-Sayed to drive Michigan’s disaffected Republicans and Independents into his corner.
El-Sayed’s campaign site is here.
Facebook Faces the Music in Landmark Settlement
Debate is raging over whether Wednesday’s massive Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) settlement with 47 state attorneys general deserves a 👍 or a 😡, which probably means the deal’s effectiveness likely depends on execution.
Here’s the deal with the deal…
Meta has come under fire for fucking kids for money, basically a metaphorical but global Epstein Island that the Epstein class has done nothing about. By stoking peer competition and status comparisons, Meta knowingly drove child anxiety, leading to eating disorders, suicide, and Mark Zuckerberg knows what else.
With 47 states suing them, Meta agreed to:
No teen use midnight to 6am
No notifications for teens overnight or during school
Teens limited to two hours per day of doomscrolling
Better age verification
Options to deactivate predatory algorithms
Concealing the number of post “likes”
Banning “beauty filter” options
Of course, without those beauty filters, you get this…
…instead of this:
Meta is now pressuring competitors — think YouTube and TikTok — to follow suit. Meaning Meta still can’t help doing peer pressure.
Florida’s attorney general, not part of the suit, called Meta’s concessions “peanuts compared to the profound harms Meta’s profit-driven addictive features have inflicted on our children.” Wait til his capitalist masters stumble across that post! 😡😡😡
WIRED reports that there’s another problem: The settlement shifts a lot of the policing burden from Meta to parents.
And Florida Republicans would have no problem with the core of Wednesday’s settlement: It’s self-regulating. There is no cop on the beat. There is no new law against what they do.
Meta simply … agreed to be better. And if they’re not, what’re 47 states gonna do about it? Sue?
Here’s the ultimate predictor of whether this hurts Meta the way we all want or helps Meta by ending the lawsuit at minimal cost: Shares of Meta stock rose on the news.
😡😡😡
Gang Members Seek to Escape Gang Due to Its Crimes
MS NOW has spoken with members of a global criminal cartel who are sick of their lives of crime and trying to get out.
The gang has a number of street names, including “Department of War” and “The Pentagon,” as the OGs call it. (That’s “Old Generals.”)
According to MS NOW, the gang members are sick of the criminal violence.
Some say their gang, “The Pentagon,” is illegally blowing up civilian bridges in Iran:
“I realized there’s no way that you could interpret the international laws as saying that you’re allowed to strike civilian bridges, but in reality, if the president wants to blow up bridges, the lawyers will find a way to say that it is OK to do it, and nobody anywhere up or down the chain of command ever stops and says no.”
That may have something to do with the fact that Democrats haven’t vowed to prosecute those in the chain of command who never stop and say no, effectively abandoning everyone lower on the chain of command.
Then there are the boat murders, The Boat-iac Killings™. It’s been hard since the maritime murder spree began a year ago not to wonder whether any of the service members involved thought about the fact that there was no warning. No due process.
No imminent danger to anyone. No rationale for self-defense.
Turns out some did.
“You can tell yourself what you want at night and say they were all precision strikes and they were all planned, but there’s at least one innocent person that I feel like I indirectly hurt.”
“Hurt.”
One group that works with conscientious objectors seeking to leave the military told MS NOW they typically handle 50 a year but have already dealt with about 140 so far since Pres. Donald Trump started the Iran War on purpose. (h/t)
Okay, congressional Democrats, 140 should be enough witnesses for the hearings next year, right?
Are You Ready for Some Football to Die?
No, not because of the toxic masculinity and tribalism it re-inscribes in society or its role as a big circus in the bread-and-circuses that preoccupy millions of men who might otherwise be volunteering at the local library or exploring their feelings.
It’s because football kills people!
A new study found that one out of four NFL players had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). That’s a condition you get when you’re slammed in the head by 250 pounds of beef, imported or American. It tends not to kill you directly: It just kills your brain, which in some cases has led to fatal violence against others and/or then self.
In short, pigskin is now on the list with asbestos and coal-mine dust.
And it’s not just the NFL. There could be similar, or proportionate cases of CTE resulting from college and high-school football, which colleges and high schools should stop doing but won’t because they like money more than they like kids.
So, um, buzzkill … we should probably stop watching. The last thing America needs is more brain damage.
This is why Jesus gave us videogames!
CTE is found in virtually zero people who don’t get slammed in the head. But it’s not just football that causes CTE. So do other impact sports: Hockey, soccer, rugby, wrestling, and even bobsledding. It’s also been found in military personnel.
Which might explain all the Murder He Boat.
Election Watch
KENTUCKY NBC’s Sahil Kapur caught a House Republican candidate in Kentucky pivoting from the primary to the general primarily by deleting references to his general: Pres. Donald Trump.
Here’s Ralph Alvarado’s (R-KY) before-and-after:
Kapur reports that Alvarado also scrubbed his campaign website of anything that sounds or looks like Trump.
Alvarado’s opponent is Zach Dembo, who probably archived every single Alvarado Trump message. Dembo’s campaign site is here.
Two Quickies
The Texas ban on drag shows just got overturned again. A judge found that the ban was so broad it could have outlawed cosplayers and Dolly Parton impersonators, right when the nation needs them most. The suit was filed by drag artist Brigitte Bandit against state Attorney General Ken Paxton, pedophile protector of child bandits. The judge’s research into the suit revealed that people offended by drag shows are physically capable of not going to them. (h/t)
A Texas federal judge on Wednesday ruled against Minnesota’s attempt to extradite an accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shooter and liar from the rogue nation of Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) has refused to extradite fugitive ICE agent Christian Castro, who shot a guy in Minnesota and then lied about it. Abbott has also refused to say he’s refusing to extradite Castro, giving the judge an excuse to say there’s nothing Abbott’s done for him to rule on, which I feel like I should’ve tried in school when I didn’t do my homework. Keith Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general, says he’s pursuing other legal avenues to pursue Castro, but it’s not clear which avenues won’t lead to him getting shot down in a Texas court.
TCB
CLARIFICATION After TFN noted the two weeks that Gary, IN, went without relief for some of its storm-stricken residents, a diligent Newsfucker emailed me about Pine Ridge and the Dine’ Reservation, Navajo Nation, lacking consistent, reliable water for decades.
“It irks me that progressives omit them when talking about struggling communities,” they wrote to me.
In my defense, because I’m overly defensive, I wasn’t talking about struggling communities, I was talking about Gary!
In my other defense, I omitted a hell of a lot more struggling communities. This is a consistent challenge for any journalism of humanism: Talking about some without talking about all.
I fail at some of this all of the time. Which is why, on any issue, I try to talk about the some in ways that illuminate the all. So, I will continue to omit many, many things. But I hope you Newsfuckers will continue to tell me about at least some of the all that I omit.
And I hope together we can share information and understanding in ways that get us closer to benefiting all.
NEWSFUCKING IN THE WILD Hoping to do a Substack Live with Wajahat Ali today at 2pm eastern, so look for that notification! I’ll also post it here when it’s done.
SUMMER FRIDAYS Dunno whether I’ll have a new TFN on Friday. Not because I’m taking off — how often do I really take off? — but mostly because there’s something like half a dozen stories I should be breaking on my original-reporting Substack — and TFN Bonus Story commentaries, too! — and I could use the time to work on those.
Plus, TFN gets more subscribers when I put out fewer TFNs! Who am I to argue? Give the people what they want not to get!
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Thank you. E pluribus fuckem.
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Go get ‘em, kids! 😡😡😡
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks. He is a member of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation advisory board.
Having watched a couple of “real time” videos of the flash flood, the only thing I could think of to compare it to was the Fukushima tsunami in 2011. I’ve never actually witnessed an event like this firsthand — just the aftereffects — and I count myself extremely fortunate for that. But this is what some science is predicting on a global scale if the Western Antarctic Ice Shield collapses — which is probably closer to a “when-not-if” calculation than I like to think about.
I like the “unbeautified” photo better