Scott Koon

a man in a military uniform says whaaat?? ALT: a man in a military uniform says whaaat??

Great episode, once again we are sticking closely to the 2025/1933 timeline.

In an episode with so many mentions of Victor Klemperer
and his cousin Otto, it seems like a shame not to at least mention Otto's avowedly antifascist son Werner.

Episode 88 -- Project 1933, Part V: July 1 - July 31 Podcast Episode · In Bed With The Right · 08/05/2025 · 1h 29m

New episode! Today on @inbedwiththeright.bsky.social , we return to our Project 1933 series and the rise of the Nazi regime. This month, we’re looking hard at collaborators and complicity: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i...

This graffito really captures something of the spirit of our age.

The folks who run Trader Joe's won't put one in Durham, so we have to make the long drive to the one in Chapel Hill.

Which is now closed until further notice due to water damage from the flooding. Thanks, Trump.

The river by the bridge at West Point on the Eno on Roxboro Road.

The water's supposed to be 20 feet lower.

Here's the USGS monitoring data if you're interested.

No deaths locally, at least one in a neighboring county. The river's higher than it's been in the 20 years I've lived here.

waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-l...

80 people rescued from flooded homes near Eno River in Durham County First responders rescued dozens of residents from homes and apartments near the Eno River in Durham County Monday morning after relentless rain caused the river to overflow.

It was a very heavy rainstorm, but no warning seems to have been issued.

Simply moist in my neighborhood, but a half mile down the road someone did try to drive through five feet of standing water, with predictable results.

www.wral.com/news/local/d...

Yesterday it was 1.65 feet, and it's 23.35 feet at the moment.

Flooding here in Durham. Here, the Eno River is normally 3 feet deep, but this morning it overflowed its banks and was 20' above the normal level, just a couple of feet under the bridges.

It's as if the Gulf of Tonkin incident reverberated and amplified. The past is never dead, it's not even past.

Which makes being old and reading even older books a kind of superpower. Sometimes I think I should stop teaching and start a YouTube channel, it would be 10,000 times more effective.

I think some of these are certainly inflection points. For example, I was in Berlin for the LaBelle Discotheque bombing. At the time, all the chatter was about Syria, but Reagan wanted to attack Libya, so they decided it was Libya.

www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...

The past is prologue. We've never had any consequences for the folks who decided to attack Iraq at the behest of the Saudis, I suppose it was silly to expect it would be different this time.

At least there's Dennis. In a world full of Bedeveres, always glad to know Dennis exists.

They never had to show their work. It would have come up in any prosecution of the organizer tier of defendants, so they skipped that tier altogether, while prosecuting these parading defendants.

Almost as if they thought that the interest of the Republican Party was more important than the law.

In so many ways, we've reverted to the middle ages.

Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

--Dennis

No Kings On June 14—Flag Day—Donald Trump wants tanks in the street and a made-for-TV display of dominance for his birthday. A spectacle meant to look like strength. But real power isn’t staged in Washington. ...

www.nokings.org

Good episode. One thing I recall anecdotally is that most folks in Berlin at the time were very skeptical, not just of the authenticity, but also of the motive beyond just the usual greed. Sight unseen, most on the left saw it as a whitewash of Hitler.

YouTube video by mywebcowtube Marshall McLuhan 1977 Interview - Violence as a Quest for Identity

Despite some outdated and offensive language about "natives," McLuhan managed to summarize life in what he called the electric age back in 1977.

youtu.be/ULI3x8WIxus?...

But it just references "documents on file with the Committee."

They had at least some of the financials, but decided not to include these on the govinfo site or in the Report.

Presumably it's all been shredded now.

For all the claims of weaponization, it's clear that they didn't go far enough. I think because of first amendment concerns, they took a very conservative approach to charging the rally organization. Martin's letter notes he funded certain STS activities.

Or they decided that they would lose in court, because money is speech and it's commonplace to pay or reimburse people for political activities. Or they felt they couldn't prove such payments had anything to do with the attack itself.

I'm sure there was a lot of other money spent as well, on travel and accommodations for rioters.

The Committee never looked at the question at all.

This is real and at your grocery store. The innovation of late capitalism, creating new products nobody asked for--even if you wanted a beer/food themed chip, who in their right mind would choose Miller Light as the brand to feature? And not one, but three flavors?

The show included a character named Michael Woodman, played by John Sylvester White, who had been Kotter's social studies teacher and who became the grumpy principal of the school.

If you get old enough, it finally hits home that Woodman is just an older version of Kotter.

Everyone of a certain age remembers Welcome Back Kotter, a show starring and created by Gabe Kaplan, in which a former remedial student returns to his old high school to teach the same kinds of students he would have had in his remedial classes. He was teaching the Sweathogs, and he used to be one.

Been waiting for the follow-up on this, and there's been nothing. No charges filed. Though I think local authorities are keen to prevent this kind of "harmless prank," apparently not so much that they actually would do something about it.

YouTube video by 11Alive Fake ICE truck hoax leaves community on edge

Shortly after Trump was inaugurated, we had a "hoax" in Durham in which someone painted their truck in such a way that it might lead people to believe it was ICE.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL-c...

And we have never had a full accounting of that, or spending by adjacent groups. I think the Committee didn't want to go there for first amendment reasons.

I used to argue that Democrats ought to focus on policy and organizing.

But festooning garbage trucks with flags has worked for Trump, and we are in the age of reality show government, so maybe this is correct. A sign of life from the DNC, at least.

thehill.com/homenews/adm...