07/31/24
Good morning! It’s Wednesday, July 31st.
Uncommon Instrument Awareness Day
Just… be aware of em, okay?
And now, the news.
Southport Stabbing
-via AP News
First, a pretty dark update on the Southport England stabbing on Monday, that injured ten, including seven critically, and killed three young girls.
On Tuesday, after a peaceful vigil to mourn the victims, the crowd of hundreds got out of hand, with a group of far-right protestors, some in masks, began throwing bottles and stones at police officers. They also set a police van on fire.
All outside of a mosque.
The group is believed to be a part of a far-right group called the English Defence League, who seem to be spreading speculation about where the 17-year-old who is in custody for the stabbings is really from.
He is from the UK. So that’s the first thing. This group is trying to say that the suspect is related to the Muslim community. Not only is that not true, but that also is irrelevant because being Muslim does not mean they’re capable of a crime like this.
There is still no motive in this horrific crime.
Israel-Hezbollah
Moving over to Lebanon. The Israeli military says they have killed a senior Hezbollah commander in retaliation for last weekend’s airstrike that killed 12 kids and teens as they played soccer.
The attack killed at least three civilians, including two children, and wounded 74 others. A search for missing people is continuing as I record this.
Hezbollah has yet to comment on the attack – a rarity for the group.
So… not much more to report there! We’ll uh… you know… we’ll be keeping an eye on this. That’s for sure.
Project 2025
-via CNN
After weeks of Democrats calling out Project 2025, finally forcing Donald Trump to pretend like he somehow both doesn’t know anything about it and hates it and wishes them luck in any and all endeavors… the director of Project 2025, who just happens to be a former top Trump advisor, has stepped down.
So… we gotta talk about this.
Project 2025 is from a group called the Heritage Foundation. If you’ve never heard of them – love that for you! They are an ultra-conservative group who has been ranked as one of the most influential groups in American politics.
Whenever I talk about how incredibly rare fraud by voters is, I use their data. Because they desperately want to pretend fraud by voters is some rampant problem. That’s how ultra-conservative they are.
So this group wrote something called Project 2025, an incredibly bleak roadmap for Donald Trump’s next term. Literally, it opens with: “The 2025 Presidential Transition Project is the conservative movement’s unified effort to be ready for the next conservative Administration to govern at 12:00 noon, January 20, 2025.” Two sentences later is says: “Indeed, one set of eyes reading these passages will be those of the 47th President of the United States.”
And when I say bleak – they want to track how many pregnancy losses come from chemotherapy. They point blank say the ideal household is a working father and a stay-at-home mother. They will eliminate DEI, LGBTQ+ rights, and literally just anything that isn’t cishet white people.
And it’s not just here’s the worst version of a dream journal! It’s an 887-page plan.
So it’s been out for a while and some people have been talking about it, but like I said, it’s getting a ton of publicity now. And not in a good way. But also, you know, maybe don’t be bad and you won’t get bad publicity.
Because of that bad publicity, the director stepped down on Tuesday.
Good news.
But here’s what I want you to really really understand… They are counting on the press of him stepping down to make it seem like they’re backing off.
They have spent millions of dollars on this.
They’re not going to back off.
They’re going to hope the attention goes away and then, even more improbably, that Trump will win, and then they can roll this out.
Well we’re not going to let Trump win because we have 97 days until the election and we’re going to keep our foot on the gas. And we’re not going to let people believe Project 2025 is going away.
Good for us!
And that’s it. That’s the news.
Medal update!
We are leading in the total medal count, with 26 to France’s 18 and China’s 14 (Japan dropped to 4th with 13).
We lead in silver and bronze medals, and picked up our fourth gold medal on Tuesday when Team USA’s women’s gymnastic team, lead by Simone Biles, brought the gold back home baybee. USA USA
And that’s to that, America became the first country to win more than 3,000 medals.
USA USA
I’m proud of the athletes. I hope they’re all friends!
I’m also proud of unusual instruments. Usual instruments as well, while I’m thinking about it. Music in general. Kelly Clarkson in specifics (a voice is an instrument!)
But more than that. More than a glass armonica, which is one of the most unusual instruments in the world – because you are also unique… I’m proud of you.