COMMODITY FETISH

Lucian Freud 'masterpiece' fetches £13.9 million at London sale

London (AFP) – A nude by Lucian Freud that took 16 months to paint sold for £13.9 million ($18.2 million) at a London auction on Wednesday, the first time the work, hailed as a "masterpiece," has come to market.


Issued on: 09/10/2024 - 
Lucian Freud's 'Ria, Naked Portrait' took 16 months to paint © BENJAMIN CREMEL / AFP
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Works by the British artist, who died in 2011, have attracted growing interest -- and prices -- in recent years.

"Ria, Naked Portrait" was the star attraction of Wednesday's sale, fetching £11,810,00, rising to £13,891,500 once the buyer's fee is added on.

"It's a late masterpiece," Anna Touzin, from auctioneers Christie's, told AFP. "It was painted between 2006 and 2007 and in the same collection since it was made.

"It's the first time it's coming to the market, which is really exciting."

Freud, considered one of Britain's greatest portrait artists, took 16 months to paint the work, with the subject -- Ria Kirby -- sitting virtually every day for up to five hours.

"So a really long process and I think it shows Freud's relationship with his sitters, the kind of dedication that they would give to him but that he also gave to them, painting them," Touzin added.

Freud's 'Head of a Woman' sold for £4,187,880 

© BENJAMIN CREMEL / AFP

Freud -- the grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud -- is known for his uncompromising nudes and self-portraits, replete with flabby breasts or rounded stomachs.

"He doesn't want to portray an idealised view of the body... he's really trying to paint people as they are," said Touzin.

That has made Freud one of the most sought-after artists on the art market.

In 2022, his "Large Interior, W11" sold for a record $86 million, while in 2015, another nude, "Benefits Supervisor Resting", went for more than $56 million.

The Christie's sale also included Freud's "Head of a Woman", which sold for £4,187,880.

Works by Marc Chagall, Berthe Morisot, Willem de Kooning and Jeff Koons also went under the hammer.

© 2024 AFP

UN warns world's water cycle becoming ever more erratic

Geneva (AFP) – Increasingly intense floods and droughts are a "distress signal" of what is to come as climate change makes the planet's water cycle ever more unpredictable, the United Nations warned Monday.


Issued on: 07/10/2024 - 

A shepherd leads his flock along the dried-up Studen Kladenets reservoir bed in southern Bulgaria in August © Nikolay DOYCHINOV / AFP

Last year the world's rivers were their driest for more than 30 years, glaciers suffered their largest loss of ice mass in half a century and there was also a "significant" number of floods, the UN's World Meteorological Organization said in a report.

"Water is the canary in the coalmine of climate change," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement accompanying the State of Global Water Resources report.

"We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems and economies," she said.

Saulo said the heating up of the Earth's atmosphere had made the water cycle "more erratic and unpredictable.
Monsoon flooding hit Roshi village in Nepal's Kavre district in September © PRABIN RANABHAT / AFP

Last year was the hottest on record, with high temperatures and widespread dry conditions producing prolonged droughts.

There were also many floods around the world.

These extreme events were influenced in part by naturally-occurring climate conditions including the La Nina and El Nino weather phenomena -- but also and increasingly by human-induced climate change.

"A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which is conducive to heavy rainfall. More rapid evaporation and drying of soils worsen drought conditions," Saulo said.
Massive glacier melt

Water is either too abundant or insufficient, plunging many countries into increasingly difficult situations.
World Meteorological Organization chief Celeste Saulo © Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP

Last year, Africa was the most heavily impacted continent in terms of human casualties.

In Libya, two dams collapsed due to a major flood in September 2023, claiming more than 11,000 lives and affecting 22 percent of the population, according to the WMO.

Floods also hit the Greater Horn of Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Mozambique and Malawi.

Currently, 3.6 billion people have insufficient access to fresh water at least once a month per year, according to the UN. That figure is expected to rise to more than five billion by 2050.

For the past three years, more than 50 percent of river catchments have been drier than usual.

Meanwhile the inflow to reservoirs has been below normal in many parts of the world over the past half decade.

Rising temperatures also mean glaciers have melted at unprecedented rates, losing more than 600 billion tonnes of water, the worst in 50 years of observations, according to preliminary data for September 2022 to August 2023.

"Melting ice and glaciers threaten long-term water security for many millions of people. And yet we are not taking the necessary urgent action," Saulo said.

Switzerland's glaciers, including the Rhone glacier, shed 2.4 percent of their volume over the past year © Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP

In addition to curbing the man-made greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, the WMO wants the world's fresh water resources to be monitored better, so early warning systems can reduce the damage to people and wildlife.

"We cannot manage what we do not measure," Saulo stressed.

Stefan Uhlenbrook, director of the WMO's hydrology, water and cryosphere department, stressed the importance of investing in infrastructure to preserve water and protect people from hazards.

But he also highlighted the need to conserve water, particularly for agriculture, which uses 70 percent of the world's fresh water consumption.

He warned returning to a more regular natural water cycle would be difficult.

"The only thing we can do is to stabilise the climate, which is a generational challenge," he said.

© 2024 AFP

Call her savvy? Harris unleashes unconventional media blitz

Washington (AFP) – She loves raisin bran and exercise, and is as comfortable talking about abortion as she is about beer. Meet Kamala Harris -- or at least a rather different side that emerged in an unconventional US media blitz this week.


Issued on: 09/10/2024 - 

Kamala Harris has launched a major US media blitz this week 

© Charly TRIBALLEAU / AFP

After weeks of largely avoiding interviews since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, Harris has taken a leaf out of rival Donald Trump's playbook and started speaking to a host of podcasters and friendly outlets.

From the popular "Call Her Daddy" podcast aimed at Gen-Z women to former radio "shock jock" Howard Stern, the 59-year-old vice president has barely been off the airwaves.

It's true that Harris did also sit down for a full-on interview on topics with one of the biggest US news institutions of all, the "60 Minutes" show on CBS — one that Trump himself backed out of.

But it was in less formal settings, which also included Hollywood star Whoopi Goldberg's daytime show "The View" and with the late-night comic Stephen Colbert, where Harris appeared to relish a more relaxed atmosphere.

Her campaign has heavily played up what it says is a way of targeting specific groups of voters, including young people and women, especially as Americans increasingly abandon "legacy" media.

"This plan makes a ton of sense to me," former White House spokesperson Jen Psaki told the left-leaning MSNBC network -- rejecting as sour grapes the complaints by some traditional media that Harris would face softball questions.
'Daddy gang'

Psaki highlighted Harris's appearance on podcaster Alexandra Cooper's "Call Her Daddy" show, which features frank discussions on sex and mental health, saying it was "far more valuable than any interview with a more traditional outlet."

Kamala Harris largely avoided interviews in the first weeks after becoming Democratic nominee © Evelyn Hockstein / POOL/AFP

The podcast was ranked as Spotify's second-biggest of 2023, behind "The Joe Rogan Experience," and the top podcast for women listeners.

Harris's interview with the podcast was a prime example of a more at-ease side of America's first Black, female and South Asian vice president, who has often appeared tense in major interviews.

Asked by Cooper to "tell the daddy gang" about her views, Harris spoke at length on protecting abortion rights and slammed Republican Trump for his sexist comments, saying it was "really important not to let other people define you."

Predictably in a deeply polarized America, there was some backlash against the host, including from listeners who criticized her for bringing politics into the show.

Trump has had similar success with unconventional media, reaching out to a core constituency of disaffected young men with macho messaging on influential right-wing podcasts -- and through an interview and campaign appearances with tech titan Elon Musk.

But Harris has been keen to show she has her own mediasphere on the left.

Former bad-boy Howard Stern hailed Harris on his SiriusXM show on Tuesday as "great" and "compassionate" and urged her to "end this nightmare" by beating Trump -- while Harris spoke about her fondness for raisin bran cereal and exercises while watching a left-leaning morning political show, and how she is a fan of Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton.
'Softball questions'

Trump hit back the next day. "BETA MALE Howard Stern made a fool of himself on his low rated radio show when he "interviewed" Lyin' Kamala Harris, and hit her with so many SOFTBALL questions that even she was embarrassed," he said on his Truth Social network.

Trump has increasingly spoken to right-wing podcasts - and tech titan Elon Musk 

© Jim WATSON / AFP

But Harris faced multiple probing questions on her blitz. Colbert, with whom she shared a Miller High Life beer, pushed her repeatedly on Israel's war in Gaza, while Republicans pounced on Harris for saying on ABC's "The View" that there was "not a thing that comes to mind" that she'd change about President Joe Biden's policies.

Kenneth Miller, a political science expert of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said non-traditional media were increasingly a better way to get policy across to voters.

"Frankly, traditional outlets ask bad questions," he told AFP.

He said Trump and Harris were doing similar things for different reasons.

"Trump is about seeking out friendly outlets," he said, whereas "Harris is about seeking outlets that give her access to the voters that she needs" including under-50s and independents.

"It's a style of media that candidates enjoy," he added.

Two strangely similar remarks by Trump and Harris on Tuesday seemed to bear that out in the middle of a punishing campaign.

"This is my form of therapy, right now," Harris told Stern, just hours before Trump said on a Los Angeles radio station: "You know what this is for me? Therapy."

© 2024 AFP

Harris media blitz aimed at connecting with younger white voters, Trump supporters, expert says


Issued on: 09/10/2024 - 

07:22 Video by:Vedika BAHLFollow|Mark OWENFollow

Vice President Kamala Harris is in the midst of a spree of media appearances - across radio, television and podcasts - as the tight race for the White House ticks ever closer. FRANCE 24's Mark Owen speaks to Dr Renée Carr, a media psychologist and political advisor. She says that Kamala Harris media blitz this week is aimed at connecting with younger white voters and Trump supporters who are questioning his mental fitness.

'It's got to stop': Biden uses national address to shame Marjorie Taylor Greene

'I DON'T CONTROL THE WEATHER'

Sarah K. Burris

RAW STORY
October 9, 2024 

President Joe Biden (Photo: Screen capture via CSPAN video)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is continuing to spread misinformation about liberals controlling national disasters, and President Joe Biden on Wednesday told her publicly to cut it out.

Speaking in a nationally-televised address with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the leaders pressed those in the path of the Category 4 Hurricane Milton to take it seriously.

Biden then directly hit Greene and former President Donald Trump for lying about FEMA funds and other conspiracy theories

"I want to thank the governors," Biden began. "They stepped up."

Then he quickly pivoted to "all of this disinformation going out about how, you know, we're devoting all of this money to migrants."

Biden cited, "Even one congresswoman suggested that I control the weather, implying that I'm sending it to red states. I mean, stuff off the wall. It's like out of a comic book."

“Yes, they can control the weather,” Greene wrote on X on Oct. 3. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

"It's beyond ridiculous. It's got to stop," said Biden at another point in his comments.

Biden said that he spoke to FEMA's administrator about Trump's claims that people were getting a check for $750 and that was all they were able to obtain in assistance.

"You lost everything, and you get $750. ... They give you an immediate what you need to get by the next day to get a prescription to get whatever," he said, stating that the amount was to cover desperately immediate needs and not the total amount of assistance the affected individuals can claim.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that one of Trump's false claims is that FEMA staff on the ground will take people's land, which he was quick to say was not true and that such lies hurt those who are trying to help.

Kamala Harris 'is in control of this hurricane' using 'weather weapons': Alex Jones

David Edwards
October 8, 2024 

Infowars/The Alex Jones Show/screen grab


Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones accused Vice President Kamala Harris of having the ability to control hurricanes through so-called "weather weapons."

Jones kicked off his Tuesday broadcast by promising to explain how he knew the government could control the weather.

"I'm going to be covering today, and I've sent the crew over 20 clips, and I've got over a hundred documents right here," he explained. "I'm gonna do a big presentation for everybody on what's really going on with weather weapons."

Jones claimed to have interviews and government documents that would prove his point.

"Then we have the bold headlines that I put up on X that the Kamala Harris, you know, the Biden-Harris administration is in control of this hurricane," he said of Hurricane Milton.

"So they have the power certified easily with just five or six big aircraft," he opined. "And that's the old technology, not the lasers that are all certified and the Doppler radar. They also have on ships and in large oil drilling platforms that they've launched. They could totally just make this thing stop and dump the water in the ocean."

Jones insisted that the technology to control hurricanes was used before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"And on 9/11, the hurricane was gonna hit," he asserted. "Remember in 2001, but that meteorologists never saw anything like it. It just turned away from the coast went away because that was gonna get in the way of some of the stuff the deep state was up to."

Scientists have said it is currently impossible to control weather events like Hurricane Milton.

Control the path and power of hurricanes like Milton? Forget it, scientists say

Watch the video below from Infowars

.

 

As Hurricane Nears, Port of Tampa Bay's Energy Role Takes Center Stage

File image courtesy Port of Tampa Bay

Published Oct 8, 2024 8:06 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

The impending arrival of Hurricane Milton in western Florida has left residents scrambling to get out of the Tampa Bay region, and in their rush to evacuate, drivers have used up so much gasoline that about 40 percent of service stations in the Tampa area have run dry. State troopers are escorting fuel trucks from the Port of Tampa Bay, home to a major receiving terminal for refined products, to clear traffic and get tanker trucks to retail gas stations - highlighting a little-noticed but critical role that the port plays in Florida's economy. 

According to the Florida Maritime Association, nearly 90 percent of Florida’s refined petroleum products are shipped from refineries in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi aboard Jones Act tankers, making this one of the busiest trade lanes in U.S. coastwise transportation. This critical transport link flows through Port of Tampa Bay, which handles more than 40 percent of the state's petroleum products. 

Courtesy EIA

The Coast Guard has closed the port's shipping channels in advance of the arrival of tropical storm force winds, but the landside operations will continue as long as safely possible, according to the port. Once the storm has passed and the port has reopened, Jones Act vessels are already positioned to offload more fuel for rescue and recovery operations, according to the FMA.

In expectation of significant impacts from Hurricane Milton, Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio (R-FL) have asked President Joe Biden to put extra resources behind the post-storm recovery for Port of Tampa Bay and its 70 miles of shipping channels. The area is known to be vulnerable to storm surge and shoaling, and the senators emphasized the port's critical role in energy transport. 

"In severe hurricane conditions the port and channel could be . . . obstructed by sediment and other storm debris.  The port’s location could also result in some of the most severe storm surge from Hurricane Milton impacting onshore facilities, including petroleum infrastructure," the senators warned. "Long-term disruptions to the port would not only hinder disaster response and recovery, but have lasting consequences for Florida’s economy."

The senators asked the White House to prepare Coast Guard and Corps of Engineers assets to address debris, navigability and emergency dredging needs as fast as possible, and even tap federal resources to repair fuel terminals if they are damaged by the storm. The senators also requested a Jones Act waiver for "maritime modes of transportation" to "facilitate interstate deliveries of petroleum fuel products." 

Florida's elected officials have reason to be concerned about the potential damage. Hurricane Milton is headed east across the Gulf of Mexico as a Category 5 storm, and while it is likely to weaken before landfall, its horizontal extent will likely spread - and its storm surge will be deadly. The most-affected areas - potentially including Tampa - could see a life-threatening surge of up to 15 feet. The center is likely to make landfall along the west coast of Florida on Wednesday night and move across central Florida through Thursday. 

 

Category 5 Hurricane Milton seen from space station

 

Hurricane Milton seen from space station on Oct. 8 in time-lapse

 

Oct 7: New Satellite Video Captures The Eye Of Hurricane Milton

 

Hurricane Milton seen from space station on Oct. 8 in time-lapse

The October Surprise

D. Earl Stephens
October 9, 2024

RAW STORY

Hurricane Milton as seen from the International Space Station (Screen cap via NASA)

This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers

Mother Nature has abruptly slammed upon our shores with an unmatched force and fury as our endless election season mercifully winds down toward its finishing kick, and if you don’t think she’s serious about exposing the Republicans’ reprehensible response to the catastrophic impacts of global warming, I suggest you contact the victims of Hurricane Helene and the looming Milton for a reference.

Because of course it was going to be a woman who put the hammer down and made Americans painfully aware yet again of the very real consequences of our rapidly changing climate, and which political party is interesting in doing something about it, and which one incredibly wants to make its crushing impacts even worse.

If in the choppy wake of these one-after-another terrible storms Democrats are understandably reticent to make this a full-blown campaign issue for fear of sending an insensitive message to the victims of these storms, who are currently hip-deep in mud, misery, and mourning, I sure the hell won’t be.

There is no issue that illustrates the extreme differences between the two governing parties in America more than this one, and depending on which of these parties prevails at the ballot box in fours weeks, will generate a forecast of much-needed hope or extreme worry going forward.

Our media is doing their level best to once again fail the American public by informing them of the glaring difference between the two parties in attacking global warming, but more on that one with a gust in a minute ...

We are in this terrible place precisely because Republicans have done everything in their power to ignore it. Their relentless attacks on the science, facts and inconvertible evidence of the dangers we are facing because of our changing climate have been appalling at best, and incredibly dangerous at worst.

That’s about as lightly as I can put it.

To be sky-blue clear here: Kamala Harris understands the significance of this issue, and the need to act with alacrity, and Donald Trump does not. Or as his third wife, Melania, would say, “I really don’t care, do you?”

Led by former-Vice President Al Gore, Harris and the Democrats have been warning of the dire impacts of global warming for three decades now, while Republicans like Trump have dutifully ignored it at behest of their reprehensible bosses in the fossil fuel industry, who have never seen a pristine ecosystem they won’t dig into and destroy with glee.

Their massive failures to take this problem seriously have turned what has been a horrible problem into a full-blown crisis effecting millions.

Interestingly, and perhaps even more perplexing, there is a decent and increasing slice of Republicans who don’t agree with their party’s brutally stupid and wobbly stance on this critical issue.

According to a landmark study on climate change by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communications late last year, 72 percent of Americans “believe global warming is happening” and only 15 percent don’t. Of the nearly three-quarters of Americans who believe our planet is warming, 58 percent believe that humans are behind it, while only 29 percent of Americans don’t.

So twice as many Americans think we are to blame for the demise of our planet than don’t. That is a significant finding.

From the report:

Majorities of Americans are worried their local area might be harmed by electricity power outages (74%), air pollution (73%), extreme heat (70%), water pollution (67%), droughts (63%), agricultural pests and diseases (63%), flooding (58%), water shortages (56%), tornados (56%), and wildfires (52%). Many Americans are also worried their local area might be harmed by hurricanes (39%), rising sea levels (38%), and reduced snow pack (37%).

If politics are local then this issue resonates throughout an ample cross-section of America, which cuts across any red- or blue-state boundaries. These stunning numbers have been steadily on the rise, and are getting to the point where only the willingly ignorant and/or those who stuff their pockets with cash from the sludge they pull out of the ground are willingly blind to what is happening right in front of their eyes.

Their continued ignorance around the most important issue of our times has been abhorrent, wildly irresponsible, resulted in the needless deaths of thousands of Americans, and if not dealt with in a responsible bipartisan fashion pronto, will be the thing that ultimately finishes us off.

We are now at the point where our active-duty military are being deployed to help the people on the ground who are fighting and losing this war against an undefeated foe.

The good people in western North Carolina who never dreamed they could see their family members and homes vanish due to the impacts of hurricanes are enduring unbelievable hardships right now. Florida, and the moron who inhabits its statehouse, are once again staring down a hurricane packing a storm surge that will swallow an entire one-story house whole.

This is simply not sustainable. Just ask the reprehensible insurance industry in the state, which has made it almost impossible for Floridians to protect their homes. They know the storms are only getting started, and have no answers but to jack up prices so high only the wealthy can afford them …

So what is the Republican plan to help combat the defining issue of our times?

Well, it’s to do everything they can to continue to make it even worse.

In Project 2025, their only known platform heading into this election besides eliminating the fictional illegal immigrants who are eating our suburban pets, there is an entire chapter devoted to their insane plans to throw gasoline on our overheated planet. Here are just some of the gory highlights:

— Withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, and all other formal engagement and collaboration with other countries on the issue.
—Replace civil servants and renowned experts on the subject within our government with rightwing political hacks.
—“Unleashing all of America’s energy resources” by eliminating federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands, curtailing federal investments in renewable energy technologies, and easing environmental permitting restrictions and procedures for new fossil fuel projects such as power plants.
— Eliminating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service (NWS) and replacing them with private companies, which will do their bidding not ours.
— Moving the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), which handles federal disaster response, from the Department of Homeland Security, to the either the Department of the Interior or the Department of Transportation, which is just insane.
—Multiple rollbacks of policies that have been in place for decades protectingAmericans’ access to clean air, clean drinking water, and protected public lands.

As Kamala Harris said in her very first speech on the campaign trail in Wisconsin I attended back in July, “Can you believe they put all this in writing?”

Worse, no less than six Republican congresspeople from Florida have voted to cut FEMA. You are reading that one correctly.

Republican Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to reconvene Congress to discuss addressing potential funding shortfalls in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

I mean, what kind of ghoul does that?

Instead of taking the repeated warnings seriously, these complete idiots are literally spitting into the 160 mph winds of a hurricane.

And what of our media, which I mentioned above? Why, when it is so damn obvious which party is taking this extreme threat seriously and which one isn’t, aren’t they treating it with the importance it demands?


Americans need to know where the two parties stand. They need to know the Republicans intend to somehow make this tragic situation even worse.

This is the bare minimum our working press should be providing their audiences right now, and they are once again catastrophically failing us.

As I put this piece to bed, Hurricane Milton is bearing down on the Sunshine State packing sustained winds of 150 mph, and sure as I am typing this will flatten a large part of the west coast of Florida in the coming days. Hundreds of thousands of Floridians and people in the adjacent states will have their lives radically changed forever.

Some will die.

With women’s rights hanging in the balance this November, Mother Nature is on the scene right now doing everything she can to shake some damn sense into all of us. She is literally showing us that if Trump and his vile Republicans win in November, we might not survive it.

Just how in the hell is this still a surprise?


D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.

Can Montana’s ‘last rural Democrat’ survive another election?

WALZ SHOULD STUMP WITH TESTER

ON ABORTION IT'S A WIN-WIN

TWO WHITE GUYS TALKING ABORTION

BAM FRONT PAGE NEWS

The Conversation
October 9, 2024 

U.S. Senator Jon Tester (D-Mont.) (Shutterstock.com)

Jon Tester has never had it easy.

The three-term Democratic senator from Montana has scored more than 50% of the vote only once in his three runs for the U.S. Senate, attracting 50.3% of the vote in 2018 against state auditor and future U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale.

This year, Tester’s always-perilous path to reelection seems narrower and more harrowing than ever before. And the outcome could determine whether the Senate remains in Democratic control or flips to the Republicans.

Current polls and political prognosticators are even starting to turn on the moderate from the farming community of Big Sandy with the flattop haircut. FiveThirtyEight has Tester’s opponent, former Navy SEAL and businessman Tim Sheehy, up four percentage points, and the venerable Cook Political Report has gone so far as to say the race “leans Republican.”

For Montana State University political scientist Jessi Bennion, this election may be the end of an era in rural America.

“I used to always call Tester the unicorn candidate because there was no one like him,” she told my students a couple of weeks back. “He was a farmer, he was a rural Democrat, the last rural Democrat.”
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Jon Tester, right, first won election to the U.S. Senate in 2006, when he beat Republican incumbent Conrad Burns, left, by a margin of 3,562 votes out of 406,505 cast. Win McNamee/Getty Images

The end of the unicorn?

I teach political reporting at the University of Montana School of Journalism, and every two years I send students out to interview candidates, profile races and talk with voters. It is true that the state has changed even since Tester won in 2018.

Despite an influx of outsiders over the past decade, Montana is still a sparsely populated state boasting 1.1 million people in the latest census. Though the state has historically relied on mining and timber for much of its economy, new economic activity in tourism and technology have helped fuel a 10% jump in population in the most recent census.

But with that influx, housing costs have soared and so have property taxes. It also leaves one of Montana’s political traditions in danger.

See, Montana has a history of doing something very few people do these days – ticket splitting, when a person votes in an election for candidates from opposing parties. In a time of deep polarization, it is hard to imagine, but out here in the Rocky Mountains and the northern plains, voters would consistently vote for a Republican for president and often for the Legislature, but also for Democrat Jon Tester.

Tester was able to put together a coalition of voters in the few pockets of liberals – college towns such as Missoula, union strongholds such as Butte and Indigenous voters on the reservation – and carve away enough moderate voters in more rural areas to eke out wins. When I moved here in 2009, it was not just Tester who did this. Back then, Montana had a Democratic governor, attorney general and head of schools. But over time those statewide offices have all gone, often by double digits, to Republicans.

No Democrat has won statewide since Tester did it back in 2018.

Migration and the march from purple to red

Then COVID-19 hit Montana.

The state saw a surge in population, jumping nearly 5% between 2020 and 2023, and experts such as political scientist Jeremy Johnson told my students earlier this fall that it is important to know who these new residents are.

“I still think the race, you know, can be competitive,” Johnson said. “I do think that some of my broader themes here – the polarization, the calcification, the reluctance to ticket split – makes it harder for Tester. Plus, I think there is some evidence that more Republican-leaning voters have moved to the state than Democrat-leaning voters in the last few years.”

One analysis reported on by the Montana Free Press found that for every two Democrats who moved to Montana since 2008, three Republicans did.

Montana does not have party registration, so when you vote in a primary, they give you a ballot for both parties, and you choose the one you want to participate in. In the highly publicized U.S. Senate primary this year, only 36% of primary voters voted in the Democratic primary, while 64% chose to vote in the Republican primary.

The one question mark of 2024


Supporters of an abortion rights initiative at a rally on Sept. 5, 2024, in Bozeman, Mont., with Sen. Jon Tester, whose path to reelection may be helped by a large turnout of abortion rights voters. William Campbell/Getty Images

Ask Sen. Tester, and he will say his campaign is anything but over. He is stressing his independence from his political party, how Republican President Donald Trump signed bills he sponsored and his long-running support of veterans as cornerstones of his campaign.

But his path to reelection may run right through Roe v. Wade.

Montana’s constitution was written in 1972, and it has some pretty progressive elements, including a right to a clean environment and an explicit right to privacy, as opposed to the more implied one in the U.S. Constitution. And in 1999, the state Supreme Court said that right to privacy included abortion access.


Still, in part to ensure that a later court decision could not strip away that right, voters have put CI-128 on the ballot this fall, which would explicitly include protection for abortion access in the state constitution.

Tester hit the issue hard in his last debate with Sheehy on Sept. 30, 2024.

“The bottom line is this: Whose decision is it to be made?” Tester said during the debate. “Is it the federal government’s decision, the state government’s decision, Tim Sheehy’s decision, Jon Tester’s decision? No, it’s the woman’s decision. Tim Sheehy’s called abortion ‘terrible’ and ‘murder.’ That doesn’t sound to me like he’s supporting the woman to make that decision.”

Tester’s supporters hope the initiative could inspire younger voters and moderate women to flock to the polls this fall, and that might make Tester’s path to reelection a bit more doable.

But it is going to take a bit of unicorn magic, perhaps, for Tester to win a fourth term.

Back at Montana State University, Bennion said the situation looks pretty dire for the Democrats in rural states.

“I don’t see, unless our state changes in a lot of different ways, I don’t see a Democrat winning in a long time,” he said. “Just the way our state is growing, the kind of person that is moving here and voting.”

Lee Banville, Professor and Director of the School of Journalism, University of Montana

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

CITIZENS UNITED

How billionaires are buying the presidency for Trump

Thom Hartmann
October 9, 2024 

Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk reacts next to Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. president Donald Trump during a campaign rally, at the site of the July assassination attempt against Trump, in Butler, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 5, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo

“The evil man is a source of fascination; ordinary persons wonder what impels such extremes of conduct. A lust for wealth? A common motive, undoubtedly. A craving for power? Revenge against society? Let us grant these as well. But when wealth has been gained, power achieved and society brought down to a state of groveling submission, what then? Why does he continue? The response must be: the love of evil for its own sake.”
— Unspiek, Baron Bodissey



Donald Trump has been found by a jury of his peers to have raped a woman. He’s a traitor who’s embraced foreign dictators, particularly Vladimir Putin, who just sentenced an American to prison while actively bombing a democratic American ally. He’s a convicted criminal who stole money from a children’s cancer charity and scammed students out of millions of dollars. He tried to end American democracy by force. Like Hitler justifying the Holocaust, he claimed some Americans are genetically inferior. And he’s a whisker away from the presidency.

How is this even possible?

You can trace it all back to dark money.

Ever since Citizens United legalized literally unlimited contributions to the new category of political action committees it created (SuperPACs), just in the 15 months from January 2023 to April of 2024 over $8.6 billion was raised for this year’s federal campaigns with over 65% of that money — $5.6 billion — running through PACs.


Nine years ago, President Jimmy Carter said on my program:
“It [Citizens United] violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. … So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over.”


He’s right. But it’s even worse than Carter imagined. Dark money — billions from the morbidly rich and giant corporations, often untraceable — has taken over the entire GOP and is the main weapon being used today against members of the Democratic Party.

It’s also badly distorting public policy.


For example, remember when Donald Trump was outspoken about banning TikTok from America because the app is owned by Chinese billionaires beholden to that nation’s communist government? In August of 2020, he signed an Executive Order that said, in part:
“This data collection [by TikTok] threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”


Proving the old adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day, Trump was right about TikTok and its owner, ByteDance. Federal lawsuits blocked his ban so it never went into effect, but in the meantime a fellow most Americans have never heard of — Jeffrey Yass — either flew down to Mar-a-Lago and spent time with Trump or met him backstage at an Elon Musk event (media reports conflict).

Yass — the world’s 64th richest person worth an estimated $40 billion — owns Susquehanna International Group, a trading company that owned large blocks of stock in both ByteDance (TikTok’s parent) and Digital World Acquisition Corporation, the company that merged back in March with Trump Media & Technology Group just as that company was desperately running out of cash.


Reportedly, the merger not only prevented Trump’s Truth Social app from going bankrupt but also let Trump take the combined company public, putting an estimated 3 billion dollars in his own personal pocket.

Even more interesting, given Yass’ holding $15 billion in ByteDance stock — the largest holding outside China, representing 7% of the company’s stock — after the Trump/Yass meeting the former President suddenly reversed his opposition to TikTok. As ABC News reported at the time:
“[T]he former president has been rebuilding his relationship with a GOP megadonor who reportedly has a major financial stake in the popular social media platform.”


And that megadonor has been busy.


While Pennsylvania-based Yass’ entire donation portfolio to Republican politicians was reported as a mere $78,000 in 2012, this year he’s the nation’s second largest political donor, reportedly having dropped more than $80,000,000 in support of Republicans over the past few months. He’s spent more in Pennsylvania than the top 10 corporate PACs combined, according to the All Eyes on Yasscampaign.

You and I have one vote each, and are limited to giving a maximum of $3,300 to any one political candidate. Pretty much every penny after that falls into the simple category of dark money, or potential dark money.

And America’s billionaires and corporations are pouring billions of that dark money into PACs and SuperPACs that are, right now, flooding the nation’s airways with attack ads against Democrats.


How did it come to this?

In 2010, five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court made it super easy for billionaires to give lavish gifts and support to Supreme Court justices and members of Congress. Their Citizens United decision blew open the doors to a bizarre new era of dark money-driven oligarchy in America.

A report from Americans for Tax Fairness details the damage these democracy-destroying decisions, made by SCOTUS members who, themselves, were at the time being groomed by billionaires, have done to our political system.


This is the brave new world Clarence Thomas’ tie-breaking vote brought America when the Supreme Court, in their 2010 Citizens United decision, legalized both political bribery and massive intervention in elections by corporations and billionaires.

Prior to Thomas’ vote on that decision, Harlan Crow — who helped finance the original Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry in 2004 — and other billionaires had lavished millions on him and his family.

Crow gave the group that Thomas’ wife, Ginni, started a half million dollars; he bought Thomas’ mother’s home and others in the neighborhood so she could live rent-free for the rest of her life; he put Thomas’ nephew through an expensive prep school. Another billionaire bought Thomas a quarter-million-dollar luxury RV.


It was a remarkably successful investment for Crow, his family, and his billionaire buddies. Just his own family’s political contributions went from an average of a few hundred thousand dollars a year during the decade preceding 2010 to multiple millions every year after Thomas’ vote. Americans for Tax Fairness calculated it at an 862% increase just for the Crow family.

In 2010, the year of the Citizens Uniteddecision, all of America’s billionaires together spent a mere $31 million on elections: There were still substantial limits on dark money in American politics.

That number jumped to $231 million in the 2012 and 2014 elections, and over $600 million for both 2016 and 2018.


The dark money blowout came in 2020, when Trump was running for re-election and there was a very real chance the billionaires could seize complete control of our federal government.

They spent a total of $2,362,000,000 in that election, with $1.2 billion of it going to elect conventional politicians who would then be beholden to their patrons.

As Americans for Tax Fairness notes:

“The report finds that almost 40% of all billionaire campaign contributions made since 1990 occurred during the 2020 season. Billionaires had a lot more money to give politicians and political causes in 2020 as their collective wealth jumped by nearly a third, or over $900 billion, to $3.9 trillion between the March beginning of the pandemic and a month before Election Day.
“Billionaire fortunes have continued to climb since: as of October 2021, billionaires were worth $5.1 trillion, more than a 20-fold increase in their collective fortune since 1990, when it stood at $240 billion, adjusted for inflation.
“These campaign donations are a profitable investment: they buy access to politicians and influence over tax and other policies that can save tycoons billions of dollars. While that $1.2 billion ‘investment’ in 2020 was massive, it totaled less than 0.1% of billionaire wealth (and less than one day’s worth of their pandemic wealth growth), leaving almost unlimited room for future growth in billionaire campaign spending.”


And this year will be far worse, once the dark money numbers come in this winter. As NBC News tells us:
“Political ad spending is projected to reach new heights by the end of the 2024 election cycle, eclipsing $10 billion in what would amount to the most expensive two years in political history.”


While Thomas Jefferson was still the US envoy to France and living in Paris, just after the Constitution had been written but a year before it would be ratified, John Adams wrote him on December 6, 1778 arguing that Jefferson’s fear of a strongman president wasn’t as big a concern as Adams’ fear of rich people corrupting American politics:
“You are afraid of the one — I, of the few. We agree perfectly that the many should have a full fair and perfect Representation. — You are Apprehensive of Monarchy; I, of Aristocracy.”


Today, if Trump is reelected, we will have both.

Kamala Harris has made it clear that if she’s elected her first order of business will be to pass the For The People Act, which will overturn large parts of Citizens United and again regulate dark money in politics.

That’s probably why our airwaves are currently saturated with hit-piece ads against Harris and other Democrats — paid for by shady dark money PACs — that make GHW Bush’s Willie Horton ads seem tame.

Rightwing billionaires are nearly in control of our government — and easily control the Republicans on the Supreme Court and in Congress — but now they want all of it. And they sure as hell don’t want to have to cough up the taxes to pay for our government.

This election may be America’s last stand against this country becoming, like Hungary and Russia, a full-on oligarchy run of, by, and for a small, malevolent group of the morbidly rich. But, to paraphrase Jim Morrison’s 60’s protest anthem: They got the money, but we got the numbers.

And now we must turn out those numbers if our democracy is to survive this all-out assault by a handful of obscenely rich people who think, as does billionaire-funded Curtis Yarvin (JD Vance’s favorite philosopher) that we should just all “get over” our “dictator phobia.”