September 13, 2024

There really hasn’t been any huge events regarding the presidential campaign itself over the past 24 hours, so I thought it might be good to zoom out a bit, and touch on some international stories.

I Can See a Liar: Over the past few days, there have been news items about Russian state media’s attempts to break into and meddle with the American media landscape. Chief among these efforts was a Kremlin-orchestrated influence operation, funneled through a media platform owned by Canadians, that sought to spread misinformation and pro-Russian narratives among right-wing media personalities. The Department of Justice announced the allegations against Kremlin news outlet RT late last week. But then today, the State Department announced new sanctions on RT, accusing it of working in tandem with the Russian military to raise funds to pay for equipment for soldiers fighting in Ukraine, along with its international propaganda campaigns. A lot of this propaganda was picked up by right-wing American news media and broadcast as fact, particularly in relation to Ukraine and efforts to boost the candidacy of former President Donald Trump. LINK, LINK

The Masterplan: Similarly to the above story, the Justice Department also plans to file criminal charges in the hacking of Trump’s presidential campaign. This has been alleged by the campaign to be at the hands of Iranian hackers, and while the intelligence community has confirmed that they believe Iran does want to hurt Trump’s campaign (while Russia wants to help it), there’s been no public confirmation that Iran was indeed behind the hack. The only solid information provided to the public has been that the hacked files appeared to be from a person named “Robert”, who used an AOL address. That, of course, leads me to believe that the perpetrator is perhaps currently residing in the late 1990s… LINK

Some Might Say: Just this morning, Pope Francis decided to wade in with his opinion on the American presidential contest. He advised American Catholics to choose who they think is the “lesser evil” in lieu of his opinion that:

“Both are against life, be it the one who kicks out migrants, or be it the one who kills babies.”

While he did not name either candidate specifically, it was fairly clear where he found faults in each of them. That being said, the Argentine Jesuit has repeatedly and frequently spoken out about the plight of migrants around the world — and in the United States in particular. On the other hand, while he has strongly upheld Catholic teachings about abortion, he has not made nearly as big of a deal about it as his predecessors. LINK

Listen Up: I had fun two days ago coming up with paragraph headlines based on Taylor Swift songs, and then yesterday’s was some of the lesser-known works of “Weird Al” Yankovic. I figured for today’s report, with more of an international flavo(u)r — plus a brief flashback to the late ’90s — that I would keep the Supersonic fun going and Go Let It Out with a band that fit that theme. Well, anyway, here’s Wonderwall.