States fold in Paramount-Warner Bros merger lawsuit, broadcast media will consolidate under Trump ally: The twelve states suing to stop the creation of a broadcast media monopoly allied to the president decided actually, it’s OK, announcing a settlement Monday greenlighting the merger. Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said in a press release that the settlement secured “significant concessions” to anti-competitive practices, none of which, I might add, address the underlying problem of one of the president’s top allies concentrating control over much of the television news and entertainment landscape, which Brown did not mention.
Why not just make an electric jet? In case you have not been following the story via your father’s subscription to Aviation Week & Space Technology, there’s a very accessible new Seattle Times story on California startup JetZero’s attempt to challenge Boeing’s domestic aerospace manufacturing dominance with a fat new airplane.. The innovative engineering is the “blended-wing” body shape of the proposed aircraft, which has never flown, with the innovative selling point being the better gas mileage the design provides. Personally I am skeptical of an unproven airframe manufactured by a new company to fill a very specific market niche, but JetZero has plenty of your tax dollars from the US Air Force to live off of while they figure out how to get off the ground.
US Sen. Susan Collins investigated for corruption: The FBI appears to have Maine’s Republican US senator dead to rights on taking bribes in the form of election campaign contributions from a shipbuilder in exchange for funneling federal contracts in the company’s direction. “It was eye-opening for me, frankly. Oh my God, all of it is for sale. It’s all for sale,” a former executive with the shipbuilding firm told ProPublica. So why isn’t Sen. Collins being prosecuted? Trump was reelected, and purged the FBI’s anti-corruption team. Collins is up for reelection, but considering her earlier opponent was a former mercenary with a Nazi tattoo who dropped out after sexual assault allegations surfaced, something normal like corruption might be the least of voters worries.
US Rep. Lauren Boebert investigated for bisexuality: A complaint filed with the US House Committee on Ethics last Thursday accuses the Colorado Republican of having sex with three House employees under her direct supervision and paying to keep them quiet. This includes two women, which in conservative culture is considered a bit of a faux pas if I am reading these reports correctly. Boebert, a noted bigot, has denied the allegations, which came from the political operative who previously accused her of being a sex worker, a claim news media could not independently corroborate. Boebert was, however, caught red-handed fondling that guy’s junk during a musical production of Beetlejuice. She’s also up for reelection.
HEARTWARMING! Ichiro demolishes arrogant high school girls: The nefarious high school girls All-Star team of Japan thought they could pull a fast one on the old man, and were rewarded with a 127-pitch shutout thrown by Ichiro, who was primarily an outfielder not a pitcher, the Seattle Times reports.
JPMorgan throws in the towel on forecasting a way out of America’s oil war: While gas prices are rising, prices haven’t been in total free fall for a few reasons even as the US, Iran, Israel, Yemen, Ukraine and Russia continue down the path of radical decarbonization. The Chinese cutting oil imports and falling back on their massive rainy day reserves saved the global economy for a while, and market analysts didn’t panic too much over the summer because they thought conventional wisdom of don’t do this shit would prevail. But this is the Trump administration, and so JPMorgan had to announce recently that they have no accurate way to forecast an endgame to the war, CNBC reports.
So goes the global economy, so goes the International Criminal Court: The Trump administration is preparing to sanction the ICC into oblivion for indicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his crimes in Gaza, the Wall Street Journal reports
Germany’s socialists owe Berlin victory to radical housing affordability plan: Left-wing party Die Linke isn’t focused on permitting reform, or mandating a certain number of affordable units for new luxury apartment buildings, or giving tax breaks to real estate developers, or any of the other solutions to housing unaffordability you hear in Seattle, even from our socialist mayor. Instead, the party, which just came in first in Berlin’s state elections, plans to seize 220,000 apartments from large real estate corporations and let people live in them cheaply. The corporations will be compensated for the real estate (as the Winter Palace’s walls are holding for now) but, at the very least, it shows that voters respond to radical solutions.
Pussy Riot member spied for Putin, poorly: Rita Flores, who has since fled Russia, says she was threatened and blackmailed into becoming an informant for the FSB, spying and reporting on other anti-government artists. She does not appear to have been a particularly good one though. According to The Guardian, “Flores said she was not supposed to tell anyone about her recruitment, but immediately told ‘about 20 people’, putting it down to the fact she is a ‘massive gossip’.”
In ale gasn vu men geyt hert men zabostovkes: Pussy Riot grew out of another Russian avant-garde political group, Voina, who at times have been a bit more extreme. In 2011, they ran a campaign to kiss as many Russian cops as possible, which would get you immediately shot in America, and there’s a recording of their efforts set to an old Yiddish pro-labor, anti-tsarist song conducted by Zalmen Mlotek.