2024: The Year In Review
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Welcome to The Politocrat. I'm Omar Moore. It is Tuesday, December the 31st, 2024. On this edition of The Politocrat, the year in review, a look back at the 366 days that were in 2024. Just some of the events worth remembering or worth forgetting over this past year. All of that coming up

Next. Dear listener, greetings and salutations on this brand new edition of the Politocrat Daily Podcast. Yours truly, Omar Moore here. How are you on this final day of 2024? My goodness me, it has gone so darn quickly, hasn't it, this year? This is the 366th day of 2024. If I can get that out before we get to the final few hours of the year. We are in the final few hours of the year, as a matter of fact.

And yeah, we had a leap year this year, 366 days. That means an extra day of the year was crammed in to what was a wild year, I think a frustrating year, sometimes a positive year, but overall a miserable year. I mean, every year, I think as you get older, it becomes a bit more miserable, doesn't it? I don't know. I don't know. It was a challenging year. I think that I can say that. I think it's true of a lot of us across the world. We faced a lot of challenges and

as life is about challenges, among many other things, and the planet faces and continues to face a challenge. The environment and what humankind, mankind, humankind has done to the environment, I think it really showed this year, didn't it? If you look at all of the fires and the natural disasters...

And if you look at all of the climate situations with hurricanes and you see what happened with tsunamis that have happened and all the rest of it, that was one of the things this year that I think really shook a lot of people up, including yours truly. You know, we had a tsunami warning here.

This month, actually, earlier this month, it feels like it was about three months ago, but it was only about three weeks ago. We had a tsunami warning three and a half weeks ago, and that came off the back of a massive earthquake in the Pacific Ocean off of a coastal line in upper California, up in the upper reaches of Northern California. And so, you know, literally about 200 miles or so north of here.

There was a 7.0 earthquake and that really shook the foundations for people all the way up in right near the border from Oregon. And goodness gracious me, that had reverberations for all of us across the state. Many of us way past San Francisco and all the way down into the southern parts of the state.

were really anxious because, of course, as well as the aftershocks that people received in the upper reaches of Northern California, there was also, of course, the tsunami warning, which was really giving coastal line all the way down to Santa Cruz and beyond. So it was a long, long stretch. You're talking about hundreds of miles of coast that was getting this warning, including here in San Francisco, for a tsunami. And so that

was really a problem and of course it sent very anxious people excuse me it sent people like myself

into an anxious tizzy as we got the heck out of Dodge. And then it turned out that there was no warning at all. But look, that's a minor story, right? In comparison to, it's not minor, but it is a story. One story of millions upon millions of people across this planet who felt the effects of earthquakes or climate change

or wildfires or mudslides or flooding, which we've had across the globe. There's been a lot of that. We've had some of this all over the world where there have been floods, where there's been a lot of rainfall in excess of what we normally would get. We've had fires devastate all parts of this world.

And I think it really serves notice that climate and climate change and global warming continues to be the major, major issue, not just now, but for the next foreseeable forever future. And generations of us are really going to suffer from this. And this is the thing that we leave behind.

a climate and a planet that at some point will not be habitable for human beings. And that's really the grim reality that nobody or very few people wish to even confront.

And it's all because we have a group of people, you know, whether they are billionaires, corporate, you know, people who own corporations who just insist upon destroying the environment with their toxic policies and their toxic behaviors and their lack of care for the environment, for society.

living things, for trees, for animals in the sea, for birds, for human beings, you know. And this greed and this toxic capitalism has, you know, really destroyed a lot of people's lives, a lot of people's well-being and their mental states because you have people who are insistent upon

Getting greedy and getting profits at every cost. And I'm not saying that you can't get profits. It's how you go about doing it. And then when does profit turn into outright greed and avarice? You know, I mean, I think there's a line that gets crossed there. But look, that's one of the things this year that really...

I think should get the attention, but I don't think it's going to get the attention that it really should because it's really the foremost issue. I think if you look at how we navigate this world, climate and climate change and the ability to take in what you might hope would be fresh air and also drink what you might hope was fresh water and clean water, those things are dramatically impacted by climate.

How we treat the planet that we live on and live in. So that's one of the things I think that jumps out at me first as we look back here at the year in review 2024 climate. That's the thing that really jumps out at me. And there's so many stories this year that you can look back at and see where climate has such a profound effect as you look at the storms that have hit various parts of

of different countries, storms that you normally don't see in those countries or in those cities across the world. So that's the first thing I want to mention on this episode as we look back at the year that was or wasn't 2024. Welcome back. It is, you know, I'd say interesting at least in quotes that

With climate, of course, you now have someone who's going to be in the White House next month on the 20th of the month, which is also the national recognition and celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King's holiday, which I'll be talking about, of course, on that day, who's going to come into the White House and destroy the Paris Climate Treaty. You know, he's going to take this country, the United States, out of that climate accord.

that President Biden restored us into when Joe Biden took office. And when the orange felon was in the White House prior to Joe Biden, he was the one that took us out of the Paris Climate Accord. So this country, and I'll talk about this a bit later, has now put back in somebody

who is going to remove this country from the climate accord. It just makes no, when it comes to climate, it just makes no sense whatsoever. Anyway, that was a footnote to the previous segment. On this segment, dear listener, and thank you very much indeed for listening, I have to focus on human rights. And of course, there has been the millennial, if you will, and I don't mean millennial as in

I'm talking about millennial as an epoch, eras, right? Millennial, perennial, I should probably say, struggle for human rights across the globe. And that continued in this calendar year of 2024, where there were people fighting for human rights in...

Venezuela or anywhere else here in the United States for that matter or in you name the country you name the country across the globe whether it was of course the fight for human rights in Palestine and against an incursion I'm sorry gosh I can't even say the word an invasive I think is probably the best incursion of people in the Israeli government the IDF

And Gaza, what's happened there this year continues to happen in Gaza. All of these things in Israel, people are fighting for the bringing home of hostages, which Benjamin Netanyahu didn't seem to really give a damn about and seems not to care about. And he doesn't care about people who are still being held hostage. He has no consideration for. And the bottom line is that this struggle continues.

is not limited to one part of the world. You look at the African continent, various countries there. You look at what's going on in various parts of Southeast Asia. You look at what's happening across Europe, you know, and what's happening in Russia. And all of these things happening in Ukraine, the continuing fight there. And so the

Yeah, this continues on. This never stops, does it? As long as human beings are here and as long as there are people who are in power, who are bent on destroying human rights and trampling human rights. And that fight continues here, as I said, in the U.S. as well. Make no mistake about it. The killings of black people in this country by police officers, by people who are in hotel rooms,

Employment. I mean, we've seen this. We've seen videos of this. That's what our daily diet is, I think, in this country. We get fed videos of

of what corrections officers do to black people. We get fed videos of corrections officers killing black people. Corrections officers correct to correct something, right? So I think they think that the best way to correct something is to kill a black person. Correct your behavior. Well, let's just get rid of you. That's the thuggery that we've had in the United States now for centuries. And we get fed these videos on a daily basis.

Here's another one for your daily viewing. You know, there's police killing us in our homes. Sonia Massey this year, in the summer of this year, July of this year, shot to death in her own home at one o'clock in the morning. She's just minding her business. She fears there's a burglar in her home. She hears all these noises and sounds and she calls the police like anyone would at that hour of the morning.

But the police come and what does one of them do? Kills her on the spot, on the spot. And for no reason, you know, after about a two minute interaction, he opens fire, shoots her in the face point blank. It's these the kinds of things that we as black people experience on a daily basis. And quite frankly, the corporate news media and the news media in general does not even mention it anymore, really.

And barely, you might be lucky to read about it on some online article that you might stumble into. Or if you watch Roland Martin Unfiltered, as I talk about often, the Black Star Network, or if you happen to watch his show every day at 6 p.m. Eastern,

on YouTube, youtube.com forward slash Roland S. Martin, you will come across these stories. And there are a lot of these stories every day. Black men and women, black boys and black girls being killed in their homes or wherever they are, just minding their business. You know, most of, you know, I remember a time when we would say things like, well,

Were they armed? Were they unarmed? Like that to me makes a damn difference. It really doesn't make that much difference because we have seen a million times, dear listener, when white people are armed, they are not shot to death. Usually almost never are they shot to death. They are neutralized. They

They may be shot in the foot or in the arm or in the leg, but they're not blown away. I mean, of course, there are obvious exceptions to that where that happens. But nine times out of 10, if there's a black person who is unarmed and a white person who is armed, the white person who is armed is not going to be killed.

Nine times out of ten. To put it another way, if there is a black person who is unarmed and a white person who is armed, it's the black person who is going to be killed by the police in the United States of America. That is exactly how it goes down in this country. And so there is this continuing fight for human rights everywhere.

for dignity and decency. And that fight continues long after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and all of the black liberation freedom fighters who have fought for this country to respect, recognize, and to address black people with respect and with decency and equal rights. That struggle continues on. So we saw this all year long.

reminders that we are not really free, F-R-E-E, in this country. We really aren't. None of us are. When we continue to have these blatant violations of our rights, out-and-out executions of us by criminals,

corrections officers, police, by hotel employees. We saw this in the middle of June or end of June or early July with a brother in Milwaukee. Remember before the Republican National Convention happened, that Klan rally happened. You had a brother who had mental challenges, who was killed inside of a hotel or just outside a hotel, beaten to death, you know, by hotel employees.

I mean, now it's not even police or corrections officers only. Now it's also random hotel employees, you know? So it's just a really, again, this is the same, it's kind of like a broken record. I could say this every year and I do. And we have, again, a brutal, violent society and an oppressive society that continues to attack people

kill, murder black people. And really,

for no good reason at all. There's no reason for it. There really is no reason for it. This is the brutality of a very racist and anti-black system. And that is what you're seeing. And that is what you have seen for hundreds of years here in the United States. And so this has happened here in the US. This happens across the globe. We see these violations of human rights. You have women in France protesting and demonstrating against some of the things going on there.

We've seen this all over the globe, Native Americans and indigenous populations everywhere also fighting back and struggling against the violence perpetrated against them.

This is across the globe. We see this all over the place. We've seen a lot of these human rights violations. South Korea, they had their president impeached at one point and I think they brought in a new president there or an acting president and that's been going on. We've seen this on the African continent. Civil war's continuing there.

We've had a lot of these things going on and they just, they continue on. They continue on absolutely unabated. And so for 2025, of course, we will be continuing that struggle across the globe, wherever human beings are.

Leadership. Leadership was, well, lacking in a lot of different places, I think, in 2024. Although there were some leaders who made a little bit of history. Of course, Claudia Scheinbaum in Mexico became the first female president of that country. And we also, of course, had some significant elections across the world as well, where we saw in France,

and in Germany some shifts as well to a degree in a few places where there were some more rightward shifts and there were also elections where France said no to going further to the right in the parliamentary elections and there were some changes in a number of different places across the globe. We saw in the United Kingdom, Germany,

which was really expected, the fall of the Tories, the Conservatives, who after 14 wretched, miserable long years were finally voted out by the public in the United Kingdom and sent packing. Labour, the Labour Party won a

an overwhelming landslide. There are 400, I think 421 seats at the time, something around that, out of the 630 plus that are in the House of Commons. And so Labour swept to victory in a dramatic and grand way. They really did dominate the election there in July of this year after Rishi Sunak, who had led the party,

really led a party in turmoil, in chaos, who had destroyed the United Kingdom with Brexit and all the rest of it, although the voters voted for that destruction back in 2016. And so there were so many things going on with the United Kingdom's parliamentary fights and battles and things like that. And in the election in July,

What was no surprise was the overwhelming win for the Labour Party. Sir Keir Starmer then became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on July 4th, no less, with that overwhelming result, that landslide result that his Labour Party picked up in the month of July, July the 4th of this year. And yeah, there have been some

upheaval since in the party with certain things going on in the party. But right now, Sir Keir Starmer is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. And of course, we've seen with various things as well in on a local level in England as well in London, current mayor who I think was going to be leaving office or was supposed to be, I'm not sure, got a third term in office. I guess there was an amendment made

I'd have to study more on this because, quite frankly, and I should know this, I don't want to give out information that's speculative or not accurate. But all I can tell you is that in the third election,

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, was re-elected for the, you know, a third term. And, you know, he has become a very popular mayor in London. And he faces these days a lot of attacks from right-wingers, racists in the right wing. The right-wing attacks on him through newspapers in London and across England.

Certainly in London, in Fleet Street, have been having a go at him and also online as he continues to lead London. And there'll always be people who will do this regrettably. And it's disgusting when it does happen. And so you have that leadership there.

As well, being attacked. And you also see in Canada, Justin Trudeau, the prime minister there, has been under a lot of fire with some of the things he's said and done that have proved not to be popular with a certain amount of the Canadian citizenry and the worry that he is shifting a bit more rightward.

And certainly he has been at the center of a lot of stories. And I think understandably so if you really look at Justin Trudeau, who came into power in Canada as a moderate, kind of a moderate politician, if you will.

but seems to be moving toward the right side of things and not in a correct way. And I don't mean right as in correct. I mean right as in disastrous. And so that's another thing to keep your eye on. We also, of course, have seen, as I had alluded to in France, the...

The president, Emmanuel Macron, who is going to be leaving office, I think, in the next couple of years, has really had his power significantly eroded in some ways, although he does have more power as a president than the American president does, Joe Biden, or any American president does.

He really has a party that is on the outside looking in after the parliamentary elections. They really are holding on by a thread in the parliament.

As I've alluded to, the elections during the middle of the year, in the summer of the year, saw the far right wing in France gain some traction in the parliamentary elections. And so that meant that there would be less of an influence, less of an overwhelming influence by, I almost said Mitterrand, by Macron's party and some of the allies aligned to it, the center-left, the center-right.

and all of the rest of it. And so Macron has a party that is really in flux at the moment.

And you have the rise of the right. In fact, you're seeing this across the world where you have these right wing and authoritarian governments and parliaments that are gaining more traction. We're seeing that in Sweden with the Swedish Democrats. And don't let that word Democrats fool you because the Swedish Democrats are a far right wing party.

They have gained a bit of traction in the parliament in Sweden. You're seeing this in a number of places in Germany. The AFD are gaining more seats and have gained a bit more traction there. And so in parts of the world, and of course here in the United States, we're seeing this. We're seeing a lot of this.

where there's this rightward shift. And there has been a lot of this going on. And I can say, I mentioned Claudia Scheinbaum earlier. To her credit, she has proven to be a very resolute leader. She has already told the incoming occupant of the White House to, if you want to try something on here,

You will be facing a very, very, you know, you'll be facing a fight here. Don't think you can roll over us. Claudia Scheinbaum is definitely somebody who I like. You know, I like someone like that who is going to let you know what the story is and tell you, listen, you're not going to come in here and do anything to us. We're going to take care of business here. And so, yeah.

With the U.S. and its relationship with Mexico to begin with is a really, quite frankly, violent one, a tangled one, an intricate one, and also, again, a very difficult one. So I like that Claudia Scheinbaum served notice to the incoming orange thug that things are not going to be a one-way street around here. So I like that. We've seen the leadership attacks continue.

And the fight, of course, against Imran Khan, who had been arrested earlier this year, the exiled, really, in some ways, Prime Minister of Pakistan, who has faced a lot of heat, a lot of upheaval. At one point, I think he was jailed this year.

And, you know, he would put out these dispatches on social media live from wherever he was. He had been arrested. I mean, there had been assassination attempts on him, I think, this year or last. So there's a lot of upheaval in Pakistan as well with the leadership there. It's a very tumultuous time there. And, of course, we've seen how that has happened.

I talked about South Korea earlier and the things that that president there wanted to do that were downright draconian. I mean, absolutely draconian. We've seen what's happened in Israel with Netanyahu.

who wants to continue to be the dictator that he is. This is someone who's facing indictment, who's been indicted, and he is doing his level-headed best to avoid any kind of prison time or any kind of real trial in order to wage this violent war against people in Gaza, against Palestinians, which this country, the U.S., continues to approve of and rubber stamp. So you have that. You have, of course, what's happening now.

in Russia and the war that continues on in Ukraine. The Ukraine, this fight that really Russia started in 2022 continues on.

And it will be tested in 2025, of course, with an incoming thug who in this country intends to try to withdraw from the responsibilities the U.S. has to keep Ukraine not only solvent, but to support the effort to beat back these Russian invaders who have come in and done what they've done and have tried to take over the entire country, but have not been able to do that in more than in almost three years of war.

and fighting. So it's the world community, the global community that has helped keep Ukraine afloat. And Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, of course, is really doing his level-headed best to keep up the fight, and they are doing so. And so that is what is happening as far as that is concerned. And we're seeing a lot of this. We saw what happened this year with both Sweden and

and for some reason, I'm forgetting the other country, Finland, becoming NATO members. Very important that that happens, of course. Sweden was traditionally a neutral country when it comes to all these things, but it became a NATO member for the first time. And so that was done with the idea, of course, of preventing any kind of incursion into those countries and sparking what would be a world war because, of course,

the NATO motto and credo and creed is all for one and one is all an attack on one is an attack on all. And so with Sweden and Finland becoming NATO members this year, that meant that Vladimir Putin with all his designs could not try to use those countries or take over those countries without, without some real major fight back. So,

Leadership and the geopolitics in the world were a major focus in 2024 and of course continue to be. Remember, the leader of Iran was killed earlier this year in a helicopter crash. His plane crashed into the mountains in Iran. And that was a major story. And so there was a new leader that had come in.

And the spiritual leader is still there. But the leader of government was brought, had to come in, a new leader had to come in. But that previous leader had been killed in a helicopter crash. I think that was back in September, perhaps, or August of this year. And so that was a major, major story.

We've seen also this year what happened in Syria. The Assad regime was overthrown after many, many years, many years of control, really 50 plus years of control if you include the father, Assad the father, Assad senior, and now the Assad junior, Hafez al-Assad, who was overthrown I think earlier this month in a coup

and an uprising and he and his family fled and Assad now is in Russia, in Moscow, getting protection there. So yeah, it's a remarkable, that was a remarkable event that happened this month actually. And yeah, that got a lot of news headlines and certainly got a lot of attention from

The U.S., of course, is very happy about that, as are a lot of different places. The countries that are not so happy about that, I would say, are Iran and Russia and I say perhaps China as well. So and also the orange thug isn't happy about that. But yeah, this is a dictatorial regime that was overthrown. You have to look at that.

There was a civil war, and I think still there has been a civil war. There is a civil war that's been going on there now for, what, 14 years? 13, 14 years. And amidst all of that, they had this overthrow of Assad, which is a massive story, a major story this year. And you talk about leadership issues.

and about how that has been affected in various places across the world. And so Assad is out, and now this time, I think there's some kind of transition government, but there's a lot to be said about Syria and a lot more to report, I'm sure, about that in 2025. And of course, when you talk about leadership, you talk about leadership here in the United States where we have seen, obviously,

A decline in leadership, although President Joe Biden, I think, has done a good job largely, except for Gaza, of course. With that, you talk about leadership. He has led, I think, pretty darn well, with the exception, of course, of Gaza and has provided a really good, I think, presidency there.

for the most part, has done a lot of different things, did a lot of different things over the course of these last four years and the course of this last year to better the lives of many, many people. The leadership issues in this country also, though, come to really specific places like Congress, where you have a Republican Party that is a fascist party that has driven

leadership into the ground and and also changed what leadership means and so it's been a very turbulent time with that and it's caused a lot of problems because there's been a lot of internal divisions in the republican party although it seems that they're on the same page they're really not there are factions in that this uh um this um

right-wing fascist move in the party, which is really the bulk of the party now in the Republican circles. And across the country, you're seeing this with these extreme policies, these fascist policies, and not just on the federal level, but in the local level and the state level. In a lot of these places, you saw the Ten Commandments in Louisiana, for example, that had been something that was going to be put up

in every public school due to the, you know, the Republican governor there, Jeff Landry. But a court said, no, you're not going to be able to do that. And so that has been put to the side for now.

But various places across this country, the Republican Party in all places has shown a swing toward fascism. They're not a swing toward it. They are in fascist mode. They are fascist. And we've seen this with the policies here. And leaders who are scandal ridden, like Matt Gaetz, for example, who resigned his position as a Republican congressman just before

a report was to come out and that report actually came out three weeks later. But he resigned because he was actually tapped to be the Attorney General, if you can believe it. That is a true story. He never became the Attorney General and his name was withdrawn or he withdrew his name, whichever it was.

He withdrew his name. And then, of course, within a couple of weeks, the report came out about his rapes of girls. I mean, this is, and people say statutory rape, but it's rape. And so you had that kind of criminal mind and that kind of evil and that kind of degeneracy that is flying around in the Republican Party. And then the Democratic Party had some issues.

leaders with issues and kinds of things there, too. Not to the extent of the Republicans by any stretch of the imagination, but just internal fights, really, in the Democratic Party. All these kinds of things can definitely be problematic. And so that's really where we were on that. The internal fights, of course, Speaker Pelosi and President Obama and Chuck Schumer, who really did not want Joe Biden anywhere near

uh, uh, or at least I should say who didn't want vice president Harris anywhere near the, uh, white house to, uh, go and run it anyway. And, and didn't want her as a candidate, uh, for vice president because they had their designs on people like Gavin Newsom and, uh,

And also Jennifer, it's not Jennifer, Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, and Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, which they probably will get their wish in 2028 if there's an election. But the point is that leadership was a focal point in this world in 2024. And some of the crisis of leadership, of course, with the infighting and the squabbling and the power plays and the idea in this country of generational leadership,

And this struggle between the generations where you had the quote unquote old God and Speaker Pelosi and that ilk versus, if you will, the crockets of the world, the Jasmine crockets of the world, the AOCs of the world, who are the younger leaders who obviously are more progressive leaders.

and have a more forward-thinking, future-looking view about how the world should look and how the country here, the U.S., should look. So that is a major thing that will continue on in 2025. Those two people you'll be hearing a lot more from, Representative Jasmine Crockett out of Texas and, of course, Representative AOC Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,

out of New York. So those are two of the people you'll be hearing a lot from, I think, in 2025. But those are the two people, I think, two major of the group of people who I think are going to be at the forefront of Democratic Party leadership as of leadership period.

in 2025. And we'll see a lot more of that. So that's really just a real as brief as I could do in about 20 minutes, a synopsis, if you will, of leadership across the globe in 2024 and how it affected us.

Politics, politics, politics. Well, specifically here in the US, of course. I think the overwhelming focus has to be on the presidential election and also how misinformation

has spread across the globe. I think I'll get into the misinformation part in a separate segment. But in this segment, I do want to focus on politics and the election here in the United States. And I think that's one of the things that really rocks the world. Although many people, it seemed, were not that surprised in, I guess, in hindsight. In hindsight, I'm trying to find another word, but I can't think of it at the moment. In hindsight is the

The election victory of Donald Trump again, the second time in three elections that he has won. Yeah, people made a lot of heat and hay of, oh, well, it was rigged, it was stolen. No, the election was not stolen.

Was there voter suppression? Probably. But where's the evidence of it? You know, we've not seen any stories about it. Doesn't mean it didn't happen. But this notion that the election was stolen and rigged is it's, you know, again, as I said at the time, people who were saying that sounded just like he, Donald Trump, did in the year 2020.

When he was bringing much the same accusation. So you kind of say to yourself, which person are we listening to right now? You can close your eyes and hear the very same thing being said four years hence. And so...

That is four years prior. So that's what was the really was something that took me for a shock because I didn't expect that that was going to happen. Maybe I was the most naive person on the planet because I had confidently, boldly and maybe stupidly predicted that the vice president of the United States would be the victor at the election this year. But that did not happen. And

And it was close, but that doesn't really matter how close it is, because the fact is, is that the Electoral College, which where we do presidential elections and how we do them still in this country, which is a ridiculous system that was enshrined in enslavement and is still here. You know, we don't have enslavement in this country anymore, at least as it was running for more than 300, 200 and some odd years. And so, yeah.

We don't have that anymore in this country, but we still have an enslavement system called the Electoral College. So that should tell you a lot about here in the United States, how things run with the institutional levels of things. And so that's the system which got Donald Trump back in the White House. Now, here's the thing that's a bigger story than the Electoral College, which was not close, is that the American public thought it was a really good idea to do this.

Knowing what they knew or maybe didn't know, and that's to the disinformation part that I'm going to get to later. The American public decided to vote in someone who was an obvious criminal, who had been adjudicated to be a rapist, who had been impeached twice in his previous iteration in the White House, who had lied and lied.

dozens of thousands of times, 30,000 plus times to be precise, 30,573 if you're counting Washington Post, and had also said the most racist and vile and misogynistic and sexist things all the time, and was proven to be corrupt and was a convicted felon just seven months ago, dear listeners, seven months ago and one day ago today. Would you believe seven months and one day ago today?

Donald Trump was convicted on 34 felonies, but that didn't matter to the more than 77 million people who voted for him. And that really tells you something about people in this country. It really does. And it also tells you a whole lot about the more than 120 million people in this country who decided not to vote at all. That really should send a shockwave through you as well. People

decided not to vote in overwhelming numbers. And every election is like this when it comes to the presidency. There's always a lot of people who choose not to vote, who can vote. This is not that there are people who are just not registered. This is people who are registered to vote who decided, no, I'm not going to bother.

I'm not going to bother doing it. And so that's what you have this year. The real secret when it comes to elections and politics, when it comes to the state elections as well, over the last year or two, we had a lot of black folk who stayed at home. We had some black folk whose votes were suppressed, but we had black folk who stayed at home as well. Happened in the election for Louisiana in 2023, in the midterm for the governor's race there, where...

Black folk stayed at home. Happened in North Carolina, where black folks stayed at home in previous elections and midterms. Has happened in, you know, numerous parts of the South as well, in addition to the southern states of North Carolina.

and South Carolina and Louisiana. Black folks staying at home. And it happened to a certain degree by at least 2% or 3% in this presidential election where a black woman was running. Not that that really should make the extra difference, but one of the things that did make a difference was disinformation, which again, I will get to shortly. But what happened this year is not so much that Donald Trump won, not so much that voter suppression won,

It's really that the couch won. The couch won the November 2024 presidential election. That is what happened. And the couch, too, is a form of voter suppression. So if you really want to talk about voter suppression, you need to be talking about the more than 120 million people, at least, at least, who decided that they weren't going to vote at all. And it really was literally a choice between voting for Vice President Harris,

and staying home. And people chose the latter. That really is the biggest story of all when it comes to the election of 2024 in the presidential election. And of course, that whole story was quite an amazing story in and of itself. One that you could put in a novel or put on a, I don't know, in a book, in a movie. Yeah, you know, in a movie.

It really was kind of a fairytale story, and you could put it in a film. President Biden, who was running for a second term, much to the chagrin of the elites, upper echelon elites in the Democratic Party, the Pelosi's and that lot, and the Schumers, who didn't want him to really run again, that infamous debate in the middle of the summer in June, actually the early part of the summer, the 27th of June, seven days into the summer, and...

Joe Biden had one of the performances that he will always remember and forget. And I still thought he won that debate. I don't think he was that bad. He had a rough first few minutes and then, you know, did what he did the rest of the way.

But the bottom line is, is that he lost the election. He didn't lose the election. He was forced out. For weeks, the media in this country, the corporate news media, were telling him to get out of the race. And the Democrats, who were feeding stories to the press, were wanting him to get out. Oh, internal polling showed that Biden was going to lose the House and lose the Senate. And then he got pushed out on July the 21st.

And that was just three weeks after all of this began of this sustained pressure, all these moderate Democrats and one progressive came out and said he's got to leave. And he did, pushed him out. And the history shows that when you push out an incumbent president,

from the race, it doesn't bode well. Or when that president decides to not run again, it doesn't bode well for the party in power in the presidency. And that happened in LBJ's time, 1968, when he announced that he would not seek, nor will he accept,

your nomination for president of the United States. And he didn't. And they lost, the Democrats did, in 1968 amidst a lot more turmoil than there was this year in the Democratic Party. And there we go. Joe Biden stepped away, clearly very upset. In the run-up to that, there were black people across this country, black women in particular, and black men, including myself, who signed a letter

and had it sent to Democrats saying, hands off President Biden, do not force him out. But of course, ultimately that wasn't successful because he was forced out. And it was the Congressional Black Caucus that protected Vice President Harris from also being forced out. And so Vice President Harris stepped into the void after the President of the United States, Joe Biden, had approved of her to be his successor in a dramatic letter that he wrote

And then a statement on social media that he posted about half an hour after that. Boom, bingo. He did end up endorsing his vice president for the nomination. She, within a matter of hours, got pretty much everybody in.

in the democratic party to get behind her and raised an astounding amount of money. I think it was something like a hundred, uh, 50 million, uh, dollars in literally a couple of hours. And by the end of the day, something like $85 million, um,

Before we even got out of that Sunday, it was one of those remarkable things that you really could, again, put in a Hollywood movie. That kind of story was phenomenal. She became an instant darling, at least on the surface. There were a lot of...

People in the party who sang her praises on television. You had all the people who had resisted Biden and wanted them out of there. Then getting on camera who previously weren't going on camera and who were supporting her wholeheartedly, saying that Vice President Harris is the ideal person. We're very pleased with her. You know, all the people except for three.

Chuck Schumer, who took about two extra days to come out and endorse, or three extra days to come out and endorse. President Obama, who didn't come out and endorse her until nearly a week after.

She had got all the acclaim on that Sunday when she took the reins, essentially. And also Speaker Pelosi, who took, I think, 24 hours before, but really was not a very enthusiastic supporter of Vice President Harris, who she's always had a very low-key and lukewarm, at best, relationship with, even though they are political, you know, in the same part of the state, and literally are just what...

literally in the same city, San Francisco. Pelosi, of course, Speaker Pelosi here in San Francisco, and also Vice President Harris, who's from Oakland originally, but was the district attorney here in San Francisco for eight years. So, you know, there's always been this very cool and not in a good way relationship between the two of them politically.

And I think personally as well. And so you didn't see this enthusiastic welcome from Speaker Pelosi. And you didn't see this from President Obama, even though he campaigned for her. It took him a whole week before he came out and endorsed her. And there's no secret that both Pelosi and Obama and Schumer wanted an open primary after Biden got pushed out. They pushed him out.

They were the ones that pushed him out. They led the charge. He had George Clooney who was urging Obama, urging Biden to leave and was writing op-eds in the New York Times and calling Obama about the op-eds. It was just a crazy, crazy time. A lot of these rich white men who

Claimed to be Democratic supporters were saying, oh, we need to just, you know, make sure Biden's out of there. We should look at someone else. And we, you know, all the rest of it, all these rich donors and the Rob Reiner's of the world and piling on as well. People who you thought were decent people or so-called progressive people showed you their true colors. And a parade of these people did, you know, Jon Stewart did it, too.

and pretends that he didn't, but he did, was amongst those leading the charge to get, oh, Biden's got to go. Even though, you know, Biden has had a very good presidency, that didn't matter to people. It didn't matter to these rich folk. It didn't matter to a lot of people. I think President Biden will go down as one of the most underappreciated presidents ever.

that we've ever had in this country in the U.S. of A. And it definitely was the case. He got treated really horribly, quite frankly. It's not the first time I'm not sitting here shocked or surprised, but it's not the first time that a Democrat has been treated so badly by his or her own. We saw this with Al Franken, who had been accused of sexual assault and her harassment, where there had been no real evidence of that.

You know, he was probably, you know, was guilty of having a photograph taken where he has his hands over, not touching, but over the chest.

of a woman who had been near him and that photo was taken while he was not a politician ever this was years before he was a politician he was doing a USO tour for God's sakes as the comedian Al Franken not as the senator of Minnesota Al Franken and yet that photograph along with allegations that proved to be unfounded and not confirmed anywhere in any court was

in any way, were the things that got him bounced out of the Senate in 2017. And who was the party? Which party was it that laid him to the slaughter in front of the world?

No, not the Republican Party, the Democratic Party. And so that's the kind of thing that the Democrats do well. Talk about politics. The Democrats know how to eat their own and do it faster and louder and prouder and quicker than any other political party on the earth. We definitely have seen that many times here in the United States. And

in a parade of people back in 2017, all Democratic senators raging and just wanting Franklin to be gone. Franklin's got to go. Franklin's got to go. And he was gone, pushed out, gave a speech that he really didn't want to give and he was really pissed off that he had to give it.

And he showed how pissed off he was and talked about, you know, I have not committed any crimes here. There are people who are committing crimes who are in the White House, who here in DC, who are a lot worse than what I've been accused of. And, you know, that's what he was saying on the floor of the Senate when he left it in 2017.

And that's what happened. You know, he's a progressive senator too. But that's what happened. And so you see this with President Biden, who I think became more progressive in office, more progressive than he had been as a senator. Obviously, the exceptions to that are things like Gaza, the atrocities and human rights violations and war crimes of Gaza. So, you know, that's the one thing on his record that he is going to have to really live with. And so, you know, you can't escape that.

So President Biden was being pushed out of the party despite accomplishing all of the positive things that he had.

for the country in his four years. And so he did not get to run again. And, you know, age, the ageist society that we have was a large part of that as well, the culture and all the rest of it. And so Joe was gone. And the convention, we saw what we saw at the convention, and there couldn't have been different contrasting, more different and more contrasting conventions than the ones we saw. The Republican one, which was a Klan rally and talked about deporting Hispanics

Mass deportations now and you had all these weirdos on stage who were toxically masculine. And I'm not even going to mention their names. You know who they are and were versus the Democratic Convention, which was an upbeat, uplifting spectacle that included everybody and even included Republicans. And then what did that turn out to help when we saw November happened?

All the courting Vice President Harris did of Liz Cheney and all the rest turned out to really lay an egg when it came to actual voting. Didn't raise or move the needle whatsoever. All the billionaires that supported Harris, or at least publicly did, the Mark Cubans of the world, that didn't move the needle at all. Nobody cared about that when it came to the voting booth because nobody

Half the people of the country don't even know who Mark Cuban is unless they watch Shark Tank or watch him on TV at the court side of the Dallas Mavericks games in the NBA. And the bottom line is the rest couldn't care who he was. And then the other people also in the rest looked at a billionaire and thought, oh, no, why are Democrats courting billionaires? Isn't that what we want to get away from?

But, you know, Jeff Bezos. And then, you know, you had all that stuff going on and all the rest of it. So that is the politics inside the country and how that affected things in the election here in the United States. And I wanted to focus specifically on that. But I'm going to get to one thing next. Well, maybe two.

Institutions, of course, were a major part of this year. And I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about those for a few quick minutes. We saw in this country the United States Supreme Court absolutely running roughshod over rights and also giving the president of the United States powers of a king or queen, for that matter. We saw that with a fateful decision made on July 1st, 2024, where the United States Supreme Court gave immunity rights

unlimited immunity to Donald Trump for any crimes he committed while in office as the White House occupant, I'll put it that way. And that is a decision that will really mark the landscape and scar it here in the United States for a very long time to come until we get change in the Supreme Court, until we get more savvy as voters and recognize our political power.

As people in this country, we really need to re-educate and undergo very, very vigorous education and re-education on our rights, on civics, and on the importance of organizing locally, as I've said before. So again, a tremendous, tremendous thing that happened, a devastating thing that happened

institutions under attack or institutions doing the attacking, all the corruption that you're seeing now in the United States Supreme Court that you saw this year, Clarence Thomas taking millions and millions of dollars from a Republican billionaire named Harlan Crowe, who wants his agenda implemented. He's not giving Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court Justice, money just because he feels charitable. He's giving Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court Justice of the United States, money with the intention of influencing

the justices' opinions and rulings on things. And now it's very likely that Clarence Thomas and Justice Sam Alito are going to be leaving the court now that Donald Trump is going to be in the White House next month. So that's coming. You will see two more very young conservative justices, and that means you're going to have a cemented 7-2 Supreme Court for a long time to come. For a long time to come.

unless there are people who pass away on the Republican side of the court or unless there are people who are going to retire when there is a Democratic president, if there ever is one again in this country. Because really, that is an open question. Institutions...

Now a constitution under attack. Now a Supreme Court doing the attacking. Now a Supreme Court that has now become the most powerful branch of government and now the presidency, which will become the most powerful branch of government come January the 20th, 2025. That is what we are in for here in the United States and that's going to have an effect around the world and

America is going to not be the kind of country that dictates to anyone anymore, which in some ways, which a lot of ways is good news. The bad news is, is that we will allow dictators from other countries to have their say and not just have their say, have their control over the world. That is really where I see things going in 2025. But institutions, the United States Supreme Court to me, and of course the media, which I will also talk about, are really the two places where

where the devastation has really happened and that has definitely filtered down into other areas of government as well. Of course, a quick correction, it would be a cemented six to three Supreme Court. You forget, there are actually three Democratic-leaning or Democratic Supreme Court justices and they are all female. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Katonji Brown Jackson.

And of course, I should also add that Harlan Crowe, the Republican billionaire, gave lots of plane trips and all kinds of benefits and gratuities to Clarence Thomas. I should make that also very clear. I talked about money, but there's also lots of plane rides and all kinds of access to houses and hotels and all the rest of it and trips, all the rest of it. And the so-called ethics rules, they don't really exist. Come on now.

We are living in an age of disinformation. This is the disinformation age, and I've said this many a time. Disinformation, and for that matter, misinformation, have been the key components over the last, really, the last five years, and you're going to see more of this happen later.

as we continue to move forward. And in this calendar year, 2024, there was no exception to that as misinformation and disinformation, I think, were principally responsible

among many other things, for Donald Trump getting back into the White House. And that was followed through lies on social media, distortions on social media, and also the irresponsible corporate news media who really don't care anymore about getting things right.

and really don't care anymore if they are actually downright biased. They always have been to a large, large degree. And so journalism went out the window. And when you had journalism go out the window in 2024, I would say it went out the window even before that, long before it. When you have such blatant bias shown by the New York Times, by the Washington Post,

by the LA Times, by all of these publications, with the notable exception of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and also ultimately when the New York Times decided to endorse Vice President Harris before they had, after they had said that Biden should step down, never said that Trump should until lots of readers quit their subscriptions of the New York Times, including me, and said, hey, look, you know what? You guys are a disgrace. And then they said, Donald Trump is unfaithful.

fit and unwell. He shouldn't be. Yeah, but that's only after you had millions of readers unsubscribed from you and stopped buying subscriptions to your paper. So you had all these things, the corporate cable news media as well, all of whom were shilling, no matter whether they were Fox News or MSNBC and CNN and News Nation, shilling for Donald Trump.

And that's what you got in the White House in November when he was elected. And so this is something that happened. And a lot of it was possible because of misinformation in social media and billionaires owning media platforms in the social media and billionaires owning the Washington Post and the L.A. Times who refused to make an endorsement at all when it was very clear between the dictator and the president

who was going to turn the United States into an even better country than it began to be under President Biden in terms of policies and healthcare and things like that and

prices of prescription drugs and all the rest of it, they decided to choose the dictator. And that was because you had a lot of people endorsing in the editorial boards being overruled and owners of papers saying, no, you're not going to be able to make an endorsement here. I forbid you to do that. And of course, the owner of the paper is going to carry that kind of sway. And people resigned in some of these boards in the LA Times and the Washington Post. They resigned because of how pathetic this was.

and how dangerous it was and is still. And so one of the things I'm gonna be doing formally is quitting as of tonight, Amazon everywhere. I know that maybe you've already done that with Amazon.

But I don't subscribe to the Washington Post, and I am going to put the kibosh on the Amazon subscription that I have as of today, tonight, the 31st. Because, no, listen, I could have done this a long time ago. I could have done it when this whole thing happened in November or in October with Bezos saying, oh, no, we're not going to endorse anybody. Between the criminal and the person who has had an exemplary career in public service, we're going to go with nobody, which means you are going with the criminal, Jeff Bezos.

And so I am going to make an executive decision and have made the executive decision. Just one person in the world who has decided to quit Amazon and get away from it. And I know Amazon is nearly impossible to quit. I wish I knew how to quit you. But...

I do know how to quit you, Amazon, and I'm going to do it. And I really hope, dear listener, that you do the same somehow, that you really do quit Amazon. I'm not saying that you quit shopping at Whole Foods or quit shopping at, you know what I mean? But I am saying Amazon, which treats its workers, speaking of human rights violations, I didn't even mention this earlier, treats its workers like dirt.

and tells them how dare they strike, how dare they strike for better wages when their former owner, because he no longer is the CEO of Amazon, so I think his former owner, and he still owns Amazon, but he's a former CEO, I should say, who was saying, who says, oh, Vaughn, oh, come on, how dare you strike for better wages when I'm making billions of dollars and not paying any federal income tax? And so,

Amazon workers being treated like dirt. Just this month, you had police in New York, you know, arresting Amazon workers who were picketing, who had the temerity to cross, who had the temerity to strike. It is just insane. And they were breaking up picket lines. This is what fascism looks like. This is fascism.

breaking up picket lines. People have the right to strike and to unionize. And Amazon is against all that stuff and the conditions that they keep their workers in. It's just absolutely disgusting. And so...

So billionaires and their empires were things that fueled misinformation. And again, we have a right to fight back against that. And I think one way to do that is to withhold our economic power, withhold our economic purse. And that means to, in my view, withdraw from Amazon. I don't care how good the deals are.

It's just the way it goes. Don't have a membership in Amazon. Don't shop on Amazon. It's very hard to find elsewhere, but you just have to do it if you are committed to it or you just don't have to do it. You don't have to. If you're going to continue to shop with Amazon, then that's what you're going to do. It's easy. It's quick. You just do it in two seconds and it's done. And the person gets the gift or the...

Whatever it is, or you get the gift or whatever you're buying in 2.2 seconds, sometimes in the same day, even slower than 2.2 seconds. Sometimes, you know, again, this is what happens. And so that's a choice I have chosen to make in response to these billionaires who are really wretched and very, very, very, very few of whom have a real collective care of

about the collective country that they live in. They care only about their safety and their profits, as James Baldwin would say. Only care about their money and how much of a bonus they're going to get, which of course is a hefty one, I'm sure, for them while they cut the bonuses of their workers. I mean, this is what happens. Government workers are getting bonuses cut. You know, people are getting fired from jobs before this orange freak comes in. And you've got billionaires doing what they're doing and the corporate cable news media

becoming a complete farce now that it is. Whether it's MSNBC or Fox, which has always been a disaster, and CNN and News Nation and all the rest, they don't serve the public interest. They serve their interest. They serve their master's interest. They serve their billionaire owner's interest. And so they don't serve the interest of the public. They try to entertain and titillate the public. And that's the problem with now.

with news in their hands, news has become a tool to entertain and titillate you with, which really that is not what news is supposed to be. And now you've got this generation of celebrities who are now becoming spokespersons somehow for movements like Stephen A. Smith, who is a sports analyst and sports pundit.

and reporter, but he now is now moonlighting as a politico. Somehow he's got some inside knowledge and inside insight and analysis on politics now. And he's pontificating and weighing in on things he's got no idea of. And of course, he's getting a lot of misinformation and putting it out there, spewing misinformation. And that's where I talk about the misinformation and disinformation age. And you've got people given large platforms, massive platforms,

millions and millions of people, and they're talking a lot of nonsense, a lot of lies, a lot of incorrect information, things that are not accurate, things that are downright lies, things that are completely false, things that just aren't true. But yet, millions of people eat that up, and it happens on social media, and that really has been the thing. Elon Musk, the Elon Musk of...

The Elon Muskification, if I can say it, of the media, of news and information has happened and it has come full circle. It's been going on for a long time and here we are.

And it is absolutely sapping us combined with Republicans banning books, which didn't start just yesterday. And then you see what's happening. The dumbing down of the society that you and I live in, the dumbing down of the world that you and I live in, and the anti-intellectualization of the world and the country that you and I live in. And so...

It's more important than ever. This is one of the reasons why I often give out book titles and books that I recommend for you to read is that we need to be reading books. We need to be getting active. We need to be understanding local government, local power.

And we need to be organizing around those things in 2025 as a pushback against what we've seen. Yes, we need better ecosystems and media. Yes, we need that against the right-wing onslaught. But when you've got Democratic politicians who choose not to go on your podcast or your radio network, you have to then start to set the agenda elsewhere. So it's a symbiotic thing, but it's also...

a thing that we need to be proactive on. And I think certainly,

We did not have as much of that this year amidst an onslaught in the media, which again is just very unhealthy to have a media that claims that it cares but doesn't really care. It's all about individuals and pundits making money, if some of them do make money, off of these appearances on TV to sell their books. It's all about them selling their books, selling their nearest gig, selling their next gig or their next appearance.

And that's what this has become now. It's not about the viewer. It's not about educating the viewer. It's all about a cult of personality. And that has been the way for a number of decades here in the United States, a cult of personality. But that now has hit the news industry and it's really become a very toxic thing. And it adds and contributes to the misinformation and disinformation age.

All of the lies that are getting funneled through TV commercials, through online commercials, through social media commercials, and X becoming the absolute sin bin of filth and sewer garbage and gutter snipes that it has become. It was a major story in 2024. Once Elon Musk purchased this, the platform in 2022, it became exactly that. And so

It was the disaster that it was going to become when it came to all of these things. And so

This is a real, real problem, a real problem. And it has had devastating impact across the country and beyond where social media and misinformation is concerned. And I do think that we need to get away from social media and at least go to better and safer spaces on social media and spend less time on social media and spend more time focusing and looking at what we need to do

in our lives to improve the quality of our lives and also to organize and do that somehow offline as well, offline and online, but do it in a way that we control the platforms that we have. We go to Fanbase, for example. We go to Spoutable, for example, where you can have safe conversations and

And have access to people who are on those spaces and those platforms who are in the know, who are politicians, who you can speak to, you can listen to. These are very important places to go to, Fanbase and Spoutable. These are two very important platforms, both of which are black owned. And then there is Blue Sky as well, Blue Sky.

is also a platform now that a lot of people have flocked to and left X from, and I've been one of them, although I still have an account of X, but just don't really post very much on X at all anymore. And why should you, you know, when you've got all of the kinds of...

racist treatment that you get on X, sexist treatment and misogynistic treatment that you get on X. You get the algorithms throttling your content if you're black. Your content doesn't get the views that it used to on when it was Twitter a few years back when you'd get a lot more views and exposure. And now, no, your content gets throttled and gets strangled. And so only a few people get to see your views. And that's through algorithms that get attached to

and floated to your account and everywhere else. And so you don't get that your views and your tweets and posts don't get to see, don't get anywhere. So why be on the platform in the first place? And that's the design of Elon Musk and his cohorts. That's what he wants. He doesn't want you and I as black people. And he doesn't want people who are, you know, trans or who are brown people or who are female persons to be on these platforms. He doesn't want that. He doesn't want that at all.

And definitely doesn't want black men and black women on the platform. Doesn't want it. And so that's what you get. You get this misinformation. You get some of these celebrities who are black or white out here peddling nonsense. Or people in the music industry, people who are rappers talking nonsense, who don't know what they're talking about, half of them. And they've got MAGA hats on, just acting the fool and being stupid. And you've got professional athletes, some of them as well, doing the same thing.

So you've got people who don't know what they're talking about who are being paraded in front of you, which is the filth machine. It's just complete nonsense. People who are insulting Vice President Harris, who are in positions of power. The incoming vice president, if you can believe it, saying that Vice President Harris needs to...

is a B word. I don't think he said that, but I'm sure that I know that the other guy said it. But, you know, we need to take her out with the trash. That's the kind of thing that a lot of Americans are quite happy with. Some of them Latinos, many of them white.

So many people being happy with that who are white and, you know, some Latino men who are very happy with that kind of language being used about Vice President Harris, who are very happy to hear a so-called comedian insulting people from Puerto Rico at the Nazi convention at Madison Square Garden earlier this year, who were very happy at that kind of nonsense. And it didn't blink an eye, didn't blink an eye. The media kept going on and on about it. But really what they were doing was feeding the cult and the racism.

That's what was going on. And the country has no moral compass. And so misinformation leads to all of these things and a whole lot worse. And really what it turned out was in 2024 when it came to misinformation is that we didn't learn our lesson. Didn't learn the history lesson because we don't care about history, it seems. Not it seems. You know, the vast majority of us do not care in the United States about history because that was then.

Ooh, that was in the past. Oh, that was a long time ago. Well, it was not a long time ago. In fact, all these things are a part of us. How can you disconnect yourself from the past? Even if you weren't around in the past, you cannot disconnect yourself from it. And so that is something that we fail to learn. And quite frankly, do not care to want to learn. That was the story of the misinformation and disinformation age in 2024.

I haven't talked a lot about abortion on this year in review, although I will mention it very briefly again later on or already, depending on which order in this episode that comes. But Amber Nicole Thurman was one of the two women that we know of, and I'm sure they are going to sadly be many more, who died as a result of the Supreme Court's abortion ban from 2022.

was implemented. She was a woman in Georgia who could not get the treatment in the States. She had to go to North Carolina to get it and by then it was too late for her and she died. And, you know, this barbarism here in the United States that we have had for so long that really is especially aimed at black women has cost at least two black women their lives that we know of right now. And any woman who

as a result of these abortion bans. You know, the government and the Supreme Court specifically, I should say, has blood on its hands. And so do these state governors who approve of these bans, like Brian Kemp did in Georgia as the governor there that resulted in the death of Amber Nicole Thurman. You know, this is something that cannot be overlooked or swept away under the rug and it cannot be forgotten. You know, these are

really, really horrible, horrible situations that no one should experience. Nobody should experience this. And it's completely preventable. It truly, truly is. And it's just so heinous and so awful and so barbaric that a woman should lose her life simply because

of an abortion ban that says that a woman should not have a right to get an abortion. It's so devastating. It's so devastating that I really don't know where to begin. I really don't. We've had these losses of Amber Nicole Thurman. We had the loss of the other sister. I believe her name is Crystal Miller.

I'm not quite sure what her name is and I'm so sorry, but I do send my deepest condolences to their families. It is very difficult for them at this time of year and for a lot of other people who have gone through this and have lost someone as a result of these abortion bans.

There's so many things that took place in 2024 and of course for the fight for abortion rights, for safety, for the environment as I've talked about earlier and so many other things, police brutality, the fight to hold police accountable, the fight to hold people who commit hate crimes responsible and so many other things, health care etc etc etc etc.

And of course we have, as I mentioned yesterday in the episode, a lot of people who departed the planet this year. And I forgot.

A whole lot of people who did, you know, whether it was even OJ Simpson, who passed away earlier this year. My goodness me. Whether it was Greg Gumbel, who passed away just a few days ago. You know, a broadcaster, legendary sports broadcaster and anchor for both CBS and NBC news.

for a number of years here in the United States and so many other people whose names I forget and remember and forget again who we lost in 2024 Ricky Henderson I mentioned yesterday and so many people who were good people by the way I mean OJ Simpson may be an exception to that I would say he was but

Certainly was an exception to that when I say one of the good people. That would not be him. But he passed away this year and we had a whole lot of other people who passed away in 2024. It's just incredible to believe that we lost so many people. And I'm thinking about people now in my mind's eye.

I remember who passed, but I just don't remember their names. There's just a sheer volume of so many people who passed away. And after I end this episode, I guarantee the names will all come flooding back to me, you know. But dear listener, again, if you lost someone this year, you know, my deepest condolences to you.

If you're going through some very difficult things at the moment, my empathy is with you. And my belief is that you will get through these things. As I've always said, not just this year, but any year that I've done this podcast, tough times don't last. Tough people like you do. And I really do believe that. And I want you to believe that. And I want you to know that because you have the power, even in these tough times, to keep going forward.

to feel, to hurt, to understand, and to keep moving forward, even with the very difficult burdens and trials and tribulations that you or someone you know or someone in your family has

may be experiencing right this second and of course it is a very difficult time of year especially on a day like today new year's eve which happens to be my favorite time of the year but for many people across the globe it's a very challenging time of year because of all the difficult things that you may be going through the loneliness the isolation the um

Mental health situations, depression, clinical depression, which is something that happens year round to many millions of people across the world. These things get amplified a lot more on a day like today, on a day like last week, Christmas Eve and Christmas, and on a day like today, certainly, when people are up and about and making fools of themselves, making idiots of themselves, as I will be doing, and as people will be doing here on New Year's Eve.

It's a very difficult time for a lot of other people, many, many millions of people across the globe. And so I do send my sincere best wishes and hopes and aspirations to you to have a better 2025 and a more uplifting 2025 than perhaps you might have had here in this year. A long year, an extra day, 366 days. This is the 366th day,

of 2024. We have reached day 366 of 366.

And we have reached the end of the Politocrat Daily Podcast for this calendar year, 2024. I do thank you very much for your listenership throughout this year, whether you listen for two seconds or two hours in some cases. I do thank you so very much indeed for your time, for spreading the word about the Politocrat Daily Podcast. Remember, there is a YouTube channel for this podcast as well, at thepolitocratpod.com.

And I do hope that you subscribe to the channel. There'll be videos up in 2025. I do thank you for your time, for your patience, and really for listening. I hope to have many more guests. I only had one, I think, in 2024, but many more guests on the podcast as well. So you don't have to just sit here and listen to my boring voice droning on and on. You get to listen to other people as well. And I

really going to work to get that to happen much more often in 2025. It's been a busy year. It's been an interesting year, an exciting year, a challenging year. It's been a year of some really, really sad news, obviously, in the world. It's been a year of hope as well, I think, in some cases, and some uplifting moments. But it's also been a very painful year as well, as we've seen what we've seen across the world as well. So,

With that, I close out this year and I do wish you the very best and healthiest and happiest and most prosperous of new years. And I thank you so very much indeed for listening to the Politocrat Daily Podcast. Remember, you can find this podcast on Apple, on Spotify, as well as other platforms like Odyssey and Vogue.

Audible, and of course, on numerous other podcasting platforms as well. Of course, you can find yours truly on social media as well at the popcorn R-E-E-L on places like spoutable. Excuse me. It's at popcorn R-E-E-L on spoutable. Spoutable.com at popcorn R-E-E-L on fanbase. Fanbase.app forward slash

Popcorn R-E-E-L. Remember, Fanbase is a social media revolution. You do not want to miss out on Isaac Hayes III's platform. It's going to get even better in 2025 with Twitter functionality as well. How about that? Please invest in Fanbase today. Startengine.com forward slash Fanbase. Please do.

Get a piece of the pie at Fanbase, on Fanbase right now. And please follow me there. Of course, there's sez.us, four slash popcorn, R-E-E-L. Get on that now. And of course, Blue Sky, popcorn, R-E-E-L dot bsky dot social. That's a platform that everybody is flocking to these days. Threads.net, four slash popcorn, R-E-E-L. In addition to Happy New Year, everybody.

And take care of yourselves. Take good care, please, over this new year. And of course, thank you so very much again. Thank you very much for listening to this edition of The Politocrat. I'm Omar Moore.