We’re at 915 new TPM Members, folks. Just 85 more to go till we meet our goal of 1,000 new TPM Members. Let me pack in some extra encouragement. Please make today the day you sign up to join us, either as a new member or returning one. Just click here. And thank you. It makes a huge, huge difference for our whole operation.

Late Update: 930!

The killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers has over the last two days triggered a wholesale shift across the U.S. political spectrum. But most particularly and significantly it’s triggered a shift from the White House. Today President Biden called for an “immediate ceasefire” along with comments from other administration officials that elaborate on a broader policy shift. In response now there are cries of betrayal from Netanyahu dead-enders as well as misgivings even from some of Netanyahu’s fiercest critics that the upshot of these events is that Hamas will live to fight another day with its brigades still holding out in Rafah.

But coming to this crossroads, which to me is a very positive development, is really all on the current government in Israel and the man who orchestrates every one of its strategies, Benjamin Netanyahu. Joe Biden has gone to every possible length to support Israel in its quest to destroy Hamas’s military capability after the terrorist paramilitary group invaded Israel with multiple death squads on October 7th. He has done that even through vast destruction to the basic physical infrastructure of Gaza and vast loss of innocent human life. He has maintained this in the face of tremendous geopolitical fallout. He has continued to do this even in the face of real damage to his political standing at home and chances for reelection in November.

We need your help for the final stretch of our Annual TPM Membership Drive. We’ve now signed up 858 new members out of our goal of 1,000. One of the benefits of these round numbers is that even I can easily compute the percentage in my head. We’re about 85% of the way there and we are going to pull out all the stops to hit our goal by the end of this week. If you have been thinking of joining during our drive, now is quite literally the time. Remember that in addition to all the direct benefits and supporting our work, we are running a 40% discount for the duration of the drive. So it’s also a good time for that. If you’ve never joined or perhaps let your membership lapse, please take a moment right now to click this link and join us. We all appreciate it.

Late Update: Now 893! We can definitely get past 900 this evening.

Thanks to so many of you for writing in in response to yesterday’s post about SCTV. It hadn’t occurred to me that lots of the sketches and maybe whole shows are on YouTube. But of course that makes perfect sense. One of the interesting things about those notes is that many of you mentioned something that I didn’t say explicitly in my post but was likely implicit, which is that being a fan of SCTV was a bit like joining a secret club. About half way through it’s run it got picked up by NBC and then it ran I think after Saturday Night Live. That’s a helluva time slot. But still, that’s network TV. Before that, though, you had to be a bit of a freak to even have found it. It would only be available as a syndicated show on one of the non-affiliate channels picked up from whatever rando station produced it in Toronto. (And yes, for you youngs, this was back when there were like 5 to 7 channels total, the three affiliate channels, PBS and then two or three low budget local channels that probably ran mostly repeats of like I Love Lucy and Brady Bunch.) So it really was a bit like being in a secret club. The few, the elect, the viewers of a show that was legit funnier than SNL.

Here’s a recollection from TPM Reader PK … (and God is he right about John Candy)

We’ve signed up 759 new members since we kicked off this year’s annual TPM membership drive. That’s just over 3/4 of the way toward our goal. I really want to thank everyone who has signed up so far. Truly. Thank you. If you’ve been considering signing up, please take the plunge today. We’re so close to hitting our goal of 1,000 new members. With your help we can probably get to 800 today. Just click here. We really appreciate it.

I wanted to share a few thoughts with you about the pretty big news out of Florida this afternoon. If you haven’t already heard, the state Supreme Court signed off on two ballot initiatives which will now appear on the ballot this November: one legalizing abortion and another legalizing marijuana. This is a big deal both for the rights in question and the potential impact on the general election. So starting with the correct assumption that this is a big deal I want to note a few complexities and complications.

I mentioned last week that Truth Social — Trump’s social network — only had a bit more revenue than TPM. And needless to say, TPM doesn’t have a multi-billion dollar stock valuation. (If anyone disagrees on this point, contact me.) Today the company released its first 8-K, basically one of the many SEC-mandated disclosures for public companies in which lying means committing a crime. There’s a bit more there on the inflows and outflows. TS brought in about $4.1 million last year and spent $58 million. So that means that TS had about 30% more revenue than TPM and roughly 20 times the expenses. Not great! There’s some other interesting details, like the fact that $39 million of that $58 million went to interest payments. Go figure.

These data points are pretty good evidence that this company is a joke. And they make for good fun. But it’s not proof. A social network in its early stages can be bleeding lots of money and still be legitimately worth a ton of money. This isn’t just hypothetical. Facebook had already become a force of nature before Mark Zuckerberg turned his attention to monetizing the engine of value he created. So there was a time when Facebook was also spending way more money than it made and investors were dying to buy in. Those who did made tons of money.

So the revenue and expenses aren’t the proof. But the proof is there.