The Conversation -- November 17, 2024
Adam Entous, et al., of the New York Times: “President Biden has authorized the first use of U.S.-supplied long-range missiles by Ukraine for strikes inside Russia, U.S. officials said. The weapons are likely to be initially employed against Russian and North Korean troops in defense of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region of western Russia, the officials said. Mr. Biden’s decision is a major change in U.S. policy. The choice has divided his advisers, and his shift comes two months before ... Donald J. Trump takes office, having vowed to limit further support for Ukraine. Allowing the Ukrainians to use the long-range missiles, known as the Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, came in response to Russia’s surprise decision to bring North Korean troops into the fight, officials said.” The AP's report is here. ~~~
~~~ Marc Santora of the New York Times: “Russia renewed its campaign to destroy Ukraine’s battered power grid on Sunday, targeting facilities across the country with missiles and long-range drones in one of the largest and most complex bombardments of the war, Ukrainian officials said. The attack lasted several hours and featured around 120 missiles and 90 drones, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement. Air-defense teams destroyed 144 targets, but at least nine civilians were killed, officials said. Mr. Zelensky said F-16 pilots had shot down 10 targets. 'The enemy’s target was our energy infrastructure throughout Ukraine,' Mr. Zelensky said. 'Unfortunately, there is damage to objects from hits and falling debris.' Interceptor missiles could be seen streaking across blue skies over the capital, before exploding in thunderous claps. Similar scenes played out across Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said.”
Aaron Davis, et al., of the Washington Post: In January 2021 after the insurrection, “Travis Akers, then a naval intelligence officer..., posted ... photos [of some of Pete Hegseth's tattoos] to ... Twitter, calling the tattoos 'white supremacist symbols' — an interpretation Hegseth has since forcefully denied. The tweet was forwarded to the D.C. National Guard’s head of physical security, Master Sgt. DeRicko Gaither, who soon warned commanding general William J. Walker that the Latin phrase suggested Hegseth could be an 'insider threat.' As he was about to be deployed [to duties surrounding Joe Biden's inauguration], Hegseth — now ... Donald Trump’s nominee to be defense secretary — received a call from his superior officer ordering him to stand down.... Hegseth’s removal from the mission became a seminal moment in his life.... [He] wrote in the opening lines of his most recent book ... that he left the military because of the episode. [He wrote, 'So, I resigned. On Jan. 20, 2021, I drafted the letter. F*** Biden anyway.'” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Hegseth claims innocence, but here's what he once wrote about the tattoo in question, according to the Post: “... Hegseth ties his belief in an existential struggle over America’s 'native' and 'Judeo-Christian' culture to the Crusades, writing that Christians, along with their 'Jewish friends and freedom-loving people everywhere,' must fight back against secularism, leftism, globalism and Muslim immigration. 'See you on the battlefield,' he writes in closing out the book. 'Together, with God’s help, we will save America. Deus vult!'”
Conservative New York Times columnist David French must be an optimist because he thinks Donald Trump is already beginning to fail: “Donald Trump is planting the seeds of his own political demise. The corrupt, incompetent and extremist men and women he’s appointing to many of the most critical posts in his cabinet are direct threats to the well-being of the country, but they’re also political threats to Trump and to his populist allies.... If Trump’s cabinet picks help him usher in the chaos that is the water in which he swims, then the question won’t be whether voters rebuke MAGA again, but rather how much damage it does before it fails once more.
Amanda Holpuch of the New York Times: “The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the fatal shooting by a sheriff’s deputy of Sonya Massey, a woman who had called the police because she thought a prowler was outside her home and was killed after an exchange with responding officers over a pot of hot water. In a letter to officials in Sangamon County, the Justice Department said that it had reviewed reports about the shooting of Ms. Massey, who was Black, and that they raised 'serious concerns' about the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office’s interactions with Black people and people with behavioral health disabilities. The Justice Department is also investigating the county and its central emergency dispatch system for possible violations of federal nondiscrimination policies.... The deputy, Sean Grayson, who is white, shot Ms. Massey, 36, inside her home in Springfield, Ill., on July 6.”
Simon Levien of the New York Times: “J. Ann Selzer, the vaunted Iowa political pollster who released an eyebrow-raising poll just before Election Day, said on Sunday that she would end her election polling operation. Ms. Selzer, 68, has long been a trusted voice in the polling industry, predicting the state’s margins of past presidential elections with an accuracy few rivaled. So when her last poll before Election Day showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading ... Donald J. Trump in Iowa, it created a political shock wave. It was a surprising result, showing Ms. Harris leading by three percentage points. And observers noted it was an outlier. But many trusted Ms. Selzer’s expertise and her track record. Nearly every other poll in Iowa showed Mr. Trump leading the state by a healthy margin, and in 2020 Mr. Trump won the state by eight points. By the time ballots were counted early this month, Mr. Trump led Ms. Harris by more than 13 points en route to his overall victory. Ms. Selzer said in a column in The Des Moines Register that she decided over a year ago that this would be the last election she polled.” Politico's story is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: I'm wondering why it is that when untalented men make mistakes, they soldier on, often not admitting to their errors or blaming others. When talented women make mistakes, they fall on their swords, they apologize and they quit.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Sanewashing Crazy Bobby. Albert Burneko of the Defector cites the text of the subhead and lede of a New York Times report on the nomination of RFJ, Jr., to head HHS: "'Vaccine skeptic.' 'Vaccine skepticism.' What the fuck are we talking about here?... You don't often encounter a word being used to describe its exact opposite in the pages of one of the English language's most prominent publications.... In my lifetime as a word-nerd, I have known 'skepticism' to refer to a sort of stubborn insistence upon rigor and evidence in place of things like dogma and 'common sense.' A skeptic, by those terms, is someone who questions what they are told. Crucially, a skeptic actually questions, as in seeks answers. A person who merely refuses to learn what can be known is not a skeptic, but rather an ignoramus.... There is no such thing as an adult 'vaccine skeptic' in the year 2024.... Any reasonable questions that a skeptical, critical-minded person might have about how and whether vaccines work can be answered by more hard, clear evidence than a person could exhaust in a year of nonstop research.... How does a shit-for-brains like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. come to be described as a 'vaccine skeptic' in the New York Times, in 2024, when he absolutely is not one, and when there is also no such thing as one?... Surely the incurable politeness of America's boneless legacy press plays a role in this." During the course of his rant Burneko supplies the Times with an appropriate word to replace "skeptic": "denier." Thanks to RAS for the link. MB: Worth a read, if just for the fun of it. ~~~
~~~ Marie: In case you were wondering what the Defector is, as I was, here's its self-description: "... a new sports blog and media company. We made this place together, we own it together, we run it together. Without access, without favor, without discretion, and without interference."
Part of our Constitutional duties as U.S. citizens to laugh at these people, and SNL is here to help:
Pat Koch Thaler is dead. You will want to read her obituary. This is supposed to be a gift link for nonsubscribers to Thaler's New York Times' obituary, by Sam Roberts. If the link doesn't work properly, I apologize. And please let me know.
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Zolan Kanno-Youngs & Alexandra Stevenson of the New York Times: “When President Biden and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, met on Saturday in Peru, they spoke directly to each other for perhaps the last time about a fierce superpower rivalry that Mr. Biden has sought to keep from spiraling into open conflict. But both men also seemed to be addressing ... Donald J. Trump.... Mr. Xi, in his opening remarks, offered what appeared to be a stern warning as U.S.-China relations enter a new period of uncertainty after the American election.... In his own opening comments, Mr. Biden seemed to try to make the case for maintaining a relationship with Beijing, as Mr. Trump talks about imposing more punishing tariffs on China and picks hard-liners for top administration posts....
“But even as Mr. Biden’s session with Mr. Xi, during a gathering of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, began with conciliatory words, it also gave the president a final chance to challenge the Chinese leader directly.... Mr. Biden pushed Mr. Xi to maintain peace in Taiwan, and pressed the Chinese leader over Beijing’s support for Russia, according to his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. Mr. Biden also urged Mr. Xi to discourage North Korea from continuing to support Russia in its war in Ukraine, Mr. Sullivan said.... [Mr. X pushed back on these and other concerns.]... Even as Mr. Biden has sought to steady relations, the fierce competition between the two countries was on vivid display during the APEC meeting in Lima.”
~~~ Here's the White House readout of President Biden's meeting with Xi Jinping.
A Most Unserious Man. Maggie Haberman & Jonathan Swan of the New York Times: “Emboldened, confident in his instincts and more contemptuous than ever of Washington expertise, Mr. Trump is staffing the most important roles in his government at breakneck speed. Advisers have been stunned at how fast he is ticking through his choices, filling the government’s most important positions roughly a month sooner than he did in 2016. Much of the action has taken place under the chandelier in the tearoom at Mar-a-Lago, where Mr. Trump surveys his potential Cabinet nominees on giant video screens. He flicks through shortlists that his transition team, led by the billionaire Howard Lutnick, has drafted over the past months. If Mr. Trump shows an interest in a candidate, the presentation is designed to allow him to immediately watch videos of the potential nominee’s TV appearances — essential for any would-be Trump cabinet official.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: It is tempting to compare Trump to a casting director, except I believe most casting directors take their jobs more seriously than Trump takes his role of filling administrative jobs. As for his being “contemptuous of Washington expertise,” he is contemptuous of all expertise, and he is contemptuous of elites everywhere, especially in Manhattan, where the upper crust is equally contemptuous of him.
With the nomination of Chris Wright, Trump is following through on the $1 billion offer he made to Big Oil at a dinner this spring. -- Tiernan Sittenfeld of the League of Conservation Voters ~~~
~~~ Trump Picks Another Dangerous Crackpot. Evan Halper, et al., of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he has selected Chris Wright, the head of fracking company Liberty Energy and a skeptic of mainstream climate science, to lead the Department of Energy and to serve on a new National Energy Council.... In Wright, Trump has chosen a skeptic of the scientific consensus on global warming who argues the 'climate crisis' is a myth. The fracking executive runs a foundation focused on dispelling the conventional wisdom on climate change and promoting expanded fossil fuel production as a solution to many of the world’s problems, an approach others say would drive dangerous levels of warming.... [Wright's] assertions conflict sharply with the conclusions of the world’s leading climate scientists affiliated with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change....
“Wright emerged as a front-runner for the role of energy secretary at the behest of oil tycoon Harold Hamm, one of Trump’s closest allies.... Like Hamm, Wright ranked as a major donor to the Trump campaign.... Wright’s antipathy toward clean-energy subsidies and rules that penalize fossil fuel emissions contrasts with positions taken by [North Dakota Gov. Doug] Burgum[, whom Trump has tapped to be his interior secretary and 'energy czar.']” Politico's story is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: We'll see how this works out. According to Michael Gold of the New York Times, Trump claimed Wright “had worked for years with Doug Burgum.” Another reason Wright is such an awful choice: he (1) has no government experience, according to Gold, and (2) he “would be in charge of the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, and he would oversee the domestic nuclear energy industry when the sector is seeking to extend the lives of existing reactors and bring new reactor technologies to market,” write the WashPo reporters.
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: “... Donald J. Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, paid a woman who had accused him of sexual assault as part of a settlement agreement with a confidentiality clause, but Mr. Hegseth insists it was a consensual encounter, his lawyer said on Saturday.... According to [a Monterey, California,] police statement, the complaint was filed four days after the encounter [in October 2017], and the complainant had bruises to her thigh. The police report itself was not released.” ~~~
~~~ Michael Kranish, et al., of the Washington Post broke the story: “Hegseth’s attorney, Timothy Parlatore, said that Hegseth was 'visibly intoxicated' at the time of the incident, and maintained that police who were contacted a few days after the encounter by the woman concluded that 'the Complainant had been the aggressor in the encounter.' Police have not confirmed that assertion.... The [attorney's] statement came after a detailed memo was sent to the Trump transition team this week by a woman who said she is a friend of the accuser. The memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, alleged he raped the then-30-year-old conservative group staffer in his room after drinking at a hotel bar.... After [the woman] threatened litigation in 2020, Hegseth made the payment and she signed the nondisclosure agreement, his attorney said.” The story has more details. ~~~
~~~ Scott Lemieux in LG&$: "In addition to what he is credibly accused of, your reminder that Hegseth definitely favors pardoning particularly appalling war criminals.... [Lemieux cites a Time report detailing the convicted or accused war criminals Hegseth advocated for.] Since we’re dealing with the Republican Party in 2024, the extensive evidence that Hegseth is a moral degenerate in addition to being entirely unqualified to be Secretary of Defense is presumably a positive factor for his likelihood of being confirmed." MB: You do have to keep in mind that Trumpworld mindset that killing "the enemy" -- even if the "enemy" is a civilian or a child and especially if the "enemy" is non-white -- is considered to be an admirable act of machoismo. The Trumpists are the cartoonish characters of B-grade action movies. On the other hand, there's this: ~~~
~~~ Courtney Kube, et al., of NBC News: "The Trump transition team is compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers who were directly involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and exploring whether they could be court-martialed for their involvement, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the plan. Officials working on the transition are considering creating a commission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including gathering information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military, how it was carried out, and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason, the U.S. official and person with knowledge of the plan said.... A 2022 independent review by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction blamed both the Trump and Biden administrations for the chaotic U.S. withdrawal in 2021."
Ian Millhiser of Vox: “Trump chose Todd Blanche, the criminal defense lawyer in his New York hush money trial..., to be deputy attorney general.... The DAG, as this position is known within the department, wields tremendous power over federal criminal prosecutions. If successfully appointed, Blanche will supervise the 93 regional US attorneys who bring the bulk of all federal prosecutions in the United States.... Meanwhile, Trump wants John Sauer, the lawyer who represented him in the Supreme Court case holding that Trump is allowed to use the powers of the president to commit crimes, to serve as solicitor general. The role oversees the Justice Department’s legal strategy in the Supreme Court....
“Another one of Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyers, Emil Bove, will serve as principal associate deputy attorney general, and will hold the DAG spot on an acting basis until Blanche or some other Trump nominee is confirmed or otherwise formally appointed to the job.... Bove’s new role does not require Senate confirmation. So he will be able to move into this job on the first day of Trump’s second presidency.... Blanche, Sauer, and Bove’s conventional résumés also mean that, if they use their DOJ posts to pursue Trump’s personal campaign of vengeance, they are likely to be fairly effective in doing so.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: In Friday Comments, RAS argued that “Team Trump’s most human failings may thwart some of their most evil plans....” As one of several ferinstances, RAS asked rhetorically, “Do you think Matt Gaetz is going to work the hours necessary to not just learn DoJ but run it in detail?” My answer to that would be, no, but the meatheads of Trump's choosing will have underlings to do their bidding. And Millhiser proves my point with specifics: both Blanche & Bove were federal prosecutors for nine years, and Sauer, who clerked for Antonin Scalia, was Missouri's attorney general. Millhiser acknowledges that “Gaetz may struggle to navigate the department’s internal bureaucracy or to resist its internal culture, which seeks to insulate prosecutorial decisions from the White House.... But if Trump gets his way, his ultraloyalist attorney general will now be backed by people who know the Justice Department and the culture of elite federal lawyers quite well.”
Steve Eder, et al., of the New York Times: “This year, America’s southern border was once again a flashpoint in a presidential election, with ... Donald J. Trump pledging to deport millions of people who he said were 'poisoning the blood' of the country. Within days of his re-election, he announced his intention to appoint hard-liners on immigration. But despite the tough talk, the broken border has been a lifeline for America’s on-demand economy under both Democratic and Republican administrations, including Mr. Trump’s first term, an investigation by The New York Times found. Thousands of companies have exploited its porousness by plucking workers from the ranks of unauthorized migrants, sometimes with impunity.... Staffing agencies ... recruit workers for warehouses, factories and distribution centers that serve up billions of dollars in goods for brand-name companies.”
“Apparently Some People Think It Makes Us Look Like Nazis.” digby: “Yes, they will be building concentration camps. There's money in it.” digby cites an ABC News report that the private prison industry is delighted with the windfall Trump's need for deportation camps promise the industry. She also cites a Rolling Stone report that shows “that Stephen Miller and Trump himself have often referred to the need to build 'camps.' Trump says he doesn’t think they’ll have to build too many though because they’ll be 'moving them out' so fast. No need for due process or anything like that. [According to Rolling Stone,] '... Some top Trump advisers get so annoyed when the media refers to his publicly detailed immigration-crackdown plans as including “camps” that they’ve cautioned the president-elect’s allies and surrogates to stop using the word “camps” during the current presidential transition, according to two sources familiar with the situation. “I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” says one close Trump ally. “Apparently some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”'”
No, They Have No Shame. Eric Lipton of the New York Times: “The to-do list for ... Donald J. Trump from Marc Andreessen, the venture capital billionaire from California, is long, but quite specific. Now, after donating big money to Mr. Trump, Mr. Andreessen is eager to see his candidate work through the list.... Mr. Andreessen’s excitement is a hint of just how broadly the victory by Mr. Trump has resonated with business executives who invested millions of dollars in his candidacy and now stand to profit from his policies.... 'It will be a billionaires’ ball,' said Robert Reich, who served as secretary of labor during the Clinton administration and who has long been critical of the income disparity in the United States.” Lipton runs down a list of fat cats and industries that are looking forward to profiting from the investments in Trump.
Jacqueline Alemany, et al., of the Washington Post: “Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire who has become ... Donald Trump’s 'first buddy,' appeared to publicly pressure Trump on economic policy and a key Cabinet appointment Saturday. In a Saturday morning post on X..., Musk praised a foreign leader’s decision to cut tariffs — the same import taxes that Trump wants to raise to the highest level in a century. Several hours later, Musk posted that Howard Lutnick, Trump’s co-transition chair, would be a better choice than hedge fund executive Scott Bessent for treasury secretary.... He encouraged his nearly 205 million followers to weigh in, too.... Several people in Trump’s circle expressed astonishment Saturday that Musk would publicly push for his choice for a crucial economic role while the president-elect was still weighing his decision.... Bessent and Lutnick have been jockeying for the role of treasury secretary over the past week, with allies of each candidate potshotting the other to transition officials.” Politico's story is here.
Joe Kucinski of Road & Track: "Tesla's vehicles have the highest fatal accident rate among all car brands in America, according to a recent iSeeCars study that analyzed data from the U.S. Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). The study was conducted on model year 2018–2022 vehicles, and focused on crashes between 2017 and 2022 that resulted in occupant fatalities. Tesla vehicles have a fatal crash rate of 5.6 per billion miles driven, according to the study; Kia is second with a rate of 5.5, and Buick rounds out the top three with a 4.8 rate. The average fatal crash rate for all cars in the United States is 2.8 per billion vehicle miles driven."
Another Job Merrick the Unready Didn't Do. David Nakamura & Mark Berman of the Washington Post: “President Joe Biden took office promising greater police accountability, and during his tenure the Justice Department launched a dozen investigations into state and local law enforcement agencies. Nearly four years later, his administration has yet to lock in reform agreements with any of them, putting a major civil rights initiative in jeopardy as Biden prepares to yield the White House to ... Donald Trump.... The race to formalize police accountability plans comes as Trump is vowing to empower local law enforcement to use more aggressive tactics to fight violent crime and potentially dispatch the National Guard, or even the U.S. military, to help patrol some U.S. cities.” MB: “The race”? Oh, there's a “race” now? Try to picture Merrick racing. ~~~
~~~ Marie: One thing we're looking at here is the downside to the policy of keeping "a wall of separation" between the White House and the Justice Department. Cabinet officers, like any subordinates in any settings, must be accountable to their bosses. But if the president can't call on the attorney general to give an accounting of his or her activities, then the AG can be as irresponsible as, say, Merrick Garland. The buck should stop with the POTUS, but it cannot if a subordinate is effectively untouchable, short of firing.
Hurubie Meko of the New York Times: “Nearly 60 years after Malcolm X’s assassination at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, his family filed a federal lawsuit on Friday claiming that the New York Police Department, C.I.A. and F.B.I. played a role in his killing. The suit, filed in Manhattan, claims that the agencies knew about threats against the civil rights leader, but 'failed to intervene on his behalf.' It says that they had 'intentionally removed their officers from inside the ballroom' before he was shot and left him even more exposed by arresting his security detail in the days before the event. The family also claims that the agencies engaged in 'fraudulent concealment and cover-up' after Malcolm X’s death by keeping information from his family and hamstringing efforts to identify his killers.”
Tom Winter & Tim Stelloh of NBC News: “Federal law enforcement officials said Thursday that they stopped a Texas man from carrying out a possible terrorist attack in Houston.... Anas Said, 28, was charged last month with attempting to provide material support to the terrorist group ISIS, according to an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Texas. Said was arrested last week at the Houston apartment complex where he is alleged to have planned the attack, said the FBI, which accused him of bragging that he would commit "a 9/11-style" attack if he had the resources.” (Also linked yesterday.)
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A Sunday Sermon....on a Sunday
CHICKEN OR EGG?
Why did Trump win and Harris lose?
Was it our broken immigration system, which at Trump’s request Republicans refused to fix before the election (nbcnews.com)? Was it the Israel/Palestinian/Iranian conflict in the Middle East that split the Democratic vote? Was it the barrage of ads associating Harris with a mythical plague of gender conversions occurring in our schools? Was it simply some men’s fear of a woman president? Or was it all about inflation and the price of eggs?
As pundits scurry to rush their answers into print, I’m hoping some will examine the connections between where and how people get their news, form their opinions, and how they vote.
Last week’s near-even popular vote again proves we live in two different countries, and while I don’t expect another violent insurrection at the Capitol this coming January (Democrats are willing to leave office when they lose an election), the culture and information wars we fight on media battlefields will certainly continue.
Such wars have been fought throughout our history. They began long before President Regan jettisoned the “fairness doctrine” in the 1980’s, encouraging the rise of radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh, whose rants about “feminazis” previewed the more recent Republican attacks on “cat ladies.”
In the last fifty years, however, with equal time no longer guaranteed for differing opinions (let alone facts), Right Wing radio was freed to offer (wikipedia.org), a brand of angry, outlandish, conspiracy-laden programming that kept people listening. Often dramatic and entertaining, it was the click-bait of its era. Simultaneously, wealthy conservatives set out to create and consolidate their own television news reality. Aside from Fox, which has agreed to pay more than $770 million for its 2020 election lies, Sinclair Broadcast Group, which distributes conservative talking points to its stations, now owns and operates 294 stations nationwide (wapo.com).
At the same time, newspaper readership, which began to decline with the advent of television in the 1950’s took a much bigger hit with the explosive growth of the digital world. Due largely to advertising revenue lost to television and the internet, city newspapers have consolidated, dropped editions or disappeared. In 2023, an average of two and a half local newspapers closed each week. Overall, since 2005, the nation has lost one-third of its newspapers and two-thirds of its newspaper journalists (ny1.com).
Coincidentally or not, as fewer were reading newspapers or news magazines, adult reading scores declined as well. Today, over half of American adults read at a sixth-grade level or below (apmresearchlab.org). For them, newspapers, which are written at a high school reading level, are hard going.
The internet makes it much easier. Today, more than half of us get our print and video news from social media. Facebook and YouTube dominate. Over one third of digital news consumers get their news from those two sites. In pursuit of “likes” and advertising revenue, digital algorithms tailor their offerings to their audiences, with some appealing more to woman than men and some more to the Left than the Right (pewresearch.org). Mark Zukerberg, the chairman of Meta, Facebook’s and YouTube’s parent company, summed up his priorities when years ago he said he believed in “companies over countries.” (vox.com). It’s the clicks that matter.
It was a telling remark: companies over country. Protected by the First Amendment and driven by profit or their political agendas, social media sites and cable news outlets deliver different “news” to different audiences. The effect? Polling has consistently shown that people who get their news from conservative cable or social media are often misinformed about the complicated subjects of inflation, crime and immigration (ipsos.com). Complexity seldom finds a welcome home on the net.
Are the decline of newspapers and of reading scores, our screen time, the death of the fairness doctrine, and the explosive rise of social media all related? I would guess they are.
Our media tells different stories to different people, with truth often taking a backseat to clicks and the advertising revenue that follows them. Some have suggested that the ways in which our media consumption determines the reality we inhabit had a profound effect on our recent election.
But which is cause and which, effect? Low reading scores or the six hours per day our eyes are on our televisions or smart phones (marketful.com)? Our divided media, our divided country? Which is the chicken? Which is the egg?
I’m waiting for some pundit to tell me. I looked it up, but I can’t find the answer on the net.
Alberto Burneko
"What The Fuck Is A “Vaccine Skeptic”?
What is skepticism? In my lifetime as a word-nerd, I have known "skepticism" to refer to a sort of stubborn insistence upon rigor and evidence in place of things like dogma and "common sense." A skeptic, by those terms, is someone who questions what they are told. Crucially, a skeptic actually questions, as in seeks answers. A person who merely refuses to learn what can be known is not a skeptic, but rather an ignoramus; a person who raises questions but does not seek their answers is not a skeptic, but a bullshitter. A person who rejects empirical knowledge, who refuses the answers that exist while requesting ones more to their liking that flatter their preference for unfounded contrarian gibberish and conspiratorial paranoia, is not a skeptic. They're the exact opposite of that: a mark. A sucker. A credulous boob."
"WTF is a "Vaccine Skeptic"?
The ones I knew can now be described as "Dead".
Like the in-laws in Ohio whose reasoning was "He would have died
anyway, what with his bad heart".
We didn't attend the funeral. No one there was vaccinated.
RAS,
Pretty much the same as a round earth skeptic, I'd say.
So the brownshirts don't want to use the word "camp" because it reeks of Nazi? I guess then they won't want the specific name either, Abschiebelager, meaning "deportation camp." That's not Nazi at all. The Nazis had no intention of deporting the inmates.
The timing of the great deportation is appropriate. We'll be getting into harvesting winter vegetables and fruit down here in Florida and in Southern California.
Lots of luck finding locals to pick and pack for the wages the growers pay out. Lots of luck finding any to do the work at all.
About those deportation camps: Maybe they can use all of Florida for one! That way, you just fence in the entire state, and , if they're waiting for deportation, and with replacement of new residents daily, all of those strawberries can be picked free by the people waiting to be dumped on planes and sent back to wherever! No salaries need to be paid, and always a ready workforce! Win-win! s/