THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2023
Blue tribe comes to its senses: Much of what is seen on Fox News is propaganda on the clown-car level.
On the other hand, some of what appears on Fox News deals with actual issues—with actual issues our own blue tribe has been trying to ignore.
For that reason, we were glad to see this front-page headline in today's New York Times:
In Rare Alliance, Democrats and Republicans Seek Legal Power to Clear Homeless Camps
Gavin Newsom is one of the Democratic office-holders cited in Shawn Hubler's report. He has joined "more than 50 governments and organizations [who] asked the [Supreme Court] this month to overturn" some recent lower-court decisions which have made it impossible for western cities to address their homelessness problems:
HUBLER (9/28/23): “It’s just gone too far,” Mr. Newsom said in a Sacramento forum held by Politico this month, in which he vowed to seek clarity from the Supreme Court and recognized that he was asking for help from the same conservative jurists whom he had sharply rebuked for decisions on abortion and gun regulations.
What should California cities do about their homeless populations? We can't tell you that. We blues almost never see the question addressed on our favorite TV programs.
We can tell you this. On blue tribe cable, our tribunes seem to have only one topic they truly adore:
Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Jail Jail Jail Jail Jail!
They talk and talk, and talk and talk, about sending Trump to jail. As they do, Fox News is talking about such major problems as homelessness and immigration policy.
Our stars seem to be concerned about little except Trump/Jail. This strikes us as an obvious way to lose next year's election.
On Fox & Friends, the clown show is endless—but the same can almost be said about Deadline: White House, where we talk about nothing but jail.
No Legal Minutia Left Behind! All too often, that's the prevailing rule of thumb for our tribe's highest-paid corporate stars.
They serve us the comfort food we enjoy. As they do, the other tribe's highest-paid stars are often discussing such high-profile issues as homelessness and the border.
What should be done about such issues? Heads planted firmly in the sand, our top stars don't seem to care!
Every positive integer greater than 1 has a unique factorization.
ReplyDeleteThat's "woke."
Delete"Fox News is using such major problems as homelessness and immigration policy" as cudgels to bash Democrats and liberals.
ReplyDeleteFTFY
So the assumed Rebub Pres. candidate attempted a coup and has promised to replace any government employee who does not swear allegiance to him; and extralegal punishment for his enemies. What me worry?
ReplyDelete“Homelessness” - an entire section in the New York Times:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/homelessness
“Biden-Harris Administration Announces New Initiative to Tackle Unsheltered Homelessness”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/05/18/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-new-initiative-to-tackle-unsheltered-homelessness/
This was reported on MSNBC.
I suppose Jesse Watters calling the homeless in San Francisco “Bags of Flesh Mutating on the Sidewalk” can be considered talking about homelessness…
https://www.thedailybeast.com/jesse-watters-homeless-people-are-bags-of-flesh-mutating-on-the-sidewalk
After Somerby’s long life, his inability to weigh in with any informed opinion about the subject is noted.
For those who do not possess the ability to consider context, Somerby is using phony concern about a lack of coverage of homelessness to bash the blue tribe by showing what he thinks is in example of intra tribe conflict, with establishment Dems overriding, what he sees as, the blue haired nutty Dems (he’s wrong).
DeleteYou read the posts that Somerby gifts you for free and then call him a phony, without basis or reason. That seems rude.
DeleteWe don't know that Somerby is unpaid for what he writes here.
DeleteI read this blog, but I don’t pay Bob.
DeleteRight, but that doesn't mean no one pays him.
DeleteWhatever Putin, Elon Musk, Riley Gaines, Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Alejandro Monteverde, DeSantis, Xi, Rupert Murdoch, Kevin Drum, the Koch Brothers, Roger Stone, and Bill Maher, are paying Bob, it’s not enough.
Delete8:49 your notion is borne from an inability to consider context, which is addressed by the comment at 7:37.
DeleteOh Dogface, poor poor Bob!
DeleteSo now we know: Cecelia pays Bob.
DeleteAnonymouse 9:57am, you have that backwards.
DeleteI'd think Cecelia is Bob, except you can tell by his writing, Bob is lazy*. Instead of making sense, he repeats stale, Right-wing memes.
Delete* also a Right-wing trait.
Anonymouse 10:37pm, right.
DeleteAnd you just exude clarity, intellectual vigor, and originality.
No one has been ignoring homelessness, going back to the Okies & Arkies camping in the Los Angeles riverbed, remember them from Grapes of Wrath? That’s how long the problem has been with us. Simply clearing the encampments doesn’t solve poverty. Politicizing the issue is unhelpful too. The best solutions involve giving people money and providing affordable shelter, not 30-day vouchers to get them out of sight.
ReplyDeleteWe blues see articles about homelessness frequently in our local papers, such as the LA Times. Somerby doesn’t live here but he could easily check before claiming we don’t have them.
ReplyDeleteHe explicitly says he’s talking about “blue tribe cable” and its “highest- paid corporate stars.”
DeleteSure, but he provides no evidence for his nonsense assertion.
DeleteFox news is not discussing viable solutions, it is just bashing Dems.
ReplyDeleteSomerby has been yammering on for weeks about the new right wing anti woke laws, claiming the media coverage has been incorrectly reporting the law.
ReplyDeleteThis is partisan garbage, as the media has been accurately reporting the impact of the laws, and his claim that their paraphrasing of the law is less than perfect, is both debatable and of no consequence…other than it justifiably makes the red tribe look bad.
Completely ignored by Somerby is an actual case of egregiously misleading reporting (by Time, the Post, Reuters, AP, NY Times) that falsely claimed Trump was bypassing the debate and instead supporting striking workers. This is a completely manufactured circumstance, a real disgrace by the media, and highly consequential. Sam Seder covers it well:
https://youtu.be/7fyRs2UcmPM?si=rzuSrnucMbL9MGEX
The incongruity between how Somerby posts about these two cases exposes his partisanship and lack of integrity.
Another in the genre of attacking Somerby for what he doesn’t say.
DeleteNo, it’s attacking Somerby for claiming to be concerned about a circumstance but only applying that concern to a trivial case that only serves an attempt to bash the blue tribe, while ignoring the same circumstance in a case of consequence.
DeleteThis is bone simple stuff, perhaps consider not letting your partisan rage interfere with your ability to be rational, which may be the case, anything is possible.
Don’t drop out of high school.
ReplyDeletehttps://jabberwocking.com/rising-mortality-is-mostly-limited-to-white-high-school-dropouts/
White people! They never learn.
DeleteThe rate for black men is higher than that for white men but Drum only talks about white men, for some unknown reason. He never mentions the higher black mortality rate for high school dropouts.
DeleteTo see this, you need to realize that the numbers on the left axis are not the same for white and black men.
DeleteMortality of whites affects national mortality more, because their are so many more whites than blacks in the country.
DeleteNoting the difference between black and white men without high school diplomas might suggest what is causing that mortality to be higher, poverty for example, or access to health care. To not mention it at all is very odd to me.
DeleteThe rates for Black men were previously higher but are now near parity, as they are trending down, whereas White men with less education are trending up, which may be due to the extraordinary high suicide rate among Whites, although the charts are too reductive to be dispositive about much of anything.
DeleteDrum has an agenda and it is not one that is good for society. The most appropriate way to view Drum is as an archetypical “centrist” (meaning he’s on the right wing spectrum) that misconstrues his status in life as being a result of meritocracy. Or, for the Whites that dropped out of school but are still alive and prefer plainspokenness, Drum’s a real piece of shit. (Apologies to the Drum fanboys, I know y’all are sensitive types that are easily triggered.)
Your vulgar attack on Drum is deeply offensive to decent people everywhere.
DeleteThe highest priority our nation faces is to keep Trump from holding office again. Voters need to understand Trump’s crimes. No other problems can be addressed if Trump is elected again because all of our resources will be consumed by limiting the damage he does to anything he touches.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think Trump would do to solve homelessness? Nothing humane, nothing effective, most likely nothing legal.
This^
DeleteSince Covid, counting the homeless has been problematic; however, prior to Covid, between 2007 and 2018 homelessness in America dropped by an enormous 100k people. This was under Obama and resurgent Dems in local governments. The drop was difficult to casually discern because Republicans had gutted funding for shelters and mental health facilities, so there were fewer homeless but they were more visible.
ReplyDeleteThis is a recurring pattern, where Republicans create a mess of our society and then Dems have to clean it up.
No one enjoys hearing the details of real estate crimes. That is no one’s idea of comfort food. But it is a responsibility of citizenship to understand what is happening in Trump’s trials.
ReplyDelete“ the same can almost be said about Deadline: White House, where we talk about nothing but jail.”
ReplyDelete(Note that Somerby says “we” talk about jail. )
“Deadline: White House is a U.S. television program broadcast on MSNBC since Tuesday, May 9, 2017. Deadline: White House is currently the third most popular show on MSNBC and 70th overall on TV, watched by a total number of 1,817,000 people (0.58% rating, up +5% from yesterday) as of the daily audience measurement on September 27, 2023. Deadline: White House is hosted by Nicolle Wallace.”
I’m still not sure how 1 million liberal (?) viewers of one show on MSNBC that is not watched by conservatives translates into “us” losing the election. Is it possible that reporting on Trump’s legal issues and corruption might actually pry votes away from him? Would Somerby’s idea of endlessly talking about Trump’s insanity have a similar effect?
On the other hand, Fox and congressional Republicans are going heavy on the Biden Crime Family pseudo-investigations. Does this also fall under Somerby’s “sure to lose an election” rule?
Somerby insisted that the blue tribe’s interest in impeaching Trump was going to cost them the presidential election, but then 2020 happened, and Somerby’s now infamous double standard is in full effect.
DeletePerhaps we should ponder why Trump’s popularity seems to rise in parallel with his legal troubles.
ReplyDeleteI realize that most here will say, “Because the Others are brain-dead morons!” OK, maybe. But does that seem likely to persuade the 1% of the Others that we need to persuade in order to beat Trump?
This is patently false: Trump’s favorability rating has been holding at about the same rating for the past year - in fact it’s been basically the same rating since 2017, there was no rise in popularity; furthermore, the two latest polls has Biden up +1 and +5, respectively.
DeleteYes, DG, can you explain why someone would be more likely to vote for Trump given his legal troubles (aka convictions)?
ReplyDeleteWe don't need to convince any Trump voters to switch to Biden. Trump does not have enough supporters right now to win. If we convince wavering Independents and RINOs to vote for Biden, that will be sufficient. That is what happened in 2020. Also suburban Republican women swung against Trump. No reason why that shouldn't be true in 2024, given his conviction for sexually abusing and defaming E.J. Carroll and his stance on abortion.
Twenty years ago, Washington DC had lead in its water. Now, it has an elevated murder rate.
ReplyDeletehttps://jabberwocking.com/lead-and-crime-in-washington-dc/
One hit wonder trying to grasp at his fleeting claim to fame, he admits it’s merely correlation but wants you to find it “interesting”.
Delete“It sure looks like”… no it does not, only if you are ignorant, or trying to push an agenda.
There’s one born every minute.
And if he’s born when there’s lead in the water, he’s more likely to become a violent criminal.
DeleteBob berates Dems for not solving the problem he has no answer for. The answer for Bob no doubt would be to stick them somewhere he doesn’t have to look at them. In the mean time he doesn’t want to hear about rich thrives like the poor u well Donald. Go to hell Bob.
ReplyDeleteGive each homeless person a million dollars.
ReplyDeleteProblem solved.
Studies show $300 would have kept them from being homeless.
Delete$300 each. A million dollars each.
DeleteEither way, we can afford it.
300 million dollars each.
DeleteDeal!
Delete“Deal” is spelled with the same letters as “Lead”. Just sayin’.
DeleteCan I explain why someone would be more likely to vote for Trump because of his legal troubles? I actually think that’s a terrific question, because our knee-jerk reaction is to think it’s crazy. But taking the question seriously forces us to walk in the shoes of the Others.
ReplyDeleteI believe the Others think that Dems have weaponized the criminal justice system to try to incarcerate their chief political opponent. They believe that patriots must stand up and save democracy.
ReplyDeleteI think it’s our task to persuade 1% of the Others that they may be mistaken in this assessment.
ReplyDelete