PROBLEMS: You can't run a large modern nation on Stupid!

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 3, 2024

One news org is willing to try: How well has the electric vehicle industry been faring of late?

That isn't the sort of thing we normally keep track of. Recently, we were inspired to try.

It isn't easy to get the answer to that question, or to any other. Even in these days of the Internet, acquisition of actual knowledge is hard.

That said, our search did lead us to this report in the November 10 New York Times. The report was written by Jack Ewing, who says he "write[s] about the auto industry with an emphasis on electric vehicles" at this particular point in a long journalistic career.

How well has the industry been doing? Somewhat dangerously, Ewing's news report started like this:

EWING (11/10/23): Normally a 50 percent increase in sales is considered very good. But when the number of electric vehicles sold in the United States grew that much during the third quarter from a year earlier, it was a disappointment.

Carmakers and analysts had expected more. Instead of celebrating, auto executives worried that demand for electric vehicles was slackening, raising questions about their plans to invest tens of billions of dollars to develop new models and build factories.

[...]

Still, electric vehicle sales are growing faster than any other major category of automobile, and Americans will buy more than one million of them this year, a record. From July through September, battery-powered cars accounted for 8 percent of the new cars sold in the United States, up from 6 percent a year earlier, according to Cox Automotive. 

The hardest factual claim in that initial passage was this:

In the third quarter of this year, EV sales increased by 50 percent as compared to the same period last year.

Normally, some such growth in sales would be "considered very good," Ewing wrote at the start of his report. In this report for The Atlantic, that was pretty much the tone adopted, just last week, by Saahil Desai:

DESAI (12/29/23): [E]lectric cars are already upending America. In 2023, our battery-powered future became so much more real—a boom in sales and new models is finally starting to push us into the post-gas age. Americans are on track to buy a record 1.44 million of them in 2023, according to a forecast by BloombergNEF, about the same number sold from 2016 to 2021 total. “This was the year that EVs went from experiments, or technological demonstrations, and became mature vehicles,” Gil Tal, the director of the Electric Vehicle Research Center at UC Davis, told me. They are beginning to transform not just the automotive industry, but also the very meaning of a car itself.

So wrote a highly enthusiastic Desai. The Associated Press seemed to be working with similar numbers when Alexa St. John published this report as Thanksgiving drew near:

ST. JOHN (11/23/23): Electric vehicle sales are expected to hit a record 9% of all passenger vehicles in the U.S. this year, according to Atlas Public Policy. That will be up from 7.3% of new car sales in 2022.

It will be the first time more than 1 million EVs are sold in the U.S. in one calendar year, probably reaching between 1.3 million and 1.4 million cars, the research firm predicts.

Although the numbers show significant progress for electrification, the nation is lagging behind countries like China, Germany and Norway.

EVs reached 33% of sales in China, 35% in Germany, and 90% in Norway for the first six months of 2023, according to a BloombergNEF EV outlook published in June. 

Our conclusion? EV sales are apparently rising in this country. In Norway, they rule the world, from the fjords to the sea!

Reports like these can only tell a person so much about the ongoing effort to replace the internal combustion engine. Meanwhile, we said that Ewing's report was "dangerous" because his data suggested the possibility that, while the growth in sales has been string, the rate of growth had perhaps started to slow.

Given the limits of human cognition, danger lurks when any such tidbit of conceptual complexity enters the picture. And sure enough! Before he was done, Ewing had mentioned this:

EWING: Some conservatives have seized on recent data to argue that electric vehicles are overhyped. Republicans like Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio have claimed electric vehicles are destroying auto industry jobs, and have proposed rolling back policies designed to encourage people to buy battery-powered cars.

Are electric vehicles destroying jobs? We have no idea. But it was a bit of pushback from "some conservatives" which led us to investigate this unfamiliar topic last week. 

We refer to a gong-show pseudo-discussion we watched in horror, just last week, on The Five, a daily Fox News Channel program with extremely high viewer ratings. We linked you to that particular segment in one report last week. 

The Five is built upon a format which is Hunger Games-adjacent. In that format, "some conservatives" (four in number) chase the program's single liberal panelist around and around and around and around, generally in the course of conversations during which many brain cells will die.

Fill disclosure! Given the nature of current "cable news," this four-to-one ratio counts as an example of extremely high viewpoint diversity! On the competing blue tribe channel, you very rarely see any viewpoint diversity at all.

That said, what sort of discussion did we watch on The Five that day? The discussion on this particular "cable news" show was conducted, on the "conservative" side, by the following cast of characters:

Dramatis personae:
Kennedy, a former MTV VJ

Tyrus, a former professional wrestler

Johnny Joey Jones, an (extremely genial) ex-Marine who suffered grievous wounds while serving in Afghanistan.

Katy Pavlich, a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution who was named "conservative blogger of the year" when she was 23.

To see what was said, just click here.

Full disclosure! There's no reason why a former VJ, or a former professional wrestler, couldn't serve, at a later point, as a highly intelligent news analyst.

People of some such descriptions could create highly intelligent discussions of such complex topics as the state of the electric vehicle industry. It's just that, objectively speaking, these four characters didn't.

Their conversation that day on The Five was one of the dumbest ever seen. We say that as someone who admires Jones for his extremely genial demeanor, and while noting the fact that Tyrus, the former professional wrestler, is a talented raconteur.

Having said that:

The conversation that foursome launched that day went beyond the merely dumb to the uncharted realm of The Stupid. As a general matter, we regard that as a word which should almost always be avoided, but we're forced make an exception this time.

Tomorrow, we'll show you some of what this foursome told millions of your neighbors and friends on this "cable news" program that day. As we continue, we'll connect this to a new approach to "cable news" which is now being explored on Fox.

Increasingly, Fox News is moving away from the realm of the old-time political dogmatist into the brave new world of the former professional wrestlers and the endless stream of lower-grade comedians. This is the world of "the juggler and clowns" once described in a world-famous song.

As our nation sets sail on this fateful year, we're willing to make a certain claim. We're prepared to employ an unhelpful word, one we'd normally avoid:

You can't run a large modern nation on Stupid! Before the week is done, we'll shift our gaze from the cable world of our nation's red tribe and turn instead to the cable world of the blue.

You can't run a nation on Stupid, but you also can't run a large modern nation on Pompous. As a nation, we're now assailed by these problems "all day long," as the Everly Brothers once said.

Tomorrow: The heavyweight champion's tale


73 comments:

  1. "We refer to a gong-show pseudo-discussion we watched in horror, just last week..."

    So, what did they say about electric vehicles?

    Would it be reasonable to say that they are overhyped? You said that this is what you wanted to find out, but then you switched to insulting The Five and, sadly, it's all forgotten.

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  2. "PROBLEMS: You can't run a large modern nation on Stupid!
    WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 3, 2024

    One news org is willing to try: How well has the electric vehicle industry been faring of late?"

    What do electric vehicles have to do with running a large modern nation? Nothing at all. What is stupid about trying to address global warming by reducing fossil fuel use? Nothing at all. Do news orgs run our nation? Not really.

    Is this perhaps just an excuse to get the word "stupid" into a headline in order to malign how our large modern nation is being run? Looks like it to me.

    Some foursome said things Somerby considers dumb and he generalizes it to running the nation! Nothing fair or right or helpful or even worth discussing about that.

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  3. "You can't run a nation on Stupid, but you also can't run a large modern nation on Pompous. "

    I'd be willing to agree that you can't run a nation on media takes about EVs, but who is trying to do that? No one that I can see.

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  4. I have owned an EV since 2021. Once a week someone asks me how I like it and how it has worked out for me. I also have solar and charge my car from my garage. I've had no problems at all going on long trips. Nothing has had to be maintained and nothing has broken or gone wrong with it. I couldn't ask for a more low maintenance, reliable car. I didn't buy it because four or five goofs on TV discussed EVs. I bought it to help reduce carbon emissions on our warming planet. I would be happy with that choice even if something had gone wrong with the car or it had lost value because of bad publicity and I don't care what Elon Musk is doing on Twitter.

    I think most people do not listen to the five when choosing their own cars. They would be foolish to do that with so many better sources of info available to them, including some Youtube analyses of the performance of EVs under various road conditions and patterns of use. There are experts out there talking about such cars.

    Why would anyone be deterred from buying a specific car because the rate of increase in its sales was decreasing? That is so long on my list of reasons to buy a car that it makes no sense for Somerby to consider it. It is just a random comment by a guy on a talk show whose job is to fill dead air. Come on! And is this any kind of problem for our nation? I really don't see how.

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  5. A decrease in the rate of increase is not the same as a decrease in that rate. It means the slope of an upward line has become less steep, but it is still going up. That is hardly bad news for EV sales because you would expect sales to flatten as they reach an asymptote that represents saturation of the market. The more EVs you sell, the harder it is to keep up the initial sales boom because everyone who is interested in buying one will have already bought theirs. An economist should understand this and not consider it a dire problem for the EV industry, as Somerby seems to be portraying it. Talk about stupid!

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    1. Why wouldn't EVs be affected by the same interest rate pressures as other cars?

      "Auto Sales Are Expected to Slow After a Strong 2023

      Automakers sold more cars in 2023 than a year ago as supply chain chaos ended, but sales are now under pressure from higher interest rates." NY Times

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  6. "Increasingly, Fox News is moving away from the realm of the old-time political dogmatist into the brave new world of the former professional wrestlers and the endless stream of lower-grade comedians. This is the world of "the juggler and clowns" once described in a world-famous song."

    Here are Dylan's actual lyrics:

    "Ah you never turned around to see the frowns
    On the jugglers and the clowns when they all did tricks for you
    You never understood that it ain't no good
    You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you"

    The person being denigrated is the audience for those jugglers and clowns, miss lovely, not the jugglers and the clowns themselves, who are earning a living by performing. The song is about the comedown of someone previously wealthy who now has to scrounge for a living. The idea is that the servants of such people may not actually respect them, hence their frowns. If Somerby were arguing that Gutfield and others held no respect for their Fox viewers, that might be a reasonable use of Dylan's lyrics, but Somerby is blaming those jugglers and clowns, blaming Fox for employing them, because they are second-rate comedians and presumably not journalists (discussing EV sales rates?).

    Fair disclosure -- Somerby himself was not even a second-rate comedian. He never had a breakthrough and he wound up running a comedy club and doing corporate gigs. The height of his fame was to appear on C-Span and Bill O'Reilly a few times while presenting a local one-man show about how mean his mother was to him. It would be understandable if he felt some spite about Gutfield, who has a TV show nightly because he is willing to tell conservatives the kind of jokes they like to hear.

    Professional wrestling requires athletic skill to avoid injuring one's confederates, but it is a scripted performance and not an actual contest between wrestlers. It requires a theatrical presence because there is a storyline associated with the matches and pain must be faked and emotions portrayed. That strikes me as highly similar to the pseudo-discussions presented on Fox as entertainment for its audiences. I doubt anyone thinks those Fox bouts are real either and I doubt anyone cares about the issues themselves. It isn't news reporting, no matter how much Somerby insists it must or should be.

    How stupid would we be if we, like Somerby, took such shows seriously and considered them news? Just as Gutfield is a comedian and not a news reporter, the Five are not reporters either and their job is to entertain not inform. When it comes down to it, no one's job over at Fox is to inform viewers. It is to present disinformation and stoke anti-liberal bile in order to keep voters hot for Trump. And of course, to make money by attracting advertisers who don't care what occurs between commercials as long as it attracts viewers.

    Somerby should know this. Why is he pretending to take Fox seriously?

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    1. 11:33 - Totally bizarre. Your comment begins with Somerby's quote calling Fox a world of jugglers and clowns, then ends by chastising him for pretending to take Fox seriously.

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    2. He is taking Fox seriously by complaining about the jugglers and clowns, as if Fox were ever a serious news outlet and not a propaganda noise machine from the beginning. The fake outrage-inducing stories run by Fox have always been manufactured to rev up the MAGA crowd and own the libs. It is no different because Gutfield is a comedian. When Somerby pretends that Fox is a news station, along with CNN and MSNBC, he deceives his readers and gives Fox greater importance than they deserve.

      I get it that you are easily confused by the least bit of complexity, but please reread and try to understand before immediately complaining in the comments. Your emotional reaction ("totally bizarre") may be getting in the way of understanding other people's points here.

      Somerby expects Gutfield to be a reporter (which is what is meant by "taking him seriously") when Gutfield has never been anything but a comedian, even in his Fox show. Somerby should take him as a comedian, but he doesn't. I say this very clearly in my 2nd to last paragraph.

      Complaining that a clown is behaving like a clown is the foolishness Somerby is perpetrating today because no one would expect anything else from a comediation, while Somerby expects him to be a news reporter and calls him a clown as an insult, when that is his profession. This isn't rocket science.

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    3. Somerby's view is that Fox is a world of jugglers and clowns. He takes seriously the effect this circus has on our national discourse.

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    4. No, that is not what Somerby is saying. He has not ever said that. He says Gutfield is a second-rate comedian and there is an ex-wrestler among The Five, but he is not caling Fox a circus and he is not focusing on national discourse. He is pretending to say that Fox needs better reporters and more serious shows, as if Fox were an actual news station. Fox has always been a place for spreading disinformation and owning libs. Somerby is not the guy who points that out -- commenters here do that. Your idea of what Somerby is doing when he talks about Fox perfects reflects what Somerby should be doing, but it isn't what his columns do, especially over time.

      You Somerby whisperers are here to rehabilitate Somerby and support his efforts. That seems to require you to distort what Somerby has actually said, from day to day. That makes arguing with you a waste of time. Why do I think you will be rational?

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    5. correction: perfects = perhaps

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  7. Is Fox now running our large modern nation? Last I heard, they lost the 2020 election.

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  8. Israel wants to get rid or Palestinians.

    https://www.eschatonblog.com/2024/01/lalalala-i-cant-hear-you.html

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    1. Biden doesn't support Netanyahu, calling him the most conservative leader in Israel's history. Biden is trying to resolve the conflict there via diplomacy and minimize violence. Blaming Biden for Netanyahu is ignorant and unfair of Duncan at Atrios, but he doesn't always get things right. Ask him about EVs instead.

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    2. Biden sends Netanyahu massive supplies of weapons.

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    3. Biden is not going to let Israel suffer because of Netanyahu. Our allies stood by us when Trump was president. Massive is a relative term. Who do you suppose Hamas gets its massive supplies of weapons from?

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    4. Half of those who disapprove of how Biden has conducted this crisis believe he has been too supportive of the Palestinians. The other half think he is too supportive of Israel. The way the news reports such figures, you would think everyone who disapproves of Biden's handling is pro-Palestinian, but that is far from true. Further, the American Jewish community remains firmly behind Biden and approves of both his support for Israel and his response to anti-semitic attacks against Jews in the US.

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    5. Hamas does not have massive supplies of weapons.

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    6. @3:20, you are wrong about that:

      Wikipedia says: "On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched an incursion into Israel starting with a rocket barrage of over 5,000 missiles against Israeli targets..."

      On New Year's Eve, "The Hamas terror group fired at least 27 rockets at the south and center of the country in a barrage timed for midnight as Israelis tried to celebrate the start of the new year. Air defense systems intercepted 18 rockets and nine fell in open areas."

      Hamas has fired more than 6000 rockets since 10/7 (not including the original attack), and dozens of drones.

      State.gov says: "Iran's support, primarily through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, enables Hamas and PIJ's terrorist activities, including through the transfer of funds and the provision of both weapons and operational training."

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    7. Those little rockets are crap. Israel has serious rockets, and weapons of all other types.

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    8. That is a good reason to stop attacking Israel.

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    9. Israel is killing all these Palestinians and destroying their homes with our bombs and our money. We, as voters who can influence policy, have the blood of those people on our hands.

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    10. Biden for President staff have seen volunteers quit in droves, and people who have voted blue for decades feel uncertain about doing so for the first time ever, because of this conflict.

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    11. 10:48: right. They could vote for the republicans, who are militantly pro-Israel, anti-Islamic, and who don’t even mention a two state solution in their platform. Makes perfect sense.

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    12. I hope it makes sense. It's a direct quote from his campaign staff:

      https://medium.com/@BidenHQforCeasefireNow/dear-president-biden-we-need-a-ceasefire-now-f48b732b2433

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  9. Juggling isn't easy. Neither is clowning (see Baskets the Clown for an example).

    I have always wondered how anyone can see the frown on the face of a clown when their smile is painted on, but maybe Dylan is only talking about clowns with painted on frowns, but even then, how would you know that clown is actually frowning under the grease paint?

    I always took the song to mean that lower class people such as servants don't like waiting on rich people. As an adult now, I've found that those who sell services to the wealthy take pride in doing a good job, have their own social hierarchy, and don't automatically despise the wealthy but often feel affection for them and even live by proxy through their successes and failures, considering their own fortunes to rise and fall along with the wealthy people they serve. Similarly, teachers feel successful when their students succeed, doctors feel successful when their patients thrive, and so on.

    Dylan doesn't often make any more sense than Somerby does.

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    1. Also, Dylan has a lousy voice.

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    2. Dylan has a whiny sense of grievance in everything he sings, much like Trump's speaking voice.

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  10. Can we increase our birth rate by letting pregnant women die?

    https://www.eschatonblog.com/2024/01/mysteries.html

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    1. The attack on Planned Parenthood as an abortion provider has resulted in decreases in prenatal care and led to higher maternal mortality rates, especially in the red states. Fund Planned Parenthood. The most at-risk pregnancies are among poor women who depend on the clinics for reproductive health care of all kinds.

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  11. Sean Hannity has moved from New York to Florida, thereby increasing the average intelligence of the citizens of both states.

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  12. "We refer to a gong-show pseudo-discussion we watched in horror, just last week, on The Five, a daily Fox News Channel program..."

    The Somerby whisperer should be able to tell us if this is actually a ringing endorsement for conservative programming. Awaiting instructions...

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  13. I run very comfortably on Stupid.

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    1. So does Hannity apparently. And the entire Republican party.

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  14. Smearing someone by mentioning his former profession is cheap and unfair. Haberdasher Harry Truman was a fine President. So was actor Ronald Reagan. Not to mention a media and politics commentator who was a comedian. People who live in glass houses…

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    1. Ronald Reagan was the worst President in the history of the United States of America. Don't let the anti-Trumpers fool you.

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    2. Reagan defeated the USSR without a war.
      His economic policies imitated two decades of prosperity.

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    3. Seems they're stealing David in Cal's identity, as well as George's.
      I wonder which one is the real David in Cal. The one who thinks the deficit is a big problem, or the one that reveres Ronald Reagan's huge deficit-creating economy?

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    4. 2:14: shh! David is happy sleeping in his cognitive dissonance tribal bubble.

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    5. The real commenter is the one whose nym appears in green. The ones in black are imposters.

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    6. David, do you really mean "imitated" and not initiated?

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    7. Sometimes the typo is better.

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    8. DiC - I urge you to contemplate this graph of GDP growth: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP

      Can you see any discernable trend arising from Reagan's presidency? from Trump's presidency? from Biden's presidency?

      Does the sharp upslope trend we see in Biden's presidency make you consider whether Biden's handling of the economy surpasses Reagan's (and all other presidents') by a lot?

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    9. George, David is hopeless.

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  15. The US supports Israel's war against Palestine; India returns to close relations with Russia.

    https://thediplomat.com/2024/01/india-turns-the-page-on-ties-with-russia-after-ukraine-war/

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    1. It isn't Israel's war against Palestine but Palestine's war against Israel. If Palestine would stop the attacks, Israel would not be waging war to eliminate Hamas. Note that it was Palestine who broke the last ceasefire by firing rockets from Gaza.

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  16. "Increasingly, Fox News is moving away from the realm of the old-time political dogmatist"

    They are still pushing dogma, just packaging it differently.

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  17. You can't run a modern blog on stupid either.

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  18. Come and take me, my ♥! Oh, how much I enjoy touching hairs on your wet legs! And smelling my fingers! And concocting word salads!

    I am Corby.

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  19. "Fox News is moving away from the realm of the old-time political dogmatist into the brave new world of the former professional wrestlers and the endless stream of lower-grade comedians. This is the world of 'the juggler and clowns' once described in a world-famous song."

    I wonder if Putin is demanding a refund?

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    1. Ask "the Others" in Congress.
      They know what the boss thinks better than anyone at TDH.

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    2. I often wonder why Somerby never had anything to say about Ukraine. Compare that with his seemingly impassioned pleas for understanding of the Palestinian cause.

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    3. Another "Somerby doesn't say Y" comment. So many commenters cannot understand that Somerby rarely is interested in talking about the political topic of the day, but instead is interested in talking about the ways the political topic of the day is reported.

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    4. No, Dogface, Somerby never mentioned Ukraine, ever. That is a glaring omission that contrasts with his immediate and strong support for Palestine. It is right to wonder about it.

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    5. That's just not true. He has a series of posts about Tucker Carlson's deranged treatment of Ukraine/Zelenskyy. Again - he was interested in the way the topic of the day was being reported.

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    6. I found two posts about Ukraine and both focused on whether there were bioweapons in Ukraine that the US didn't want Russia to gain access to. Somerby's main comment about Ukraine was that someone should have pinned Nuland down on her comment about the presence of such weapons. The rest was about how Tucker Carlson was abandoned by his mother and perhaps Trump and Putin had similar childhood tragedies (Trump didn't). Somerby was not particularly interested in how anyone besides Tucker was reporting on Nuland's statement about bioweapons. There was no mention of any other cable news or media and no disagreement about the presence of such weapons.

      In contrast, Somerby repeatedly expressed support for pro-Palestinian voices in the days after student protests were making news everywhere. He was critical of pro-Israel voices on Fox. That is an actual discussion of the war and its coverage, and a statement of support for the student pro-Palestinian protesters along with doubts about anti-Jewish attacks also being reported. There is no comparison between this brief mention of Ukraine (as an example of Tucker Carlson's handwaving) and Somerby's concerns about Palestine. He was NOT interested in Ukraine. A discussion of Ukraine would have looked much different than Somerby's amateur psychoanalysis of Tucker Carlson for his bombast.

      If you think these are eqivalent there is something wrong with your thought processes. You did catch us out on the statement that Somerby never talked about Ukraine, but this doesn't qualify as a focus on Ukraine in any way. He thought Nuland should have been pressed. Nothing about whether Ukraine had bioweapons and no criticism of how Ukraine was being covered. Just Tucker's over the top performance.

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    7. I think I'll have a new policy. If a comment has more than eight-ten lines, I won't bother to read it. Almost invariably, comments with more than ten lines are full of blather and nonsense.

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    8. Good idea George.

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    9. Anything worth saying can be said in five lines. I am Corby.

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    10. George, you should stick to 5-letter words too.

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    11. George, if you don’t read them, I reckon you can’t comment on them. Win win.

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    12. If you use a nym I promise I’ll never read any of your comments.

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    13. Nyms are for losers. I am Porby.

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  20. It’s quite simple, George. If Somerby cared about Ukraine, he would write about it. He has written many posts trying to view the Palestinian cause with some sympathy. I leave it to you to ponder.

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    1. Thanks for using a nym. I’m pondering.

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    2. And I like your nym. It shows you have a sense of humor.

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    3. In order for this childish and foolish statement to make any sense at all it would have to be proven that writing about Ukraine in his blog is the only way Somerby can express care for Ukraine.

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    4. The irony is this poor slob probably thinks of themself as rational thinker.

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  21. Post - It’s my belief that you completely misread Somerby. His subject-matter is not Ukraine-Russia or Palestine-Israel or the topics of the day. His subject is meta - how we talk about the topics of the day. He feels that if we don’t fix the discourse, we can’t solve our problems.

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