MADNESS: The smell of napalm in the morning!

SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 2024

The NewsHour meets Berliner: Can Blue America's votaries be a tiny bit devious too?

If Stephanie Saul has it right today, so it might possibly seem. On the front page of today's New York Times print edition, her news report starts like this:

State Bans on D.E.I. Prompt Universities to Rebrand Their Efforts

At the University of Tennessee, the campus D.E.I. program is now called the Division of Access and Engagement.

Louisiana State University also rebranded its diversity office after Jeff Landry, a Trump-backed Republican, was elected governor last fall. Its Division of Inclusion, Civil Rights and Title IX is now called the Division of Engagement, Civil Rights and Title IX.

And at the University of Oklahoma, the diversity office is now the Division of Access and Opportunity.

In what appears to be an effort to placate or, even head fake, opponents of diversity and equity programs, university officials are relaunching their D.E.I. offices under different names, changing the titles of officials, and rewriting requirements to eliminate words like “diversity” and “equity.” In some cases, only the words have changed.

That sounds a bit dishonest to us. Online, the dual headlines say this:

With State Bans on D.E.I., Some Universities Find a Workaround: Rebranding
Welcome to the new “Office of Access and Engagement.” Schools are renaming departments and job titles to try to preserve diversity programs.

Education elites have played these kinds of games before. Sometimes, they've done so in ways which have encouraged black kids to stay in their lower-performing urban schools, avoiding the challenges and opportunities found in academic / admission high schools.

(Perhaps with the noblest of intentions, these games were devised so Blue America's education elites could skirt prevailing law.)

Elsewhere, Atlanta teachers and principals staged so-called "erasure parties," doctoring results of statewide testing programs. Fani Willis sent some of them to jail.

In Blus America, we can be devious too. It isn't just the termagant Gutfeld and them, though they are creating an art form.

That said, how about fairness and balance? On page A11 of today's same Times, we read about Kari Lake's flip on abortion rights in the state she loves. 

Online, the headlines read like this. We'd call those headlines accurate, though perhaps a bit soft and mild-mannered:

Kari Lake Backs G.O.P. Effort to Drop 1864 Abortion Law in Favor of 15-Week Ban
The Senate candidate and Donald Trump ally is supporting a handful of state Republicans who have backed away from a near-total ban that was upheld by the State Supreme Court this week.

After checking all the links, we would (almost) agree to let it be said that Lake is lying when she says that she never meant to say what she actually said about the "incredible law" she plainly endorsed all through her failed Senate campaign in 2022—the incredible law from 1864, the incredible law which allowed virtually zero abortions.

(We'd almost let that word be used. We might be more inclined to say that it's very, very, very hard to believe that Candidate Lake is telling the truth—and that you, the voters of Arizona, have to decide what you think about that.

As it turns out, we humans are sometimes inclined to be less than perfectly honest! In fact, we can even remember the time when Rachel Maddow swore, for the first half hour of a Monday night, that she had no idea why she'd been challenged, on Meet the Press about her (plainly inaccurate) statements about the gender wage gap.

As of 8 o'clock that Monday night, it was very, very, very hard to believe that she was telling the truth. It remains very hard to believe today—but in Blue America, we faithful votaries almost surely tended to gulp her denial down.

Are we humans also wired to love the smell of napalm in the morning? Perhaps to resort to our fighting words, eager to bring on our next wholly necessary war?

Are we possibly wired to march off to war? In his lengthy introduction to Robert Fagles' 1990 translation of the Iliad, the late Professor Knox speaks at some length about Hector, the upstanding hero of Troy.

As we'll note on Monday, Hector was a family man—though viewed from the modern perspective, perhaps just up to a point. That said, also this, Professor Knox observing:

[T]he Iliad is a poem that celebrates the heroic values war imposes on its votaries...And though the warriors of the Iliad often rail against their condition, they can also enjoy to the full war's intoxicating excitements. 

They revel in the exultation of victory as they taunt a fallen adversary with threats of exposure of his corpse, or with a bitter sarcasm, as when Patroclus mocks one of his victims, who, his face crushed by a stone, dives from his chariot: "Look what a springy man, a nimble, flashy tumbler!" (Book 16, verse 868). 

Even Hector, by far the most civilized of all the warriors at Troy, can list with pride and a kind of joy his credentials as a seasoned fighter.

"War—l know it well, and the butchery of men.
Well l know, shift to the left, shift to the right
my tough tanned shield. That's what the real drill,
defensive fighting means to me. l know it all,
how to charge in the rush of plunging horses,
l know how to stand and fight to the finish,
twist and lunge in the War-god's deadly dance." 

By far, he was the most civilized of all the warriors who fought on the plains outside Troy. But even he may have reveled in taunting his opponents with bitter sarcasm, as quite a few commenters did in response to Kevin Drum's recent post about the quality of work being done at NPR.

Go ahead—scroll through the comments! Right from the opening exchange, you can see the kinds of taunting and name-calling which come from our more self-assured and war-inclined players, even over here within our own blue tribe. 

They call NPR's Uri Berliner names. They direct bitter sarcasm at the honesty and the intellectual ability of those who don't agree with their own perfect views, right down to the commas and colons.

Our blue tribe loves its fighting words—our smell of napalm in the morning. In our view, this behavior tends to be ugly, stupid, counterproductive—and yet, as Ezra Pound once said, And yet, this is you.

In the essay under review, NPR's Uri Berliner said that he voted against Donald Trump twice. We can't say whether that statement is true, but our votaries hurried right past it.

Barely stopping to smell the flowers, they rushed ahead to call-and-response performances of this familiar type:

COMMENTER: Sounds like Berliner is just another right-winger whining about "liberal bias" in the media, which usually turns out to be a bias toward the truth. The fact that he's "business editor" at NPR supports my view.

RESPONSE: Agreed. He’s just another MAGA asshole whining about easily and previously debunked news. Maybe he would be happier working for Fox News. I know as someone who occasionally gives my local NPR station some money, I personally would be much happier if he worked someplace else.

Dumb and angry all the way down, as we all are at times. That said, they're very, very sure of themselves. They seem to be sure that know what they know, and they seem to be sure that what they know is automatically true.

They seem to know that what they know is always and everywhere true. Everyone else is an asshole. There's no such thing as a different perspective—possibly a mistaken or imperfect perspective, but a different perspective laid out in good faith.

We humans have always been wired this way. We continue to behave in such ways until we train ourselves not to. 

We start our wars in such pleasing ways. We love our "fighting words."

For ourselves, we found little to work with in Berliner's essay, other than a list of the gent's opinions about the coverage of several major specific topics over the past seven years. In our view, Berliner thoroughly glossed those various topics—for example, saying this:

BERLINER (4/9/24): Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency. 

Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff. 

Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse. By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports.

But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming. 

There's a lot of hustle in that passage—flowery attempts at persuasion substituting for the tedium of  evidence. We refer to the verbal hustle about "catnip," and about "hitching our wagon" to an "ever-present muse" who created "the drumbeat" of the NPR's reporting.

It's hard to know what such language specifically means. In the meantime, riddle us this:

If Schiff was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, why wouldn't NPR have interviewed him on various occasions down through the many months or even perhaps through the years? 

Was something "wrong" with those interviews? Were other perspectives presented in other interviews—in other interviews which may then have been fact-checked and critiqued?

Schiff was interviewed 25 times? Over a period of how many years? Berliner tells an engaging tale, but he's sliding past information. He links to exactly one interview with Schiff—a total, complete nothingburger.

That passage, penned by Berliner himself, is an example of extremely weak journalism. Along the way, though, he did say this:

He did say that there were 87 Democrats on staff at central NPR—and exactly zero Republicans!

We can't verify that census, but those numbers do leap off the page. And according to the New York Times, this was the more general critique Berliner advanced in his essay:

NPR in Turmoil After It Is Accused of Liberal Bias

[...]

Uri Berliner, a senior business editor who has worked at NPR for 25 years, wrote in an essay published Tuesday by The Free Press, a popular Substack publication, that “people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.”

Mr. Berliner, a Peabody Award-winning journalist, castigated NPR for what he said was a litany of journalistic missteps around coverage of several major news events, including the origins of Covid-19 and the war in Gaza. He also said the internal culture at NPR had placed race and identity as “paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace.”

Is it true? In the years after Trump came into our lives, did “people at every level of NPR coalesce around the progressive worldview?” 

More specifically, did the internal culture at NPR place race and identity as “paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace?"

Based on Berliner's essay, we can't answer those questions. He never makes a real attempt to support such claims in a specific way based on actual evidence concerning NPR's treatment of some specific topic.

That said, we'd been puzzled by a report on the PBS NewsHour dating back to late January. The report was broadcast by two journalists we're inclined to view quite favorably:

Trump deploys racist tactics as Biden rematch appears likely
Laura Barron-Lopez, Amna Nawaz. The PBS NewsHour, January 26, 2024.

We watched that broadcast in real time. To read the transcript or watch the tape, you can just click here.

We thought the journalism put on display that night was straight outta kindergarten. To our surprise and disappointment, the journalism seemed to have come from a Kindergarten Press Corps.

That said, the journalism served to advance the type of progressive, race-and-identity aligned cultural outlook to which that passage in the Times refers. Beyond that, it also tended to support our own Blue America's use of a world-famous fighting word.

In fairness, even Hector of the shining helmet loved the thrill of war! We'll return tomorrow to tell you what PBS said.

Spoiler alert! The assessments we offer tomorrow will be perfect, complete and true. All other assessments will be offered by assholes who are being dishonest and are liars, just as it ever has been.

Black kids were encouraged to stay in less challenging urban schools! We think of the contempt Willa Cather's narrator directed toward the Anglo men who refused to act on their attraction to the remarkably vibrant, good and decent, very beautiful immigrant girls. 

Tomorrow:  They found one man who said it!


208 comments:

  1. We need to get rid of identity-politics.
    I'd love to wake-up in a world where we don't give a shit what the white working class thinks.

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    1. As an added bonus, there'd be no more need to suppress the votes of black people.

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  2. "Education elites have played these kinds of games before. Sometimes, they've done so in ways which have encouraged black kids to stay in their lower-performing urban schools, avoiding the challenges and opportunities found in academic / admission high schools.

    (Perhaps with the noblest of intentions, these games were devised so Blue America's education elites could skirt prevailing law.)

    Elsewhere, Atlanta teachers and principals staged so-called "erasure parties," doctoring results of statewide testing programs. Fani Willis sent some of them to jail.

    In Blus [sic] America, we can be devious too. It isn't just the termagant Gutfeld and them, though they are creating an art form."

    Somerby starts by describing the efforts of university offices to be less of a lightning rod for MAGA hate by renaming themselves to avoid DEI-focused ire. The function of such offices is and has always been to attract students to campus, including diverse students. Somehow that has become a bad thing in Somerby's mind, because the right wing opposes such efforts.

    He then segues from attracting under-represented students on college campuses to somehow keeping black students out of white schools to cheating in Atlanta to improve test scores. None of these things have anything to do with each other, except for representing academic perfidy in Somerby's mind. And there was proof of cheating, but not of the other two loosely connected examples of academic wrongdoing (which somehow becomes BLUE wrongdoing in the transition from topic to topic). Then somerby accuses blue academics of deliberately "skirting the law" without explaining how that happens in the cases that did not involve erasure parties (which were certainly done by schools, but were not proven to be "blue" activities in any sense).

    This is just hate speech. There is no effort to prove anything wrong occurred. There is just a bunch of name-calling aimed at the left (which is oddly equated with Greg Gutfeld at one point).

    This is no different and certainly no better than one of Donald Trump's Truth Social rants. We get it that Somerby dislikes blue anything (voters, writers, political efforts, universities) but he offers no support for the idea that blue tribe members do bad stuff (other than those convicted Atlanta teachers, who were school administrators, not blue tribe members).

    There is no way to address this kind of weirdly hostile screed against Democrats based on a university office name-change (no evidence is provided that they didn't also change their mission). It is just hate and I don't have time for this. Somerby is sick today. He isn't thinking very well, but his emotional affinities are clear and they are oddly aligned with the right. They can have each other.

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    1. Fani used RICO to send those teachers to jail. They were racketeers, you see.

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    2. So RICO is a crime after all. Those teachers were committing RICO!

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    3. There is a difference between teachers and school administrators. The latter are the ones who were involved in changing scores. They did that because test scores were being used to determine school funding and the administrators (not the teachers) were desperate to keep the money allocated to their district. That is what happens when you make school funding dependent on performance, as NCLB did nationwide.

      Somerby knows this. Why is he recently pretending that schooling is all a scam perpetrated by elitists to impose lefty values on children via indoctrination? Perhaps that is what his right wing handlers want voters to think about teachers and schools these days -- an elitist plot to turn innocent children into Democrats, furries and transgay drag queens! Dictated by SATAN!

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    4. It's always management.

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    5. "Those teachers were committing RICO!"

      Eleven of the dozen accused educators were found guilty of conspiracy charges. One of the defendants, Angela Williams - who was found guilty of conspiracy, two counts of false statements and two counts of false swearing, which is lying under oath - may face the longest sentence.

      Why are magats so stupid?

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    6. In other words, the they were found guilty of organizing and operating a corrupt racket of changing test scores thereby defrauding the state.

      They committed RICO.

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    7. Fani Willis locked them up.

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    8. Anonymouse 12:37pm, I get the irony. You?

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    9. They did not commit RICO, which is grammatically incorrect and nonsensical. They committed crimes which are covered by the RICO law.

      That someone is so captured by their need to dominate that they make ignorant and specious arguments about grammar, indicates that society has failed such person, that such person is wounded and thus lashing out to soothe their uncomfortable emotional state.

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    10. Personally, I'm saddened that Atlanta teachers and principals ricoed statewide testing programs. That's horrible.

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    11. I’m saddened that black kids are underperforming. I doubt that defunding their schools will help.

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    12. They are funded by Russia via Iran and Qatar. Through Truth Social.

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    13. When everything’s a joke, including people suffering, you’ve lost your way, and have no credibility in any discourse.

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    14. It's almost like the only thing the Right really cares about is bigotry and white supremacy. Without the "It's almost like" part.

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    15. It’s almost like anonymices talk out of both sides of their mouth when setting their hair on fire,

      “Almost”

      We know anonymices talk out of another orifice.

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    16. crude as always, this is what passes for wit on the right, akin to Somerby’s complaint about Gutfeld’s crudeness. Cecelia is his audience.

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    17. Anonymouse 11:53pm, you feign outrage when in the course of debate someone jests or makes an ironical remark, or anything else that’s not to your scripted game plan.

      You then engage in angry and very nasty character assassination and feign shock and surprise when you’re flipped off in return.

      Go soak your head.

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    18. Cecelia,
      If you own the patent for being an asshole on the internet, and then whining when you get called out on it, now is the time to show it.
      If not, what makes you the only one who can act like that?

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    19. Anonymouse 8:14pm, you might want to think about your appellation since I was being chided for making jocular remarks.I give as good as I get.

      I return in kind, no matter how high your self-estimation and your self-righteousness. It’s a public service since you’re sorely in need of that reality check.

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  3. Those college DEI offices are perfidious because Somerby just knows, despite their name changes, they are going to keep on doing the same thing -- letting black kids into college. The horror!

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  4. "it's very, very, very hard to believe that Candidate Lake is telling the truth"

    A truth-telling candidate will not be elected anywhere, ever (well, with the rare exception: protest vote). Their M.O. is pandering. That's what they do. The pandering politician will beat the truthful politician 100% of the time. Live with it.

    "It's hard to know what such language specifically means."

    Funny, it's perfectly clear to me what it means. And if you kill 15 minutes of your time listening to NPR, it'll become clear to you too.

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    1. How is NPR different than any other media enterprise who fell for the Right pretending that they cared about inflation and the deficit?

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  5. Here is an example of Republican lying in order to cash in on rural cred:

    "Businessman Tim Sheehy, who is running for US Senate in Montana, has been hyping his rural connections to voters on the campaign trail. But a new report suggests Sheehy is actually a product of suburbia.

    Farm life is a mainstay of Montana. US Census records show that the Big Sky State has the nation's fifth largest concentration of rural residents (behind Vermont, Maine, West Virginia and Mississippi), with 46.6% of its residents living in remote areas. Incumbent Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana), who is running for a fourth term this November, is a bona fide lifelong rancher who lost several fingers in a farming accident as a child. So Sheehy has been trying to persuade voters of his rural credentials, saying in a 2023 interview that he "grew up in an old farmstead... surrounded by farmland."

    But according to the Daily Beast, Sheehy's upbringing in Minnesota was actually in "a multi-million-dollar lake house in Shoreview, Minnesota, a quiet Twin Cities suburb just north of St. Paul with a population of roughly 27,000."

    "According to a 1990 deed, Sheehy’s childhood home on Turtle Lake is 13 miles from the Minnesota State Capitol, 13 miles from the home of the Minnesota Vikings at U.S. Bank Stadium, and just over 20 miles from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and the Mall of America," the Beast's Riley Rogerson wrote. "The property sits just three miles from a Trader Joe’s market—much closer than the nearest Fleet Farm, a fishing, hunting, and farm supply store popular in the state."

    The Beast further reported that Sheehy claimed the Shoreview home as his residence as recently as 2016, before his parents ultimately sold it for more than $2 million the following year. Rogerson described the community as "a desirable slice of middle to upper-middle class suburbia with quiet spaces and good schools." Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, who authored The Great Gatsby, was educated at the nearby St. Paul Academy, the same exclusive private school where Sheehy graduated."

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    1. The entire Conservative movement is built on bullshit.

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    2. Weren’t anonymices just throwing out the same accusation against Al Gore?

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    3. Republicans made similar claims against Gore, but as covered by Somerby at the time (back when he had relevancy), those claims were false whereas the claims about Sheehy are accurate.

      Sheehy’s carpetbagging case is closer to the case of Kristof, an opinion writer who tried to run for governor in Oregon because he owned a vineyard there - his attempt to run was rejected by the state (although he kept the $3 million his campaign raised).

      When all you care about is “owning the libs”, you are likely to make poorly reasoned claims.

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    4. All I care about is owning the libs.

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    5. If I owned the libs I’d sell them. Fast.

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    6. Nah. I collect them.

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    7. I know about liberals, but anonymices routinely own themselves.

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    8. …don’t know about liberals…

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    9. You know about liberals and you don’t know about them. You’re Schrödinger’s conservative.

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    10. Har har har says the lost soul commenter pretending to be a woman, in an obvious cry for help.

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    11. Only right-wingers have souls. Liberals are programmed by education.

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    12. Anonymouse 2:52pm, learn to read.

      I said that I didn’t know that anyone had tried to own or had ever owned a liberal at TDH, and that there is no need to attempt that with anonymices since you aren’t liberals and you own yourselves.

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    13. TDH’s whole enterprise, Somerby’s raison d’etre, is to “own the libs”. The phrase is in quotes because, while it conveys the motivation behind right wingers, it is their phrase, their misunderstanding of what “liberal” means.

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    14. I own several libs. Some with a well sized penis. Mm-mmm. I am Vorby.

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  6. “There's a lot of hustle in that passage—flowery attempts at persuasion substituting for the tedium of evidence. We refer to the verbal hustle about "catnip," and about "hitching our wagon" to an "ever-present muse" who created "the drumbeat" of the NPR's reporting.”

    Would allusions to epic Greek poems be more elucidating?

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    1. The “heroes” of those epic poems were thugs, gangsters, criminals.

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    2. They went to Troy to promote democracy. For the children.

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    3. And for the women. Remember, the Trojans had abducted Helen.

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    4. Yes. So that Trojan girls could go to school. And have abortions, when pregnancy makes them look fat.

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    5. This is what right wing men think of women.

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    6. So Trojan women could have careers.

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    7. Trojan women should make sure that Trojan men should wear a Trojan.

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    8. Ha ha ha what an original joke.

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    9. Did you hear the one about the Republican voter who cared about something other than bigotry and white supremacy?
      Me neither.

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  7. Bob asks, "If Schiff was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, why wouldn't NPR have interviewed him on various occasions...?"

    The 25 interviews isn't the problem. The problem is NPR's sparsity of coverage when Russiagate was found to be without evidentiary support.

    NPR (and some other liberal organs) left some listeners with the impression that the Russia collusion hoax was valid. Some of them comment here on this board.

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    1. And some of them are Republican Senators.

      https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/senate-intel-releases-election-security-findings-first-volume-bipartisan-russia-report

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    2. Thanks for the link @11:49. However, it talks about Russian interference, but it says nothing at all about Russia helping Trump.

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    3. Schiff was also the chairman of the intelligence committee at that time. In 25 visits what could he have shared intelligence-wise with NPR?

      Schiff could only share info that other Drmocrats knew as well. The reason that Schiff was such a prominent and repeated guest was that he could do his thing in alluding to special intelligence that was damning, but not something he could share.

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    4. "The 25 interviews isn't the problem."

      Of course it's a problem. Media's role is to challenge politicians' bullshit narratives, not to give one side free unlimited airtime to propagate them.

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    5. And just like that, the whole “Russia had nothing to do with Trump’s election in 2016” goes poof.

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    6. There's no evidence Russia had anything to do with the outcome of Trump’s election in 2016.

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    7. The Trump Russia collusion hoax is a DNC straw man. They don't want people to ponder the real reasons for Trump's election.

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    8. Thanks for the links @12:11. Both say Mueller found no evidence of collusion.

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    9. Russia is blackmailing Trump (and GOP Congresspeople). They don’t need to collude with him.

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    10. Mueller, a Republican who barely investigated the issue, detailed, in an entire volume of his report, the evidence of Trump working with Russians to enhance his election chances; the only qualification he made was that he questioned whether the collusion was actionable due to the vagueness in the law. (The other volume demonstrated how Trump illegally obstructed the investigation.)

      There is no way to know if Russia was THE deciding factor in Trump winning, but at a minimum it played a significant role.

      And it continues to this day, as we now know the Republican star witness in their phony Biden Crime Family investigation was a stooge for Russia, and that Republican members of congress themselves were/are operating with Russia to diminish the strength of our democracy, as Parnas recently testified to.

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    11. "The problem is NPR's sparsity of coverage when Russiagate was found to be without evidentiary support. NPR (and some other liberal organs) left some listeners with the impression that the Russia collusion hoax was valid." It WAS valid. See my reply to the very first comment above. And I'd just luuuv to see your proof that NPR's coverage of the Trump-Russia scandal was in any way irresponsible. As if you would know anything about NPR's coverage.

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    12. "They don't want people to ponder the real reasons for Trump's election."
      The real reasons aren't politically correct enough for Republican voters to hear.

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    13. @Mike L
      Your comments here are too short. I need to see more words from you to make up my mind.

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    14. Sometimes you gotta get a little verbose to counter right-wing bullshit.

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    15. Sure thing. Or maybe you and Corby are paid by word?

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    16. Mike L, you’re doing a good job, we appreciate learning from your comments and enjoy how it triggers the fanboys.

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    17. But the fanboys are right: we need more words.

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    18. If they ask nicely, I'll give them two words.

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    19. 2:47 we are aware you are triggered, you’re beating a dead horse.

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    20. There's no evidence Russia played any role at all in Trump winning.

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    21. David, you're welcome for the links, you dumb bastard. They are both by NPR, proving Berliner was full of shit, Dickhead in Cal.

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    22. 3:08 there is evidence, some even detailed today in the comments. All you are saying is “I have blinders on because I want to feel superior to you in some way”.

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    23. 3:08,
      Or that there is a God, or a Republican voter who cares about something other than bigotry and white supremacy.

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    24. It is like the two Republican Congressmaen who stated to the press Re: No Ukrainian War Funding From White Moses (&TrumPutin) that several of their colleagues are repeating Russian Talking Points. Like just this fucking week, and yet you cultist dolts stick to your same totally debunked years long talking points like nothing is fucking going on.

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    25. No problems with the entire FOX News apparatus, run by a foreign born billionaire, being 100% dedicated 100% of the time to having conspiracy cultists electing Republicans, and denigrating Democrats. But little old NPR is hosting a well qualified expert, who always knows his security speech limits, to discuss the Trump/Russia scandal buried by the Iran/Contra corrupt AG Barr... And oh my, get the fainting coach!!!!

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    26. There's no conclusive evidence Russia played any role at all in Trump winning. There's no conclusive evidence the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia in their election interference. The Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion or as he defined it, conspiracy. The report makes it clear why. The NPR editor is accusing NPR of notably sparse coverage of this result (Mueller finding no credible evidence of collusion) and then letting Russiagate quietly fade from their programming.

      DNC dead-enders have lot of conspiracy theories about why Mueller found no credible evidence of collusion and they have lots of conspiracy theories about how there really is conclusive evidence of collusion - but for some reason it is just buried somewhere where Mueller couldn't find it. But it's right there for all the smart people to see (a pathetic appeal to authority).

      Two major investigations spent millions of dollars looking into the issue of any kind of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in their election interference and both of them found no credible or conclusive evidence that they did. Was this reported accurately by NPR or the press in general? That no coordination, collusion or cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia was found in these major, multimillion dollar investigations into the matter? Reading these comments by commenters who are consumed with denial, maybe it was not accurately reported.

      Partisan zealots, gripped with evangelical fervency, are bearing witness. They have received, deep ay night, divinely appointed visions of conclusive collusion. No, it can't be seen .. but it's there all the same!! If you only have faith, brother!

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  8. The improvement in Kari Lake's position on abortion looks like a response to Trump's comment that he favors a more moderate position than Arizona's complete ban. Hopefully other anti-abortion states will follow Trump's lead and moderate their abortion laws.

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    1. Hopefully, the media will report that Trump's words mean nothing. They already know it, but I'm hopeful they'll get around to reporting it.

      Delete
    2. No, David, you dumb bastard, Lake was running away from the verdict before the ink was dry. Why don't you pull your head out of trump's corrupt ass? He just took a giant dump on the women of Arizona, and they know it no matter how much double talk bullshit he spews.

      Delete
    3. Hillary, did Lake initially support a complete ban on abortion or did she support the SCOTUS decision that states should decide what parameters (if any) to place around abortion?

      Delete
    4. She supported a complete ban on abortions, until she left her bubble.

      Delete
    5. Anonymouse 12:23pm, I was just reading where initially she called abortion the “greatest sin”, to later saying that women could still get abortions in “other places”, to now saying that Arizona’s ban goes too far,

      She’s definitely “moderating” her position.

      Delete
    6. Abortion provides a good case study for understanding how right wingers lack integrity, only care about dominance, and not about dealing with real issues.

      Historically, abortion rights have had broad support among most cohorts, besides a segment of Catholics, including Republicans and even Evangelicals. Indeed Roe was decided on by a Republican majority Supreme Court. It wasn’t until Republicans discovered they could weaponize the issue in the later 70s to use as a tool to fight desegregation, that they flipped on the issue and suddenly become virulent anti choice demagogues.

      Quick recap: abortion is not mentioned in the Bible, the Bible suggests both that life starts at first breath and that a fetus does not have human rights but is the personal property of the pregnant mother. The pertinent factors in deciding abortion rights are viability and sentience, which is largely how the Courts have justified their rulings in making abortion legal.

      Right wingers, of which Republicans are a subset, have no ideology. It’s a personality trait centered around an obsession with dominance, typically borne from unresolved trauma that often occurs in childhood.

      When the proximal root cause of right wingers is revealed, they get triggered because, although the condition is a function of having endured horrible suffering, they find emotional comfort in perpetuating their identity through various forms of reproduction. The abuse they suffer is often generational and cyclical.

      The ultimate root cause is when modern humans transitioned from immediate return societies to a society based on surplus and commodification, thus creating circumstances that diminished our innate human nature of egalitarianism, and from which emerged the traits of hierarchy and dominance.

      Delete
    7. You are the queen of careless and dumb.

      Delete
    8. To answer you question, Cecelia, Lake supported the 1864 abortion ban before she changed her mind on a dime, you dumb ignorant ass.


      “We have a great law on the books right now. If that happens we will be a state where we will not be taking the lives of our unborn anymore.”

      “I’m incredibly thrilled that we are going to have a great law that’s already on the books, I believe it’s ARS 13-3603,” she said during a June 2022 interview on KFYI. “So it will prohibit abortion in Arizona except to save the life of a mother. And I think we’re going to be setting the, paving the way and setting course for other states to follow.”

      ARS 13-3603 is the territorial law that mandates a two- to five-year prison sentence for any doctor who performs an abortion on a girl or a woman who is not dying.

      “My personal belief is that all life matters. All life counts, and all life is precious, and I don’t believe in abortion,” she said during the Republican gubernatorial debate in June 2022. “I think the older law is going to take and is going to go into effect. That’s what I believe will happen.”

      Delete
    9. 2:59 Stalin was a right wing authoritarian.

      The rest of your gibberish is equally nonsensical, an un parse able non sequitur.

      When you have no coherent counterpoint, just a loony rant, you are conceding.

      Delete
    10. Stalin was a Marxist and lords knows the millions who have been murdered on behalf of that ideology.

      Delete
    11. Anonymouse 3:08pm, beat you to it.


      CeceliaApril 13, 2024 at 12:36 PM
      Anonymouse 12:23pm, I was just reading where initially she called abortion the “greatest sin”, to later saying that women could still get abortions in “other places”, to now saying that Arizona’s ban goes too far,

      She’s definitely “moderating” her position.

      Delete

      Delete
    12. Yes, "leaving it to the states" is a fucking pri cipled stand, to switch from, depending on whatever. Funny how moderate one becomes when getting their reactionary ass handed to them.

      Delete
    13. "Funny how moderate one becomes when getting their reactionary ass handed to them."

      Indeed. Facilitating a genocide gets unpopular, occasionally.

      Delete
    14. Anonymouse 4:38 pm, particularly when you’ve gone with calling abortion “the greatest sin”.

      Then too, the merits of a political “about face” on policy is in the eye of the beholder:

      Exp- Anonymouse 3:17pm: “Biden, after noticing polls and electoral protests, is shifting his stance on Israel. Such is politics in a democracy.”

      Delete
    15. Opinions on the Gaza debacle have not been static since Oct. 7th, insofar as Israeli actions have been increasingly unpopular; to characterize Biden's stance as a merely a response to polls is a biased opinion; polls change in response to the news and so can the opinion of the president, irrespective of the polls.

      Delete
    16. It's kind of funny, in a ridiculous way, how the Right thinks that pretending they care about babies, will distract us from the fact that they're fascists.

      Delete
    17. Anonymouse 12:47am, as an anonymouse said, “Such is politics in a democracy.”

      Delete
  9. The smell of napalm in the morning is obviously a reference to Apocalypse Now, the film, but what does it have to do without anything else Somerby writes about today?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Comparing "fighting words" to napalm, I suppose.

      Delete
    2. To battle and to our affinity for war.

      Delete
    3. We need an affinity for the Pentagon to hold bake sales to fund themselves.

      Delete
  10. There are a bunch of commenters on here who keep repeating Trump's narrative about the Trump-Russian scandal, calling it a "hoax" and mocking anyone who is concerned about it and the obvious threat that Putin and his government pose to the U.S. and its democratic allies. Of course, it wasn't a hoax at all. It was an extremely disturbing episode in our country's recent history. Here are some known facts about it: Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, very possibly tipping the outcome of the election to Trump, and the Trump team knew it was happening in real time, encouraged it, showed they were WILLING to collude with the effort, and lied about it in an attempt to cover it up (or at least muddy the waters about it). They went along with Putin's denial that it was even happening, taking Putin's side in an information war between Russia and our U.S. intelligence teams. They obstructed the investigation into it -- obstruction which included Trump floating the prospect of presidential pardons at the height of the investigation. He then followed through with those pardons, after multiple people were convicted of obstruction of justice. Given the extensive obstruction, it is beyond reasonable doubt that there was even more evidence that wasn't uncovered. 
    If that was the extent of what the Trump team did, that alone would be utterly reprehensible, traitorous behavior for a presidential candidate and his team to have engaged in. But that's not the extent of it. There is considerable evidence pointing towards collusion (summarized below), EVEN IF IT'S NOT DISPOSITIVE. Many very bright, well-informed people think the evidence itself constitutes collusion. I'm not 100% convinced of that -- it would depend on how loosely "collusion" gets defined. But set aside the argument over semantics, about whether the word "collusion" correctly applies to what Trump and his criminal cronies did. After all, who CARES whether a given word applies to the activities described? Ultimately, it's the activities themselves that matter, and they're beyond the pale for a presidential candidate. If we woke up tomorrow morning to headlines saying that Joe Biden's campaign had engaged in similar activities with Chinese nationals linked to China's communist government, Trump supporters would lose their fucking minds. 
    "The Media Did Not Make Up Trump’s Russia Scandal"
    By Jonathan Chait
    "NPR reporter Uri Berliner wrote an essay for The Free Press arguing that the network has lost chunks of its audience by growing too dogmatically progressive. Some of the evidence supports his claim. Unfortunately, he undermines his case by leading with an example that in no way vindicates the thesis, and actually undermines it: coverage of the Trump-Russia scandal.

    Berliner presents the story as a nothingburger that NPR breathlessly hyped and then ignored when it turned out to exonerate the president:

    “Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff. Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse. By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports. But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.”

    Even though Republicans have repeated this ad nauseam to the point where The Free Press would blithely state it as fact, it is simply not true that the Mueller report “found no credible evidence of collusion.”  [continued below]

    ReplyDelete
  11. "First, establishing 'collusion' was explicitly not the objective of the Mueller investigation. Mueller saw his job as identifying criminal behavior. Collusion is not a crime. The Mueller report stated clearly that it was not attempting to prove whether or not Trump colluded with Russia:

    "In evaluating whether evidence about collective action of multiple individuals constituted a crime, we applied the framework of conspiracy law, not the concept of 'collusion.' In so doing, the Office recognized that the word 'collud[e]' was used in communications with the Acting Attorney General confirming certain aspects of the investigation’s scope and that the term has frequently been invoked in public reporting about the investigation. But collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law. For those reasons, the Office’s focus in analyzing questions of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law."

    Nonetheless, Mueller found extensive evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The evidence was summarized in a report by Just Security. It uncovered multiple secret meetings and communications between the two. [Chait then summarizes Just Security's main points. Instead of Chait's summary, here is Just Security's own summary, which is more detailed:]

    The redacted Mueller Report documents a series of activities that show strong evidence of collusion. Or, more precisely, it provides significant evidence that Trump Campaign associates coordinated with, cooperated with, encouraged, or gave support to the Russia/WikiLeaks election interference activities. The Report documents the following actions (each of which is analyzed in detail in Part II):

    1. Trump was receptive to a Campaign national security adviser’s (George Papadopoulos) pursuit of a back channel to Putin.

    2. Kremlin operatives provided the Campaign a preview of the Russian plan to distribute stolen emails.

    3. The Trump Campaign chairman and deputy chairman (Paul Manafort and Rick Gates) knowingly shared internal polling data and information on battleground states with a Russian spy; and the Campaign chairman worked with the Russian spy on a pro-Russia “peace” plan for Ukraine.

    4. The Trump Campaign chairman periodically shared internal polling data with the Russian spy with the expectation it would be shared with Putin-linked oligarch, Oleg Deripaska.

    5. Trump Campaign chairman Manafort expected Trump’s winning the presidency would mean Deripaska would want to use Manafort to advance Deripaska’s interests in the United States and elsewhere.

    6. Trump Tower meeting: (1) On receiving an email offering derogatory information on Clinton coming from a Russian government official, Donald Trump Jr. “appears to have accepted that offer;” (2) members of the Campaign discussed the Trump Tower meeting beforehand; (3) Donald Trump Jr. told the Russians during the meeting that Trump could revisit the issue of the Magnitsky Act if elected.

    7. A Trump Campaign official told the Special Counsel he “felt obliged to object” to a GOP Platform change on Ukraine because it contradicted Trump’s wishes; however, the investigation did not establish that Gordon was directed by Trump. [continued below]

    ReplyDelete
  12. 8. Russian military hackers may have followed Trump’s July 27, 2016 public statement “Russia if you’re listening …” within hours by targeting Clinton’s personal office for the first time.

    9. Trump requested campaign affiliates to get Clinton’s emails, which resulted in an individual apparently acting in coordination with the Campaign claiming to have successfully contacted Russian hackers.

    10. The Trump Campaign—and Trump personally—appeared to have advanced knowledge of future WikiLeaks releases.

    11. The Trump Campaign coordinated campaign-related public communications based on future WikiLeaks releases.

    12. Michael Cohen, on behalf of the Trump Organization, brokered a secret deal for a Trump Tower Moscow project directly involving Putin’s inner circle, at least until June 2016.

    13. During the presidential transition, Jared Kushner and Eric Prince engaged in secret back channel communications with Russian agents. (1) Kushner suggested to the Russian Ambassador that they use a secure communication line from within the Russian Embassy to speak with Russian Generals; and (2) Prince and Kushner’s friend Rick Gerson conducted secret back channel meetings with a Putin agent to develop a plan for U.S.-Russian relations.

    14. During the presidential transition, in coordination with other members of the Transition Team, Michael Flynn spoke with the Russian Ambassador to prevent a tit for tat Russian response to the Obama administration’s imposition of sanctions for election interference; the Russians agreed not to retaliate saying they wanted a good relationship with the incoming administration.

    During the course of 2016, Trump Campaign associates failed to report any of the Russian/WikiLeaks overtures to federal law enforcement, publicly denied any contacts with Russians/WikiLeaks, and actively encouraged the public to doubt that Russia was behind the hacking and distribution of stolen emails.

    One qualification before proceeding to the analysis in Part II: a significant amount of relevant information was unavailable to Mueller due to four factors. First, as the Report states, “several individuals affiliated with the Trump Campaign lied to the Office,” and “those lies materially impaired the investigation of Russian election interference.” Second, President Trump’s interference in the investigation also appears to have stymied the investigation. A key example is Paul Manafort’s failure to cooperate with the Special Counsel because he was apparently led to believe that President Trump would pardon him. Third, some individuals used encrypted communications or deleted their communications. Fourth, some of the individuals who “cooperated” with the investigation (e.g., Steve Bannon) appear to have been deceptive or not fully forthcoming in their dealings with the Special Counsel. Several individuals failed to recall the content of important conversations with Trump or other Campaign associates. The Report states, “Even when individuals testified or agreed to be interviewed, they sometimes provided information that was false or incomplete.” [continued below]

    ReplyDelete
  13. "Finally, some tips for reading the Mueller Report. It is important to keep in mind that the Report’s analysis is about whether or not to prosecute someone for a crime. Furthermore, statements that the investigation “did not establish” something occurred are not the same as saying there was “no evidence” that it occurred. The Report has clear ways of saying when the investigation found no evidence. It conveys the absence of any evidence when, for example, it states the investigation “did not identify evidence” or “did not uncover evidence” that something occurred. Even then, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. When there is “evidence of absence,” the Special Counsel was willing to say the investigation “established” effectively that something did not occur. For example, the Report states that the investigation “established” that interactions between the Russian Ambassador and Campaign officials at certain locations were “brief, public, and non-substantive.” That finding excludes the possibility that something more nefarious occurred in those particular interactions. A keen eye on these kinds of distinctions is important when reading the Report itself." [end of Just Security's summary; Chait's article continues below]

    "But because collusion is not a crime, Mueller refrained from stating an opinion as to whether this extensive pattern of furtive meetings in pursuit of a shared objective constituted 'collusion.'

    There was an investigation into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia. That investigation was conducted by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee. And that report found even more evidence of collusion, including multiple links between Russian intelligence and the Russian figures interfacing with Trump’s campaign. The Senate identified Konstantin Kilimnik, the business partner of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, as a Russian intelligence agent. And it found two pieces of evidence that “raise the possibility of Manafort’s potential connection to the hack-and-leak operations” — the most direct kind of collusion — that it redacted for national-security reasons.

    The Senate Intelligence report came out more than a year after the Mueller report and received a fraction of the media attention devoted to Mueller. But that disparity is not, as Berliner frames it, evidence of anti-Trump bias. It’s evidence of the opposite. The news media allowed Trump’s “no collusion” to misleadingly frame Mueller’s investigation and then buried the report that did investigate collusion.

    [...]

    Berliner thinks the Russia story is evidence the news media is hopelessly biased to the left. If anything, his misunderstanding of the story shows the bias is not as bad as he thinks."

    https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/media-liberal-bias-npr-free-press-trump-russia-mueller-collusion.html

    By the way, regarding Kilimnik, the "it's all a hoax" commenters keep trying to downplay his status as a Russian operative. That's some kind of talking point they presumably picked up from right-wing sites. Mueller's report says otherwise, as does his Wikipedia page. More recently, the treasury department put out a statement about Kilimnik: https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/03/18/how-josh-dawsey-downplays-paul-manaforts-ties-to-alleged-russian-spies/

    ReplyDelete
  14. If I were going to RICO, and I’m not, I would never RICO. But if I were, I’d want my co-conspirators to be David and Cecelia.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We would pay for your services. We are not communists.

      Delete
    2. If you're in Georgia, go with Fani Willis.

      Delete
    3. It is hard to figure out how a conservative troll coming to a liberal blog and irritating people is supposed to win votes.

      Delete
    4. Fani will really cost you.

      Delete
    5. Fani is hot and Hunter has a well sized penis.

      Hunter’s wife is also hot.

      Joe and Jill have a happy and healthy relationship.

      Trump is having to own up to his personal responsibilities.

      This is what triggers these sad lost soul fanboys.

      Everything’s a joke to them, dropping bombs on innocent civilians has no more meaning to them than swatting a fly; meanwhile the rest of us are trying to improve people’s lives.

      Delete
    6. “…meanwhile the rest of us are trying to improve people’s lives.”

      By making it out to the polls?

      You’d be a tad more believable if you weren’t here all the time blasting Bob,

      Delete
    7. Biden, after noticing polls and electoral protests, is shifting his stance on Israel. Such is politics in a democracy.

      I’ll agree that such activities and information have no meaningful impact on Republicans.

      Delete
    8. Too late, hopefully. He's already "genocide Joe".

      Delete
    9. As bad as Biden has been on Israel, he’s still our best, most effective president since FDR.

      While it’s true that Trump’s Truth Social stock has tanked, womp womp boohoo, Biden has otherwise overseen our economy booming.

      It’s important that leaders have open minds and genuinely adjust their views as they become aware of new information.

      I’ll be voting for Biden.

      When your hopefulness centers around the continued killing and suffering of innocent civilians, you’ve lost the plot.

      Delete
    10. "the continued killing and suffering of innocent civilians"

      Corby gets new talking points, I see.

      Delete
    11. By the way, tell me about pardoning Assange a couple of months from now, Corby. Might get your bosses a few votes, eh?

      Delete
    12. Anonymouse 3:17pm: “Biden, after noticing polls and electoral protests, is shifting his stance on Israel. Such is politics in a democracy.

      I’ll agree that such activities and information have no meaningful impact on Republicans”

      Is Kari Lake not a Republican?

      Delete
    13. Kari Lake, like Trump, is a self absorbed asshole who gives two shits about effective government policies.

      Delete
    14. Anonymouse 4:42pm, one man’s notice of polls and protests in an election year, is another woman’s pandering.

      Delete
    15. Biden changes from asking Natzi Netanyahu nicely to be humane, to asking sternly to be humane. Lake, OTOH, does a complete flip flop on abortion. See both sides be pandering.

      Delete
    16. Anonymouse 5:50pm, yeah, that whole thing on supplying missiles and other weapons while asking the PM to be humane is the essence of the political process.

      Delete
    17. Cecelia says Biden's military arms support for Israel has not changed over his supporters protests. Thanks for the heads up, you be the flip flopper.

      Delete
    18. Anonymouse 6:59pm, if you were fair, you’d aver that one of your fellow anonymices said that Biden’s stance toward Israel has changed since the beginning of the incursion due to his angry constituents as displayed via polls. And that AFTER he had sent multitudes of munitions to Netanyahu and had assured Israel that we are their staunch supporters.

      However, you aren’t fair. You’re just silly.

      Delete
    19. Netanyahu is almost as big a piece of shit as an average Right-winger, for sure.

      Delete
  15. Correction: "Many very bright, well-informed people think the evidence itself constitutes collusion." I'm not sure about this - I might have misinterpreted something I read. Regardless, it doesn't affect anything else I said above.

    ReplyDelete
  16. DeSantis stripping civilian oversight boards of their ability to investigate police misconduct is a boon to the gun industry.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Expect gun sales to skyrocket in Florida, to level the playing field.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Florida is determined to self destruct, it’s interesting to watch.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Ummn - idiot? Collusion is largely synonymous with conspiracy, is it not? Mueller said on page two he did not establish conspiracy.

    (He said on page 180 collusion is largely synonymous with conspiracy.)

    ReplyDelete
  20. So, is Kilimnik still a spy then? What about his relationship as a source for the U.S. State Department?

    ReplyDelete
  21. Kilimnik received the polling data. Only spies know the polling data. It's super-secret, classified as "burn before reading".

    ReplyDelete
  22. In your fantasy, Manafort gives him this polling data and then he gives it to Russia who uses it to target Facebook ads in battleground states ... which changed the outcome of the election! All the people had their minds changed by Russian Facebook ads! In a multi-billion dollar election where Trump himself was already targeting battleground states with Facebook ads based on one of the most sophisticated targeting campaigns in the world at the time (Cambridge Analytica) ... and he was spending tens of millions of dollars doing it.

    So in your fantasy, Trump felt like he had to take a break from his well-funded, sophisticated and successful Facebook targeting campaign in order to collude with Russia on their campaign. Their campaign that spent $75,000. Under $5,000 of which was spent on ads in battleground states.

    It's possible but you have to have conclusive evidence to claim that it's true and there isn't any.

    And it doesn't make any sense at all.

    ReplyDelete
  23. 3:20 3:22 these are not coherent counterpoints to Mike L.

    Not good enough - see me!

    (A tribute to Brand X, the greatest band that no one has heard of)

    ReplyDelete
  24. Went to eat at a local Haitian expats restaurant. We were on good speaking terms. I said I was sick that a man child was elected President. He screamed! at me, "you do not know my politics". Went on about the Clinton foundation fucking over Haitians. Then I learned that Cambridge Analytica had targeted Haitian expats on Facebook with ginned up stories about the evils of the Clinton Foundation treatment of Haitians. When you lose the popular vote by 3 million, but win on the edges of tens of thousands of votes in electoral college swing states (thanks fucking slavery) moving a few votes does matter. (Also too Putin's friend Jill Stein is a pain in the ass. Steve Bannon is planning to get the Youngs to vote for her as Biden has opened up record carbon energy production (she's the Putin, er Green Party afterall), while simultaneously telling the Cultist that Trump will ratchet up energy production on Day 1. The stupid, it burns...)

    ReplyDelete
  25. Get ready for another Mr. Trump's... sorry: Mr. Biden's Big War, Bob.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Iran has launched drones that are expected to reach Israel soon.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Iran has also launched cruise missiles.

      Delete
    2. Couldn't have happened to a nicer country.

      Delete
  27. Dan Nexon looks at Biden’s Israel policy:

    https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/04/conditioning-aid-to-israel

    ReplyDelete
  28. Taking water breaks away from extreme heat workers is not being done to help the economy, but to punish the browns doing the work that white folks largely won't.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Who is allegedly poisoning the blood?

    The PBS clip of Trump’s comment starts with “They’re poisoning the blood…” PBS cut off the sentence before, so we don’t know who Trump was talking about when he said “they”.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He didn't say allegedly, Dickhead in Cal.
      Who the fuck do you think he was talking about, you fucking mendacious bastard?

      Delete
    2. @5:56 I said "allegedly". It was Trump's allegation.
      Who do you think Trump was talking about?

      Delete
    3. He’s talking about illegal immigrants. They have icky blood. Legal immigrants, like my grandparents, have nice blood.

      Delete
    4. He didn't say allegedly, Dickhead in Cal.

      But you did. So to you, it's possibly true, right fuckface.

      It's a sick fucking fascist thing to say. Take a guess who he meant, you sick fuck.

      Axios Explains: The racist history of Trump's "poisoning the blood"
      https://www.axios.com/2023/12/30/trump-poisoning-the-blood-racism

      Delete
    5. @6:21 "allegedly" - according to what is or has been alleged.

      "allege - "to assert without proof"

      Trump alleged, that is asserted without proof that blood comment.

      I said allegedly, that is someone had made made such an assertion without proof.

      Delete
    6. Alleged. Like Biden's corruption, and the Republican voter who cares about something other than bigotry and white supremacy. Or is that mythical?

      Delete
    7. David comes here and feigns ignorance about who Trump was talking about when he said "they" are poisoning our blood. Apparently, David, is ignorant of how to use Google or some other search engine and is only allowed to view the one edited PBS clip.

      Do you understand why I say, that DiC is a passive aggressive troll?

      Delete
    8. Russia, if you're listening, give the Right some talking points that make sense.

      Delete
  30. 3:20 PM Ummm . . . idiot? Learn to read more carefully. Collusion is addressed multiple times above, and you're ignoring the explanations above of the way words like "established" are used in the context of Mueller's report.

    Regarding Kilimnik, I provided plenty of info and sources that show that he's considered a spy. If he had some kind of interactions with our State Department (don't know if that's true or what the specifics might be), that wouldn't prove he's not a spy.

    Regarding the polling data, that's just one small part of this - and it's only one part of Manafort's interactions with Kilimnik. But my god, what is a manager of a U.S. presidential campaign doing repeatedly discussing data internal to the campaign with a Russian spy, knowing that at the same time Russia is trying to interfere with the election? If it were a Democratic campaign doing that, I'm sure you'd have no problem seeing more clearly how troubling and suggestive that is.

    3:28 PM, I don't know what they were up to. But the biggest influence Russia had on the election wasn't what you're suggesting. The biggest influence they had was the theft of emails and the release of those emails at strategic moments: just before the DNC convention, and when the "grab 'em by the pussy" story first broke, and during the final weeks of the campaign. Given how close the election was in three key battleground states, the slow release of those emails and the enormous amount of media attention each partial release garnered, it could have EASILY have tipped things Trump's favor.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Kevin debunks CBS News:

    https://jabberwocking.com/food-inflation-is/

    ReplyDelete
  32. Yes, idiot. There is no conclusive evidence of collusion. The matter was settled years ago by Mueller. There's no evidence at all that this scary "spy", a Ukrainian Russian dual citizen who had been an employee of Manafort's and worked with him on polling for over a decade, gave anything at all to Russia. There's no evidence at all that Russia received or used any polling data whatsoever. It is all a religious fantasy on your part that he did. Which is your right. You have the freedom of religion and the right to spread your faith-based views here or anywhere.

    But the NPR editor was accusing NPR of sparse coverage of this indisputable real-world truth: Mueller was tasked to investigate collusion, he spent millions of dollars doing so and did not find any.

    Is that so hard to swallow?

    ReplyDelete
  33. Ahhh, no "conclusive" evidence. That's right, idiot. But there IS evidence. And that's all most of us have said. Regarding Kilimnik, you can sit there and make all the claims you want, it doesn't change the facts. You have the freedom of religion, too.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Trump was charged with colluding with Russia. Mueller was asked to investigate it. He found Trump did not conspire or coordinate with Russia. There was insufficient proof. The case was closed. This is big news.

    These are the facts. Collusion was investigated and not found. Did NPR gloss over this huge news? Did they become obsessed with unproven theories and let the core finding fade away? Theories abound but they are all unproven and therefore none of them change the indisputable fact that collusion was not found. Was this reported properly by NPR?

    ReplyDelete
  35. Test your economics expertise:

    1. How much do the top 1% of taxpayers by income account for in terms of share of total federal income taxes paid: 1%, 12%, 42%, or 64%?”

    A California McDonald's worker was earning $15 an hour, bringing home $600 a week. As of April 1, the minimum wage for CA McDonald's workers was increased to $20 an hour. In May, how much will this worker bring home each week: $800, less than $800 but more than zero, Zero?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He will bring home $800i. Yes, his salary now is purely imaginary.

      Delete
    2. That's outrageous. Why isn't that minimum wage McDonald's worker bringing home less than $1,500 a month?

      Delete
    3. The top 1% in the US make 40 times that of the bottom 90%, allowing them to pay roughly 40% of all tax revenues at a tax rate of 25%. The marginal tax rate of 37% does not apply to the very wealthy, largely because the majority of their income is accrued via capital gains. CEOs of the largest US companies make far more as multiples of their average workers than do European CEOs. The Gini coefficient of the US is higher than that of any G7 country, reflective of these facts. So when right wingers argue that the very wealthy are imposed upon by having to contribute so much as a percent of total tax revenues in the US, they should be reminded that the very wealthy in this country pay little in taxes as a percent of earnings compared with those in other developed countries that do not have such markedly skewed distributions in wealth.

      Delete
    4. https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/california-minimum-wage-increase-tax-impact

      Delete
    5. @Unamused 4:03 AM
      "CEOs of the largest US companies make far more as multiples of their average workers than do European CEOs. The Gini coefficient of the US is higher than that of any G7 country"

      And yet, according to this
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income
      the US has the second highest PPP "median disposable income per person" in the world.

      Should the US strive to lower its "Gini coefficient" along with its median disposable income?

      Please advise, you're so smart.

      Delete
    6. Cecelia, nice article.
      5:17 Factoring in the cost of healthcare, pharmaceuticals and other tax subsidized amenities in Europe takes care of those few extra disposable dollars that you are so proud of. The last time I was in Denmark a tour guide listed universal healthcare, child and elder care, and free university. When disposable income is paying for these items it is not disposable in the way you would suggest.

      Delete
    7. So, you do want to reduce middle class' disposable income, for the purpose of making some calculation called "Gini coefficient" look better.

      Okay, that's your right. Perhaps you should make it your motto.

      By the way, I've been to Denmark a couple of times too. You know the tax they pay when buying a car? 100%. It doubles the price. Do you know how much a gallon of gas is there? Ten bucks.

      But yes, a doctor will be assigned to you, if you're a citizen. But to find a doctor with private practice is nearly impossible (or so I heard).

      Delete
    8. Unamused: When disposable income is paying for these items it is not disposable in the way you would suggest.”

      In the way that I would suggest? It’s not disposable at all.

      Delete
    9. Russia, if you're listening, help 6:57 find a doctor in a private practice in Denmark.

      Delete
    10. Of course you’re all smart enough to figure out that the McDonald’s worker’s income might be any of those 3 options. It will depend on whether he’s laid off or gets reduced hours or keeps his job unchanged.

      This explains why an increase in the minimum wage might hurt the poor. Such an increase might DECREASE the income of .poor people as a group.

      Delete
    11. Don't businesses just pass along their labor costs to their customers, the same way they do with the cost of the fines they get for breaking the law?

      Delete
    12. If the business can layoff or reduce the hours of workers, they probably didn't need to hire those workers (full, or part-time) in the first place.
      The problem with Capitalism in the USA is that businesspeople have no understanding of it.

      Delete
    13. I find that if you want to really understand how capitalism works, you have to ask a Communist/ Marxist/ Socialist to explain it to you.

      Delete
    14. "Don't businesses just pass along their labor costs to their customers"

      It depends on what economists call "price elasticity of demand". If you raise the price and demand remains what it was (more or less), then yes. But if the demand falls, people don't want to buy your product for the new, higher price, then they have to scale down.

      Delete
    15. Of course they might try to compensate by "shrinkflating", reducing the quality (cheaper components), etc. That may or may not work, in the end.

      Delete
    16. If you can't afford to pay labor a living wage, you don't have a good business plan.
      This is easily solved by Capitalism. You go out of business, and someone else comes up with a plan to offer the products and services you did, while using a good business plan (which includes paying labor a living wage). If no one can come-up with a good business plan to offer your products and services, there isn't enough value in the products and services you offer in the first place.

      Delete
    17. If it wasn't for the cost of labor, I'd still be running my horse and buggy business.

      Delete
    18. @11:05 AM
      This depends of what you mean by "living wage". In the US, the poverty line income for singe individual is $15K/year. That's, I think, something like $7.5/hour.

      Delete
  36. Mike - why would you go on about inconclusive, circumstantial evidence? It means nothing.

    ReplyDelete
  37. Kevin looks at Iran’s attack on Israel:

    https://jabberwocking.com/iran-sues-for-peace/

    ReplyDelete
  38. Collusion is not a thing to find. The links to Russia were documented in the Mueller Report and Russians were prosecuted.

    ReplyDelete
  39. David in Cal,
    Word on the street is that the only reason Iran attacked Israel, is because they deserved it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymouse 1:04am, same word on the street when Hamas hang-glided into Israel and engaged in a massacre.

      Same word on the street during WWII.

      Delete
    2. Bombing an embassy, murdering its personnel, is a perfectly legitimate casus belli, it seems to me.

      Delete
    3. I have the same opinion about arming Hamas.

      Delete
    4. Certainly arming Palestinian resistance organizations would be controversial. However, mere accusations, unproven accusations, of arming Hamas are nowhere near a legitimate casus belli, it seems to me.

      Delete
    5. Aside from that, bombing an embassy seems like a odd response to the alleged arming of Hamas. What's the plan?

      Delete
    6. They weren’t just trying to destroy some random embassy. They killed specific Iranians who had organized attacks on Israel.

      Delete
    7. So, it's not "arming Hamas", but unspecified "attacks on Israel" now? Nice.

      My theory is this: Zionists commit a terrorist act (embassy bombing), trying to provoke their opponents into responding with a similar terrorist act. And then Zionists would start screaming bloody murder.

      Delete
    8. Iran killed three members of the US military. That is why the US targeted the specific Iranians.

      Delete
    9. Why do Zionists kill Iranians?

      Delete
  40. As promised, here is the latest excerpt from my memoirs.

    "And it was at this very time that a rare and peculiar butt wind was hereby produced and released. The odd scent almost immediately induced a psychedelic trance. I began to see long past memories embellished with an edge of surrealism in what can only be described as a futuristic utopia. Several other pseudo-morphic beings relented to my fanny burp as I pranced around an upside-down camp fire..."

    Stay tuned for my next installment.

    -Fanny Bubbles

    ReplyDelete
  41. Thanks for posting that Mike L. It's important to keep all these facts documented.

    ReplyDelete
  42. Russia, if your listening, explain that the Republican Party is nominating a self-proclaimed sexual predator to be the President of the United States.

    ReplyDelete
  43. I’m against misogyny, so I’m voting for Donald Trump.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You should vote for him if you are against funding a border wall.

      Delete
  44. Has the Right ever explained which big-government border solutions they don't want funded by taxing the rich and corporations?

    ReplyDelete
  45. Biden has told Netanyahu not to attack Iran. What will Biden do if Netanyahu disobeys?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Support the one-state (Palestine) solution, hopefully.

      Delete
    2. Here's Caitlin Johnstone:
      https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/us-declines-israels-invitation-to

      Delete
  46. "But the biggest influence Russia had on the election wasn't what you're suggesting. The biggest influence they had was the theft of emails and the release of those emails at strategic moments"

    Then what was the influence of the polling data? Why bring up the polling data? There isn't any evidence Russia ever even received or used and polling data at all. You say it wasn't a big influence on the election - so why is it even relevant? Why bring it up if it didn't have meaningful impact and there's no evidence it ever even happened?

    ReplyDelete
  47. As far as I'm aware, there isn't any evidence that Russia has anything to do with the emails either. CrowdStrike admitted that they have no evidence, and the server, afaik, conspicuously disappeared.

    ReplyDelete