Sharpton refers to a migrant invasion!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2024

Why in the world would he do that? Has the bipartisan Senate border deal actually crashed and burned?

We can't say with perfect certainty, but so it may appear. Along the way, President Biden made little attempt to speak to the public about this highest profile of all current issues, and MSNBC's blue tribe tribunes have continued to focus on the possibly impossible dream of throwing Trump under the jail.

Ther were no fireside chats from the sitting American president. There was no Oval Office address.

No explainer-in-chief has been appointed. There has been no major attempt to explain current procedures to the public—and we saw additional footage on TV last night which made us wonder, all over again, if President Biden will be up to the challenge of conducting a vigorous campaign this year on behalf of his own policies and his own ideas.

As a political matter, red tribe voices own this general issue. And with our blue team refusing to take the field, the general issue is politically potent. 

Below, we'll show you what Al Sharpton said on yesterday's Morning Joe—what he said about the "invasion" of northern cities by waves of migrants. First, though, consider how hard it is to articulate even the simplest facts about the way current laws and policies work.

In this morning's New York Times, reporter Angelo Fichera conducts a fact check about the proposed border deal. Below, you see the way he starts. Quite quickly, the language gets murky:

No, Border Deal Won’t ‘Allow’ 5,000 Unauthorized Immigrants a Day

Republican critics have quickly twisted one element of a bipartisan compromise bill unveiled on Sunday to misleadingly suggest that it permits 5,000 migrants to enter the country illegally every day.

The legislation, which links additional funding in military aid for Ukraine with immigration policy, would more aggressively tamp down on illegal crossings at the U.S. border with Mexico.

The claim has become a popular talking point, reflecting broader pushback by Republicans who have seized on the border security provisions in the $118.3 billion bill and derided them as too lax.

But the bill does not, in fact, authorize immigrants to cross the border illegally. Instead, among other provisions, it would give officials the authority to summarily remove migrants, with little recourse, after a certain number cross: an average of 5,000 encounters per day for a week, or 8,500 in a single day. 

Question! As a matter of basic logic, would it even be possible to "permit" a bunch of people to engage in some action "illegally?"

Let's put it a different way! If a proposal did, in act, "authorize" immigrants to cross the border, then in what sense could it be said that they were doing so "illegally?"

This connects to a simple question, one we've never seen addressed or explained. If migrants have applied for asylum and have thereby been released into the country, can they accurately be described as "illegal immigrants?" Because that's what's they're called on Fox all day long and into the night, and it seems to us that this would be an inaccurate way to describe their status.

How does our current border system work? If you stopped a thousand people on the street, could even five such people answer basic questions about the laws and policy procedures which have produced the current situation?

We're quite sure that we wouldn't be able to do that. In fairness, neither would anyone else!

Our blue tribe's thought leaders spend their days discussing the best ways to frog-march Trump to jail. Over the course of the past few years, they've generally acted as if the southern border and its attendant problems don't even exist.

Meanwhile, red tribe voices rant and rail about Biden's failure to stem "the illegals." As this round-the-clock barrage occurs, Biden himself remain hidden away. He's barely said a word himself, and no alternate explainer has emerged.

That brings us to Reverend Sharpton. Why did he say the things he did? Looking through comments at certain blue sites, we see little sign that blue tribe commenters understand the lay of the land with respect to what's happening here.

That said, here's the first thing Sharpton said on yesterday's Morning Joe. He spoke with Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) during the 7 o'clock hour. You can see him say it here:

SHARPTON (2/5/24): Senator Murphy, Al Sharpton. What is being done to get the public to really rise up in various states to say to their senators that they want to see the borders, the border issue resolved? I mean, you're getting migrants beating up policemen in the streets of New York. You're seeing an influx of migrants all over the country that frankly have people outraged.

Couldn't there be some kind of public pressure put in the next couple days in some of these senators' states saying, "Why are you allowing this to continue?"...I mean, we're looking every day at the invasion of migrants and they're playing a time game with politics on this? 

Just like that, the term "invasion" jumped from red tribe rhetoric all the way over to blue. Later, during the 8 o'clock hour, Sharpton used the new term again, this time saying this:

"We're looking at cities being invaded—Democratic mayors, particularly black ones, being invaded."

Why has Sharpton made this rhetorical leap? If you've been watching red tribe cable, you may have a rough idea.

While our blue tribe city mice dream of throwing Trump in jail, the red tribe country mice have been playing tape of outraged black residents in major northern cities. Those black citizens have been voicing their anger at the way immigrants within their cities are literally being given cash in the form of prepaid debit cards, but also at the way the limited resources of their lower-income communities are being redirected to house and shelter migrants.

Our city mice keeping talking to one another. Here's the one song they know:

Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Jail!

While blue thought leaders sing that song, the industrious mice of the rival red tribe are beating our blue tribe's political brains out on their own cable net.

Our guess:

Sharpton is hearing from those angry black constituents. Many of them have now been saying that they won't vote blue this year. 

He's also speaking on behalf of those overwhelmed and challenged black mayors. In comment threads, we rarely see a lot of signs that our tribe is aware of these problems, or that we actually care.

Biden is AWOL and Lawrence [HEART] jail! Black residents seem to be increasingly angry, and whatever the merits of granting a shot at asylum to good decent people, it isn't real hard to see why.

More black citizens seem to be saying that they may vote for Trump this year. No one can say that our landlocked blue cadres aren't working to earn our way out.

ARMIES: 59-year-old breaks the news!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2024

A battleship of fools: By now, it was 10:32 p.m. 

More precisely, it was 10:32 p.m. Eastern. It was only 7:32 p.m. on the west coast, where the 59-year-old man had received his sun-drenched start in life.

At 10:32 p.n. Eastern, a 59-year-old man named Greg Gutfeld was hosting his nightly primetime program on the Fox News Channel. As you know, Fox News is one of our struggling nation's three major "cable news" channels.

The program in question went to air last Friday night. As the program returned from commercial break, a jingle announced the nature of the new segment.

It's coming your way! Hey, hey! It's VIDEO OF THE DAY!

Delighted viewers would be seeing the video of the day! The 59-year-old man in then began his news analysis:

Biden gives himself a pass,
For the cost of food, milk and gas.

The 59-year-old man had decided to start the segment with a childish nursery rhyme, as he almost always does. Apparently, the upcoming segment would involve something President Biden had said about the nation's struggles with inflation.

The 59-year-old man had offered a childish rhyme. There followed a second childish rhyme, and then the real analysis started.

Let's take a slightly fuller look at the man's opening presentation. This is what the program's host said as he started his program's new segment:

Biden gives himself a pass,
For the cost of food, milk and gas.

Instead, blame the grocer for the grief,
Says the vegetable in chief.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

Today's video comes from President Poopy Pants, who attacked grocery stores for continued high prices.

Hit it, Gladys!

[VIDEO CLIP]

Producers played a brief video clip from "President Poopy Pants," a public figure also described as "the vegetable in chief."

In their homes around the nation, millions of citizens saw a sitting president referred to as "President Poopy Pants." In this moment, we start to see the intellectual and emotional horizons of the 59-year-old man.

Let us repeat the most surprising part of this tableau. This weirdly adolescent 59-year-old man is the nightly host of a primetime American "cable news" program.

He assembles a four-member panel each night to help him discuss the news. His panels are larded with low-grade comedians, along with one former professional wrestling heavyweight champion. 

Sometimes, the former VJ is there.

To watch the discussion which unfolded last Friday, you can start by clicking here. In all honesty, a deeply stupid discussion broke through, on occasion, concerning the topic of inflation. 

It was the coarseness of this pseudo-discussion which impressed us more than anything else. The coarseness and the unrefined anger; the coarseness and the immaturity; the coarseness and the childishness displayed by the man and his panel. 

As the panelists declaimed, comments like these flew forth:

The 59-year-old man played that brief video clip of Biden discussing inflation. 

To our ear, the president's discussion was underwhelming, unimpressive. But then, what followed was this:

"Sorry, Gramps!" the 59-year-old man said. He then described the sitting president as "a senile blowhard who never worked in the private sector."

Eventually, he threw to Kat Timpf, a lower-grade comedian who is a nightly panelist on this primetime  program. Her view of the Biden clip went exactly like this:

It also just kind of—the whole thing felt very like, "Old man yells at cloud."

[PERFORMS SCREECHING IMPRESSION OF OLD MAN YELLING]

You're like, "OK, Grandpa! You've got them, you're right!"

"He doesn't know what he's saying," the low-grade comedian said.

From there, it was on to the former professional wrestler. Plainly, he's a skillful raconteur, but at times he may be several sleeper holds short of major policy chops. 

In this case, the wrestler authored a rambling, incoherent attempt to discuss the topic at hand. He ended with the statement shown below, bringing cheers and shrieks of laughter from the studio audience:

To Kat's point, he has no idea what he's talking about, and the American people can see it. You have to kiss us now before you bang us. We know now. 

[SHRIEKS OF LAUGHTER]

You have to kiss us before you bang us! To his credit, he skipped the f-word this time.

Now it was on to Walter Kirn, an actual novelist. In the course of thoroughly mangling what Biden had said, the novelist offered this:

They aren't trying to hide his dementia any more...Not only is Kat right, because he sounds like he's ranting in a dog park or something, but he is turning on everyone who is productive on behalf of everyone who isn't. I'm tired of his insults.

Kirn offered a dog park insult, then said he was tired of all the insults. So it went as a panel of frightened children huddled in the dark. 

In this segment, the sitting president was referred to as President Poopy Pants, but also as the vegetable in chief. He was boldly addressed as Gramps, but then again also as Grandpa.

In fact, the frightened children had played it this way right from the top of the program. The 59-year-old man had opened the show with the week's unused jokes. The first such joke involved a "Diaper Spa" which has opened in New Hampshire.

Needless to say, the punch line to the diaper spa joke involved a photo of Biden.

(The second joke involved a study which said that dementia might be contagious. Inevitably, the punchline involved a photograph of Biden and Harris together.)

That opening monologue had spilled with "politically incorrect" fare. With apologies, the d*ck jokes had run hog wild in another segment.

In that opening monologue, the 59-year-old man had offered jokes about Jesse Watters' very small penis, but also about an unnamed woman's "big boobs." He'd offered a joke about Chris Christie being too fat, and he had authored another joke about a smashed tampon dispenser.

The biggest reaction of the night came in response to the joke in which everybody got to laugh at a photo of a little person. 

The audience roared with laughter; the 59-year-old man had to stop to collect himself. We thought of this part of his backstory, as described by the leading authority:

Gutfeld then became editor-in-chief of Stuff, then owned by Dennis Publishing. During his tenure, circulation increased from 750,000 to 1.2 million. In 2003, Gutfeld hired several dwarfs to attend a conference of the Magazine Publishers of America on the topic of "buzz," with instructions to be as loud and annoying as possible.

The stunt generated publicity but led to Gutfeld being fired soon afterward; he then became "director of brand development" at Dennis Publishing. He edited the company's Maxim magazine in the U.K. from 2004 to 2006. Gutfeld's contract expired without renewal after losses in readership under his tenure. 

Stuff and Maxim were, of course, incorrect ogling mags. His earlier hiring of the several dwarfs may tend to speak for itself. 

Last Friday night, the hilarity surrounding that hilarious condition was back.

For the record, we have a bit of an old school tie to the 59-year-old man. In 1982, he graduated from Serra High in San Mateo, California. (Barry Bonds was a classmate. Tom Brady came along later.)

Years before, we had graduated from Aragon High, a public school one mile up the Alameda from Serra, a Catholic high school.

We'd been lucky enough to move to California in the summer of 1960 as we entered eighth grade. We had left the highly segregated, crabbed culture of the throwback Boston area for a sunnier, and much more inclusive, stay in the Golden State. 

We got a chance to live in a warner, more welcoming sun. It amazes us that someone could emerge from that suburban city on the peninsula in the way of the undergrown man who is now under discussion.

Last Friday night's show was a study in certain aspects of imperfect human nature. As we watched the show unfold, we thought back to a division in the rapidly growing comedy club world of the early 1980s—the division between "cleaner" Manhattan comedy and the "bluer" style of comedy associated with Long Island.

Some of the biggest stars of that era emerged from the Long Island branch. We think of Eddie Murphy; but also of our own (almost) friend, Rosie O'Donnell, who we hired for a weekend comedy club stint when she was just a kid.

As watched Friday night's panel proceed through a deeply stupid hour, we saw that certain people just wanna have (a certain type of) fun—and we saw the simmering anger that's never far away from the surface in the world of the 59-year-old man.

The greatest question of them all would of course be this:

Why is a man like this in charge of a primetime nightly program on a so-called major news channel? Also, how is it possible? How is it possible that behavior like his has been normalized as the more refined news orgs of our own blue tribe politely refuse to report or discuss the garbage-can conduct he unleashes every night?

Early in The Iliad, the poem lists the array of armies aligned on the Achaean side.  The roll call starts with "the Boeotian units led by Leitus," then continues at length from there.

Judged by any traditional norm, this primetime program on the Fox News Channel assembles a battleship of fools on a nightly basis. This aggregation is one of the many armies which will be fighting on our red nation's side as this year's election draws nearer.

The Iliad recorded the history of a legendary ten-year siege of Troy. As we slide toward November's election, we'll be working to record the behaviors of the various armies, red and blue, who are fighting here.

The gods have asked us to create that record. Herodotus and Thucydides are no longer present. 

The man said, President Poopy Pants. It was part of primetime "news!"

We say our democracy is at stake. When a 59-year-old corporate man behaves in such remarkable ways, are the building blocks of some such system already being ripped apart, thrown away?

President Poopy Pants, he said. O Muse, he's dumb as a rock and twice as angry.

He's 59 years old!

Tomorrow: Who do you trust?

No-bail release in New York hits the Times!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2024

All praise to the Internet Archive: In this morning's print editions, last week's no-bail release of the Gotham cop-beaters has appeared in the New York Times.

Andy Newman is the lead reporter. Print edition headline included, the report begins like this:

Grand Jury Set in Assault On Officers In Times Sq.

As he prepares to present evidence to a grand jury on Tuesday against a group of men charged with assaulting police officers in Times Square, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, is under pressure over his handling of the case.

In all, seven men were arrested following the Jan. 27 assault, in which an officer and a lieutenant sustained minor injuries. All of them were migrants, according to a law enforcement official.

Prosecutors decided not to ask the judge to hold most of the men on bail, and after they were released from jail last week, four of them fled the city, according to the official.

Mr. Bragg quickly became the subject of unusual public criticism from the police. In response, he expressed concern that all the perpetrators might not have been correctly identified.

The report begins to fill in some of the basic factual information about this high-profile series of incidents. Newman cites Governor Hochul's reaction during this later passage:

The case and the outcry over Mr. Bragg’s handling of it touch on several hot-button issues. Among them are criticism of New York’s bail-reform laws, which bar judges from setting bail in most nonviolent crimes, and many New Yorkers’ declining patience with footing the bill for the care of the nearly 70,000 migrants housed in city shelters.

Most of the men arrested in the attack were charged with felony assault, a crime that remains eligible for bail even under changes in New York State bail law. Nevertheless, they were released without bail.

The firestorm recalled past episodes in which Mr. Bragg did not proactively address politically charged cases and policy decisions, including a 2022 case in which a bodega clerk who killed an attacker was initially charged with homicide. He has faced backlash from both Democrats and Republicans in such instances, often responding some time after criticism has begun.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, Democrat of New York, said at a news conference on Wednesday that she was “looking to judges and prosecutors to do the right thing” in the Times Square case. On Thursday, she said of any migrants found responsible for the assault: “Get them all and send them back.”

As we noted last week, Hochul has called for deportation of the assailants, who attacked the pair of police officers in a group of roughly twelve. For the record, "the firestorm," "the outcry" and "the unusual public criticism" of Alvin Bragg hasn't simply come "from the police."

The outcry concerning this matter has occurred all over the Fox News Channel, with the Times arriving on the scene perhaps a week too late.

Governor Hochul has actively called for deportation. As we noted last week, Al Sharpton has said, on several occasions, that violent assaults of this type are not the kinds of events bail reform was ever meant to address.

On this morning's Morning Joe, Sharpton took his language concerning this incident quite a bit further. On at least two separate occasions, he referred to the influx of migrants into northern cities run by black mayors as a type of "invasion." 

In that way, Sharpton echoed the kind of language which has fueled commentary about the southern from the political right. During the past few years, our own blue tribe has largely persisted in pretending that the southern border, with its attendant problems, doesn't even exist. It's been all about Trump Trump Trump Jail!

We can't yet link you to Sharpton's new statements; for unknown reasons, the Internet Archive tends to be slower in posting videotape from Morning Joe than from all other MSNBC programs. 

With that said, let us also say this:

All praise to the Internet Archive and to its almost wholly unutilized public service!

Good lord! The Internet Archive actually posts minute-by-minute videotape of all programs on all three of our major "cable news" channels! In principle, this permits a full examination of what's being said, to millions of people, on these high-profile networks.

Having said that, we'll add this:

We don't think we've ever seen anyone ever offer a link to any of the video content made available through this remarkable service. Especially in the case of the astonishing content now being churned on primetime shows on the Fox News Channel, the finer people have thereby normalized the astounding degradation of the public discourse being engineered on Fox.

For ourselves, it has worked like this:

We only began to watch Fox programs with more regularity when the offerings on MSNBC became completely unwatchable. Since we began watching Fox with more regularity, we've been surprised by the extent of the change in the channel's long-standing partisan bombast format—but also by the absolute, undisguised stupidity the channel now provides during the bulk of its primetime hours.

Fox's turn to a "comedy"-based delivery system may well make for more effective tribal propaganda. During the course of this election year, we're going to make sure that this conduct is memorialized, though we can assure you that career players within our blue world will not be discussing this conduct by Fox, except in the general, softer-soap ways our tribe enjoys and admires.

Starting in March 1999, we documented the ways the mainstream press corps make a 20-month joke of Campaign 2000. That said, what was happening in the mainstream press corps stayed within the mainstream press corps, and it still basically does:

The liberal world is still almost wholly unaware of what was done to its interests during that remarkably stupid press corps campaign—what was done by the mainstream press, not by "the right-wing machine."

We're going to document the events of this campaign too. Tomorrow morning, we'll start by looking at the ship of fools assembled to chat about "President Poopy Pants," the "vegetable in chief," on the astonishingly stupid Gutfeld! program last Friday night.

Your tribe's career players will almost surely avert their gaze from what we post at this site. It's hard to believe that these are the ways "the rational animal" actually works, but this is the way that animal works—first within the marauding red tribe, then also within the self-protective blue.

We'll link you to Sharpton's comments when they become available. This isn't what bail reform was intended to do, he instantly said last week—and now, rightly or wrongly, he seems to have said much more.

Many blue voters are convinced that our blue tribe figures are constantly upright and pure. Red voters tend to think the same thing about their tribal figures. Until we train ourselves to be wiser, we're wired to react in such ways.

That no-bail release is costing us votes. The Times arrived on the scene a week later. Few other figures from our tribe have made it there at all!

ARMIES: An Iliad of the ongoing siege of the Biden White House!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2024

We'll start to sing it tomorrow: It's sometimes called "a poem of war." We've seen it thumbnailed thusly:

The Iliad, "a poem about Ilium (Troy)," is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences.

Set towards the end of the Trojan War, a ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states, the poem depicts significant events in the siege's final weeks. In particular, it depicts a fierce quarrel between King Agamemnon and a celebrated warrior, Achilles. 

It is a central part of the Epic Cycle. The Iliad is often regarded as the first substantial piece of European literature.

What in the world is "the Epic Cycle?" For an overview, click here. 

According to the source we've quoted above, "The Iliad [was] likely written down in Homeric Greek, a literary mixture of Ionic Greek and other dialects, probably around the late 8th or early 7th century BC." We now move on from there.

The western world's story-telling starts with this ancient war poem. As noted above, its legendary siege of Troy extended for roughly ten years. 

Here in our struggling modern-day nation, we're now involved in a kind of modern-day war which will last for at least another nine months, but which can also be said to date back quite a few years.

Robert Fagles translated The Iliad in 1990. In his rendition, Book Two of the poem's 24 books was adorned with this apt headline:

THE GREAT GATHERING OF ARMIES

As the war poem begins, the Achaeans (more simplistically, the Greeks) have decided to stage a formal assault on the walls of Troy. At this point, sacred Homer calls the roll of the Achaean troops.

The Achaean troops are great in number, and they're ready to go. For page after page in the Fagles translation, the alignments of their various constituent armies are described in this manner:

Sing to me now, you Muses who hold the halls of Olympus
You are goddesses, you are everywhere, you know all things—
all we hear is the distant ring of glory, we know nothing—
who were the captains of Achaea? Who were the kings?
The mass of troops I could never tally, never name,
not even if I had ten tongues and ten mouths,
a tireless voice and the heart inside me bronze,
never unless you Muses of Olympus, daughters of Zeus
whose shield is rolling thunder, sing, sing in memory
all who gathered under Troy...

First came the Boeotlan units led by Leitus and Peneleos:
Arcesilaus and Prothoenor and Clonius shared command
of the armed men who lived in Hyria, rocky Aulis,
Schoenus, Scolus and Eteonus spurred with hills,
Thespia and Graea, the dancing rings of Mycalessus,
men who lived round Harma, I1esion and Erythrae
and those who settled Bleon, Hyle and Peteon,
Ocalea. Medeon's fortress walled and strong,
Copae, Eutresls and Thisbe thronged with doves,
fighters from Coronea, Haliartus deep in meadows,
and the men who held Plataea and lived in Glisas,
men who held the rough-hewn gates of Lower Thebes,
Onchestus the holy, Poseidon's sun-filled grove,
men from the town of Arne green with vineyards.
Midea and sacred Nisa, Anthedon-on-the-rnarches.
Fifty ships came freighted with these contingents,
one hundred and twenty young Boeotians manning each.

So begins a long recitation. 

This call of the roll runs through a full ten pages in The Iliad's published form. It consumes almost three hundred lines of text. As recently as three thousand years ago, rapt audiences sat and listened to every word.

The Iliad turned this brutal war into a lengthy war poem. As becomes clear in that early call of the roll, many smaller regional armies create the great contingent which eventually conquered Troy when Achilles beat back his great anger and defeated noble Hector in battle, then dragged his lifeless body through the dirt and the dust.

A very unusual political war will be fought in our nation this year. It seems to us that this news report contains a bad indication for our own blue tribe, the spectacularly flawed political tribe we ourselves have always voted for:

Biden to Sit Out Super Bowl Interview for Second Year in a Row

President Biden is sitting out the Super Bowl for the second year in a row.

CBS said on Saturday that the White House had turned down a request for Mr. Biden to participate in a televised interview with its news division, which would have aired in the highly rated hours ahead of the big game on Feb. 11.

In a tradition dating to 2009, presidents have recorded an interview with the network that broadcasts the Super Bowl, although there have been exceptions. Donald J. Trump did not appear on NBC in 2018. Last year, Mr. Biden declined to appear on Fox, home of cable hosts like Sean Hannity who are sharply hostile toward him.

As the siege of his White House continues, will President Biden be able to conduct a vigorous campaign on his own behalf? 

His decision to skip that interview adds to our sense of concern. These new poll numbers from NBC News are another warning sign. 

On the other hand, Candidate Trump arrives on the scene badly disordered and deeply erratic. He drags behind himself an astounding array of possible pitfalls as his tribe's siege of the Biden White House adopts its final form.

The Iliad records the names of all the Achaean participants as they neared the end of their ten-year siege of Troy. As the poem moves on from Book Two, it describes the events of the next few weeks, events which culminate in this immortal closing line:

Such was the burial of Hector, breaker of horses.

That line comes from the Richmond Lattimore translation. We prefer it to Professor Fagles' rendition of the poem's closing line.

That was then, and this is now. Here's how we plan to proceed:

At this site, or perhaps at a different location, we plan to describe the actions of (some of) the participants in our own nation's political war.

More specifically, we'll describe the troops who publish opinion columns in our nation's most famous newspapers. Also, we'll describe the troops on cable TV, including the various print journalists who appear on our "cable news" channels as political commentators.

We Americans! As this year's siege moves onto the field, we've arrayed ourselves in two large armies, the red army and the blue. For ourselves, we'll be voting the way the blue tribe votes, as we always do. But tens of millions of neighbors and friends will reach a different judgment.

Beyond that, Zeus himself instructs us to tell you this:

We think that we in our own blue tribe have helped bring potential defeat down upon our heads. That casts us in the role of Paris—he whose unwise though deeply human behavior led to the fall of his native Troy.

Beyond that, we think our tribe will need to understand such matters if we're able to move ahead in the future after a potential November defeat. And yes, to borrow from President Lincoln, such a defeat may come.

This week, we're going to call a cursory roll of some of the visible players within our nation's red army. Having said that, a confession:

In our view, our own blue team has performed so unwisely in certain ways that even the most ridiculous forces of that army hold a powerful upper hand concerning some of the basic issues which will help determine the outcome this siege.

On balance, we don't really believe that President Biden will be able to conduct a vigorous campaign on his own behalf. That said, we're prepared to be wrong about that. 

We have no way of knowing what will happen, domestically or globally, if Candidate Trump wins. But if that happens, we blues will need to improve our game as we try to rebuild our political standing—and our blue nation's political game could stand a ton of improvement.

It's hard to believe the degree of intellectual squalor we will start to describe tomorrow as we begin to call the roll of the players in one of the armies in the advancing red siege. 

For starters, the anger and the childishness were everywhere among one of the red tribe's cable news programs last Friday night. But on certain very basic issues, their assembled troops will almost surely seem to be right on the general merits in the eye of most American voters:

Except for human blindness and the fog of war, it's amazingly easy to see why that is. 

It's hard to believe the childishness and the intellectual squalor which, by now, have been thoroughly normalized on the Fox News Channel. That said, thanks to the flaws of our own blue tribe, is it possible that their assembled battalions hold a winning hand?

It's a long, long way from sacred Homer to the Fox News Channel's primetime Gutfeld! program. We'll guess that very few people within our blue world understand the degree of inanity and coarseness which now prevail at that major "news org."

Tomorrow, we'll start by calling the roll of that small but embarrassing clique. The Iliad records the events of one famous war. We'll be recording these.

At present, our blue nation seems to be losing to an embarrassing collection of armies. Can it possibly be the case that our own tribe's self-assured armies are, in some hidden way, worse?

We're going to document the action. In this case, as in so many others, you can be sure that no else will.

Tomorrow: Assessed by any traditional norm, almost beyond comprehension

SUNDAY: A second wave of airstrikes last night!

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2024

As presented this morning on Fox: Last week, our reports appeared beneath this heading:

CAMPAIGN

The fateful campaign was underway. Tomorrow, we'll start our second week of campaign reports under this unfortunate rubric: 

ARMIES

We expect to start with a very brief Iliad hook. We're sorry to see that our struggling nation has succumbed to a division of the type we'll have to describe.

On Friday night, the airstrikes began! Yesterday morning, we showed you the way the Fox News Channel responded. 

We took you to the set of Fox & Friends Weekend, then to their first expert guest. 

Under current arrangements, no one will ever ask the three friends what they think of their expert guest's long history of extremely peculiar public statements. Under current post-journalistic arrangements, such things simply aren't done.

Instead, we were told on yesterday's Fox & Friends that the strikes were "a psyop on the American people and the world, quite frankly." We were told, three separate times, that the strikes were just "a multimillion-dollar fireworks display."

As of this morning, a second wave of airstrikes had occurred. As you can see by clicking this link, this is the way the friends began their messaging program, starting at 6 a.m. sharp:

CAIN (2/4/24): We start this morning off with a Fox News Alert, the U.S. and U.K. carrying out a new wave of airstrikes yesterday, this time targeting sites in Yemen occupied by the Iranian-linked Houthi rebels.

HEGSETH: The Pentagon confirming strikes on at least 36 targets and more than a dozen different sites across Yemen, including Houthi weapon facilities, missile launchers and air defense systems. 

That's what we're told. [pause] While the British military says it struck a ground control station near Yemen's capital.

That's what we're told? We were struck by the instant note from Hegseth, a Fox News friend who has been broadcasting attitude ever since he was subbed in to replace the too-silly-to-air Jesse Watters as the air strikes began Friday night.

More on Pete Hegseth below. But by 6:03 a.m., he was quoting an aggressive opinion column in the New York Post, while producers displayed its headline:

JOE BIDEN IS PLAYING WITH FIRE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND RISKING WORLD WAR 3

Hegseth quoted the part of the column which accused Biden of "a form of appeasement that will end as appeasement always does."  Turning again to his privileged musings, and once again addressing his friends, Hegseth then offered this:

HEGSETH: Guys, it does feel like escalation in search of de-escalation or deterrence. We just keep shooting—and I keep, I said this morning, we're told it hit because, I don't know, we can't confirm for you what buildings were hit, or how many were hit. This is what the Pentagon is telling us, and we're at some level having to trust their numbers on it. But what happens next, we have no idea.

By now, several analysts had begun to shout, "Traitor Pete!" They called it a play on Trader Joe. Swiftly, we told them to stop.

Who in the world is Pete Hegseth? As of 6:04 a.m., he had already signaled his viewers, two separate times, that they probably shouldn't believe what they were being told.

On this second day of the ongoing strikes, the blustery talk about fireworks displays had thankfully left the building. But even though everyone knows that these airstrikes really are occurring, the Fox News host was signaling hard to a legion of viewers in the red part of our struggling land.

Nothing stops the flood of messaging when these friends sit down. Inevitably, at 6:05 a.m., this mandated message was sent concerning President Biden:

CAMPOS-DUFFY: We don't know how much of what he's doing, or not doing, is right or not for America, and how much of this is about appeasing different groups and maybe even Barack Obama, who's running a lot of things out of his D.C. mansion in D.C. 

We don't know what's going on, and I think that's what's so—I don't even want us to be in the Middle East any more.

We don't know what's going on! At last, a key admission! Meanwhile, the mandated message had finally arrived:

It may be Obama who's running this show! That may be who Biden's appeasing!

As we told you yesterday, this is a mandated talking about among the collection of players who pump the Murdoch message all day long, starting at 6 a.m. of a Sunday morning:

Joe Biden is mired in appeasement. Obama is running the show!

With regard to Hegseth's lament, there's never a reason to place perfect trust in anybody's numbers. That said, no one on the face of the earth doubts that these airstrikes are taking place—and as Campos-Duffy clumsily blurted, she and her trembling friends have no personal way to know what's going on.

The talk about fireworks was gone today, but Hegseth continued to signal hard. We have no doubt that his skepticism is real, or that he's sincere in his ardor.

That said, who is the weirdly entitled man who wants to message this way?

Pete Hegseth, age 43, is movie star handsome, He graduated from Princeton in 2003, then got a master's degree from the Kennedy School at Harvard ten year later.

Also this—he served. The leading authority on his career tells us this:

Following graduation from Princeton in 2003, Hegseth joined Bear Stearns as an equity capital markets analyst and was also commissioned as a reserve infantry officer into the U.S. Army National Guard. In 2004 his unit was called to Guantánamo Bay, where he served as an infantry platoon leader with the Minnesota National Guard. His unit was under the operational control of the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment 101st Airborne Division. He was awarded the Army Commendation Medal. Shortly after returning from Cuba, Hegseth volunteered to serve in Baghdad and Samarra, where he held the position of infantry platoon leader and, later in Samarra, as civil–military operations officer. During his time in Iraq, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, Combat Infantryman Badge, and a second Army Commendation Medal.

He returned to active duty in 2012 as a captain. He was deployed to Afghanistan with the Minnesota Army National Guard and acted as a senior counterinsurgency instructor at the Counterinsurgency Training Center in Kabul. Hegseth, a major, currently serves in the Individual Ready Reserve. He has been awarded two Bronze Stars for his service overseas.

Perhaps a year or two ago, we saw Hegseth discussing an education project during an hour on C-Span. He struck us as wholly sincere about the project in question. Plainly, he is fully equipped in the basic IQ / smarts department.

Hegseth says that he served on "small, remote bases" during his military service. We have nothing but  respect for that dangerous service—but he's been a million miles over his skis as he has continued to signal and message and propagandize in the past 48 hours.

Biden is flirting with World War III! Obama is calling the shots!

At 7:04 a.m., we briefly flicked back to the world of the friends—just in time to see Campos-Duffy refer to the commander in chief as "Appeasement Joe." 

In fairness, that may be better than "President Poopy Pants," the way the prepubescent Greg Gutfeld referred to Biden on Friday evening's Gutfeld! show, just after the first wave of attacks. 

(It may be better that the "Vegetable in Chief," another of that small broken boy's many designations for Biden during that evening's show. We'll have much more concerning that program when we resume tomorrow.)

Who in the world is Pete Hegseth? What's the source of the obvious anger he feels, anger he feels he must always display?

What is the source of his anger? In a world where our nation's news orgs weren't segregated by viewpoint, behavior like Hegseth's would be challenged, and he'd have a chance to explain. He might give a strong explanation. Then again, maybe not.

That's what would happen if we were functioning as one nation. Now, we run two separate news nations, red and blue, and never the twain shall meet. 

Sadly, much of what's being said on Fox is hard to argue with at this particular time. That said, the channel is also a steaming cauldron of stunningly childish low-IQ embarrassments from an array of Gutfeld types who have as much business sifting the news as your pet beagle would have running the Bolshoi Ballet.

At 6:01, the signaling started. We shouldn't believe these people! Joe Biden is President Poopy Pants, the "cable news" clown had said. 

At Fox, disorder like that goes right on the air, and major orgs like the New York Times know to avert their eyes. Our finer people don't tangle with Fox. It simply isn't done.

"Traitor Pete," the analysts cried, at 6:03 this morning. Our view?

The analysts are very young, and all of us, red and blue, still have a long way to go. We'll be walking you down that trail all during this fateful year.

Can a large modern nation really function this way? Neighbors and friends, must you ask?

Starting tomorrow: ARMIES

UPDATE: Now for the rest of the Tata tape!

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2024

What Red Nation hears: In our earlier report, we gave you a bit of background on Brigadier General Anthony Tata, who specializes in spotting the traitors found all over the land.

He was today's initial guest on the Red Nation "cable news" program, Fox & Friends Weekend. The show begins at 6 o'clock Eastern. As you can see by clicking this link, General Strangelove was placed on the air at 6:04 a.m. sharp.

The one-star general was on the show to evaluate the military strikes which are under way and will apparently continue. Just for the record, we're going to guess that Tata hasn't been fully briefed by President Biden on the extent of the action which is yet to come.

Oracular knowledge filled that void. The retired general's most memorable assessment was delivered at 6:07:

"This is all a psyop on the American people and the world, quite frankly."

So the general said! To his credit, he was speaking "quite frankly" to the three friends, but also to our neighbors and friends, and fellow citizens, who live within Red Nation.

On Fox, Taylor Swift was said to be a psyop. Now, so are these ongoing strikes! Along the way, we thought we'd show you some other things which were said as a former sports reporter and a former reality show performer joined Princeton's own Pete Hegseth in cheering Tata on.

Hegseth set the tone quite quickly. He paraphrased a congressman who had said, according to Hegseth, that last night's strikes were "really nothing more than a fireworks display."

That was Hegseth's paraphrase. At that point, producers played tape of the congressman's actual statement. The statement had been made to Sean Hannity, and it had gone like this:

"Sean, I just heard tonight from soldiers who are down range right now, and they're telling me this is going to equate to nothing more than a multimillion-dollar fireworks show."

So the congressman said to Hannity, last night. By the way, how did a bunch of soldiers out in the field know what this campaign will end up being like?

Questions like those are rarely asked when we separate ourselves into Blue Nation and Red.

Before the general's session was done, he turned to that image for the third time, once again calling the strikes "a fireworks display." He also said that President Biden, like President Obama before him, was involved in "a love affair with the Iranian mullahs, and they don't want to offend them."

"There's no plan, no vision, no strategy," he said. No one asked him how he could know whether such statements were accurate at this early point in time.

Eventually, the other friends inserted themselves into the unfolding imitation of life.

For Rachel Campos-Duffy, there's still a Communist or a Marxist under every bed—and yes, those are the terms she persistently uses.

We'll guess that Campos-Duffy has some very good personal qualities. We'll also guess that she may not be a global relations specialist. Inevitably, she was soon asking this:

"How much of this do you think is Obama still directing the Iran policy? You know he's obsessed with the nuke deal with Iran."

"Yeah, Rachel. Very good points there," the general quickly replied. The other good points to which he referred had been delivered in this fuller version of what Campos-Duffy said:

General, I'm trying to make sense of all of this. And from what I can gather, as far as what the rationale is, or what the doctrine is, if you will, I see a Valerie Jarrett doctrine of appeasing Iran and making sure that the funding is still there for them in different ways, with the money that has gone to them even just this past year alone.

I also see a John Kerry doctrine that a lot of this is about making sure that our, for climate purposes, our energy is shut down, but somehow they didn't seem to do anything that could shut down Iranian oil, because I believe they want to use Iranian oil instead of American oil.

How much of this do you think is Obama still directing the Iran policy? You know he's obsessed with the nuke deal with Iran.

There you see the three good points the Washington general affirmed. 

Our guess?

Most blue tribe members don't understand the extent to which the pundits serving Red America push the idea that Barack Obama is still the acting American president. 

Some of Donald J. Trump's recent statements may have been built upon that theme. Our own blue pundits seemed to be unaware of this tribal pattern.

Thanks to the Internet Archive, you can watch the entire discussion which took place with General Tata today. We know of no particular reason to think that any of the four participants had any way to know what they were actually talking about, but in a world split into The Red and The Blue, such niceties no longer arise in the course of our fully segregated, dueling pseudo-discussions.

These strikes are just the latest psyop, the crackpot general said. First Taylor Swift was caught in a psyop. Now General Tata says this!

A suggestion: We'll suggest that you review the thumbnail treatment of this general from our earlier post. As we separate into Red and Blue Nations, we're at least on the receiving end of major anthropology lessons. 

What's human functioning actually like? That thumbnail treatment should be sobering, but it's also deeply instructive.

SATURDAY: Who the Sam Hill is Anthony Tata?

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2024

Red Nation, separate from Blue: Early this morning, the question arose on our sprawling, mid-Baltimore campus:

Who the heck is Brigadier General Anthony Tata (U.S. Army, Retired)? 

Below, we'll explain why that question arose. For now, we'll simply show you what we found when we turned to the leading authority on this topic.

Who in the world is Anthony Tata? For starters, we'll riddle you this:

Anthony Tata

Anthony Jean Tata (born September 7, 1959) is an American retired United States Army officer, author, and government official. He is a retired brigadier general of the United States Army (1981–2009), and later served as a school district administrator for two large school districts in the District of Columbia and North Carolina. He served as Secretary of Transportation of North Carolina from 2013 to 2015 under Governor Pat McCrory. Tata is the author of the Threat series of thriller novels.

After leaving the Army, he became a regular on Fox News, where he offered pro-Donald Trump commentary and promoted conspiracy theories. He has falsely claimed that Barack Obama is a Muslim and "terrorist leader" and promoted a baseless conspiracy theory asserting that the CIA sought to assassinate Trump.

We can't vouch for the perfect accuracy of every assertion, but that's how the thumbnail began. Wikipedia offers plenty of sources and citations, and then too it goes on to say this, following a truly bizarre passage about an "acrimonious" 1993 divorce proceeding:

Upon his retirement in June 2009, Tata received the Distinguished Service Medal.

After retiring from active duty service, he served as the Chief Operating Officer of the District of Columbia Public Schools from 2009 to 2010. In 2010, he was named Superintendent of the Wake County Public School System. Tata had strained relationships with several members of the Wake County School Board, which shifted to a Democratic majority during Tata's service. Opposition fell along party lines. Citing concerns over his "leadership style" and his handling of student assignment issues in the large school district, Tata's contract was terminated after less than two years, in 2012. The decision to buy out Tata's contract under a no-fault clause was controversial, with two local polls suggesting that a majority of Wake County voters and parents of children in the district opposed the decision to remove Tata.

We can't vouch fort h perfect accuracy of all those statements, We'll note that his post-retirement public school service seems to have predated his many claims about President Obama, the Muslim terrorist leader.

Concerning those many unfortunate claims, the authority goes on to say this:

In Twitter posts and radio-show appearances in 2017 and 2018, Tata repeatedly made the false claim that President Barack Obama was a "Muslim" and a "terrorist leader"; accused Obama of being "an anti-Semite" who wanted to "destroy Israel" and "did not want" to defeat ISIL; and claimed that the negotiation of the multilateral nuclear agreement with Iran was born by Obama's "Islamic roots." Tata accused then-President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama of being "borderline treasonous" during Trump's transition to the presidency. In August 2018, he accused former CIA Director John O. Brennan, a critic of Trump, of being a "clear and present danger" to the U.S. and called Brennan a "communist" on Fox & Friends. He repeatedly pushed the notion that a "deep state cabal" was working to undermine Trump; pushed false conspiracy theories that Brennan ordered the assassination of Trump; and, on another occasion, tweeted at Brennan, "Might be a good time to pick your poison: firing squad, public hanging, life sentence as prison b*tch, or just suck on your pistol." Tata also referred to Islam as "the most oppressive, violent religion"; accused both Obama and former president Bill Clinton of being guilty of "sedition and/or treason"; accused Obama of being a "Manchurian candidate" who supported "Hamas & Muslim brotherhood"; and suggested that "the left" and Obama "hates America." Tata also made various inflammatory Twitter posts attacking Democratic politicians Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters as "violent extremists" and using a racist hashtag to criticize CNN journalist Don Lemon.

Tata deleted several of his Twitter posts after they were publicized by CNN in June 2020, following an investigation by Andrew Kaczynski and others.

We can't vouch for the perfect accuracy of every statement. By now, though, it seems to us that we may be spying the start of a drift.

Why did we decide to research this question today? It all began at 6 a.m. with the start of Fox & Friends Weekend.

Did General Tata once call John Brennan a "communist" on Fox & Friends? We're haven't tried to fact check that claim, but in the first few minutes of today's show, the trio of weekend friends welcomed Tata onto their broadcast.

Once there, he served as the red tribe's program's expert guest concerning yesterday's military strikes on targets in Iraq and Syria.

Yesterday's strikes were "a psyop on the American people," the expert guest instantly said. His commentary turned a bit poisonous from that point forward, with the weekend friends joining in. 

Later, we'll be able to post more examples of what was said. But the poisonous comments by General Tata and the three friends captured what we saw last night as our two separate nations—Red Nation and Blue—listened to "cable news" reporting and analysis about those ongoing attacks.

We live in Tabloid and Broadsheet Nations. We live in Red Nation and Blue. 

Our two separate nations are now thoroughly segregated by viewpoint when it comes to the dissemination of information and news. Tata, he of the earlier poisonous claims, was the person the Fox News Channel chose to present as this morning's first expert guest.

Can a large continental nation really expect to function this way? We will guess that the answer is no, and our White House campaign is now underway, with the constant foolishness of our self-assured blue tribe making it especially hard for our Blue Nation to prevail.

Last night, we saw disgracefully stupid behavior on Fox. The Gutfeld! show was especially ugly, coarse, unintelligent, angry and rank, even by its own basement-level intellectual standards.

Can a large modern nation really function this way? By all that was sacred about the imperfect show Crossfire, the answer almost surely is no.

Intriguing question: Who decided to make this guy the head of the D.C. Public Schools?

We don't recall the answer to that. For the record, he was the immediate successor to Michelle Rhee, she of the apparently fraudulent claims all through her meteoric career.

Judge Jeanine says they aren't people!

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2024

Judge Jeanine goes off: Over the past few days, a new arrival on the front became the topic of general conversation. 

We refer to the no-bail release of the Gotham cop-beaters. This no bail release was widely discussed—everywhere except within our own tribe's blue bayous and blue silos.

(Important exception: Morning Joe, on Thursday and Friday mornings.)

On Thursday's Morning Joe, Al Sharpton quickly agreed—the no-bail release of these violent young men wasn't an example of reform, and it wasn't progressive. 

On Morning Joe, the conversations were intelligent, respectful and sane. On Fox, they had The Five.

For all we know, Jeanine Pirro—Judge Jeanine—may be the nicest person in the world, at least among her own. On its face, her thumbnail seems and is impressive:

Jeanine Ferris Pirro (born June 2, 1951) is an American television host and author, and is also a former judge, prosecutor, and politician in the state of New York.

Pirro was elected as a judge of the Westchester County (N.Y.) Court in 1990. In 1993, she was elected to the position of Westchester County district attorney. She is the first women to be elected to either of those positions. 

As district attorney, Pirro gained visibility in cases of domestic abuse and crimes against the elderly. Pirro was re-elected district attorney in 1997 and 2001. Pirro briefly sought the Republican nomination for United States Senate to run against Hillary Clinton in 2006, but dropped out to accept the nomination for New York Attorney General. She lost the general election to Democrat Andrew Cuomo.

On its face, Pirro has had an impressive career. Today, she serves as the most outspoken rabble rouser and table banger on the 5 p.m. Fox News program, The Five.

(We're staying away from "loudmouth." In truth, the temptation exists.)

Niceties are rarely observed when the judge mounts her charger and starts to declaim of a late afternoon. Yesterday, she was involved in Day Two of the no-bail cop-beater release discussion.

Given the nature of the events, there's no way to avoid scoring solid points if you're coming at this event from a red tribe political perspective. Eventually, though, the judge went off, as she routinely does.

Eventually, this is what the jurist said, speaking about "these people:"

PIRRO (2/1/24): Let me say one more thing about this. 

[Finger-wagging starts]

These— I don't even want to call them people, because they're not people.  

These people come here, and they say they want asylum, and we suckers believe it? 

They don't respect authority. They take authority down. One of the other ones we didn't know about yesterday was charged with resisting arrest. He pushed a cop, last time a cop arrested him. in addition to their beating down the arrest 

So I am sick and tired of hearing this nonsense. 

[Seeming to quote standard reporting] 

"They traveled 3,000 miles through the [Darién] Gap. It's one of the most dangerous places in the world, because they want to be part of the American Dream." Bull! Baloney! 

They don't want to be part of the American Dream. They don't want to swear allegiance. They don't show up for their asylum hearings, and 85% of them who do don't get asylum!

At this point, Jesse Watters broke in, directing a question at the sole liberal panelist. "Richard, why won't Democrats deport people like this?" the bromance-adjacent regular panelist asked.

Especially given the no-bail release and the subsequent apparent flight from New York by several of the assailants, it's hard to avoid scoring points with a question like that if you're a red tribe member. Richard Fowler tried to answer, but he plainly tried and failed.

That said, we thought you might like to take a look at the rhetoric of Judge Jeanine. 

She doesn't want to call them people, she said as this peroration began. She doesn't want to call them people because she said they aren't. 

As she started, she seemed to be talking about a rather small group of young men. Soon, she seemed to be speaking about a familiar, much larger group. She was quickly speaking about "these people," but also of course about "them."

With respect to the young men who attacked the police officers, we'd advise pity for people who are so sunk in violence at such young ages. We're going to guess there are ugly stories lying behind their violent behavior.

That's how such violence strikes us. In the assertive world of Judge Jeanine, the assailants aren't even human beings, and it almost sounds like every one of "these people" is just like everyone else.

Did the dozen assailants who beat the police come through the Darien Gap? We have no idea, and we doubt that the judge does either.

Were these assailants actually seeking asylum? At this point, we're not entirely sure about that either.

That said, who cares? The judge quickly moved from the conduct of the dozen assailants to sweeping statements in which she seemed to function as an equal opportunity denouncer. Also, this mildly humorous bit of logic:

They don't show up for asylum hearings. And when they do show up, then they get turned down!

The Five is an angry world. Dana Perino sits at the table, smiling sweetly, pretending she doesn't know better.

Watters and Gutfeld interrupt to crack their insider bro-boy jokes and they giggle and snicker together. Over the weekend, we may show you how it went when Gutfeld interrupted Jessica Tarlov this week to insist that she say the word—to insist that she say "abortion."

The Five is an angry and juvenile world. Our blue tribe newspapers avert their gaze from the chaos on this "news channel." The finer people within our tribe don't like to wrestle with Fox.

People needing people, the singer once said. They're the luckiest in the world!

Perhaps a less impressive episode: This passage also comes from the judge's thumbnail sketch:

Pirro was named as a defendant in a February 2021 defamation lawsuit by Smartmatic in relation to false claims of election fraud in the 2020 United States presidential election. While the allegation against Pirro was dismissed in March 2022, the lawsuit against the other Fox News hosts and the company was in the discovery phase as of April 2023. 

Pirro was among the hosts named in the Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network defamation lawsuit for broadcasting false statements about the plaintiff company's voting machines that Fox News settled for $787.5 million and required Fox News to acknowledge that the broadcast statements were false.

People, we're just saying. 

Over on our blue tribe channel, it was nothing but Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Jail during large swaths of last night. 

We feel good when they feed us such gruel! Even as the reds are scoring major points, trips to the trough of that mandated kind help us feel sure that we the blues are moral, quite brilliant and right.

CAMPAIGN: Governor Hochul joins Reverend Sharpton!

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2024

Not a word from the New York Times: Yesterday morning, Morning Joe arrived at the topic at 6:02 sharp.

Thanks to the invaluable Internet Archive, we're now able to link you to the videotape of that detailed discussion. 

The discussion started with this:

SCARBOROUGH (2/1/24): Talk about a bipartisan issue, this is a crazy New York story, Mike Barnicle.  

You have illegal immigrants in New York that beat the hell out of cops, they get sent to jail, they get released the next day. The next day!

As he spoke, Scarborough displayed the front page of the New York Daily News. 

Why did he have to display that paper? Below, we'll get unto that.

Barnicle fleshed out more of the facts, as they were known at the time. Perhaps most strikingly, the violent assailants—who represent no one but themselves—had been released back into the streets. They had been released without bail. 

The videotape which Morning Joe played shows a group of as many as 12 young men beating two police offers in a very serious, very dangerous manner. For the record, we don't know if they were "illegal" immigrants, or if they were in this country as a result of legal asylum requests.

By 6:04 a.m., Al Sharpton had joined yesterday's discussion. As you can see by clicking this link, he too denounced the decision to release these young men. 

SHARPTON: Even for those of us who have fought for reform... 

I'm right around the corner from where this happened. So to have people just walking around being able to do this is not reform and is not progressive. We need to deal with how we handle policing in a way that police, nor citizens, are victims of people that are reckless. And we need to be mature about that.

Later in the day, Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) announced that she favored deportation for these assailants, assuming they can still be found. That said:

To this day, there hasn't been a single word about any of this in the New York Times.

Yesterday morning, it was on the front page of the Daily News. It was on the front page of the Murdoch-owned New York Post. But if you subscribe to the New York Times, none of this has happened! 

On the other hand, if you watch the Fox News Channel, as millions of friends and neighbors do, you've seen that ugly videotape again and again and again. Updates were offered all last night. Those updates continued this morning.

You've also heard, again and again, that these assailants were released without bail. You've heard this everywhere you look, except on our own tribe's primetime "cable news" shows, and except in the New York Times.

This morning, starting at 6:50, the Morning Joe panel discussed this ugly event again. Reverend Sharpton was there once again, along with the segment's principal guest, chyroned thusly:

CHIEF JOHN CHELL, NYPD CHIEF OF PATROL 

"I challenge my progressive friends to step up and say this is not what we condone," Reverend Sharpton said. "Don't act like we're anti-cop. We're anti bad cop." (Those quotes may be slightly imperfect.)

Yesterday morning, Scarborough displayed the front page of the Daily News, and he did so for a reason. To this day, there hasn't bene a single world about this event in the upper-class, blue New York Times.

In fairness, the Times is no longer a local newspaper in the way it once was. There is no "New York" section today. More and more, the New York Times and the Washington Post have gone fully national.

That said:

Even with the governor on board, Times subscribers haven't seen a single word about this widely-discussed event. So it goes within our tribe's blue bayou, as this year's fateful presidential campaign takes its start. 

So it goes inside our blue bubble. So it goes inside our blue Babel.

So it goes inside our blue silo. So it goes inside our aggressively segregated, pure baby blue, blue tribe tribal lands.

So it goes as our blue cable stars keep us barefoot and clueless. As they maintain their "viewer maintenance" cable news diet. As they keep feeding us the stories and the topics we like, thereby building ratings and corporate profits and keeping their own salaries high.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. Because we're all just a bunch of people, we blues are strongly inclined to be just as tribal, and just as human, as the others are.

Over the course of the past dozen years, our tribal judgment has often been extremely poor. Will we be able to save ourselves? As November approaches and dreams of trials fade, we're left with little time.

Our judgment is often quite poor. Last night, Alex Wagner, followed by Lawrence O'Donnell, largely gamboled and played as they reassured and entertained us with a succession of baby blue topics.

It makes us feel good when we're fed tribally pleasing porridge. It also keeps moving us closer to a potential November debacle.

On this newest morning, we come to you with two signs of hope. For starters, we offer hope in the form of the discussions we've seen on Morning Joe in the past two days.

We were especially glad to see Al Sharpton lending his voice to the consensus stated in this those discussions. 

He's smarter than the average bear, and he has a superb sense of humor. That said, Sharpton and Hochul are both on board, but not yet a word in the Times!

We'll suggest that you watch yesterday morning's discussion, courtesy of the Internet Archive. We can't link you to this morning's sequel yet.

We can link you to our second cause for hope. We refer to a superb blog post by that self-same Kevin Drum.

Two days ago, we thought Kevin had essentially given up—had lost the will to exercise judgment—when he offered this weirdly snarky post about the problems which have arisen in Fulton County, Georgia. 

Oddly, he offered no evidence for the stance he took. He blew right past the various progressive legal analysts who have said that an actual problem may well be lurking there.

We almost thought that he'd given up, had decided to accept the comforts of pure Storyline. But this morning, we clicked over to his site and we found a very clearly stated post. 

Drum's new post starts this way, headline included:

Why aren’t Democrats steamrolling Republicans?

Ezra Klein asks today, "Why haven't the Democrats completely cleaned the Republicans' clock?"

Actually it's Ruy Teixeira who asked that question, and it's one I share. I mean, Republicans have turned into complete loons. Democrats should have been able to build a huge and enduring lead over the past decade. Why haven't they?

As Jon Lovitz said on Saturday Night Live, almost forty years ago, "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!" 

How is it possible that our blue tribe could end up losing to Donald J. Trump all over again? We'll suggest that you read every word of Kevin's clearly written post. That said, he ends with this:

DRUM (2/1/24): Research suggests that Fox News generates about 3% more votes for Republicans than they'd otherwise get. In a 50-50 electorate, that's a lot. And it doesn't help that Democrats make themselves so easy to attack.  From "Defund the Police" to extreme softness on the border to defending trans girls competing in high school sports, liberals have been pushing the boundaries of social conventions pretty hard. That scares ordinary people and costs votes.

There's probably not a lot we can do about race. Some people are racists and that's that. We just have to fight them. But we could probably tone down the cultural leftism and adopt moderately more populist economic policies. It wouldn't take a lot. But it might make enough of a difference to sink the Republicans for the coming decade.

We disagree with only one point. 

We've long since recommended replacing the key word in that second paragraph with more precise formulations. That said, and sadly enough, it's surely true that "some people are racists." 

Sadly enough, that's true. It isn't necessarily true that the way to build a better world is "to fight them." We'd recommend pitying such lost souls first, while also praising the various people, including those within the red tribe, who have moved forward into the future when it comes to certain issues of race.

(More on such red tribe people to come.)

Some fights can't be won by fighting! When it comes to matters of race, the performative value can be very high when we stage our fights, but the gains which accrue to the Fox News Channel have often been stunningly real.

(Kevin cites "defund the police." The list moves forward from there.)

At any rate, so it stands, on this day of the lord, as the general campaign takes its start. Just as Kevin  says, our tribe routinely insists on making itself easy to attack.

We do so through our performative conduct. And yes, this takes us to the concept of "woke," a topic we'll touch on tomorrow.

Tomorrow, we're going to pleasure ourselves with a report about a major figure in the NFL. Almost surely, our specific topic will end up having nothing to do with the outcome of this year's campaign.

Our specific topic will be separate from the campaign. That said, our discussion may help us think about two major topics:

Storyline and Woke

Our tribe insists there's no such things as woke. As is true of all human tribes, our tribe can be very silly.

That doesn't mean that we're bad people. It does mean that we're people people, pretty much like everyone else.

It does mean that we're tribal people. It means we frequently can't see ourselves in the way the others do.

This is the way to lose votes, Kevin correctly says. His post is very clearly composed, and it lands right on the money.

We have a dream for the coming year, and this is what it is:

We want Kevin to be a national treasure. At this very, very late hour, we want him to save the world.

This afternoon: Judge Jeanine goes off

Tomorrow: The attractions of Storyline and Woke, NFL / ESPN variants 

In summation: Scarborough held up the Daily News; Sharpton supported every word. The governor of the state of New York came out for deportation of the assailants (who we suggest you should pity).

Our tribe hasn't heard a word about this. Your friends and your neighbors all have.

The many nice things Sean Hannity said!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2024

We'd call this misleading reporting: Michael Grynbaum isn't some inexperienced kid. Also, he went to one of the finest schools!

Let it be said that he's also a good, decent person. He thumbnails himself as shown:

Michael M. Grynbaum

I’m a media correspondent for The New York Times.

I write about the intersection of media, politics and culture: how the news industry shapes and reflects the changing world around us. I am particularly interested in coverage of presidents and presidential campaigns, and the future of television and cable news.

I’ve been writing about media for The Times since 2016. Before that, I served as the paper’s City Hall bureau chief, covering two New York City mayors. Since joining The Times as an intern in 2007, I’ve reported on presidential campaigns, the 2008 financial crash and the New York City subway system.

I grew up outside Hartford, Conn., and graduated from Harvard College with a degree in history and literature. I now live in Manhattan.

There you have it. He's been at the Times since 2007. He graduated from Harvard that very year.

Not that there's anything wrong with it! That said, his analysis piece in today's New York Times may help explain why members of our nation's red tribe place little real faith in the Times.

With today's MEDIA piece by Grynbaum, the Times is exploring the Taylor Swift matter again! On each of the past two mornings, the Times had news report about Swift on the front page of the print edition.

Today, Grynbaum's piece has been dispatched to page A16. Print edition headline included, his report begins like this:

Staying Silent, Swift Sends Fox News Hosts Into Tizzy

Taylor Swift has not uttered a word about the 2024 presidential election. But the mere prospect that the pop superstar could endorse President Biden has sent conservatives on Fox News into conniptions.

“Why would someone as popular as she is alienate your fans, the Swifties?” Jeanine Pirro said on “The Five,” before addressing the singer directly. “So don’t get involved! Don’t get involved in politics! We don’t want to see you there!”

“Please don’t believe everything Taylor Swift says,” urged one commentator, Charly Arnolt. “We’re all begging you.”

And Sean Hannity, using his prime-time soapbox on Tuesday evening, suggested that Democrats were leading Ms. Swift astray. “Does Taylor realize the guy that they want her to endorse is a kind of stumbling, bumbling mess?” he asked. 

So the report began. In Grynbaum's analysis, Swift's possible endorsement of Biden has sent Fox News personnel into a tizzy. Either that, or they've just been sent into conniptions.

In our view, Charly Arnolt is a script-reading empty vessel. Judge Jeanine is an inveterate loudmouth and brawler.

Still and all, based on the examples Grynbaum provides, his language seems a bit overstated to us. It doesn't seem real "journalistic."

It sounds a bit like an entertainment / reassurance package designed for blue tribe subscribers Later, though, we began to wonder what planet Grynbaum is on:

Ms. Arnolt, sounding alarmed, told the Fox anchor Martha MacCallum that when Ms. Swift encouraged her fans to vote in a social media post, it yielded 35,000 new registrations. Voters “need to be careful because she doesn’t do what she says,” Ms. Arnolt said, noting that Ms. Swift flies on a private plane, “yet she constantly talks about climate change.” It was the sort of eco-scolding that rarely turns up on a cable network whose guests often voice skepticism about global warming.

For starters, did Arnolt really tell MacCallum "that when Ms. Swift encouraged her fans to vote in a social media post, it yielded 35,000 new registrations?" 

If so, it's because that's what it said in a front-page report in the New York Times that very day. We would have gone with "noted the fact," rather than with the much fuzzier, more suggestive "told."

Much more strangely, the sort of "eco-scolding" that Grynbaum cites shows up on Fox pretty much all the time! It's an accusation of liberal hypocrisy with respect to climate issues. 

It's an accusation of liberal hypocrisy, or even of liberal dishonesty about climate change. It's not a call for eco-awareness.

This is crappy journalism. Having said that, we were especially struck by this later passage about Hannity, who still plays the role of name-calling king of aggression on Fox's air every night:

Mr. Hannity, who has pronounced himself “not a Swiftie,” drew a connection on Tuesday between Ms. Swift and one of Fox News’s favorite boogeymen: George Soros, the financier and Democratic donor. He aired an old clip in which Ms. Swift said that Mr. Soros’s son Alex helped fund the sale of her song catalog to the producer Scooter Braun. “Does Taylor actually realize that the Soroses, they’re huge donors to left-wing and Democratic causes?” Mr. Hannity asked.

For what it's worth, Hannity's report of what Swift once said was factually accurate, in that he played the videotape of Swift's formal statement. 

That said:

In that formal statement, Swift specifically referred to "the Soros family," and it was clear that she was criticizing them for what she seemed to regard as some sort of misconduct. It seems to us that Grynbaum aggressively smoothed that part of what Swift once said. 

That said, we were perhaps most struck by the statement that Hannity has pronounced himself "not a  Swiftie"—that Hannity has so declared, full and complete total stop.

We haven't been able to find the place where Hannity made some such declaration. But on his program Monday night, we ourselves saw him say this:

HANNITY (3/29/24): First of all, I like Taylor Swift. I don't like the way some people have been talking about her, treating her. I wish her and Travis Kelce the best.

She's a pretty amazing young woman. I mean, she writes her own songs, she does 40-plus songs in her concerts. She's great to her fans, she gives big bonuses to her crew. She's got a lot of great qualities...

That's what he said about Swift and Kelce, and about their romance. At this point, he transitioned to his standard bombast, saying he hopes that she'll be shown videotape of "Creepy Joe" and "Incoherent Joe," just so she'll know who and what she's endorsing.

Hannity is a warrior of red tribe insult and bombast, not to mention misinformation. But he praised Swift on Monday night, and said nothing negative about her on his Tuesday night program.

She wasn't mentioned on Wednesday night. Last September, when the romance and the trashing began, Hannity even said this about that, Mediaite headline included:

Hannity Defends Taylor Swift: ‘I Kind of Hate People, You Know, Hating On Her’

"I want to say something before we get—ok, you know what? I look at Taylor Swift— if I picked my music based on their politics, I’d have five choices. Let’s be honest. You know, country, Christian contemporary, which are my favorite, but I admire her talent. She writes all her songs, she does these shows that have like nearly 50 songs, you know, sets in them...

"She’s a great businesswoman, seems like a lovely girl, extraordinarily nice to her fans, and I kind of hate people, you know, hating on her."

He also offered this:

"I know that Travis is woke, and he’s Bud Light, and he’s for the Covid shot. I just, you know what, if you want to listen and get advice from a football player, I don’t care. Or a pop star. I don’t care where you get your advice. We live in a free country, they are entitled to their views, as much as I might disagree. But I can also recognize talent and they’re both enormously talented. How’s this? I wish them the best, I hope it works for them."

We thought Grynbaum's reporting was largely misleading. To our eye and ear, it had the definite feel of blue tribe subscriber maintenance from a temporarily flyweight blue rag.

Hannity is an inveterate name-caller and a purveyor of red tribe attack. There's a tremendous amount to criticize, correct and challenge about his nightly conduct. That's been true for the past twenty-five years.

The New York Times rarely plays that role. The Times typically sticks its head in the sand, then peeps out with pabulum like this.

Hannity is a highly unreliable attack dog and a dedicated name caller. But even as he has trashed "Creepy Joe," he's said nothing negative about Taylor Swift. In fact, he's done quite the opposite.

Grynbaum went to one of the finest schools. Sifting the content of his report in a manner designed to please, he writes for our greatest newspaper—for a newspaper of the blue tribe.

Red tribe members who see work of this type will often see it for what it is. We belong to the blue tribe ourselves, but we think this report was largely blue silo, and we don't think this stroking helps.

It makes us think we're in good hands. Just for the record, we aren't.

CAMPAIGN: O'Donnell turns to the Taylor Swift card!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2024

Police officers beaten in Gotham: Yesterday morning, we started with some unwelcome polling figures.

This morning, new data look good. As of now, the new national survey is very much an outlier—but the new survey says this:

Biden Opens Up Lead Over Trump In Head-To-Head, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds

As signs point to the 2024 presidential election being a repeat of the 2020 race between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Biden holds a lead over Trump 50 - 44 percent among registered voters in a hypothetical general election matchup, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll of registered voters released today.

Dear God! Let some form of traditional electoral sanity prevail, one analyst lustily cried.

As of now, this new survey is an outlier. And of course, there' a very long way to go, and this is going to be a year without any known precedent.

But so it stood, within one survey, as dawn's rosy fingers extended. With regard to the way the campaign will be played, we'll begin today with Lawrence O'Donnell at the start of last evening's Last Word.

"I just can't take it any more," O'Donnell told Alex Wagner. "I have to unburden myself on Republicans, the NFL and Taylor Swift. It's time. It's time."

Wagner responded in kind. "Listen, I unburdened myself last night," she said. "But we almost took another pass at it today because it's so absolutely bonkers, the whole thing."

Lawrence said he was going to offer warnings about "the dangerous spread of this insanity." To watch this exchange, just start here.

So goes the entertainment / reinforcement branch of cable news, or so our assessment would tell you. In fairness, when Lawrence began to unburden himself, he was honest enough to restrict himself to a ludicrous tweet by a man named Mike Crispi, who once ran for Congress in New Jersey and lost in the GOP primary by just over twenty points.

Crispi is a very minor Republican player. To his credit, O'Donnell didn't misstate what's being said about this matter by much bigger players on Fox.

In all honesty, O'Donnell did overstate what Vivek Ramaswamy said in a posting of his own. Mainly, though, Lawrence built his complaint about "the madness" found in this ludicrous Crispi tweet:

Mike Crispi tweet:

The NFL is totally RIGGED for the Kansas City Chiefs, Taylor Swift, Mr. Pfizer (Travis Kelce).

“All to spread DEMOCRAT PROPAGANDA. 

Calling it now: KC wins, goes to Super Bowl, Swift comes out at the halftime show and ‘endorses’ Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield.

It's been an op since day one. 

If Crispi believes any part of that lunacy, then of course he's insane. That said, to build a prime time "cable news" segment around so minor a player strikes us as an impulse coming from the outskirts of crazy too.

In our view, the Crispi tweet became a bit of a sweet-tasting Krispie Treat within the candygram realm of partisan "cable news." As he continued, O'Donnell discussed "the madness loose in the land, and no one fuels that madness more than Donald Trump."

To his credit, O'Donnell is one of the very few mainstream journalists who has been willing to discuss Donald Trump's mental state within the context of modern medical / psychiatric science.  He's done so only on rare occasions, but few others have done that at all.

But as O'Donnell continued—and he didn't fail to name Adolph Hitler—it seemed to us that he was still providing a type of feel-good service to his blue tribe viewers. When we have to build our urburdenings around such minor figures as Crispi, are we really creating a line of argument and attack which could make's today's poll numbers stand?

O'Donnell unburdened himself regarding Swift—and Swift is great for eyeballs, ratings and clicks, as every news org knows. He unburdened himself in the 10 p.m. hour—but earlier, during the 5 p.m. hour, horrible videotape shown on The Five helped define the kinds of struggles our own Candidate Biden will face.

This morning, Morning Joe played the same videotape. The panel then discussed the tape at length during the program's first half hour.

Alas! The tape showed a pair of New York City police officers being viciously assaulted by a group of roughly eight teenaged asylum seekers.

The tape is awful; the facts get worse. Three of the assailants were arrested. In apparent accord with New York City law, the vicious assailants were then quickly released without bail.

At this site, we feel sorry for any individual who reached the state of such viciousness while still in his teens. That said, we advise you to look at that videotape, while remembering that the eight young assailants in question represent only themselves.

Yesterday afternoon, the videotape was heavily featured at the start of The Five. At 10 p.m., it was also heavily featured on Gutfeld!

On Gutfeld!, a bit of possible expertise actually came into play. A former heavyweight "professional wrestling" champion said this about what he saw:

TYRUS (1/31/24): While we're looking at the video, just so you know, these guys weren't trying to fight. They were trying to kick them in the head—kill shot. It is a kill shot. They were trying to line them up and kick them in the head. 

They weren't holding them. They weren't even punching them. Every one of them was trying to kick the police officers in the head, because when you kick somebody in the head, it's lights out, and then once they're lights out, then the stomping comes and everything else. We're just lucky that the police officers kept moving and kept evading, even though they were dealing with one guy, they—

So again, you're also—the mayor has the power to do something with the district attorney, who is just letting them go... 

Plainly, that's what the tape looks like. We're not sure about the powers of Gotham's mayor, but the three assailants who were arrested were immediately released on bail.

Is it possible that our own blue tribe has allowed itself to be overtaken by an array of bad political judgments? If you want to understand the sorts of problems Candidate Biden is going to face, we'll advise you to watch the opening segment of yesterday's The Five (link below).

In that segment, the videotape and the facts are so bad that no one had to embellish a single point to score a straight 5-0 vote among the program's panelists.

Eight teenaged asylum seekers savaged a pair of cops. Three of the assailants were arrested, then they were quickly released.

That gruesome video drove The Five—but it was also featured in the first half hour of today's Morning Joe. Just so you'll know what it's safe to say, Al Sharpton was there on the panel, and he joined Joe Scarborough and everyone else in saying that this ugly event is not what bail reform was ever supposed to be about.

Other panelists called for deportation. Saying that the black community gets the worst of this, Reverend Sharpton seemed to agree.

Our view? As he unburdened himself last night, Lawrence was hunting, deep in the woods, with a very tiny and very small pop gun. That said, also this:

Five hours earlier, all five panelists on The Five had helped define the parameters of the disputed term, "Woke."

Our frequently silly and self-impressed tribe keeps insisting there's no such thing! In such ways, we make it conceivable that a disordered figure like Donald J. Trump could sneak through to the White House again.

Our own blue tribe is deeply flawed. We often show very poor judgment.

It's also true that corporate "cable news" stars are on the air to please us. They're on the air to generate ratings, along with the profits which ensue. In that way, their pleasing behaviors keep their (undisclosed) multimillion dollar corporate salaries up.

Roughly one week ago, Candidate Donald J. Trump said "Haley" instead of "Pelosi." Last night and again this morning, our stars were still running with that.

That strikes us as a very small cup of a very weak tea. But if you watch that first segment from The Five, you're starting down the barrel of the types of errors Candidate Biden will be forced to run against. 

How strong a candidate will he turn out to be? We have no idea.

Reverend Sharpton agreed with The Five. So did everyone else on today's Morning Joe panel.

Meanwhile, Wagner had almost unburdened herself once again. Along the way, she hadn't asked her blue tribe viewers to watch, and then to think about, the meaning of that videotape. 

O'Donnell disappeared it as well.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our own blue tribe, like all human tribes, is frequently saddled with very poor judgment. As is true with all human tribes, many members of our own tribe have a hard time grasping that fact.

Reverend Sharpton agreed with The Five! Are we self-impressed souls over here on the left able to wrap our minds around what events like yesterday's catch and release will mean as Candidate Biden tries to campaign in the face of our tribe's self-imposed blindness? 

This morning, it's just like Ben Franklin said. Our candidate is sporting a six-point lead, but only if we can keep it.

This afternoon: The New York Times, clowning around about Swift

Opening segment of The Five: We advise you to ponder the tale of that tape. To watch the opening segment of The Five, start by clicking right here.

You'll see what the five Fox News panelists said. Thirteen hours later, on Morning Joe, Reverend Sharpton made it six.