PEOPLE: Troy fell during a Brone Age war!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Our war involves (mis) information: Below, we'll show you something Greg Gutfeld said on red tribe cable last night.

One hour before the gentleman spoke, we saw Rachel Maddow deliver a beautifully reasoned, hour-long broadcast on our own tribe's "cable news" channel.

For us, the brilliance of Maddow's presentation came very, very late in a less impressive, 15-year game. We'll get to that as the days roll by—but last night's program excelled.

At any rate, the people who people these warring battalions are demographically distinct. That said, they constitute two of the major armies currently arrayed in the field as the siege of the Biden White House enters its final year.

At times like this, we often think of Carlotta Valdes, the character in Hitchcock's widely-praised Vertigo who occasionally seizes Kim Novak's soul. At those time, the Novak character mournfully recalls all the human destruction and death which have gone before.

It seems to us that there's a lot we contemporary people can learn from those earlier human wars. There are things we can learn about ourselves as people—about the impulses driving our conduct in the course of this current war.

That said:

To the extent that it actually happened, the fall of Troy was part of a Bronze Age war. The leading authority on that age describes that era in the manner shown:

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting from approximately 3300 BCE to 1200 BCE. Characterized by the use of bronze, the use of writing in some areas, and other features of early urban civilization, the Bronze Age is the second principal period of the three-age system proposed in 1836 by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen for classifying and studying ancient societies and history. It is also considered the second phase of three, in the Metal Ages.

An ancient civilization is deemed to be part of the Bronze Age if it either produced bronze by smelting its own copper and alloying it with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or traded other items for bronze from producing areas elsewhere. Bronze is harder and more durable than other metals available at the time, allowing Bronze Age civilizations to gain a technological advantage.

"A technological advantage" accrued to those engaged in Bronze Age war. This brings us to sacred Homer's Trojan War, which may or may not have occurred:

Trojan War

The Trojan War was a legendary conflict in Greek mythology that took place around the 12th or 13th century BCE. The war was waged by the Achaeans (Greeks) against the city of Troy after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology, and it has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably Homer's Iliad...

The ancient Greeks believed that Troy was located near the Dardanelles and that the Trojan War was a historical event of the 13th or 12th century BC. By the mid-19th century AD, both the war and the city were widely seen as non-historical, but in 1868, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann met Frank Calvert, who convinced Schliemann that Troy was at what is now Hisarlik in Turkey. On the basis of excavations conducted by Schliemann and others, this claim is now accepted by most scholars.

Whether there is any historical reality behind the Trojan War remains an open question. Many scholars believe that there is a historical core to the tale, though this may simply mean that the Homeric stories are a fusion of various tales of sieges and expeditions by Mycenaean Greeks during the Bronze Age. Those who believe that the stories of the Trojan War are derived from a specific historical conflict usually date it to the 12th or 11th century BC, often preferring the dates given by Eratosthenes, 1194–1184 BC, which roughly correspond to archaeological evidence of a catastrophic burning of Troy VII, and the Late Bronze Age collapse.

Carlotta Valdes is speaking to us as we read that passage. That said, what in the world was "the Late Bronze Age collapse?" The authority riddles it thusly:

Late Bronze Age collapse

The Late Bronze Age collapse was a time of widespread societal collapse during the 12th century BC, between c. 1200 and 1150, and was associated with environmental change, mass migration, and destruction of cities. The collapse affected a large area of the Eastern Mediterranean (North Africa and Southeast Europe) and the Near East, in particular Egypt, eastern Libya, the Balkans, the Aegean, Anatolia, and, to a lesser degree, the Caucasus. It was sudden, violent, and culturally disruptive for many Bronze Age civilizations, and it brought a sharp economic decline to regional powers, notably ushering in the Greek Dark Ages.

The palace economy of Mycenaean Greece, the Aegean region, and Anatolia that characterized the Late Bronze Age disintegrated, transforming into the small isolated village cultures of the Greek Dark Ages, which lasted from around 1100 to the beginning of the better-known Archaic age around 750 BC....

So it went among the palace economies of the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age collapse. To the extent that it may have occurred, the fall of Troy is listed as part of that widespread societal failure.

At any rate, Troy fell as part of a Bronze Age war. It was fought on the wide plains outside Troy with death-dealing Bronze Age weapons—with weapons that tore human flesh.

It was fought in hand-to-hand combat, with bodies of the dead dragged behind chariots, as was the norm at the time. By way of contrast, the war we're fighting as part of the current siege of the Biden White House is a war of the (so-called) Information Age.

Our war is being fought through the weapons of information, though we'd be inclined to say that the term is routinely misused. More often, this war is being fought with misinformation or disinformation—with claims that are misleading. flatly false or absurdly fanciful, with claims that are meant to distract or mislead or confuse.

Our modern information war is also fought with the coarsest possible insults. Last night, on the Fo News Channel's Gutfeld! show, a certain 59-year-old man was quickly describing President Biden in the following way:

"An ice cream eating cadaver that farts dust."

So he said at 10:03 p.m., in his opening "monologue." 

Earlier, at 10:02, this 59-year-old manchild had told his several million viewers what Hillary Clinton is possibly thinking, now that President Biden has been assessed even more unfavorably in this new ABC / Ipsos survey:

Maybe she's thinking, though, thinking that she can replace Biden once Gavin Newsom and Michelle Obama kill themselves.

The fantasy that Michelle Obama will replace President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket is constantly fed to red tribe viewers on Fox. In this case, the fallen man / boy who sits on the throne of this primetime "cable news" program added the image of Newsome and Obama, dead at their own hands.

All in all, there is nothing this channel won't put on its air, no image too coarse, ill-advised or unseemly to consider:

"An ice cream eating cadaver that farts dust!" In all honesty, Maddow once came approached this level of conduct, back in the Tea Party days, over the course of six programs spread across two separate weeks.

We thought she showed extremely poor judgment at that point in time; Jon Stewart chastised her for what she'd done. On the whole, though, the people who people our blue tribe's channel, Maddow certainly included, don't stoop to that remarkably low level. 

(It's also true that our higher new org simply ignore such red tribe conduct. By now, Gutfeld's conduct has been thoroughly normalized. It happens off there, in a forbidden zone "somewhere [high end journalists] have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience.") 

The world will be a better place if Greg Gutfeld can ever make himself better. That said, he's being rewarded for what he does, and what he does helps propel an enormously restive red army.

The warring groups on our red and blue channels are demographically distinct groups of people. They can be thought of Broadsheet Nation versus Tabloid Nation, even as Ivy League Nation versus Less "Highly Educated" Nation, though Gutfeld himself is a graduate of Berkeley.

On the plains outside the walls of Troy, Achilles sent Hector to the House of Death using Bronze Age weapons. The potent weapons we're using today are entirely different in form, and the groups of people we see on cable are demographically distinct.

That new survey from ABC seems to say that the red tribe people are winning. We will continue to ask you this question:

Why do you think that is?

Tomorrow: Chris Hayes is a good, decent person. Does he watch red cable?

Is Candidate Trump really "losing it?"

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2024

Or is it possibly Us? Before we read the Kevin Drum post, we had watched Jonathan Lemire on the 5 a.m. MSNBC show, Way Too Early.

What we saw struck us as journalistic / political / electoral malpractice. After teasing the segment at 5:26, he returned at 5:30 with this:

LEMIRE (2/12/24): When he wasn't threatening to destroy a nearly 75-year-old global alliance, Donald Trump seemed downright confused at times over the weekend.

 In addition to claiming it was Saturday repeatedly when it was actually Friday, and saying Barack Obama was president, not Joe Biden, Trump slurred his words repeatedly, and also read teleprompter cues out loud, 

Take a look.

At this point, Lemire played a compilation of seven (7) brief clips, gleaned from a pair of speeches Trump gave over the weekend. After playing the compilation reel, he then offered this:

LEMIRE: I mean, I've read the teleprompter cues before too. But the rest, perhaps worrisome.

Joining us now, politics reporter for Semafor, Shelby Talcott. 

A brief discussion followed, performed above this chyron:

TRUMP AGAIN SAYS OBAMA IS POTUS IN GAFFE-FILLED WEEKEND

If you want to watch the entire segment, you can start by clicking here.

When we see an embarrassing performance like this, we wonder if our high-profile political and journalistic team has simply given up, or has maybe lost its mind.

The seven brief clips played by Lemire had been assembled from two lengthy speeches by Trump on Friday and Saturday nights. We're sorry, but no:

We're familiar with Candidate Trump's familiarly disjointed speech. Having said that, we didn't see the candidate say that Obama is the president. We're not even sure we saw him say it was Saturday on one (1) occasion during his Friday speech.

We saw one or maybe two extremely minor examples of the slurring of words—one or two extremely minor examples drawn from two (2) lengthy speeches in which Trump was beating our tribe's brains in as he pounded away at some of the topics our tribe has avoided for years. 

He did mistakenly read one (1) teleprompter cue, but Lemire quickly said that he has done that too! In as many as three of the seven clips, we can't even identify where the candidate's "downright confusion" is supposed to come in.

Full disclosure! This is something like a widely viewed practice on Fox. The assumption seems to be this:

Once you've told viewers what they're going to see, the viewers will be too dumb to notice the fact that the video "evidence" you've provided shows them no such thing. Or maybe Lemire is so far gone that he now believes his own twaddle!

In our view, it's simply astounding—it's evidence of a tribal political meltdown—that someone could think that this is the way a party like ours should go after a disordered candidate like Trump.

Does anyone actually see this as the route to electoral success? It looks to us like we're the ones who may be (currently) "losing our minds," not the candidate who (rather successfully) abandoned his mind back in 2011, at the start of his birther campaign.

Over the weekend, Trump made his latest truly remarkable statement, this time concerning his attitude toward the invasion of NATO countries by Russia's Vladimir Putin. It's one of the many astonishing bits of behavior he has authored, dating back to the four years of that birther campaign.

The problem is this:

By now, it has become abundantly clear that we in our blue tribe don't know how to get a sufficient number of American voters to pay attention to us when we discuss serious matters like that. 

Trump voters stopped paying attention to us long ago—and surveys keep suggesting that there are more Trump voters than Biden voters at the present time. 

To appearances, our thought leaders have decided that we're unable to move the needle by talking about the serious topics which actually matter in the real world. In a bit of desperation, we seem to think that we can move the needle by peddling bullsh*t like this.

This strikes us as an unbelievably wrong-headed way to proceed. That said, our favorite blogger has also been selling this new campaign. When we clicked to his site this morning, we found this headline on top:

The real Donald Trump is losing it

The post in question struck us as an act of understandable despair and unproductive anger. Soon, another post followed, bearing this headline:

Donald Trump plays a tough guy on TV

To our eye and ear, it looks to us like the disordered candidate in question has successfully gotten a million miles under this good person's skin. That said, we can't imagine why we want to keep preaching the following sermon to us in our own blue choir:

Orange man very bad!

We're sorry, but no. Donald Trump isn't "losing it" at the present time. He plainly lost it long ago, but our politically hapless blue tribe doesn't seem to know how to convince enough voters of that fact, and so we've decided to go with a big pile of ridiculous bullsh*t.

(Also, the harms of shrinkflation! Could anything be more pathetic on the face of the earth?)

For ourselves, we assume that Donald J. Trump is (severely) mentally ill. In their wisdom, our blue tribe journalists and pundits have agreed that such a possibility must never be mentioned—though we'll assume that they all talk about it in private.

We're left with the pathetic impulse to make up silly sh*t like we saw on Way Too Early. And after we saw it on Way Too Early, we saw it on Morning Joe!

In part, we're doing this because we're in denial about the situation encasing Candidate Biden. For ourselves, we don't know who's going to win this fall, but we find it increasingly hard to believe that President Biden will be able to conduct a vigorous campaign on his own and his party's behalf.

To cite one example, he won't be able to discuss issues involving immigration and the border. Trump and an army of red tribe cable talkers are beating our brains out every night discussing that topic, a topic our own blue tribe has been avoiding for years.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our political tribe almost seems to be out of its mind. The other guy is crazy too—but he seems to be mentally ill.

The other guy seems to be mentally ill. What's our freaking excuse?

Coming at some point: Acyn Torabi is a good, decent person. Who is Acyn Torabi?

PEOPLE: Private worlds were lost in the siege of Troy!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2024

And in the Soviet camps: No people are uninteresting! Or so Yevtushenko said.

Some will say that he was putting the best face on the situation. 

At any rate, the title of the poem in question is rendered, quite simply, as People. In translation, the poem starts like this:

People 

No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.

Nothing in them is not particular,
and planet is dissimilar from planet.

And if a man lived in obscurity
making his friends in that obscurity
obscurity is not uninteresting.

Obscurity is not uninteresting! As we've noted in the past, the poem continues from there. 

To each his world is private,
and in that world one excellent minute.

And in that world one tragic minute.
These are private.

In any man who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight.
It goes with him.

There are left books and bridges
and painted canvas and machinery.
Whose fate is to survive.

But what has gone is also not nothing:
by the rule of the game something has gone.
Not people die but worlds die in them.

Whom we knew as faulty, the earth’s creatures
Of whom, essentially, what did we know?

There's a bit more to it. You can see Yevtushenko's full poem, though in translation, simply by clicking here.

We first encountered People in Deschooling Society, a 1971 book about education reform by Ivan Illich. We didn't take great interest in the book's principal analyses, but this line has never left us:

"But what has gone is also not nothing..." 

For reasons we've never understood, that double negative formulation has stayed within us, very deeply, ever since the day we first read it.

"No people are uninteresting?" So Yevtushenko alleged! 

He was writing within a Soviet Union which was struggling to emerge from the purges, the famines and the mass deaths of the Stalin era. Presumably, within the borders of this poem, the people whose worlds were fated to die within them were, in millions of cases, the victims of Stalin's purges.

Some say Yevtushenko was admirably courageous during that turbulent era. Others say he wasn't brave enough. 

For us, he's the Soviet, then Russian poet who wrote People—though we've read it only in translation. (We've seen other translation of his poem which wouldn't have caught our ear.)

Plainly, Yevtushenko was writing with individual people in mind. 

Then too, there's also "Us the People"—our struggling human species. We're currently an eight-billion member global demographic.

Within the western world, the first great account of how we people behave comes in the Greek war poem, the Iliad. It's a poem of war and of conquest and, literally from its first page on, of sexual subjugation.

According to the leading authority. it's "often regarded as the first substantial piece of European literature." In the 1990 Robert Fagles translation, Book One (of twenty-four) starts like this:

The Great Gathering of Armies

Rage—Goddess. sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end...

And the will of Zeus was moving toward its end!

The Iliad is a poem of the war which was fought, for roughly ten years, on the wide plains which lay outside the towering walls of Troy. 

In theory, the lives which were lost in that siege were "not nothing." That said, also this:

Quite a few of the lives which were lost in that siege were lost due to "the rage of Peleus' son"—due to Achilles' great anger. Just to bring us up to speed, but also with apologies for the subject matter, here is that leading authority's thumbnail account of the origin of this ten-year siege, and of Achilles' destructive rage: 

Iliad

[...]

[T]he rage of Achilles—its cause. its course and its disastrous consequences—is the theme of the poem, the mainspring of the plot.

Chryses, a priest of Apollo, whose daughter has been carried off by the Achaeans in one of their raids, comes to the camp to ransom her. But she has been assigned, in the division of the booty, to the king who commands the Achaean army, Agamemnon, and he refuses to give her up. Her father prays for help to Apollo, who sends a plague that devastates the Achaean camp. 

Achilles, leader of the Myrmidons. one of the largest contingents of the Achaean army, summons the chieftains to an assembly. There they are told by the prophet Calchas that the girl must be returned to her father. Agamemnon has to give her up, but demands compensation for his loss. 

Achilles objects: let Agamemnon wait until more booty is taken. A violent quarrel breaks out between the two men, and Agamemnon finally announces that he will take recompense for his loss from Achilles. in the form of the girl Briseis, Achilles' share of the booty. Achilles represses an urge to kill Agamemnon and withdraws from the assembly, threatening to leave for home, with all his troops, the next day. 

And so on from there, as Achilles sulks in his tents. Sexual conquest was part of the culture, much as it is today.

Within the realm of the Iliad, those events occur in the final weeks of the ten-year siege of Troy. For us today, in our present time, a siege of the Biden White House is now underway. 

A gathering of armies is in the field—armies from our struggling nation's prevailing red and blue camps.

In the end, the Trojan army was fated to succumb to the Achaeans' siege of Troy. For those of us in our own blue tribe, it should be apparent by now that the forces of the other tribe's army may prevail in this year's siege of the Biden White House.

Or not! We can't tell you how this year's siege will end, though we're less sanguine with each passing day. But it seems to us that we might all gain by putting the current siege in a wider context—in a context derived from the worlds of the poets, Russian and ancient Greek.

The Achaean forces prevailed. So might the forces of Candidate Donald J. Trump. For ourselves, we disagree with the assessments of that candidate's voters. But then, they disagree with ours!

No people are uninteresting, Yevtushenko alleged. We'll recommend that moral perspective as we continue, through the course of this week, to take an early look at some of the armies already arrayed in the field.

A wide array of cultural morés were notably different back then. But are our instincts as humans, as a very large mass of people, actually all that different?

For ourselves, we believe in the thrust of that Soviet poem. Also, we believe in the power of the Iliad to offer a look at our lives. 

Should we try to place this year's events in a wider human perspective? For us as people, it seems to us that that might be a smart thing to do.

Tomorrow and all week: A first look at our blue battalions. More from the red tribe's camps.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON: The things the red tribe's viewers are told!

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2024

The things they'll never hear: Last Saturday morning, at 6 o'clock sharp, "Trader Pete"—the Fox News Channel's Pete Hegseth—got busy denouncing the U.S. Army's attacks in the Middle East as an utterly useless "fireworks display."

The campaign had only just begun. The nation had been explicitly told that there would be more to come.

For whatever reason, the handsome star of Fox & Friends Weekend got busy mocking the popgun campaign. He was joined by a retired brigadier general with this remarkable record:

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.

[...]

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.

Trader Pete brought on this fourth friend. At any rate, so it went:

The American commander in chief had started his bombing campaign in Syria and Jordan. Within a matter of hours, the people at Fox had started theirs.

Today, we tuned in to Fox & Friends Weekend to see what Hegseth would say. The bombing campaign had continued through the past week. Damage and death had resulted.

Would the campaign still be described as "a fireworks display" for the nation's red tribe viewers? We never got a chance to find out! Trader Pete was a no-show today. The Fox News trader had cut and run, leaving this as the day's collection of friends:

Fox & Friends Weekend, 2/10/24
Will Cain: former ESPN sports commentator
Rachel Campos-Duffy: former cast member, MTV reality show, The Real World
Johnny Joey Jones: combat-wounded former American Marine

Below, we'll link you to one superb segment. First, we want to show you something our nation's red tribe viewers were told, at least twice, during the program's first two hours.

At 6:33 a.m., Jones—he strikes us as basically sincere, though perhaps not heroic at this point—introduced former acting attorney general Matt Whitaker. 

As you can see by clicking this link, Whitaker had this to say about the willful possession of classified documents. We'll highlight one key phrase:

WHITAKER (2/10/24, 6:33 a.m.): I don't know how you can not say there's a two-tiered system of justice when the exact same case is reviewed against one person in Donald Trump and they charge him, raid Mar-a-Lago, all the things they did, very aggressive tactics, and then, you know, Joe Biden is allowed, not only to cooperate, but is given no consequence for his behavior. Joey, it's just not the way our system of justice should work.

"The exact same case?" In fact, Robert Hur's report on the Biden probe spells out the kinds of inappropriate behavior allegedly engaged in by Trump which Biden did not engage in.

Obviously, these two investigations did not involve "the exact same case." Everyone on the planet knows that—everyone except for red tribe viewers, who will never be told about that part of the Hur report by guests on the Fox News Channel.

It was "the exact same case," the former Trump official said—and then, sure enough!  Early in the 7 o'clock hour, Cain referred to Whitaker's earlier appearance, and the program's producers played videotape of the bogus claim all over again:

WHITAKER (7:06 a.m.): I don't know how you can not say there's a two-tiered system of justice when the exact same case is reviewed against one person in Donald Trump and they charge him, raid Mar-a-Lago, all the things they did, very aggressive tactics, and then, you know, Joe Biden is allowed, not only to cooperate, but is given no consequence for his behavior. Joey, it's just not the way our system of justice should work.

Fox viewers heard it all over again! None of the friends, arrayed on white chairs, noted the inaccuracy of the statement they'd just replayed.

First at 6:33 a.m., then again at 7:06, red tribe viewers heard a flagrantly bogus statement by a former Trump official—by someone they think they can trust. Later in the 7 o'clock hour, viewers of C-Span's Washington Journal were afforded a fairer deal.

At 7:53 a.m., Tom from Elgin, Illinois called in on the Independent line. He spewed a bunch of talking points straight from Donald J. Trump himself, prompting moderator Kimberly Adams to read this part of the Hur report:

The exception is President Trump. It is not our role to assess the criminal charges pending against Mr. Trump, but several material distinctions between Mr. Trump's case and Mr. Biden's are clear. Unlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would present serious aggravating facts. 

Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it. In contrast, Mr. Eiden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview. and in other ways cooperated with the investigation.

To hear the full exchange with Tom from Elgin, click here, then move to minute 53. After Adams read that passage, Tom said that Hur was apparently part of the deep state too, though perhaps not of its "fedsurrection."

We'd never heard that term before! Summarizing:

Fox viewers were told that the DOJ had assembled "the exact same case" against Biden and Trump. C-Span viewers were allowed to hear that excerpt from Hur's report.

Fox viewers will very rarely, if ever, hear about the glaring distinctions between the two cases. As a general matter, they don't know that information of that type is being withheld from them by the former reality show stars they have come to trust.

They trust the friends their channel provides, and they trust the former Trump official. One week earlier they didn't know that they perhaps and possibly can't really trust someone like Tata.

They've come to trust the friends on Fox. They don't know that they're being misled—that they're being played, misinformed.

Under current arrangements, news orgs like the Fox News Channel are segregated by viewpoint. No one will challenge or correct false statements by other members of the tribe.

In such ways, our giant nation is being turned into a pair of nations. Can a large modern nation really function this way? Our answer would of course be this:

"Son, take a good look around."

The friends are one of the red tribe's armies in the ongoing siege of the White House. 

The siege of Troy went on for ten years. At this site, we'll be recording the history of this modern-day siege, which won't last nearly that long.

12-year-old, 13-year-old: We loved every bit of the Fox & Friends segment which started at 6:42 a.m. 

We loved the statement by the 12-year-old girl that she and her family felt "sad and distraught," six months ago, about the Maui fires.

As the Carter Family used to say on their posters, this [segment] is morally good.

SATURDAY: Are we locked in a type of tribal denial?

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2024

Only time will tell: In private, is President Biden "perfectly lucid, with a good grasp of events?" 

Beyond that, does the president exercise good judgment concerning major policy matters?

In this brief post, Paul Krugman answers those questions in the affirmative, based upon an hour-long conversation with President Biden last August. 

We know of no reason to doubt what Krugman says about his conversation with the president. That said, we've been asking a different question at this site. The question we've asked has been this:

Will Candidate Biden be able to campaign, with vigor and clarity, on his own behalf?

Rightly or wrongly, we see no sign that Candidate Biden will be able to do that. In our view, Thursday night's press event only drove that point further home.

This brings us to what President Roosevelt said he saw when he looked out at the nation. "Here is the challenge to our democracy," he said in January 1937, in his second inaugural address: 

Here is the challenge to our democracy.

In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.

[...]

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished...

Everywhere that president looked, he saw "one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." In his view, that was the challenge to our democracy at that point in time.

That's what Franklin D. Roosevelt saw. Everywhere we look today, we see roughly that same percentage of the population trapped in something which looks to us, perhaps mistakenly, as a form of wishful thinking / denial.

Friend, did it look to you, on Thursday night, like President Biden will be able to drive a vigorous campaign? We can only remind you of this:

This very week, two days before that press event, a new NBC News survey emerged with these dispiriting results:

Biden’s age and fitness top the list of voters’ concerns, poll finds

Three-quarters of voters, including half of Democrats, say they have concerns about President Joe Biden’s mental and physical health, according to the latest national NBC News poll.

That compares with...less than half of voters who have concerns about [Trump's] mental and physical health.

More precisely, 76% of respondents voiced that concern with respect to Biden's mental and physical health, as opposed to 48% of respondents with respect to Trump. 

(Back in mid-January, similar numbers emerged from this survey by ABC News.)

That NBC News survey question is somewhat imprecise. That said, the Fox News Channel doesn't reach that many voters, and it certainly doesn't reach that many Democrats. 

Many respondents seemed to think they'd seen some point of concern in the case of President Biden. Dating to his first speech in Lanai last August. we count ourselves inside that camp. 

Other people can't seem to see any such thing. In the end, there's no way to say who is "right," but those survey numbers continue to speak loudly all by themselves.

Everywhere we look today, we think we might be looking at a type of group denial. Examples:

At this site, a favorite blogger links to a tweet by Josh Marshall and complains about the treatment of the Thursday night event in the online New York Times. The print edition of Friday's Times is said to have made more sense.

Fellow citizens, please! The event in question took place at 8 p.m. Thursday night. It's surprising that the event got reported in the next day's print editions at all, let alone above the fold on the New York Times front page, which is where it landed.

The second layout, from the online Times, is timestamped 9 o'clock Friday morning. By then, the topic had gone thoroughly viral. It's hardly surprising that the Times was now providing substantial coverage.

There's nothing to see with President Biden! The New York Times is being unfair! Is that perhaps the way it goes when a poorly functioning political tribe may begin to smell defeat in the air?

Our tribe continues to praise the Goldilocks Biden economy. Then, we wonder why the others aren't as thrilled with it as we are. 

That approach conveys pleasure, and seems to make sense, until you watch the PBS NewsHour and encounter a report like this one from Thursday night:

Half of American renters pay more than 30% of income on housing, study shows

Rental prices are unaffordable for a record number of Americans with half of all renters paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Stephanie Sy reached out to renters across the country to hear how these soaring prices are impacting their lives and discussed their issues with Whitney Airgood-Obrycki. 

In our view, the report is more sobering than that synopsis suggests—and it seems to suggest why a lot of good, decent people are possibly less than thrilled with the economy our blue tribe's tribunes praise.

For a news report in the Washington Post about that same Harvard study, you can just click this. The report appeared three weeks ago, then rapidly disappeared:

Rent has never been less affordable, especially for the middle class

Rent has never been less affordable—for tenants with high and low incomes alike—even while costs for new leases are finally cooling off.

Half of American renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs—a key benchmark for affordability—with the financial strain rising the fastest for middle-class tenants. That’s according to a new report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, which found that the number of such renters, considered to be “cost-burdened,” hit a record 22.4 million in 2022—up 2 million from just three years before. And of those households, 12.1 million had housing costs that ate up more than 50 percent of their income, an all-time high for those with “severe burdens.”

As we recently noted, we often read blue tribe reports about how great the economy is. But when we click the link to the source for the upbeat report, we see horrible news about housing costs—for rental housing and home purchase—which the upbeat tribune has simply failed to mention.

Could that be the way it goes as a very large political tribe starts to fear the worst?

Last night, Bill Maher suggested that the Democratic Party may need to find a way to replace Candidate Biden, perhaps at the party's convention. (We know that because they played the tape of what Bill said on this morning's Fox & Friends.)

If we knew of any viable replacement, we might even buy onto that pipedream-adjacent idea. That said, we know of no such possible candidate.

It may be that President Biden will turn things around and begin to campaign with vigor and clarity. For ourselves, it looks like the president may be caught in a type of decline.

We see no sign that he'll be able to campaign in the vigorous way which will be needed. Of course, our perception could turn out to be wrong.

Could Candidate Trump actually get elected again this year? Yes, of course, could! 

He could also crash and burn during one of his three million court cases. That said, Candidate Trump could get elected again—and if that happens, our own blue tribe will be facing a long, hard comeback road. 

In our view, our self-impressed tribe has often worked quite hard to earn its way out. Everywhere we look today, we see one-third of a deeply challenged, struggling nation which seems to be in something resembling group denial.

Joe Biden may fight back! That said, we're not sure that the Biden of even a few years ago is still with us today. His private functioning may be strong, as Krugman says, but he may struggle out on the stump.

On Monday, we expect to start exploring the armies our own blue tribe has in the field as the siege of the White House begins. In our view, our tribe's elites have frequently worked fairly hard to earn our way out.

That doesn't mean that we're bad people. It only means that we're people people.

As in Casablanca, so too here! Human beings that we are, we may be inclined to head down to Rick's Cafe, where we can gambol and play.

Beauty is in the eye of each observer!

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2024

So too with President Biden's acuity and health: "I'll have [one of] what she's having!" We've added two words to the famous line from When Harry Met Sally.

This morning, we'll have one of what Kevin Drum's having with respect to President Biden's current all-around health.

Kevin feels the concern about the president's mental acuity is basically an illusion. It doesn't look that way to us, but Kevin could always turn out to be right. 

That said, it hasn't looked that way for some time.  Headline included, this is Kevin's full post:

Here is Joe Biden’s press conference. Watch for yourself.

Joe Biden continues to have problems enunciating certain sounds, and I also think that "angry" Joe Biden doesn't work for him. That said, here's his entire press conference this afternoon. It's only 13 minutes long. Watch for yourself and decide if, speech issues aside, he seems in any way cognitively limited. As usual, it strikes me that if you watch the whole thing instead of just reading about it or looking at snippets, he seems fine.

On balance, President Biden doesn't seem fine to us. That said, you can watch yesterday's 13-minute event by clicking to Kevin's post.

A few of Kevin's commenters have pushed back against his sense that things are basically OK. One reader offered an (understandably) angry, pessimistic comment:

COMMENTER: This is the second year in a row that President Biden has refused to speak to the American people just before the Super Bowl.

This is inexcusable. Can you image Trump turning down this opportunity, or any contender for that matter? This is cowardly.

Of course I will vote Biden, I will work for his re-election. But I am damned unhappy about his piss poor judgement. I am as angry with him as I was with Ms. Willis.

Bad judgement that will deliver the United States to Mr. Trump, but also Europe to Putin.

I spit on the ground at Biden's feet. Stupid he is to not recognize that he cannot counter this ever-expanding negativity swirling around him.

The commenter is angry about the refusal to do the Super Bowl interview. Even here, this angry comment seems to be sunk in a possible bit of denial. To wit:

The commenter is angry that Biden turned down the chance to be interviewed this Sunday. He sees this decision as a form of "piss poor judgment."

It doesn't seem to have occurred to the commenter that the refusal to be interviewed may represent a savvy judgment about the president's possible inability to perform well in such a setting. Another reader posted this response to that comment:

RESPONSE: "This is inexcusable. Can you image Trump turning down this opportunity, or any contender for that matter?"

No, because Trump is a media whore. So are most other Republican contenders. What's your point? It's obviously not a *requirement* to speak before the Super Bowl, since something like three-quarters of our past presidents didn't do so.

Here too, it doesn't seem to have occurred to this commenter that there could be a savvy, if unfortunate,  reason for the decision to skip the interview.

Here's another comment:

COMMENTER: Biden has an easy defense if the public has a misunderstanding of his current mental abilities/memory, etc: Biden could do several, relatively free form, public facing events.

I read that Regan, after charges of mental decline, actively increased his public facing agenda. In contrast, passing on the Super Bowl interview feeds into the narrative that the Biden team is hiding him.

Or else, perception in a hyper media world quickly becomes reality.

Here again, the commenter hasn't allowed for the possibility that Biden might have difficulty doing several freeform public events at the present time.

At this site, we have no ultimate way to know about the state of President Biden's mental acuity. That said, the negative perception has been building over a fairly substantial stretch of time. It has not been coming on quickly.

When we see tape of Biden from four years ago, I don't feel entirely sure that that person still exists. His voice was stronger, his eyes were wider, his self-assurance seemed stronger. not sure that person.

In the last few days, I saw tape of Biden from January 2023 and it struck me that I'm not even sure that that version of President Biden still exists.

Denial, wishful thinking and true belief can be powerful forces at times of great partisan conflict. President Biden doesn't seem the same to us. They've been pushing this extremely hard at orgs like Fox, but I for one don't think that they're simply making it up.

In the end, Kevin's perception may turn out to be accurate. I thought Biden's energy level and demeanor were highly unpersuasive last night, and if some loss of acuity is underway, such situations tend to get worse.

In our view, Trump is deeply disordered, but he's full of energy ("passionate intensity"). Our tribe seems to be whistling past the (metaphorical) graveyard with respect to this state of affairs—that is, unless Kevin is right.

This is a terrible, tragic state of affairs. That is, unless Kevin is right.

ARMIES: Sheer idiocy, the commander said!

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2024

The foot soldiers fell into line: As the coming year's siege of the White House continues to pick up steam, yesterday turned into a full-blown example of "That Was the [Day] That Was." 

As with the earlier siege of the towering walls of Troy, a wide array of armies—rather, of battalions within two larger armies—have assembled themselves in the field.

Within the realm of red tribe corporate America, one such battalion assembles each night on Gutfeld!, a Fox News Channel program. Last Friday night's hour was especially rank, though also quite instructive. 

A red nation army was aligned in the field. Near the start of the program's last segment. the program's angry commander-in-chief was angrily saying this:

GUTFELD (2/2/24): It's so weird, Walter, to start the morning by trying to make yourself stupid. 

It's like getting up and going, "Hey, you know what? I feel smart. I've got to shave off thirty I.Q. points. What's on Morning Joe?"

To watch the full segment, start here.

Sure enough! For his hour's closing segment, the field general had decided to feature the sheer stupidity of the blue tribe show, Morning Joe. 

In a new report, Politico had reported that President Biden often watches the MSNBC program. Also, Politico was reporting that Biden sometimes consults with Joe Scarborough, namesake of Morning Joe.

Joe Biden watches Morning Joe! The general took that as his cue to tell the world how stupid the program ism and his foot soldiers fell into line. 

The general had directed his comment at a resentful novelist, Walter Kirn. Kirn had replied in this manner:

KIRN (continuing directly): So we find out that Morning Joe is programming Naptime Joe every day, OK? This used to happen with Days of Our Lives and my grandma...

This program's "President Poopy Pants" had now been rendered as "Naptime Joe." Kirn seems to have become an "insult novelist," albeit one who meekly repeats whatever he's been told. 

At this point, the other troops took turns amplifying their leader's storyline. Eventually, Todd Piro, cohost of the 5 a.m. program Fox & Friends First, summed it up as shown below, with Gutfeld then throwing to Kat:

PIRO: Morning Joe is a D.C. bubble for the old people that were hippies that are no longer, you know, cogent and cognizant of life, and the D.C. establishment. So, it's a circular line of thinking, and it's useless. It's useless for the country. Completely useless.

GUTFELD: It's a stupid loop. 

[APPLAUSE]

Kat, it's a stupid loop. You have stupidity coming one way, gets reinforced, sends it back, and it just keeps going around and around and around.

A merry-go-round of idiocy. If you will, Kat. If you will!

Full disclosure:

In our view, there are several problems with the general thrust of Morning Joe. That said, we were a bit surprised to see this Fox News Channel program attacking that program as "stupid."

In our view, Joe Scarborough tends to clown around a bit too much. (That said, his sense of humor is much more refined than that of the angry child Gutfeld.)

Also, Morning Joe does seem to serve as a vehicle for the Biden White House line, sometimes in ways which strike us as uninsightful on the merits and unhelpful on the politics.

That said, the program also offers extremely careful discussions of our struggling nation's role in the wider world. We regard them as the most intelligent such discussion was ever see on any cable news program. 

Like the vast bulk of the population, we have no particular knowledge in the realm of foreign affairs. For that reason, we're grateful for the chance to watch those Morning Joe discussions.

There's no such thing as a perfect discussion. But those discussions are intelligent and nuanced—and they're routinely driven by a trio of highly experienced analysts.

Who drives these discussions of Morning Joe? Once again, let's call the roll:

Principal foreign policy analysts, Morning Joe

Admiral James Stavridis: Retired United States Navy admiral. NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (2009 to 2013). Commander, United States Southern Command (2006 to 2009). 

Chair emeritus of the board of directors of the United States Naval Institute. Senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Richard Haass: President of the Council on Foreign Relations, 2003 through June 2023. Prior to that, director of policy planning for the United States Department of State.

David Ignatius: Since 1999, twice-weekly columnist for the Washington Post on global politics, economics and international affairs.

There's no such thing as a perfect discussion. There's no such thing as a perfect roster.

That said, the Morning Joe foreign policy roster is deeply experienced and highly informed. Did we remember to mention the fact that Admiral Stavridis, a transparently sane public figure, is also a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab?

At any rate, so it goes on Morning Joe as it drives its stupid loop forward. By way of contrast, here's the roster of low-grade nudnicks who were appearing on Field Marshall Gutfeld's remarkably crabbed TV show on the evening in question:

Five-member panel, Gutfeld! 

Greg Gutfeld: Comedian. Former editor-in-chief of Stuff.

Tyrus: Now touring with new comedy show. Former professional wrestling heavyweight champion.

Kat Timpf: Comedian and "best-selling author." Co-host, Fox News Radio podcast Tyrus and Timpf.

Walter Kirn: American novelist, essayist. Author of eight novels, most notably Up in the Air.

Todd Piro: Co-host, Fox & Friends First, 5-6 a.m.

Once again, we've called the roll. On this occasion, this assembly of flyweights were happy to tell us how stupid Stavridis is!

Please understand! There's no reason why a low-grade comedian, or a former professional wrestler, can't be an insightful analyst. 

In fact, Tyrus is a highly skilled raconteur. That doesn't necessarily mean that he has a ton of policy chops, or that he's qualified to opine on every policy question producers might throw on the air.

Below, we'll show you the circumstance under which Timpf is now routinely introduced as a "best-selling New York Times author." For now, let's examine where she took this discussion after receiving the throw from her boss.

By now, the others had each taken a turn deriding the sheer stupidity of the program aimed at those who are no longer cogent or cognizant.  It would now be Kat's turn.

How brilliant are the nightly discussions which unspool on the primetime "cable news" program? Accepting the throw from her commander in chief, the analyst started like this:

TIMPF (continuing directly): I was just wondering like, Do you think Mika gets jealous? 

[NERVOUS LAUGHTER]

Do you think they fight about it? 

Because I definitely would! I would be like, "Oh sorry, like you don't have time—  Oh, the president is on."

[NERVOUS LAUGHTER]

 She probably—

[GESTURING TO LARGE PHOTO OF MIKA]

Look how upset she looks right over there.

GUTFELD: She always looks upset. She has resting upset face!

TYRUS: Well played!

So it went as the brilliant Timpf discussed the other tribe's amazingly stupid program.

Near the end of The Iliad, the body of Hector, breaker of horses, is dragged through the dirt and the dust outside the walls of Troy.

Three thousand years later, the building blocks of our own democracy are dragged through the dust on a nightly basis when these consummate flyweights are thrown on the air to offer name-calling insults for millions of people who don't understand that they're getting played—with Timpf agreeing to earn her keep by mocking Mika's comical face.

There is no perfect way to grade or rate a discussion. Within our own grade book, Morning Joe's foreign policy discussions are routinely highly erudite.

The discussion we see the Gutfeld! show are routinely among the dumbest, and the ugliest, ever seen in this part of the earth.

This week, as we've limned last Friday's program, we haven't been able to get to the ugliest parts of that show—to the parts of the show where the angry host kicks down at every demographic group which threatens his extremely fragile comfort level.

We haven't gone to the parts of the show where he kicks down at women; kicks down at gays; kicks down at trans kids; kicks down at "blacks" like Williams and Ford; kicks down at all demographic comers. 

Even Achilles beat back his great anger; the astoundingly privileged Greg Gutfeld rarely does. He will then duck behind his disguise, behind which he portrays himself as just a harmless little scamp.

We don't have the slightest idea how this 59-year-old man ever got to be this way. That said, the world would be a better place if San Mateo's own Greg Gutfeld could somehow make himself better. 

He could of course retain his "libertarian" views, slender and brittle as those supposed views seem to be. 

Democracy is being dragged through the dust as the suits at the Fix News Chanell broadcast this braindead prime time program. In this instance, the program ended with a segment in which a bunch of low-grade comedians commented on the blinding stupidity being churned by such experienced figures as Stavridis, Haass and Ignatius.

Each person will have to score the panels on those two cable programs in the way which makes most sense. We're sorry to have beaten up on Timpf in the way we've done in the past two days, but her commentaries have been utterly brainless, even as she agrees to recite the scripts her owners hand her.

By the way, how did this flyweight-adjacent figure ever become a "New York Times best-selling author?" That designation was awarded to Timpf's rarely reviewed 2023 memoir, You Can't Joke About That: Why Everything Is Funny, Nothing Is Sacred, and We're All in This Together. 

Almost all the low-grade comedians at Fox have books about what one of them calls "the war on fun." But how did an avowed libertarian like Timpf become a best-selling author? 

In this report from last December, the New York Times' Elizabeth Egan seems to explain, twin headlines included:

Snapshot of a Year in the Land of Best Sellers
Surprising ascensions, Hollywood migrations and daggers to the art—it’s all part of life at the top.

[...]

In 1995, the authors of a book on successful business practices were accused of purchasing tens of thousands of copies of their own book to manipulate their way onto best-seller lists. That’s when The Times started printing a small dagger after certain titles, indicating that bookstores reported bulk orders of these books.

Of the 22 titles that were appended with a dagger in 2023, seven were published by Broadside, a conservative-leaning imprint of HarperCollins, and, with two exceptions, are by current or former political figures or are affiliated with Fox News. Mike Pompeo, Ron DeSantis, Kat Timpf, Jason Chaffetz and Johnny Joey Jones fall into this category.

"So that was what they were like, I thought, these white-handed, high-collared clerks and bookkeepers!"

So says Willa Cather's narrator in My Antonia as he comes to understand the hypocrisy of the Anglo boys who refuse to act on their attraction to the vibrant beauty of Black Hawk's immigrant girls.

That story is told in Book II, Chapter IX of Cather's famous and real book. In a somewhat similar vein, Timpf is the kind of libertarian who gets her bills paid by Fox. 

The channel promotes her comedy appearances on the air, such as those outings are. The channel also promotes the sales of her book. 

Also, someone apparently buys her book in bulk! As a result, Gutfeld introduces her as a "best-selling New York Times author" night after night after night.

As for Timpf, she isn't nasty on a regular basis, the way her battalion chief is.  To her vast credit under the circumstances, she's rarely nasty at all.

On this occasion, she did decide to go after Mika's face.  Are these the things these flyweights are willing to do to stay on the gravy train?

The Iliad records the end of a fictional, ten-year siege of Troy. Ten thousand years later, we plan to provide a year-long history of this year's siege of the Biden White House.

Red battalions are already in the field. Blue battalions are also active. We plan to create a history of the way this siege unfolds. As a person who will be voting blue, we almost think that we can sense a possible very bad outcome.

In a very general way, we tend to agree with some of the things which get said on Gutfeld! At present, the red nation army possesses certain weapons whose power is hard to deny.

That said, the tone of the show is very stupid and very ugly, sometimes in ways we haven't yet had time to discuss.

Red tribe voters watching this program don't know that they're getting played. In closing, let us add this:

Gutfeld! isn't a comedy show. It hasn't been quixotically placed in a primetime slot on our highest-rated "news channel."

Almost surely, Fox is moving in this direction because research has shown that its expanding comedy tilt provides a more successful way to advance its preferred lines of propaganda and misinformation.

 Producers assemble a gaggle of hacks. The gaggle of hacks proceed to pimp their various insults and their mandated party lines.

Democracy is being dragged in the dust as the corporate suits at the Fox News Channel produce this nightly show. At times, its programs get uglier than we've yet shown you. 

Meanwhile, riddle yourself this:

Stavridis is stupid, but Greg Gutfeld isn't! As our nation splits into two, is rationality itself being dragged through the dust? Is sanity turned on its head? 

Still coming, though we don't know when: The most soul-damaged segment ever. 

Also, what Kat told Bill Maher

Are liberals allowed to admire James Lankford?

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2024

We'll go with a solid yes: We've never voted for a Republican. That pretty much leaves Senator James Lankford (R-OK) off our future "might vote for him" candidate list.

Aside from that, we've always semi-admired Sen. Lankford. Our reasons would have gone something like this:

This week, Lankford is suddenly very high profile due to his role as one of the three senators who crafted the Ukraine / Southern border bill. In the past, he was much lower profile on the national stage, but he always struck us as very smart—and he isn't nasty, stupid, ridiculous, crazy or some kind of ugly name-caller., as many others are.

Are we liberals allowed to admire those who differ from our views? In yesterday's New York Times, Kayla Guo offered an intriguing profile of the suddenly controversial Sen. Lankford, parts of which we post below. 

Lankford's views are not our views. We're prepared to let them be his:

As His Border Deal Dies, a G.O.P. Senator Laments the Forces Against It

[...]

The plight of Mr. Lankford, 55, a slim, understated Baptist minister with neatly combed red hair, reflects the extraordinary rise and fall of the border and Ukraine deal that Republicans blocked in a test vote on Wednesday—and the political forces within the Republican Party that brought it down.

For months, Mr. Lankford, a staunch conservative, labored over the package alongside Senators Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, and Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent, demanding strict immigration policies his party insisted must be a part of any bill to send a fresh infusion of aid to Ukraine. But when Mr. Lankford managed to extract them, he found his fellow Republicans unwilling to embrace the plan, in a vivid illustration of how the political ground for any compromise on immigration has vanished for a party that has decided the issue is too valuable as a political weapon to resolve.

Lankford is "a staunch conservative." Here at this site, we aren't.

Also, he's a Baptist minister. We hold no religious or theological views. As a general matter, our cosmology could be summed up like this:

We humans have no idea where we are, or how we got here, or what we're doing there. 

In our view, it's all beyond our pay grade as humans. By way of contrast, the leading authority on the subject reports that Lankford's early life and formal education proceeded in the manner shown:

Lankford was born March 4, 1968, in Dallas, Texas, the son of Linda Joyce (née House) and James Wesley Lankford. His mother was an elementary school librarian. His maternal grandparents owned a small dry-cleaning business, his father and paternal grandparents a dairy farm. His stepfather was a career employee of AC Delco, the parts division of General Motors.

Lankford's parents divorced when he was four; he lived with his mother and older brother for a time in his grandparents' garage apartment. He became a Christian at eight. His mother remarried when he was twelve, and the family moved to Garland, Texas, with his stepfather.

Lankford attended Lakeview Centennial High School in Garland. While there, he participated in the Close Up Washington civic education program. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Secondary Education (specializing in speech and history) at University of Texas at Austin in 1990, and a master's degree in Divinity at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1994. Lankford is an ordained Southern Baptist minister.

That isn't our story at all. Lankford was born in Dallas, we were born in Boston and came of age in the San Francisco suburbs. We were talked out of religion in the ninth grade by the friend whose father created this amazing legacy as a musician, composer and painter. 

To see some of the paintings, click here.

Way back then, we would walk past Greg Gutfeld's Serra High as we ambulated down the Alameda de las Pulgas to visit that friend's (very challenging) home. Because he'd been stricken with polio, our friend's father was painting with a paint brush held in his mouth by that point in time.

Lankford graduated from Texas Austin, then went to Southwestern Baptist Theological. We graduated from Harvard in 1969, then began to teach in the Baltimore City Schools, looking for a possible way to possibly save the world.

Lankford became a Christian at age 8. Except in the most tangential ways, that description of an early life lies outside our frame of reference. 

That said, his upbringing produced a very bright man who isn't nasty or ridiculous or crazy—a person who doesn't go around calling everyone names.

The Beatles lived in a yellow submarine. By way of contrast, the rest of us live in a large continental nation. An array of different culture zones define and establish the complex fabric of that giant nation.

As we've often noted, Bill Clinton said he greatly admired the Arkansas Pentecostals, even though they rarely voted for him, because of the way he saw them live their faith. A nation like ours cannot exist unless people are able to admire neighbors and friends with different outlooks and worldviews.

(We also think that that passage from Clinton's book is the greatest primer of this era in the way to win elections and / or to advance the values and goals of your political party or your cultural tribe.)

Lankford is now on the firing line. "He could have seen it coming," Guo says. After that, she explains:

He could have seen it coming. Weeks ago, Mr. Lankford revealed on Wednesday, a “popular” right-wing media personality vowed to do “whatever I can to destroy you” if he tried to “move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year,” he said.

“By the way,” Mr. Lankford added, “they have been faithful to their promise, and have done everything they can to destroy me.”

The soft-spoken second-term Republican, who generally refrains from seeking the political limelight, did not volunteer to helm the border negotiations when they began in the fall. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, deputized him as the top Republican on the Senate’s border security subcommittee. Or as Mr. Lankford put it, he drew the “short straw when it came time to be able to negotiate all this.”

His Republican colleagues warned him to be careful.

“I told him he was going to be like a goalie on a dart team,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, who was supportive of the talks but came out this week in opposition to the bill. “He knew this was a treacherous path, but I have nothing but praise for Senator Lankford. I think he’s done the best job you could possibly do under the circumstances. It’s just a very, very, very difficult, complex situation.”

Just a guess—confirming the claim about that "right-wing media personality," and identifying who that person is, will now be the focus of a large journalistic hunt.

Lankford is soft-spoken, and also plainly quite smart. In a political world of endless invective, "soft-spoken" strikes us as good. 

Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) is full of praise for his Republican colleague. We think Murphy is one of the smartest, sanest Democratic senators. 

A nation like ours can't possibly function if we all insist on loathing The Others. Murphy's praise for his colleague Lankford is good enough for us. 

ARMIES: When Gutfeld threw to the clueless Kat Timpf...

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2024

...democracy died in the dust: What would a reasonably intelligent public discourse actually look like?

Almost surely, it wouldn't start with a 59-year-old termagant-adjacent, "cable news" shouter referring to a sitting president as "President Poopy Pants." 

It wouldn't start like that! But so it now goes in the adult-free erogenous zone now being developed in the vineyards at Fox. 

That said, what might a less ridiculous discourse possibly look like?

In yesterday's report, we started to sketch that out. At issue was a specific claim by President Biden—the claim that food prices in our grocery stores are now being driven, at least in part, by some degree of corporate price-gouging.

The president advanced that claim in a speech on South Carolina on Saturday, January 27. Below, you see the full, though rather limited text of what he said on that topic that day.

For the White House transcript, just click here. The full excerpt goes like this:

From Biden's speech: Saturday, January 27

But look, folks, things this country has—have been through have been pretty tough for a lot of people.  But we’re making progress.  There’s a lot more on the way.

Inflation is coming down.  It’s now lower in America than any other major economy in the world.  

(Applause.)  

The cost of eggs, milk, chicken, gas, and so many other essential items have come down.

But for all we’ve done to bring prices down, there are still too many corporations in America ripping people off:  price gouging, junk fees, greedflation, shrinkflation. 

You see that article about the Snickers bar?  

(Laughter.)  

Well, it’s going to stop. Americans, we’re tired of being played for suckers.  

(Applause.)  

And that’s why we’re going to keep these guys—keep on them and get the prices down.

For the record, those insertions about the laughter and the applause strike us as perhaps overstated. But there you see the full extent of what Biden said on this topic that night.

The president did say that some corporations have been involved in price gouging. And as Jim Tankersley noted in last Saturday's New York Times, Biden "made a similar point last fall in a post on the social media platform X."

To our eye and ear, Biden's claim sounds underwhelming—heavily meh—when we watch the tape of that speech. Still, he had made a fairly specific claim about a matter of great current concern.

To his credit, Tankersley advanced the discussion with his news report about the claim—with the news report from which we quoted in yesterday's report. 

For the record, Tankersley's report appeared online on Thursday, February 1. The following evening, the resident red tribe pundit army on the primetime "cable news" program Gutfeld! pretended to conduct a discussion of what Biden had said.

As we noted yesterday, Tankersley had included some basic information in his report—information which might bear on the accuracy of President Biden's claim:

He reported that grocery stores "had increased their [profit] margins by about two percentage points since the eve of the pandemic, reaching their highest level in two decades." According to a government study, those profit margins "have stayed elevated" post-pandemic, "even as other retailers’ margins have fallen back."

Also, "food producers...have continued to raise prices even as their costs have declined, leading to heady profit margins," Tankersley reported. 

Does this mean that price-gouging is going on in the casino? Not necessarily, no. But it might be the start of a serious effort to analyze Biden' claim.

Tankersley's report appeared online late in the evening of Thursday, February 1. Roughly 24 hours later, the resident army on the Gutfeld! show pretended to stage a discussion.

It started, as all such Gutfeld! discussions must, with adolescent name-calling from the program's 59-year-old host. After he played tape of one part of what Biden had said, the first expert he consulted on this question was Kat Timpf, a low-grade comedian and the author of a (very briefly) New York Times best-selling book.

Timpf seems like a perfectly decent person. On the other hand, her analysis of this news event went exactly like this:

GUTFELD (2/2/24): Kat, is it me or does this guy have no concept of how the economy works? He always blames the outcomes for the cause of the outcomes.

TIMPF: Yeah. And also, just kind of the whole thing felt very like "old man yells at cloud." You know, it's like:

[PERFORMS LOUD SCREECHING IMPRESSION OF BIDEN]

And the grocery stores and the Snickers and the thing, and the Snickers. It's like, And I I told them, you better [unintelligible]—

It's like, "OK, Grandpa! [chuckles] You got them! You're right."

I don't think anybody, regardless of any of their political views, watches that and is like, "You know, I think he's on it. I think he's got it." 

[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

I think, when I go to the store, like it's going to take—

People are like, "Okay." I don't think anyone's even thinking about it that much any more. It's just like, what?

Like, he doesn't know how much anything costs. He doesn't know what he's saying. I think that even saying he doesn't know how the economy works, that's like very charitable. He doesn't say anything close to that.

GUTFELD: Yeah. Tyrus, does this piss you off? Or is this just funny?

Such was the full analysis of Kat Timpf, purveyor of narrative.  Moving right along, Tyrus is the former professional wrestling heavyweight champion who is now making the stand-up scene and appears most nights on the Gutfeld! show. 

In fact, Tyrus is a highly capable raconteur. He's plainly a very bright person. But on this occasion, he wandered the countryside at considerable length, apparently in search a humorous double entendre built around Biden's use of the word, "suckers."

Either that, or he didn't understand what the president had said. At long last, he settled for this:

TYRUS: 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 FROM AUDIENCE]

At least he didn't use the f-bomb this time; he'd been BLEEPED only moments before. But here, he saved his floundering attempt at commentary with an old fashioned, if incoherent, trip to the d*ck joke pile, the place to which this undergrown program almost always returns.

Having said that, let's return to Timpf's oration. As we do, let us say this:

We're now repeatedly told by the Washington Post: Democracy Dies in Darkness. One of the building blocks of a working democracy lay dead and dying in the dust as Timpf staged that imitation of human life on last Friday evening's show.

To all appearances, the stunningly privileged "cable news" star didn't have the first [BLEEPING] idea what she was talking about. She had exactly nothing to say about the actual topic at hand. All she had was a stream of generic insults aimed at the man she derided as "Grandpa"—at President Poopy Pants.

Can democracy die in darkness? Just as a matter of fact, democracy was dying right there, as the battalion of overaged children on the Gutfeld! show conduct their latest clueless imitation of actual human life.

Timpf knew as much about the topic at hand as we would know if we were asked to discuss the Bolshoi Ballet. For the record, there was no sign that any of the program's gang of five had ever perused Tankersley's day-old report at the Times—the news report which almost surely led producers to build a segment around that particular topic.

None of them knew what they were talking about, but they all knew their brief. Gutfeld said it, then everyone did. This is the way they played:

Gutfeld: Kat, is it me or does this guy have no concept of how the economy works? 

Timpf: Like, he doesn't know how much anything costs. He doesn't know what he's saying.

Tyrus: To Kat's point, he has no idea what he's talking about.

Walter Kirn: Kat [is] right, because he sounds like he's ranting in a dog park or something.

Todd Piro: It's from a position of ignorance. He completely has no idea how a supermarket works.

Everyone agreed with Kat, and Kat agrees with Gutfeld. 

On the down side, Timpf had nothing whatsoever to say about the topic at hand. Neither she, nor anyone else showed any sign of having read the New York Times report which almost surely trigged the selection of the price-gouging claim as a topic the next night.

To appearances, no one had the slightest idea what they were taking about. They did understand their charge from the corporate behemoth by whom they're all employed:

Their assignment was to bring in the insults. Timpf played the insult card well.

Ten thousand years ago, Hector's body was dragged through the dust outside the towering walls of Troy after that shining citadel fell. 

Today, our way of life is dragged through the dust when strivers like this mediocre "comic" take the money from corporate owners and pretend to conduct a human discussion, in prime time, on this major "cable news" channel.

Democracy is already dying in the dust as Gutfeld sprays his insults around, then calls on his vacuous guests. For the record, we've barely scratched the cat-scratch surface of how stupid, but also possibly ugly, last Friday night's program got.

Tomorrow: Almost beyond the reach of belief. Gutfeld limns Morning Joe!

It looks like the border deal has failed!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2024

The claims voters hear on cable: By all accounts, the once bipartisan border deal has officially crashed and burned.

In a front-page report in this morning's New York Times, Baker and Edmondson described yesterday's televised speech by President Biden concerning the bill's apparent fail:

Border Deal Is Doomed, and Biden Puts the Blame Squarely on Trump

[...]

“I understand the former president is desperately trying to stop this bill because he’s not interested in solving the border problem,” Mr. Biden said. “He wants a political issue to run against me on.”

“Republicans have to decide,” he added. “Who do they serve? Donald Trump or the American people?”

He called the bipartisan agreement “a win for America” because it combines the “most fair, humane reforms” to immigration law and “the toughest set of reforms to secure the border” at a time of record illegal migration. To buttress his point, he cited support from institutions normally favorable to Republicans, including The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Border Patrol Council, a union that endorsed Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020.

“If this bill fails, I want to be absolutely clear about something,” Mr. Biden said. “The American people are going to know why it failed. I’ll be taking this issue to the country.”

We only hope that Candidate Biden will be able to make good on that promise. Yesterday, as he spoke on behalf of the bill, he cited a trio of red-leaning entities which had voiced their support for the bill.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page wrote a formal editorial in support of the bill. Yesterday, on the Fox News Channel program The Five, the lone Democrat on the five-member panel went right ahead and said so!

It was Harold Ford in the suicide seat, opposed by all four fellow panelists. In the course of his remarks, he had already cited the Wall Street Journal's editorial in support of the deal. 

A bit later, sure enough! When he cited the Border Patrol Union's support, this exchange with Jeanine Pirro occurred:

PIRRO (2/7/24): The fact that we already have the laws on the books, and Joe Biden won't let the border patrol enforce the laws, is reason enough to believe that, even if we pass something, Joe Biden's agenda is to let them in.

FORD: Why do you think the Border Patrol Union endorsed this?

PIRRO: Because they didn't have a chance.

Say what? "Because they didn't have a chance?" 

Even within the fuller context, that faltering reply by Pirro didn't make any obvious sense. And yes, that was Pirro's full reply. As we review the tape of that exchange, we see no sign that she had anything else to add.

We'd call it a non-answer answer! But at this point, Dana Perino broke in and brought the segment to its end. Fox News viewers weren't required to see "Judge Jeanine" pushed to offer a reply to Ford which seemed to make more sense.

In her work on this 5 p.m. pig-pile show, with four red tribe panelists arrayed against a single lone blue, Pirro relentlessly takes the prize as interrupter of the year. In this case, though, she managed to emit one essential talking point before Ford posed his question.

"We already have the laws on the books," she said. It's just that Biden won't enforce them! 

In the past few days, red tribe viewers have heard variants of that claim again and again and again. Here was slacker panelist Jesse Watters, making a highly improbable claim at the start of this same discussion:

WATTERS (2/6/24): So, we looked it up. Any president since 1952 can shut down the border if he finds the entry of aliens is detrimental to the United States. He can shut the whole thing down like that [SNAPS FINGERS] So he's asking Congress for powers he already has.

The claim that Watters "looked something up" bumps on the limits of human credulity. That said, viewers of Fox News programs heard it again and again last night:

President Biden already has all the powers he needs to bring the border under control. For example, he could simply restore the "Remain in Mexico" policy, the way his predecessor did.

Citizens watching Fox News programs heard such claims again and again, right through the opening segment of the channel's 11 p.m. program.

Ever so briefly, Ford was there to offer an alternate view during The Five. But under current arrangements, that's about as much diversity of viewpoint as anyone will ever see on the Fox News Channel or on primetime MSNBC programs.

Red tribe viewers have heard it again and again—Biden has all the authority he needs to bring the border under control. Blue tribe viewers were hearing all night about the most recent court ruling concerning the ongoing attempts to frog-march Trump to jail.

That court ruling was a real news event—but dearest readers, please riddle us this:

How many viewers of blue tribe programs would know how to answer the Fox News claims concerning Biden's pre-existing powers? How many viewers could hope to explain what was wrong with the claim made by Pirro and by Watters?

At one time, cable news discussion shows ran on the Crossfire / Point/Counterpoint model. A Republican and / or conservative panelist would make a claim about some issue. A Democratic and / or liberal panelist would offer a rebuttal.

Viewers were forced to hear competing claims. Depending on the moderator's skills, a real debate or discussion might take place.

The Crossfire model has given way to "segregation by viewpoint." Dear readers, riddle us this:

Could you explain how this border bill was or is supposed to work? Would you know how to respond to the claim that President Biden already has all the powers he needs, right at the present time?

We'll say right now that we couldn't do that! Just a guess:

Given the way our two-tribe news culture currently works, neither could anyone else!

ARMIES: Army of Gutfeld feigns a discussion!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2024

Here's how democracy dies: Why are grocery prices still high? Inquiring minds want to know.

In this recent analysis, the AP reports that egg prices are creeping back up due to a new wave of avian flu. Also, we think we've read that orange juice prices may still be high as a result of weather-related crop losses in Florida.

Such occurrences would qualify as "acts of God." That said, could price-gouging possibly be another part of the story?

Last Friday, President Biden made that allegation in a speech in South Carolina. That evening, a 59-year-old man, joined by an army of low-grade comedians along with a former professional wrestler, played a video clip of what President Biden had said.

The man then proceeded to savage the allegedly ludicrous statements made by "President Poopy Pants," a public servant who was also described, on this Gutfeld! program, as "the vegetable in chief."

Executives at the Fox News Channel are now putting this new variety of manifest garbage on their "cable news" air through much of their network's prime time. In this new post, Kevin Drum linked to our latest report about that evening's Gutfeld! program. 

Kevin wasn't impressed with Greg Gutfeld's army of God. His headline said this:

Yes, Fox News has gotten even worse

Fox News "has gotten even worse," Kevin said, as it continues to build a new pseudo-journalistic culture around the musings of groups of "sophomoric jokesters." 

In principle, we agree with that assessment, but we'll offer one word of caution:

We assume that Fox is moving its primetime programming in this direction because the network has learned, through market research, that this represents a more successful way to advance tribal propaganda.

To be clear, we don't know that any such research has been conducted. But we'll offer a solid guess in which that's a part of the deal.

Greg Gutfeld's panels will constitute one of the armies in the field during this year's political war in our country—during the ongoing siege of the Biden White House. Just as the traveling poets who composed The Iliad listed all the armies in the field during the lengthy siege of Troy, so too here:

This site will be reviewing the various armies determining our nation's fate as we approach the presidential election scheduled for this November.

The angry and irrational Gutfeld sits at the head of one such army. Last Friday night, he and his troupers savaged President Poopy Pants in a way which lets us know that the basic building blocks of a sane democracy are already slipping away, with very few armies within our blue tribe recording what those red tribe armies are doing or offering words of complaint.

At any rate, the vegetable-in-chief had made an allegation. For those still wedded to reality, is there any actual merit to what the vegetable said?

For ourselves, we thought the video clip of President Biden's statement was underwhelming, basically unimpressive. That said, in last Saturday's print editions, the New York Times offered a detailed news a report on the question at hand.

Gambling was spotted in Rick's casino. Is price gouging present in our grocery stores?

Inquiring minds might want to know! Headline included, the report in the Times began in the manner shown:

Biden Takes Aim at Grocery Chains Over Food Prices

President Biden, whose approval rating has suffered amid high inflation, is beginning to pressure large grocery chains to slash food prices for American consumers, accusing the stores of reaping excess profits and ripping off shoppers.

“There are still too many corporations in America ripping people off: price gouging, junk fees, greedflation, shrinkflation,” Mr. Biden said last week in South Carolina. Aides say those comments are a preview of more pressure to come against grocery chains and other companies that are maintaining higher-than-usual profit margins after a period of rapid price growth.

Jim Tankersley's report appeared on page B1—the front page of the Business section. Already, in his second graf, Tankersley had reported that "grocery chains and other companies" are maintaining "higher-than-usual profit margins" at the present time.

Does that mean that "price gouging" is involved? We employ no experts on such questions. As such, we have no real idea at the present time.

That said, we did read on. As Tankersley's report continued, he also reported such findings as these:

A new analysis from the White House Council of Economic Advisers suggests that elevated profit margins among large grocery retailers could be contributing to the stubbornly high price of food on store shelves. The analysis, which relies on Quarterly Financial Reports data from the Census Bureau, found that food and beverage stores had increased their margins by about two percentage points since the eve of the pandemic, reaching their highest level in two decades.

Much of that increase came in 2021 and 2022, around the time that other retailers—like clothing and sporting goods stores—also saw profit margins jump. Grocery-store margins have stayed elevated, the analysis finds, even as other retailers’ margins have fallen back to more normal levels based on recent history.

[...]

But the White House analysis also implies that increased grocery profit margins do not come close to accounting for the price spikes that grocery shoppers have experienced under Mr. Biden’s tenure.

Other research suggests additional forces—like consumer demand and supply-chain disruptions—are a much bigger factor in the price increases. A bout of avian flu caused egg prices to spike last year, for example. And food producers, like soft-drink manufacturers, have continued to raise prices even as their costs have declined, leading to heady profit margins.

On its face, we're prepared to score Tankersley's report as admirably fair and balanced. 

Tankersley seems to report that price-gouging can't account for the bulk of the grocery store price increases. On the other hand, he also seems to report that grocery stores are enjoying unusually high profit margins at the present time.

Also, food producers are experiencing "heady" profit margins—and they've continued to raise their prices even as costs have declined.

Is some degree of price-gouging some part of the picture concerning grocery prices? We still have no finished idea. But Tankersley was describing the basic field of play for anyone who wanted to explore this question in a traditional, rational way. 

His report appeared on the front page of the Business section of Saturday's New York Times. One night before, an angry 59-year-old man, joined by a panel of Fox-style experts, had pretended to conduct a discussion of this very topic.

It would have been extremely hard to conduct a dumber "discussion" than the one this army of Gutfeld conducted last Friday night. In this case, their imitation of an adult discussion was conducted in primetime, on our nation's most-watched network for "cable news," as millions of voters watched.

Tankersley is an experienced economic reporter. The angry 59-year-old man was joined by a low-grade comedian, a former professional wrestler and by a timid, name-calling novelist, but also by a pompous peacock dragged in from Fox & Friends First..

As we noted yesterday, the angry 59-year-old man spewed a stream of juvenile insults. Quite plainly, the people with whom he conducted his imitation of a discussion showed no sign of having the slightest idea what they were talking about.

This kind of sophomoric pseudo-discussion is now a staple of three (3) hour-long, primetime weeknight programs on the Fox News Channel. The 59-year-old man commands one of the armies which will be out in the field, waging its war on the red tribe's side, during this year's siege of the White House.

Blue tribe armies have stood down from any attempt to report or critique this peculiar state of affairs. All in all, and simply put, no one wants to tangle with Fox. Among the higher-class armies of the blue tribe, it simply isn't done.

Democracy dies in darkness, we're now repeatedly told. The major newspaper which broadcasts that warning clear of the Fox News Channel, as does everyone else.

For today, let us say this:

We've shown you the way a serious journalist starts to conduct a serious examination of a serious policy question. Tomorrow, we'll give you a look at what occurred when Greg Gutfeld's ersatz army pretended to discuss the claim made by the person they derided as President Poopy Pants—the claim that some amount of current food prices results from some type of price-gouging.

We'll also visit a second Fox News show, a Fox News program from last weekend. On that program, Fox & Friends cohost Brian Kilmeade interviewed John Walsh about the return of Walsh's long-running crime-stopper program, America's Most Wanted.

It was Few Misstatements Left Behind as the pair pretended to discuss the current state of crime in our struggling nation. To appearances, basic facts died a thousand deaths in the course of their conversation. 

As in in the day when armies gathered on the plains outside the towering walls of Troy, so too here and now and today:

Various armies of the red tribe will be fighting in this manner as the siege of the White House unfolds. Major blue armies will fail to resist—have politely agreed to avert their gaze from generals like Gutfeld, have politely agreed to stand down.

Tomorrow: Democracy dies like this!