SATURDAY: MSNBC aired a special program!

SATURDAY, MARCH 16, 2024

It seemed like every program: We didn't exactly hate yesterday's Daily Howler. But it did leave us disquieted.

Partly, we were dealing with fatigue, based upon the loss of an hour last Saturday night. Thanks a lot, President Biden!

We're willing to call spade a spade! Mainly, though, the problem involved this disquieting fact:

In our view, the other tribe has been more right than wrong concerning one major topic.

Say what? The other tribe has been more right than wrong about something? So it has seemed to us:

In our view, the other tribe has seemed to be more right than wrong in the degree of emphasis it has placed on issues involving the southern border.

At times like these, it hurts to voice some such assessment. But so it has seemed to us as the other tribe has stressed an array of worries concerning the southern border, and as our own tribe has largely pretended that the border doesn't even exist.

So it went in recent years among our blue tribe's journalistic "thought leaders," but also among our major elected officials:

Biden officials kept insisting that the border was "secure" and "closed," even when it plainly wasn't. Our major blue pundits focused on the various trials of Donald J. Trump, and on little else.

As our blue tribe was adopting this stance, the red tribe plainly wasn't. They kept stressing a number of concerns about the border—concerns which seem valid to us. 

The questions they've raised have gone unaddressed as our own floundering tribe has kept trying to send Trump to jail. Full disclosure:

In our view, our blue tribe's efforts reached the point of parody at 10 o'clock last night. At that time, MSNBC aired a one-hour special which carried this name:

The Trump Indictments

For the record, that's the title of a new book by Melissa Murray and Andrew Weissman, a pair of highly capable MSNBC legal analysts. Murray and Weissman served as co-hosts of last night's one-hour special. Their book is published by Norton. 

Somewhat parodically, The Trump Indictments is also the name of a different new book! That new book was edited by Ali Velshi, another major figure at MSNBC. 

At some point, it might be easier to list the names of MSNBC personnel who haven't published new books called The Trump Indictments. At any rate, Murray and Weissman served as co-hosts of last night's hourlong special. It was Velshi who brought them on, after serving as substitute host for last night's edition of Alex Wagner Tonight.

Nothing which follows is intended as a criticism of Murray, Weissman or Velshi.  That said, last night's hourlong special opened with Murray saying this:

Good evening and welcome to a special hour devoted to the Trump indictments... 

Donald Trump is charged with 88 felony counts in four different jurisdictions. In this hour, we will cover the latest developments in Donald Trump's criminal cases starting with Fulton County, Georgia today.

That's the way the program started. Our immediate question was this: 

What primetime program on MSNBC within the last year hasn't been "devoted to the Trump indictments?" Within the last year, what hour hasn't "covered the latest developments in Donald Trump's criminal cases?"

The analysts yowled and tore at their hair as Murray offered that somewhat parodic introduction to last night's "special" hour. Briefly, though, let be clear:

The various indictments of Donald J. Trump do, in fact, constitute a set of major news events. There's no reason why they shouldn't be covered by major news orgs.

That said, the border has been a major news topic too, even as MSNBC has seemingly tried to ignore it.

Putting it mildly, the Fox News Channel hasn't ignored the southern border. In turn, the Fox News Channel has done its best to ignore or erase the events of January 6 and the role the former president played in those astounding events.

So it has gone as these two news orgs have stressed one major set of events while disappearing another. Here's our sad admission:

In our view, Fox has been more right than wrong in its focus on the border. Also, Fox has been more right than MSNBC in the amount of coverage it has given to border / immigration topics.

In our view, MSNBC has badly misfired in the massive amount of emphasis it has placed on the Trump indictments. In fairness, the channel has presumably pleased its target audience with this unyielding emphasis.

There were matters we didn't get to yesterday. We'll link you to several today.

We'll start with three posts in which Kevin Drum has attempted to explain some basic provisions of the proposed (and quickly discarded) border bill. All in all, this sort of thing is pretty much never done:

Kevin Drum on the border bill:
February 4, 2024: Senate immigration bill expands detention, increases asylum judges, and allows the president to shut the border

February 5, 2024: Here’s a quick look at objections to the Senate immigration bill

March 9, 2024: Why did Republicans vote down the immigration reform bill?

That sort of thing is rarely done. On cable, here's what happens instead:

On MSNBC, personnel repeat a talking-point about how great the border bill was. On Fox, personnel have tended to mumble imprecise claims about the bill's alleged flaws and limitations while saying that President Biden could fix the border all by himself, with no legislation needed.

Those are the dueling memorized claims. Depending on which channel you watch, you hear one claim or the other, with no disputation allowed.

We were also interested in Christopher Wray's testimony last week before a Senate committee. His testimony drew little press coverage. Headline included, here the start of a poorly-proofread report by ABC News:

ABC News: FBI director warns of 'dangerous individuals' coming across southern border

Amid a bitter election-year debate over illegal immigration, FBI Director Chris Wray told a Senate panel on Monday that dangerous individuals have entered the United States illegally at the southern border.

"We have had dangerous individuals entering the United States have a variety of sources," Wray said at the annual "Worldwide Threats" congressional hearings at which the heads of U.S. intelligence agencies testify.

"We are seeing a wide array of very dangerous threats that emanate from the border, " he said, citing drug trafficking in particular. "The FBI alone seized enough fentanyl in the last two years to kill 270 million people," he said.

[...]

"There is a particular network that has—some of the overseas facilitators of the smuggling network have—ISIS ties that we're very concerned about, and we've been spending enormous amount of effort with our partners investigating," Wray said.

Overall, he said, threats from various groups have reached a "whole other level."

"Even before October 7, I would have told this committee that we were at a heightened threat level from a terrorism perspective—in the sense that it's the first time I've seen in a long, long time," he said..."[S]ince October 7, though, that threat has gone to a whole other level. And so, this is a time I think for much greater vigilance, maybe been called upon us," he said.

On Fox, they talk about such alleged threats all the time. On MSNBC, rightly or wrongly, little of this gets mentioned.

We also would have liked to direct you to something Senator Katie Britt said on last weekend's Fox News Sunday. 

Britt was doubling down on a grossly misleading anecdote she uncorked as part of the official GOP response to President Biden's State of the Union address. Here's part of The Hill's report about what Britt now said:

ROBERTSON (3/10/24): Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) defended herself on Sunday after she used a story of sexual violence from two decades ago in Mexico as an attack on President Biden in her State of the Union response.

[...]

The senator brushed off the criticism, claiming the story [she told] is emblematic of the president’s border policy.

“I’ve said, in [Biden’s] first 100 days he had 94 executive actions, and those executive actions didn’t just create the crisis. They invited it,” Britt said in a “Fox News Sunday” interview with Shannon Bream. 

“The truth is, and the media knows that they’re not covering it, that human trafficking has gone up under President Biden,” she continued. “If you look back under 2018, it was a $500 million industry, human trafficking by the drug cartels. It is now a $13 billion dollar industry. Shannon, the drug cartels are winning under this. This is a story of what is happening now.”

Say what? Human trafficking by the drug cartels is now a $13 billion industry?

As it turns out, Britt was citing a pair of accurate dollar figures. Inevitably, she was doing so in a somewhat misleading / inaccurate way—though we tend to agree with her claim that "the media" tends not to cover this topic.

At any rate, they talk about "trafficking" all the time on the Fox News Channel! When it comes to topics like this, MSNBC tends to play Goofus to that channel's Gallant, broadcasting hourlong special programs designed to do the same thing they do during every primetime program.

Fox pleases red tribe viewers with its topic selection. MSNBC provides the same service to us blue tribe viewers.

This isn't the doing of Murray and Weissmann. It is a way to create a pair of warring populations, in much the way we read about on the wide plains outside Troy back in ancient times.

Last night, our blue channel offered a special broadcast. For better or worse, it seemed like every other broadcast—like the ones they don't call special!

Has the red channel been more right than wrong about this particular point? 

Much of their work comes straight outta clown college, astoundingly and inexcusably so. But is it conceivable that the others have maybe been more right than wrong, if only this once, just when it comes to this?

Jesse Watters breaks the news...

FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 2024

...concerning the CNN smear: Did Aaron Rodgers really say that the murders at Sandy Hook were a government hoax?

Yesterday, we discussed CNN's report to that effect. Then, shortly after 8 o'clock last night, we saw the Fox News Channel's Jesse Watters turn CNN's story to dust.

Well, not exactly! This is the way it went down:

Watters excitedly started his 8 p.m. show with the thrilling possibility that Rodgers may run for vice president under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

He was filled with excitement at that prospect—and he assured his viewers that CNN's report was just the latest "smear" by the liberal press in support of the Biden White House. 

Behind him, that's what the backdrop said—the backdrop said RODGERS SMEARED.

CNN's report was the real "hoax," the channel's silly child said. "This is just another dirty disinformation campaign to distract from the lifeless Democratic ticket," the smarmy Fox host declared. 

At that point, Watters dropped his purported bombshell. He played an audiotape from 2012 in which Rodgers said, on his Milwaukee radio show, that the incident was a terrible tragedy which he hoped we could learn from.

To see Watters play that audiotape from 2012, you can click right here.

Does that audiotape mean that CNN's report is itself a hoax and a SMEAR? Not really! Here's the problem:

The audiotape played by Watters seems to have been made in real time—in December 2012. According to CNN, the statement in which Rodgers claimed Sandy Hook was a government hoax was made five months later, at the Kentucky Derby in May 2013.

(In standard fashion, Watters seems to say that the reported statement by Rodgers was made at the Derby in 2012. In a thoroughly typical mangling of facts, he's off by one full year.)

In short, CNN's report isn't necessarily undermined by the fact that Rodgers made the earlier statement. It may be that Rodgers signed on to the growing conspiracy theories surrounding Sandy Hook in the months that elapsed between the two incidents.

Also, maybe Rodgers never did say that Sandy Hook was a hoax! We have no personal knowledge concerning this matter. Also, we have no desire to encourage hatred of Rodgers.

Did Rodgers really believe and say that Sandy Hook was a hoax? We can't answer that question, and we aren't looking to turn people into haters.

As we noted yesterday, so we'll note again today:

Many people do believe this least plausible of all possible claims. We regard that as an important, major new fact about the way we human beings frequently function. 

It's an anthropology lesson—anthropology all the way down:

Despite the ways we tend to describe ourselves, we human beings are inclined to believe all sorts of highly implausible, wholly unfounded claims. Unfortunately, this is a modern-day, important new fact about the way our politics functions. 

One final point about Watters: His disordered, throwback behavior concerning women is the most startling thing about his program, but also about the way the reinvented Fox News Channel now functions. Eventually, we'll force ourselves to return to this unpleasant, delicate topic, with one other prime time host thrown into the mix.

That said, we recommend pity for the stunted emotional growth of people like this. At the same time, we pose these questions:

Why in the world is the Fox News Channel constantly putting this misogyny-adjacent, broken-souled content out there on its air? Also, why does this conduct engender exactly zero comment from the profoundly aware, high-end blue tribe press?

WARS: Britt lodged some strenuous accusations!

FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 2024

As always, blue leaders ignored them: It's as we noted yesterday. Midway through his State of the Union address, President Biden described his stance regarding the southern border.

He went all the way back to Day One. This is what he said:

PRESIDENT BIDEN (3/7/24): Unlike my predecessor, on my first day in office I introduced a comprehensive plan to fix our immigration system, secure the border, and provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and so much more. 

Because unlike my predecessor, I know who we are as Americans...

Actually, that was pretty much all the president said about his initial policies and proposals concerning the southern border. He went on to call for the passage of this year's proposed border bill.

Roughly an hour later, the president was met with some strenuous pushback from Senator Katie Britt. Citing his first hundred days in office, she offered this assessment:

BRITT (3/7/24): President Biden inherited the most secure border of all time. But minutes after taking office, he suspended all deportations, halted construction of the border wall, and announced a plan to give amnesty to millions.

We know that President Biden didn’t just create this border crisis. He invited it with 94 executive actions in his first 100 days.

[...]

From fentanyl poisonings to horrific murders, there are empty chairs tonight at kitchen tables just like this one because of President Biden’s senseless border policies.  

Just think about Laken Riley...She was brutally murdered by one of the millions of illegal border crossers President Biden chose to release into our homeland.

Britt was giving the official Republican response to the president's address. In her account, President Biden had issued 94 executive actions with respect to the border in his first hundred days. 

She said he created the "border crisis" through the "senseless policies" embedded in those executive actions. She said that people had lost their lives. 

Rightly or wrongly, she even named Laken Riley.

Stating the obvious, Senator Britt was lodging a deeply severe set of accusations. Along the way, she also recounted an anecdote about sexual trafficking with respect to the border—an anecdote which turned out to be grossly misleading with respect to the most basic facts.

Something else happened that night during the president's speech. As is becoming a bit of a norm, President Biden was interrupted—was heckled—midway through his address.

The interruption came from the usual suspect. According to the AP's transcript of the evening's live remarks, these are the words which were spoken:

PRESIDENT BIDEN: I’m told my predecessor called members of Congress in the Senate to demand they block the [proposed border] bill. He feels political win—he viewed it as a—it would be a political win for me and a political loser for him. 

It’s not about him. It’s not about me. I’d be a winner—not really. I—

REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: What about Laken Riley?

(Crosstalk.)

AUDIENCE: Booo—

REP. GREENE: Say her name!

PRESIDENT BIDEN: (The President holds up a pin reading “Say Her Name, Laken Riley.”) Lanken—Lanken (Laken) Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed.

REP. GREENE: By an illegal!

THE PRESIDENT: By an illegal. That’s right. But how many of thousands of people are being killed by legals?

(Crosstalk.)

To her parents, I say: My heart goes out to you. Having lost children myself, I understand.

At that point, Biden went on to describe some of the contents of the proposed border bill, moving beyond the contents of his prepared text. 

But there you see the interruption—the heckling directed at Biden. Like Senator Britt's grossly misleading anecdote, the interruption—the heckling by Greene—launched a thousand ships.

As we've noted, Senator Britt doubled down on her misleading anecdote on Fox News Sunday last weekend. Offered a chance to disown the gross misdirection she had authored, the young solon refused to relent.

According to the Washington Post, Britt's office took the same approach just last night in response to further questions. This is the way the game now tends to be played within our deeply destructive Red Nation / Blue Nation divide.

Senator Britt has now tripled down on her grossly misleading anecdote! This is the way the game is played as a political war continues to grow.

That said, there was another predictable reaction to Senator Britt's accusations concerning Biden's border policies:

Blue tribe pundits completely ignored the senator's claims concerning those border policies. Blue tribe pundits walked away from the merits, or the lack of same, inhabiting Britt's critique.

Instead, blue tribe pundits lambasted Britt for her misleading anecdote. Also, they scolded President Biden for his impromptu use of an inappropriate word.

At this point, we'll repeat what we said at the start of the week. For ourselves, we wouldn't use "illegal" as a noun, the way the president did.

We wouldn't refer to someone as "an illegal," as is the norm on Fox. We also aren't inclined to regard that point of language as more important than the actual facts concerning Britt's accusations—accusations which are made on a daily basis on Fox.

We aren't inclined to regard that point of language as more important than the actual life-and-death facts concerning the southern border. Inevitably, that is what our blue tribe punditry instantly did.

Progressive thought leaders pummeled Biden for having used that word. Did anyone address the claim that Biden's first three years of border policy had led to fentanyl poisonings and horrific murders?

Essentially, no one did. Here's what happened instead:

In the wake of his address, the president appeared on Jonathan Capehart's little-watched weekend program on MSNBC. 

During Capehart's interview, the president was instantly asked about his use of that word. The president said he should have said "undocumented" instead.

The president said he regretted using that word. Inevitably, that's where any discussion of the border ended.

A few days later, Paul Krugman's column emerged. The column appeared in Tuesday's print editions under this headline:

Sex Trafficking, De Facto Lies and Immigration

In his column, Krugman focused on Senator Brit's grossly misleading anecdote. We don't disagree with what he said about that.

With perfect justice, he pummeled Britt for her misleading anecdote. At the same time, he paid exactly zero attention to the claims Britt had made about the effects of Biden's border policies over the past three years.

Along the way, he offered an extremely weak refutation of a claim we've seen no one make. But so it has gone, within our pair of warring nations, within (let's say) the past year. 

Red tribe observers constantly talk about the crisis at the border—a crisis they say the president's policies caused.

They talk about fentanyl deaths. They talk about the dangers of letting unvetted people into the country en masse, as has become the norm. 

They talk about human sex trafficking, including the trafficking of children. They talk about the number of apprehensions which have involved people on terrorist watch lists—and they wonder how many such "got-aways" may have occurred under current arrangement.

They relate the murder of Laken Riley—and other similar violent crimes—to the alleged chaos at the border under the president's policies. Our blue tribe pundit corps has responded in the following way:

On the whole, they've responded by pretending that the border doesn't exist. So it has gone as our two nations agree to a journalistic arrangement built upon "segregation by viewpoint:"

On Fox, the border is discussed around the clock. The events of January 6 are almost completely disappeared. 

On MSNBC, the southern border barely exists. Instead, we're fed constant legal minutia, with dreams of criminal convictions dancing in our heads.

Two groups of pundits behave in such ways, and never the twain shall meet. On each channel, no one is asked to consider the possibility that the other group might actually be right about something, if only in some tiny way.

Blue tribe viewers see police being beaten on January 6. Red tribe viewers never see any such tape. Instead, they see tape of people streaming across the border. Blue viewers are shielded from that.

Eventually, northern Democratic pols began to say that the immigration situation had become unsustainable. Only then did blue pundits and pols move to address a situation which may cost us the White House this year.

We don't mean to single Krugman out. His column reflects the general way the blue world reacted to last Thursday night's events.

Blue pundits hammered Senator Britt for her act of misdirection. Progressives also challenged Biden for his use of that word.

Speaking with the reliable Capehart, he said he regretted the use of that word. Our tribe then returned to its usual fare.

Endless clowning continues on Fox from people like Gutfeld and Watters. But when they focus on the border, can anyone swear that they're wrong?

There's a great deal more which ought to be said about these red and blue tribal reactions. Most simply put, artificial segregation by viewpoint is a good way to gear up for a dangerous war.

There's a great deal more which ought to be said. We can promise you this:

If you stopped a thousand liberals on the street, no more than three could tell you what President Biden's original policies were. Only a handful could tell you what's been proposed in that new border bill. 

We certainly couldn't do those things! Instead, our blue tribe lives in splendid isolation—and they're living the same way over on Fox. This is good for ratings, profits and salaries—at their channel but also at ours. 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. President Biden may win re-election this year—or then again, he may not!

Did Aaron Rodgers ever believe...

THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 2024

...the planet's least plausible claim? Did Aaron Rodgers ever believe the planet's least plausible claim?

In a new statement posted today, Rodgers has seemed to say that no, he never did. On the other side of the ledger, we direct you to a partially first-person report by Jake Tapper and Deborah Brown of CNN.

According to the CNN report, Rodgers once said he believed that least plausible claim. He believed that the murders at Sandy Hook were a hoax—or at least, so CNN says:

CNN knows of two people with whom Rodgers has enthusiastically shared these stories, including with Pamela Brown, one of the journalists writing this piece.

Brown was covering the Kentucky Derby for CNN in 2013 when she was introduced to Rodgers, then with the Green Bay Packers, at a post-Derby party. Hearing that she was a journalist with CNN, Rodgers immediately began attacking the news media for covering up important stories. Rodgers brought up the tragic killing of 20 children and 6 adults by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School, claiming it was actually a government inside job and the media was intentionally ignoring it.

When Brown questioned him on the evidence to show this very real shooting was staged, Rodgers began sharing various theories that have been disproven numerous times. 

[...]

Brown recalls Rodgers asking her if she thought it was off [sic] that there were men in black in the woods by the school, falsely claiming those men were actually government operatives. Brown found the encounter disturbing.

Rodgers, through one of his agents, declined to comment to CNN.

CNN has spoken to another person with a similar story. This person, to whom CNN has granted anonymity so as to avoid harassment, recalled that several years ago, Rodgers claimed, “Sandy Hook never happened…All those children never existed. They were all actors.”

When asked about the grieving parents, the source recalled Rodgers saying, “They’re all making it up. They’re all actors.”

For the record:

If the murdered children never existed, we don't know what it would mean to say that they were actors. 

That part of the story is a bit hard to parse. That said, that anonymous source also claims that Rodgers said the parents of the murdered children were just "crisis actors" too.

(For the record, also this: We'll guess that the word "off" in that passage may be an unnoticed typo. If "off" should really be the word "odd," the passage would seem to make more sense.)

At any rate, can this claim about Rodgers possibly be true? In an instant rebuttal, he has seemed to say that he never believed those things about the murders at Sandy Hook.

On the other hand, the Washington Post's Azi Paybarah did some sniffing around yesterday. He came up with this second alleged example of a somewhat peculiar belief:

PAZBARAH (3/13/24): According to one former teammate, Rodgers appeared to show skepticism about the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

“The first thing that comes out of Aaron Rodgers’s mouth was ‘Do you believe in 9/11?’” former Green Bay Packers teammate DeShone Kizer said in a 2022 podcast interview, of meeting the quarterback. After Kizer said he did, Rodgers replied, “You should read up on that.”

What does, or did, Rodgers believe about 9/11? We have no idea!

Meanwhile, did Rodgers ever believe the least plausible claim on the planet—the claim that Sandy Hook was a hoax?  We can't answer that question, but we can reliably tell you this: 

A whole lot of people do!

The idea that those killings were a hoax would seem to be the least plausible claim on the planet. That said, the so-called "democratization of media" has resulted in a giant anthropology lesson, a lesson which goes like this:

We humans believe the craziest things! Aaron Rodgers to the side, there's nothing so crazy—more precisely, so implausible—that a whole lot of us human beings won't rush into line to affirm it.

This is a very important discovery, one that runs all through our politics. It's a surprising tenet of newfound anthropology—anthropology all the way down. 

It's hard to believe that Rodgers believed it! That said, how well do we understand the shape of our human world?

WARS: President Biden agreed with Britt!

THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 2024

Lives are at stake, he said: Mercifully, President Biden devoted little time, last Thursday night, to the silly "shrinkflation" "issue."

Mercifully, he barely mentioned the topic at all! According to the AP transcript of his spoken remarks, he did say this at one point:

PRESIDENT BIDEN (3/7/24): Look, too many corporations raise prices to pad their profits, charging more and more for less and less.

That’s why we’re cracking down on corporations that engage in price gouging and deceptive pricing, from food to healthcare to housing.

In fact, the snack companies think you won’t notice if they change the size of the bag and put a hell of a lot fewer—same—same size bag—put fewer chips in it. No, I’m not joking. It’s called “shrinkflation.”

Pass [Senator] Bobby Casey’s bill and stop this. I really mean it.

You probably all saw that commercial on Snickers bars. And you get—you get charged the same amount, and you got about, I don’t know, 10 percent fewer Snickers in it.

According to the address as written, the apparent quip about "ten percent fewer Snickers" seems to have been an ad lib. 

That said, has any proposal by a senator ever been sillier? If a snack company's costs have risen, they can't sell you a smaller bag of chips while keeping the price the same?

Instead, they have to sell the same number of chips while raising the price?  If they choose the prior option, the federal government will make them stop? 

In our view, the president's fondness for Casey's proposal is a tiny bit daft. Beyond that, the president may have made a few statements in his address which were perhaps false or misleading—though he also made some dead-on claims, according to the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler.

Kessler fact-checked the president's speech. It's the role he's long played at the Post. 

Some of Kessler's analyses involve so much complexity that they could never play a serious role in any imaginable public discussion. Beyond that, we reach the true and the false.

Doggone it! Kessler said that Biden's claim about inflation—his claim that our rate is the lowest in the world—was no longer accurate. On the other hand, some of Kessler's fact-checks made Biden look quite good:

KESSLER (3/8/24): Biden’s job record in his first three years certainly tops Trump’s performance. In the first three years of Trump’s term, about 6.5 million jobs were created—less than half the number created under Biden in the same time period. The number of jobs is now 5.4 million higher than the peak under Trump in February 2020, before the pandemic struck the economy.

Most of Biden's statements were accurate; some may have been wrong. Then too, and rather strikingly, we come to the point in the president's address where he agreed with the highly ambitious young Republican solon, Senator Katie Britt.

As we've noted in the past few days, Senator Britt gave the official Republican response to Biden's address. She savaged the president for the way he has dealt with the southern border—but in the following part of the president's speech. he almost seemed to agree with one part of what Britt's red tribe has been saying all along.

Biden was heckled during this part of his address. For today, we'll quote from the official White House text of the speech as prepared for delivery:

PRESIDENT BIDEN: In November, my team began serious negotiations with a bipartisan group of Senators. The result was a bipartisan bill with the toughest set of border security reforms we’ve ever seen in this country. 

That bipartisan deal would hire 1,500 more border security agents and officers.  100 more immigration judges to help tackle a backload of 2 million cases. 4,300 more asylum officers and new policies so they can resolve cases in 6 months instead of 6 years. 100 more high-tech drug detection machines to significantly increase the ability to screen and stop vehicles from smuggling fentanyl into America. 

This bill would save lives and bring order to the border. It would also give me as President new emergency authority to temporarily shut down the border when the number of migrants at the border is overwhelming.  

The Border Patrol Union endorsed the bill. The Chamber of Commerce endorsed the bill. 

I believe that given the opportunity a majority of the House and Senate would endorse it as well. But unfortunately, politics have derailed it so far. 

I’m told my predecessor called Republicans in Congress and demanded they block the bill. He feels it would be a political win for me and a political loser for him. 

It’s not about him or me. It’d be a winner for America! 

At this point, the president was interrupted. Already, though, he had agreed with some of the things the highly ambitious young Senator Britt would say in her formal response.

He had agreed that lives were at stake, in some unspecified way, by the ongoing conditions at the border. He had agreed that fentanyl was being smuggled across the border in a way which could be reduced or stopped by that bipartisan bill.

He also made the statements shown below in his formal prepared remarks. This mirrored, in a funhouse mirror sort of way, some things Britt would soon allege:

PRESIDENT BIDEN: Unlike my predecessor, on my first day in office I introduced a comprehensive plan to fix our immigration system, secure the border, and provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and so much more. 

Because unlike my predecessor, I know who we are  as Americans. 

We are the only nation in the world with a heart and soul that draws from old and new. 

Home to Native Americans whose ancestors have been here for thousands of years. Home to people from every place on Earth. 

Some came freely. Some chained by force. Some when famine struck, like my ancestral family in Ireland. 

Some to flee persecution.  Some to chase dreams that are impossible anywhere but here in America. That’s America, where we all come from somewhere, but we are all Americans. 

We can fight about the border, or we can fix it. I’m ready to fix it.  Send me the border bill now! 

For the record, are we "the only nation in the world with a heart and soul that draws from old and new?" Well actually no, we aren't.

At any rate, President Biden now said that he had "introduced a comprehensive plan to fix our immigration system [and] secure the border." He said that he'd done that on his very first day on office! 

That same night, Britt gave voice to a sharply different view of the matter. As we noted yesterday, this what the young solon said concerning that very same topic:

BRITT (3/7/24): President Biden inherited the most secure border of all time. But minutes after taking office, he suspended all deportations, halted construction of the border wall, and announced a plan to give amnesty to millions.

We know that President Biden didn’t just create this border crisis. He invited it with 94 executive actions in his first 100 days.

[...]

From fentanyl poisonings to horrific murders, there are empty chairs tonight at kitchen tables just like this one because of President Biden’s senseless border policies. 

The young solon mentioned fentanyl too, though she also referred to "horrific murders." That said, she took a very different view of Biden's first day in office—of his first hundred days, in fact.

President Biden seemed to agree that lives are currently at stake at our southern border. This topic constitutes a major part of the political war in which our flailing nation is currently involved.

Long ago, the Achaeans went to war with the Trojans concerning the marital status of "Helen the radiance of women." A bit more sensibly—or possibly not!—our polarized nation, Red against Blue, has now gone to war about this. 

Red tribe members are told one thing. We blue tribe members hear something quite different, on the rare occasions when we're re asked to consider this life-and-death topic at all.

Biden and Britt almost seemed to agree, at least on that one basic point. Lives are at stake at our southern border, the president and the senator said.

Tomorrow: Hooray for interruptions!

How many black voters will Donald Trump win?

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 2024

A peculiar report in the Times: How many black votes could Donald Trump win in November? 

It's a scary topic! This morning, a report on that question appears above the fold on the front page of the New York Times. In print editions, the dual headlines say this:

Trump Wooing A Voting Group He Stereotypes
Modest Gains Among African Americans

The headline speaks about modest gains—but paragraph 4 says this:

HABERMAN ET AL. (3/13/24): Mr. Trump currently receives nearly four times the support from Black voters in polling than the 6 percent who actually voted for him in 2016, according to Pew Research Center data. He is vying for wins in states with major cities that have large Black populations, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia. The margins of victory are expected to be small in those four states, where Mr. Trump hopes to offset his potential weaknesses with independent voters and suburban women.

Say what? Trump got six percent in 2016—but he's polling at four times that amount now? 

Presumably, any such outcome would mean that Trump would win November's election. That said, here's why we thought this Times report was peculiar.

It's true! Trump did get six percent of the black vote in 2016—"according to Pew Research Center data." That said, note the source of the data the Times reports shortly thereafter, in paragraph 9:

HABERMAN ET AL.: Even as Mr. Trump lost Black voters overwhelmingly in 2020, he gained ground relative to 2016, according to exit polls. He performed stronger among Black men, winning 19 percent; it was double his share among Black women.

Now the data are sourced to "exit polls." Here why we found that peculiar:

It's true! According to the one standard set of exit polls, a strikingly large 19 percent of black men voted for Trump in 2020. According to those same exit polls, he won just nine percent of black women in 2020, and 12 percent of black voters overall.

That was the way the black vote went in 2020 according to exit polls. But after each of our recent national elections, Pew has conducted a detailed study of what it calls "validated voters."

Pew's numbers have tended to differ from those in the standard exit polls. For example:

In the case of the 2020 election, Pew found that black voters favored Biden over Trump, 92 percent to 8. Rightly or wrongly, Pew found that eight percent of blacks voted for Trump in 2020—not the 12 percent which had emerged in the exit polls.

(For Pew data from 2016 and 2020, you can just click here.)

Which numbers are more reliable—those which emerge from the exit polls, or those which result from the later, detailed studies by Pew? We can't tell you that!

We can say this—we don't know why the Times would report exit poll figures in paragraph 4, then switch over to Pew figures just a few paragraphs later.

In the case of black voters, the numbers have been substantially different:

According to the exit polls, eight percent of black voters voted for Trump in 2016. According to Pew's later study, the number was six percent.

Also this:

According to the exit polls, twelve percent of black voters voted for Trump in 2020. According to Pew's later study, the actual number was eight percent.

The only numbers which matter today will be those from November's election. Presumably, if Trump gets something like 24 percent of the black vote, he'll be on his way back to the White House.

We have no idea how black voters are going to vote. We also have no idea why the Times structured its front-page report the way it did—jumping from Pew figures in 2016 to exit poll figures in 2020, just a few paragraphs later.

Why the heck would a paper do that? We have no idea!

Also this:

How many black voters did support Donald J. Trump in 2020? We think again of the old joke known as Goldberg's Law:

The man with one watch always knows the time. The man with two watches is never quite sure.

As with watches, so too here. Hat tip to Paul Reiser!

WARS: Murders, fentanyl, the terrorist watch list?

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 2024

The main things the senator said: Senator Britt got blown off the map by yesterday's Robert Hur hearings. Briefly, let us say this about that:

Did President Biden exhibit a memory problem when he was interviewed by Hur?

Almost surely, there's no real way to evaluate that claim based on the lengthy transcript. There will also be no final way to evaluate that claim if the audiotapes are released.

As with everything else, the red tribe would cherry-pick certain talking points. Our blue tribe would settle on certain others. 

Under current arrangements, such conflicts are never resolved, or even addressed. We can only hope that the audiotapes will stay wherever they are.

Once Hur's report was made public, Candidate Biden was going to take a hit from what Hur had written. It would have been best for Democrats to accept that fact, then to counter with Hur's graphic account of the fact that Donald J. Trump's behavior with classified material was much worse than Biden's.

Instead, House Democrats at yesterday's hearing managed to generate another talking-point for the rival red tribe. They did that with their hapless claim that Hur had "exonerated" Biden. 

For reasons any third grader could be made to understand, prosecutors rarely do any such thing. In this instance, Hur didn't "exonerate" Biden in his official report. 

By grilling Hur on this point, Democrats induced him to make an explicit statement to that effect. In so doing, they created another videotaped talking point for red tribe warriors to herald.

On this morning's Fox & Friends, the friends were glorying in that videotaped statement by Hur. This is the way we human being create the divisions which lead on to wars, even in these demographically complex modern times.

Back to Senator Britt! As recently as Sunday, her refusal to relent on his prior misstatement was still on the public agenda. 

In Thursday night's official GOP response to President Biden's State of the Union address, the apparently ambitious young solon had authored a grossly misleading claim. 

By Sunday, everyone knew that Britt's presentation had been grossly misleading. That included Shannon Bream, host of Fox News Sunday.

But alas! As we noted yesterday, when Bream gave Britt a chance to clarify her misleading claim, Britt doubled down on the bogus claim instead. This is the way the game is now played as our the "thought leaders" of our flailing nation proceed ahead with a very dangerous political war.

Britt doubled down on her deception—and that's how the game is now played. Yesterday, the incident was blown off the public stage by the renewed dispute concerning Hur's report. 

Every day, a new skirmish is invented as our two tribes wage their war. That said, the Hur report will go away—and Senator Britt's deliberate act of deception already has.

What won't go away are the main things Britt said last Thursday night, and then again in her appearance on Fox News Sunday.

Those statements won't be going away because they dealt with the southern border—and the southern border will almost surely be the main "issue" in this year's presidential campaign. 

Britt's allegations will be advanced again and again, by everyone within the red tribe from Donald J. Trump on down. Other disputes will come and go, but those allegations about the border won't be going away.

The mains things Britt said won't be going away. So what in the world did she say?

Let's set aside the misleading anecdote Britt offered on Thursday night. What were the main allegations she made that night? As you can see in this transcript of her remarks, her main allegations were these:

BRITT (3/7/24): The true, unvarnished state of our union begins and ends with this: Our families are hurting. Our country can do better.

And you don’t have to look any further than the crisis at our southern border to see it. President Biden inherited the most secure border of all time. But minutes after taking office, he suspended all deportations, halted construction of the border wall, and announced a plan to give amnesty to millions.

We know that President Biden didn’t just create this border crisis. He invited it with 94 executive actions in his first 100 days.

[...]

President Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace. It’s despicable. And it’s almost entirely preventable.

[...]

From fentanyl poisonings to horrific murders, there are empty chairs tonight at kitchen tables just like this one because of President Biden’s senseless border policies. 

Just think about Laken Riley. In my neighboring state of Georgia, this beautiful, 22-year-old nursing student went out on a jog one morning. But she never got the opportunity to return home. She was brutally murdered by one of the millions of illegal border crossers President Biden chose to release into our homeland.

Fentanyl poisonings? Horrific murders? All "because of President Biden’s senseless border policies?"

These allegations won't be going away—and Britt didn't even include the red tribe's persistent allegations about individuals crossing the border who are on the terrorist watch list.

Those allegations will continue right through November's election. On Fox News Sunday, the ambitious young senator went into more detail.

If you want to see what she said you can start by clicking here. Headline included, here's a summary of her allegations, as offered in The Hill: 

Katie Britt defends human trafficking story in State of the Union response amid backlash

[...]

The senator brushed off the criticism [of her grossly misleading story], claiming the story is emblematic of the president’s border policy.

“I’ve said, in [Biden’s] first 100 days he had 94 executive actions, and those executive actions didn’t just create the crisis. They invited it,” Britt said in a “Fox News Sunday” interview with Shannon Bream. 

“The truth is, and the media knows that they’re not covering it, that human trafficking has gone up under President Biden,” she continued. “If you look back under 2018, it was a $500 million industry, human trafficking by the drug cartels. It is now a $13 billion dollar industry. Shannon, the drug cartels are winning under this. This is a story of what is happening now.”

"The media" aren't covering this, the ambitious young senator said. 

"There are victims all throughout our country," Britt further said. She said the media are taking a dive, but "the drug cartels are winning" under Biden's policies.

Britt even included a very large dollar figure designed to show how bad things have become. Human trafficking is now a $13 billion industry, the ambitious young solon said.

Claims of that type about the border will continue right through November. The hubbub about Hur will subside, but those claims won't be going away.

Full disclosure! As we'll note tomorrow, Britt was still playing a bit fast and loose with the dollar figures she cited. 

In fact, though, "the media" have largely avoided this topic in recent years. O at least, our own blue tribe's most beloved stars have relentlessly disappeared the border as they've pursued the one topic they truly love:

Trump Trump Trump Trump Jail!

Full disclosure! Even after Britt appeared on Fox News Sunday, our stars continued to avoid her major claims about the border. Tomorrow, we'll return to Paul Krugman's column to see the way this works.

That said, every day it's another dispute—another point concerning which our nation's two warring populations will hear two vastly different accounts.

Our blue tribe has reacted to Britt by trashing her for the grossly misleading anecdote on which she doubled down. As for the main allegations she made, we're still largely running around with our blue heads struck in the sand.

No, Virginia! Hur didn't "exonerate" President Biden. (Prosecutors rarely do such things.)

That flap is going to fade away. We'll be left with GOP claims about the border, and with Hector's ancient warning:

The day will come when sacred Troy must die.

Tomorrow: Biden agrees with Britt!

Did President Biden have memory problems?

TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 2024

It depends on who you ask: Did President Biden have memory problems when he met with Robert Hur?

The transcript of their interviews has been released, but it runs 250 pages. As we perused a few initial reports, we were struck by differences between the Washington Post and the New York Times concerning one high-profile matter.

Let's start with Matt Viser's instant report for the Washington Post. Headline included, this is the way it starts:

Full transcript of Biden’s special counsel interview paints nuanced portrait

President Biden was in the early stages of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur when the topic of Beau Biden came up—initially with Biden raising it and later as Biden was attempting to get his chronological bearings and wondered aloud when, exactly, it was that his son died.

“What month did Beau die? Oh God, May 30,” he said, naming the correct day, according to a transcript of the exchange reviewed by The Washington Post.

Two others in the room chimed in with the year, and Biden questioned, “Was it 2015 when he died?”

Not long after the exchange, Hur suggested they consider taking a brief break.

“No,” Biden responded, before launching into a long explanation of Beau’s death and its impact on him deciding not to run for president in 2016. “Let me just keep going to get it done.”

As Viser continues, he correctly notes a basic fact. Ever since Hur's formal report was released, "the exchange between Biden and Hur [about Beau Biden's death] has become one of the focal points" of subsequent pundit discussion.

As Viser notes, President Biden's comments about his son's death "led the special counsel to conclude that Biden would not be prosecuted for mishandling classified documents—in part because Biden’s 'poor memory' would make it difficult to convince a jury.

In fact, Hur's account of this matter was so imprecise that it almost sounded, at least to some, like President Biden couldn't remember the fact that his son had died, or couldn't remember the actual incident. Among pundits capable of greater precision, Hur's claim was paraphrased with greater accuracy:

The president wasn't able to remember the date—or perhaps the year—of his son's death.

This jumbled allegation became a major part of pundit reaction to Hur's poisonous claims about Biden's alleged memory problems. In the account which Viser provides, it almost sounds like Biden was sharp as a tack—like he instantly gave the correct date on which his son had passed away, with two others in the room quickly "chiming in with the year."

Viser opens with that topic. To our ear, his account makes it seem a bit silly to think that Biden's acuity would have been called into question on this slender basis.

To our ear, that's the way it sounds in the Washington Post. In the New York Times, Charlie Savage drew the assignment of scanning the lengthy transcript—and his account of this specific matter makes it sound somewhat different.

Indeed, Savage actually includes a fairly lengthy chunk of the relevant transcript—though we're not real sure it helps.

According to Savage, President Biden was asked "about where he kept papers related to work he did after leaving the vice presidency in January 2017." At that point, in response to that specific question, this fandango occurred:

BIDEN: Well, um … I, I, I, I, I don’t know. This is, what, 2017, 2018, that area?

HUR: Yes, sir.

BIDEN: Remember, in this time frame, my son is—either been deployed or is dying, and, and so it was—and by the way, there were still a lot of people at the time when I got out of the Senate [sic] that were encouraging me to run in this period, except the president. I’m not—and not a mean thing to say. He just thought that she had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did. And so I hadn’t, I hadn’t, at this point—even though I’m at Penn, I hadn’t walked away from the idea that I may run for office again. But if I ran again, I’d be running for president. And, and so what was happening, though—what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30—

RACHEL COTTON, A WHITE HOUSE LAWYER: 2015.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: 2015.

BIDEN: Was it 2015 he had died?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: It was May of 2015.

BIDEN: It was 2015.

ROBERT BAUER, BIDEN’S PERSONAL LAWYER: Or—I’m not sure of the month, sir, but I think that was the year.

MARC KRICKBAUM, HUR’S DEPUTY: That’s right, Mr. President. It—

BIDEN: And what’s happened in the meantime is that as—and Trump gets elected in November of 2017?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: 2016.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: ’16.

BIDEN: ’16, 2016. All right. So—why do I have 2017 here?

ED SISKEL, BIDEN’S WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: That’s when you left office, January of 2017.

BIDEN: Yeah, OK. But that’s when Trump gets sworn in, January.

SISKEL: Right.

BAUER: Right, correct.

BIDEN: OK, yeah. And in 2017, Beau had passed and—this is personal …

Savage includes that long chunk of transcript. On balance, we're not sure why. There's a bit of "Who's On First" to that passage, but we're not sure it tells us anything much worth knowing.

In this chunk of transcript, Biden starts by flatly miscasting the timeframe in which his son died. Quickly, things move onward from there. 

Memory and acuity-wise, is there anything of interest there, in these initial bits of confusion? We're not real sure that there is. 

That said, Viser's account in the Post makes this whole thing go down a whole lot easier. Maybe you had to be there, or maybe you have to hear the audiotapes.

Call no man happy until he's dead! The admonition is sometimes attributed the famous Greek statesman, Solon.

We also think of the joke we learned from Paul Reiser way back when. He referred to the joke as Goldberg's Law. To the extent that memory serves, it went a great deal like this:

The man with one watch always knows the time. The man with two watches is never quite sure.

 Hur's report included a widely-quoted political bomb. We can't quite tell you why.

WARS: Senator Britt refused to relent!

TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 2024

But what were the main things she said? Senator Britt misled the world. Three days later, she refused to relent!

With substantial regularity, this is the way our broken national discourse currently works. In the case of Senator Britt, here's the way the whole fandango started:

Last Thursday night, Britt delivered the official Republican response to President Biden's State of the Union address. 

At first, she was mocked, by red and blue observers alike, for the over-the-top delivery of her prepared remarks. Then, as Paul Krugman notes in today's column, a second problem arose:

KRUGMAN (3/12/24): Her overwrought performance has been widely mocked; that’s OK for late-night TV, but I’m not going to join in that chorus.

What I want to do instead is focus on the centerpiece of Britt’s remarks, a deeply misleading story about sex trafficking that she used to attack President Biden. Her use of the story—which turns out to have involved events in Mexico way back when George W. Bush was president—wasn’t technically a lie, since she didn’t explicitly say that it happened in the United States on Biden’s watch. She did, however, say: “We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America, and it’s past time we start acting like it. President Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace.”

That’s a clear attempt to mislead—the moral equivalent of a lie—and the careful wording actually suggests that she knew she was being misleading, and wanted an escape hatch if someone called her bluff.

It's true! As you can see in the text of Britt's remarks, her specific "story about sex trafficking" was very carefully composed. (Though quite possibly not by her, we might be inclined to guess.)

The story she told involved no statements which were explicitly false. But as Krugman correctly notes, it conveyed a grossly misleading impression. 

In that sense, the story Britt told was "the moral equivalent of a lie." (Though only, we'd have to say, to the extent that she understood the impression her story would inevitably convey.)

As he continues, Krugman calls the story "a de facto lie." And again—despite the absence of statements which were explicitly false, Britt's story did in fact convey a grossly inaccurate impression.

A large amount of our nation's failing discourse is built on similar models. In this case, Britt was given a chance to relent when she appeared on Fox News Sunday this past weekend.

Shannon Bream gave the young solon a chance to relent. It would have been extremely easy for Britt to say that she hadn't intended to mislead the public. At that point, she could have restated her main allegations concerning Joe Biden's border policies.

It would have been easy for Britt to relent. Instead, she doubled down.

In her initial question about the story, Bream gave Britt a chance to relent. In a lengthy, Biden-bashing response, Britt declined to address the problem at hand. 

(To watch that exchange, click here.)

After that initial filibuster, Bream gave Britt a second chance to relent. When she did, Britt emitted an account of what she had said on Thursday night, as you can see right here:

BREAM (3/10/24): OK, but to be clear: The story that you related is not something that happened under the Biden administration. That particular person.

It would have been easy for Britt to agree with that statement, and to express regret if anyone got a different impression. At that point, Britt could have returned to the principal thrust of her allegations about President Biden's border policies.

It would have been easy to do that! Instead, Britt doubled down with an account of what she had said Thursday night which was too slippery by well more than half.

Britt relied with this absurdly slippery presentation, apparently of her own making:

BRITT (continuing directly): Well, I very— I very clearly said I spoke to a woman who told me about when she trafficked when she was twelve.  

So I didn't say a teenager. I didn't say a young woman. A grown woman. A woman, when she was trafficked when she was twelve.

And so, listening to her story, she was a victims right advocate who was telling this is what drug cartels are doing. This is how they're profiting off of women, and it is disgusting. And so, I am hopeful that it brings some light to it, and we can actually do something about human trafficking, and that that's what the media actually decides to cover.

At that point, Bream gave up. Even given this second chance, Britt had cast herself in a type of victim's role, suggesting that anyone who listened carefully on Thursday night would have understood what she had been saying.

The chronology would have been implied by the italicized words. The italics come from us, but they correspond to Britt's points of verbal emphasis.

For ourselves, we would have given Britt a break concerning her initial overwrought affect. Last Thursday night, she had been cast in a new type of role. In such novel circumstances, people often perform quite poorly.

We would even have given her half a break concerning the misleading nature of that original story. 

All of a sudden, Britt found herself being put forward as a possible vice presidential pick. Human nature being what it is, people routinely submit to whatever they're being told to do when such opportunities come along.

We would have done even that! But on Sunday morning, speaking with Bream, Britt doubled down, and doubled down hard, on her initial deception. 

In her initial statement to Bream, she criticized "the liberal media" for the way it had corrected the obvious misimpression her original story advanced. In her second statement to Bream, she even seemed to say that the chronology implied by her story had been clear all along:

This was a ridiculous claim—one that falls wholly on Britt. In fairness, much of our failing national discourse works in similar ways.

It would have been easy for Britt to express regret if anyone was misled. Pugnaciously, she refused to do that—and her overwrought delivery style was still present when she spoke with Bream.

That said, something else happened when Britt spoke to Bream. The solon went into a bit more detail concerning her overall criticism of President Biden's border policies over the past three years. 

Those criticisms will receive large play in the media world of Red America. Over here in Blue America, those criticisms will be disappeared.

On Thursday night, Britt's initial story was grossly misleading. It was, in fact, the moral equivalent of a lie.

That said, the main things she said, on Thursday night and Sunday morning, do not appear in Krugman's column. Nor will you ever see them repeated by major blue tribe figures.

The Trojan War brought two distinct populations—Achaeans and Trojans—together for a ten-year siege. As we noted yesterday, Hector, hero of Troy, said he knew what was coming:

"For in my heart and soul I also know this well:
the day will come when sacred Troy must die,
Priam must die and all his people with him,
Priam who hurls the strong ash spear..."

In a way which went unexplained, Hector knew what the outcome would be.

Two wholly separate populations had come together to engage in a ten-year war. Pundit reaction to Britt's remarks may help us see the way we moderns are perhaps still strongly inclined to create a similar conflict.

Senator Britt refused to relent. So will our blue tribe's tribunes.

Tomorrow: The main things the solon said

As heard on C-Span's Washington Journal!

MONDAY, MARCH 11, 2024

Information Age warfare comes home: Saturday morning, at 7 o'clock, C-Span's Washington Journal invited viewers to call in with their Top News Story of The Week.

A furious flurry of phone calls followed. At 7:26 a.m., this exchange occurred:

MODERATOR (3/9/24): Next up, we'll hear from Richard in Newport, North Carolina on our Independent line. Richard, what's your top news story?

RICHARD IN NORTH CAROLINA: Good morning. 

First of all, it's not the "Democratic" Party. That's a falsehood. It is the Democrat Party.

They've always been known as the Democrat Party. So that needs to be straightened out.

To our ear, it sounded like the caller was speaking literally—was completely sincere in his inaccurate claims. It sounded like he was annoyed to hear references to the "Democratic" Party, when its actual name is the Democrat Party, and it always has been.

After voicing this complaint, the caller went on to identify his Top News Story. He said that President Biden had been "pumped with drugs" during his State of the Union Address, and that he ought to be charged as an accessory to murder because of his border policies.\

(Also, he said that anyone who votes for Biden should be in "an insane asylum.")

So went this one phone call from this one Independent. (You can imagine what the Republican callers were saying on this particular day!) 

To our ear, it sounded like the caller really believed that the official name of the party was the Democrat Party—that people who referred to the "Democratic" Party were putting a friendlier face on things.

That's the way it sounded to us. Let us say this about that:

It may be the most childish part of our nation's long-standing information war. Long ago, red tribe bombastics began referring exclusively to "the Democrat Party"—began refusing to refer to the party by its actual name.

Long ago, we saw Chris Matthews complain about this tribal idiocy or at least one occasion. But this practice has been widely maintained for decades—to the point where it sounded to us like this one caller had been completely misled by this braindead, childish behavior.

People who place their trust in princes may not know when they're being misled! For what it's worth, this caller's statement was instantly seconded. At 7:29, another caller on the Independent line ended his call like this:

JAMES IN MERIDIAN, MISSISSIPPI:  ...And the man is right! It is not the Democratic Party, it's the Democrat Party. The last three letters are "rats!"

That last, mathematically bungled jibe was popular years ago. We haven't heard it lately. At any rate:

To our ear, it sounded like this caller probably knew that he was simply engaged in an act of tribal war.

C-Span moderators occasionally (though rarely) challenge factual misstatements by callers. On this day, the moderator made no attempt to speak to the actual fact which lies at the heart of this endlessly childish bit of verbal war.

You can see the name of the party here. People, we're just saying!

For extra credit only: For a convoluted history of this matter, you can just click here.

WARS: Some people died on the battlefields...

MONDAY, MARCH 11, 2024

...some in the prison camps: "Now we're engaged in a great civil war," President Lincoln once said.

In one colloquial sense of the term, the war in question was something less than "civil." The leading authority on the matter offers this report on its immediate human costs:

The war resulted in at least 1,030,000 casualties (3 percent of the population), including about 620,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease—and 50,000 civilians. Binghamton University historian J. David Hacker believes the number of soldier deaths was approximately 750,000, 20 percent higher than traditionally estimated, and possibly as high as 850,000.

[...]

Based on 1860 census figures, 8 percent of all white men aged 13 to 43 died in the war, including 6 percent in the North and 18 percent in the South. About 56,000 soldiers died in prison camps during the War. An estimated 60,000 soldiers lost limbs in the war.

Some died on the battlefields, some in the prison camps. Wars which are necessary, even just, do come with vast human costs.

As we've noted in recent weeks, the first European "poem of war" is something like three thousand years old. It describes a largely mythical war which would have taken place centuries earlier, "at the time of the Late Bronze Age collapse, in the early 12th century BC."

It tells the story of a ten-year siege of a mighty walled city—a siege conducted by the Achaeans (most simply, by an assembly of Greeks) against the inhabitants of Ilium, more commonly known now as Troy.

That war was conducted in bloody but simpler times. For those who participated in the war, there seemed to be no real doubt concerning which side you were on.

Participants in this mythical war knew which side they were on! Inhabitants of Troy were under a state of siege, facing an existential threat from a powerful collection of Achaean armies. Fairly early in the poem, Hector, the son of Troy's King Priam, described the stakes to Andromache, his generous wife:

And tall Hector nodded, his helmet flashing:
"All this weighs on my mind too, dear woman.
But I would die of shame to face the men of Troy
and the Trojan women trailing their long robes
if I would shrink from battle now, a coward...
For in my heart and soul I also know this well:
the day will come when sacred Troy must die,
Priam must die and all his people with him,
Priam who hurls the strong ash spear..."

The day will come when sacred Troy must die! For inhabitants of the great walled city, the endless, ongoing ten-year siege was an existential threat. 

The masses of Achaean warriors also knew they had to wage their endless war: You see, Late Bronze Age culture was built around the pursuit of war, and the Achaeans were acting on a point of honor! A point of honor concern (with apologies) the most beautiful woman in the world, Menelaus' former wife!

Given the warrior culture which prevailed at that time, Achaean warriors were eager to seek glory on the field of battle in the course of conducting their siege.  Hector shared that cultural outlook:

Glory was earned on the field of battle, a point he explains in much greater (and astounding) detail as that conversation with his generous wife continues.

Given the offence to honor which had occurred; given the nature of Late Bronze Age culture; none of the Achaeans ever questions the reason for conducting this endless siege of Troy. Indeed, no one on either side in this Bronze Age war ever expresses any doubt concerning which side he (or she) is on.

From its opening pages, the poem turns on expressions of rage—expressions of rage brought on by perceived slights to honor. For the record, these slights all involve disputes about sexual and marital relations between men and women, a general point of concern which lingers today, in various forms, in our own political war.

Today, our struggling nation, such as it is, is involved in a growing political war. As with Lincoln's war, so too with our own—this is an internal war, not a war between two groups of geographically distinct populations. 

In the development of our war, citizens of a pre-existing nation-state are forced to decide which side they're on, or it they want to be on a side at all. 

Achaeans and Trojans had no such choice. In theory, we moderns do.

Theirs was a Late Bronze Age war; ours is a war of the Information Age. But certain impulses—perhaps including the impulse to wage war itself—may not have changed all that much over the thousands of years.

As we conduct our political war here within our struggling nation, can we possibly learn to see ourselves more clearly through a review of our earliest literature—through the way the impulse to war was carried out in a much less complexified time?

Our current political war involves two major populations—Red America and Blue. Because our war isn't being fought over a single offense to honor, our alignments in this ongoing war have to be built around a wide array of causes and slights.

With that in mind, we'll riddle you this:

Are points of difference sometimes created by those who want to drive us to war—by those who are still gripped, perhaps unknowingly, by that ancient, primal impulse? Can we trust the things we're told by the various people who are creating the points of honor which will recruit us into this war?

Hector told his generous wife that he knew sacred Troy must die. Civilizations can die in our human wars. It happens all the time!

Lincoln wasn't a Bronze Age man. "We must not be enemies," he fruitlessly said. "We are not enemies, but friends."

Tomorrow: Senator Britt declines to relent. How about President Biden?

SUNDAY: Our mainstream journalists seem to love snubs...

SUNDAY, MARCH 10, 2024

...more than they love life itself: Our mainstream journalists love the "snub" more than they love life itself.

This thought came to mind as we scanned this trio of offerings in today's New York Times:

Snubbed!

By Brooks Barnes

Every year since the Academy Awards were invented, somebody has been overlooked, ignored, passed over, disregarded or brushed off. You know what they say about beauty and beholders.

But perceived Oscar omissions—snubs, as we have come to call them—have grown into a frenzied annual conversation, with people left off the nomination list, or nominated but denied a statuette, sometimes receiving as much attention, or more, as those who win. “Barbie” was nominated for eight Academy Awards, but Greta Gerwig’s exclusion from the best director lineup has been the headline (never mind that she is in the running for adapted screenplay). The academy and ABC, which will broadcast the Oscars on March 10, have been promoting the show with a commercial that pointedly references the lapse.

[...]

A version of this article appears in print on March 10, 2024, Section AR, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: A Club Too Good To Be Ignored. 

Spurned, Slighted, Rejected: 25 Oscar Snubs We’ll Never Get Over
Greta Gerwig, you’re not alone. These artists and films memorably—outrageously in our view—got the brush-off from the academy. We’re still in disbelief.

By The New York Times

[...] 

A version of this article appears in print on March 10, 2024, Section AR, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: A Club Too Good To Be Ignored.

13 Things We’re Still Mad About: Oscars Edition
We asked staffers in Culture and Books about the snubs from years past that still bother them, and they had some things to say.

By The New York Times

[...]

A version of this article appears in print on March 10, 2024, Section AR, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Oscar Decisions That Still Bother Us.

We offer the first two paragraphs of the Brooks Barnes piece. For the other two compilations, we simply present the double headlines which sit atop the lists of alleged snubs from the past. We also present the online accounts of where these three items appear in today's print editions.

At any rate, our journalists seem to like nothing more than working up lists of "snubs." 

It isn't enough to disagree with a selection which was made in the past. Here, as in so many other areas, we've agreed to settle on the use of a term designed to inflame.

Much of our discourse is like this today, thereby constituting what we'd call "imitations of life." Our discourse routinely heads off in search of perceptions of insult which thereby permit expressions of rage. 

This seems to be the mindset we've chosen as a nation. 

Full disclosure:

Among our own three favorite films of all time, Casablanca won for Best Picture in 1943. In 1947, then again in 1980, Notorious and My Brilliant Career didn't even receive nominations!

Additional full disclosure:

Unlike the journalists who contributed to that one piece today, we've somehow "gotten over it." With emotional balance as our watchword and our way of life, we aren't "still in disbelief!"

We aren't even "still bothered" by these so-called "snubs." We've even found our way past that!

We're sorry we wasted our time with this. That said, we pretty much did. So it goes with Hollywood!

SATURDAY: When The Five reviewed the president's speech...

SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2024

...they said he should pee in a cup: No serious person forms an opinion about a State of the Union address until The Five have had a chance to check in.

Yesterday, at 5 o'clock sharp, the Fox News panel began a lengthy of President Biden's address. 

As usual, the panel was evenly split, with four (4) standard Fox News types arrayed against one (1) lone liberal. Serving as moderator, resident loudmouth Judge Jeanine offered this initial overview of the president speech:

PIRRO (3/8/24): It's five o'clock in New York City, and this is The Five.

It was must-scream TV! The president yelling at Americans for over an hour during one of the most hyper-partisan State of the Unions. 

President Biden's lack of leadership was on full display in a speech designed to please his base of MSNBC flunkies and not the American people.

One of the chyrons said, OLD YELLER. The discussion continued from there.

The first segment ran until 5:13. At that point, the judge teased the program's second segment in the manner shown:

PIRRO: Coming up, "a tour de force." Joe Biden's clapping seals in the media give a slobbering review of his State of the Union.

We'll say this for Judge Jeanine. Yes, she may be a world-class loudmouth. But when she's cast in the moderator role, she plays it right down the middle! 

After a commercial break, that second segment unfolded. By its conclusion, an overall assessment had clicked into place: 

President Biden was hopped up on drugs during Thursday night's address.

After several feints from several performers, it fell to TV's silliest child to articulate this assessment. Lone liberal Jessica Tarlov had finally addressed the insinuations, leading to this declaration:

WATTERS: I'm not a doctor, but they are giving him something, Jessica!

If you see a horse, and the horse is old and injured and mopes around the barnyard, and then all of a sudden you race the horse and he fires out of the gate and laps everyone, what did they give the horse?

Jessica, the man has walked around lethargically for the last three years. Barely picks his head up, can't hear, is out of breath, falls asleep, skips dinner internationally, dies out during funeral processions.

All of a sudden, this guy is like on speed or something, Jessica. To dismiss it like, "Oh, he's definitely clean"— He should pee in a cup.

PIRRO: [LAUGHTER]

There was more to this gentleman's diagnosis. But you've now gotten the general drift of the program's initial half hour.

At 5:27 p.m., it fell to substitute panelist Shannon Bream to tease the program's third segment. For the record, it seems to us that a serious point of concern did arise during the upcoming segment:

BREAM: Coming up, Laken Riley's mom ripping into President Biden for fumbling her daughter's name.

In our view, this next segment did involve a teachable moment. In this morning's New York Times, Annie Karni reports on the general topic while omitting one event:

KARNI (3/9/24): As he made his way to the rostrum, Mr. Biden gasped and appeared taken aback by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the hard-right Republican from Georgia, who had dressed herself as a one-woman political protest. She wore a red “Make America Great Again” cap and a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of Laken Riley, the 22-year-old nursing student allegedly killed by a Venezuelan migrant, a horror story Republicans have used as a cudgel against Mr. Biden.

“It’s about Laken Riley!” she cried out later from her seat during the segment of Mr. Biden’s speech devoted to the U.S. border with Mexico, in which Mr. Biden blamed his “predecessor” (as he referred to Mr. Trump all night) for tanking a bipartisan border security bill.

Ms. Greene saw her moment, interrupting the president to call the suspect in Ms. Riley’s killing an “illegal.” The authorities have charged a Venezuelan migrant who crossed into the United States illegally and was then released on parole. “Say her name!” Ms. Greene shouted.

In response, Mr. Biden did, in fact, say her name, albeit botching the pronunciation so it sounded more like “Lincoln Riley.” The president referred to her as “an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal—that’s right.”

“But how many of thousands of people are being killed by legals?” he said.

[...]

He added: “To her parents, I say, my heart goes out to you. Having lost children myself, I understand.”

The president’s off-script use of the term “illegal” drew immediate pushback from progressives. “No human being is illegal,” Representative Delia Ramirez, Democrat of Illinois, posted on social media shortly after he uttered the word.

For what it's worth, we've seen no videotape in which Taylor Greene refers to the alleged murderer as "an illegal." It may be that she actually did, but Karni offers no source for the claim.

That said:

This was one of the most dramatic moments in which Biden ventured off-prompter during Thursday's address. When he did, he made a series of errors or apparent errors:

He mispronounced Laken Riley's name. He then used a term which generated instant pushback from a wide array of progressives. 

Also, he authored that peculiar question about the "thousands of people being killed by legals." The utterance was interpreted in various ways on various sides of the aisle.

That said, this morning's Times report didn't include what happened next. Here's the way Jesse Watters introduced the third segment on yesterday's The Five:

WATTERS: Joe Biden, botching the name of Laken Riley, the Georgia nursing student brutally murdered at the hands of an illegal alien. Watch:

[Videotape of Biden and Taylor Greene]

WATTERS: Laken Riley's mom slamming Joe Biden as "pathetic" for fumbling the name of her daughter, and adding this:  "If you are going to say her name (even when forced to do so) at least say the right name.

And Democrats are upset because the president called the killer "an illegal."

[Videotape of several Democrats criticizing Biden for his use of that term]

As the segment unfolded, Biden was slammed for mispronouncing Riley's name and for failing to speak to her parents. Democrats were slammed for allegedly caring more about language issues than about the murder of Riley itself.

The report in this morning's New York Times omitted the statement by Riley's mother. Also, it included this passage—a passage which is perfectly accurate, but speaks to a claim we've seen no one make on Fox:

KARNI: (For years, studies have found that undocumented immigrants have much lower crime rates than citizens born in the United States and legal immigrants across a variety of offenses, including violent crimes, drug crimes and property crimes.)

That passage addresses a claim we've seen no one make. Here are the claims which have been widely made by red tribe observers, even on such clownish programs as The Five:

Familiar claims on red tribe TV shows:
For the bulk of his first three years, President Biden made no serious effort to stop the rapidly increasing flow of unauthorized immigrants across the southern border. As a result, an untold number of violent people were presumably able to cross the border along with everyone else. 

It was one of those violent people who is alleged to have murdered Laken Riley. For three years, the Biden Admin made no serious effort to staunch the flow across the border, even as they kept insisting that the border was secure and closed.

It seems to us that red tribe pundits are raising perfectly valid points when they make such arguments. Until big city mayor began to complain, it seems to us that the Biden administration had been weirdly silent about the vast increase in chaos at the southern border. 

As part of this package, a very large number of unvetted people have been allowed to stay in the country over the past several years. One of those people was Jose Ibarra, who has been accused of the murder of Laken Riley. 

In the wake of this highly publicized murder, remarkably clueless blue tribe pundits have laughed about the silly voters who see the border as a major issue. In one case, a major figure at MSNBC seemed to be unaware of the most elementary facts about the killing of Riley. 

Completing the rule of three, the president then mispronounced Riley's name in the course of making a jumbled off-prompter presentation. So it goes in our unsustainable modern world—in a world whose major news orgs are often rigidly "segregated by viewpoint." 

Thanks to this rigid segregation, we live in a modern Babel. Red tribe voters hear one set of facts. Blue tribe voters—even blue tribe media stars—may be completely clueless concerning topics which are going viral on the streets where they and their colleagues don't live.

Or then again, they may not care. We can't rule that out.

The clowns at The Five were in typical form during the bulk of yesterday's program. There were moments of typical clown-car stupidity which we haven't even mentioned.

The Five is an imitation of life, a gruesome parody of journalism. In the end, it seemed to us that yesterday's program also raised some reasonable points.

Red tribe voters mourn a killing; blue pundits crack jokes and laugh. So it goes in our rigidly segregated America—in America Red and Blue.

Can a large modern nation really function this way? Go ahead! Take a good look around!

How much confidence should you have...

FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 2024

...in our blue tribe's corporate pundits? How much confidence should you have in the judgment and / or in the performance of our blue tribe's corporate "cable news" stars?

We just watched the first segment of Deadline: White House. Our answer to your question would be this:

Not much! 

Be careful where you place your confidence! Consider what John Heilemann said. 

Midway through the opening segment, Heilemann said something to this effect:

President Biden's speech was so good last night, "he should be out there doing this all the time."

(That's close to a word-for-word quote.)

As we noted this morning, we think the speech itself was extremely good. But the State of the Union address is a scripted teleprompter speech, delivered to a (largely) rapt audience in an august, jam-packed hallowed hall.

A candidate can't "do that all the time!" And there were some instant problems when President Biden went off-prompter last night.

One example: 

The whole progressive world came down on Biden's head for using the term "illegal" as a noun. He did that when he briefly went off-prompter in response to heckling from Marjorie Taylor Greene concerning the murder of Laken Riley.  

On the one hand, we ourselves don't, and we ourselves wouldn't, use the word that way. When President Biden spoke that way, we instantly noticed.

On the other hand, this pushback is precisely the sort of thing for which our blue tribe gets widely ridiculed. That said, it was a type of mistake on Biden's part, and he was instantly criticized for it. 

He made several other mistakes when he went off-prompter last night. We thought his speech was beautifully composed, but how well will he do if he attempts to conduct a normal presidential campaign?

For ourselves, we still aren't sure. On Deadline: White House, the cheerleaders were all twirling their pom-poms in all the mandated ways.

We think that was an excellent speech, but there's still a long way to go. As for the gaggle of blue tribe pundits (and their predecessors), they've routinely been failing you for at least three decades now. 

Be careful who you listen to! You shouldn't feel certain about the things the "cable news" oracles say.