Fake news – Page 11 – Politics Plus

Open Thread May 9, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:26 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

May 092022

Yesterday, of course, I visited Virgil. I was glad I left early, and glad I stopped for gas. I didn’t remember the road as well as I thought I did (and construction here and there didn’t help.) When I arrived and turned where the road sign said the complex was, I drove right past the visitation center to the complex gate – who told me eexactly where is was. Although all the prisins follow the same manual there are always details in which they are individual There’s a form that every facility requires, but his last facility wanted it filled out in pendil (in other words, by have every time) but they were willing t let it last longer than one visit unless something has changed. This faciity doesn’t care about pencil (which means I can fill one out in good dark ink, scan it, ans print it off) but they do want it every visit. There’s another form about CoViD sympotoms that the last place wanted to go through the questions with visitors verbally and fill it out for us. The same form, this facility wants us to fill out for them (not in pencil.) It’s short and sweet so I won’t be scanning it,. The gave me a (surgical) mask without question, and one of the shuttle busses has a wheelchair life. I also saw some dress code differences, though probably none I’s want to emulate (like flip flops – not for me.) Because of the bussing, one can’t just leave whenever one feels like it, as one could at the last facility – but that’s not going to be a problem, as the route is not almost due south and almost due east to get ther (and the opposite returning) as the last facility was, which made both sunrise and sunset problematic duting winter, but rather roughly south sotjeast (about 30 from due south) and roughlt due west going, and yje opposite returning, and that alone takes care of most of the sunlight issues. All this is probably more than anyone wanted to know; hope I didn’t bore you too much.

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Short Takes –

Wonkette – Nation’s Long Nightmare Over As Chuck Todd’s Daily Wankfest Banished To Streaming
Quote – Poor Chuck. When in under a year and a half your network moves you to a new time slot so the world can have another hour of Nicolle Wallace, and then out of that time slot to an online streamer, it feels like they are sending a message, and the message is not, “Great work, Mr. Cronkite.” Anyway, what can yr Wonkette say about Todd that isn’t being said very scornfully on Twitter? The man has been a scourge of the sort of view-from-nowhere bothsidesism and horserace politics that has fueled both our rage and our alcohol problems for many a year.
Click through for details. I doubt whether anyone here actually watched Chuck Todd… but it’s interesting that this comes so soon after the WHCD.

Crooks and Liars – Trump’s DHS Altered Russia Report To Help Trump
Quote – Trump’s acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and others in his department altered parts of a report and delayed its release. The original reports stated clearly that Russia helped Trump in 2020 (never mind 2016?) for political reasons. On Special Report with Bret Baier, Fox News finally covered a negative Trump story.
Click through for story. You might wonder, what DHS other than Trump’s would do this? But if the GQP is capable of suggestiong that AntiFa did the insurrection to overthrow an election which their side won, then the GQP is capable of suggesting just about anything.

Salon – Did a justice’s wife leak Supreme Court drama?
Quote – We already know her husband, Clarence Thomas, is an extraordinarily angry and bitter person, thanks to his memoir, “I Am Still an Incredibly Angry and Bitter Person on Account of That Time Anita Hill Told the Complete Truth About Me.” (And Clarence Thomas is apparently buddies with CBS’s Jan Crawford.) And Ginni made a living, for years, touring the nation telling everyone how awful and unconstitutional healthcare reform was, which means she was probably pretty upset when her husband told her John Roberts voted to kill liberty forever. She’s also known for having really poor impulse control[.]
Click through for discussion. I don’t think it’s necessarily true that once a leaker, always a leaker, because some – many – people are capable of mental and emotional growth. But then, this is Ginni Thomas we are talking about here.

Food For Thought

Video Thread 5/4/22

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:39 am Open Thread, Politics

May 042022

Glenn Kirschner – From a corrupt Supreme Court justice to upcoming J6 public hearings: Legal Recap for April 2022

The Lincoln Project – Truth Matters

Meidas Touch – Michael Cohen REACTS to Georgia Trump Grand Jury

WHCD – Trevor Noah on Fox (but his best line was addressed to Chuck Todd – “I’d ask you a follow-up, but I know you don’t know what that is.”

Liberal Redneck – SCOTUS Overturning Roe v Wade

Puppet Regime – Zelensky Visits the Big Apple

Beau – Let’s talk about how Russia could do things differently…. (I love this… I didn’t see it coming – but now I’ve said that, you likely will.)

Video Thread 4/27/22

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:44 am Open Thread, Politics

Apr 272022

Glenn Kirschner – How to best disqualify Marjorie Taylor Greene & other insurrectionists in Congress? Prosecutor them.

The Lincoln Project – This Woman Votes

(Meidas Touch is starting a series on “reactions”)
Meidas Founder REACTS to Elon Musk Twitter Takeover!

Thom Hartmann – Here’s What The Dems Have Done – Did You Know?

RepresentUs – Former CIA officer explains how partisanship makes us weak (He rcommends ranked choice voting … which Florida just outlawed.)

Rebel HQ – TikToker EXPOSES How ‘Granola Logic’ Can Trick You

Beau – Let’s talk about sympathy for President Reagan….

Open Thread April 27, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:36 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 272022

Yesterday, I finished putting together today’s posts at a little after 4:30. That was an hour earlier than they guarantee the information, but I looked it up anyway, and a lot of information was already there. There wass a group of 211 jurors ordered to report by 8:00 a.m. today, and another group of 286 standby jurors ordered to check in around 11:30 and be prepared to come in within the hour. Of that 268, I would be the 248th person to be called. On Tuesday they released 380 standby jurors, and on Monday they released 404. So I was figuring I can pretty well expect to be off the hook. But of course I don’t take that for granted.

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Short Takes –

Common Dreams – EU Enacts Landmark Social Media Law to End Self-Regulation by Big Tech
Quote – “The law aims to end an era of self-regulation in which tech companies set their own policies about what content could stay up or be taken down,” the newspaper noted. “It stands out from other regulatory attempts by addressing online speech, an area that is largely off-limits in the United States because of First Amendment protections.” Calling the legislation a “major milestone for E.U. citizens,” Thierry Breton, the bloc’s internal market commissioner, said that “the time of big online platforms behaving like they are ‘too big to care’ is coming to an end.”
Click through for details. Yes, free speech. And yes, this is going to be a pain in the butt for them to administer, even without the FirstAmendment. But the way social media currently act will nevitably destroy democracy.

Crooks and Liars – Climate Activist Dies After Setting Himself On Fire At SCOTUS
Quote – And so Wynn Bruce had set himself on fire in front of the Supreme Court at about 6:30 p.m. on Friday, and we didn’t pay any attention to that, either. I thought I’d remind you, so he didn’t die in vain.
Click through for story. CPR reported the incident but not the reason. You may have seen the report somewhere (but probably not the reason.) I’m afraod he did indeed die in vain.

The Daily Beast – U.S. Vietnam War Insiders: Russia Is Making the Same Damn Fool Mistakes in Ukraine That We Did
Quote – “The Americans got run out of Vietnam, and the Russians are going to get run out of Ukraine,” William Taylor, ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009 and again, for seven months, from June 2019 to January 2020, told The Daily Beast. “The U.S. didn’t understand Vietnam, and the Russians didn’t understand Ukraine.” … Although comparisons are inexact, he finds an eerie parallel between the American failure in Vietnam and Russia’s violent campaign in Ukraine. “We didn’t understand there’s a nationalism about the Vietnamese,” he said. “The Vietnamese pushed us out,” and “the Ukrainians will push out the Russians.”
Click through for the reasoning. I was certainly not an insider then, but those who were have good reason to know mistakes were made. I hope their conclusion is accurate.

Food For Thought

Video Thread 4/13/22

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 12:27 pm Open Thread, Politics

Apr 132022

Glenn Kirschner – J6 Committee Has the Goods on Trump But Debates Timing of Criminal Referral to DOJ for Prosecution

The Lincoln Project – Doctored

Ring of Fire – Ron DeSantis Caught LYING About School Changing A Child’s Gender

Thom Hartmann – How Will America React to Trump’s Crimes (My concerns are quite different from those of the New York Times, as I expressed in the Open Thread.)

Robert Reich – The Best Year to be Born

Liberal Redneck – Herschel Walker and Georgia Politics

Beau – Let’s talk about Trump’s really bad day….

Open Thread April 13, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:19 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 132022

Yesterday was pretty quiet. Which was definitely fine with me!

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Short Takes –

Second Nexus – Devout Fox News Viewers Were Paid to Switch to CNN for a Month and the Results Have People Surprised
Quote – “Despite regular Fox viewers being largely strong partisans, we found manifold effects of changing the slant of their media diets on their factual beliefs, attitudes, perceptions of issues’ importance, and overall political views. We show that these effects stem in part from a bias we call partisan coverage filtering, wherein partisan outlets selectively report information, leading viewers to learn a biased set of facts. Consistent with this, treated participants concluded that Fox concealed negative information about President Trump. Partisan media does not only present its side an electoral advantage—it may present a challenge for democratic accountability.”
Click through for story. You may have seen this elsewhere; this is one of George Takei’s sites. To me the jaw-dropping part is that it only took one month to get significant change.

Cheney: Plenty Of Evidence To Make Criminal Referral For Trump
Quote – “But now, with the Justice Department appearing to ramp up a wide-ranging investigation, some Democrats are questioning whether there is any need to make a referral — and whether doing so would saddle a criminal case with further partisan baggage at a time when Mr. Trump is openly flirting with running again in 2024.” … Cheney downplayed the notion that there’s a “dispute” and told Tapper she was confident they’d come to an agreement soon.
Click through for more pros and cons. I’ve been wondering about the optics myself … and also whether a criminal referral by Congress (particularly at t time when the DOJ says it is 100 or 131 prosecutors short – and I absolutely believe that) might (and of course this is pure speculation) would push the DOJ into going to court without the best possible case, and/or without the best possible staff.

Daily Beast – The Obscure Law NY Prosecutors Could Use to Charge Trump Years From Now
Quote – Law enforcement in New York has five years from the date of an alleged crime to officially file charges for most felonies, but under New York law § 30.10(4)(a)(i), that clock stops for up to five more years when a defendant is outside the state. That 10-year grace period means Trump’s time in the White House and his post-presidential political exile at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida may be gifting prosecutors much-needed extra time.
Click through for details. Does Trump** know about this? I have no clue.

Food For Thought:

Open Thread April 6, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:30 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 062022

Yesterday, our spring winds started. So did the spring fund drive of my reguar radio station (I’m sure there’s no connection), so I switched over to the one in Denver. Colorado Springs is not seeing any precipitation, nor is Denver (which, though it’s not warm, is having a red flag fire danger day, while up in the mountains there is a winter storm warning, and about 50 miles north a ski area is closed. At least out governor is well aware that climate change is a thing, but there is a limit to what he can do, and so much damage has already been done. Sure, at this altitude we don’t have o worry about sea level rise, but that is far from the only consequence.

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Short Takes –

Robert Reich – Why Biden’s plan to tax the super rich is moving from unlikely to likely, and why it’s really really important
Quote – Last week Joe Biden unveiled two tax proposals that would revive Teddy Roosevelt’s original vision, and could possibly slow or even reverse America’s march toward oligarchy: (1) a minimum income tax that Biden calls a billionaire tax but would in reality apply to households with a net worth of $100 million or more, and (2) a separate tax at death on gains from appreciated assets, even if the assets are not sold. The odds are growing that at least one of these proposals will get through the Senate in April or May via “reconciliation” requiring only a bare majority (i.e., all fifty Democratic senators plus the vice president). I’m told Joe Manchin is mostly on board (which means the other Democratic holdout, Kyrsten Sinema, will sign on as well).
Click through for the full essay, including some cartoons. I do hope his analysis is correct (not his analysis of the economy, we know that’s correct, but his analysis of the bills’ chances.)

Crooks and Liars – Fox Viewers Paid To Watch CNN Changed Their Minds After 30 Days
Quote – The results: Not only did CNN and Fox cover different things during the September 2020 survey period, but the audience of committed Fox viewers, which started the month with conservative predispositions, changed their minds on many issues.
Click through for methodology and result numbers, as well as a link to the Washington Post story. This may be the absolute best news of the year. Now if we can only figure out how to use it.

Mother Jones – What Can Indigenous Worldviews Bring to Space Exploration? As It Turns Out, a Lot.
Quote – Language and thought have influenced SETI and science writ large, said Rebecca Charbonneau, a historian at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. During Europe’s Scientific Revolution, the philosopher Francis Bacon described nature as something to be subjugated, she said: “a thing for mankind, in his words, to control. And that’s kind of formed the basis for the way we think about science.”
Click through for thoughtful analysis. If there is carbon-based life (and/or non-carbon-based life – possibly even more important) anywhere we are likely to reach. this kind of thinking is an absolute necessity As good as we are at self-sabotage, however, I’m not convinced we can get there.

Food For Thought: