Fake news – Page 2 – Politics Plus

Open Thread September 23, 2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:04 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 232023

Yesterday, I received a Substack newsletter from Mary L. Trump about the Meet The Press interview with TFG. She watched it so you and I don’t have to. (Beau did the same thing, taking notes, but, since TFG can lie faster than Beau can write, his notes are incomplete.) And Mary’s article really also just hits low points. (There were appaently no high points.) Here’s the link if anyone wants it. Also, Andy Borowitz’s headline was “Zelensky Offers to Broker Peace Deal Between Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans.” Yahoo cut off the subject line after “between,” so I wasn’t expecting that – I was expecting something more like “red states and blue states.” So I did laugh out loud.

Cartoon – 23 0213

Short Takes –

The New Yorker – Inside the War Between Trump and His Generals
Quote – Both Esper and Milley found new purpose in waiting out the President. They resisted him throughout the summer, as Trump repeatedly demanded that active-duty troops quash ongoing protests, threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, and tried to stop the military from renaming bases honoring Confederate generals. “They both expected, literally on a daily basis, to be fired,” Gates recalled. Milley “would call me and essentially say, ‘I may not last until tomorrow night.’ And he was comfortable with that. He felt like he knew he was going to support the Constitution, and there were no two ways about it.” Milley put away the resignation letter in his desk and drew up a plan, a guide for how to get through the next few months. He settled on four goals: First, make sure Trump did not start an unnecessary war overseas. Second, make sure the military was not used in the streets against the American people for the purpose of keeping Trump in power. Third, maintain the military’s integrity. And, fourth, maintain his own integrity. In the months to come, Milley would refer back to the plan more times than he could count.
Click through for complete story. This article is a bit over a year old, but Milley is in the news again because the Atlantic has just published a profile. I can’t get into the Atlantic, but Steve Schmidt referenced this New Yorker article – which broke the existence of a never-submitted letter of resignation – as back-story, and I can get in to the New Yorker. The Atlantic profile also influenced Beau amd MSN and probably others to discuss it, so you could find more in a lot of places. My take is that the military is commonly considered to lean to the right – but “right” does not necessarily mean “authoritarian.” I (and I think Pat would agree, but she’s off now and through the weekend having fun) would trust the Generals in a crisis – with the caveat that they can function better when their promotions are confirmed, and only 3 of over 300 have gotten past Tuberville and those 3 were already months late. (Lawrence O’Donnell had some words on that. His Aunt Mary was a senior officer’s wife, and they had 7 kids.)

PolitiZoom – Zelenskyy: Russia Has Weaponized Food (In Addition To Energy)
Quote – So there’s that, but let’s get to the substance of what President Zelenskyy dove in to because it’s an impressive laundry list. BBC News has a nice piece that if you scroll down starts with the pre-speech stuff but it does a nice job of emphasizing those main points. Zelenskyy starts out throwing a hard punch, noting that Ukraine gave up the third largest stockpile of nuclear weapons once upon a time. (If you didn’t know this was a carefully negotiated treaty and Russia signed on – with a promise not to try and take over Ukraine I might add) He flat out said it was Russia, who is acting as a terrorist State that should have had to give up its nukes!
Click through for article. My first reaction was that with TFG “promising” that if reelected he’ll weaponize – fill in the blank – DOJ is probably at the top of the list-he’s sure to pick up this too. He won’t have to read PolitiZoom. He’ll get all the info he needs from Putin.

Food For Thought

Open Thread September 22, 2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:06 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 222023

Yesterday, I learned, because Talking Points Memo had an opinion I felt was both too accurate and too scary not to share, that TPM is also on Substack – along with Heather Cox Richardson, Joyce Vance, Robert Reich, Robert Hubbell, Mary Trump, Margaret Atwood, and Wonkette, to name only a few. I predict that more and more of our best minds will be migrating to Substack, and this is why: “Since we transferred our shit over to substack, we’ve had a twenty-percent increase in paid subscribers. I haven’t cried about payroll ONCE, particularly since three (? math!) months later, I still have two months worth of payroll in the bank. When’s the last time I had two months of payroll in the bank? Oh, it’s been a long, long time.” That’s from one of Wonkette’s latest newsletters. I realize that scrolling and clicking to continue can be annoying. But I don’t want to quit sharing what I consider to be the best. So first, I promise you, I will never use paywalled content from Substack – I can’t see any of that myself, not being a paying subscriber to any of those I subscribe to. And second, if anyone really has difficulty accessing Substack artcles, let me know – with an email address. There are ways I can send Substack articles to you directly.

Cartoon – 22 block

Short Takes –

Crooks and Liars – It’s Time For A ‘Rural New Deal’
Quote – While “gerrymandering is a huge problem,” polarization is also an issue, as “rural voters are increasingly trending more to the right, and urban voters more to the left,” the Fix Our House report says. Members of Congress elected in uncompetitive districts fear primaries, so they focus on their voting base and refrain from working with “the enemy.” RUBI director Anthony Flaccavento said Tuesday that “the extreme political divide in our country robs rural communities of the resources and opportunities they need, while making it nearly impossible to address the biggest problems we face as a nation.”
Click through for article. Remember the New Deal? Remember the CCC? Maybe not from experience, but possibly from history, including oral history from parents. But thePeace Corps? That you may remember. The RND is being proposed at the same time as Joe’s and Kamala’s ACC (American Climate Corps). I think both are needed. Because it’s not just the economy which needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up and the middle out. Faith in Democracy needs the same makeover.

Talking Points Memo – House GOP Launders Disinformation Through Its Public Hearings – No Good Solutions To This Problem
Quote – Instead, the committee hearings give members the chance to inject the worst of the conspiracizing and crazy talk directly into the public record and into widespread media coverage – and the media still acts as if its powerless to stop participating in it. I could share with you the inane questions that Garland faced, where his face would contort with confusion over what whack-a-doodle premise was framing the question. Or Buttigieg’s exasperation with having to unpack all the lies and presumptions built into the questions he faced about EVs or his personal travel. But to do so would be to further mainline the disinformation. You get it.
Click through for full explanation of the problem (TPM is on Substack.) This is a big reason we need both of the programs in the first short take – and more. What these – people – are doing is poisoning the well. It reminds me of the incident in Willa Cather’s “Song of the Lark” – a tramp infected with typhoid is forced to leave town. He does – by jumping into the town well. He drowns, of course, but his act avenges his own death many times over. Many people wiser than I are saying the GOP is committing suicide with its irrational ideas and behavior. But if it is, it is also taking much of the nation down with it. Somehow we must address that.

Food For Thought

Video Thread 9/19/2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 12:01 pm Open Thread, Politics

Sep 192023

Glenn Kirschner – Trump’s media interviews, his continued lies & the need for a gag order to protect the jury pool.

The Lincoln Project – Senile

PoliticsGirl – What is Going on with our Media?

Brent Terhune – They Kicked Lauren Boebert out of Beetlejuice

Puppy Who’s Been Through So Much Loves Her New Family

Beau – Let’s talk about Susanna Gibson and Virginia….

Open Thread September 16, 2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:02 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 162023

Thursday, Robert Reich (accurately) predicted that, by Friday, the UAW would be on strike against GM, Ford, ad Chrysler. The way the giants have been acting, I really didn’t doubt it. Would you want to buy a car assembled by a senior manager on a CFO or whatever? I certainlt wouldn’t. (And that isn’t even one of his five reasons.) Yesterday was also the 60th anniversary of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing which killed four girls. Both Joyce Vance and Marian Wright Edelman commemorated this tragedy. Marian, an educator, emphasized how, in the civil rights movement of the soxties and seventies, children were forced to lead. Joyce, an Alabama lawyer, made a point of how it was Doug Jones who finally brought some closure by prosecuting the last two living perpetrators of the outrage. Both takes are valid, and both are necessary. Contrary to the anti-woke mob, one can’t be ully human withou looking at the worst (and also the best) that humans can be. Also yesterday, jury selection began for the trial of two of the officers accused in connection with the death of Elijah McClain. Yes, I realize how ironic that is, and how discouraging. But also yesterday, Denver’s neighbor Mount Evans had its name changed to Mount Blue Sky – in order to stop honoring the instigator of the Sand Creek Massacre.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

Crooks & Liars – So Guess Who’s Suing Fox News Now — And Why
Quote – New York City’s pension funds and the state of Oregon are suing Fox Corporation, alleging in a lawsuit that the Fox News parent company failed shareholders…. “The lawsuit, which was filed under seal in the Delaware Court of Chancery and named Fox Corporation board members and its executives as defendants, accused the media company of having chosen to “invite robust defamation claims, with potentially huge financial liability and potentially larger business repercussions, rather than disappoint viewers of Fox News.”
Click through for details. I did not see this coming. More power to the plaintiffs!

Wonkette (on Substack) – Domestic Abuser Shot At Woman In Parking Garage, Wants Supreme Court To Give Him Back His Guns
Quote – On Nov. 12, 2020, a 25-year-old woman told police that she agreed to meet Rahimi in a parking lot after receiving a Snapchat message from him saying that he “had something for her.” When she arrived, she told police she saw him kneeling by the driver’s side of a vehicle, wearing all black clothes, including a black ski mask covering his face. Rahimi had his hands around his waistband, she said, where he appeared to hold a pistol with a magazine larger than the gun itself. As the woman got back into her car and drove off, she heard five or six gunshots, some of which appeared to strike her car. “Vehicle was shot multiple times with the driver inside,” the police report reads. Again, Rahimi went on to open fire in public five more times after that.
Click through for full story. I’m kind of out of words.

Food For Thought

Open Thread August 24, 2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:08 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Aug 242023

Yesterday, I started looking at cartoons for September. You may remember that when I took over, I went back 8 years (to 2013 at the time) intending tto reuse as many cartoons as possible made by TC and if one was out of date, or there wasn’t one, to make one. Now it is 2023 so I am up to 2015, and next month is September. There are cartoons for the first and the second (both usable.) That was when TC slipped into a coma which resulted in the loss of his left leg below the knee. So. In the past couple of years, I have made 8 or 10 historical cartoons for dates in September. That leaves a bunch to be filled in. I have been through the historical calendar and picked out some events – there was one day when there really was nothing, so I will be using one with no particular date which I made recently just because I thought of it for that day. If while making them I decide that the event I selected is not really that interesting, I will do some filling in with undated images I have made using the Bayeux app, and if necessary, from memes I have put together which have no particular date but are still applicable. I will need to frame those (I have already framed the Bayeux ones) but that’s much faster than starting from scratch. So it will be interesting. Benedict Arnold and William Wallace ate likely to turn up as well as Mary Queen of Scots. Maybe Karl Marx. We shall see. Also yesterday, I solve the New Yorker Name Drop on the second clue. That would not have happened had I not, when it was newly out, watched every minute of Ken Burns’s multi-part documentary on country music. That man can keep one spellbound for hours about a topic in which one has no interest otherwise.

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Short Takes –

Politico “Morning Money” – SCROLL DOWN to “What’s Biden’s Superman story?”
Quote – “Imagine a Superman movie where all Superman does is fly around Metropolis and never fights anybody,” [Adam Green] said. “That’s such a boring movie. If you want to position yourself as a hero, you have to have a villain in the story.”
Click through for a pretty short but definitely pointed article, which it took me an hour to find because of Politico’s linking system. Democrats don’t like demonizing anyone or even anything but Green is right. We have to find something – probably a policy rathr than a person or a group – or some behavior – because, while I am very happy woth “boring,” it’s a really tough sell.

HuffPost – Many Americans Still Wrongly Think Guns Make Us Safer
Quote – Though the poll found that percentages of Americans who believe that false claims are “definitely” true is small, the portion who think they are “probably” true is substantial. Overall, between half and three-quarters of the country belong to what KFF CEO Drew Altman called the “muddled middle,” saying that the false claims were “probably” either true or false. Perhaps most striking of the poll’s findings is the incorrect belief, held by many Americans, that guns make them safer.
Click through for discouraging story. These beliefs are mostly based on gut feelings, which are the hardest beliefs to change. They are impervious to facts and science. I’ve had a few of my own, and you probably have too.

Food For Thought

Video Thread 8/19/2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 12:00 pm Open Thread, Politics

Aug 192023

Glenn Kirschner – Trump supporter arrested for threatening judge presiding over Trump’s DC trial for elections crimes

The Lincoln Project – Last Week in the Republican Party – August 15, 2023

The Ring of Fire – Trump’s Rivals Refuse To Call Out His Biggest Weakness

Trae Crowder for ATTN – The South is So Gay

Kitten Shows Up On Couple’s Boat And Stays Forever

Beau – Let’s talk about Hawaii and theories….

Video Thread 8/17/2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:53 am Open Thread, Politics

Aug 172023

Glenn Kirschner – Trump is indicted in Georgia for RICO conspiracy for trying to steal the 2020 presidential election

Thom Hartmann – God Wants Immigrants To Suffer & Die Says GOP

Robert Reich – 5 Facts About Trump’s Indictments

[There’s more after the VPN commercial]
Liberal Redneck – Ohio and the Future of Democracy

Wild Child Kitten Grows Up Looking After Rescue Puppies

[I chose this basically for one sentence – near the end – you’ll recognie it – it’s the one that ends “and it’s never failed me yet.”
Beau – Let’s talk about Texas, Paxton, the feds, and assumptions….