Grey Lady leads with this

For President Biden, a Political Liability That May Not Go Away Soon

The collapse of a plea deal and the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden mean the president could face political fallout for months to come.

What the fuck? The New York Times leads with four variations on this theme — the appointment of a special counsel, the same Chrump-appointed US attorney who negotiated the plea deal with Hunter Biden that was attacked over and over by Republicans who sent “friend of the court” briefs to the Crump-appointed federal judge who took the extraordinary step of voiding the agreement of the parties, rejecting Hunter Biden’s guilty plea to rarely charged misdemeanors.

Elected Republicans screamed bloody murder that Hunter Biden had received special treatment, a “sweetheart deal” somehow after his laptop and his dick pics, and his drug taking and his late payment of taxes and his job, making a lot of money capitalizing on his famous father’s name. In exchange for peace he pled guilty to a misdemeanor most people are not even charged with, late payment of income tax.

Then a Chrump appointed federal judge, egged on by Chrumpie’s myrmidons, threw out the agreement. The Chrump-appointed US attorney who was appointed special counsel has already written two letters to MAGA extremists in the House informing them that there was no fucking evidence of there there and that Garland had not interfered in any way in an investigation that lasted years longer than Mueller’s, even John Durham’s equally damning investigation.

So, of course, on a day that defendant Chrump got warned in federal court about posting things like “IF YOU COME AFTER ME, I’LL HAVE YOU ASPIRATIONALLY FUCKING KILLED” the New York Times leads with four articles about a political liability for Joe Biden that might not go away soon.

What the fuck? Seriously, Grey Lady, what the fucking fuck?

The Grey Lady Asks Again

Aug12

It turns out the Times is talking about that solid 37% of Republican voters who find Chrumpie’s feces indescribably delicious and the seeming inevitability, given his standing with this solid, faithful block, of him being impossible for another extreme right wing candidate to beat in the Republican primary.

0% of this 37% of Republicans, according to a recent NYTimes/Sienna College poll about the 2024 election, believe he has committed any crime, just 2% concede he might have done something wrong.

Why is he so hard to beat? Better title: Why are 37% of Republican voters so fucking stupid and immune to evidence? It’s not like 37% of one of only two major American political parties are actually Klan members or Nazis… I don’t believe that, even in the most Exceptional totally non-racist nation a white, angry, intolerant, violence-endorsing Jesus ever blessed.

Seriously, Grey Lady?

Aug3

Got to wonder how the guy who was beaten twice by a total of 10,000,000 votes, lost his party seats in 2018, 2020, 2022, leads the NY Times to pose the key question, after noting his rock solid 30% is rabidly loyal:

Why is he so hard to beat?

NY Times cites John Yoo’s defense of Black Klansman Clarence Thomas

Apr7

In light of recent revelations that Clarence and Ginni Thomas took many undisclosed lavish paid vacations (including a half million dollar luxury cruise in Indonesia) with, and recieved obscenely expensive gifts from, a right-wing billionaire and funder of the Federalist Society and other right wing causes, a far right real estate mogul named Crow who inherited great wealth from his father, the New York Times closes their short piece about the scandal with a quote from a former government official who also clerked for Clarence Thomas.

Coincidentally the former official was an author of the fucking torture memo, that secret legal fig leaf that made it “legal” for US contractors to violate international law and treaties that the US had signed, in order to go to the dark side fighting the “War on Terror.” Here’s fucking John Yoo with the last word on the latest unfair attack on Thomas in the “liberal” NYT’s short account:

John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who clerked for Justice Thomas and served in President George W. Bush’s administration, said he did not believe that vacations or gifts would play any role in the decisions he issued. The criticism of the justice’s ties to Mr. Crow, he added, reflected a broader campaign.

“This is part of this attack on him that goes back to ever since he joined the court,” Mr. Yoo said. “That somehow he couldn’t hold these views from his own free thoughts.”
source

According to Bill Barr, and MAGA, there is no systemic racism against black people in this country

Mar1

The lede of a recent troubling New York Times article, under this headline:

Childbirth Is Deadlier for Black Families Even When They’re Rich, Expansive Study Finds

In the United States, the richest mothers and their newborns are the most likely to survive the year after childbirth — except when the family is Black, according to a groundbreaking new study of two million California births. The richest Black mothers and their babies are twice as likely to die as the richest white mothers and their babies.

The graphics at the beginning of the online version of the article (link above) show the number of children who die in the first year of life per 100,000 childbirths for wealthy white, poor white, wealthy black, and poor black mothers.

All I can say right now is fuck Bill Barr and his bad breathed, bagpiping, culture warrior, killer asshole ilk.

NYT opinion writer Charles M. Blow cited this hard truth from a fifty-five year old report by a Presdidential Commission:

As the 1968 Kerner Commission report put it: “What white Americans have never fully understood — but what the Negro can never forget — is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”

source

It’s a tragic law of human nature, if a deadly thing doesn’t affect you, or anybody you know, it’s hard to work up much feeling about it. Most of the time you are not only unaware of it, but, if it threatens your worldview in any way you will indignantly deny it if somebody brings it up.

Homo sapiens, the wise ape.

evocative headline

Feb17

Take it from the Grey Hag

Nov2

The Gray Lady hastens to remind readers that our elections are won by the party with the best slogan, a winning market-driven vision that encapsulates a compelling narrative in a single phrase, MAGA, for example, or, even better, Q.

It follows that a political party does not win an election by highlightting a wide range of policies they’ve enacted, against determined, lockstep opposition, to help millions of Americans, they do it by using effective single-issue branding and messaging.

So, according to the Grey Lady’s top headline a day or two back, top Democrats are hissing at each other because, once again, they’re going to lose because they’ve concentrated on the wrong metrics to win, instead of picking one (like “Make America Great Again”) in a majoritarian democracy where money is speech, time is money, and the citizens’ attention spans are two and a half seconds long.

If it is not a single idea that fits on a baseball cap, and it doesn’t inspire blind single-minded purpose, the battle is lost, in the considered opinion of the Grey Lady’s headline writers.

They also had a top headline that Joe Biden made two verbal gaffes at a recent campaign stop. Imagine that! MAGA GAGA, NYT. I don’t know why you do it, but nobody does it better.

Top Democrats Question Their Party’s Strategy as Midterm Worries Grow https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/01/us/politics/midterm-elections-worrying-democrats-strategy.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqYhlSVUbAibIRp8_qRmHmfnE2_s5h3PiITKQDDtGwu8JAo-G4ALSYrB5dto10HGXSdpGO6UmWOc31fNFNlBgRBjuooeBnN5NBRQJnr-JfzF82YPRD_d_-CX2b2K9JaByzefj40_cOn28CKPZzXEhIAx6qMZgJUWh3iAMzvvFRrEh39FuzLx2UMABMDQKYSeAu_HtCgwve4nVK0GBtXRlHr1RSjrRntWD67ofcQ00CljOSHJ34WlU-8oLcZpMf_65d0h8DZK41bYBCWVoL5OqB4kyQ-XUlbZtuL3Or3-c2aVHIphJmuuQVoWn6X1P6OU

NYTimes: How Disinformation Splintered and Became More Intractable

Oct23

I’m going to wait to read this groundbreaking article in the New York Times, but I’m putting a gift link below for anyone who wants to read it. The finding that self-regulated social media, which runs most lucratively on the viral spread of things that piss people off, has somehow tribalized people by constantly confirming their faith in things that are manifestly untrue, seems like a tragically belated headline for the Gray Lady. But let’s give her the benefit of the doubt shall we? I’m sure their presentation of the weaponization of hateful conspiracies will be supremely well-balanced.

Here’s the sub- headline:

Ahead of the midterm elections, the proliferation of alternative social media sites has helped cement false and misleading information as a defining feature of American politics.

Oh boy…

The spread of Mr. Trump’s [stolen election] claim illustrates how, ahead of this year’s midterm elections, disinformation has metastasized since experts began raising alarms about the threat. Despite years of efforts by the media, by academics and even by social media companies themselves to address the problem, it is arguably more pervasive and widespread today.

“I think the problem is worse than it’s ever been, frankly,” said Nina Jankowicz, an expert on disinformation who briefly led an advisory board within the Department of Homeland Security dedicated to combating misinformation. The creation of the panel set off a furor, prompting her to resign and the group to be dismantled.

The creation of the panel set off a furor, prompting her to resign and the group to be dismantled.

More like the creation of a panel to combat right-wing disinformation set off the Führer. Death threats forced Jankowicz to resign, the threat of widespread violence by American lynch mobs caused the closure of the Homeland Security Department to combat disinformation. Come on, Gray Lady!

This is some alarming shit:

“We believe at Parler that it is up to the individual to decide what he or she thinks is the truth,” Amy Peikoff, the platform’s chief policy officer, said in an interview.

She argued that the problem with disinformation or conspiracy theories stemmed from the algorithms that platforms use to keep people glued online — not from the unfettered debate that sites like Parler foster.

On Monday, Parler announced that Kanye West had agreed in principle to purchase the platform, a deal that the rapper and fashion designer, now known as Ye, cast in political terms.

“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial, we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” he said, according to the company’s statement.

God save us from bigoted assholes with mountains of fucking money.

How Disinformation Splintered and Became More Intractable https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/20/technology/disinformation-spread.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqYhlSFUZAybJUNMnqBqCgvfeh7A9nX74Ii-PTD9ezuMTRpOY4UrEaexje943lXy9deN2DYUOFrZ03_MNeAtkURWpqZ-J35hVeX9ro9jtGzM7hMOIAOwzrnrjZDPjbbYgmuzjsRzXOzToWrfNkiF0fHYTqppjc1Ct2XIK1_2FRrYzgo8iqK9nUpNqRj4AZz2Jvu3oC3h8P9aGahLc4momSr0TGGGTzZPHteV2IEgFAknGTXh__W4_9NpaXdoTN634JBQiE9HstQOz_tBYKWVEFaX2SF5BXw

Grey Lady breaks more bad news for team Trump

Aug13

Great reporting, headlined: Trump Lawyer Told Justice Dept. That Classified Material Had Been Returned, with a sub-headline only the NY Times is capable of: