To all those mainstream media figures who have normalized Trump for years … from Les Moonves of CBS TO David Brooks of The New York Times (whose “That’s just Trump being Trump” reasoning in the PBS Newshour made me sick)… you are going to live to regret your failure to protect the Constitution as the Founding Fathers intended you to do when the enshrined Freedom of the Press in the Constitution.
They think that they will survive, but playing butt buddy to Trumps Goebbels. As did German papers, until the Völkischer Beobachter (Peoples Observer) became the official NAZI paper
As did so many Germans who thought that pledging fealty to the fuhrer would gain them favor and exemption. Especially in the over3,000 newpapers that went out of business or whose owners and editors wound up learning what Arbeit Macht Frei means.
Yeah...when David Brooks speaks we mute the TV. We saw him speak in a lecture series years ago and he came across as a reasonable man, just more conservative than us. Seeing him on Newshour makes me wonder what happened to him.
One of my very earliest memories was from about the age of five. It was a children's story from a collection where the main character was an angel named Wupsy.
A young boy's family had been mistreating an elderly relative because of the infirmities of his advanced age, and the angel Wupsy was explaining to the boy why that was wrong.
I remember none of the details, and yet I remember I cried at the end of the story, and this has been one of my most vivid memories of my life the entire 65 years since.
Last night, at the end of the historic speech President Biden gave, explaining why he had just chosen to end his campaign, and pass the torch to Kamala Harris, I cried again, and that ancient memory of the Wupsy story flashed back for me, explaining why my tears were flowing so intensely.
The SAME issue, attitudes about the value of elderly persons in our lives, was central to both stories.
In the present story, it is not the only issue, of course.
But even so, it is extremely profound that it is central to what might be the most important inflection point in history.
Debra, I am 85, I have deficits from cancer and probably age. I am aware of those deficits, painfully aware every minute of every day, when I go shopping or to pick up mail, I get consideration from people, that surprises me. But when it comes to being a defender of democracy, the leader of a nation and beating Trump and retaining what shred of democracy and freedom we do have left, Biden was not the man to do it, and I am so glad that he bowed out, and did so, so gracefully, and eloquently.
History will speak kindly of him, better than LBJ and Nixon.
So frustrating I can't like" But I do! What's interesting is, I think Harris coming across as aggressive is working! Like, there was a pent-up appetite for strong, and it's OK if "strong" is female!
Gawd I hope so Mmerose. My wife was a building official, till she retired, she has an eidetic memory, knew the building codes by heart, has great judgement, but she was always being torpedoed by her male subordinates (building inspectors) and not respected by superiors and customers, called on the carpet because (to tell the truth) she was not submissive.
I know for a fact that men get away with all kinds of shit, which can get a female disciplined or fired. I've seen it in the military, and civilian life
But I have also seen women get ahead by manipulating men, who think with the smallest of two heads. I've seen them use their sex as a tool, and the men act like fools.
Men get flummoxed, upset and angry (not all men of course) when women don't act in their stereotypical roles, but it seems to be embedded in American culture for some reason. Not so in Europe (look at female prime ministers in Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Women_prime_ministers_in_Europe
How about Indira Ghandi of India, Golda Meir of Israel, even Benazir Bhutto, Prime minister of Pakistan, a Muslim country, and Islam is the most openly misogynistic religion.
Interesting that Trump is suing for libel and defamation considering how he lies and defames rivals. We watch Fox news occasionally to see how outrageously they lie and defame. In the early morning hours they were rapidly scrolling the "horrible things Harris has done and plans to do" if elected. This morning they had a Congressman on lieing that the unions, specifically the Postal and Auto workers were the ones in DC yesterday burning US flags and spraying red paint on monuments that say, "Hamas." The unions should sue Fox and any news media that doesn't correct lies told about them.
For some reason Trump continues to find ways to bring his this rape and his treatment of women generally back to trial again and again. He's not a good man, neither is he a smart man.
It's a three-pronged strategy to destroy free press:
1. Promote media that's already sympathetic, e.g. Fox [so-called] News.
2. Subvert / corrupt those that are susceptible, e.g. NY Times' Maggie Haberman, NBC's Chuck Todd who, pretending even-handedness, are in fact doing his bidding.
3. If they remain uncompliant, sue them and/or their advertisers.
"We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media," said former Defense Department official Kash Patel during an appearance on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast.
Patel, who served as chief of staff in the Department of Defense during the Trump administration and Trump's counterterrorism adviser on the National Security Council, was asked by Bannon if he would be able to deliver "serious prosecution and accountability" against their political opponents during a second Trump presidency.
Many presidents have complained about how they were treated by the press, but they all accepted that a free press is protected by the Constitution. What if Hillary or Biden had sued the NYT for pushing the email story and the Biden is old and weak story
You know how they needed a bigger boat for Jaws.....
If Trump/Vance are elected, we are going to need a LOT more judges. There will be no end to libel cases they seek. Maybe he will set aside a court just for HRH the President.
After all, he's special. When it came to the language he used to spark the January 6th insurrection, he claims HE is not responsible. Just kidding about hanging VP Pence and hurting members of Congress, staff, and police officers.
Our new King and his Court will shred the Constitution. Keeping the Reichstag in mind, I hope they don't let him anywhere near the National Archives and the real thing.
Ali's, Then along comes somebody with a little more money than you and you get kicked to the bottom of the pyramid scheme! Then someone else comes along later and kicks them to the bottom of the pyramid scheme. That could be going on by the thousands and Donald would be sitting on top rolling in the dough, kicking everyone to the bottom of the pyramid. That would be just one of Donald's grifts.
Libel laws are different in Northern Ireland to Great Britain. They are closer to the Putin/Orban model and continue to be used to shut down all true investigative journalism here and complaints against civil rights abuses by both politicians and highly paid celebrity shills in the BBC. It is a little known outside of Northern Ireland abuse of judicial power. My advice: fight this creeping ‘soft peddle’ legalised authoritarianism as hard and as fast as you can.
So what do you think? "You can't knowingly say false things". You mean like you do, trump. Does that mean your political opponents can sue you when you slander them?
The truth is the enemy of liars. Once the liars are put in charge of the judicial branch of the government, that is the end of democracy.
Can't Donald Trump be sued for saying the election was rigged and that he won the election and keeps promoting his big lie? Apparently the fascists can lie all they want, they just want to silence the people who speak the truth. Those Nations will eventually become third world hell holes. The mentally ill billionaires who don't want to pay taxes will not care.
Clearly, the misanthrope Drumpf is succeeding, sporadically, at being a Svengali for the feebs. The feeble minded; both on the bench (looking at you, too, Cannon) and the majority of the R's electorate.
Factoid: So called "Orange Jesus" received 60% of the White vote in 2016. And in 2020, after permitting COVID to run amok nationwide, thereby massacring 1.3 million Americans.
What a price to pay to remain "supreme" — In one's own mind, anyway. Next toll, fascism?
Letting a 'Tard sit in the Whitehouse throwing ketchup, and verbal-feces for 4 years . . . There's your "REAL DEI" hire. A bad hire, to be sure, of a bottom-of-the-barrel, congenitally fascistic intellect.
If you hav e not read Anne Applebaum's new book, READ IT. She ain't gentle! Every American should read it and pull their head out of their butt! Denial ain't the answer!
Amazing that so many judges want to support the end of the American experiment. They do not have the time to succeed. All these people will eventually this year to remove themselves from offices of honor. Shame will compel them leave for their actions they will have to accept. It is also amazing that so many Christians are unable to see how they have rejected the simple message of Jesus. They are still unwilling to change and will separate themselves from the people and go back into a past that does not exist. I regret the loss of the spiritually poor to a fragmented world into a separated failed society. At a time of spiritual accent into the higher realms I hope they change their course into love.
I think there is a quote from Putin where he says, "When I got control of the media, I got control of the country." Another "must do" for an authoritarian take-over, I believe, is to start arresting your political enemies immediately upon taking power. A dictator does not want to allow their opposition time to organize against them. People might want to consider updating their passport!
Putin use charges of NAZI to justify invading Ukraine, but no one on the current scene is a better follower than Adolph. Putin is following Adolph's playbook,
The fascists are clamping down on domestic flights. A special endorsement on your driver's license, is needed in order to board a plane sometime next year. Everyone gets checked out by the FBI, except the planners of the insurrection, so lots of luck.
I would offer that freedom of the press has been under attack for decades but the MAGA party wants to close the press down altogether. We all know that the stated goals of the party are to do away with the constitution as it is and write a new one that suits their agenda. We better hope V.P. Harris can do what is needed to win over the independents and uncommitted voters before November. She will need every vote she can get.
Authoritarians are good at ruling, and are terrible at leading. Unless the blind leading the blind, they accidentally stumble upon a Utopia. Sounds like to happen very often.
To all those mainstream media figures who have normalized Trump for years … from Les Moonves of CBS TO David Brooks of The New York Times (whose “That’s just Trump being Trump” reasoning in the PBS Newshour made me sick)… you are going to live to regret your failure to protect the Constitution as the Founding Fathers intended you to do when the enshrined Freedom of the Press in the Constitution.
They think that they will survive, but playing butt buddy to Trumps Goebbels. As did German papers, until the Völkischer Beobachter (Peoples Observer) became the official NAZI paper
By the end of WWII there were 1100 privately owned papers, down from 4,700 in 1933 when Hitler took power.https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-press-in-the-third-reich
They think the contributions to Trump are insurance. IMHO fealty to their lord and master.
As did so many Germans who thought that pledging fealty to the fuhrer would gain them favor and exemption. Especially in the over3,000 newpapers that went out of business or whose owners and editors wound up learning what Arbeit Macht Frei means.
Yeah...when David Brooks speaks we mute the TV. We saw him speak in a lecture series years ago and he came across as a reasonable man, just more conservative than us. Seeing him on Newshour makes me wonder what happened to him.
One of my very earliest memories was from about the age of five. It was a children's story from a collection where the main character was an angel named Wupsy.
A young boy's family had been mistreating an elderly relative because of the infirmities of his advanced age, and the angel Wupsy was explaining to the boy why that was wrong.
I remember none of the details, and yet I remember I cried at the end of the story, and this has been one of my most vivid memories of my life the entire 65 years since.
Last night, at the end of the historic speech President Biden gave, explaining why he had just chosen to end his campaign, and pass the torch to Kamala Harris, I cried again, and that ancient memory of the Wupsy story flashed back for me, explaining why my tears were flowing so intensely.
The SAME issue, attitudes about the value of elderly persons in our lives, was central to both stories.
In the present story, it is not the only issue, of course.
But even so, it is extremely profound that it is central to what might be the most important inflection point in history.
I too was uncomfortable with how Biden was treated. Than you for giving me words for those feelings
Debra, I am 85, I have deficits from cancer and probably age. I am aware of those deficits, painfully aware every minute of every day, when I go shopping or to pick up mail, I get consideration from people, that surprises me. But when it comes to being a defender of democracy, the leader of a nation and beating Trump and retaining what shred of democracy and freedom we do have left, Biden was not the man to do it, and I am so glad that he bowed out, and did so, so gracefully, and eloquently.
History will speak kindly of him, better than LBJ and Nixon.
So frustrating I can't like" But I do! What's interesting is, I think Harris coming across as aggressive is working! Like, there was a pent-up appetite for strong, and it's OK if "strong" is female!
Gawd I hope so Mmerose. My wife was a building official, till she retired, she has an eidetic memory, knew the building codes by heart, has great judgement, but she was always being torpedoed by her male subordinates (building inspectors) and not respected by superiors and customers, called on the carpet because (to tell the truth) she was not submissive.
I know for a fact that men get away with all kinds of shit, which can get a female disciplined or fired. I've seen it in the military, and civilian life
But I have also seen women get ahead by manipulating men, who think with the smallest of two heads. I've seen them use their sex as a tool, and the men act like fools.
Men get flummoxed, upset and angry (not all men of course) when women don't act in their stereotypical roles, but it seems to be embedded in American culture for some reason. Not so in Europe (look at female prime ministers in Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Women_prime_ministers_in_Europe
How about Indira Ghandi of India, Golda Meir of Israel, even Benazir Bhutto, Prime minister of Pakistan, a Muslim country, and Islam is the most openly misogynistic religion.
Interesting that Trump is suing for libel and defamation considering how he lies and defames rivals. We watch Fox news occasionally to see how outrageously they lie and defame. In the early morning hours they were rapidly scrolling the "horrible things Harris has done and plans to do" if elected. This morning they had a Congressman on lieing that the unions, specifically the Postal and Auto workers were the ones in DC yesterday burning US flags and spraying red paint on monuments that say, "Hamas." The unions should sue Fox and any news media that doesn't correct lies told about them.
For some reason Trump continues to find ways to bring his this rape and his treatment of women generally back to trial again and again. He's not a good man, neither is he a smart man.
It's a three-pronged strategy to destroy free press:
1. Promote media that's already sympathetic, e.g. Fox [so-called] News.
2. Subvert / corrupt those that are susceptible, e.g. NY Times' Maggie Haberman, NBC's Chuck Todd who, pretending even-handedness, are in fact doing his bidding.
3. If they remain uncompliant, sue them and/or their advertisers.
Have I missed anything important?
They threaten to jail their enemies. https://thehill.com/opinion/4791892-social-media-bias-political-bias/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48696131
Kash Patel tells members of media, government: 'We're going to come after you' in Trump's 2nd term https://abcnews.go.com/US/kash-patel-tells-members-media-government-after-trumps/story?id=105432592
"We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media," said former Defense Department official Kash Patel during an appearance on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast.
Patel, who served as chief of staff in the Department of Defense during the Trump administration and Trump's counterterrorism adviser on the National Security Council, was asked by Bannon if he would be able to deliver "serious prosecution and accountability" against their political opponents during a second Trump presidency.
Many presidents have complained about how they were treated by the press, but they all accepted that a free press is protected by the Constitution. What if Hillary or Biden had sued the NYT for pushing the email story and the Biden is old and weak story
Not all. John Adams jailed his perceived enemies under the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Had I represented HRC or Biden, I would have threatened to sue everyone who published or republished the child molestation BS.
You know how they needed a bigger boat for Jaws.....
If Trump/Vance are elected, we are going to need a LOT more judges. There will be no end to libel cases they seek. Maybe he will set aside a court just for HRH the President.
After all, he's special. When it came to the language he used to spark the January 6th insurrection, he claims HE is not responsible. Just kidding about hanging VP Pence and hurting members of Congress, staff, and police officers.
Our new King and his Court will shred the Constitution. Keeping the Reichstag in mind, I hope they don't let him anywhere near the National Archives and the real thing.
Psychopath. Even worse, a litigious psychopath.
Let us do what we can to keep him from being King.
Hear! Hear!
But don't you want to be Sir William? Knighthood could be had for the low low price of.....
No way, the higher up the pyramid you climb, the further you have to fall, the more paranoid you become, as well as the less human you become.
I could never understand why people seek celebrity status, it is so much more comfortable and less stressful being just another face in the crowd.
Ali's, Then along comes somebody with a little more money than you and you get kicked to the bottom of the pyramid scheme! Then someone else comes along later and kicks them to the bottom of the pyramid scheme. That could be going on by the thousands and Donald would be sitting on top rolling in the dough, kicking everyone to the bottom of the pyramid. That would be just one of Donald's grifts.
Libel laws are different in Northern Ireland to Great Britain. They are closer to the Putin/Orban model and continue to be used to shut down all true investigative journalism here and complaints against civil rights abuses by both politicians and highly paid celebrity shills in the BBC. It is a little known outside of Northern Ireland abuse of judicial power. My advice: fight this creeping ‘soft peddle’ legalised authoritarianism as hard and as fast as you can.
So what do you think? "You can't knowingly say false things". You mean like you do, trump. Does that mean your political opponents can sue you when you slander them?
Asking for some friends!
Like, Kamala hates Jewish people? Saw that today.
The truth is the enemy of liars. Once the liars are put in charge of the judicial branch of the government, that is the end of democracy.
Can't Donald Trump be sued for saying the election was rigged and that he won the election and keeps promoting his big lie? Apparently the fascists can lie all they want, they just want to silence the people who speak the truth. Those Nations will eventually become third world hell holes. The mentally ill billionaires who don't want to pay taxes will not care.
Clearly, the misanthrope Drumpf is succeeding, sporadically, at being a Svengali for the feebs. The feeble minded; both on the bench (looking at you, too, Cannon) and the majority of the R's electorate.
Factoid: So called "Orange Jesus" received 60% of the White vote in 2016. And in 2020, after permitting COVID to run amok nationwide, thereby massacring 1.3 million Americans.
What a price to pay to remain "supreme" — In one's own mind, anyway. Next toll, fascism?
Letting a 'Tard sit in the Whitehouse throwing ketchup, and verbal-feces for 4 years . . . There's your "REAL DEI" hire. A bad hire, to be sure, of a bottom-of-the-barrel, congenitally fascistic intellect.
If you hav e not read Anne Applebaum's new book, READ IT. She ain't gentle! Every American should read it and pull their head out of their butt! Denial ain't the answer!
Amazing that so many judges want to support the end of the American experiment. They do not have the time to succeed. All these people will eventually this year to remove themselves from offices of honor. Shame will compel them leave for their actions they will have to accept. It is also amazing that so many Christians are unable to see how they have rejected the simple message of Jesus. They are still unwilling to change and will separate themselves from the people and go back into a past that does not exist. I regret the loss of the spiritually poor to a fragmented world into a separated failed society. At a time of spiritual accent into the higher realms I hope they change their course into love.
I think there is a quote from Putin where he says, "When I got control of the media, I got control of the country." Another "must do" for an authoritarian take-over, I believe, is to start arresting your political enemies immediately upon taking power. A dictator does not want to allow their opposition time to organize against them. People might want to consider updating their passport!
Putin use charges of NAZI to justify invading Ukraine, but no one on the current scene is a better follower than Adolph. Putin is following Adolph's playbook,
The fascists are clamping down on domestic flights. A special endorsement on your driver's license, is needed in order to board a plane sometime next year. Everyone gets checked out by the FBI, except the planners of the insurrection, so lots of luck.
In fact it is von trump / bannon that use putin / orban strategies not the other way round. Thanks!
Von Schitzhispants not von Trump
Lol.
I would offer that freedom of the press has been under attack for decades but the MAGA party wants to close the press down altogether. We all know that the stated goals of the party are to do away with the constitution as it is and write a new one that suits their agenda. We better hope V.P. Harris can do what is needed to win over the independents and uncommitted voters before November. She will need every vote she can get.
Authoritarians are good at ruling, and are terrible at leading. Unless the blind leading the blind, they accidentally stumble upon a Utopia. Sounds like to happen very often.