Trump is merely following the playbook of previous and current dictators, from Mussolini and Hitler to Orban and Putin. Step one is always get control of the media, either through violence or money. Hitler was working with Goebbels as early as the 1920s.
Look up the word fascism: the combination of business and government, corporations and the state. We’re pretty much there. Time to call out the GOP for what they have become, the American Fascist Party, or the American Nationalist Party. Their enemy is truth, justice and democracy…and anyone who represents it.
I like the fact that Thom corrected Reagan's famous assertion to "democracy is the problem"; that is more to core of what corporatists believe. A belief in the righteousness of money and the superiority of those who have it is what forms the basis of fascism.
As a people we actually had more to talk about when there were just three major networks and, as others have noted, the Fairness Doctrine required real discussions of major social issues. And killing public broadcasting is another step in reducing easy access to "uncomfortable" information. So is the death of newspapers, though that is not so much planned as just part of changes in how people consume media. (It's interesting, visitors to the Soviet Union said one thing that struck them was how thin the printed news was--no ads and heavily sanitized articles made for few sheets. We are getting to the same place.) There always will be some Internet outlets for dissent, notably the Guardian, Al Jazeera--notably driven off the air here--and so on, but those won't make much difference. Joseph Pulitzer was right:
“Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mold the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.”
Good to know, but not every cable company carries such content. I get Comcast and have never seen anything like this. And unfortunately these big companies make viewers pay for Fox! As was told to one person who complained, "I'm sorry. You cannot take Fox News off your monthly bill. It is part of a package that appeals to a board spectrum of customers. You can either ignore the channel or remove your cable subscription."
The system has been so compromised and corrupted that the only possible recourse may well be a true "revolution!" From the current Congress, to the Supreme Court, to the inadequacies of the Constitution, the inherent baked in racism of large swaths of the citizenry, to the corruption of money in the political process and to the less than "loyal" opposition of a major political party that has all the earmarks of an actual cult the future of a multicultural, pluralistic democratic republic is more than threatened, it is in the ICU on life support.
Viva la revolución! You’re right that there are too many problems tied together in a Gordian knot and we can’t attack them piecemeal. Put them all on the block. Start by impeaching the criminal in charge and anyone who serves him. Looking at you “supreme” court. End billionairism and put a limit on the amount of wealth any one person can have. End mega-corporations. All this needs to be done all together, otherwise we will be playing whack-a-mole. Radical? Only in the USA.
Owner Redstone is a Nepo-baby and a spoiler. I thought you were supposed to get wiser as you got older. She absolutely must know TRump is a psycho, but decided to what? Line her coffin with money, jewels and stock certificates?
These next 10 months will be some of the greatest TV delivered by Colbert. Living well is always the best revenge. He will have a plot---Stephen has his own little cult. Maybe he will bust every record there is on YouTube. He likes to give candidates the Colbert "bump"; he could ramp that up.
I can see him working with the young YouTubers that are reporting demons. What is beautiful is that they don't really compete; they go on each other's shows. They. Despise. Liars.
Just a guess, there is no oligarch heaven. When we take back the Congress, we have to impeach TRump and the SCOTUS Six. They like to ruin and take lives. What say we make sure the time they have left is miserable and their legacy is the truth about what they did to America and the Constitution?
We are picking-up steam with the internet, especially on YouTube: IHIP podcast, Meidas Touch Network, Hysteria, Hawk Podcast, The Bulwark, Daily Beast, Adam Mockler, Occupy Democrats, Keith Edwards, Luke Beasley, Bryan Tyler Cohen, The Young Turks, The Majority Report, Kyle Kulinski
Black Spy, Politics Girl, On Democracy. The Contrarian. I start every day with Heather Cox Richardson, Joyce Vance.
Today Jen Rubin comments:"What could possibly be the basis for the number two person in the Justice Department to meet with the woman at the center of the criminal enterprise that now threatens to envelop Trump in a scandal like none other in his sordid career?"
"Todd Blanche, the first guest to appear twice on For the Defense with David Oscar Markus, discusses everything from the war room to Melania Trump not appearing at trial to getting into it with Michael Cohen and everything in between in this in-depth and free flowing interview about the trial of the century involving the former President of the United States, Donald Trump."
Episode 2 • 27th June 2023 • For the Defense with David Oscar Markus • Todd Blanche for Paul Manafort
Drip, drip, drip, my guess is the WSJ has even more, this is why they were not intimidated with the Trump lawsuit. Now Trump is grasping for “something” through Maxwell. This should get interesting right about now.😀
2 days before his suicide, Epstein set up a Trust naming DARREN INDYKE, Epstein's lawyer & RICHARD KHAN Epstein's accountant as Trustees. The attorney for over 200 Epstein victims I cited above is BRADLEY EDWARDS whom Lawrence O'Donnell interviewed last night.
Confirmation: The Epstein victims & the Executors of Epstein Estate can confirm the 50th "Birthday Book" exists & can be produced from the relevant law firms in possession of the book, the Trautmann & the Patterson law firms. Yes, Ghlaine's gift to her co-felon feature's Trump's entry
To clarify for the reader. CBS is owned by ViacomCBS, which is owned by Paramount, which is owned by National Amusements which is owned by the Redstone nepo babies, Sumner and Shari Redstone, children of Michael Redstone,also owns HBO and Bill Maher's
show.
But they aren't the only owners, Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street are the major institutional investors,and they are heavily invested in every sector of our economy from agriculture, defense , insurance, health care to our petro chemical and investment banking.
Clinton and his love of neoliberalism is what destroyed the democratic party. Obama for the small amount of good he did was still a neoliberalist at his core. Protect the big corporations, make the working class pay for it. Banks, car companies, pharmaceutical companies, health insurance companies, the list goes on and on.
Protege of Annenberg. Speaks volumes. A talented guy, but a corporatist through and through. But believe me, there are huge differences between the D and R brands. Too bad no journalist has ever decided to consult independent voters as a block. The zero -sum addiction consumes all.
Don't lead readers to forget the Democratic Party's attempt to end independent journalism by trying to do a statutory definition of "a journalist." Readers should Google "Diane Feinstein Journalist Definition" to see what is being left out here. The intent was to remove everyone not employed by a big corporate media monopoly from access to research and publication. That would likely have shut down access to events and information to academic researchers too. I'm sick and tired of the whitewashing done here of Democrats' attacks on free speech and democracy, especially their handing over the restriction of Americans' First Amendment rights to the Israeli government. "Protesting against ethnic cleansing, genocide and mass murder is antisemitic." Indeed NOT. Feinstein's legacy party should be called "The Plutocratic Party" not "The Democratic Party."
"The enemy" is every person who seeks to maintain a ruling class government at the expense of American citizens through subverting their Constitutional Bill of Rights.
When you think about it, Reagan used the Southern strategy to gain election. When Johnson signed the civil rights legislation that gave Blacks in the South the right and ability to vote, those who had supported Southern apparteid rebelled against the Democratic Party which had always represented them, and the Republican Party was quick to harvest their votes. The Republicans then became the party of White racism. So, in a way, we have White racism to blame for Reagan and the trail of horror that the Republicans have brought ever since. I will also add this: The Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s, made significant gains in terms of integration and legislations. What it did not do is change the hearts and minds of intrenched racists The power elite has always been able to take advantage of poor and working class Whites' need to feel status by telling them that they are better than Blacks. I wish we would figure out how to get the message to them that they are being taken advantage of in order to keep both groups down, and that if working class Whites and Blacks could unite, we'd have all the power we need to get more for everyone.
McConnel is personally responsible for so much harm to people and the environment. Have you ever thought about how different the world would be if Reagan and all the successive Republicans had not gotten in office. No income inequality (or at least not so much); no Iraq invasion (which set off a rise of terrorism in the Middle East); environmental progress insead of backlash, and no T-Rump. And not one of them got their legally, as far as I'm concerned.
In January 1933 there were over 4,000 newspapers in Germany, by 1938 only 1,000 and they all took their lead from the Volkischer Beobachter, the unofficial (official) organ of the NAZI party.
The corporate media has caved or obeyed in advance. I am wondering how much time is left for MSNBC's nightly line up, which though critical of the Trump regime, is hardly hard hitting
The most appalling part is that the silencing of the media is glaringly done in broad daylight. I don't see how they allowed Colbert to continue on for ten more months. This absolutely fulfills me! I hope he milks every moment to expose and deride the shenanigans of the powerful....
I reread my post I should have said latest, not last, and last night was different.
Than the one I referenced which was the night before last.
I record his shows, and at the time I wrote that, I had not seen his actual latest show, he got in trouble because all of his monologues have been a big fuck you to Trump, but since he has been cancelled he has become more tepid, more comments on his staff like Bondi.
There is an immediate example of the dangers of monopoly in the US: the price of eggs compared to the price of eggs in Canada.
Egg production in the US is a monopoly controlled by only a few producers. There is no monopoly in Canada. There are a large number of small producers. So avian flu can be checked more easily.
Also, Canada has a supply management system so there are controls for over or under production among the provinces and a structure for communication among the smaller farms. This could not be done in the US because it would be labelled socialism.
My parents owned an egg farm 65 years ago and large monopolies ran the small producer out of business. Too bad for everyone that we can’t adopt Canada’s system now. Happy ranchers happy chickens better eggs.
Those who are not witless or spineless need to step away from "legacy" media and put more of their/our energies supporting and expanding what initially was alternative but increasingly is becoming a multimedia environment: the Internet. Supporting sites like The Hartmann Report is a good start but we need to continue to support all the voices that are beginning to speak up and speak out. I was sorry to see print fade into insignificance — I teethed on the LA times — as I am the erosion of network television, to the point where it is little more than AV sludge. We live in a different Age; we need to commit to its tools rather than dwell on the loss of what is most likely irretrievable. Revenue streams are going to be an issue; it's up to us whether or not there are open forums where information that the corporatocracy "disappears", where discussions and debates are still possible. Actually, the Internet is the only place where this has been possible to any meaningful degree. Letters to the editor were not interactive nor open to all, and as for television...
Monday I watched John Stewart quit mainstream media. He was incandescent, he was infectious, he told it, quite literally, to fuck off. If we want to hold on to this last shred of media democracy I suggest we follow in kind.
It's almost humorous to think that the reason the "F" bomb has been exploding on television can be completely laid at the feet of Donald Trump. Nice going, Don Don. Take that, evangelicals.
Sure. However, the last time I read the LA times was in 1972, at which time Yorty way mayor. It's similar to regnal years, keeping years based on how long someone ruled. Think of it as "during the reign of..."
It only took Hitler 18 months to take over Germany, It appears the emperor is going to break his record. We walk among those for whom it cannot happen soon enough. How do you unstupid stupid?
As always, Professor, you are exactly right. You describe what is happening before our eyes with chilling clarity. We need to listen to you. We need to heed you. This media collapse is a sure sign of the sound of democracy crumbling.
Trump is merely following the playbook of previous and current dictators, from Mussolini and Hitler to Orban and Putin. Step one is always get control of the media, either through violence or money. Hitler was working with Goebbels as early as the 1920s.
Look up the word fascism: the combination of business and government, corporations and the state. We’re pretty much there. Time to call out the GOP for what they have become, the American Fascist Party, or the American Nationalist Party. Their enemy is truth, justice and democracy…and anyone who represents it.
I like the fact that Thom corrected Reagan's famous assertion to "democracy is the problem"; that is more to core of what corporatists believe. A belief in the righteousness of money and the superiority of those who have it is what forms the basis of fascism.
As a people we actually had more to talk about when there were just three major networks and, as others have noted, the Fairness Doctrine required real discussions of major social issues. And killing public broadcasting is another step in reducing easy access to "uncomfortable" information. So is the death of newspapers, though that is not so much planned as just part of changes in how people consume media. (It's interesting, visitors to the Soviet Union said one thing that struck them was how thin the printed news was--no ads and heavily sanitized articles made for few sheets. We are getting to the same place.) There always will be some Internet outlets for dissent, notably the Guardian, Al Jazeera--notably driven off the air here--and so on, but those won't make much difference. Joseph Pulitzer was right:
“Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mold the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.”
Free Speech TV, channel 269 on Dish and Direct TV, carries Thom Hartman, Democracy Now, Rising up with Sonali Koheckar, and even Al Jazeera.
My only problem with it is Democracy Now, I used to donate, but stopped when I got a whiff of their Putinist leaning.
Good to know, but not every cable company carries such content. I get Comcast and have never seen anything like this. And unfortunately these big companies make viewers pay for Fox! As was told to one person who complained, "I'm sorry. You cannot take Fox News off your monthly bill. It is part of a package that appeals to a board spectrum of customers. You can either ignore the channel or remove your cable subscription."
The system has been so compromised and corrupted that the only possible recourse may well be a true "revolution!" From the current Congress, to the Supreme Court, to the inadequacies of the Constitution, the inherent baked in racism of large swaths of the citizenry, to the corruption of money in the political process and to the less than "loyal" opposition of a major political party that has all the earmarks of an actual cult the future of a multicultural, pluralistic democratic republic is more than threatened, it is in the ICU on life support.
Viva la revolución! You’re right that there are too many problems tied together in a Gordian knot and we can’t attack them piecemeal. Put them all on the block. Start by impeaching the criminal in charge and anyone who serves him. Looking at you “supreme” court. End billionairism and put a limit on the amount of wealth any one person can have. End mega-corporations. All this needs to be done all together, otherwise we will be playing whack-a-mole. Radical? Only in the USA.
The less the Constitution is upheld the more inadequate it becomes. Be careful, we all may grieve its passing in the very near future.
Succession.....
Owner Redstone is a Nepo-baby and a spoiler. I thought you were supposed to get wiser as you got older. She absolutely must know TRump is a psycho, but decided to what? Line her coffin with money, jewels and stock certificates?
These next 10 months will be some of the greatest TV delivered by Colbert. Living well is always the best revenge. He will have a plot---Stephen has his own little cult. Maybe he will bust every record there is on YouTube. He likes to give candidates the Colbert "bump"; he could ramp that up.
I can see him working with the young YouTubers that are reporting demons. What is beautiful is that they don't really compete; they go on each other's shows. They. Despise. Liars.
Just a guess, there is no oligarch heaven. When we take back the Congress, we have to impeach TRump and the SCOTUS Six. They like to ruin and take lives. What say we make sure the time they have left is miserable and their legacy is the truth about what they did to America and the Constitution?
See you in the streets.
We are picking-up steam with the internet, especially on YouTube: IHIP podcast, Meidas Touch Network, Hysteria, Hawk Podcast, The Bulwark, Daily Beast, Adam Mockler, Occupy Democrats, Keith Edwards, Luke Beasley, Bryan Tyler Cohen, The Young Turks, The Majority Report, Kyle Kulinski
Black Spy, Politics Girl, On Democracy. The Contrarian. I start every day with Heather Cox Richardson, Joyce Vance.
Today Jen Rubin comments:"What could possibly be the basis for the number two person in the Justice Department to meet with the woman at the center of the criminal enterprise that now threatens to envelop Trump in a scandal like none other in his sordid career?"
Ans. A fix?
"The woman" is represented by David Oscar Markus.
Episode 1 • 2nd June 2024 • For the Defense with David Oscar Markus •Todd Blanche for former President Donald Trump. https://forthedefensepodcast.com/episode/todd-blanche-for-former-president-donald-trump
"Todd Blanche, the first guest to appear twice on For the Defense with David Oscar Markus, discusses everything from the war room to Melania Trump not appearing at trial to getting into it with Michael Cohen and everything in between in this in-depth and free flowing interview about the trial of the century involving the former President of the United States, Donald Trump."
Episode 2 • 27th June 2023 • For the Defense with David Oscar Markus • Todd Blanche for Paul Manafort
I fully expect Maxwell to walk away free and clear but not right away. Just like their summer vacation hoping that we will forget.
Trump was told by Bondi his name appeared multiple times in Epstein files: Report -- ABC NEWS. https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-told-bondi-appeared-multiple-times-epstein-files/story?id=124014441
Drip, drip, drip, my guess is the WSJ has even more, this is why they were not intimidated with the Trump lawsuit. Now Trump is grasping for “something” through Maxwell. This should get interesting right about now.😀
2 days before his suicide, Epstein set up a Trust naming DARREN INDYKE, Epstein's lawyer & RICHARD KHAN Epstein's accountant as Trustees. The attorney for over 200 Epstein victims I cited above is BRADLEY EDWARDS whom Lawrence O'Donnell interviewed last night.
Confirmation: The Epstein victims & the Executors of Epstein Estate can confirm the 50th "Birthday Book" exists & can be produced from the relevant law firms in possession of the book, the Trautmann & the Patterson law firms. Yes, Ghlaine's gift to her co-felon feature's Trump's entry
To clarify for the reader. CBS is owned by ViacomCBS, which is owned by Paramount, which is owned by National Amusements which is owned by the Redstone nepo babies, Sumner and Shari Redstone, children of Michael Redstone,also owns HBO and Bill Maher's
show.
But they aren't the only owners, Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street are the major institutional investors,and they are heavily invested in every sector of our economy from agriculture, defense , insurance, health care to our petro chemical and investment banking.
Basically USA Inc.
You forgot to talk about Clinton and the 1996 telecom act. In too many ways Clinton was as bad or worse than Reagan
Clinton and his love of neoliberalism is what destroyed the democratic party. Obama for the small amount of good he did was still a neoliberalist at his core. Protect the big corporations, make the working class pay for it. Banks, car companies, pharmaceutical companies, health insurance companies, the list goes on and on.
Protege of Annenberg. Speaks volumes. A talented guy, but a corporatist through and through. But believe me, there are huge differences between the D and R brands. Too bad no journalist has ever decided to consult independent voters as a block. The zero -sum addiction consumes all.
The trip over his appendage cost us.
If you jmean Clinton and the b.j. He got re elected after that scandal broke.
I suspect that the way he was re elected is because the money powers used the scandal to reel him in and keep him under control.
I Thank You, everyday for providing the information, so needed & not provided by national news.
Don't lead readers to forget the Democratic Party's attempt to end independent journalism by trying to do a statutory definition of "a journalist." Readers should Google "Diane Feinstein Journalist Definition" to see what is being left out here. The intent was to remove everyone not employed by a big corporate media monopoly from access to research and publication. That would likely have shut down access to events and information to academic researchers too. I'm sick and tired of the whitewashing done here of Democrats' attacks on free speech and democracy, especially their handing over the restriction of Americans' First Amendment rights to the Israeli government. "Protesting against ethnic cleansing, genocide and mass murder is antisemitic." Indeed NOT. Feinstein's legacy party should be called "The Plutocratic Party" not "The Democratic Party."
The enemy is MAGA. The bill never became law.
"The enemy" is every person who seeks to maintain a ruling class government at the expense of American citizens through subverting their Constitutional Bill of Rights.
When you think about it, Reagan used the Southern strategy to gain election. When Johnson signed the civil rights legislation that gave Blacks in the South the right and ability to vote, those who had supported Southern apparteid rebelled against the Democratic Party which had always represented them, and the Republican Party was quick to harvest their votes. The Republicans then became the party of White racism. So, in a way, we have White racism to blame for Reagan and the trail of horror that the Republicans have brought ever since. I will also add this: The Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s, made significant gains in terms of integration and legislations. What it did not do is change the hearts and minds of intrenched racists The power elite has always been able to take advantage of poor and working class Whites' need to feel status by telling them that they are better than Blacks. I wish we would figure out how to get the message to them that they are being taken advantage of in order to keep both groups down, and that if working class Whites and Blacks could unite, we'd have all the power we need to get more for everyone.
Right, the entrenched racism was alive and well in Congress. People like Mitch Mconnell kept it alive and well.
McConnel is personally responsible for so much harm to people and the environment. Have you ever thought about how different the world would be if Reagan and all the successive Republicans had not gotten in office. No income inequality (or at least not so much); no Iraq invasion (which set off a rise of terrorism in the Middle East); environmental progress insead of backlash, and no T-Rump. And not one of them got their legally, as far as I'm concerned.
In January 1933 there were over 4,000 newspapers in Germany, by 1938 only 1,000 and they all took their lead from the Volkischer Beobachter, the unofficial (official) organ of the NAZI party.
The corporate media has caved or obeyed in advance. I am wondering how much time is left for MSNBC's nightly line up, which though critical of the Trump regime, is hardly hard hitting
The most appalling part is that the silencing of the media is glaringly done in broad daylight. I don't see how they allowed Colbert to continue on for ten more months. This absolutely fulfills me! I hope he milks every moment to expose and deride the shenanigans of the powerful....
I watched his last performance, last night, and he has actually tapered off. It could be he was givien a warning, in addition to cancellation.
I hope you're wrong, but at least he got his big "f*ck you" in....
I reread my post I should have said latest, not last, and last night was different.
Than the one I referenced which was the night before last.
I record his shows, and at the time I wrote that, I had not seen his actual latest show, he got in trouble because all of his monologues have been a big fuck you to Trump, but since he has been cancelled he has become more tepid, more comments on his staff like Bondi.
There is an immediate example of the dangers of monopoly in the US: the price of eggs compared to the price of eggs in Canada.
Egg production in the US is a monopoly controlled by only a few producers. There is no monopoly in Canada. There are a large number of small producers. So avian flu can be checked more easily.
Also, Canada has a supply management system so there are controls for over or under production among the provinces and a structure for communication among the smaller farms. This could not be done in the US because it would be labelled socialism.
This was the system 60 years ago in the US
My parents owned an egg farm 65 years ago and large monopolies ran the small producer out of business. Too bad for everyone that we can’t adopt Canada’s system now. Happy ranchers happy chickens better eggs.
The GOP and millions in this country are possessed by the ghost of Reagan.
His famous quote related to this is,
"I am paying for this microphone!"
His angry (staged?) outburst was the turning point in the 1980 NH primary.
And it also comes from the heart of the conservatives' information warfare plan against democracy:
Only those who own "a microphone" will be heard by the masses.
Those who are not witless or spineless need to step away from "legacy" media and put more of their/our energies supporting and expanding what initially was alternative but increasingly is becoming a multimedia environment: the Internet. Supporting sites like The Hartmann Report is a good start but we need to continue to support all the voices that are beginning to speak up and speak out. I was sorry to see print fade into insignificance — I teethed on the LA times — as I am the erosion of network television, to the point where it is little more than AV sludge. We live in a different Age; we need to commit to its tools rather than dwell on the loss of what is most likely irretrievable. Revenue streams are going to be an issue; it's up to us whether or not there are open forums where information that the corporatocracy "disappears", where discussions and debates are still possible. Actually, the Internet is the only place where this has been possible to any meaningful degree. Letters to the editor were not interactive nor open to all, and as for television...
Monday I watched John Stewart quit mainstream media. He was incandescent, he was infectious, he told it, quite literally, to fuck off. If we want to hold on to this last shred of media democracy I suggest we follow in kind.
It's almost humorous to think that the reason the "F" bomb has been exploding on television can be completely laid at the feet of Donald Trump. Nice going, Don Don. Take that, evangelicals.
The L.A. Times has gone over to the dark side.
Last time I read it Sam Yorty was mayor.
I didn't know that a newspaper has a mayor. Karen Bass is the Mayor of .A. and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is the owner of the Los Angeles Times.
Sure. However, the last time I read the LA times was in 1972, at which time Yorty way mayor. It's similar to regnal years, keeping years based on how long someone ruled. Think of it as "during the reign of..."
Yorty was mayor of the L.A. Times? Didn't know that newspapers have mayors. Live and learn.
Somehow, I think (I hope) you know exactly what I mean. If not, of course feel free to carry on.
It only took Hitler 18 months to take over Germany, It appears the emperor is going to break his record. We walk among those for whom it cannot happen soon enough. How do you unstupid stupid?
As always, Professor, you are exactly right. You describe what is happening before our eyes with chilling clarity. We need to listen to you. We need to heed you. This media collapse is a sure sign of the sound of democracy crumbling.