“The last thing on earth that Murdoch wants is to leave himself vulnerable to another $787-million headache.”
Dominion’s lawsuit also revealed that 18 of the 20 defamation allegations made by the voting machine company against Fox News specifically cited remarks made by Dobbs, Bartiromo, and Pirro.
The highly rated Dobbs left the network more than two years ago, a month after the insurrection. Media analysts said it fit Murdoch’s past pattern in the UK: throw one good one overboard hoping to limit the damages from the new lawsuit Dominion had filed back then.
Some analysts now believe Mirro and Bartiromo are about to be shown to the exit door since they were big features of the Dominion case. Bartiromo & Dobbs became well known as Wall Street cheerleaders before they became conspiracy Foxperts. Dumping Mirro makes the most sense as the temporary judge usually sounded like a belligerent wino at the Cardbordeaux wine bar.
It looks like the Tennessee legislature finally found someone more dumpworthy than a couple of assertive Black lawmakers. Creepy harassment isn’t acceptable at any level of government, from librarian and department of public works, to the presidency and Supreme Court.
An intern. That’s akin to hitting on a high school kid when you’re old enough to have parented them. Does his resignation serve justice? I think more restitution is in order, out of his pocket.
I’ll miss Buzzfeed News. I’m too familiar with writing on the cheap online compared to what I could make in my pre-internet days. For some, subscription models work. For some, ad models work. But a lot of good writers lose their employment with either model.
Unless you’re in it to better the world, I recommend choosing another occupation because everyone today wants content for free.
I mentioned two groups were using a Civil War law to try and keep Trump off 2024 ballots. I meant to include this link to give more detail of that effort.
First there’s the anti-abortion zealots who urged the reversal of Roe v. Wade, saying states’ rights should prevail. Now the smaller number of states wants to take away the rights of the majority to decide anything.
This ‘Some-States’-Rights-Matter’ approach has another name: ‘authoritarianism.’ Control two branches of government and it can defeat the third. When the GOP lost the presidential popular vote by a substantive margin as well as the electoral college, it needed to win both houses of Congress since they’d already stacked the Supreme Court and the federal appeals courts. Voters foiled that.
Those voters decided the Democratic majority of the Senate should be able to block extremist legislation that passes the House dominated by its extremist Republican fringies. And voters chose a Democratic President to wield a veto pen as a double insurance policy, aka an ‘ironclad lunacy-free guarantee.’
But the leading GOP Presidential candidates, true to form, prove there’s no bottom to the depths they’ll sink to by going after the smallest, least powerful group in our melting pot: kids who are dealing with gender dysphoria. Along with other minority groups.
DeSantis got off to a strong start with his war against “woke” which consists of attacking everyone from school teachers to teenagers to Disney for failing to be properly cruel to immigrants, transgender kids and Black people. His latest red meat offering to the MAGA base was to sign a bill lowering his previous abortion ban from 15 weeks to 6 weeks and censoring all discussions of LGBTQ issues in Florida public schools through the 12th grade. (This was an expansion of his earlier ban on all such discussions through the 3rd grade.)
Trump has actually been lagging behind on the hatefest but he’s now making some bold moves on that front. Not to be outdone by DeSantis’ all-out assault on trans people, he has promised to “protect children from left-wing gender insanity,” with a series of extreme policy pronouncements including the proposal of a federal law that recognizes only two genders, bars trans women from competing on all women’s sports teams and prohibits all federal money from being spent on gender-affirming health care (which he will ban for minors under all circumstances.)
He also has an innovative plan for the homeless — concentration camps:
There’s nothing like criminalizing poverty and serious health problems to ‘solve’ the big problems in the world like global warming, pollution, mass shootings made ever faster by gun manufacturers and their number one sales technique: fear.
There are places where the public response proved futile in addressing homelessness during an opioid crisis/fentanyl crisis/ deadly pandemic. Conservative and progressive policies both failed in places like Seattle, Portland, Eugene and San Francisco, and residents of some cities are eager to see their streets cleared of the tents and shopping carts, the random outbursts of people over and undermedicated, and the trail of rubbish that some of the homeless campers leave.
That’s understandable. I’ve had family and friends who’ve been physically harmed by a homeless person which has driven the point home even further to me.
Trump wants refugee camps, where the trash and sanitary problems are exactly the same. The main difference is that impoverished community can be stashed out of sight and face gunsight oversight if any dare venture out of the camp’s boundaries.
Is that what a greater America looks like?
No. Don’t ever normalize cruelty. Refugee camps too easily can become genocidal death camps.
Many continue to fail to grasp that affordable housing is an essential part of the social infrastructure in any capitalist society that there are no halfway strategies for. We have FHA, HUD, Section 8 and other forms of government subsidized housing and we need to expand those programs. We need to stop talking about all the substance abuse rehab centers needed and get them up and operating.
Homelessness grew out of the Vietnam War, the Reagan deinstitutionalization of mental institutions, our nation’s historical record of selling alcohol while relying on AA to resolve the addictions (though AA has a pitiful record of success). Add to that urban renewal that closed inexpensive hotels and boarding houses through the years. Add to that influxes of drug-use spikes, with both illegal and legal drugs getting people hooked. The notion that homeless citizens are wholly responsible for their own situations is just wrong.
Add to that the longest stretch of minimum wages frozen since the minimum wage began in 1937, which came on the heels of the housing bubble pop, while wealthy investors bought a lot of the foreclosures at a bargain. Had the federal and state govts bought at those depressed prices, a lot of currently homeless people would be housed.
But back to DeSantis and Trump punching down, targeting those with the least amount of political influence…. their efforts will boomerang. Neither man stands a chance now of winning the presidency. Mark that down.
A politician can succeed attacking the poor. Or attacking the LGTBQ folks. Or any minority group. But when a politician attacks them all AND attacks the rights of women, that’s political suicide.
None of the groups wants to refight fights won between 1965 and now. Trump can claim 70% support from Republicans, but he’s not convincing the independents or any Dems. He’s not convincing many of the young new voters who’ll be voting for the first time in 2024.
Extremism unchecked continually surpasses all boundaries. And this pair of calculating hateful guys didn’t take a hint from the midterm results. Voters will have to shout louder than ever this time, and will.
Republicans in several states are trying to weaken labor laws that were put in place by Teddy Roosevelt more than a century ago. Some are trying to prevent reform efforts that seek to raise the age that children can be married, to age 18. (Currently some states allow kids as young as 12 to get married with parental consent, which is nuts).
And most of the young kids getting married are girls, natch.
So apparently, the GOP is trying to protect your kids or grandkids from drag queens (with no record of harming a kid), from DisneyWorld, from books about sex and race with much worse sex stuff available on tv and the internet. And in Texas, they’re gonna push the Ten Commandments fight again even though they’ll lose that again.
But they won’t protect them from mass shootings, from employers exploiting them and from adults who try to legalize statutory rape with a marriage license. Couple that with telling women carrying a fetus that will die a few hours after birth that there is no other choice, or that she has to carry her rapist’s baby, etc, etc…..
That’s not the way to get the mom vote, the teen vote, the women’s vote or the Black vote.
Oh, and did I mention that Biden’s campaign manager for his re-election is a Latino-American woman?
There is so much more to write about: Ukraine, Russia, China, the failing Supreme Court, more repulsive history that we need to hear. And baseball.
And I can’t. This is likely to be an off week ahead as pressing offline matters demand my attention.
Stay well.
And just like that, I leave you this brief bit of humor.
Speaking of everyone wanting free content, I have subscribed to a bunch of substacks and newsletters (and Talking Points Memo) which is now my go-to news source) because I trust the people who run them not to bullshit me. The legacy media is dying, because they got blindsided by the internet and have STILL not learned how to make money in an online world, without charging for subscriptions, and they are being strangled by their penchant for both-sidesing everything (and presenting things in the best light for their uber-rich capitalist owners). The kids are not down with that.
And to tie it in with one of your other points, the New York Times has been awful on trans issues in general, and trans kids in particular. One of the states the passed the most draconian transphobic legislation cited the Times' reporting (not opinion, mind you, but reporting) as justification. The paper has consistently pushed the views of the "just asking questions," fascist lollipop guild (Ben Shapiro, Bari Weiss, Jesse Singal, Matt Walsh, etc).
Great job, dude. Some typographical notes: "Pirro" became "Mirro" twice in the first paragraph. I think Jeanine is more of a bullshit artist than a modern artist.
Speaking of everyone wanting free content, I have subscribed to a bunch of substacks and newsletters (and Talking Points Memo) which is now my go-to news source) because I trust the people who run them not to bullshit me. The legacy media is dying, because they got blindsided by the internet and have STILL not learned how to make money in an online world, without charging for subscriptions, and they are being strangled by their penchant for both-sidesing everything (and presenting things in the best light for their uber-rich capitalist owners). The kids are not down with that.
And to tie it in with one of your other points, the New York Times has been awful on trans issues in general, and trans kids in particular. One of the states the passed the most draconian transphobic legislation cited the Times' reporting (not opinion, mind you, but reporting) as justification. The paper has consistently pushed the views of the "just asking questions," fascist lollipop guild (Ben Shapiro, Bari Weiss, Jesse Singal, Matt Walsh, etc).
Great job, dude. Some typographical notes: "Pirro" became "Mirro" twice in the first paragraph. I think Jeanine is more of a bullshit artist than a modern artist.