A few others, on more specific subjects.

As I've pointed out before, Biden has not been getting the credit he deserves on his environmental policies and polls consistently show a lack of public knowledge of anything he's done related to these policies.  I think I've suggested that maybe some of this has to do with the fact that many of these policies go against the wishes of some rather powerful corporate industries, who are also some of the top advertisers for the news media.  Of course I could very well be wrong about these news corporations' attitudes about their bottom line.  What do I know?

Some of the more ambitious policies at the EPA were jeopardized with the Supreme Court ruling in 2022 limiting the authority of executive agencies without a Congressional mandate, so when Biden put out his new EPA rules last week, they were written specifically to stay within those allowed strictures (although they'll probably get sued anyway).  But these rules are ambitious on their own, just as ambitious as the coverage over them has been absent on mainstream news.  Specifically addressing emissions from power plants that will "require them to install technology that prevents 90% of their carbon emissions", as well as rules around the disposal and discharge of mercury, arsenic, lead and coal ash.  In addition to this, this past week also saw Biden allot $3 billion to replacing lead pipes in drinking water infrastructure, while his Energy Department is giving $26 million in grants for new local clean energy projects.  That's just this past week, and not counting the other billions in funding from the past month alone, all a continuation of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.  But this is all far too sexy news for even MSNBC to cover properly.

This past week also saw a landmark legislative win for the young Squad member, Summer Lee, who spearheaded a bipartisan push to address the pollution of methane and benzene from abandoned oil wells, which is the kind of rare victory that should have been applauded by those who don't believe Congress can do basic things anymore.  (As a result of the latter, it was promptly ignored.)

Also this week, on Tuesday, a joint report by the Senate Budget Committe and the House Oversight Committee was issued that is a damning indictment of the oil industry, that "includes documents in which oil industry figures seemingly concede the industry’s history of knowingly suppressing the link between fossil fuels and climate change".

The report alleges that major oil companies, as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the trade group the American Petroleum Institute, modified their strategy over the years from outright denial to “deception, disinformation, and doublespeak.” Their strategies on this front, the report alleges, include erroneously positioning natural gas as a climate-friendly “bridge fuel” to renewables that obfuscate its emissions. They have also publicly expressed support for the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement but internally acknowledged those goals are not compatible with their long-term business strategies, according to the report.

You may say that there's nothing surprising about that....other than the report's complete absence from TV news coverage.  These networks were similarly uninterested in the G7 announcement this week that they were committed to phasing out all "unabated" coal power by 2035.  Is the lack of "good news" on climate progress due to the presumption that more alarmist coverage is better for ratings?
 

It may be a little too soon to see how "unreported" this story will be, but of its two prongs, the first, from earlier this week, has absolutely gone unreported in American media, while the more recent (from this afternoon actually) may have legs in the upcoming week, but generally news stories that break on the weekend tend to subside quickly.

Over the past week, two significant members of Netanyahu's Cabinet, both miltary leaders, have threatened to resign in order to force Netanyahu to amend his post-siege plans for Gaza to allow, at minimum, an autonomous civilian authority and possibly including a hybrid international cooperative administration.  Netanyahu has previously rebuked any civilian Palestinian administration in post-war Gaza and has asserted that Isreal will maintain "indefinite security" and "open-ended control" over Gaza after current hostilities cease (a tacit suggestion that perhaps the hostilities will not).

Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz are the current and former Defense Ministers of Israel respectively, and both comprise two of the three-member 'War Cabinet' established after Oct. 7th.  The fact that both have now threatened to resign, in protest of Netanyahu's refusal to facilitate a future Palestinian state, is something that should be the leading headline across all news outlets.  (Instead, last night's congressional catfight continues to eat up that valuable 'print space'.) 

On Wednesday, from the AP:

Senior members of his Cabinet disagree. In a nationally televised statement Wednesday, Netanyahu’s defense minister increased the criticism, saying he had repeatedly pleaded with the Cabinet to make a decision on a postwar vision for Gaza that would see the creation of a new Palestinian civilian leadership. Yoav Gallant, a member of the three-man War Cabinet, said the government has refused to discuss the issue.

Gallant said not doing so would produce a reality where Israel could again exert civilian control over the Gaza Strip, which he said he opposed. Israel withdrew troops and settlers from the territory in 2005 after capturing it in the 1967 Mideast war.

“I call on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a decision and declare that Israel will not establish civilian control over the Gaza Strip, that Israel will not establish military governance in the Gaza Strip and that a governing alternative to Hamas in the Gaza Strip will be advanced immediately,” he said, suggesting Netanyahu’s decision-making was based on political considerations.

And from this afternoon:

Gantz spelled out a six-point plan that includes the return of hostages, ending Hamas’ rule, demilitarizing the Gaza Strip and establishing an international administration of civilian affairs with American, European, Arab and Palestinian cooperation. The plan also supports efforts to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia and widen military service to all Israelis.

He gave a June 8 deadline. “If you choose the path of fanatics and lead the entire nation to the abyss — we will be forced to quit the government,” he said.

Also worthy of coverage today: "Thousands of Israelis again rallied Saturday evening to demand a deal along with new elections. Some police in Tel Aviv responded with water cannons."

Netanyahu has called the conditions presented by Gantz "euphemisms" for defeat, under his long-standing assumption that a civilian Palestinian state poses an existential threat to Israel (unlike an unsustanable indefinite occupation?).  But Bibi is also cynically dangling a Catch-22 here.  He says that any "day after" talk of what a Palestinian state would consist of are "words devoid of content" as long as Hamas exists.  But everyone already knows that the complete elimination of Hamas is not a likely possibility.  So Netanyahu, as he has done for decades, is still using Hamas as an existential obstruction to the establishment of a Palestinian state, and to justify a more "open-ended" indefinite security lock-down of the Palestinian people.

Anyone blaming this on Biden is simply a fool.  Israel needs an interior solution to this problem at this point, whether from his own military leadership or through more democratic means.  Netanyahu's hubris is fragile enough to call this bluff.
 

Rampop II wrote:

And yet here it all echoes through the inglorious halls of the Less–Than Reported. 

There's a tendency for public statements to deliberately skirt the term "genocide" because in the context of international law, "genocide" is a legally–binding designation; officially declaring that a genocide is taking place triggers certain mandatory responses from the UN and from international governments. But, you know, (stretch and yawn) they might not feel up to making good on those commitments. So instead we're more likely to hear terms like "ethnic cleansing" and "crimes against humanity," which sound every bit as awful, the only difference being that we aren't actually obligated to do anything about them if we don't want to. If a genocide is clearly taking place and a politician, pundit, or whoever, calls it "ethnic cleansing" instead, chances are they're merely paying impotent lip–service. I'm not saying PEN America was doing that, mind you. I'm just highlighting the significance placed on whether or not the word "genocide" is employed. The UN is legally obligated to respond to a genocide, but not to an ethnic cleansing... even though they mean the exact same fucking thing. 

The problem may also be that since Palestinian Arabs are not culturally or linguistically distinct enough from some of their neighbors (Jordanian Arabs, for example), that even the UN definition of cultural eradication may not apply here (or it may, it may need to be adjudicated).  But what's happening is definitely an ethnic cleansing, a displacement to allow for territorial annexation.  I don't think the distinction should trivialize the problem, and more importantly, I don't think the distinction should be used (as I believe it was in the PEN context) as a weaponized litmus test. 

Unfortunately it's a moot point in terms of efficacy as long as Israel claims, um, immunity (outside the jurisdiction) of international law.  But in my own view of efficacy, I prefer to prime the interior divisions I outlined above to push for a two-state solution, which those PEN protesters still consider "Zionist propaganda".  Inevitably, the distinction between the rhetoric of "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" is tactical not ideological, and for the Genocide Joe folks, I just say, "good luck with that".

Rampop II wrote:

Whether ideological or strategic, it still meets UN standards for genocide. By their definition, genocide doesn't have to be a total eradication from the face of the planet, as in the case of the Holocaust, nor does it have to be ideologically–driven. Forced displacement of a specific ethnic group for territorial gain is sufficient. 

Again, this is getting into semantics.  Ethnic cleansing, as a "crime against humanity", falls within the Genocide Convention, and the UN already has the authority to act on ethnic cleansing (as they did with Serbia-Bosnia-Kosovo), and they have been in Gaza as well in their capacity, but the problem is we've seen the limitations of the UN's authority when the accused country doesn't acknowledge that authority.  (It's why Putin is an indicted war criminal but has not been arrested.)

But, back to the current context, the tactical rhetoric has no legal substance in this case.  Whether or not PEN America uses the term "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing" carries zero weight on either international law or our State department's realpolitik.  These protestors are not demanding the designation because it will effect either, any more than the harassments of AOC or Bernie Sanders (despite that both of them have used the term) will effect one inch of Israeli foreign policy.  Hence the rhetoric is only effective as a litmus test to alienate otherwise useful allies.  At worse, it's even a method of shifting the moral goalposts to where anyone who supports the idea of a Jewish homeland nation, even in a two-state solution (ie, a Zionist), can be spurned as 'genocide-adjacent'.  (Similar to what we saw in 2020 where supporters of law enforcement reform, as opposed to abolition, were spurned as white supremacy-adjacent.)

We were talking about this, and I'll add this here: a review of a new book called Solidarity, with its "core tenet" of "don't punch Left".  The premise is that when liberals (negative connotations assumed) attack those to their Left, it's playing into right-wing divide-and-conquer strategy, so liberals need to stop criticizing the Left in a show of solidarity.  The problem, as Jonathan Chait points out, is that the Left is then under no obligation to reciprocate this show of sympathy and solidarity.  They're free to continue punching and demonizing liberals all they wish, as if this isn't, at the very least, equally fracturing to these shared causes.  Naturally, this is because Leftists believe that they are absolutely right, and liberals, rather than possessing their own defined set of principles, are merely timid and indecisive compromisers.  So obviously, when liberals support things like police reform, rather than abolition, or a two-state solution, rather than a single Palestine, they are accused of aiding and abetting the status quo.  And because the Leftists see nothing less than total revolution as a solution, they have understandably dispensed with any notion of electoral political solutions, or as they are quoted: "Despite all that is at stake, too many liberals hold on to the false hope that we can fact-check or vote our way out of these problems."  But if we can't vote our way out of these problems, what remaining options are available?

We can see this betrayal of democratic principles in that protest letter to PEN America, where they make it clear that certain disagreements from the "conscionable" dogma will no longer be tolerated.  Knowing that they do not have the majority support, disruption and coercion become acceptable.  In short, there is no efficacy here, only scolding and posturing.  And maybe, like Bibi with his impossible task of eradicating Hamas, there's no real expectation of victory, only a perpetual continuation of the profitable problem.  As we've seen with both Fox News and the Young Turks, righteous indignation is a valuable commodity in an economy incentivized on outrage, and this is lucrative on all sides.  Why bother with the responsibility of governance when you can fundraise from the bleachers?  I guarantee you that, if he had a choice, this would have been Trump's preferred role under a Hillary Clinton administration.

Anyway, long story short, shaming people over whether they're saying "genocide" or not isn't putting one Palestinian out of harm's way.

Jinnistan wrote:

Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz are the current and former Defense Ministers of Israel respectively, and both comprise two of the three-member 'War Cabinet' established after Oct. 7th.  The fact that both have now threatened to resign, in protest of Netanyahu's refusal to facilitate a future Palestinian state, is something that should be the leading headline across all news outlets.

Perhaps because AP has been doing some great coverage of these stories, the Israeli government has now shut down the AP's live feed from Gaza and seized their camera equipment, citing the same 'foreign broadcaster law' used to similarly shut down Al-Jazeera's operation in the country earlier this month.  All of this has the smack of retaliation to it.

And as the UN has announced a freeze in aid shipments to Gaza, we have the less reported incidences of extremist Israelis seizing and vandalizing aid trucks who have been attempting to enter the West Bank.  We learned yesterday that the Israel National Security Minister (and member of Jewish fascist group Otzma Yehudit) Itamar Ben-Gvir had ordered Israeli police forces to stop providing security for these aid trucks, and today we learn that these same police are actually providing these extremist settlers with intelligence to help them in their attacks on these aid trucks.

Meanwhile, our flotilla pier isn't doing a goddamn thing.

(Late-breaking edit: Israel this afternoon has reversed their seizure of the AP cameras and feed.)

Last edited by Jinnistan (5/21/2024 7:13 pm)

Although it remains underreported, there has a bit a slight uptick in attention towards the Heritage Foundation blueprint which is being used by Trump cronies (Steve Bannon, Steven Miller, Jeffery Clark, Johnny McEntee, Peter Navarro, Russell Vought, Ken Cuccinelli, Christopher Miller, etc), all of whom will be placed in senior positions in a future Trump administration, to preview and highlight their agenda, and it is especially focused on what one crony describes as a "three-week reign of terror" immediately following the inauguration.  Project 2025 is not a conspiracy theory, nor a secret.  They have their own website with 900 pages of pdfs explaining precisely what they intend to do.  Despite this transparancy, the mainstream news media has been curiously incurious about any of it, and as a result the vast majority of Americans remain completely unaware of its existence.  (Sometimes this works to their advantage, like last week when Christopher Miller's proposal to implement mandatory military service happened to be reported on, Trump was able to deny it without much pushback.

Since it might be helpful for voters to understand what exactly is in this plan that will be implemented with a Trump victory, whether anyone considering voting for Trump or anyone thinking of sitting this one out 'cause how bad could it be?, let's take a look at some of this shit:

BBC wrote:

The Project 2025 document outlines four pillars: restore the family as the centrepiece of American life; dismantle the administrative state; defend the nation’s sovereignty and borders; and secure God-given individual rights to live freely....it calls for sacking thousands of civil servants, expanding the power of the president, dismantling the Department of Education and other federal agencies, and sweeping tax cuts.

Project 2025 proposes that the entire federal bureaucracy, including independent agencies such as the Department of Justice, be placed under direct presidential control – a controversial idea known as “unitary executive theory”.  The proposals also call for eliminating job protections for thousands of government-employees, who could then be replaced by political appointees.

This is important to understand.  From the AP: "Much of the new president’s agenda would be accomplished by reinstating what’s called Schedule F — a Trump-era executive order that would reclassify tens of thousands of the 2 million federal employees as essentially at-will workers who could more easily be fired."  Essentially what we'll see is that on "day one", an inaugurated Trump will demand the resignations of the entire civil service, forcing them to re-apply for their jobs.  At this point, the administration will look to shrink the administrative state by numbers they're citing around 50,000 employees.  Those who will keep their jobs will be vetted, mostly on loyalty oaths and the like.  Those who do not pass the loyalty litmus tests will be let go, and Project 2025 is currently already amassing several thousand applicants and training them to be MAGA loyalists to take these open positions throughout the administrative state.  Basically Trump will be remaking our civil service into his own image to a completely unprecedented degree in American history.  This "purge" is exactly what Trump is referring to when he says he will only be a dictator on "day one".

BBC wrote:

The Project recommends the arrest, detention, and deportation of undocumented immigrants.

Other proposals include increasing fees on immigrants and allowing fast-tracked applications for migrants who pay a premium. [Note how this will only hurt poor immigrants, not those either sponsered by wealthy cartels or - gasp! - international terrorist groups. ed-Jinn]

The document proposes slashing federal money for research and investment in renewable energy, and calls for the next president to "stop the war on oil and natural gas”...the economic advisers suggest that a second Trump administration should slash corporate and income taxes, abolish the Federal Reserve and even consider a return to gold-backed currency.

it proposes withdrawing the abortion pill mifepristone from the market

It proposes to eliminate a long list of terms from all laws and federal regulations, including “sexual orientation", “diversity, equity, and inclusion”, “gender equality”, "abortion" and “reproductive rights”.

But here's my favorite:

Under the proposals, pornography would be banned, and tech and telecoms companies that facilitate access to such content would be shut down.

Now, in America today, if the Democrats can't win an election by simply pointing out that Trump will shut down their porn, then I honestly have no idea what could possibly save them.  And again this isn't a conspiracy theory or hyperbole.  They have their stated intention to ban pornography and shut down the internet platforms which host it in black and white text in the introduction of thier mission statement book, Mandate For Leadership, on their own fucking website, which says:

Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.

 You think Sam Alito was joking about that Comstock business?

Let's go a bit further:

Demolishing the independence of the Department of Justice is almost taken for granted.  Even Trump gleefully brags about this publicly.  And don't mistake language claiming to reign in the FBI, they mean to likewise reign in their independence, but also they look to "maximize law enforcement capacity" in many other ways.  They also look to make the WH Office of Legal Counsel more subservient (obviously!, if a president has total immunity!) and to further restrict press access:

TIME wrote:

The handbook encouraged the next presidential administration to “reexamine the balance between media demands and space constraints on the White House premises,” saying that there is “no legal entitlement” for the press corps to have permanent space on the premises.

Maybe the Genocide Joe crowd will find this interesting: "In fact, Congress would see its role diminished — for example, with a proposal to eliminate congressional notification on certain foreign arms sales."

Two additional elements that may interest voters: 1) In addition to regulating our more prurient pleasures, this Project seeks to assert a more explicit Christian Nationalism into governance.  The Project, like Alito, also sees Christians as "under assault", and this is an important aspect of the retribution theme behind Trump's re-election, and 'wokeness' will invariably be the target.  Many of these Christian Nationalist figures, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, have ties to what's called the New Apostolic Reformation and this week Johnson has been confidently laying out his plans for a Republican majority and White House to "hit the ground running".

And 2) a proposal to use the 1807 Insurrection Act to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement purposes, with a strong suggestion that the targets could be Trump's political enemies.  The Project 2025 doesn't go into this, but WaPo reported on the plan last year, and the plan is attributted to Project 2025 contributor, and Trump flunky, Jeffery Clark (Sven!).  Let's just say it dovetails with the overall Project 2025 objective to reign in the DoJ under the President's command. 

There's lots of other awful stuff in there, and it's all out in the open, and, hey Democrats!, maybe try to make some smoke out of this?  Because it's clear that the mainstream media isn't interested enough to try.
 

John Oliver is clearly a fan of Plato Shrimp, which must be why he hustled out his own overview of Project 2025 this past Sunday after my post on the subject.  Hopefully all of the other news media corporations will follow our blazing trail.




 

Sometimes, the stories themselves are not so much underreported as the implications behind them.  There's been no shortage, for example, of coverage of the recent "plea deal" which US military lawyers reached with some of the very few remaining detainees at Guantanamo Bay who were involved in planning of the 9/11 attack, or the outrage from various Republicans looking to capitalize on the development to attack the Biden administration, or the quick reversal from the Pentagon, in reaction to said backlash, to suspend at least temporarily the agreement from going through.  What remains underreported is how asinine all of this is.  Anyone suggesting to you that any of the three detainees in question will ever set foot outside of a US prison in their lifetimes is lying to you.  In fact, such a plea deal, in addition to being an absolutely necessary step to the goal of finally closing the Guantanamo Bay prison after more than 20 years, is also an absolutely necessary remedy for, you know, all that torture committed against these detainees which has prevented the legal process from going forward.  These agreements allow only for the death penalty to be taken off the table, in exchange for the detainees to faithfully and finally give full testimony including information which may have originally been procured under illegal duress.  All of which sounds pretty 'win-win' to me.  This Intelligencer piece explains the implications of this "life for facts" agreement:

The U.S. government had reportedly agreed to a plea deal that would take the death penalty off the table in return for KSM’s full cooperation in a sort of fact-finding proceeding. The government would present its evidence and the terrorist would reportedly answer questions about how the plot was planned and carried out, some of them submitted by the family members of 9/11 victims. ...

But the decision to pull the plea bargain is frustrating to at least one group of people: those who want to complete the historical record.

In his view — and that of most others inside and outside the government who have been involved in the Guantánamo trials — a plea agreement along the lines of the one accepted and retracted last week is the only logical way to bring the proceedings to an end. The structure of the military tribunal’s proceeding was still being hashed out when Austin called a halt, but it was reportedly to take the form of a “mini-trial,” which would have been held next year. The fact-finding process might not deliver justice but might have offered some answers to lingering questions.

The piece also excoriates the decision by the Pentagon: "the election-season backtrack looked bumbling, indecisive, and cravenly political".  The military should understand by now that of course Republicans will take every opportunity to weaponize any foreign policy decision - especially one that would be considered a victory - against the Biden administration, much like they just did over the recent successful Russian prisoner swap.  The operating aspersion is that everything in the world is Biden's fault regardless of circumstances and for what it's worth Kamala would be so much worse.  Don't bother to explain that this was needed to finally close Guantanamo, an overwhelmingly popular move.  Instead react with panic, which only fuels the perception that something was actually nefarious about the deal in the first place.  Good job, Gen. Austin.

.....

Rampant torture of Palestinians in Israeli custody isn't particularly new or shocking, but maybe there should have been a lot more coverage of that damning UN Human Rights Office report from last week which spells out all of the greatest hits: "held in cage-like facilities, stripped naked for prolonged periods, wearing only diapers", "kneeling on gravel", "being blindfolded, deprived of food, sleep and water, subjected to electric shocks and burnt with cigarettes....women and men also spoke of sexual and gender-based violence", "waterboarding and the release of dogs", as well as reports of being served spoiled and moldy food.  Also of note is that these are not necessarily prisons either, but involved being "held in prolonged secret detention...held without trial or even charges".  All of this coming to light just days after the detention of several Israeli "reservists" for crimes committed against a Palestinian prisoner in custody led to riots and the storming of two Israeli army bases by far-right protestors trying to free these soldiers.  Note how the current National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (who is in charge of Israeli prisons and detention facilities) celebrated these riots and called the soldiers' arrests "nothing less than shameful", directly contradicting the Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.  Note as well that this current National Security Minister also happens to have previously been convicted for "incitement to racism and supporting a terror organization", which somehow wasn't enough to dissuade Netanyahu from appointing him in charge of the Israeli police forces.

But as much as these accusations of torture among the Palestinian detainees seem to allude to America's own shameful CIA torture program, one particular detail stood out pretty brightly to me, which was the inclusion among the acts of torture of "forced consumption of hallucinogenic pills".

Although this particular element of our own torture program had been strongly suggested in Jon Ronson's Men Who Stare At Goats (and even more strongly impled in the film adaptation), there never has been a great deal of follow-up on the conjecture that the Enhanced Interrogation Techniques were actually the true heir apparent of the MK-Ultra program.  The latter proved unsuccessful at both producing a truth serum or a mind-control agent, but proved far more successfully at psychological torture.  Given that all of the rest of these Israeli allegations seem copy-pasted directly from the CIA EIT playbook, why should we be surprised if the illicit use of powerful mind-altering substances wasn't also a major - and still completely unexamined by American media - plank of the original CIA program from 20 years ago?
 

Days after ABC This Week's Martha Radditz  and the WaPo editorial board confidently declared that "price gouging is not causing inflation", the "senior director for pricing" at Kroger, Andy Groff, testfied to the FTC that they had price gouged egg and milk prices "beyond inflation levels".  I didn't hear anyone apologize for that.  I want to note that this story broke last week, and for whatever reason I watched the following Sunday morning news shows, including Radditz's This Week, and this story was never brought up.  Indeed, perhaps lost in the wild holiday weekend that is American Labor Day, this story has been completely swallowed into the ether it seems.  It wasn't brought up during the high profile CNN interview with Kamala Harris the very next day, as proof for the need of her asserted anti-gouging ban.  But Harris was asked about suddenly turning 'black', so there's....that.

It isn't simply the insult of gaslighting Americans that real price controls, ala gouging and fixing and setting, aren't actually happening right now in our economy at corporate cartel levels.  The news media has clearly decided that these kinds of stories are boring.  We get cute little euphemisms like "sellers inflation" which doesn't even fool Wikipedia.  And instead we get this Sunday's "analysis" that Trump is still leading in the polls on the flat, broad issues like "economy" and "immigration".  These are his strengths, we're told.  But then to ignore actual news reporting which happens to support Kamala Harris' economic policy proposals?  Hm.  It's like dogmatically repeating his strength on immigration without having to point out that it's largely based on a fictitious racist pretense, which is easily factually refutable even if it wasn't so morally distasteful on its face.  It starts to look like maybe Trump is leading in these broad catagories because no professional corporate journalists seem to be interested in applying contextual explanation.  Oh well, tl;dr.

Let's concentrate on what's most important here: Does Kamala even frack?  OK, frack, shill, bury - let's do this right now, CNN and ABC.  Who would you do?
 

crumbsroom wrote:

One of the rare times I have found myself agreeing with Bill Maher....exactly what the fuck was that Kamala interview? What kinds of questions were those? It's almost like they veered her around anything she could say of substance, policy that people might actually benefit from hearing about, focusing in on half-assed gotcha questions, and questions which no matter what answer she gave, it was a total irrelevancy.

There's blame all around.  I'm sure that if Kamala's people wanted a more substantive interview, they could have pushed for it.  If CNN was unwilling, they could have gone to NBC, ABC, CBS.  I'm hoping this isn't the case, but there's a lot of talk among the punditry that suggests that Kamala should avoid talking substance in this final lap, relying instead on sustaining the "vibes" of her candidacy.  I think that's extremely ill-advised if that's her actual plan, but hubris has always been the Democrat achilles heel.  I just happen to believe that Harris has the more persuasive policy substance, but, again (a theme of my political malaise) the mainstream media dogma is that "policy substance" is anathema to people's attention spans.  So we get the gotcha gimmicks.  The reality show histrionics.  Kamala could possibly win the election if she would just toss a tall glass of chardonnay in Trump's face during the debate.  And if that's the way it's got to be, Kamala, toss it hard.

crumbsroom wrote:

Is it the media that reinforces this double standard?

It absolutely does, whether advertently or not.  It's the eventually result.  The news media has been gaslit by the old-school Bernard Goldberg grievance of "liberal bias" to where they're almost neurotically careful to overcompensate their criticism of liberals.  And in such a situation, the bell curve accentuates every Dem gaff while forfeiting all but the most egregious Pub trespasses.  And even with the worst Pub scandals, there's an incessent need to get "both sides", giving the benefit of the doubt even against overwhelming evidence.  Trump has played this tendency like Liberace, and exposed the fecklessness of these standards, but unfortunately the news media still seems immune to adapting to this cynicical strategy.  "That's just Trump being Trump!"

Also, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I do believe that the news media has made a conscious decision not to provoke "the bear", that contigent of Trump supporter that falls in that nexus of Christian nationalist and white supremacist which, as seen on Jan. 6, could very well be prone to violence.  You can criticize the Clintons, Obamas, Bidens and Kamala all day long and nobody's going to be calling for Civil War.  This is another political disparity that the news media is not willing to examine much less expose.  Trump and his stans have learned that they possess a very valuable perceived Damaclean sword that privileges their coverage tremendously.  It's the same as those Putin symps saying that supporting Ukraine amounts to inviting WWIII.  It's the logic of domestic abusers.  Better not burn that dinner, bitch.

crumbsroom wrote:

Are left leaning people ultimately doomed because of their ability to think (as well as become lost) in the many shades of grey that attends any serious issue

Somewhat to the contrary, I'm more frustrated by elements on the left which are increasingly intolerant of nuance and more willing to push for absolute and uncompromising solutions.  The only caveat is that these kinds of leftists don't occupy a significant number of public offices and are largely confined to the pod-bleachers and the street protests.  But there's definitely an increased urge to "eat your own", most notably in the left's abandonment of AOC recently.  If the left can't even build a bridge with their closest prospective allies, like AOC or Elizabeth (*snake emoji*) Warren, how the hell do they expect to get anything done?  Or this attempt to defame Josh Shapiro.  Why are you shitting on a popular Dem governor of a swing state?  Are you that eager to hand over Pennsylvania to Trump on a silver platter?  They're just not thinking these things through.  We can all laugh at the right-wing Freedom Caucus for causing similar "my way/highway" obstruction and immolating all of their Speakers every few months, but I really don't think the left needs to be taking that as a constructive guideline for effective politicking.

crumbsroom wrote:

Are the uninformed and apathetic always destined to have the upper hand?

I think that the worst aspect is the trolling vengence.  We've always had the uninformed and apathetic among us.  What's new, probably spurred by social media empowerment, is that these constituents are less willing to "sit it out" and instead want to inflict pain on the those of us who do care and are bothered to be informed.  Misery loves company, and I guess they're tired of being so lonely.

.....

And for a great recent example of "less reported news", and which exemplifies the double standard for how Trump is seemingly able to get away with major scandals unscathed while the media is busy parsing Democratic grammar:

Looks like Trump very likely took $10 million dollars from the Egyptian government as an illegal campaign donation in 2016, and then had his attorney general, Bill Barr, shut down the investigation into it.

This was reported last month and has been completely absent from mainstream coverage until some Dems started screaming about it this week.  Sometimes that's the only way to get the press' attention.  The news media answers to shrill like buck musk.