Here’s a really good vent piece

about what was happening with the Dem presidential ticket prior to Sunday’s culmination. It hasn’t been easy for any of us to just pivot to our new candidate, though her wondrousness makes it easier. There are still feelings about it. I like how this writer termed it.

Joe Did What? Trafalgar Edition by Yastreblyansky

“No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.”Read on Substack

Well, I guess this certainly does change everything, and that’s refreshing.

I’m going to stay angry for a long time at The Times and Politico and other big media and the “liberal” tech billionaires for the dishonest backdoor trick they pulled, when they couldn’t succeed in turning the public against Biden and shifted instead to convincing us that we had turned against Biden by ourselves, or rather that our neighbors had, through the bogus “age issue”, warning us not that Biden was a bad president, but that he’d lose because other people thought he was too old, and our punishment for supporting Biden would be another Trump term (on the basis of a polling model that has consistently failed by underestimating the Democratic vote for six years now). They recognized our deep fear of the consequences of another Trump term and exploited it, in a way that actually made Trump’s reelection more likely, using the debate disaster as evidence of a permanent degeneration (which it obviously wasn’t—Biden had never showed up in that condition before and never has since). It was irresponsible and disgusting.

I’m not too angry with the congressional party leaders, or the “centrist” representatives in their precarious suburban seats, or even the bedwetter commentariat. The fear is real, and it’s justified. What could be lost in another four years of Trumpery is almost incalculable; I’m thinking especially of the backsliding in the elimination of fossil fuels, but the “deconstruction of the administrative state” as prefigured in the Project 2025 document turns the entire civil service into an easily corrupted tool for tearing down regulations, and reduces the Justice Department into the president’s personal police agency. It really is the end of the republic, alongside plans for a federal ban on abortion, vigilante takeovers of school libraries, the insane powers for evil conceded to the presidency by the Supreme Court even as it strips the office of its power to do good. The thing is, fear is a lousy counselor, and their Fantasy Politics League plan to get rid of Biden by obliterating the primary results with some kind of pantomime competition, before or during the Democratic convention, as somebody leaked the plan to the abominable Mark Halperin (now working for Newsmax), was a terrible, senseless plan that would have flung us into even worse uncertainty than we already had. Don’t panic.

I’m certainly not angry at Biden for making the decision. Far from it! Remember that (as @nycsouthpaw just pointed out) there are two parts to what he did: stepping down from the campaign, and giving his endorsement to Vice President Harris. The first was the thing he was being pressured to do by the congressional party leadership, the timorous representatives from Nassau County and North Jersey and the Hudson Valley, the readers of Friedman and Brooks and Ezra Klein, and so on; the second was the thing those people absolutely didn’t intend for him to do, spoiling the open convention plan. He was not supposed to endorse Harris.

So it was one of those audacious, perfectly timed Biden moves that looks like a gaffe (the most famous example would be the one during his vice presidency that made marriage equality a federal reality) and changes the whole situation. Harris quickly announced her candidacy (to “earn and win” the nomination, she said, carefully), all the other conceivable candidates endorsed her too, and the campaign had raised $50 million from small donors ($100 million after 24 hours, suck on that, billionaires). Like one-eyed, one-armed Nelson at Trafalgar—I’m not kidding, folks!—the 81-year-old Biden had sacrificed his own (political) life, but had won the battle, for his legacy of a better, more free and equal America.

At least I hope so. A battle, of course, not the war. Anyway, it seems clear that Democrats are in a much better position than they were a couple of days ago, with a unity in the party we’ve seen nothing like in years, pro-Biden and anti-Biden voices embracing in the social media. Of 263 Democratic congressmembers and 23 governors, the Washington Post tally 24 hours after the announcements has 243 who have endorsed Harris and 43 who haven’t (non-endorsers include convicted felon Robert Menendez and the federally indicted Henry Cuellar, but the New York and New Jersey centrists I’ve been watching the most have endorsed, except for that freak Tom Suozzi, and so, I’m glad to report, has Speaker Emerita Pelosi). There are no alternative candidates except Marianne Williamson (old Joe Manchin sent out feelers, but was roundly rebuffed). As of this afternoon convention delegations from ten states—Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Florida, Louisiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Alaska, and Wisconsin, plus Guam, had pledged support to Harris, for a total of 770 delegates out of the needed 1,986.

Meanwhile the Trump campaign, now led (with Biden’s withdrawal) by the oldest and unquestioned most cognitively disabled presidential candidate in history, is having to completely reconfigure its tactics. They are running ads complaining that Vice President Harris laughs too much and that she’s opposed to plastic drinking straws. Their vice presidential candidate “JD” Vance looks like a feeble impostor and baffles his audiences with his complaints.

Republicans have been trying to characterize the surge of support for Harris as some kind of coup attempt against Biden, as if Biden hadn’t sparked himself it with his bold move, and as undemocratic, which is somewhat ironic—

One of the most gratifying aspects of the excitement is the way the discussion of Biden’s age has given way to the discussion of his accomplishments from all quarters:

I’ll be getting to that, no doubt, but in the meantime check out this magisterial survey, “Why Biden Outclasses Every American President Since FDR,” by Nathan Newman.

Oh, and maybe one of his most surprising accomplishments will be the election of the nation’s first Black woman president.

(For me, that cleans the Anita Hill slate. It may not for her, and I wouldn’t blame her, but I’m over it now that this has happened. People learn, grow, and remediate wrongs over time. Well, good people do.)

Moms for Liberty have had a rough year. They’re still RNC darlings.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/07/moms-for-liberty-have-had-a-rough-year-theyre-still-rnc-darlings/

Thanks to their friends in (very) high places.

By Keira Butler Sunday, July 21, 2024

Moms for Liberty co-founders Tina Descovich and Tiffany JusticePhoto: YouTube clip

This article first appeared on Mother Jones. It has been republished with the publication’s permission.

On the second day of the Republican National Convention, I made my way back to Milwaukee’s symphony hall to attend a town hall hosted by the conservative parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty. This wasn’t my first Moms for Liberty event—I’ve attended the annual summits for the past two years. Back in 2022, Betsy DeVos, who served as former President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education, delivered the line that got the loudest applause. “While I know that everything we did was with the interest of kids in mind and policies that would really give as much power back to the states and local communities as we possibly could,” she said, “I personally think the Department of Education should not exist.”

At the time, that statement felt a little bit edgy—like DeVos was saying the quiet part out loud. But two years later at yesterday’s event, many of the panelists expressed that same sentiment as a a foregone conclusion. “The fundamental problem that we have in the United States was the creation of the federal Department of Education,” Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) told the crowd of maybe 400 or so mostly white women. In his remarks, erstwhile GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy said, “We’re not just going to reform the Department of Education, it means we’re going to get there and actually shut it down.”

Does that mean that a ragtag group of moms single handedly turned the abolition of a behemoth government agency into a run-of-the-mill conservative talking point? Not exactly. On that issue and many others, Moms for Liberty has had a major assist from powerful conservative groups that share their goals—and are shaping the Republican agenda for 2024.

Founded in 2021 by three former school board members in Florida, Moms for Liberty rode the rising tide of anti-mask sentiment in the tumultuous year after schools were closed during the pandemic. The group’s leaders capitalized on the backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd. In fact, Moms for Liberty was one of the most prominent early groups to criticize the teaching of ant-racist curriculum in schools, which they incorrectly referred to as “critical race theory.” The group also vociferously opposed LGBTQ-inclusive lessons, and its members led campaigns to rid classrooms and school libraries of books deemed inappropriate.

Over time, Moms for Liberty grew in both membership and influence. Today, the group counts 130,000 members across chapters in 48 states. The organization groomed some members to run for local school boards, gradually expanding their influence throughout communities. Last year, all of the Republican presidential candidates, including former president Donald Trump, spoke at their annual conference in Pennsylvania.

In its marketing, Moms for Liberty comes off as a group of like-minded people, mostly women, who all happened to come together because of a shared concern for children. Founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Deskovich, the website says, are just a couple of “moms on a mission to stoke the fires of liberty.” But as I’ve previously reported, the organization’s connections to the Republican party run deep. Its conferences have been sponsored by the GOP training group the Leadership Institute and the conservative powerhouse think tank the Heritage Foundation. Earlier this week, after the RNC Heritage Foundation event, Moms for Liberty national director Catalina Stubbe told me that her group is “very close friends” with Heritage, which was one of the sponsors of today’s event, and whose president Kevin Roberts spoke on one of the panels.

Considering the group’s cozy relationship with Heritage, the RNC town hall panelists’ focus on abolishing the US Department of Education shouldn’t be surprising. Project 2025, the 920-page conservative policy roadmap that Heritage spearheaded, calls for the complete elimination of the Department of Education, along with the codification of parents’ rights laws similar to those in Florida, which strictly limit teachers’ use of LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum and books.

After the event, I spoke to Lydia Dominguez, a Moms for Liberty member running for school board in Clark County, Nevada. Dominguez, the mother of two teenage boys, told me that she believed schools “are being oversaturated by national agendas.” What kinds of national agendas? I asked. “They’re having CNN in the classroom,” she said. “They’re pushing national topics such as the transgender topics, sexualized content.”

—————
She believed schools “are being oversaturated by national agendas…They’re having CNN in the classroom,” she said. “They’re pushing national topics such as the transgender topics, sexualized content.”
—————

Monica Kepes serves as the secretary of a Moms for Liberty chapter in Washington County, Wisconsin. “I think the big bureaucratic institutions are instituting a lot of stuff that comes down through the education system,” she said. “I think the bigger you get, the more power there is, the more chance corruption and all that kind of stuff.”

At Moms for Liberty’s upcoming 2024 summit, which will take place next month in Washington, DC, it seems unlikely that the group will be able to muster a repeat performance of the star-studded speaker roster from last year. So far, this year’s list appears to be a grab bag of not especially famous ultra-conservative pundits, C-list comedians, and culture warriors. One reason for this lackluster lineup could be the fallout from a series of scandals in 2023. A group from a chapter in Kentucky posedfor a photo with the white nationalist group the Proud Boys. (Those members were later removed from the group.) Last year, a chapter leader in Indiana quoted Hitler in a newsletter. On the last evening of the annual summit a few months later, Justice, the co-founder, said in a speech, “One of our moms in a newsletter quotes Hitler…I stand with that mom!”

But the most damaging setbackcame in late 2023, when Christian Ziegler, chair of the Florida GOP, was accused of raping and illegally filming a woman who had been involved in a sexual relationship with him and his wife, Bridget Ziegler, a founding member of Moms for Liberty. As I wrote at the time, the situation was especially awkward because Ziegler helped craft Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” parents’ rights law, which forbids teachers in the state from talking about same-sex relationships. “The irony is crazy because you have this woman and her husband who are so concerned with preventing children from hearing anything that doesn’t totally align with their values,” one Florida mom told me at the time. “And then it’s like, I’m having to explain a three-way to a 12-year-old this week.” (Christian Ziegler has been cleared of rape charges; in March, the Florida state attorney’s office declined to criminally charge him for illegally filming the sexual encounter because of insufficient evidence.)

Unsurprisingly, no one mentioned the sex scandal (or any of the other ones) at the town hall event. But on one panel, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took a victory lap about a bill Ziegler helped to create. “It used to be…you didn’t have to worry about your kid going to kindergarten and being told that they should change their gender,” he said. “We put the kibosh on that in Florida—we said, ‘We are not going to be indulging in things like gender ideology in our schools.’” The crowd whooped with approval.

The Republican Party seems to agree. Its official platform, released last week, calls for funding cuts for schools that embrace “woke” policies like LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum. This serves as a reminder that even though Moms for Liberty’s star appears to have dimmed over the past year, the reverberations from its movement will be felt for years to come. Moms for Liberty, cofounder Tina Descovich told the crowd, “is here to fight, fight, fight, and win, win, win.” She paused. “And winning we are.”

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Florida is denying trans people updated birth certificates in defiance of its own laws

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/07/florida-is-denying-trans-people-updated-birth-certificates-in-defiance-of-its-own-laws/

Dozens of trans people have appealed the denials but they’re not even getting responses.

By John Russell Tuesday, July 23, 2024

Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a press conference at the FGCU Kapnick Education and Research Center in Naples on Tuesday, April 23, 2024.Photo: Jonah Hinebaugh/Naples Daily News/USA Today Network-Florida / USA TODAY NETWORK

While Republican lawmakers have repeatedly failed to pass legislation to prevent transgender people from updating their birth certificates to reflect their gender identity, the state has nonetheless been denying requests from both trans adults and minors to do so for the past year.

According to The 19th, since last year, trans minors and adults in the state have received letters from the Florida Department of Health’s Bureau of Vital Statistics denying their requests for amended birth certificates even when all their other government-issued ID documents reflect their gender identity and despite the fact that they have provided documentation of their gender transition that has previously been accepted.

In one March 2024 letter reviewed by the outlet, the agency said that documentary evidence provided by the applicant “does not establish that the sex identifier on the birth record contains a misstatement, error, or omission.”

Another from August 2023 said that for trans minors, “documentary evidence established prior to the child’s seventh birthday is required,” while a separate letter says that trans adults must provide documentation “established prior to the registrant’s 18th birthday.” As The 19th notes, for many trans people who were either unaware of or still figuring out their gender identity or were unable to access gender-affirming care as children, either requirement would be nearly impossible to provide.

Simone Chriss, an attorney with Florida-based Southern Legal Counsel (SLC), told The 19th that of the around 80 clients she has worked with since August 2023 who have appealed the agency’s denials, none have been able to obtain an amended birth certificate reflecting their gender identity. Most of her clients’ appeals, she said, “are just being ignored.”

“I’ve filed many,” said Chriss, who is also the director of SLC’s transgender rights initiative. “There’s at least five that I have pending at this moment that the department hasn’t responded to.”

Since 2018, trans Floridians have been able to provide documentation from a doctor showing that they have received gender-affirming care in order to get their birth certificates updated to reflect their gender identity. Before that, only trans people who could provide proof of gender-affirming surgery could qualify for an amended document.

In 2023, Florida Republicans tried to pass a bill that would have banned the state from changing gender markers on birth certificates. Another bill, introduced earlier this year, would have required state IDs and licenses to reflect a person’s sex assigned at birth. Both pieces of legislation failed to pass.

But that has not stopped state agencies from denying trans people updated documents. In a January letter, Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FHSMV) deputy executive director Robert Kynoch rescinded the agency’s previous policy allowing individuals to correct the gender markers on their driver’s licenses after transitioning.

“The term ‘gender’… does not refer to a person’s internal sense of his or her gender role of identification, but has historically and commonly been understood as a synonym for ‘sex,’ which is determined by innate and immutable biological and genetic characteristics,” Kynoch’s letter read in part. Allowing people to alter their licenses based on gender identity, he wrote, “undermines the purpose of an identification record and can frustrate the state’s ability to enforce its laws.”

“Misrepresenting one’s gender, understood as sex, on a driver license constitutes fraud,” the letter continued, “and subjects an offender to criminal and civil penalties, including cancellation, suspension, or revocation of his or her driver license.”

As The 19th notes, the department’s rule was not prompted by any legislation. Similarly, the Florida health department’s Bureau of Vital Statistics’ denials of trans people’s requests for amended birth certificates do not reflect any new state law, and have resulted in trans Floridians spending hundreds of dollars to obtain previously accepted documentation only to have their requests denied.

As Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson noted in a statement following Kynoch’s January letter, policies denying trans people documents that reflect their gender identity result in their being outed “anywhere they use a driver’s license or identification document,” potentially subjecting them to harassment, discrimination, or worse.

Southern Legal Counsel’s Chriss told The 19th that the organization plans to challenge the state’s birth certificate policy in federal court.

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Let’s talk about Harris and constitutional requirements….

When Hatred of the Left Becomes Love for Putin

AZspot

“What’s more, the grievance and resentment at the heart of Trumpist nationalism in America is in some ways quite similar to the mentality of Putinist nationalism in Russia: One obsesses over losing the culture war and being disrespected by the “elites”; the other, over losing the Cold War and being disrespected by the West. Perhaps this explains other similarities in the two mindsets, from the penchant for provocation and in-your-face defiance of norms to the affinity for conspiracy theories. Too many American rightists look at the Putin regime and see kindred spirits.”

Is Florida ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Over? Well, Here Is What Really Happened

Oklahoma Schools To Teach From The Bible

The Rev. points out how bad an idea this is, and that is people want religious instruction they should trust their church, their trained religious leaders, not the government. Again this man makes a lot of sense to me compared to US hate preachers. Hugs. Scottie

A Truly Great, Truly Christian Nation…. That Would Be Something To See!

This maybe the most important video I have watched or posted today. It is grand. I wish ever Christian Nationalist republican could watch it, and then try to understand it. He is saying to be a Christian Nation under Jesus rules you don’t get to be the ruler, the king, the one demanding how others live. You are there to serve everyone, and everyone is free to either believe in your god or not. Wonderful. Hugs. Scottie

Pundits Are Obsessing Over Biden’s Ageism Instead of Trump’s Far-Right Project 2025 Manifesto

Pundits Are Obsessing Over Biden’s Ageism Instead of Trump’s Far-Right Project 2025 Manifesto

This is long. Gronda writes like that. I do wish she would make smaller posts but she doesn’t. So here it is. Why you ask am I posting a written article I already told you made my eyes glaze over a few times. Because the information she provides is so vitally important. Please go, read the article she wrote. Then if you have issues with it, post them here on my blog. Loves, hugs. Scottie

The Media Rigs The 2024 Election

https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/the-media-rigs-the-2024-election

I want to thank Ten Bears for the link, his link I will post below. Please read the article, and see how the news media has tried to mislead and lead the public to accept the candidate that will make them the most income. Grand read. Please do. It explains the totally unequal reporting on Biden and tRump, and other elections, and explains we must ignore it, and vote for democracy and that means vote for Biden. Hugs. Scottie.

Some quotes from the article.

How else to explain the manner in which the people who reflexively insist there are “two sides” to every issue have completely dispensed with reporting in full dimensions the issues around Biden’s performance? The press has chosen a lane, best exemplified by the New York Times loading up their front page and home page with anti-Biden narratives. The debate within the Democratic Party and liberalism is being reported as a one-sided affair, despite prominent leaders in the party making the argument for Biden’s continued candidacy. In the media pack, that storyline effectively has ceased to exist. They want Biden out, and they want him out now.

Why is the press doing this? While I think that there is some truth to the fact that the ownership of most of these media outlets has a conservative world view and that they are happy to pillory the Democratic Party at every opportunity they get, I think the reasoning is simpler.

The Biden administration has been competently boring, passing a roster of better than anticipated legislative achievements that have led to low unemployment, low fuel prices, massive infrastructure investment and now-declining inflation. This is great for America but it sucks for the bank accounts of most journalists.

During the Trump presidency they didn’t have to bother covering things like replacing lead pipes in Black communities or attempts to forgive billions in student debt. No, under Trump they had a never ending stream of feuds instigated by Trump, ranging from childish insults thrown at Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, NATO, and random people on social media. They had Trump insiders leaking office gossip about Omarosa, Diet Pepsi and other nonsense to stenographers like the New York Times’ resident Regina George, Maggie Haberman.

This led to massive online traffic, a bump in television ratings and book deals, so many book deals. ABC News’ Jonathan Karl has somehow squeezed out three Trump books, and the title of his first bestselling tome gives the game away: “Front Row at the Trump Show.”

Faced with the choice of another four years of Biden/Harris or the gravy train of Trump, the press has openly picked Trump. Even before the debate, the media studiously minimized Trump’s criminal convictions, fascist rantings, verbal diarrhea and his use of language literally out of Adolf Hitler’s playbook. Instead, they decided that the most important story in this race was Biden’s age.

See the point of the article. The media makes big money off tRump and loses money on Biden. They don’t give a flying F**k about democracy, in the US profit is king! So please read the article and don’t fall for it. Hugs. Scottie.

Twicky Twexas Twosday …

History Continues To Repeat Itself

OLIVER WILLIS

JUL 05, 2024

President Joe Biden’s performance in the first presidential debate was abysmal. Regardless of the reason for what occurred it was a betrayal of the trust millions of Americans have put in him over the last four years, not just as a partisan party leader, but as the head of the American government. The debate over how he and the Democrats should proceed from here is a legitimate discussion worth having.

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This is completely separate from the media feeding frenzy that has raged nonstop since before the end of the debate.

What is happening in the mainstream American media in outlets like the New York Times, CNN, the Associated Press and beyond is disgraceful and beyond contempt. The free flow of disdain for Biden, Democratic voters, and the sanctity of public discourse is obvious to even the most casual observer.

I have not seen worse behavior since the same press aided and abetted George W. Bush in selling a pack of lies about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction from 2001-2004. It isn’t even worth saying the press should be ashamed because they have shown us time and time again, they have no shame.

As a longtime critic of political reporting, a frequent fig leaf often offered in defense as outlets circle the wagons against liberal criticism, is that it is unfair to assess them as a herd. We are individuals, they protest, and the worst of us should not be lumped in with exemplary moments of reporting.

But to appropriate Bette Davis in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane: Media, you are in that pack.

How else to explain the manner in which the people who reflexively insist there are “two sides” to every issue have completely dispensed with reporting in full dimensions the issues around Biden’s performance? The press has chosen a lane, best exemplified by the New York Times loading up their front page and home page with anti-Biden narratives. The debate within the Democratic Party and liberalism is being reported as a one-sided affair, despite prominent leaders in the party making the argument for Biden’s continued candidacy. In the media pack, that storyline effectively has ceased to exist. They want Biden out, and they want him out now.

We’ve seen this kind of thing again and again from this pack of jackals. We saw it in the withdrawal from Afghanistan, when the press all but ignored successful operations to evacuate personnel and instead hyped up problems and misfires. We had purportedly nonpartisan reporters at outlets like CNN sounding like sock puppets for the Lindsey Grahams and Ted Cruzes of the world in expressing exasperation at Biden’s operation.

We also of course saw it in the 2016 election, when a collective shrug was made at Trump after he mocked the disabled and called Mexicans rapists, in favor of what was the single most important national security issue in American history: Hillary Clinton’s emails.

This deranged behavior also popped up when the press complained incessantly that President Barack Obama needed to go out and play golf with then-Speaker John Boehner, and again when the media decided the Clintons were too bumpkin to be a part of official Washington in the early 1990s, and their behavior helped pave the way for one of the most disastrous presidencies in American history because they spent the entire 2000 election cycle calling Al Gore a liar. Ever notice how even though Bush knowingly lied about WMDs, the press has never elevated that to the same level of scandal as Gore (accurately) describing his key role in contributing to the early internet? Yeah.

Why is the press doing this? While I think that there is some truth to the fact that the ownership of most of these media outlets has a conservative world view and that they are happy to pillory the Democratic Party at every opportunity they get, I think the reasoning is simpler.

The media misses Donald Trump. And they would like him to win.

The members of the mainstream media are human beings (despite frequent appearances to the contrary) and human beings respond to incentives. There is an enormous personal financial incentive to another four years of Trump in the White House, and a disincentive for the press pack if Biden (or any other Democrat) is in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Biden administration has been competently boring, passing a roster of better than anticipated legislative achievements that have led to low unemployment, low fuel prices, massive infrastructure investment and now-declining inflation. This is great for America but it sucks for the bank accounts of most journalists.

During the Trump presidency they didn’t have to bother covering things like replacing lead pipes in Black communities or attempts to forgive billions in student debt. No, under Trump they had a never ending stream of feuds instigated by Trump, ranging from childish insults thrown at Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, NATO, and random people on social media. They had Trump insiders leaking office gossip about Omarosa, Diet Pepsi and other nonsense to stenographers like the New York Times’ resident Regina George, Maggie Haberman.

This led to massive online traffic, a bump in television ratings and book deals, so many book deals. ABC News’ Jonathan Karl has somehow squeezed out three Trump books, and the title of his first bestselling tome gives the game away: “Front Row at the Trump Show.”

Faced with the choice of another four years of Biden/Harris or the gravy train of Trump, the press has openly picked Trump. Even before the debate, the media studiously minimized Trump’s criminal convictions, fascist rantings, verbal diarrhea and his use of language literally out of Adolf Hitler’s playbook. Instead, they decided that the most important story in this race was Biden’s age.

When responding to criticism of this coverage choice, they resort to that tired old defense, insisting that they merely cover the news and that liberals are upset because it paints their candidate in a poor light.

But what they chose to do was put their entire body (not just a thumb) on the scales. The same way in which they minimized Russian interference in the election to focus on Clinton’s staffers sharing food recipes and the national security implications of risotto, they elevated Biden’s age above all else.

The press has long ago thrown away the veneer of plausible deniability in this practice and where I would fault fellow liberals is giving the press the benefit of the doubt. Surely, the thought process goes, they are as afraid of how a second Trump term would crack down on their ability to do their jobs and exercise their freedom as the rest of us.

This is unfortunately naive. These people do not care. They are far more interested in their personal financial gain and professional standing than the future of the country. Just like they didn’t care about what Bush would do to the citizens of Iraq and the American military as they rushed to publish and broadcast “scoops” about nonexistent weapons. They don’t care. A cursory study of the history of Germany shows far too many were quite happy to either turn a blind eye to Hitler’s ascent because after all, currency from Nazis is still currency.

We are in a bad place in this country and we have been for some time. The political system has been in near-constant upheaval, the party tasked with providing adult leadership (the Democrats) has shown a compulsive disinterest in adapting to the politics and communications strategies of the modern era, and the press stinks.

What is needed is constant pressure on these people, in nonviolent and legal ways, to blunt the ill effects of their zealotry on the country. The press went off into the deep end decades ago, now they are trying to drag the rest of us even further into deep, dark trenches that we may never be able to claw our way out of.

“The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it – and rather successfully. Cassius was right. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.’

Good night and good luck.” – Edward R. Murrow, 1954

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— Oliver

Follow me, Oliver Willis, on Threads @owillis1977

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Kal is blissfully unaware of this mess and I envy him. The squirrels are a problem though.

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