Trump Will Always Be Trump

While Trump has finally taken some steps to address the Covid-19 crisis, realizing his reelection depends on it, he can’t help reverting to form, as he did in the press conference today. Just a few examples of the good ole Trump unable to cover up his tendencies:

1. Thought not as explicitly as he has in recent days, he still blamed China for covering up information that could have got our doctors there (though one wonders if that would have happened anyway). China, by the way, is saying the virus started here, which seems highly unlikely. But a war of words and pushing blame onto others, as Trump is want to do on a regular basis, does nothing to actually alleviate the problem. 
2. Attacking reporters, and NBC and “Con”cast in particular, thus delegitimating the very institution that could keep people informed and acting appropriately. He then went on, along with others who took to the podium, to excoriate them for the “fake news” they spread, from an administration that has spouted lies, among other things about the novel coronavirus itself, at historic levels. 
3. Blaming the Obama Administration for not preparing them, even as the Washington Post reported two years ago that the Trump Administration disbanded the task force and folded it into another department (WP) probably watering it down in the process. It is, of course, his obsession with Obama that led us down the path to him eventually becoming President but one wonders what it is, exactly, he has against the man beside a small slight many years ago. In a broader sense, has there ever been a President who has gone out of his way to spend so much time blaming his predecessor? Even Obama, who had every reason to do so, did not!
4. Congratulating himself and his administration on multiple occasions for the great work they are now doing, even though his ignorant refusal to admit the looming crisis made it substantially worse (WP2).
5. Again taking the opportunity to talk about immigrants and the ways we will quickly send them out of the country to anywhere that will take them (okay, a bit of an exaggeration, but it was interesting to hear him talk inaccurately about what is happening at the moment).
6. Undermining doctors and his own expert in claiming the very preliminary anecdotal evidence that a malaria drug might work both to mitigate the effects of the virus for those who already have it and potentially even block it in others is now a viable solution to the problem, which fits the administrations anti-science discourse from the first days of his presidency.
7. Go out of his way to call the Senators who cashed in on preinformation of the Coronavirus threat by selling stocks “honorable people,” and making sure the public knew one of them was a Democrat. 

There were other examples throughout, but the point is that this is the most unpresidential President in history and a stain on our collective history that hopefully people will start to see for who he really is. Of course, they should have been able to see it almost four years ago, so maybe my hope is misplaced. But a boy can dream …

Trump's Changing Tune on Covid-19

I know the memory of many Americans is short. This video should remind you that the President's tune on the novel coronavirus has changed pretty rapidly, and that a different initial response might have helped mitigate against our current circumstance ...

Romney Deification Just Slightly Overblown?

Not too long ago it was the posthumous encomiums to George Bush, who one shouldn't forget gave us his son, that spread across far too much of the mainstream media. Earlier it was the son who found renewed respect after what was, arguably, the worst presidency in history. Now the love affair for conservatives not quite as bad as Trump has spread to Mitt Romney for an op ed that stated the obvious with some pretty serious caveats segments of the media seem to be ignoring. So let's, as George Michael used to say, go to the "video tape." 

“It is not that all of the president’s policies have been misguided,” he wrote. “He was right to align U.S. corporate taxes with those of global competitors, to strip out excessive regulations, to crack down on China’s unfair trade practices, to reform criminal justice and to appoint conservative judges. These are policies mainstream Republicans have promoted for years. But policies and appointments are only a part of a presidency.”

Then the critique so many loved began. But lest us forget that this is the guy who is essentially part of the same cabal. Maybe a little more seasoned and polished, but still someone who took 1000s of jobs to feed the Wall Street machine, who pushes the same pro-corporate agenda that has squeezed the middle class and increased poverty. The same one who continues to try to stuff the courts with conservative ideologies who no longer even pretend to not be "activist" judges litigating our private and public lives. And who ramped up the anti-immigrant rhetoric that had largely disappeared from the mainstream of the party with the turn of the new century (at least his omission of a critique of this component of Trump made sense).

So let's respect that someone is willing to stand up to Trump who happens to be a Republican not retiring from the Senate or dying, but forgo the overly exuberant veneration of that conservative, particularly when we disagree with almost everything he stands for ... just a thought. 

Fake News Hits the Holocaust

Fake News, as I argued in an article here last year, is not a new phenomenon, as many in the media (and Trump) seem to imply. And yet the acceleration of “counternarratives” (aka lies) accelerate and proliferate across our fiber optic and airwaves, the truth has become more tenuous than at any time since science came along to challenge the hegemony of religion, mythology and old world traditions. The latest parry in this ongoing war on knowledge, beyond the daily barrage by the Trump administration, comes thanks to one its former members, Anthony Scaramucci.

In an online poll on his twitter account, the Scar (my nickname), asked the following question:

How many Jews were killed in the Holocaust?
o Less than 1 million
o Between 1-2 million
o Between 2-3 million
o More than 5 million

Holocaust deniers are not new, either, of course, but is this really a question we have to continue to debate in the mainstream of American politics – or at least the new “mainstream?” Beyond the absurd response that they were simply “testing people’s knowledge” of the tragedy is the fact that it was 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust, which is substantially more than “more than 5 million.”

If you’re wondering, the results as of the time of the Washington Post story was 69 percent for the theoretically “correct” answer, 7 percent who thought it was 2-3 million, 4 percent who believed 1 to 2 million and an astounding 20 percent who claimed “less than a million.”

With global warming, past presidential phone calls, Iranian nuclear weapon activities, the real beneficiaries of tax cuts and Russian interference in our election all up for debate just the past week, is it any wonder we return to perpetuating one of the ugliest lies repeated over the past 60 years? Not with our current Commander and Thief in charge of the public dialogue …

Fox News Racism Speaks For Itself ...

Liberal Media Bias? Hmm ...

MPAA Tries to Kill Another Moore Movie

The MPAA’s ongoing battle with Michael Moore continues to fester as they tagged yet another of his films with an R-rating (The Guardian). The latest is Where to Invade Next, a film that will get a limited release in late December. Like Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, and really all of his films, the decision appears to have move to do with politics than any substantive issues with the film.

Moore, of course, released the top grossing documentary of all time with Fahrenheit 9/11, which earned an impressive $119.2 million domestically and another $103 million overseas, despite the attempts by the MPAA to stop it from wide release. That movie was R-rated without any credible explanation but a clear attempt to keep American children from hearing ideas outside the conservative mainstream. And his other films haven’t done so bad either, with Sicko at $10 ($24 million domestically), Bowling for Columbine at #12 ($21m) and Capitalism: A Love Story at #19 ($14m) – each also the recipient of the dreaded R-rating.

With Where to Invade Next, the film was given an R-rating because of “violence, drug use and brief nudity.” The violence is footage of the brutal murder of unarmed Eric Garner by the NYPD. The drug use is a discussion of how Portugal ended their war on drugs 15 years ago. And the nudity is 2 seconds of Germans at spa for a vacation to alleviate stress – part of their socialized healthcare. Moore argued, “It’s amazing how 25 years have passed – we invented the internet, gay marriage is legal and we elected an African American president of the United States, but the MPAA is still intent on censoring footage that is available from any evening network news show.” The organization has always been shrouded in secrecy, well documented in another documentary, This Film is Not Yet Rated (the film was in fact rated by the MPAA, as NC-17 for “some graphic sexual content”).

The rating appears to be just the latest parry in a battle for the hearts and minds of America, being fought with equal vigor by the right and left. Both seem almost equally intent on quashing the voices of any non-believers. We have seen it with the MPAA for decades now, but it is also quiet clear in recent debates among GOP presidential contenders on who should even be allowed to ask them questions. On the left, it exists in protests of respected conservatives invited to give speeches on campus, in trigger warning discourses that want to whitewash history, literature and politics and in once respectful left-leaning publications that have become click bait rags no better than Fox News in their skewed (and uncritical) perspective.

In the upcoming election, we will hear a lot about the perils that ISIS, gays, immigrants, “big government” and the like pose to the country. Yet I believe political insularity and an inability to compromise with, or even listen to, those who hold different perspectives is the most dangerous threat to our collective future.

I, Journalist (aka iJournalist)

Back in the 80s, but really starting much earlier, there was real fear that robots and computers were taking over the world. They could work 24 hours a day, never asked for raises, never went on strike, rarely got injured (though they might be more expensive to diagnose and treat) and wouldn’t wile the day away surfing the web. Fears emerged that we were moving toward a period of high unemployment and high profits, creating a permanent underclass and small, unaccountable elite. One could argue we’ve ended up there without the help of the robots, who are taking a lot longer to become productive than originally envisioned. Yet it is clear that “automated” machines have taken many jobs over the years, with bank tellers being among the most obvious, and that many more will do so in the future. It is wonderful for business, but less obviously beneficial for workers, customers or, arguably, the social order in general.

The latest attempt to automate a job that few thought would ever fall outside the purview of humanity is journalism. It might sound like pure science fiction, but companies like Narrative Science are already perfecting technology that will allow computers to create content, already utilized in sports and business journalism. The computer-generated journalism is not bad, able to point out the highlights of an event and create pithy, to-the-point sentences. It reduces the need for editing, obviously, and makes the pathway to distribution that much faster. Co-founder Kris Hammond argues that “Look … we are humanising [sic] the machine and giving it the ability not only to look at data but, based on general ideas of what is important and a close understanding of who the audience is, we are giving it the tools to know how to tell us stories.”

Hammond envisions a future where more and more content is handled by his computer programs (he believes 90 percent of journalism will be computer-generated by 2030) and where, someday, a computer will win a Pulitzer Prize. But his vision goes well beyond increase efficiency and cost saving (and a jobless economy, one should add) to a future where stories can be tailored to the specific interests of audiences. Quill has already taken steps in this direction, as it quickly learned to frame stories to suit its audience. If the readers were the supporters of a particular baseball team, it gave the match report from that team’s vantage. Likewise, if it is creating two company reports based on the same data, the machine can produce a positive emphasis for clients and a must-try-harder tone for employees. It has learned the art of spin.

Hammond believes that this would be a dramatic improvement on the journalism of today, largely driven by data and personal/business interests. Yet what is lost in this process, beyond millions of jobs? Well, the news is not simply an objective compilation of what’s happening on a given day, it is also a very human and subjective rendering of what is important on a given day. Reporters go out and talk to people, humanize stories, dig below the surface and find the heart of the narrative. Sure a computer can do with this with some effectiveness, but is this really the world we want to live in? Do we really want to destroy the world of journalism completely? And two other essential questions emerge as well.

The first is what this means for the idea of media as the fourth estate of government? Media is supposed to hold the powerful accountable for their actions and to keep the population at large educated and informed on the key issues of our age. We already see the abrogation of this responsibility in the age of corporate media but could it get even worse if computer programmers are setting the parameters of what we read each day – what counts as news and maybe more importantly, what doesn’t count. He said, she said reporting could become even more of a norm than it presently is and even if fact checking was programmed in, the sources of that fact checking would play a big role in the ultimate conclusions. What would even happen to human interest stories, which tend to provide a framework from moving a story from a distraction to something people actually care about, can empathize with or decide to fight against? In the broader sense, the idea seems to fit with the broader debates about data journalism. I’m not against it as an element of journalism, providing a more quantitative approach to news analysis at the macro level, but I personally don’t want to live in a world where that is all there is. Reading fivethirtyeight.com is sometimes interesting, but if that was the totality of my sports reading, I would probably stop altogether. Data pretends to be neutral, but analyzing it always moves us from objectivity to a more subjective rendering of reality, though it is cloaked by the lie that statistics never lie.

The second concern relates to trends that are already well underway – the tailored news filtering systems that currently exist. Facebook is getting in the news business and there are already hosts of other sites that promise to only give you the news that you want. On the surface this seems wonderful, a way to swim through the infinite seas of irrelevance to find the information that is most important to you. But is something lost if we get to decide exactly what we hear, read and see and from which perspective that information is delivered? Anyone not a fan fully understands the critique of Fox News, but more and more of us across the political spectrum arguably live in a world that is increasingly politically insular. We only hear the opinions of those who agree with us, only filter the news through sources with particular entrenched interests and can ignore anything that doesn’t meet our ideological or taste predilections. That might work in Utopia, but in a democracy, we need spaces for debate, we need to hear opinions that differ with our own and need a common set of information to make informed decisions. Just looking at the partisanship that dominates Washington DC today, we can see the results of increased insularity. Imagine if it was taken to the next level? Imagine if corporate interests were at the fulcrum of the programs’ algorithms? Imagine if an entire country could be slowly hypnotized into a waking sleep that ensured that the interests of the few dominated the interests of the many. I wonder if you already can?

ND Coffee Shop Chimes in On Gay Rights

Fargo, North Dakota, coffee shop owner Joe Curry did not appreciate the 56 North Dakota legislators who voted against a bill that would have protected LGBT people from discrimination and decided to do something about it. He put up the following sign …

"Ban effective immediately. The listed Men & Women are now banned from entering this establishment.* This is based solely on age, gender, race, beliefs, color, religion & disability." The asterisk points to the following statement: "* Unless accompanied by a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual, Queer, Intersex or Asexual person."

After getting some criticism for replicating the behavior of the very people he was criticizing, he clarified that the entire stunt was merely satirical and that he would allow anyone to enter his coffee shop, even the 56 anti-equality voters, posting on Facebook the following message: “The Red Raven Espresso Parlor wants to clarify that all are welcome in our space. We do not attempt to discriminate. The intent of our 'ban' was to satirize the environment that the legislation created for the LGBTQ+ community by voting against SB 2279. Here at the Raven we have workers and patrons who are included in this community who are directly impacted by this stringent and detached ruling. We stand by these individuals, as they are our families and friends. Its time the legislation affirms what the majority believes to be a fair, human practice of non-discrimination.”

A local newspaper, The Forum, chimed in as well with a front page article with the faces of each of the lawmakers. Even as this hate mongering continues to go on largely unabated, it’s nice to see more and more people standing up to it.

Williams Suspended; Rest of Mainstream Media Should Follow

Je Suis Charlie

Deconstructing Conservative Media Rhetoric

Today, I thought I would look at a particular article from a right wing online publication, to explore the potential problems with the arguments made and any rhetorical and or factual problems. The article in question is from Michal Walsh at PJ Media, entitled Harvard Faculty Angry About Health Care Cost Increases they Championed.

The article essentially uses the recent vote by Harvard faculty against the increases to their healthcare costs to argue that liberals are hypocrites that only like policies if they do not affect them. While that might be true of some, there is, of course, the question of whether Harvard is even a bastion of liberal thinking at all. As a constant critic of neoliberalism and the overreliance on positivism (and “objective,” and observable empirical evidence), I would instead argue the opposite is true and that Harvard has done more to push these two ideological positions than anyone. Harvard cloaks itself in the veneer of liberalism, but really they are at the heart of the rightward economic push that has been occurring since the 80s (and, in particular, the brand offered by Clinton, Blair, and a host of “liberated economies” across the globe). Ignoring this broader critique of the article’s premise, let’s look more specifically at the flaws in the specific arguments employed.

I’ve included three specific flaws, as follows: First, is the tired argument that Obamacare is a “socialist” program, mirroring the programs in most of the rest of the industrialized world, where the public essentially “owns” the industry through the government and taxes they pay. This is a completely inaccurate but rhetorically useful strategy the right employs on a regular basis. In general, socialism is the “public ownership of the means of production,” not, as many on the right argue, “every bill passed by Democrats since the beginning of time.” Social Security, on the other hand, is essentially a “socialist” policy, though really a social democratic policy, as the Europeans more accurately label it. But more generally, the notion that socialism and capitalism are incompatible is one of the most flawed conservative arguments used in the past 35 years or so, given that it was “socialist” policies that saved capitalism during the Great Depression and in other periods of economic turmoil before and after.

Second, just because a few professors at Harvard advised on the Affordable Care Bill doesn’t mean the entire faculty supported it. This is a common argument that conservatives make in one of two ways: a. They take a few people that support something, or a few people engaging in a particular activity and then generalize that to all “liberals” or all professors or all gays (ad infinitum to all people that, like, care about other people), b. They take one exception to a rule to essentially argue against an entire system. Two quick examples should suffice. The first involves the overturning of the “death tax” by Bush in 2001. He argued that some small business owners couldn’t pass their estates onto their children, because the tax burden was too high. But that was a small percentage of those who pay the federal inheritance tax and could have been solved simply by increasing the minimum at which the tax was assessed. Instead the entire tax was eliminated by Bush, using those few examples as emblematic of the entire important revenue stream. A second is on the question of welfare reform, even as it was Clinton who finally passed it – arguing that the program needed to be undermined because it was being abused, when the reality was that most participants were young single mothers (who were on the program for 5 years). A better solution was affordable childcare, but that wasn’t ideologically compatible with their ideology.

Finally, I thought I would deconstruct the conclusion in detail. In it, the author includes the following argument wrapped in typical conservative rhetoric, "American academics are so used to spouting socialist Utopian nonsense while cashing fat capitalist paychecks that their delicate psyches aren’t prepared for the reality of their leftist fantasies. Most big -government elitists are fans of programs that put the burdens on anyone but them, and that is the way that these boondoggles are usually crafted. It is natural that they thought they’d get a pass on this.” First of all, why are university professors cashing “capitalist” paychecks? Most universities are non-profit and many are public. Second, I don’t know by what definition the author is using “fat,” but with the exception of a few schools (like UCLA), professors’ paychecks don’t fit that modifier. Third, last time I checked, professors pay taxes and thus put the “burden” on themselves as much as others. This would be even truer if their paychecks are, in fact, “fat.” Fourth, how is something that has been debated endlessly and is fully open to public scrutiny a “boondoggle?”

Television & Expertise

An essential feature of media is to provide accurate information to the consumers of that media. That’s a rather obvious point, but given how completely the profit motive has infiltrate almost all of the mainstream news media, it is a point that must be scrutinized to explore the effectiveness of this prime directive. There are rather obvious examples of gross negligence in this regard, with Fox News at the top of the list and Christian radio a close second (in providing political news, not necessarily in feeding the religious needs of its audience). In a more general sense, as writers like Chomsky, Herman, McChesney and Alterman and movies/television shows like Network, Face in the Crowd, Broadcast News, Newsroom and even Anchorman 2 have been arguing for years, the news media is arguably corrupted in a general sense by the profit motive, which leads toward sensationalism, under coverage of complex news and the push toward infotainment.

We can certainly ask questions about who gets to judge accuracy, but there are clear strategies for manipulating information to serve particular ideological and/or commercial ends. The media can manipulate the news it disseminates in a number of ways including: framing, selection, emphasis, flak and filtering. It can also heavily influence the slant of a story based on whom it talks to, and whom it ignores (generally called “sourcing”). And it is here where I want to focus for the rest of this post, mainly because sourcing is arguably one of the most troubling issues in American media today (and for some time now). What experts are asked to discuss stories? What experts are ignored? How do we even decide who is an expert?

Let’s take a rather obvious example, but one that highlights the problem quite well: the buildup to the Iraq War. The media has been charged with a pro-war bias throughout the period leading up to the invasion, particularly given the fact that they did little to challenge the Bush administration’s strategy of conflating Hussein/Iraq and 9/11 (which, of course, had nothing to do with each other). But one other area that I believe played a huge role was essentially centering their arguments over the war as discussions about the strategy of the war, how easy it would be to win and what kind of casualties it would result in among American soldiers. The experts they spoke with were predominantly retired military men, none of whom argued against the war. In fact, in 2003 a study released by FAIR found that the network news disproportionately focused on pro-war and left out anti-war sources. According to the study, 64 percent of total sources were in favor of the Iraq War while total anti-war sources made up only 10 percent of the media (and only 3 percent of US sources were anti-war). The study found that "viewers were more than six times as likely to see a pro-war source as one who was anti-war; with U.S. guests alone, the ratio increases to 25 to 1." FAIR conducted a similar study in 2004, finding that current or former government or military officials accounted for 76 percent of all 319 sources for news stories about Iraq that aired on network news channels.

Turning away from the news, the question of expertise becomes even more concerning. We have shows where people with very real problems like addiction, depression, obesity, relationship or financial issues and the like looking to supposed “experts” to help them, from talk show hosts like Dr. Phil and “the doctors” to intervention specialists. But are these “experts” really in a position to provide accurate and helpful information? Many aren’t even trained in the fields for which they are doling out this advice. Worse yet, the entertainment value of the shows has to be a factor, as ratings are the ultimate goal of any show on television. The latest entry into this growing genre of “turn to the expert” shows is TNT’s “Wake Up Call,” staring Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson.

Each episode of Wake Up Call focuses on a different person who needs help with some aspect of their life, whether it’s a troubled teen dropout, a workaholic ruining his family business and marriage, or a defeated former NBA star. The Rock then swoops in to help them out, usually with the help of another expert. They are given motivational speeches, the means to better themselves, and ultimatums. Now I’m not saying the Rock might not help these people, but how in the world can the inspiration ever really trump the implicit exploitation involved in the effort. Is it really healthy to live out your problems in front of an audience of strangers with a preened celebrity giving you advice? Fans might argue the Rock isn’t out of his wheelhouse here, as he has had his fair share of troubles including multiple arrests, eviction and having his football dreams crushed. But does this really make him an expert who has been properly trained to deal with the variety of issues the show will address? Does the tough love approach these shows tend to take even work? There is substantial evidence to show the answer is actually often no and many respected sources have been challenging this approach which was so popular in the 80s.

The problem is that tough love is more entertaining for viewers, whether it works or not. And that is the problem in general, isn’t it? Entertainment is what television is about – keeping you watching from one commercial break to the next. That’s okay when people are looking to be entertained. But is it acceptable when citizens in a democracy are trying to stay informed about important information that affects their lives? And is it acceptable when people make the poor choice of turning to television to make choices about their lives? I’ll leave that up to you to decide …

Metaphors, Fox Style

Fox News has always had a troubling relationship to the truth. Now they have added a rather fascinating idea of appropriate metaphors. The case in point? Fox News host Kennedy Montgomery claimed that requiring companies to disclose CEO pay was like “slut shaming companies” (Salon). Actually maybe that’s an apt metaphor. Why should corporations have to tell their stockholders about their irresponsible behavior? Oh wait …

The exchange went as follows, “They are essentially trying to slut-shame companies into paying their highest workers less money,” Montgomery said. “And slut-shaming companies is not the job of the U.S. government at all,” Tantaros agreed. “Also,” she added, “the only people who should care about this are the shareholders at the company — otherwise, frankly, it’s none of the government’s business.” Could it be instead that with inequality at record levels, maybe the government, as the representative of the will of the people, should know where our money is going? Perish the thought!

Democracy & The News

Dick is a Dick (Liz the Devil); Surprise, Surprise!

I find it amusing when liberals become apoplectic after the latest detestable Dick Cheney statement. It wasn’t so funny when he was essentially running the White House, but now that he is gone, does anyone take this latest incarnation of the devil seriously? His latest crime? Claiming that capturing the guilty implicitly justifies incorrectly torturing or even killing the innocent. Don’t believe me? Well, from the horse’s ass’ mouth itself (Daily Kos) :

CHUCK TODD: Let me go to Gul Rahman. He was chained to the wall of his cell, doused with water, froze to death in C.I.A. custody. And it turned out it was a case of mistaken identity.

DICK CHENEY: --right. But the problem I had is with the folks that we did release that end up back on the battlefield. [...] I'm more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that, in fact, were innocent.

CHUCK TODD: 25% of the detainees though, 25% turned out to be innocent. They were released.

DICK CHENEY: Where are you going to draw the line, Chuck? How are-- [...]

CHUCK TODD: Is that too high? You're okay with that margin for error?

DICK CHENEY: I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective.

Dick Cheney is arguably one of the worst human beings to live since World War II, and certainly among the worst Americans. The question that we should ask is why the media continues to take his opinion so seriously, beyond Fox. And while we’re on the topic of evil, it is certainly interesting to see Fox already get involved in the Elizabeth Warren potential campaign for President. Fox Business host Melissa Francis claimed that Wall Street would devote all its available resources to quash a Warren run because bankers and traders think she is “actually the devil.” To make sure we weren’t confused, she went on to state, ““I mean, without question, Elizabeth Warren is the devil. So, they’re going to put any money they have behind Hillary Clinton, which should be a help.” (Raw Story). So caring about, like, the people and questioning the greed that has hurt so many over the past decade or three makes one the devil? I am beginning to think we live in some bizarro alternate universe and physicists simply forgot to mention it to us.

And speaking of evil, how pathetic is it that Sony pulled the release of the Interview, essentially allowing North Korea and cyberterrorists to win? I don’t think any of us will really be missing anything by having to rent (or simply ignore) the latest dumb, self-congratulatory Seth Rogen comedy (with perennial idiot savant (minus the savant) James Franco) to come out of Hollywood, but it is a dangerous and troubling precedent to set. Now Sony is questioning their own decision, but I think it’s too late.

Fox News Reality TV

Fear Mongering in America

NPR Doesn’t Care About the Environment Either

The right has been trying to defund NPR and PBS for years, arguing the government should not be supporting their “partisan” perspectives. And while they continue to receive a little federal funding, the declining percentage has meant increased fealty to their corporate sponsors. Starting in the early 2000s, it was clear that NPR was starting to move toward the middle, with more stories reported from a conservative perspective, more conservative voices and less leftist presence on the airwaves. That has only worsened over time, at least to an old leftist like me, and now they have made their latest parry in the struggle to undermine any progressive voice in American mainstream media, cutting their staff to a single part-time reporter on climate change (from three full-time reporters and an editor). Not surprisingly, we are already seeing a decline in that coverage this year and it should only get worse going forward.

The good news is that most news on climate change is bad news, and we can thus save ourselves from the increasingly depressing reality that we have all but killed the planet. Better to ignore the crisis and instead focus on the lives of the rich and famous, our favorite sports team and the continued inability of our politicians to do much beyond calling each other names.

Benghazi Scandal's Quiet Death

Remember that Benghazi Scandal  the GOP kept trying to wrap around Obama's neck like an albatross? Yeah, me neither ...