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Is it valid to be annoyed when, as your plane pulls up to the gate...
William S. Burroughs postulated four political parties in his fiction Naked Lunch: Liquefactionists, Senders, Divisionists, and Factualists.
Per Wiki:
The city is contested by four rival political parties: Liquefactionists, who want to merge everyone into one protoplasmic entity; Senders, who want to control everyone else through telepathy; Divisionists, who subdivide into replicas of themselves; and Factualists, who oppose the other three.
The Senders are a metaphor for mass media propaganda as practiced by Edward Bernays, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Goebbels, and American political consultants.
The Democrats and their allied Never Trumper Republicans are the heirs to this legacy.
The rise of first the Internet, then the World Wide Web, and finally social media threw them for a loop initially, and played a role in Trump taking over the G.O.P.
Dan Rather also has a few words for his former employers at CBS: According to CBS News’ editorial standards, moderators Norah O’Donnell, anchor of the “CBS Evening News,” and Margaret Brennan, host of “Face the Nation,” are there to ask questions and enforce the rules. They are not fact-checkers. CBS says it is up to the candidates to fact-check, though “the moderators will facilitate those opportunities” during rebuttal time. While both fact-checking (ABC during the Harris-Trump debate) and not fact-checking (CNN during the Biden-Trump debate) have drawn criticism this year, for the most part, the criticism was unsurprisingly partisan. CBS is not abdicating completely. In a live blog and on social media, CBS News’ misinformation unit will provide real-time fact-checking. So, the audience is expected to watch the debate and simultaneously monitor a blog? Simply put, this “rule,” imposed by CBS, incentivizes lying. It invites the participants to bend the truth, since their opponent then has to spend his rebuttal time calling out the lie, rather than giving an opposing view.
“You see these guys walking out with air conditioners with refrigerators on their back, the craziest thing. And the police aren’t allowed to do their job… if you had one day, like one real rough, nasty day… if you had one really violent day…one rough hour, and I mean real rough. The word will get out, and it will end immediately.” — Donald Trump speaking at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
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Excuse me, Mr. Trump? I know you don’t usually take questions from the audience at these rallies, but seeing as how we’re deep into hour four, and you haven’t landed the plane on a single sentence, you’ve started in, well, quite a spell, I’m hoping exceptions might be made.
Trump’s henchmen aren’t very good at this: Speaking with Fox Business on Monday, Republican Representative Greg Murphy claimed that attacks by the Democrats on the MAGA leader’s health care plans were futile, almost entirely because Trump and his vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, don’t actually have a “full, fleshed-out plan.” “The Harris campaign has just released this new report, it came out this morning, they’re calling it ‘The Trump-Vance Concept of Healthcare: A plan to rip away coverage from people with preexisting conditions and raise costs for millions,’” said guest host Cheryl Casone. “We’re now starting to have that conversation about health care, which is still a main issue for voters across this country. What do you make of the campaign doing this?” “Well, Kamala and her crew, it’s absolute nonsense. There’s not a full, fleshed-out plan by the president or J.D. Vance, and for them to come out with a book of fiction, they’re just a bunch of damn liars,” Murphy retorted. Lol. Right. They don’t have a plan.
The warning comes as Israel began a ground incursion into southern Lebanon and after the US told Iran it will get directly involved if it attacks Israel
What an amazing life.
September marked the 23rd anniversary of al-Qaeda’s 2001 attacks on the United States, which left nearly 3,000 people dead. For the two decades since then, I’ve been writing, often for TomDispatch, about the ways the American response to 9/11, which quickly came to be known as the Global War on Terror, or GWOT, changed this country. As I’ve explored in several books, in the name of that war, we transformed our institutions, privileged secrecy over transparency and accountability, side-stepped and even violated longstanding laws and constitutional principles, and basically tossed aside many of the norms that had guided us as a nation for two centuries-plus, opening the way for a country now in Trumpian-style difficulty at home. Even today, more... Read more
A customer walks out of the troll store without buying a troll.
ERIC: What the fuck did you say to him?
HARPER: He wanted a Firefighter Troll. I said we’re out of stock.
ERIC: Is this kindergarten? Do you need a juicy box?
Harper’s eyes well up.
ERIC: When a customer asks about a Firefighter Troll, you tell him we have a Firefighter Troll, and it comes with a Dalmatian Troll and a plush Firefighter Troll Fire Truck, and it will all be ready by MONDAY. You better be running down the street to get him. Go, go, go!
Harper runs out the door.
ERIC: Our budget is one thousand dollars for raw materials for the trolls. We’re on a KNIFE’S EDGE here with these Scandinavian troll dolls that we craft with LOVING CARE.
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A dinner party at Yasmin’s house.
The Spectator, 13 January 2024 Monetarism, with which his name is associated, has long defined economic policy. But what would Friedman have made of the banking collapse, so soon after his death in 2006? The Keynesian economist Nicholas Kaldor called Milton Friedman one of the two most evil men of the 20th century. (Friedman was … Continue reading Milton Friedman – economic visionary or scourge of the world?
The backdrop to Rachel Reeves’ budget yesterday is a country riven by vast and growing inequality, rising poverty and falling incomes for most. According to a recent report by Oxfam, the top 1 percent in Britain has more wealth than 70 percent of the population combined. The UK’s wealth gap, a measure of the difference between the […]
My latest book has so far have been published in three different places under three different titles. In the UK (hardback November 2023, paperback November 2024). It was entitled “The Machine Age” An Idea, A History,. A Warning. In Germany it was published in April 2024 under the title: Werden Wir Ersetzt: Vom Fortschrittswahn zu … Continue reading Books
Analysis of 12 years of the Register of MPs' Interests appears to show an acceleration of generosity from the Premier League since plans for a new football regulator were announced
Project Syndicate 18th of September, 2024 “Shortly after taking office, the United Kingdom’s new Labour government announced the discovery of a massive shortfall in public finances. While much of the political debate has centered on the size of this fiscal hole, the real culprit is the set of arbitrary rules that British governments have imposed on themselves … Continue reading Britain’s Illusory Fiscal Black Hole
Project Syndicate 21st of August, 2024 “Even though recorded performances provide some valuable benefits, most people prefer live events. That is because the audience is part of the production, and the two sides exchange energy and the gamut of human emotions in a way that would be impossible in any other setting.“ SALZBURG – While … Continue reading The Enduring Appeal of Live Performance