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Created
Tue, 28/02/2023 - 02:30
Putin the salesman NOTE: An update-related laptop crash kept me from posting this while on the road on Sunday. Two hours of Windows reset and some rebuilding later, it’s fixed. When health insurance industry whistleblower Wendell Potter spoke here (pre-pandemic), someone asked about those ubiquitous Medicare advantage TV ads. Stay away, Potter advised. Sure, they make the plans sound good, Potter said. They know what you’ll buy. So does former KGB agent Vladimir Putin. The Russian dictator is selling. The American right is buying, and some on the left too. If Putin sounds as if he’s running for president in 2024, that’s no accident, writes E.J. Dionne: “Look at what they’ve done to their own people,” he said of us Westerners. “They’re destroying family, national identity, they are abusing their children. Even pedophilia is announced as a normal thing in the West.” Never mind that Russia is a world leader in sex trafficking. Putin didn’t stop there.
Created
Tue, 28/02/2023 - 08:00
 Howard Kurtz is in a pickle: Fox News’s top media anchor wants to cover the bombshell messages released in the ongoing lawsuit between the network and Dominion Voting Systems over the 2o20 election—but the network won’t let him. “Some of you have been asking why I’m not covering the Dominion Voting Machines lawsuit against Fox involving the unproven claims of election fraud in 2020, and it’s absolutely a fair question,” he said on Sunday’s MediaBuzz. “I believe I should be covering it. It’s a major media story, given my role here at Fox. But the company has decided that as part of the organization being sued, I can’t talk about it or write about it, at least for now. I strongly disagree with that decision, but as an employee, I have to abide by it.” He could quit. But that would require a lot more integrity from Howard Kurtz than we’ve ever seen in the past. Remember, these are the people railing daily about cancel culture and censorship.And they are keeping their own audience completely in the dark about this important story. They’re just not covering it at all.
Created
Tue, 28/02/2023 - 01:00
Will the RW pause its transgender freakout and book banning? The Department of Energy has a special announcement. Well, it’s not that special, really. It’s another “low confidence” finding not unlike the Cochrane mask study that Bret Stephens hyped last week in the New York Times. In a classified report, the DOE finds based on new intelligence that there is a low probability that COVID-19 originated from an accidental lab leak in China. Then come the caveats (New York Times): Some officials briefed on the intelligence said that it was relatively weak and that the Energy Department’s conclusion was made with “low confidence,” suggesting its level of certainty was not high. While the department shared the information with other agencies, none of them changed their conclusions, officials said. Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan would not confirm the intelligence, telling CNN on Sunday “there is no definitive answer” the the origin of the pandemic. The 18 services in the intelligence community have differing assessments. In addition to the Energy Department, the F.B.I.
Created
Mon, 27/02/2023 - 05:00
AP classes were cool Ron DeSantis was an AP student back in the glory days when it was all white males, before the you know what’s history and beyotch studies were taught in school. When America was great: When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis floated the possibility of eliminating Advanced Placement classes from his state’s curriculum, he conveniently left out an important fact. DeSantis was once the “AP US History student of the year,” according to his high school yearbook, pages of which were obtained by The Daily Beast. Before turning on AP classes in his latest culture war skirmish, the governor not only benefited from the rigorous courses as a high schooler at Dunedin High School, he also praised the Sunshine State’s top three placement for students in AP courses in February 2020, calling the program “a gateway to achieving success in college, career and ultimately in life.” Now DeSantis is trying to sell a populist pitch that APs aren’t worth the trouble, despite benefiting from the highly sought-after curriculum on his way to an Ivy League education.
Created
Mon, 27/02/2023 - 07:30
It’s hard to believe that these right wingers are whining incessantly about free speech and cancel culture but this is just fine:: IN EARLY 2018, the American national security apparatus was fixated on reports that North Korea was building nuclear weapons that could reach the U.S. or that Russia was plotting chemical weapons assassinations in Europe. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump was busy targeting his idea of an enemy of the state: late night host Jimmy Kimmel.  The then-president, according to two former Trump administration officials, was so upset by Kimmel’s comedic jabs that he directed his White House staff to call up one of Disney’s top executives in Washington, D.C., to complain and demand action. (ABC, on which Jimmy Kimmel Live! has long aired, is owned by Disney.) In at least two separate phone calls that occurred around the time Trump was finishing his first year in office, the White House conveyed the severity of his fury with Kimmel to Disney, the ex-officials tell Rolling Stone.
Created
Mon, 27/02/2023 - 09:00
This piece in Forbes takes a look at Trump’s signature building Trump Tower. Let’s just say that like everything else about Trump it’s more BS than reality: The offices of the New York attorney general and the Manhattan district attorney have both focused on Trump Tower as part of their probes into Donald Trump’s efforts to mislead lenders about the value of his assets. The attorney general filed a $250 million civil suit in September, accusing Trump, his business and his underlings of fraud. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg inherited a related criminal probe when he took office last year, but he hesitated to file charges, and two top prosecutors resigned. Bragg’s office says it is still investigating. Perhaps the district attorney is hoping to turn up additional information. Forbes has some. Since the early 1980s, long before our efforts had anything to do with a quarter-billion-dollar lawsuit or potential criminal charges, we have been scrutinizing various aspects of Trump’s properties.
Created
Mon, 27/02/2023 - 10:30
I like the guy but …no It’s bad enough that we have wingnut anti-vaxxers spreading lies and making the world a more dangerous place. Do we really need supposedly left wing movie actors doing the same thing? After a winding story about smoking weed — shouting-out his pot shop in West Hollywood, The Woods, and claiming his manager, Jeremy, transported weed from the LA shop to New York for him — Harrelson went into a spiel about the pandemic. The self-proclaimed “anarchist” joked about a supposed movie script, a clear metaphor for the pandemic, that went, “The biggest drug cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes, and people can only come out if they take the cartel’s drugs — and keep taking them — over and over.” Except for the deadly virus that actually killed well over a million people in the US alone in less than two years, this is super right on. He’s been saying stupid shit about the pandemic for a while. Maybe he could just hang out with Joe Rogan and do that instead of going on SNL?