Cokie’s Law über alles Longtime readers recall Cokie’s Law. Digby coined the term in 2008 for how skillfully the right wing tosses smears into the air to be carried by the media like the wind. Smears, lies, and disinformation become a “legitimate” subject of mainstream reporting not because they are true or meaningful but because they are “out there.” The law is named for the late NPR/ABC reporter Cokie Roberts: “At this point,” said Roberts, “it doesn’t much matter whether she said it or not because it’s become part of the culture. I was at the beauty parlor yesterday and this was all anyone was talking about.” Thus right-wing smears, lies, and disinformation become, in campaign parlance, “earned media.” James Fallows on Saturday did not reference Digby’s law, but essentially conceded that “the death-cloud of misinformation, ignorance, lies, myths, fears, stereotypes” has come to represent, like the shadows in Plato’s cave, an “artificial reality playing out in the minds of citizens.” Fallows: —It’s not a new problem in American democracy.
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Advice from Carole Cadwalladr Friends have already secured permanent residency in Canada. Others are headed there in January. But then they have the means. Following post-election racist texts targeting Black people come a spread of similar intimidating texts targeting Hispanic and LGBTQ people. They warn recipients they have been “selected for deportation or to report to a re-education camp.” The FBI still does not know their origin. “The FBI did not say whether it believes the offensive messages to LGBTQ and Hispanic recipients are from the same source as the previously reported messages,” NBC News reports. Some of my LGBTQ friends were concerned even before this report.
I happened to catch the movie “The Apprentice” recently about the relationship between Donald Trump and his mentor Roy Cohn, the notorious lawyer who was involved in many of the mid 20th century’s most high profile political events. I don’t know that the film told me anything I didn’t already know but it did remind me of just how vicious Cohn was and how much Trump loved that about him. He learned his lessons well. The thru line between Cohn’s nefarious career and Trump’s own ruthlessness is about to manifest in this second term. It’s almost as if it’s coming full circle. Cohn’s first big splash in national politics took place when he was only 23 years old when he was one of the lead prosecutors in the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. He was so well-liked by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover that he recommended him to be the lead counsel for Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations communist witch hunt.
Can you blame them? They rightfully fear being arrested: From a tiny office behind a Haitian grocery store on Springfield’s South Limestone Street, Margery Koveleski has spent years helping local Haitians overcome bureaucratic red tape to make their lives in the Ohio city a little bit easier. But Koveleski – whose family is Haitian – has noticed a major change recently. Haitians are now coming to her to figure out how to leave. “Some folks don’t have credit cards or access to the internet, and they want to buy a bus ticket or a plane ticket, so we help them book a flight,” she told the Guardian recently. “People are leaving.” Koveleski, leaders in Springfield’s Haitian community, and others have relayed reports of Haitians fleeing the city of 60,000 people in recent days for fear of being rounded up and deported after Donald Trump’s victory in the 5 November presidential election. “The owner of one store is wondering if he should move back to New York or to Chicago – he says his business is way down,” Koveleski remarked.
Leaked files show top UK military figures conspired to carry out the Kerch bridge bombing, covertly train “Gladio”-style stay-behind forces in Ukraine, and groom the British public for a drop in living standards caused by the proxy war against Russia. Emails and internal documents reviewed by The Grayzone reveal details of a cabal of British military and intelligence veterans which plotted to escalate and prolong the Ukraine proxy war “at all costs.” Convened under the direction of the British Ministry […]
The post Leaks expose secret British military cell plotting to ‘keep Ukraine fighting’ first appeared on The Grayzone.
The post Leaks expose secret British military cell plotting to ‘keep Ukraine fighting’ appeared first on The Grayzone.
I’ve always been frustrated by the inability of anyone to address the rank corruption of Trump’s administration. Some of his early cabinet officials were chased out of office for their greed and grift but nobody ever seemed to care much that Trump and his family were making vast sums of money from his presidency. (The utter gall of going after the Biden family for that was overwhelming.) There were some belated senate investigtions which never held a public hearing as far as I can tell. But they’re over. And it’s going to be so much worse. Greg Sargent writes: It’s often said that Trump campaigned expressly on a platform of authoritarian rule, but this also applies to corruption: He didn’t disguise his promises to govern in the direct interests of some of the wealthiest executives and investors in the country—and he won anyway. Trump and his allies will likely interpret this as a green light to engage in an extraordinary spree of unrestrained malfeasance. There are several reasons to fear this could amount to a level of oligarchic corruption that outdoes anything Trump did in his first term.
I will confess that I’ve spent the last week watching a lot of Animal Planet rather than news.I needed a soother every single day. But here’s some news that will renew your faith in humanity: 54 horses saved. That’s heroic.
The game clock stopped on Nov. 5. Now we’re in overtime. Don’t know about your states, but we’ve got a recount scheduled to start on Tuesday. As counties tabulated remaining absentee and provisional ballots, Democrat Allison Riggs took the lead late Friday by 106 votes in the NC Supreme Court race. At the end of election day, she was down by over 7,000. As of this writing, there are still several counties yet to upload their final tallies that don’t plan to complete their work until Monday. So more to come. Upside? Blue counties left to report voted 455k of their citizens. Red counties voted only 172k. The vast majority are already counted. What’s left are the handful that need approving by the county boards. Remember the fierce 2023 battle in Wisconsin for the state supreme court seat won by Janet Protasiewicz? These local and state races matter. But like Rodney Dangerfield, they largely get no repsect. It’s why we station poll greeters outside polling stations urging voters to vote their ballots all the way to the bottom. Many don’t. Downlballot races suffer. We are still reeling from N.C.
Who’s next for DNC chair? Now that Democrats face four year of an administration bent on destroying the greatness their Lord Trump claims he wants to restore, they can don sackcloth and ashes or elect a someone to lead the DNC who knows how to lead, how to raise money, and how to organize at the grassroots. Politico this week reported the fight for the future has begun: When rumors began swirling that Wisconsin Democratic Party leader Ben Wikler might run for chair of the national party, Jeff Weaver, a prominent progressive strategist, texted him with a warning. “I am letting you know that in advance I will be publicly and actively opposing any effort to elevate you to DNC chair,” he wrote. Only one week after losing the White House, the battle for the next chair of the Democratic National Committee is underway — with members of the party’s political class boosting their favorite potential candidates for the job on social media and knifing their opponents behind the scenes. Isn’t that nice? It’s a fight with significant consequences for Democrats.
Kennedy wants to make America healthy again. Uh huh… Michelle Obama is depicted as overweight and binging on hamburgers in a cartoon on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website. The cartoon, which also appeared on Breitbart’s Big Journalism site over the weekend, references Obama’s campaign to encourage healthy eating and fight obesity. In it, she is drawn with a double chin and plump cheeks. She is drawn saying, “I’ve stepped up my efforts to control America’s eating habits by telling restaurants to lower portion sizes and fat content.” While she says this, she is eating one of a plateful of hamburgers. President Obama is shown next to her, with huge ears but no excess fat, eating one of a tiny number of vegetables. “Michelle, I want to get re-elected,” he says. “What you’re doing is only going to annoy a lot of people.” Mrs Obama began her Let’s Move! initiative – which is dedicated to improving the disastrous U.S. childhood obesity rates within a generation – last year.