In Fake News we trust.

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From one of my favorite Progressives:

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Just a few current examples among the many over the past few years:

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BlueAnon--why Russiagate disinformation never ends

[Pete F.]

Thinking back to the Bush era, can't say I ever would have predicted I'd live in a time when conservatives would spend all day attacking Cheney and favorably citing Glenn Greenwald. Live long enough, as they say...

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Originally Posted by Pete F.

Thinking back to the Bush era, can't say I ever would have predicted I'd live in a time when conservatives would spend all day attacking Cheney and favorably citing Glenn Greenwald. Live long enough, as they say...

Don't know specifically to whom you are referring. If its me, I don't spend all day attacking Cheney . . . don't recall doing it at all, though I think she deserves being "attacked".

Glenn Greenwald and I differ fundamentally about what our federal government, or government in general, should do or what it constitutionally can do. He is the rather rare journalist from the left who is objective and honest. I wouldn't doubt that he has written many articles with which I have some disagreement. But there are some progressive journalists that I respect in spite of their having a fundamentally different political view than mine. Glenn Greenwald is one of them. And I like citing them to quash the silly but convenient knee jerk dismissal by this site's lefties of any "conservative" journalist's opinion as being, ipso facto, biased.

Of course, when Greenwald wanders into what Dems consider traitorous, they disown him with their boiler plate condemnations.

Apparently you've lived long enough to see Republicans spend day after day ad nauseum attacking a Republican President with unproven, even obviously false accusations with the intention of defeating him and handing over control of the federal government to the Democrats--more radical Democrats, at that, than those in the days of FDR and Woodrow wilson.

And you've lived long enough to see the Democrat's about face, shifting from their signature hate of agencies like the CIA and FBI and their animosity against corporatism and monopolies, into a symbiotic support of and cooperation with what they once hated--all supported by our Progressive corporate media suppression of opposing speech and by our Progressively oriented higher and lower education system. All working hand in hand to create a fascistic state capitalist super state. And sparing no lie, deceit, pliant mass immigration, and novel Progressive "interpretation" of law to gather the power with which, for the good of "the people," they can, unobstructed, shape and define what life, thought, and humanity is and means in our time.

[Pete F.]

Sure now you align with Glenn “9/11 was an inside job” Greenwald and push the agenda of the despot President George Washington, warned about in farewell, 1796, when he said that America might someday face “despotism.” He said that “disorders and miseries” might cause some Americans “to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual,” leading to “the ruins of public liberty.”
Because of course the usual claims that the evil ....others will deprive you of something you never had, be very afraid and your only salvation is supporting the former guy
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Originally Posted by Pete F.

Sure now you align with Glenn “9/11 was an inside job” Greenwald and push the agenda of the despot President George Washington, warned about in farewell, 1796, when he said that America might someday face “despotism.” He said that “disorders and miseries” might cause some Americans “to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual,” leading to “the ruins of public liberty.”
Because of course the usual claims that the evil ....others will deprive you of something you never had, be very afraid and your only salvation is supporting the former guy

I can't say that I fully understand your rather incoherent post. But, as to what I "align with", I don't align with Greenwald's opinion of Trump, Nor do I align with Greenwald's Progressive view of government. Nor with much that is fundamental to his personal opinions, that I am aware of, about what we humans are. And I specifically said that he has written many articles with which I disagree.

But I do align with his insistence on reporting what is actually corroborated and reasonably proven (not merely conjectured) to be true. And his willingness to call out the lies and deceptions of not only so-called "conservatives," but of those who supposedly align with his Progressive ideology.

There are honest Progressive journalists and commentators such as Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, & Jimmy Dore, and others, who don't like Trump, don't politically side with Republicans or "conservatives," but insist on old fashioned journalistic standards, and who called out the uncorroborated BS crap about Trump that the corporate media incessantly pushed as fact simply in order to get rid of him. I respect that, and, of course, cite their documented debunking of the leftist media's lies which folks like you gobbled up as the truth. I also appreciate, and align with their view on what is essentially (though they don't use the term) "fake news."

And the "despotism" that various founders, as well as like-minded commentators such as De Tocqueville, warned against was not only "in the absolute power of an individual," but in the absolute power of unchecked, unlimited government acting on behalf of the "welfare" of the people. Which is the basis, the soft despotism, of Progressive political ideology.

There was no realistic chance that Trump would get absolute power. There was not really the sliver of a chance that he would get that--in spite of the Democrat and supportive corporate media strenuously concocted narratives that somehow implied that he would.

But our current melding of Progressive media, Progressive corporations, Progressive education, Progressive culture, and Progressive government powers has a far, far, greater chance of obtaining absolute power. And it is in the interest of that monopolistic, fascistic, Hobbesian political behemoth of amalgamated power to distract us with false narratives and utopian promises before we catch on to what is happening.

[Pete F.]

Three federal judges in D.C. have had some extraordinary things to say about former Attorney General William Barr. In March 2020, Judge Reggie B. Walton said Mr. Barr could not be trusted.
Then Judge Emmet G. Sullivan expressed strong doubts in December 202 about the legitimacy of Attorney General William P. Barr’s decision to try to end the case against Mr. Flynn.
Now Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Monday that the Justice Department’s obfuscation appeared to be part of a pattern in which top officials like Barr were untruthful to Congress and the public about the investigation.
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Originally Posted by Pete F.

Three federal judges in D.C. have had some extraordinary things to say about former Attorney General William Barr. In March 2020, Judge Reggie B. Walton said Mr. Barr could not be trusted.
Then Judge Emmet G. Sullivan expressed strong doubts in December 202 about the legitimacy of Attorney General William P. Barr’s decision to try to end the case against Mr. Flynn.
Now Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Monday that the Justice Department’s obfuscation appeared to be part of a pattern in which top officials like Barr were untruthful to Congress and the public about the investigation.

What does that have to do with this thread? It is not a cogent response to any post here. Shall we dump into this thread what every federal judge has to say or has said? I am not interested in various judges' opinion on Barr's trustworthiness, or what doubts they have, or what they think something "appears" to be. The verdicts in actual contested cases is what matters.

[Pete F.]

You’re the one posting Greenwald’s false claims about the former guys Russian connections
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[Pete F.]

Here's the short version of what Judge Jackson and the others are saying; the Mueller Report found that Trump committed 11 federal felonies and Barr covered it up along with other violations, exactly as many said 2 years ago. For 2 years, hidden from the public because Barr lied to a federal court.

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Originally Posted by Pete F.

You’re the one posting Greenwald’s false claims about the former guys Russian connections

The federal judges personal opinions were not only not about this thread, they were not proof that Greenwald made false claims. And I have learned that when you claim something is false it is usually conjecture and far from truth or proof.

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Originally Posted by Pete F.

Here's the short version of what Judge Jackson and the others are saying; the Mueller Report found that Trump committed 11 federal felonies and Barr covered it up along with other violations, exactly as many said 2 years ago. For 2 years, hidden from the public because Barr lied to a federal court.

You'll need to be specific about to what federal felonies you are referring, and did Mueller say they actually were or that they could be. If you're speaking about the possible obstructions of justice that he mentioned, even he said that they could be interpreted in other ways rather than obstruction so could not be positively construed as obstruction. So they could only found to be actual obstruction in a criminal trial, not by an off the cuff personal opinion of a judge.

And if you keep using this thread to hash over the Mueller report, or to keep using it as a venue for whatever "get Trump" bug is up your arse, I recommend that John just shuts it down, and you can find another thread to hijack.

[Pete F.]

Looks to me like he could just make you moderator of this forum
I’m just glad we still have two parties in our political system: the Democratic Party and the anti-democratic party.
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Originally Posted by Pete F.

Looks to me like he could just make you moderator of this forum
I’m just glad we still have two parties in our political system: the Democratic Party and the anti-democratic party.
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I guess that sort of fits into this thread. It's a sort of fake news. Actually, we have more than two functioning parties in this country. And they do take away some votes from other parties. And two of them, the socialist and the communist parties are fairly influential. The head of the Communist Party USA has explicitly said that they work to get Democrats elected--in order to move the country to a point when communism will more readily be accepted by Americans. The CPUSA once sued the Democrat Party for running on basically the Communist party platform. The Democrats, Communists, and Socialists, are varying shades or degrees of an unlimited centralized system of government--that absolute power that you fear.

[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by detbuch

I guess that sort of fits into this thread. It's a sort of fake news. Actually, we have more than two functioning parties in this country. And they do take away some votes from other parties. And two of them, the socialist and the communist parties are fairly influential. The head of the Communist Party USA has explicitly said that they work to get Democrats elected--in order to move the country to a point when communism will more readily be accepted by Americans. The CPUSA once sued the Democrat Party for running on basically the Communist party platform. The Democrats, Communists, and Socialists, are varying shades or degrees of an unlimited centralized system of government--that absolute power that you fear.

A little Alinskyish, don't you think

[Pete F.]

Even the insurrection participants now know what’s fake news
“Attorney for Capitol defendant Anthony Antonio said his client had “Foxitus” and “Foxmania” from watching six months of Fox News and started “believing what was being fed to him” by Fox News and the president.”
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Originally Posted by Pete F.

A little Alinskyish, don't you think

I think you're trying to make fake correlations.

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Originally Posted by Pete F.

Even the insurrection participants now know what’s fake news
“Attorney for Capitol defendant Anthony Antonio said his client had “Foxitus” and “Foxmania” from watching six months of Fox News and started “believing what was being fed to him” by Fox News and the president.”
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Yes, corporate media peddles fake news. That's what I've been pointing out. Lefties and Anti-Trumpsters have been accusing Fox News of that for a long time. I've been trying to show, that even honest lefties see the political fakeness of the rest of the corporate media, and how you all Anti-Trumpsters believed what they fed to you.

BTW, labeling the DC riots as an "insurrection" is another example of blatant fake news. Why didn't the leftist corporate media call the Seattle occupation an insurrection? Didn't the Seattle rioters actually claim they created a separate autonomous self-governing police free zone in the city? And the Capitol riots were puny compared to the seemingly never ending occupation of Portland. BLM and Antifa destructions were justified as righteous push back against so-called white racism and white nationalism, even though many non-white properties were destroyed.

Why are things or people who or which are not racist labelled by leftist corporate media as racism or racists?

[Pete F.]

Don’t worry laws banning speech have already been passed in some states, but we are finally starting to see a media recognition about how "critical race theory" is a carefully constructed moral panic.
These laws serve multiple purposes: they are culture war fodder with a racial valence to distract from the GOP's threadbare economic policies. While obviously unconstitutional, they will still succeed in chilling speech by teachers/faculty who don't want to be pilloried on Fox.
Media, esp. local media & right wing media, have largely accepted the framing of CRT as a dangerous theory that must be stopped, rather than as an unconstitutional attack on free speech motivated by a desire to stop conversations about race and power.
Republican politicians started strategically calling all accurate historical information about racial inequality "critical race theory" and a lot of media outlets are just uncritically running with the phrase now.
"Critical race theory" is a real thing, of course, but the political strategy here is concept stretching and, well, it appears to be working.
It's really representative of what the GOP messaging typically does; take an obscure concept that is vague to the general public, build it up as a straw man, and then run against the giant straw man they built.

I don't agree with CRT, but what the GOP labels stuff is not CRT.
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Originally Posted by Pete F.

Don’t worry laws banning speech have already been passed in some states, but we are finally starting to see a media recognition about how "critical race theory" is a carefully constructed moral panic.

Interesting. Didn't know that some states are banning speech. I'm not for that. Please tell us what those anti-speech laws are.

These laws serve multiple purposes: they are culture war fodder with a racial valence to distract from the GOP's threadbare economic policies. While obviously unconstitutional, they will still succeed in chilling speech by teachers/faculty who don't want to be pilloried on Fox.

Didn't realize that GOP's economic policies are threadbare. They were very successful under Trump. By threadbare do you mean they need more policies, that they are short on policies?
That more policies, more "threads" create better economies? More policies, the way I see it, lead to greater government control. You do seem to favor a bigger, more powerful, more centralized government.


Media, esp. local media & right wing media, have largely accepted the framing of CRT as a dangerous theory that must be stopped, rather than as an unconstitutional attack on free speech motivated by a desire to stop conversations about race and power.
Republican politicians started strategically calling all accurate historical information about racial inequality "critical race theory" and a lot of media outlets are just uncritically running with the phrase now.
"Critical race theory" is a real thing, of course, but the political strategy here is concept stretching and, well, it appears to be working.
It's really representative of what the GOP messaging typically does; take an obscure concept that is vague to the general public, build it up as a straw man, and then run against the giant straw man they built.

I don't agree with CRT, but what the GOP labels stuff is not CRT.

So what do you say CRT is? And what about it do you disagree?

Here are two dialogues on the effects of CRT between two Blacks with elite academic credentials and who are not Fox News devotees, nor who are not Republicans or Trump supporters

In this first one you can skip the first 2.40 minutes of promotional info:

[Pete F.]

On january 12, keith Ammon, a Republican member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, introduced a bill that would bar schools as well as organizations that have entered into a contract or subcontract with the state from endorsing “divisive concepts.” Specifically, the measure would forbid “race or sex scapegoating,” questioning the value of meritocracy, and suggesting that New Hampshire—or the United States—is “fundamentally racist.”
Ammon’s bill is one of a dozen that Republicans have recently introduced in state legislatures and the United States Congress that contain similar prohibitions. In Arkansas, lawmakers have approved a measure that would ban state contractors from offering training that promotes “division between, resentment of, or social justice for” groups based on race, gender, or political affiliation. The Idaho legislature just passed a bill that would bar institutions of public education from compelling “students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere” to specific beliefs about race, sex, or religion. The Louisiana legislature is weighing a nearly identical measure.

The language of these bills is anodyne and fuzzy—compel, for instance, is never defined in the Idaho legislation—and that ambiguity appears to be deliberate. According to Ammon, “using taxpayer funds to promote ideas such as ‘one race is inherently superior to another race or sex’ … only exacerbates our differences.” But critics of these efforts warn that the bills would effectively prevent public schools and universities from holding discussions about racism; the New Hampshire measure in particular would ban companies that do business with government entities from conducting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. “The vagueness of the language is really the point,” Leah Cohen, an organizer with Granite State Progress, a liberal nonprofit based in Concord, told me. “With this really broad brushstroke, we anticipate that that will be used more to censor conversations about race and equity.”
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Originally Posted by Pete F.

On january 12, keith Ammon, a Republican member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, introduced a bill that would bar schools as well as organizations that have entered into a contract or subcontract with the state from endorsing “divisive concepts.” Specifically, the measure would forbid “race or sex scapegoating,” questioning the value of meritocracy, and suggesting that New Hampshire—or the United States—is “fundamentally racist.”

Isn't a key word here "endorsing"? That doesn't bar "discussing" an issue or the pros and cons of a given theory or a comparison of various theories or concepts.

And "race or sex scapegoating" is defined as "assigning fault, blame, or bias to a race or sex, or to members of a race or sex because of their race or sex, and includes claims that, consciously or unconsciously, and by virtue of his or her race or sex, members of any race are inherently racist or are inherently inclined to oppress others, or that members of a sex are inherently sexist or inclined to oppress others”-- which all seem to be discriminatory against either a specific race or a specific gender.  Racial and sexual discrimination are already forbidden under law in various government institutions.

Ammon’s bill is one of a dozen that Republicans have recently introduced in state legislatures and the United States Congress that contain similar prohibitions. In Arkansas, lawmakers have approved a measure that would ban state contractors from offering training that promotes “division between, resentment of, or social justice for” groups based on race, gender, or political affiliation.

Again, a key word here is "training." "Discussing" the merits of resentment of a race or gender or political affiliation, might be useful. But conducting training courses with one point of view, especially a controversial view is not merely speech, it is indoctrination. Indoctrination is a form of suppressing speech, not promoting it.

The Idaho legislature just passed a bill that would bar institutions of public education from compelling “students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere” to specific beliefs about race, sex, or religion. The Louisiana legislature is weighing a nearly identical measure.

Key word here is "compelling." Compelling students to personally affirm specific beliefs is actually denying their free speech. To bar such compelling does not ban speech, it makes it more possible.

The language of these bills is anodyne and fuzzy—compel, for instance, is never defined in the Idaho legislation—and that ambiguity appears to be deliberate.

In law, dictionary definitions usually suffice. Various dictionary definitions don't leave much, if any, fuzziness about what it means to compel. And I don't know what is anodyne about the word "compel."

According to Ammon, “using taxpayer funds to promote ideas such as ‘one race is inherently superior to another race or sex’ … only exacerbates our differences.”

I agree that racism and sexism shouldn't be funded by taxpayers. And that promoting any racial or sexual superiority does exacerbate differences. Discussing those things should be allowed.
But promoting, or training one point of view discourages or suppresses the freedom to dissent.

But critics of these efforts warn that the bills would effectively prevent public schools and universities from holding discussions about racism;

They absolutely would not prevent schools from holding actual discussions. They would make it more difficult, perhaps, from having a course specifically devoted to the notion that a given race is inherently racist but that other races are not. But it wouldn't prevent discussions on whether a given race, and only that race, is inherently racist.

the New Hampshire measure in particular would ban companies that do business with government entities from conducting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. “The vagueness of the language is really the point,” Leah Cohen, an organizer with Granite State Progress, a liberal nonprofit based in Concord, told me. “With this really broad brushstroke, we anticipate that that will be used more to censor conversations about race and equity.”

This last paragraph is ironic. It employs vague language such as "conducting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs" to criticize the far less vague language of the bills. And the bills don't censor conversations (another vague accusation), they make indoctrination more difficult.

I asked you "So what do you say CRT is? And what about it do you disagree?" I would be very interested in your answer--even though the subject of this thread has so thoroughly been breached to the point of who gives a damn.

[Pete F.]

Far beyond CRT now
Suddenly everybody’s a student of critical horse race theory
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Originally Posted by Pete F.

Far beyond CRT now
Suddenly everybody’s a student of critical horse race theory
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You do have a penchant for latching onto notions that easily go "poof!" under close examination.

[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by detbuch

You do have a penchant for latching onto notions that easily go "poof!" under close examination.

You mean like your claims about the end of the USA as we know it?
Did you claim Bill Clinton, in office 8 years, would usher in socialism. Then Obama, in office 8 years, would bring socialism. Now it's Biden will bring socialism.
Care to explain why the US still isn't socialist despite the fear mongering?

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Originally Posted by Pete F.

You mean like your claims about the end of the USA as we know it?

I might have said that here once. Don't remember. I may also have quoted someone saying that. Don't remember.

But "the end of the USA as we know it" has been happening almost every generation or two. Would the Founders claim that this present USA is the one they knew? Would Lincoln and the late 19th Century Americans claim the current USA as one like their own? What would Coolidge think? What would the average American from the founding to 1960 say? What would the grandparents and parents of our current young Americans say?

Hasn't the goal of our leftists from Woodrow Wilson to FDR and from LBJ to the present been to transform America? Even fundamentally transform it?

The phrase "end of America (or USA) as we know it" means different things to different people. To many leftists, if not most, it would mean something good, something desired, something rightly to be achieved (or as Shakespeare wrote, "a consummation devoutly to be wish’d."

What it means to me is not the expected cultural, technological, and low level or constitutional political changes, but the ongoing and final transformation from a Constitutional Republic to a centralized administrative state.

Did you claim Bill Clinton, in office 8 years, would usher in socialism. Then Obama, in office 8 years, would bring socialism. Now it's Biden will bring socialism.

I'm sure I've thrown the word "socialism" around, probably inaccurately, from time to time. Most of us, especially the so-called "conservatives," tend to refer to any thing more than moderately leftist as being "socialism."

But even many or most average American leftists use the word incorrectly, referring to the kind of government that European countries have, especially Sweden and Denmark. Those countries are not governed by socialism. To varying degrees, they are welfare states, not socialist (as in socialism) countries.

Care to explain why the US still isn't socialist despite the fear mongering?

If you mean why we are not yet ruled by true socialism, I'll give it a shot. Probably for the same reason that either we don't have countries that are under a true state of socialism, or that cannot sustain a state of true socialism as in "the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole." Because "the community as a whole" either cannot, or cannot as well and constantly, create and innovate things to produce as can individuals motivated to do so--and that motivation is, in the main, driven by a desire for some sort of profit.

There could, conceivably, be a relatively brief period of time in which some socialist revolution nationalized an existing system of production and just kept repeating essentially the same methods of production, and the same products. But over time, without entrepreneurs (especially profit seeking entrepreneurs), the socialist system would collapse due to stagnation, due to the lack of change needed to satisfy those substantial numbers of "citizens" who seek various meaning to their lives other than being a cog in the monotonous turning wheel of the "community as a whole." As well, such a system, because it is authoritarian in nature, is inherently ripe for being corrupted by inevitable power seekers who either lust for power, or who gain power in order get more of what they desire than the system provides.

And so a socialist (as in socialism) system, for many reasons, including human nature, is more likely to lead to a far more authoritarian scheme in which the desired utopia transforms into the human nightmare in which individuals become purely a pawn of the state--Marx claimed that socialism was the interim stepping stone from capitalism to communism.

My fear is not that we will become a socialist state. For the above reasons that is not likely, at least not for long. But that something worse will happen. That we will lose that constitutional anchor which keeps us moored in the calmer, more secure, waters of individual freedom, and will cast us adrift into the dangerous seas of unchecked authoritarian statism.

Close examination of the direction we have been drifting into is that regulatory state which is cousin to socialism or economic fascism. We already to a great degree have been transformed into an administrative state. Our courts almost always defer to administrative law over Constitutional law when regulatory agency law is being challenged. I don't believe that it can be denied that the central federal government is far more powerful than it was in the beginning, and has incrementally grown so from generation to generation. Our government has grown, almost constantly--larger and more powerful and more authoritarian.

And if I were to stick a label on it, I would say that our present iteration of American central government, is a burgeoning form of economic fascism combined with a socialistic regulatory scheme. It is a behemoth complex of big business wedded to a big government regulator and enforcer. The only direction it can grow into from here is the total assimilation of huge corporations with the administrative state into an unlimited form of government--call it what you will.

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A really good take (from a couple of my favorite Progressive journalists) on the failure of true journalism during the Covid-19 pandemic and the Trump era. It also touches on the illusion of media "fact checking,"--and the shaming of those differing with the the then current but changing "follow the science" narrative,--and the constantly changing and inconsistent media "truth."

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Progressive journalists join with Conservative journalists against corporate media fake news (12 minutes):

[Pete F.]

let's not forget that glenn greenwald has a pet billionaire who used to fund the intercept a newspaper he founded (with this billionaire money) and used to work at
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