This is the free market at work. We trusted the media to hold the powerful people accountable and tell us the truth, and instead they got in bed with the dogs and predictably got fleas.
All they had to do was stop lying at any point during the last decade or so, but they couldn't do that. So now they're unemployed and you read Matt Taibbi instead.
Speaking of the free market. I suspect this collapse might have come sooner and seemed less dramatic if there hadn't been a sizeable taxpayer-funded influx of cash into many of these organizations. There is an interesting correlation between this collapse and the death of USAID. It would be wrong to attribute direct causation, but it seems like it might have contributed.
This would be an interesting thread to pull- because I think the evidence is almost already there. If not USAID, other agencies. Look at what I call the buried treasure Lee Zeldin found at EPA- Money going to Stacey Abrams among others. Where else was it going? Remember all of the Politico Pro subscriptions held by numerous government agencies? We knew USAID had a few and even a few was 10's of thousands of dollars. There were other similar stories. Also, all the COVID and vaccine PSAs being run directly by government agencies. They weren't free. And because I am fair, why do I see Kristi Noem talking about how DJT is coming for illegals and they better self deport ads on Fox news. Are migrants a Jesse Waters demo? Do we see those on other networks? I support the policy but the ads rub me the same wrong way as all the other stuff the other side was doing. How many government subscriptions were there to the Washington Post? OK- I did search, check out this BS story claiming Karoline Leavitt was wrong to go after Politico Pro after it was found it got $8 million from Politico Pro subscriptions as if Politico Pro was worth that. They said people use it to track legislation. Only a moron who knows nothing about such things could believe that. I track legislation for free using this thing called the internet. OK- I do pay for internet. I bet Racket could do a lot with $8 million from government agencies subscribing. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/07/nx-s1-5290282/politico-subscriptions-usaid-x-musk-trump And for Christ's sake, can we teach these idiot reporters that a "conspiracy theory" does not mean "something I do not believe in."
Conspiracy theory is the new Racism. They just call everything they want to denigrate, a conspiracy theory. In most cases it is not a theory, there is no conspiracy suggested, or both.
I'm so glad you pointed out those stupid Noem ads. The administration needs to be called out. Uforia Audio Network radio and Univision TV purchases would make sense. But Fox? That is pandering to the base, and a pointless waste of taxpayer money.
These ads were not purchased to support the FNC though, they were bought to help the base be patient and know the government was at work. This wouldn't have been necessary if any of the networks weren't completely viewpoint captured.
Good point about placating the base. I do think Fox is being paid for them. I think it says so at the end. I am sure I will see another soon. And also good point on Univision. Furthermore, Gabbard giving an exclusive to Lara Trump (also, see above, Lara Trump?) on Fox is not exactly "getting the message out." It is preaching to the choir. Maybe go on Joe Rogan or heaven forbid, CNN or MSNBC. That is where pushing back needs to be done because there stuff filter down to the locals. Locals in several locations I have traveled to still refer to Kilmer Abrejo Garcia as the Maryland Man wrongly deported.
The level of corruption is truly stunning. Almost unimaginable levels of pure theft - billions of $, and guaranteed not a single one of these scum will ever be charged.
Zero cost dollars caused a lot of distortion. Of course the plebs never got any no-cost cash, but our ruling class was swimming in money. What they didn’t extract out of the plebs they printed.
ktrip, I think you’re right to feel disgust about those Noem ads. It’s what is morally right. It’s not much of a payback to Fox for its support of Trump, it’s more like a tip to a bartender at a party with an open bar. The real goal is it’s one of the best ways to reach the base and tell them what the admin is doing. There’s value in that. Marketing in politics is hard ball and often would make a non-cynic vomit. Trump is hardly a beacon of morality, and his 2.0 administration has been selected because he recognized that he needed a crew that punched back harder than his first round. I’m not trying to change your mind, I think I like you the way you are! I’ll just say I’m holding my own puny punches until we’ve secured a victory in 2026 and 2028 (whether that’s JD Vance or another worthy candidate). Then it will look like 8 more years of winning and a lot more opportunity to critique the tactics. I’m nervous as hell that we’re going to lose everything if we don’t cut a little slack — we’ve barely passed the 6 month mark!
I pretty much agree- and like the open bar tip analogy. I just felt I had to be fair. It looks cheap. It has a ministry of propaganda feel and sounds like a political ad to me disguised as a PSA to your point. To your final point, and this is why I feel they need to go beyond preaching to the choir, they need to get the truth to independents and others and also get the converted to turn out. They can't declare defeat in 2026 because "that always happens" in the mid terms. BS. Not if you are doing a good job and your opponents are running on resuming their effort to destroy the country!
You failed to mention that we are now busy deporting all of these assholes' economic slaves. They are going to have to pay the full freight in the future.
O'Reilly has sold far more books and is on the radio and TV far more, yet doesn't own 2 oceanfront compounds.
Interesting that United Healthcare stock price went up 2500% after Obamacare announced his ACA plan. UNH is now down 50% since Trump took office. Forbes did an article explaining the health insurance companies wrote the ACA.
I’ve had this thought many times myself. Matt and Walter think that those 8 thumb drives are what caused the Russiagate hoax. I think it was the massive clandestine cash injections that NGOs were getting- which I suspect was at least partially responsible for getting democrats elected to various offices.
As a sort of experiment, I’m holding out to see how mid terms go.
I've wondered that as well. With the Act Blue stuff (which I've not heard too much about) where they were using it as a money laundering tool to get around the contribution limits imposed; and the loss of billions into the NGOs across the l government (USAID and Dept of Education, et al.) it will be interesting if they can get their so-called 'ground game' running.
100% - it seems like there are a fraction of the protesters and they're all 70 year old retired teachers and retired government employees. Shutting off USAID was a brilliant move.
Also oligarchs. The ones that aren't directly subsidized/controlled by the government are bought out by billionaires and paid to distribute the same propaganda by the people who already control the government. You can tell very easily which outlets are like this by their relationship with their audience. If they don't seem to care about getting caught being wrong over and over... they don't care about the readers, they are there to mislead them.
The mainstream press has been the propaganda arm of Intelligence for some time now. I would be more surprised if they were not propped up by taxpayer dollars.
I had a friend named Gary who used to work at the NYT during the 60s and 70s. His biggest achievement according to him was an interview with Westmoreland in the aftermath of Vietnam. I ran into him as a legal/political editor of a local paper. He believed in the objective media. And I think for Gary personally, it was true. He was an ethical person, but definitely to the left of center. Great guy to discuss stuff with. He also didn't hate me for dating his daughter. He died in 2004.
I think he's probably been doing rapid spinning in his grave for the last decade plus. I have to question, given what I know now, how widespread Gary's point of view was. We've all seen Citizen Kane, and we know about all the newspapers of the 19th century, with the political party they supported usually in the name. All stories are paid for. The person(s) doing the paying govern the slant. They won't pay for material that doesn't serve their interests. It may be that serving the Chamber of Commerce's interests (inasmuch as papers and TV were advertising mediums for local business) was sufficient for the latter part of the 20th century, but today? Where's the linkage to the individual?
Yes! I went through journalism classes in the late 80s/early 90s and the objective media was still the standard (at least in school). Then (IMO) came the 24-hour news networks.....but since there's not 24 hours worth of news, what do you fill the time with? Opinions. (Just like ESPN!) That's going to naturally lead to the death of objective media as your audience filters itself to your bias.
I went to JSchool in the early 70s. My parents watched Walter Cronkite, when they weren’t working, and I have an autographed photo of WC. I respected him because my parents did. Trust.
In my Nebraska JSchool, they required a journalism history course. We learned about the beginnings of getting out information. Gutenberg. Voltaire? Remember the Maine! Learned about the Lindbergh baby kidnapping sensation. Something about Billy Sol Estes floats to mind.
I graduated in 1976. Half a century ago. I don’t remember everything, but I remember — . There was respect for country. There was* journalistic ethics, and journalistic valor. At least, how I define it.
I think if we take away all the mirrors, these people will have nothing left.
I did Jschool at UNM in the late 70’s. Had one old prof (Stuart Novins) who had been at CBS. Another prof was UPI chief for Puerto Rico. Both straight shooters and no nonsense. But then I had a prof (Charles Coates) who had been at NBC. Different story!
Back in the days you could actually freelance for a living, I spent some time working on transcriptions for a bunch of those bad shows. These often included some of those 'behind the scenes' clips where contestants are talking to the producers. I was shocked to see how often the producers would outright lead the contestants into saying something, or saying it a specific way.
I wrote about that in one of my first substack essays. The 24 hour news show was the beginning of the decline of the Walter Cronkite style of journalism and the beginning of personality talking heads that reached its penultimate example in the absolutely feckless Rachel Madow style of Journalism. (Great Monday piece for screamers by the way).
Bias is unavoidable but what an “objective” outlet can do is supply more than one … quoting “both sides” or the like… it may not supply objectivity but the reader has an easier time reading between the lines
RealClear Politics has been doing a tremendous service with their conservative and Liberal posts that you can comment and digest interesting stream of opinions.
07/28/25: Bezos's only hope now is to shut WaPo down and re-open it as a funeral home. Then its purpose would be perfectly aligned with the business that it's actually currently engaged in (instead of pretending to be "journalism").
Imo the post was doing what it was designed for… it has long been a favorite outlet for the intel bureaucrats… now those people are on the ropes… the reporters’ sources are desperately holding onto the power they once had. Over classification and the national security state killed reporter access to documents to cross check sources’ claims. Yes, reporters used to have to check what they were told…
07/29/25: An excellent memoir about the era in which reporters were expected to check, as you say, what they had been told: "The Times of My Life," Max Frankel [1930-2025], edited by Kate Medina; Random House (1999 hardcover). [Speaking of checking, Substack's Spellcheck is HORRIBLE.]
Lying in State…in ice. And it’s August so Bezos better send the Ms. out for another bag or two. She looks like someone who can find frozen water anywhere.
Thanks! I think somebody could break a lot of minds posting guys joyously singing, “There is nothing like a dame . . .” R & H were wonderful, confronting issues in a way that make us all want to sing.
If Bezos were serious, he’d be looking to hire journalists like Matt—people who do the research, do the work, have some wit, but who don’t fit into the traditional left/right partisan boxes.
Getting in bed with the dogs and catching fleas seems to fit what happened to TFP. I unsubscribed months ago because of the change in direction I noted, to so carefully edit their stories to try and please the widest audience possible, and not to alienate themselves from the top dogs they sought to have access to. They made their bones by reporting the insane excess of the left and then pivoted to no man’s land where it was below them to write anything that could be viewed as supporting DJT. I still receive their emails, and not surprisingly I have so far seen zero mention of the new information released by Tulsi Gabbard.
I often scan the NYT just to see the headlines and bylines. It’s absolutely amazing. They way they spun the favorable trade deals that Trump was successful in securing, FOR AMERICANS, was that it was going to be hard on the EU. This from the “premier” American news paper. Similarly there was no good news about it in TFP. You simply will never find any positive news coverage there that involves Trump
Still subscribe for now, and they did finally write a story that somehow backs up the mainstream narrative around the intelligence reports (Putin did want Trump) while simultaneously criticizing the coverage by the media. Very interesting line they are trying to take— especially if one reads Matt’s excellent reporting. Can’t have it both ways!
“Can’t have it both ways!” Is exactly why I won’t waste any time with them any longer. It appears they prioritize appearing to be “neutral”, in order to grow and be as mainstream as they possibly can, ambitiously attempting to replace the news media they have criticized for years… by becoming more like them, over the raw honesty that they began with, and which attracted so many to their site
07/29/25: Perfectly summarized (what they were; what they are today, a stunning change in so a short period of time). Such chameleons are like liars: the liars have to remember what lies they told to which people (eventually, that falls apart), and chameleons like Weiss must remember what they said in the past in order to fake it again in the present (eventually, that falls apart).
I mean, a handful of them are unemployed for the moment, but the infrastructure remains, and the 25/7 wall of bullshit is unabated.
My Progressive friends haven't learned anything whatsoever at all and have not even begun to open their minds even a crack about Russia and other such nonsense and likely never will.
If they do it will be ala JFK: NOW, TODAY we can all say in polite company that he wasn't killed by Right Wing violence without being cancelled. That was 61 years ago so who gives a shit. In the event it was Texas' fault and remains so effectively.
The man behind the curtain waved his mighty hand and it was over. In a short time even the stragglers who deny reality will have to let go. No one seems to be asking " What is replacing the media system the man had in place to tell us what to think". Whatever it is, it is already up and running and in plain sight.
I make a point of reading a selection of legacy media outlets, despite the fact that I don't rely on them at all (and haven't for almost a decade) for any actual news. What matters most, which almost everyone is missing, is *why* people read legacy media outlets. It's not trust, it's to know what narrative they're trying to sell. The biggest change for me, is that with every article/segment I ask myself "why are they telling me this?"...
AP website is my touchstone for everything going on with the Left. All I need to see are the headlines, most of the time. I began to read, with AP - Hitler got better press, back then, than Trump today.
He wasn't killed by right wing violence. He was killed by the sullen, insolent bastard who, as Priscilla McMillan said, "thought he was something he wasn't." It's an overbearing thing to ask someone to read a 1,500 page book, but if you're up to it in terms of time you can spare and strength of interest in the topic, I strongly recommend Vincent Bugliosi's "Reclaiming History." There is a book about half that length which presents the case for Oswald as sole assassin as trenchantly if not as fulsomely, Gerald Posner's "Case Closed." And though Jean Davison's brilliant book, "Oswald's Game," is out of print, there are used copies a'plenty to be had.
Alternatively, you can go to Sean Munger's historical channel on YouTube and watch his nearly four hours long, two part video about the assassination. He tells the viewer from the beginning that his video is going to be a teaching of the Bugliosi book, and it is, brilliantly.
To top this off, there is a guy whose YouTube channel called "LEMMiNO." He describes himself as a Swedish guy in his twenties who likes to make videos. He makes one every year to two years because his interest is in quality, not big rewards. He is strong testimony for the idea that if you produce work which is high in quality, you will be rewarded for it. His ninety minutes long graphic recreation of what went on in Dealey Plaza in those eleven seconds is the most spellbinding presentation of anything I have ever seen.
Gerald Posner and his book are bunk. How can you proclaim "Case Closed" when not all the evidence in the case has been revealed? Like the fact that the CIA did have a connection to Oswald? Absurd on its face.
Anyone would have to be a dolt not to believe that part of the price Oswald had to pay to be allowed to return to the United States in 1962 after his defection to the Soviet Union in November, 1959 was an agreement to be reamed out by every spook agency we have.
Before advances in biotech changed the nature of criminal detection dramatically it was an axiom that a crucial move to make in assessing someone as a possible suspect was to investigate his life. Actions have consequences but they also have meanings. Why would any 20 year old American have defected to the Russians in 1959? Is it just possible that in his fantasy life, he expected to be declared a hero of the Soviet Union, and receive everything he imagined would come with that, celebrity, an apartment in Red Square, hot Russky babes?
It's obvious to anyone who reads the Jean Davison book, in particular, but also to anyone who studies Oswald's life as rendered honestly by a researcher that Oswald was a Cluster B personality disorder case if one ever existed, probably a hybrid of psychopathy and histrionic personality disorder. The CIA doesn't look for people who are likely to go rogue.
When JFK was killed, a psychologist who had evaluated thirteen year old Lee Oswald was interviewed. He had been sent to her as a chronic truant by the school system. She has seen what a mess he already was, and felt helpless to do anything because of the resistance of the mother, Marguerite, who after the assassination asserted that Lee Harvey Oswald was an American hero who died in the service of his country. Maybe you believe that. To me, it's likelier that that pathetic man, just a month past his 24th birthday, saw an opportunity never to come again to make history, and took it.
IMO, based on what I know of Bugliosi and his life, including threatening his mistress with murder, among a whole host of other moral failings, I think anyone that would offer up anything he wrote as irrefutable fact is also someone that doesn’t know jack shit about the life of Vincent Bugliosi.
I guess you have a hard time finding any books to read, music to listen to, movies to see, paintings to relish, or anyone to trust, period, considering the flawed characters which we are all saddled with. I wonder what a background check on you might reveal?
Bugliosi was effective enough to handle the prosecution of the Manson family.
Do you remember who was in charge of management of nuclear waste in the last administration until that nasty business of some theft at the Minneapolis/St Paul airport came to public attention? The guy is entertaining in the ebullience of his sexual perversion, but I have no reason to believe he performed inadequately in his federal job.
The thing about Bugliosi, is that he lied. Multiple times. In court, and to grand juries. He was not only a scumbag of a human being, but he was also a shit prosecutor when it really counted. But you keep up the good detective work son. I’m sure you feel really good about it.
The free market was swamped with scads of NGO cash pilfered from our future debt.
USAID is not paying for a lot of things they used to, and it's beyond the stage where cracks are showing. It's spinning apart and sending spall in every direction.
Sadly, the people programmed by this dream factory are still out here tripping balls on the lies and fantasy. We had a dinner a few nights ago and these old timers, (ardent Boomer News MSDNC/CNN/WaPo/NYT believers,) were remarking at how much is happening and how fast.
It was all I could do to not burst out laughing in their faces because if they had really been paying attention and had really applied these ideals they espouse so breezily they'd have seen this coming too.
Now we're stuck with Trump and he's throwing a lot of babies out with the filthy bathwater.
I'm OK with that, but I think the researchers who depend on that money will get screwed hard. Not OK with that. Just the worst players being shot in the anus.
And yet the academic institutions getting rid of the researchers because they are losing federal dollars have enormous endowments they could tap into, if they really believed in the cause that research is researching. Like the rest of us have to do when it comes time to buy tires or get the septic tank pumped -- you gotta draw on reserves. Obviously, hoarding their money is more important than supporting the research.
We need to remember that the average rake-off from federal research grants to universities for "overhead" was in the 40-50% range, which they used to build lavish facilities and hire more DEI administrators. So they can cut back the overhead to the 15% range and not lose very much actual research money.
This is the true wonder to behold. These "Highly Educated" masses are now left to their own free thoughts, and that terrifies me, because none of them are qualified to think on their own.
It's too much, too fast for them and in their dotage they cannot pivot along.
It's glorious.
They were so fucking smug as they tried to justify the global terror operations being conducted in the name of "spreading democracy" when Obama was doing it but recoiled when Bush was doing it.
Fully co-opted.
To me, it's forgivable. We're talking a trillion dollar media machine. Sophisticated and barely detectable. a lot of people don't even have a defense mechanism for it -not their faults.
I don't think it's the free market at work, there is really not much left of free markets despite the repetitive claims that such a market exists. What this article suggests is that readers, like voters, vote with their feet, in this case their ears, eyes, and nose. The bull shite offered up by the legacy media was crap and just lies in service to a bigger agenda, the destruction of the USA. All the gnashing of teeth over Colbert is a prime example of a demographic of mentally ill news junkies struggling with the realization that the sane know how to sniff out a liar and refuse to be misinformed.
it's pretty funny to hear it put that way. But really, the lying and cowardice and misprision has been going on for a lot longer than the last decade. Both in the halls of Congress and in the media, and elsewhere. Anywhere people could have spoken up on the spot, but didn't. Including the private sector lobbyists* too, of course. Ironically, patronage by a few wealthy donors or an employer is not exactly the magic of the free market, either.
[*It's often said that "journalists lean left", but that's only true if you don't count lobbyists for "the private sector"--they're often journalists, too! ]
To be clear, I don't confuse Matt with a lobbyist. Or with a pro-Trump partisan. The success of Matt Taibbi is the Free Market at work.
With regards to Trump, you must not be reading the same Taibbi, although it's true he doesn't mention Gaza and Israel much, you can always watch Glen Greenwald for as much of that as you can handle.
That's what's great about independent media! We can focus on the stuff we know and let other people handle the other stuff.
I do listen to Greenwald and find him far more courageous than Taibbi. He actually has firm principles, and they often get in the way of what his readership wants to hear, but he's pretty unyielding. He's lost lots of readers. He was tough on Biden and now he's often tough on Trump. Taibbi just wants to feed us what most of his readership wants to read. It's cowardly.
Sorry but Gaza is a giant issue not just because it's a moral outrage and a slaughter but also because the political dimensions of it for American politics are huge and in need of journalists like Taibbi to point them out. Greenwald regularly points out how almost all of American politicians on both sides of the aisle are bought and paid for by AIPAC--a foreign county openly controlling American foreign policy. It's not just some distant humanitarian crisis thousands of miles away. It's a crisis right here at home. And Trump is enabling it even more than Biden did.
If one is going to opine on the Palestinians and Gaza, I believe it is intellectually honest to bring up Palestinian support for Hamas, the massacre and Islamism in this tragedy. The “Free Palestine “ crowd totally ignores this fact when according to Hamas’ Foundational Covenant, it is front and center.
Then the question is simply: why the no-comment? Particularly as it impacts everything you traditionally give a shit about, like censorship/free speech in this country, where a new administration has gone well beyond anything Biden could dream of--actually deporting some of the people who have the nerve to say something about Gaza, and threatening the rest of the institutions that don't capitulate. And the thousand other ways in which this issue radiates corrosively throughout American politics. And I'm a Jew who feels that way. I know many Jews and gentiles who feel similarly--an ever-growing tide.
Your silence is utterly odd. If you're losing readers why not.....do the right thing? Or is it really such a tough issue to navigate? At this point? Really?.....
You don't want Matt to cover Israel/Gaza. You just want Matt to write anti-Israel articles.
You're pissed that the propaganda you want to read isn't on this site.
There are countless places to get that.
Matt writes what most others generally don't. He does it well sourced, informative and with some great humor.
How many different articles do you want to read calling out a "genocide", which by all accounts, Israel is the worst fucking "genociders" in world history apparently.
It seems as though everyone, big media and small, overseas and here, is covering Israel and Gaza. Why do some people have to grind on and on for Taibbi to? I do not understand it. He wouldn’t have any time to devote to this stuff, which basically no one is covering.
No, it isn't. Because the most fundamental issue is, in fact, freedom of expression -- not Gaza, nor anything else.
Matt has spoken his piece on Gaza. Making the same points repeatedly segues from attempts at persuasion into psychological abuse (of the target, of course, but also of readers). Find a better way of treating him and all people who are acting in good faith, and find a better way of confronting people you really think are not.
I'm on the same side as you on Gaza (and am a Leftist), but I'm also anti-totalitarian. For some reason that I can't fathom, today's so-called "Left" has run headlong for use of totalitarian force (of various kinds, of course not labeled as such) rather than persuasion, based on supposedly undeniable "correctness". Hilariously, they also call this a defense of "democracy", when half the time they have no clue they are themselves victims of overwhelmingly sophisticated propaganda, and thus not actually participating in democracy! They do not understand what the word means any more, and instead have adopted the same stance as that of crazed religious, supremacist, and might-makes-right zealots. As you know, we're being overrun by such people on this very issue. In this very thread. Don't be them!
That, or you're disingenuously baiting him. I know that is to be expected here.
It's not odd, it's welcome. There wouldn't be an original thought there. All of it would be covered by someone else already. Sometimes it's better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you're stupid, than it is to open your mouth, and remove all the doubt. Glenn Greenwald has been talking about Israel long before he left the Guardian (let alone before the current conflict started). What you really want is for Matt to wade into this because he has a platform and a sizable following. You wouldn't care at all about this if he only had a few hundred followers.
Hey Matt, I disagree re: "the change" - AI and other "authentic" voices are more popular with non-Boomers - the expensive dinosaurs served their purposes and their shelf-life is up. BUT - expect next generation "aspirational" and "inspirational" AI to lead us by the nose in exactly the same way. Coz, that's the way- uh-uh - we like it, and always have - which leads, btw, by the nose to Voltaire, by way of Chaucer.
Chaucer began as a translator of French. The Arthur myths are French and Welsh. Schiller looked to Mary Queen of Scots and her life of tragedy for inspiration. These folks all mixed socially, and courted the same aristocratic patrons. "Novels" were bound series of letters between interlocutors, and that's likely the origin of both Candide and Frankenstein, it's certainly the formal structure - really of Frankenstein, and really of Heart of Darkness. Addison and Steele had a huge influence, French consumers lapped up English authors right into the 19th century. For arcane but important popular culture background : "History of PYRATES - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_General_History_of_the_Pyrates
Bro there's only so much time in the day and we're already ignoring world-breaking stories because there's so many of them. Perhaps Matt (like myself) doesn't care about Gaza beyond "We have no business there whatsoever". How many times can you print that?
And calling Matt a coward is so fucking laughable I can't even. Good luck out there.
He's on Locals/Rumble, and for me that's inconvenient. I'm wondering if that affects subscriptions. Current I mainly read just his email transcripts, but religiously, and for them $5/mo is nowhere so well spent.
I really don't see courage problems with Taibbi. Seriously, you don't see the dangers he faces with what he covers, and with the profile he has? I've long moved past requiring that kind of purity from someone.
Anti-Israel and anti-Ukraine hysteria is the purity test for the new/alt/MAGA/Tucker Carlson right. Trump has really started to piss them off! Atta boy Donald!
I'm not sure what's hard to understand. Do you hear Taibbi talking about Gaza and Israel, or talking critically of Trump's policies? I don't. It's as though everything Trump is doing is what he promised, whether about censorship, free speech, new wars in the middle east, Jeffrey Epstein, etc. It's just a giant bait and switch, and Taibbi is happy to be an apologist for all of it--focusing our attention in other directions......
I think there are a lot of reporters focused on The Trump stories…and the Gaza stories. Why does Matt need to do those reports? Isn’t his reporting on the Russia hoax a lane he can stay in for a while? Since he is doing a thorough job with it? Furthermore, isn’t this part of a Trump story?
Yes, but that was only one book, and years ago. According to jackman, Taibbi should be shrieking from the rooftops "Orange Man Baaaaaad!" and "Israel Baaaaaad!" nonstop.
Not really sure how you’ve turned Matt into some kind of policy wonk. His work these last few years has focused on the massive network that exists between the government, ngo’s and corporations that bring into question 1st amendment violations. His work has been tireless on this issue. He has now pivoted to how the media worked in lock step in regards to its coverage of Trump, and the effect the russiagate story has had on the MSM. Another story he has covered tirelessly. The Gaza story is in another stratosphere, and there are plenty of other sources out there covering that story, as was mentioned earlier..Glenn greenwald.
I don't dispute his coverage of Russiagate, et al and its free speech implications. I've always applauded that. It's why I initially subscribed here. That's precisely what's troubling about his present position, or rather, non-position on Israel/Gaza at the same time that issue is being used domestically for even more grotesque violations of our rights to speak freely in this country. I'm perplexed why most of his readership gives him pass on it. Do we really believe that THIS is the ONLY issue that Trump will weaponize to punish people in this country, once he's made it possible to deport people, and punish any institution that publishes certain ideas? Are we really? Or what the next Democrats will do with the same powers? Are we forgetting EXACTLY why those rights are embedded in the Constitution and transcend what our leaders think? It should be obvious--and I know that Taibbi knows it. So it's all a bizarre abdication of avowed principles.
And then there's the simple fact that we're all supporting with our tax dollars the starvation of innocent people, as well as the corruption of our government by another country. Just little stuff like that......
I'll just say that if Matt turned this into a Israel/Gaza site, I'd be gone. I can read that anywhere and honestly, I just don't care that much about it. There are plenty of other conflicts going on in the world, and there will be many more. I don't have to a shit about all of them or any of them.
Just because this is your issue at the forefront of your life and news consumption, doesn't mean it is for me, other readers, or Matt.
Matt is obviously choosing not to focus on a plethora of stories. The world is a big fucking place with many news events. Nobody can cover them all, and especially well.
I am perfectly happy with Matt staking his efforts where he has been over the last year and a half or so that I have been a customer. Now and then there is an article that I am not interested in, but that's fine. I just skip it. That is rare.
Again, reporters aren’t required to cover every story. You seem extremely well informed on the issue, so you’re getting the information from someplace. Matt isn’t required to pass your litmus test to be considered a worthy reporter, nor is he required to comment on every single issue.
Many of us are incensed over Gaza, and the fact that our tax dollars are funding it, but I don't expect every writer to whom I subscribe to cover every issue I care about. Lee Fang doesn't cover Gaza much, though he did a great job of schooling Winston Marshall on it. I don't see much from Michael Tracey or Michael Shellenberger on Gaza, either, but I appreciate their work on other subjects. I don't get the obsession with insisting that Matt Taibbi cover Gaza.
Matt accused the current admin of hypocrisy on freedom of speech, framed Mahmoud Kahlil’s attempted deportation as a 1st Amendment issue and predicted Trump’s implosion if he squelched free expression. But we’re at this historical moment largely due to media b.s. and massive corruption from our government in a hysterical push to eliminate Trump. Do we really need another conduit for Orange Hitler articles?
I'm loving the past couple weeks. Matt should hire a skywriter to patrol over his house writing "I was right and you were wrong" every day. Pretty sure we could crowdfund that.
08/14/25: Correct. Harry Enten on CNN is now driving that emaciated, peroxide-saturated nitwit Kate Bolduan nuts with his survey charts showing the ZERO interest in the Epstein story three week later.
08/12/25: "Christopher Clark" must be Paul Krugman's alias. How's that "white-hot" Epstein story doing now, two weeks later? Dead in the water, and it won't come back. 78th bogus "scandal" FAIL this year since January 21, 2025, when Trump was sworn in.
Even if this is true, can you read? Try rereading the timelines starting in August 2016. Wake up, try thinking for yourself it will be refreshing and you’ll discover you’ve been lied to for another years!
Matt starts off his theory of the case stating that Hillary Clinton tied Donald Trump to Putin and she made the I/C aware of this contention for some sort of scheme.
One of the stupidest contentions in the history of stupid theories.
Listen to Mike Benz lay out the Epstein stuff. He makes a good case that Epstein was much more likely the finance arm of an arms trading ring. I don’t doubt that he liked younger girls but that seems more like his personal peccadillo rather than a major blackmail ring. And if that were the case, it would make some sense why both Democrat and Republican presidents have not wanted the details public.
The government, and particularly the CIA, would find a free trove of blackmail data well worth playing close to the vest. Revealing it, en mass, would make it worthless. Time will do the same for parts of it, as players leave the field due to death, health or politics over the next couple of decades. But, in the meantime, the "value" of not publicly revealing this data is potentially astronomical.
The same may be true for the contents of those eight SVR thumb drives, supposedly languishing in a vault somewhere. This is not about President Trump. This very well may be about having five aces up your sleeves in the big game.
Read the two volumes of "One Nation Under Blackmail" to get a feel for how likely this explanation might all be and how naturally parts of our intelligence community might take to this course of action.
A couple different places but I believe he was on the Triggernometry podcast last week talking about it. He draws a relatively straight line between Iran-Contra, Adnan Khashoggi, and Epstein. He was certainly tight with a lot of American Zionists like Les Wexner and Leon Black, so my guess is that Epstein was a valuable tool for multiple Western intelligence agencies to exercise soft power and sell weaponry under the table, and as a result he was afforded a bit of leeway/protection as regards his penchant for underage girls. As far as I'm aware, the whole "pedophile blackmail ring" accusation stemmed from one accusation from Virginia Giuffre, who was not a very reliable witness. It blew up from there.
Did you actually read the article that Matt wrote? On what planet is MSNBC or reliable source anymore? They push the Russia collusion narrative from the beginning and continue to push it to this day. Find another source for your information. That's the whole point of the article.
Not defending Trump, but I think if they had something concrete on Trump it would have been used a long time ago to get rid of him. That almost seems obvious.
If you follow Whitney Webb or have listened to Eric Weinstein on the podcast Diary of a CEO from 2 weeks ago, which has 4M views you will see that Epstein wasn't even remotely a financier, as they say. https://youtu.be/I-iyGGPabpI?si=nrPd9fUm865_fpdX
If you delve deeply into who he was you will see he was a construct created by the Elite to be a go between worlds. He was given an office at Harvard in the math department and was questioning Weinstein about Science. He blackmailed people. The underage girl thing is the smallest part of his story and if you look further into that you will discover most of the girls were not underage and consenting. The Elite want us to focus on the sex scandal part but that is a smokescreen for something much bigger.
Whitney Webb has written two 500 page books on this topic explaining every Epstein connection and thread there is to pull. It's all there for anyone to read. But instead we focus on the pedophile aspect because it requires less work on our part.
Here is an excerpt of one of her books that illustrates the above:
“Far from being an anomaly, Epstein was one of several men who, over the past century, have engaged in sexual blackmail activities designed to obtain damaging information (i.e. ‘intelligence’) on powerful individuals with the goal of controlling their activities and securing their compliance. Most of these individuals, including Epstein himself, have their roots in the covert world where organized crime and intelligence have intermingled and often cooperated for the better part of the last 90 years, if not longer. Perhaps most shockingly, these men are all interconnected to various degrees.
“Following the formal establishment of the organized crime-intelligence in World War II through what is today remembered as Operation Underworld, the relationship between these two entities has since become so intertwined and so symbiotic that, today, it is nearly impossible to know where one ends and the other begins. As this book will show, many of the biggest scandals and events of the last century have not only been tied to these networks, but many of them also have counted on the involvement of sex traffickers and blackmailers, Epstein among them. Publicly, these men have been powerful lawyers, businessmen and lobbyists. Their more clandestine and shadowy activities, though a matter of record, are often known only to those who are well read on certain historical events or in the field of ‘deep politics.’…
“We cannot properly address the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, nor prevent them being committed by others in the future, unless we grapple with the covert power structures that have long wielded blackmail, bribes and assassinations as their weapons of choice to corrupt and control public institutions while manipulating and looting the public.”
—Whitney Webb, One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 1
My comment was cut off above - here is the rest of that quote:
“Following the formal establishment of the organized crime-intelligence in World War II through what is today remembered as Operation Underworld, the relationship between these two entities has since become so intertwined and so symbiotic that, today, it is nearly impossible to know where one ends and the other begins. As this book will show, many of the biggest scandals and events of the last century have not only been tied to these networks, but many of them also have counted on the involvement of sex traffickers and blackmailers, Epstein among them. Publicly, these men have been powerful lawyers, businessmen and lobbyists. Their more clandestine and shadowy activities, though a matter of record, are often known only to those who are well read on certain historical events or in the field of ‘deep politics.’…
“We cannot properly address the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, nor prevent them being committed by others in the future, unless we grapple with the covert power structures that have long wielded blackmail, bribes and assassinations as their weapons of choice to corrupt and control public institutions while manipulating and looting the public.”
—Whitney Webb, One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 1
The most direct and obvious explanation is usually the correct one.
She’s a conspiracy theorist and has no idea wtf she’s talking about wrt Woody Allen. Moses Farrow’s blog post blew all of Mia Farrow’s bs out of the water
“During the podcast, Webb strongly attacked Woody Allen. Webb criticised the recent Wall Street Journal story about Woody Allen meeting Jeffrey Epstein several times, saying that the WSJ article should have also mentioned the SA allegation made by Mia Farrow against Woody Allen. Then a clip from the "Allen V. Farrow" documentary was played on the show. This clip (with a phone-call recording set against music) was where Mia Farrow accused Woody Allen of allegedly harming Dylan Farrow.
Webb then made a speech criticising Woody Allen, which the other guests agreed with. Webb falsely called Allen a "convicted paedophile". Webb also falsely claimed Soon-Yi Previn is Allen's adopted daughter, and hence his relationship with Previn is abusive and incestuous. Webb also attacked Noam Chomsky for calling Woody Allen "a great artist". Webb also claimed that Woody Allen is still being championed by the US media, saying”
“During the podcast, Webb strongly attacked Woody Allen. Webb criticised the recent Wall Street Journal story about Woody Allen meeting Jeffrey Epstein several times, saying that the WSJ article should have also mentioned the SA allegation made by Mia Farrow against Woody Allen. Then a clip from the "Allen V. Farrow" documentary was played on the show. This clip (with a phone-call recording set against music) was where Mia Farrow accused Woody Allen of allegedly harming Dylan Farrow.
Webb then made a speech criticising Woody Allen, which the other guests agreed with. Webb falsely called Allen a "convicted paedophile". Webb also falsely claimed Soon-Yi Previn is Allen's adopted daughter, and hence his relationship with Previn is abusive and incestuous. Webb also attacked Noam Chomsky for calling Woody Allen "a great artist". Webb also claimed that Woody Allen is still being championed by the US media, saying”
Uhh, it wasn't a "screw-up," a "botched or invented story, "or "getting a story wrong forever," it was a deliberate attempt to create a false narrative to derail the democratic electoral process and hold onto illegitimate power through knowing lies.
07/28/25: Perfectly stated. And now, let's mock the Stephen Colbert Rally outside of the Late Show theater --- all of 20 people showed up. Soros is relieved that he didn't have to pay the usual 2,000 sidewalk zombies, but suspects that his new daughter-in-law Huma will be putting in an expense account listing the "2,000" people anyway, who she'll say she had paid upfront to go to the rally ("she used to pull that sh*t when she worked for Hillary!").
Right, the MSM did what they wrongly accused Putin of doing — interfering in a US election.
And oh, by the way, our government has been interfering in foreign elections for the last 60-70 years. Obama used White House money to interfere in the Israeli election to help Netanyahu get reelected.
So even if Putin did try to sway the election (which he didn’t) unless Trump got him to do so (which he didn’t) it would be no different than what the US government has been doing for decades.
Don Reed - Pitt The Elder displayed more common sense than the rest of Parliament put together when he warned in vain about using bureaucratic oppression to suppress a spirit of populism in American colonials. The resulting rebellion against the Mother Country was a spectacular example of FAFO.
07/28/25: Not really. Many of them made millions of dollars, or at the very least ate well while they were "working," for quite a long time. For those of us who knew what they were up to and ourselves never having been paid all that well, the consolation today of watching them getting canned is a hollow sensation. And as for the unindicted felons like Matt Lauer and Les Moonves (engaged in the same behavior that landed Weinstein in jail) getting away relatively unscathed ...
Good piece (again). The speed of the collapse here really is astounding. It's the old line - it all fell apart, gradually and then suddenly.
It's not that these media dolts didn't realize they were lying. It's that they believed themselves to be "stretching the truth" in the service of a noble goal, getting rid of Trump/making sure Trump didn't get re-elected. Literally anything done in the service of that goal was seen by this crowd as ethically permitted, even necessary. And now as the political winds shift and the lies are exposed for what they are, all they've got left it - "He's persecuting us!" And no one rushed to their defense.
Oh the irony: Dems, the left, MSM (all one in the same) have been repeating constantly how big of a liar Trump is, and the threat to democracy, when the biggest of lies, the most egregious acts of attempting to subvert the will of the American people, was not committed by Trump, but by the Dems, and the MS News Media.
Considering his greatest contribution to television was showing videos of girls in tank tops and skirts jumping on trampolines, I'm kind of amazed that people take his opinions seriously.
I used to like Colbert, too, when he hosted The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. But once he took to the Ed Sullivan Theater stage, he completely sold out. Such a shame.
I watched him for years when he was running his original format, but when he flipped on Trump in 2017 and became what he is now, it was disgusting to watch. Not as much for the positions that he took, but the fact that he had no core beliefs.
I don't care about Mika as she's just an empty vessel who recites talking points. I expect that they'll be divorced within a year of their show getting canned.
Oh I hope not. I love the way she looks at him. It’s this amused look on impending failure from which she knows she will need to rescue him.
It isn’t about the news, which I think they even recognize, it’s about their public display of a borderline femdom relationship! He’s such a good puppy and she’s such a strict arrogant whip holder.
I actually used to watch the show many years ago before they were married and liked it. Now he is so whipped and looks like a beavis and butthead character.
Matt, Matt, Matt. ".... biggest botched story of our generation, the misreported/invented Trump-Russia scandal." I'd postulate that Covid is tied as the biggest botched story. Meanwhile, all the MSM news corps defenestrations..."OH THE HUMANITY!"
The new revelations sort of remind me of covid, when the conclusions were already pre-written and the 'experts' and media trumpeted anything at all that backed them up, while ignoring reams of other data undermining the narrative.
My own personal theory is that Russiagate begat a series of other hoaxes including Covid hysteria. Bunch of senior government bureaucrats are hanging out bragging that "we got half the country to think that Americans voted Republican in 2016 because of Russian advertising." Another group, these from the Pentagon, respond, "so? we got Congress to hold hearings where theyre telling everybody that they have proof of extraterristrials." Fauci & co hears all this, "oh yeah, we bet you that we can convince half the country that the common cold will kill you now unless you support the creation of a police state." Everyone else: "youre on." And the rest, as they say, is horrifying history.
That story wasn't botched or misreported -- the deception was intentional. If you think about it, the track record this century has been appalling for MSM. Here's a list of the more notable things the MSM has gotten wrong, knowingly spouted false propaganda, or refused to cover in the past 20 or so years: Iraqi WMD, government overreach of patriot act powers, the state of Afghanistan occupation, the opioid epidemic, pretty much any scandal involving Obama, globalism, free trade, and offshoring the America's manufacturing base, the causes of the 2008 financial crisis and the ensuing bank bailouts, colluding with the DNC during presidential debates for the past 10-15 years, covid origins, covid vaccine injuries, Hunter Biden laptop, the censorship industrial complex, inflation from 2020-2024, voter fraud, Joe Biden's mental decline, and our uncontrolled borders. There are probably many, many more things that could be added to this list. I'm surprised it took so long to lose all credibility.
Unrelated to anything: there's a game, Tactical Breach Wizards, that focuses heavily on literal defenestration - there are actual map goals related to forcing people out of windows from the opening tutorial throughout the entire game. They get a couple of good jokes out of it.
I learned the word in college, when our friend group played a game called (I think?) "Assassination." There were numerous symbolic ways to score a 'kill,' and one of them was to corner the target in an upstairs room with a window, which counted as 'defenestration.' (Obviously, we never actually harmed anyone in the process of the game. I've heard of other groups playing in ways that got too realistic and ended with the people getting in trouble with authorities.)
Defenestration is dramatic, but not always fatal, alas. In the 1618 Defenestration of Prague, the victims survived by breaking their fall on a dung heap (so they say). MSM may break their fall in much the same way.
Anyone remember when the Left hated corporations? I do. Then corporations took over mass media starting in the 1980s, creating vast media empires that skewed Left. DEI, climate change, and the dreaded "land acknowledgement" that started so many all-hands meetings bought the Left off, and it lost its connection to the labor movement. Supported by the growth of Silicon Valley in the early 00s, there was money and jobs aplenty at Vox, HuffPo, and other corporate media outlets.
In Trump's first term, the journalists went #Resist, and spent the next 8 years whining about Trump and the Right, comparing them to Hitler and the Nazis and completely ignoring half the country who weren't happy about trans kids stealing trophies from their daughters, or homeless people threatening them on the streets.
They elected Trump again, and the corporations realized there was no money in #Resist, and they had a duty to their shareholders to stop wasting money on crap that wasn't funny, wasn't entertaining, and wasn't worth watching or reading - especially by half the country. So bye-bye Colbert, Maddow, and possibly the View.
NPR especially won't be missed. Did any PoC listen to it that didn't work for that outfit? Did any plumber, fireman or electrician? I listened to Marketplace, but it always seemed like Kai Ryssdal talked about the economy like a priest discussing parenthood. He knew how it worked. He'd seen it done many times. But he still didn't truly understand it.
I don't think it's a stretch to say that Colbert's main job was to prevent the re-election of Trump. Now he failed so he's not worth lighting that huge pile of money on fire.
They were equal opportunity detractors. True, they picked more on the Right than the Left, and some of the interviews were very cringeworthy, but they exhibited a lot more, dare I say, *equity*.
Ah car talk, that reminds me of the days when average working people had something to listen to on NPR. I could not stand the accents of those hosts, though. It was like shoving nails in my ears. The content was good, but I just couldn't stand their voices. That Boston accent is just awful.
The Left hated corporations before they got high-paying jobs. When the upper-middle class/professional-managerial class took over the Left, they brought their class interests into it and morphed it into the contemporary pseudo-Left. It is now all about the aggrandizement and promotion of the less talented progeny of their class (spoiler: that's most of them); all their yammering about glass ceilings and microaggressions and chest-feeding is intended to drown out any discussion of actual, real-world problems people have - and to distract people from noticing that they and their oligarchic masters have been busy pilfering from everybody else. This is as true in the media as everywhere else.
The worse the real-world problems got, the more shrill they had to become. That's the source of their TDS and DEI and all the other BS they're spewing. But the grift could only go on as long as there were money, and now they're in a Wile E Coyote moment where he's just realized he ran off a cliff. Yipe!
The problem is monetizing a) a general news staff and b) investigative reporting. It won’t be easy. Individual voices will do well.
One thing that I think people miss about how the media works is that it’s really hard to just develop new sources on new topics - much better to have beats. But that means some sites and writers will have no way to cover certain topics quickly
Part of the problem with the current media landscape is that you have to cater to advertisers (aka clicks). This leads to a massive amount of 'click bait'-level stories and a general death of quality.
Substack does it better, because the only people you have to convince of your value are the readers. You do that with thoughtful, quality (and generally correct) posts.
Catherine Austin Fitts has offered creative solutions that are more sophisticated than I am able to describe. I have always been a little suspicious of her ... And it needs to be considered that controlled opposition may perniciously corrupt these developing systems. So whatever happens, we should all proceed with healthy skepticism. Jeeze. I remember David Icke mentioned intelligence working for Blackrock purchased a significant portion of substack almost a year ago. I can only imagine that the same independent and free thinking that drove people from MSM could help to preserve the integrity of the system that emerges from where we are headed. "Motherfucker, I'm am American. That shit doesn't work on us" attitude will go far. Thank you Matt.
This was one of the first promises of bitcoin, but as you say, the technology was prevented from becoming mainstream. Ask me how happy I am to rely on a single company (Stripe) to handle 100% of the economics of my Substack........
I don’t know the answer, but Ted Nelson was a force in the emergence of our software driven world. I know the initial web protocols allowed for small micro payments. Ted’s comments indicate that there were still gaps, which were never filled.
That is of course easy to understand, small businesses had no clue about the problem and the government did not see it as an important issue.
Never heard of her, but I checked out her latest post and the top comment has 818 likes -- "He wouldn't be spending all that taxpayer money on something he couldn't keep for himself. The announcement about the "ballroom" being constructed in the White House is his way of announcing that he's never going to leave."
Craigslist probably did more to kill local news media than Google or Facebook.
It demonetized local want ads, which had been the financial bread and butter of the local paper. Business ads were not enough to plug the gap, plus the web took much of them as well.
Perhaps the real problem is that people are getting so focused on their own affairs that there is not enough interest in the local community. When one sees couples each communing earnestly with their own phone, loss of community interest may not be the most important issue.
Good point about Craigslist (as well as competitors like Kijiji).
Not sure if self-involvement plays a role in the demise of local news, given it is a perennial, species-level issue.
Population density and wealth of the local community are pretty key, though, and poorer rural areas will have a harder time keeping news outlets going.
Can that Pulitzer be revoked? I know the Pulitzer commission, or whatever they call themselves has become a joke, but that would be a good start toward restoring some credibility.
That would require the level of self-awareness in which they can acknowledge that they've lost credibility. They have too much of their self-image bound up in preventing them from ever having that self-awareness in order for that to happen.
Judging by Scott Bessents comments on the federal reserve (a universal basic income for PhDs in economics, and wrong about everything), they could be looking to shave billions from their budget.
Economics seems like the perfect task to replace with Artificial Intelligence.
On July 23, 2025, Google AI was asked this question:
"When in 1937 was Mercury, Venus and Mars simultaneously retrograde?"
1st response (Google AI (07/23/25):
"According to available information [:] Venus Rx in 1937 began in Aries, which occurs every eight years [;] Mercury Rx dates in 1937 include periods starting on January 16th and May 6th [;] Mars Rx did not occur in 1937 ...
"Therefore, there was no period in 1937 when Mercury, Venus, and Mars were simultaneously retrograde."
FACT: Mercury, Venus and Mars WERE simultaneously Rx between April 30 and May 9th, 1937.
Google Gemini is pure garbage.
--- An hour or so later, I returned to the site to retrieve the exact wording of the question that I had posed ("When in 1937 was Mercury, Venus and Mars simultaneously retrograde?").
And just for the heck of it, I asked the same Q again.
Result: Their story CHANGED! From a flat out statement that MV&M were NEVER simultaneously Rx in 1937, now it hedges --- and "unlikely" (below) is just as incorrect an answer as the previous "no period" (= never):
"It's highly unlikely that Mercury, Venus, and Mars were all retrograde simultaneously in 1937.
Below: "And there's no readily available information..."
"While overlaps between Mercury and Venus retrogrades occur, simultaneous retrogrades of Mercury, Venus, and Mars are much rarer events and there's no readily available information suggesting such an alignment in 1937."
I was able to find the correct information in @ 15 seconds.
Below: No, it is not "more likely." They either are or they are not:
"It's more likely that these planets were retrograde individually or in pairs during different times in that year."
... In the time that it took me to dig all this stuff up and make a record of it, a Google AI busybody was paid about $480.77 (hourly minimum wage).
I have seen so many similarly inexplicable errors reported that I cannot see how or why anyone would cede any knowledge to any AI platform. As a lawyers I cannot imagine ever getting an AI to draft a document or correspondence for me (although sifting through evidence/collating data maybe, yes). This is my art fwiw. So much of human endeavour and creativity could be lost to AI.
07/29/25: AI is a fishing lure, so to speak, for those of us who want Something For Nothing. And if they have enough money, they'll end up hanging themselves with ropes made out of Benjamins.
And they say comedy is dead! Thanks for this. AI may eventually get by this, but much ground to cover! AI can't actually think at this point, perhaps never. In current state, it's just a busybody that parrots whatever it has heard, WITHOUT logical examination/parsing what it's repeating. In essence, a collage of the unverified. A modern town crier? Woo-hoo!!
It has value properly applied, but it's often misapplied. Not to bore you (nerd alert!!), but it's great at inspecting parts, once you have ~300,000+ pics and have told it what's "good/bad". Like any new tech, lots of excitement, then the discovery grunt work of finding where it actually works.
As humans, we always hope to win the lottery, but our more rational gut knows the real deal. Aaargh!
One of the joys of staying with a Windows 7 operating system is that Substack, at some point (when) and to what degree (how much), ceased to interact with W7 users. If I click on "Like," nothing happens.
There's no way to prove or disprove the validity of such a statement because the closest I can get to the truth are rumors.
However, given all of the other complications (100% negative) of refusing to "graduate" (get screwed by installing) Windows 11, my guess as to why my voting privileges had been neutered seems to be reasonably un-stupid.
"In current state, it's just a busybody that parrots whatever it has heard, WITHOUT logical examination/parsing what it's repeating. In essence, a collage of the unverified."
Or, in other words, most people. Or maybe I'm just a cynical misanthrope.
07/29/25: Mr. Forgettable? It seems as if he was fired five years ago; the J-School body count has been mounting like the odometers on the spinning driver-less Teslas.
07/28/25: How deep are the Deep State pockets? And what happens if and when Substack goes public? Will we then, or eventually, find out that every "subscriber" is paying the same rate --- or will Soros (et al) be given massive discount-for-volume deals?
Writing is a very different medium, and throwing money at substack bloggers probably won't do much. The thing about television news is that people tend to assume good looking presenters are honest, and switch off their logic and reasoning cores. With writing, you have nothing but words. With substack, media personalities and looks don't matter, just content. The shift away from visual media to the written word for news consumption is a good thing.
07/29/25: "The shift ... to the written word..." Agreed, with a caveat: I've lost count of how many writers I had formerly admired who ended up writing themselves into oblivion. Why? Verbosity.
1. Paying for content farms/bots/paid shills/AI agents to create the illusion of popular support for a given issue. This happens all the time, and it requires social media platorms to play along to work well. Once Elon bought X, that stopped.
2. Censor the internet of wrongthink. This is the route Europe is taking, but unless the USA goes along, I don't think it will work. Right now everyone in the UK is signing up for a VPN service as the online safety act takes effect.
97/29/25: 1. Trump & Company severed their governmental "NGO" $ pipeline. 2. The Online Self-Incrimination Act, you mean. Hitler was merely a man ahead of his time, by about ninety years. The only thing missing in London today is a Goebbels statue and the renaming of Buckingham Palace to the "Himmler Hofbräuhaus."
07/29/25: One of the joys of staying with a Windows 7 operating system is that Substack, at some point (when) and to what degree (how much), ceased to interact with W7 users. If I click on "Like," nothing happens.
There's no way to prove or disprove the validity of such a statement because the closest I can get to the truth are rumors.
However, given all of the other complications (100% negative) of refusing to "graduate" (get screwed by installing) Windows 11, my guess as to why my voting privileges had been neutered seems to be reasonably un-stupid.
Cause or effect, hard to say but I think corporate media’s switch to basically a state run propaganda machine wins out as a big part of the reason we have no common reference points today. How can I convey to someone who watches PBS Newshour every evening and reads the NYT the body of information I have read the past 7 or 8 years that made me vote for Trump solely to see disclosures like this see the light of day? They are told every day and then Colbert tells them again before bed that people like me are conspiracy minded MAGA wing nuts. Impossible. As Scott Adams said the other day you can’t live in a country whose govt does these things w impunity. It’s media who has the job of keeping govt on the up and up. That corp media abdicated their responsibility on these points will hopefully go down in history books as the worst thing that ever happened to our country.
“How can I convey to someone who watches PBS Newshour every evening and reads the NYT the body of information I have read the past 7 or 8 years that made me vote for Trump solely to see disclosures like this see the light of day?”
I ask myself this at least once a week. If even there were a person who’d engage with me earnestly on a topic on which we disagree, I don’t see how we could meaningfully proceed coming from two different realities.
I don't engage directly too much today with establishment-so-called-"Leftist" types much any more.
But I've faced this problem a few times over the last two years visiting a couple of good friends from college (from decades back). I find myself quite challenged trying to assemble a handful from the sheer volume of excellent articles (PDFs, sometimes prints) for them, never mind discussion that can get anywhere even over, say, a four-hour period of mostly talk. Meanwhile, though, they have supplied nothing (yet). To sum it up: To this day, we have not yet gotten down to a rough common set of "facts" (information) on which we can even agree. Trust me, they start out discussions very confident on facts and forceful about their opinions. Yet when I get frustrated sometimes with their apparent ignorance and/or lack of discipline pursuing truth ... they dismiss it with jokes.
One day those jokes will dry up. Not saying these types will ever engage with reality, but too many other people will have. Conventional wisdom will leave them behind and they will wonder where all their friends went. These people depend on the perception that their views are widely held. The smugness you experience will eventually evaporate into uncomfortable silence.
Maybe Michael Jackson had it right -- and these media voices who don't understand the term introspection, let alone practice it, ought to pay attention to his famous lyric:
This is the free market at work. We trusted the media to hold the powerful people accountable and tell us the truth, and instead they got in bed with the dogs and predictably got fleas.
All they had to do was stop lying at any point during the last decade or so, but they couldn't do that. So now they're unemployed and you read Matt Taibbi instead.
It's better this way.
Speaking of the free market. I suspect this collapse might have come sooner and seemed less dramatic if there hadn't been a sizeable taxpayer-funded influx of cash into many of these organizations. There is an interesting correlation between this collapse and the death of USAID. It would be wrong to attribute direct causation, but it seems like it might have contributed.
This would be an interesting thread to pull- because I think the evidence is almost already there. If not USAID, other agencies. Look at what I call the buried treasure Lee Zeldin found at EPA- Money going to Stacey Abrams among others. Where else was it going? Remember all of the Politico Pro subscriptions held by numerous government agencies? We knew USAID had a few and even a few was 10's of thousands of dollars. There were other similar stories. Also, all the COVID and vaccine PSAs being run directly by government agencies. They weren't free. And because I am fair, why do I see Kristi Noem talking about how DJT is coming for illegals and they better self deport ads on Fox news. Are migrants a Jesse Waters demo? Do we see those on other networks? I support the policy but the ads rub me the same wrong way as all the other stuff the other side was doing. How many government subscriptions were there to the Washington Post? OK- I did search, check out this BS story claiming Karoline Leavitt was wrong to go after Politico Pro after it was found it got $8 million from Politico Pro subscriptions as if Politico Pro was worth that. They said people use it to track legislation. Only a moron who knows nothing about such things could believe that. I track legislation for free using this thing called the internet. OK- I do pay for internet. I bet Racket could do a lot with $8 million from government agencies subscribing. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/07/nx-s1-5290282/politico-subscriptions-usaid-x-musk-trump And for Christ's sake, can we teach these idiot reporters that a "conspiracy theory" does not mean "something I do not believe in."
Remember, the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth is about six weeks.
Conspiracy theory is the new Racism. They just call everything they want to denigrate, a conspiracy theory. In most cases it is not a theory, there is no conspiracy suggested, or both.
If I can figure out what a reporter believes in, I automatically discount their reporting 70% no matter what color their beliefs are.
I'm so glad you pointed out those stupid Noem ads. The administration needs to be called out. Uforia Audio Network radio and Univision TV purchases would make sense. But Fox? That is pandering to the base, and a pointless waste of taxpayer money.
These ads were not purchased to support the FNC though, they were bought to help the base be patient and know the government was at work. This wouldn't have been necessary if any of the networks weren't completely viewpoint captured.
Good point about placating the base. I do think Fox is being paid for them. I think it says so at the end. I am sure I will see another soon. And also good point on Univision. Furthermore, Gabbard giving an exclusive to Lara Trump (also, see above, Lara Trump?) on Fox is not exactly "getting the message out." It is preaching to the choir. Maybe go on Joe Rogan or heaven forbid, CNN or MSNBC. That is where pushing back needs to be done because there stuff filter down to the locals. Locals in several locations I have traveled to still refer to Kilmer Abrejo Garcia as the Maryland Man wrongly deported.
The level of corruption is truly stunning. Almost unimaginable levels of pure theft - billions of $, and guaranteed not a single one of these scum will ever be charged.
Zero cost dollars caused a lot of distortion. Of course the plebs never got any no-cost cash, but our ruling class was swimming in money. What they didn’t extract out of the plebs they printed.
👍
ktrip, I think you’re right to feel disgust about those Noem ads. It’s what is morally right. It’s not much of a payback to Fox for its support of Trump, it’s more like a tip to a bartender at a party with an open bar. The real goal is it’s one of the best ways to reach the base and tell them what the admin is doing. There’s value in that. Marketing in politics is hard ball and often would make a non-cynic vomit. Trump is hardly a beacon of morality, and his 2.0 administration has been selected because he recognized that he needed a crew that punched back harder than his first round. I’m not trying to change your mind, I think I like you the way you are! I’ll just say I’m holding my own puny punches until we’ve secured a victory in 2026 and 2028 (whether that’s JD Vance or another worthy candidate). Then it will look like 8 more years of winning and a lot more opportunity to critique the tactics. I’m nervous as hell that we’re going to lose everything if we don’t cut a little slack — we’ve barely passed the 6 month mark!
I pretty much agree- and like the open bar tip analogy. I just felt I had to be fair. It looks cheap. It has a ministry of propaganda feel and sounds like a political ad to me disguised as a PSA to your point. To your final point, and this is why I feel they need to go beyond preaching to the choir, they need to get the truth to independents and others and also get the converted to turn out. They can't declare defeat in 2026 because "that always happens" in the mid terms. BS. Not if you are doing a good job and your opponents are running on resuming their effort to destroy the country!
People call simple pattern recognition a "conspiracy theory" these days.
Oh but it would be so sweet to find that direct link to usaid.
With the USAID spigot turned off, how will Obama pay for his chefs, landscapers, maids, maintenance, etc at his two oceanfront compounds?
You failed to mention that we are now busy deporting all of these assholes' economic slaves. They are going to have to pay the full freight in the future.
I’m sure he’ll do fine…
07/29/25: All he has to do is go over to Bertelsmann, set up another ghost-written "memoir," and cash the advance.
But will that new Obama memoir include his sex-for-drugs tryst with Larry Sinclair? Speaking of stories that the media buried...
07/29/25: His orchestrating a multi-racial KKK lynch mob intent on hanging Trump is all we really need to know.
He has cash flowing to him from his book deal and lucrative speeches
Yes, that's the spin.
O'Reilly has sold far more books and is on the radio and TV far more, yet doesn't own 2 oceanfront compounds.
Interesting that United Healthcare stock price went up 2500% after Obamacare announced his ACA plan. UNH is now down 50% since Trump took office. Forbes did an article explaining the health insurance companies wrote the ACA.
Al Capone or the cartels could only dream of a law making it illegal to NOT buy their products.
Looks like he might not be needing them.
07/29/25: By shaving his head and posing for Mr. Clean detergent bottle labels.
He’s selling one of them…
Totally agree.
I’ve had this thought many times myself. Matt and Walter think that those 8 thumb drives are what caused the Russiagate hoax. I think it was the massive clandestine cash injections that NGOs were getting- which I suspect was at least partially responsible for getting democrats elected to various offices.
As a sort of experiment, I’m holding out to see how mid terms go.
I've wondered that as well. With the Act Blue stuff (which I've not heard too much about) where they were using it as a money laundering tool to get around the contribution limits imposed; and the loss of billions into the NGOs across the l government (USAID and Dept of Education, et al.) it will be interesting if they can get their so-called 'ground game' running.
Good point.
I don't think it's a coincidence. Nor do I think it's a coincidence that there are fewer paid protesters at the left's idiotic events.
100% - it seems like there are a fraction of the protesters and they're all 70 year old retired teachers and retired government employees. Shutting off USAID was a brilliant move.
Also oligarchs. The ones that aren't directly subsidized/controlled by the government are bought out by billionaires and paid to distribute the same propaganda by the people who already control the government. You can tell very easily which outlets are like this by their relationship with their audience. If they don't seem to care about getting caught being wrong over and over... they don't care about the readers, they are there to mislead them.
The mainstream press has been the propaganda arm of Intelligence for some time now. I would be more surprised if they were not propped up by taxpayer dollars.
Yes for sure. These propaganda outlets have been funded by the Deep State. That's not a conspiracy theory. It's fact.
Oh, please.
wish I'd said that. And, yes, Taibbi is better in so many ways.
07/28/25: Agreed. "SitCom" said it perfectly.
I had a friend named Gary who used to work at the NYT during the 60s and 70s. His biggest achievement according to him was an interview with Westmoreland in the aftermath of Vietnam. I ran into him as a legal/political editor of a local paper. He believed in the objective media. And I think for Gary personally, it was true. He was an ethical person, but definitely to the left of center. Great guy to discuss stuff with. He also didn't hate me for dating his daughter. He died in 2004.
I think he's probably been doing rapid spinning in his grave for the last decade plus. I have to question, given what I know now, how widespread Gary's point of view was. We've all seen Citizen Kane, and we know about all the newspapers of the 19th century, with the political party they supported usually in the name. All stories are paid for. The person(s) doing the paying govern the slant. They won't pay for material that doesn't serve their interests. It may be that serving the Chamber of Commerce's interests (inasmuch as papers and TV were advertising mediums for local business) was sufficient for the latter part of the 20th century, but today? Where's the linkage to the individual?
Yes! I went through journalism classes in the late 80s/early 90s and the objective media was still the standard (at least in school). Then (IMO) came the 24-hour news networks.....but since there's not 24 hours worth of news, what do you fill the time with? Opinions. (Just like ESPN!) That's going to naturally lead to the death of objective media as your audience filters itself to your bias.
I went to JSchool in the early 70s. My parents watched Walter Cronkite, when they weren’t working, and I have an autographed photo of WC. I respected him because my parents did. Trust.
In my Nebraska JSchool, they required a journalism history course. We learned about the beginnings of getting out information. Gutenberg. Voltaire? Remember the Maine! Learned about the Lindbergh baby kidnapping sensation. Something about Billy Sol Estes floats to mind.
I graduated in 1976. Half a century ago. I don’t remember everything, but I remember — . There was respect for country. There was* journalistic ethics, and journalistic valor. At least, how I define it.
I think if we take away all the mirrors, these people will have nothing left.
*Using the singular intentionally.
I’m really miss the good old inverted pyramid…being told how and what to think has gotten old. As Sgt. Friday would say: “Just the facts, ma’am.”
I did Jschool at UNM in the late 70’s. Had one old prof (Stuart Novins) who had been at CBS. Another prof was UPI chief for Puerto Rico. Both straight shooters and no nonsense. But then I had a prof (Charles Coates) who had been at NBC. Different story!
'Reality' TV, aka scripted with the intent to SEEM extemporaneous, also played a huge role
Back in the days you could actually freelance for a living, I spent some time working on transcriptions for a bunch of those bad shows. These often included some of those 'behind the scenes' clips where contestants are talking to the producers. I was shocked to see how often the producers would outright lead the contestants into saying something, or saying it a specific way.
I still love "The Traitors", though!
Slumdog Millionaire!
Look at one if the most "popular " voices on ESPN, Steven. a Smith.
hard to believe he still says he is a dem (dumb).
I wrote about that in one of my first substack essays. The 24 hour news show was the beginning of the decline of the Walter Cronkite style of journalism and the beginning of personality talking heads that reached its penultimate example in the absolutely feckless Rachel Madow style of Journalism. (Great Monday piece for screamers by the way).
Dick Minnis
removingthecataract.substack.com
Bias is unavoidable but what an “objective” outlet can do is supply more than one … quoting “both sides” or the like… it may not supply objectivity but the reader has an easier time reading between the lines
RealClear Politics has been doing a tremendous service with their conservative and Liberal posts that you can comment and digest interesting stream of opinions.
07/28/25: Bezos's only hope now is to shut WaPo down and re-open it as a funeral home. Then its purpose would be perfectly aligned with the business that it's actually currently engaged in (instead of pretending to be "journalism").
Imo the post was doing what it was designed for… it has long been a favorite outlet for the intel bureaucrats… now those people are on the ropes… the reporters’ sources are desperately holding onto the power they once had. Over classification and the national security state killed reporter access to documents to cross check sources’ claims. Yes, reporters used to have to check what they were told…
07/29/25: An excellent memoir about the era in which reporters were expected to check, as you say, what they had been told: "The Times of My Life," Max Frankel [1930-2025], edited by Kate Medina; Random House (1999 hardcover). [Speaking of checking, Substack's Spellcheck is HORRIBLE.]
WaPo is dead, a candle lights its (mast)head, it’s lying there and looking so serene . . .
Wow, so you remember "Oklahoma!" too. Nice.
Lying in State…in ice. And it’s August so Bezos better send the Ms. out for another bag or two. She looks like someone who can find frozen water anywhere.
07/29/25: So. What has the Return On Investment been for Bezos's $250,000,000 (the price paid for WaPo)? [The Cheshire Cat Grins...]
To quote Charles Foster Kane : “I think it would be nice to own a newspaper.”
07/29/25: Which reminds me... didn't Bezos get his start as Montgomery Burns' secretary?
Thanks! I think somebody could break a lot of minds posting guys joyously singing, “There is nothing like a dame . . .” R & H were wonderful, confronting issues in a way that make us all want to sing.
If Bezos were serious, he’d be looking to hire journalists like Matt—people who do the research, do the work, have some wit, but who don’t fit into the traditional left/right partisan boxes.
08/02/25: Bezos doesn't have the IQ needed to understand the wisdom of your suggestion.
Conversely, Taibbi would never work for Bezos. If he did, he wouldn't be Matt Taibbi.
Getting in bed with the dogs and catching fleas seems to fit what happened to TFP. I unsubscribed months ago because of the change in direction I noted, to so carefully edit their stories to try and please the widest audience possible, and not to alienate themselves from the top dogs they sought to have access to. They made their bones by reporting the insane excess of the left and then pivoted to no man’s land where it was below them to write anything that could be viewed as supporting DJT. I still receive their emails, and not surprisingly I have so far seen zero mention of the new information released by Tulsi Gabbard.
I had roughly the same experience with them.
Bari and her rag TFP are a fraud. She, and it, are as biased and corrupt as the NYT from which she fled.
I often scan the NYT just to see the headlines and bylines. It’s absolutely amazing. They way they spun the favorable trade deals that Trump was successful in securing, FOR AMERICANS, was that it was going to be hard on the EU. This from the “premier” American news paper. Similarly there was no good news about it in TFP. You simply will never find any positive news coverage there that involves Trump
Still subscribe for now, and they did finally write a story that somehow backs up the mainstream narrative around the intelligence reports (Putin did want Trump) while simultaneously criticizing the coverage by the media. Very interesting line they are trying to take— especially if one reads Matt’s excellent reporting. Can’t have it both ways!
“Can’t have it both ways!” Is exactly why I won’t waste any time with them any longer. It appears they prioritize appearing to be “neutral”, in order to grow and be as mainstream as they possibly can, ambitiously attempting to replace the news media they have criticized for years… by becoming more like them, over the raw honesty that they began with, and which attracted so many to their site
To repeat: Bari and her rag are a fraud. She, and it, are as corrupt as the NYT from which she fled.
07/29/25: I second the motion.
07/29/25: Perfectly summarized (what they were; what they are today, a stunning change in so a short period of time). Such chameleons are like liars: the liars have to remember what lies they told to which people (eventually, that falls apart), and chameleons like Weiss must remember what they said in the past in order to fake it again in the present (eventually, that falls apart).
TFP is really no different than the NYT, they just pretend to be "balanced".
I mean, a handful of them are unemployed for the moment, but the infrastructure remains, and the 25/7 wall of bullshit is unabated.
My Progressive friends haven't learned anything whatsoever at all and have not even begun to open their minds even a crack about Russia and other such nonsense and likely never will.
If they do it will be ala JFK: NOW, TODAY we can all say in polite company that he wasn't killed by Right Wing violence without being cancelled. That was 61 years ago so who gives a shit. In the event it was Texas' fault and remains so effectively.
The dedicated aren't moving, but the "normies" certainly are. And every day with every lie, the media loses a few more of them.
The man behind the curtain waved his mighty hand and it was over. In a short time even the stragglers who deny reality will have to let go. No one seems to be asking " What is replacing the media system the man had in place to tell us what to think". Whatever it is, it is already up and running and in plain sight.
I make a point of reading a selection of legacy media outlets, despite the fact that I don't rely on them at all (and haven't for almost a decade) for any actual news. What matters most, which almost everyone is missing, is *why* people read legacy media outlets. It's not trust, it's to know what narrative they're trying to sell. The biggest change for me, is that with every article/segment I ask myself "why are they telling me this?"...
AP website is my touchstone for everything going on with the Left. All I need to see are the headlines, most of the time. I began to read, with AP - Hitler got better press, back then, than Trump today.
And to think Journalists were trained with the AP Style book.
He wasn't killed by right wing violence. He was killed by the sullen, insolent bastard who, as Priscilla McMillan said, "thought he was something he wasn't." It's an overbearing thing to ask someone to read a 1,500 page book, but if you're up to it in terms of time you can spare and strength of interest in the topic, I strongly recommend Vincent Bugliosi's "Reclaiming History." There is a book about half that length which presents the case for Oswald as sole assassin as trenchantly if not as fulsomely, Gerald Posner's "Case Closed." And though Jean Davison's brilliant book, "Oswald's Game," is out of print, there are used copies a'plenty to be had.
Alternatively, you can go to Sean Munger's historical channel on YouTube and watch his nearly four hours long, two part video about the assassination. He tells the viewer from the beginning that his video is going to be a teaching of the Bugliosi book, and it is, brilliantly.
To top this off, there is a guy whose YouTube channel called "LEMMiNO." He describes himself as a Swedish guy in his twenties who likes to make videos. He makes one every year to two years because his interest is in quality, not big rewards. He is strong testimony for the idea that if you produce work which is high in quality, you will be rewarded for it. His ninety minutes long graphic recreation of what went on in Dealey Plaza in those eleven seconds is the most spellbinding presentation of anything I have ever seen.
Thanks for that info.
Have you ever read Chaos by Tom O’Niell?
Gerald Posner and his book are bunk. How can you proclaim "Case Closed" when not all the evidence in the case has been revealed? Like the fact that the CIA did have a connection to Oswald? Absurd on its face.
Wow, that's an effective refutation.
Anyone would have to be a dolt not to believe that part of the price Oswald had to pay to be allowed to return to the United States in 1962 after his defection to the Soviet Union in November, 1959 was an agreement to be reamed out by every spook agency we have.
Before advances in biotech changed the nature of criminal detection dramatically it was an axiom that a crucial move to make in assessing someone as a possible suspect was to investigate his life. Actions have consequences but they also have meanings. Why would any 20 year old American have defected to the Russians in 1959? Is it just possible that in his fantasy life, he expected to be declared a hero of the Soviet Union, and receive everything he imagined would come with that, celebrity, an apartment in Red Square, hot Russky babes?
It's obvious to anyone who reads the Jean Davison book, in particular, but also to anyone who studies Oswald's life as rendered honestly by a researcher that Oswald was a Cluster B personality disorder case if one ever existed, probably a hybrid of psychopathy and histrionic personality disorder. The CIA doesn't look for people who are likely to go rogue.
When JFK was killed, a psychologist who had evaluated thirteen year old Lee Oswald was interviewed. He had been sent to her as a chronic truant by the school system. She has seen what a mess he already was, and felt helpless to do anything because of the resistance of the mother, Marguerite, who after the assassination asserted that Lee Harvey Oswald was an American hero who died in the service of his country. Maybe you believe that. To me, it's likelier that that pathetic man, just a month past his 24th birthday, saw an opportunity never to come again to make history, and took it.
IMO, based on what I know of Bugliosi and his life, including threatening his mistress with murder, among a whole host of other moral failings, I think anyone that would offer up anything he wrote as irrefutable fact is also someone that doesn’t know jack shit about the life of Vincent Bugliosi.
I guess you have a hard time finding any books to read, music to listen to, movies to see, paintings to relish, or anyone to trust, period, considering the flawed characters which we are all saddled with. I wonder what a background check on you might reveal?
Bugliosi was effective enough to handle the prosecution of the Manson family.
Do you remember who was in charge of management of nuclear waste in the last administration until that nasty business of some theft at the Minneapolis/St Paul airport came to public attention? The guy is entertaining in the ebullience of his sexual perversion, but I have no reason to believe he performed inadequately in his federal job.
The thing about Bugliosi, is that he lied. Multiple times. In court, and to grand juries. He was not only a scumbag of a human being, but he was also a shit prosecutor when it really counted. But you keep up the good detective work son. I’m sure you feel really good about it.
So Bobby Lime hasn’t read it. Got it. No, your assumption isn’t correct. Thanks for a mind numbing simple and forgettable interaction though.
The free market was swamped with scads of NGO cash pilfered from our future debt.
USAID is not paying for a lot of things they used to, and it's beyond the stage where cracks are showing. It's spinning apart and sending spall in every direction.
Sadly, the people programmed by this dream factory are still out here tripping balls on the lies and fantasy. We had a dinner a few nights ago and these old timers, (ardent Boomer News MSDNC/CNN/WaPo/NYT believers,) were remarking at how much is happening and how fast.
It was all I could do to not burst out laughing in their faces because if they had really been paying attention and had really applied these ideals they espouse so breezily they'd have seen this coming too.
Now we're stuck with Trump and he's throwing a lot of babies out with the filthy bathwater.
I'm OK with that, but I think the researchers who depend on that money will get screwed hard. Not OK with that. Just the worst players being shot in the anus.
And yet the academic institutions getting rid of the researchers because they are losing federal dollars have enormous endowments they could tap into, if they really believed in the cause that research is researching. Like the rest of us have to do when it comes time to buy tires or get the septic tank pumped -- you gotta draw on reserves. Obviously, hoarding their money is more important than supporting the research.
We need to remember that the average rake-off from federal research grants to universities for "overhead" was in the 40-50% range, which they used to build lavish facilities and hire more DEI administrators. So they can cut back the overhead to the 15% range and not lose very much actual research money.
No doubt. If it mattered to the puppet masters they'd divert money to it.
Spoiler Alert: they NEVER cared.
This is the true wonder to behold. These "Highly Educated" masses are now left to their own free thoughts, and that terrifies me, because none of them are qualified to think on their own.
Most of them haven't woken up to the reality yet.
It's too much, too fast for them and in their dotage they cannot pivot along.
It's glorious.
They were so fucking smug as they tried to justify the global terror operations being conducted in the name of "spreading democracy" when Obama was doing it but recoiled when Bush was doing it.
Fully co-opted.
To me, it's forgivable. We're talking a trillion dollar media machine. Sophisticated and barely detectable. a lot of people don't even have a defense mechanism for it -not their faults.
By free market you mean funded by USAID??
I don't think it's the free market at work, there is really not much left of free markets despite the repetitive claims that such a market exists. What this article suggests is that readers, like voters, vote with their feet, in this case their ears, eyes, and nose. The bull shite offered up by the legacy media was crap and just lies in service to a bigger agenda, the destruction of the USA. All the gnashing of teeth over Colbert is a prime example of a demographic of mentally ill news junkies struggling with the realization that the sane know how to sniff out a liar and refuse to be misinformed.
......I agree with you, but people voting with their feet is literally how the free market works!
I concur. I guess we could say they are "Free to choose."
Do you hear violins playing in the background? I do...
I think so, but they're so tiny....
it's pretty funny to hear it put that way. But really, the lying and cowardice and misprision has been going on for a lot longer than the last decade. Both in the halls of Congress and in the media, and elsewhere. Anywhere people could have spoken up on the spot, but didn't. Including the private sector lobbyists* too, of course. Ironically, patronage by a few wealthy donors or an employer is not exactly the magic of the free market, either.
[*It's often said that "journalists lean left", but that's only true if you don't count lobbyists for "the private sector"--they're often journalists, too! ]
To be clear, I don't confuse Matt with a lobbyist. Or with a pro-Trump partisan. The success of Matt Taibbi is the Free Market at work.
I would rather get the dog fleas than watch MSM
It is by far the worst part about this gig.
SOMEONE has to care about the truth... right?
I sure hope so!
Yea, Taibbi is so great--now I don't have to ever read anything critical of Trump, or anything about Gaza and Israel! What a great new world.......
Jackman is the kind of guy that turns on the Weather Channel and complains that they aren't talking about Israel and Gaza...
Who can think about the weather when 0.2% of the Middle East is controlled by non-muslim interlopers?
WHAT IS THE TEMPERATURE OF GENOCIDE?
Depends on how fine you want the cremains.
Too soon?
From the River to the Sea,
Areal flooding is likely in Philly.
Now that's funny.
With regards to Trump, you must not be reading the same Taibbi, although it's true he doesn't mention Gaza and Israel much, you can always watch Glen Greenwald for as much of that as you can handle.
That's what's great about independent media! We can focus on the stuff we know and let other people handle the other stuff.
I do listen to Greenwald and find him far more courageous than Taibbi. He actually has firm principles, and they often get in the way of what his readership wants to hear, but he's pretty unyielding. He's lost lots of readers. He was tough on Biden and now he's often tough on Trump. Taibbi just wants to feed us what most of his readership wants to read. It's cowardly.
Sorry but Gaza is a giant issue not just because it's a moral outrage and a slaughter but also because the political dimensions of it for American politics are huge and in need of journalists like Taibbi to point them out. Greenwald regularly points out how almost all of American politicians on both sides of the aisle are bought and paid for by AIPAC--a foreign county openly controlling American foreign policy. It's not just some distant humanitarian crisis thousands of miles away. It's a crisis right here at home. And Trump is enabling it even more than Biden did.
If you think I don’t lose readers by no-commenting Gaza you’re delusional
Matt, I appreciate you focusing on what you do.
If one is going to opine on the Palestinians and Gaza, I believe it is intellectually honest to bring up Palestinian support for Hamas, the massacre and Islamism in this tragedy. The “Free Palestine “ crowd totally ignores this fact when according to Hamas’ Foundational Covenant, it is front and center.
Then the question is simply: why the no-comment? Particularly as it impacts everything you traditionally give a shit about, like censorship/free speech in this country, where a new administration has gone well beyond anything Biden could dream of--actually deporting some of the people who have the nerve to say something about Gaza, and threatening the rest of the institutions that don't capitulate. And the thousand other ways in which this issue radiates corrosively throughout American politics. And I'm a Jew who feels that way. I know many Jews and gentiles who feel similarly--an ever-growing tide.
Your silence is utterly odd. If you're losing readers why not.....do the right thing? Or is it really such a tough issue to navigate? At this point? Really?.....
You don't want Matt to cover Israel/Gaza. You just want Matt to write anti-Israel articles.
You're pissed that the propaganda you want to read isn't on this site.
There are countless places to get that.
Matt writes what most others generally don't. He does it well sourced, informative and with some great humor.
How many different articles do you want to read calling out a "genocide", which by all accounts, Israel is the worst fucking "genociders" in world history apparently.
It seems as though everyone, big media and small, overseas and here, is covering Israel and Gaza. Why do some people have to grind on and on for Taibbi to? I do not understand it. He wouldn’t have any time to devote to this stuff, which basically no one is covering.
"is it really such a tough issue to navigate?"
No, it isn't. Because the most fundamental issue is, in fact, freedom of expression -- not Gaza, nor anything else.
Matt has spoken his piece on Gaza. Making the same points repeatedly segues from attempts at persuasion into psychological abuse (of the target, of course, but also of readers). Find a better way of treating him and all people who are acting in good faith, and find a better way of confronting people you really think are not.
I'm on the same side as you on Gaza (and am a Leftist), but I'm also anti-totalitarian. For some reason that I can't fathom, today's so-called "Left" has run headlong for use of totalitarian force (of various kinds, of course not labeled as such) rather than persuasion, based on supposedly undeniable "correctness". Hilariously, they also call this a defense of "democracy", when half the time they have no clue they are themselves victims of overwhelmingly sophisticated propaganda, and thus not actually participating in democracy! They do not understand what the word means any more, and instead have adopted the same stance as that of crazed religious, supremacist, and might-makes-right zealots. As you know, we're being overrun by such people on this very issue. In this very thread. Don't be them!
That, or you're disingenuously baiting him. I know that is to be expected here.
It's not odd, it's welcome. There wouldn't be an original thought there. All of it would be covered by someone else already. Sometimes it's better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you're stupid, than it is to open your mouth, and remove all the doubt. Glenn Greenwald has been talking about Israel long before he left the Guardian (let alone before the current conflict started). What you really want is for Matt to wade into this because he has a platform and a sizable following. You wouldn't care at all about this if he only had a few hundred followers.
You are a Jew in name only
Hey Matt, I disagree re: "the change" - AI and other "authentic" voices are more popular with non-Boomers - the expensive dinosaurs served their purposes and their shelf-life is up. BUT - expect next generation "aspirational" and "inspirational" AI to lead us by the nose in exactly the same way. Coz, that's the way- uh-uh - we like it, and always have - which leads, btw, by the nose to Voltaire, by way of Chaucer.
Chaucer began as a translator of French. The Arthur myths are French and Welsh. Schiller looked to Mary Queen of Scots and her life of tragedy for inspiration. These folks all mixed socially, and courted the same aristocratic patrons. "Novels" were bound series of letters between interlocutors, and that's likely the origin of both Candide and Frankenstein, it's certainly the formal structure - really of Frankenstein, and really of Heart of Darkness. Addison and Steele had a huge influence, French consumers lapped up English authors right into the 19th century. For arcane but important popular culture background : "History of PYRATES - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_General_History_of_the_Pyrates
MOLL CUT PURSE - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Frith
Witch hunters - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Hopkins
Terry Southern's Candy is a kind of a must watch. Keep up the good work!
Bro there's only so much time in the day and we're already ignoring world-breaking stories because there's so many of them. Perhaps Matt (like myself) doesn't care about Gaza beyond "We have no business there whatsoever". How many times can you print that?
And calling Matt a coward is so fucking laughable I can't even. Good luck out there.
"[Greenwald]'s lost lots of readers."
He's on Locals/Rumble, and for me that's inconvenient. I'm wondering if that affects subscriptions. Current I mainly read just his email transcripts, but religiously, and for them $5/mo is nowhere so well spent.
I really don't see courage problems with Taibbi. Seriously, you don't see the dangers he faces with what he covers, and with the profile he has? I've long moved past requiring that kind of purity from someone.
Greenwald leaving Substack was a dark day. Never was able to 'transfer' my subscription over, and I MUCH prefer a written article to a filmed one.
It seems people have forgotten that Taibbi was raided by the IRS while called before the government to testify about his writings.
Anti-Israel and anti-Ukraine hysteria is the purity test for the new/alt/MAGA/Tucker Carlson right. Trump has really started to piss them off! Atta boy Donald!
"Atta boy Donald!"
Now, I can't unsee The Donald slobbering for his master's doggie yummies. You got it right! Thank you!
I'm one of the readers that Glenn lost, because he essentially printed the same take on the Israel-Gaza story every day for two straight years.
You are delusional and lack perspective.
It's cowardly and intellectually disreputable to say that about someone without making a case.
If you want to be intentionally stupid just go back to believing Russian Collusion and you will fit right in with polite Progressive society.
Help me understand your comment
I'm not sure what's hard to understand. Do you hear Taibbi talking about Gaza and Israel, or talking critically of Trump's policies? I don't. It's as though everything Trump is doing is what he promised, whether about censorship, free speech, new wars in the middle east, Jeffrey Epstein, etc. It's just a giant bait and switch, and Taibbi is happy to be an apologist for all of it--focusing our attention in other directions......
I think there are a lot of reporters focused on The Trump stories…and the Gaza stories. Why does Matt need to do those reports? Isn’t his reporting on the Russia hoax a lane he can stay in for a while? Since he is doing a thorough job with it? Furthermore, isn’t this part of a Trump story?
Jesus Christ have you not read Insane Clown President? He wrote an entire book bashing Trump. What's wrong with you?
Yes, but that was only one book, and years ago. According to jackman, Taibbi should be shrieking from the rooftops "Orange Man Baaaaaad!" and "Israel Baaaaaad!" nonstop.
He talks about the ridiculousness of the Trump administration writing Anti-Semitism laws all the time.
Edit: He's also on the extreme side of speech when it comes to student visas.
Not really sure how you’ve turned Matt into some kind of policy wonk. His work these last few years has focused on the massive network that exists between the government, ngo’s and corporations that bring into question 1st amendment violations. His work has been tireless on this issue. He has now pivoted to how the media worked in lock step in regards to its coverage of Trump, and the effect the russiagate story has had on the MSM. Another story he has covered tirelessly. The Gaza story is in another stratosphere, and there are plenty of other sources out there covering that story, as was mentioned earlier..Glenn greenwald.
I don't dispute his coverage of Russiagate, et al and its free speech implications. I've always applauded that. It's why I initially subscribed here. That's precisely what's troubling about his present position, or rather, non-position on Israel/Gaza at the same time that issue is being used domestically for even more grotesque violations of our rights to speak freely in this country. I'm perplexed why most of his readership gives him pass on it. Do we really believe that THIS is the ONLY issue that Trump will weaponize to punish people in this country, once he's made it possible to deport people, and punish any institution that publishes certain ideas? Are we really? Or what the next Democrats will do with the same powers? Are we forgetting EXACTLY why those rights are embedded in the Constitution and transcend what our leaders think? It should be obvious--and I know that Taibbi knows it. So it's all a bizarre abdication of avowed principles.
And then there's the simple fact that we're all supporting with our tax dollars the starvation of innocent people, as well as the corruption of our government by another country. Just little stuff like that......
Not enough hours in the day as SC stated. Read Caitlin Johnstone, Consortium, or GG if you need your Gaza fix, that what a bunch of us do...
Read Moon of Alabama if you want to get a European perspective on Gaza.
Matt is a journalist covering his beat.
It's like asking the mail carrier why he didn't empty your garbage bins.
You get that right?
I'll just say that if Matt turned this into a Israel/Gaza site, I'd be gone. I can read that anywhere and honestly, I just don't care that much about it. There are plenty of other conflicts going on in the world, and there will be many more. I don't have to a shit about all of them or any of them.
Just because this is your issue at the forefront of your life and news consumption, doesn't mean it is for me, other readers, or Matt.
Matt is obviously choosing not to focus on a plethora of stories. The world is a big fucking place with many news events. Nobody can cover them all, and especially well.
I am perfectly happy with Matt staking his efforts where he has been over the last year and a half or so that I have been a customer. Now and then there is an article that I am not interested in, but that's fine. I just skip it. That is rare.
Keep it up Matt is you read this.
Again, reporters aren’t required to cover every story. You seem extremely well informed on the issue, so you’re getting the information from someplace. Matt isn’t required to pass your litmus test to be considered a worthy reporter, nor is he required to comment on every single issue.
Many of us are incensed over Gaza, and the fact that our tax dollars are funding it, but I don't expect every writer to whom I subscribe to cover every issue I care about. Lee Fang doesn't cover Gaza much, though he did a great job of schooling Winston Marshall on it. I don't see much from Michael Tracey or Michael Shellenberger on Gaza, either, but I appreciate their work on other subjects. I don't get the obsession with insisting that Matt Taibbi cover Gaza.
People seem to treat Racket as if it's a newspaper. It's not. The comparison is one guy on one beat in a newspaper, not a whole newspaper.
Matt accused the current admin of hypocrisy on freedom of speech, framed Mahmoud Kahlil’s attempted deportation as a 1st Amendment issue and predicted Trump’s implosion if he squelched free expression. But we’re at this historical moment largely due to media b.s. and massive corruption from our government in a hysterical push to eliminate Trump. Do we really need another conduit for Orange Hitler articles?
07/28/25: If you're so easily led to water, don't complain that you're drinking too much of it.
I read Matt Taibbi, you read Matt Taibbi, but on 'the street' I can't find many who have heard of him. I'm not ready to celebrate quite yet.
Brilliantly written
Now and again I manage to spew out something that doesn't suck. 😉
I'm loving the past couple weeks. Matt should hire a skywriter to patrol over his house writing "I was right and you were wrong" every day. Pretty sure we could crowdfund that.
07/28/25: Skywriting plane over WaPo HQ: "Would The Last Liar Being Bought Out Tonight Please Turn Off The Lights?"
Where do I send the money?
Seriously we should have shirts that say "Taibbi was right all along."
One of the last true honest journalists I trust.
The last couple of weeks?
Trump frantically trying to distract from the Epstein files?
As if the Biden team wouldn't have done something with the evidence of Trump being involved with Epstein in a bad way. Simply not believable.
Certainly the big change around the Epstein stuff is the Dems (and mainstream media) suddenly becoming concerned? Obviously?
This is a media driven story, period. Front page tabloid stories every day. No one I know gives a sh*t about it.
08/14/25: Correct. Harry Enten on CNN is now driving that emaciated, peroxide-saturated nitwit Kate Bolduan nuts with his survey charts showing the ZERO interest in the Epstein story three week later.
Lol. Lmao even.
08/12/25: "Christopher Clark" must be Paul Krugman's alias. How's that "white-hot" Epstein story doing now, two weeks later? Dead in the water, and it won't come back. 78th bogus "scandal" FAIL this year since January 21, 2025, when Trump was sworn in.
Thanks Tex!
Even if this is true, can you read? Try rereading the timelines starting in August 2016. Wake up, try thinking for yourself it will be refreshing and you’ll discover you’ve been lied to for another years!
I'll chip in a ten spot for that 😊
Pretty sure you’re an idiot.
Matt starts off his theory of the case stating that Hillary Clinton tied Donald Trump to Putin and she made the I/C aware of this contention for some sort of scheme.
One of the stupidest contentions in the history of stupid theories.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna621131
Yep
Trump is involved with Epstein in a bad way. Why else would he be saying all the crazy shit he’s now saying downplaying the Epstein files?
Also the Democratic base doesn’t give a shit who goes down with Trump (I’m talking Clinton/Gates)as opposed to the MAGA cult defending Trump.
Listen to Mike Benz lay out the Epstein stuff. He makes a good case that Epstein was much more likely the finance arm of an arms trading ring. I don’t doubt that he liked younger girls but that seems more like his personal peccadillo rather than a major blackmail ring. And if that were the case, it would make some sense why both Democrat and Republican presidents have not wanted the details public.
The government, and particularly the CIA, would find a free trove of blackmail data well worth playing close to the vest. Revealing it, en mass, would make it worthless. Time will do the same for parts of it, as players leave the field due to death, health or politics over the next couple of decades. But, in the meantime, the "value" of not publicly revealing this data is potentially astronomical.
The same may be true for the contents of those eight SVR thumb drives, supposedly languishing in a vault somewhere. This is not about President Trump. This very well may be about having five aces up your sleeves in the big game.
Read the two volumes of "One Nation Under Blackmail" to get a feel for how likely this explanation might all be and how naturally parts of our intelligence community might take to this course of action.
My guess too. A longer game. I guess we’ll see
Where did you hear Mike Ben speaking about the Epstein files?
A couple different places but I believe he was on the Triggernometry podcast last week talking about it. He draws a relatively straight line between Iran-Contra, Adnan Khashoggi, and Epstein. He was certainly tight with a lot of American Zionists like Les Wexner and Leon Black, so my guess is that Epstein was a valuable tool for multiple Western intelligence agencies to exercise soft power and sell weaponry under the table, and as a result he was afforded a bit of leeway/protection as regards his penchant for underage girls. As far as I'm aware, the whole "pedophile blackmail ring" accusation stemmed from one accusation from Virginia Giuffre, who was not a very reliable witness. It blew up from there.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/analysis/jeffrey-epstein-files-trump-report-rcna219360
Trump is going to have to release the files or this isn’t going away.
MSNBC 😂 yup theres a real source LMAO
Semi literate cultist who’s swallowing everything Trump is pulling out of his ass!
Thanks Carol!
Did you actually read the article that Matt wrote? On what planet is MSNBC or reliable source anymore? They push the Russia collusion narrative from the beginning and continue to push it to this day. Find another source for your information. That's the whole point of the article.
Lol!! Thats your best??? Not only not original but dead wrong- gaslight on 😂
08/14/25: Your call is very important to us, Mr. Krugman.
Thanks!
Not defending Trump, but I think if they had something concrete on Trump it would have been used a long time ago to get rid of him. That almost seems obvious.
If you follow Whitney Webb or have listened to Eric Weinstein on the podcast Diary of a CEO from 2 weeks ago, which has 4M views you will see that Epstein wasn't even remotely a financier, as they say. https://youtu.be/I-iyGGPabpI?si=nrPd9fUm865_fpdX
If you delve deeply into who he was you will see he was a construct created by the Elite to be a go between worlds. He was given an office at Harvard in the math department and was questioning Weinstein about Science. He blackmailed people. The underage girl thing is the smallest part of his story and if you look further into that you will discover most of the girls were not underage and consenting. The Elite want us to focus on the sex scandal part but that is a smokescreen for something much bigger.
Whitney Webb has written two 500 page books on this topic explaining every Epstein connection and thread there is to pull. It's all there for anyone to read. But instead we focus on the pedophile aspect because it requires less work on our part.
Here is an excerpt of one of her books that illustrates the above:
“Far from being an anomaly, Epstein was one of several men who, over the past century, have engaged in sexual blackmail activities designed to obtain damaging information (i.e. ‘intelligence’) on powerful individuals with the goal of controlling their activities and securing their compliance. Most of these individuals, including Epstein himself, have their roots in the covert world where organized crime and intelligence have intermingled and often cooperated for the better part of the last 90 years, if not longer. Perhaps most shockingly, these men are all interconnected to various degrees.
“Following the formal establishment of the organized crime-intelligence in World War II through what is today remembered as Operation Underworld, the relationship between these two entities has since become so intertwined and so symbiotic that, today, it is nearly impossible to know where one ends and the other begins. As this book will show, many of the biggest scandals and events of the last century have not only been tied to these networks, but many of them also have counted on the involvement of sex traffickers and blackmailers, Epstein among them. Publicly, these men have been powerful lawyers, businessmen and lobbyists. Their more clandestine and shadowy activities, though a matter of record, are often known only to those who are well read on certain historical events or in the field of ‘deep politics.’…
“We cannot properly address the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, nor prevent them being committed by others in the future, unless we grapple with the covert power structures that have long wielded blackmail, bribes and assassinations as their weapons of choice to corrupt and control public institutions while manipulating and looting the public.”
—Whitney Webb, One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 1
My comment was cut off above - here is the rest of that quote:
“Following the formal establishment of the organized crime-intelligence in World War II through what is today remembered as Operation Underworld, the relationship between these two entities has since become so intertwined and so symbiotic that, today, it is nearly impossible to know where one ends and the other begins. As this book will show, many of the biggest scandals and events of the last century have not only been tied to these networks, but many of them also have counted on the involvement of sex traffickers and blackmailers, Epstein among them. Publicly, these men have been powerful lawyers, businessmen and lobbyists. Their more clandestine and shadowy activities, though a matter of record, are often known only to those who are well read on certain historical events or in the field of ‘deep politics.’…
“We cannot properly address the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, nor prevent them being committed by others in the future, unless we grapple with the covert power structures that have long wielded blackmail, bribes and assassinations as their weapons of choice to corrupt and control public institutions while manipulating and looting the public.”
—Whitney Webb, One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 1
The most direct and obvious explanation is usually the correct one.
She’s a conspiracy theorist and has no idea wtf she’s talking about wrt Woody Allen. Moses Farrow’s blog post blew all of Mia Farrow’s bs out of the water
“During the podcast, Webb strongly attacked Woody Allen. Webb criticised the recent Wall Street Journal story about Woody Allen meeting Jeffrey Epstein several times, saying that the WSJ article should have also mentioned the SA allegation made by Mia Farrow against Woody Allen. Then a clip from the "Allen V. Farrow" documentary was played on the show. This clip (with a phone-call recording set against music) was where Mia Farrow accused Woody Allen of allegedly harming Dylan Farrow.
Webb then made a speech criticising Woody Allen, which the other guests agreed with. Webb falsely called Allen a "convicted paedophile". Webb also falsely claimed Soon-Yi Previn is Allen's adopted daughter, and hence his relationship with Previn is abusive and incestuous. Webb also attacked Noam Chomsky for calling Woody Allen "a great artist". Webb also claimed that Woody Allen is still being championed by the US media, saying”
She’s an idiot.
“During the podcast, Webb strongly attacked Woody Allen. Webb criticised the recent Wall Street Journal story about Woody Allen meeting Jeffrey Epstein several times, saying that the WSJ article should have also mentioned the SA allegation made by Mia Farrow against Woody Allen. Then a clip from the "Allen V. Farrow" documentary was played on the show. This clip (with a phone-call recording set against music) was where Mia Farrow accused Woody Allen of allegedly harming Dylan Farrow.
Webb then made a speech criticising Woody Allen, which the other guests agreed with. Webb falsely called Allen a "convicted paedophile". Webb also falsely claimed Soon-Yi Previn is Allen's adopted daughter, and hence his relationship with Previn is abusive and incestuous. Webb also attacked Noam Chomsky for calling Woody Allen "a great artist". Webb also claimed that Woody Allen is still being championed by the US media, saying”
Well, Soon-Yi Previn was Allen's adopted daughter and then they got together and got married. Judge for yourself what that is or isn't. It is strange.
Whitney Webb may be a lot of things, but an idiot is not one of them.
Where there is smoke there is fire. Nothing is off the table.
Seeing that the Woody Allen child molestation story is 100% bs, she’s started off with a deficit in my eyes.
Also, Soon Yi PREVIN was NEVER adopted by Woody Allen.
So yeah, I don’t particularly trust people who play so fast and loose with the facts in life and death situations.
http://mosesfarrow.blogspot.com/
That we would!
Uhh, it wasn't a "screw-up," a "botched or invented story, "or "getting a story wrong forever," it was a deliberate attempt to create a false narrative to derail the democratic electoral process and hold onto illegitimate power through knowing lies.
07/28/25: Perfectly stated. And now, let's mock the Stephen Colbert Rally outside of the Late Show theater --- all of 20 people showed up. Soros is relieved that he didn't have to pay the usual 2,000 sidewalk zombies, but suspects that his new daughter-in-law Huma will be putting in an expense account listing the "2,000" people anyway, who she'll say she had paid upfront to go to the rally ("she used to pull that sh*t when she worked for Hillary!").
Huma is the perfect bride of Frankenstein to Alex’s Frankenstein. A match made in hell.
07/29/25: And to elevate the horror, the essential triteness of both people compliment the evil of their characters.
Right, the MSM did what they wrongly accused Putin of doing — interfering in a US election.
And oh, by the way, our government has been interfering in foreign elections for the last 60-70 years. Obama used White House money to interfere in the Israeli election to help Netanyahu get reelected.
So even if Putin did try to sway the election (which he didn’t) unless Trump got him to do so (which he didn’t) it would be no different than what the US government has been doing for decades.
Um, 60 or 70 years?
Remember the Maine?
07/29/25: We still haven't lived down getting caught in the William Pitt (The Elder) affair...
Don Reed - Pitt The Elder displayed more common sense than the rest of Parliament put together when he warned in vain about using bureaucratic oppression to suppress a spirit of populism in American colonials. The resulting rebellion against the Mother Country was a spectacular example of FAFO.
Bingo
Watching all of these clowns get what they rightfully deserve is cathartic.
They haven't literally hit the streets yet, so hold out for full release.
07/28/25: Not really. Many of them made millions of dollars, or at the very least ate well while they were "working," for quite a long time. For those of us who knew what they were up to and ourselves never having been paid all that well, the consolation today of watching them getting canned is a hollow sensation. And as for the unindicted felons like Matt Lauer and Les Moonves (engaged in the same behavior that landed Weinstein in jail) getting away relatively unscathed ...
Good piece (again). The speed of the collapse here really is astounding. It's the old line - it all fell apart, gradually and then suddenly.
It's not that these media dolts didn't realize they were lying. It's that they believed themselves to be "stretching the truth" in the service of a noble goal, getting rid of Trump/making sure Trump didn't get re-elected. Literally anything done in the service of that goal was seen by this crowd as ethically permitted, even necessary. And now as the political winds shift and the lies are exposed for what they are, all they've got left it - "He's persecuting us!" And no one rushed to their defense.
“How did you go bankrupt?"
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
07/28/25: Who would attempt to rescue a nationwide "bust-out" operation?
The Number Uno reason for their demise, as institutions charged with reporting truth,, they lied and are lying about their lies..........
Oh the irony: Dems, the left, MSM (all one in the same) have been repeating constantly how big of a liar Trump is, and the threat to democracy, when the biggest of lies, the most egregious acts of attempting to subvert the will of the American people, was not committed by Trump, but by the Dems, and the MS News Media.
Hopefully Mika and Joe will be next on the chopping block.
Hopefully Kimmel gets schiff canned.
I used to like Kimmel... until he went all in with the covid cult. Now I can't stand to even look at him.
Considering his greatest contribution to television was showing videos of girls in tank tops and skirts jumping on trampolines, I'm kind of amazed that people take his opinions seriously.
Now bring back the girls bouncing on trampolines.
especially when Kimmel "cries about lies". A for effort...
Ditto for me with both Colbert and Fallon
Colbert and Kimmel are both Goebbels from Nazi times. Same same.
I used to like Colbert, too, when he hosted The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. But once he took to the Ed Sullivan Theater stage, he completely sold out. Such a shame.
he should have stuck w juggeez on trampolines.
Kimmel is like fingernails on a chalkboard. I’d rather eat my arm than watch his show.
I love Chicken!
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DzuicPGiF1qM&ved=2ahUKEwjJsPDYkeGOAxV_ATQIHbjNGhUQwqsBegQIDRAG&sqi=2&usg=AOvVaw3ZDKAD2RT-UE7Jmio_Q2Hr
07/28/25: One could literally start a new news network with all of these ambulatory J-school corpses...
I really want to see Joe and Mika crash and burn.
I watched him for years when he was running his original format, but when he flipped on Trump in 2017 and became what he is now, it was disgusting to watch. Not as much for the positions that he took, but the fact that he had no core beliefs.
I don't care about Mika as she's just an empty vessel who recites talking points. I expect that they'll be divorced within a year of their show getting canned.
I think Joe has core beliefs, he just gets paid more to spout bald face lies: " This Biden is the best Biden ever".
He just has no morals that most people consider good.
Funny that nothing changed since their meeting with Trump ?
Oh I hope not. I love the way she looks at him. It’s this amused look on impending failure from which she knows she will need to rescue him.
It isn’t about the news, which I think they even recognize, it’s about their public display of a borderline femdom relationship! He’s such a good puppy and she’s such a strict arrogant whip holder.
I laugh every time I see clips from the show.
I actually used to watch the show many years ago before they were married and liked it. Now he is so whipped and looks like a beavis and butthead character.
OK, so that made me laugh out loud thank you!
"This version of Biden is the best Biden yet" deserves some comeuppance?
Matt, Matt, Matt. ".... biggest botched story of our generation, the misreported/invented Trump-Russia scandal." I'd postulate that Covid is tied as the biggest botched story. Meanwhile, all the MSM news corps defenestrations..."OH THE HUMANITY!"
3 botched stories, perhaps of equal importance: Covid; Biden's sharp as a tack; Russia, Russia, Russia.
They underestimated a lot of Americans, didn't they!
You can run on for a long time, run on for a long time….
The new revelations sort of remind me of covid, when the conclusions were already pre-written and the 'experts' and media trumpeted anything at all that backed them up, while ignoring reams of other data undermining the narrative.
My own personal theory is that Russiagate begat a series of other hoaxes including Covid hysteria. Bunch of senior government bureaucrats are hanging out bragging that "we got half the country to think that Americans voted Republican in 2016 because of Russian advertising." Another group, these from the Pentagon, respond, "so? we got Congress to hold hearings where theyre telling everybody that they have proof of extraterristrials." Fauci & co hears all this, "oh yeah, we bet you that we can convince half the country that the common cold will kill you now unless you support the creation of a police state." Everyone else: "youre on." And the rest, as they say, is horrifying history.
Yes. The crowd in Washington has gotten away with so much for so long that they thought they’d always win.
That story wasn't botched or misreported -- the deception was intentional. If you think about it, the track record this century has been appalling for MSM. Here's a list of the more notable things the MSM has gotten wrong, knowingly spouted false propaganda, or refused to cover in the past 20 or so years: Iraqi WMD, government overreach of patriot act powers, the state of Afghanistan occupation, the opioid epidemic, pretty much any scandal involving Obama, globalism, free trade, and offshoring the America's manufacturing base, the causes of the 2008 financial crisis and the ensuing bank bailouts, colluding with the DNC during presidential debates for the past 10-15 years, covid origins, covid vaccine injuries, Hunter Biden laptop, the censorship industrial complex, inflation from 2020-2024, voter fraud, Joe Biden's mental decline, and our uncontrolled borders. There are probably many, many more things that could be added to this list. I'm surprised it took so long to lose all credibility.
Unrelated to anything: there's a game, Tactical Breach Wizards, that focuses heavily on literal defenestration - there are actual map goals related to forcing people out of windows from the opening tutorial throughout the entire game. They get a couple of good jokes out of it.
I too have been enjoying the term "defenestration." I never heard it used until a few years ago (at most). It has a delightful visual dimension to it.
I learned the word in college, when our friend group played a game called (I think?) "Assassination." There were numerous symbolic ways to score a 'kill,' and one of them was to corner the target in an upstairs room with a window, which counted as 'defenestration.' (Obviously, we never actually harmed anyone in the process of the game. I've heard of other groups playing in ways that got too realistic and ended with the people getting in trouble with authorities.)
I can see how the word might persist in your mind, given such a vivid learning process! LOL! It's remarkable that so many kids survive to adulthood.
Defenestration is dramatic, but not always fatal, alas. In the 1618 Defenestration of Prague, the victims survived by breaking their fall on a dung heap (so they say). MSM may break their fall in much the same way.
Oh, Tobe.
When they admitted who the real enemies were, it was already too late.
These imbeciles have nothing on what Cheney unleashed...
https://youtu.be/nsmo0hUWJ08?si=bLNHxQpTzMP0a7-x
Agree. Cheney and Rumsfeld 💩🤮
Anyone remember when the Left hated corporations? I do. Then corporations took over mass media starting in the 1980s, creating vast media empires that skewed Left. DEI, climate change, and the dreaded "land acknowledgement" that started so many all-hands meetings bought the Left off, and it lost its connection to the labor movement. Supported by the growth of Silicon Valley in the early 00s, there was money and jobs aplenty at Vox, HuffPo, and other corporate media outlets.
In Trump's first term, the journalists went #Resist, and spent the next 8 years whining about Trump and the Right, comparing them to Hitler and the Nazis and completely ignoring half the country who weren't happy about trans kids stealing trophies from their daughters, or homeless people threatening them on the streets.
They elected Trump again, and the corporations realized there was no money in #Resist, and they had a duty to their shareholders to stop wasting money on crap that wasn't funny, wasn't entertaining, and wasn't worth watching or reading - especially by half the country. So bye-bye Colbert, Maddow, and possibly the View.
NPR especially won't be missed. Did any PoC listen to it that didn't work for that outfit? Did any plumber, fireman or electrician? I listened to Marketplace, but it always seemed like Kai Ryssdal talked about the economy like a priest discussing parenthood. He knew how it worked. He'd seen it done many times. But he still didn't truly understand it.
I don't think it's a stretch to say that Colbert's main job was to prevent the re-election of Trump. Now he failed so he's not worth lighting that huge pile of money on fire.
Yes. And as Walter said, "all of a sudden comedy didn't have to be funny anymore". Now hat Colbert isn't funny he has no purpose.
At a minimum, he took that as a personal mission.
Could be but his level of hysteria hints at darker motivations. Idk, he just exudes creepiness. Maybe that’s all
He was good back in the Comedy Central days. Then he sold out.
Yep. Turns out it wasn't Colbert that was funny, it was the character he was playing.
Once he "went straight" on CBS, the humor was gone.
Oh, I don't know. He was good as a correspondent on the Daily Show.
Two things changed when he went to the big network: 1. he quit playing the character, 2. he became a mouthpiece for a political party.
Hard to say which variable killed the joy.
Peak Daily Show made EVERYBODY funny, though. Hell, even Samantha Bee got her own show! (Not to mention the terminally unfunny Trevor Noah)
They were equal opportunity detractors. True, they picked more on the Right than the Left, and some of the interviews were very cringeworthy, but they exhibited a lot more, dare I say, *equity*.
We working class flyovers loved Car Talk- but those guys were not only master mechanics, they were hilarious.
I miss those guys...
Ah car talk, that reminds me of the days when average working people had something to listen to on NPR. I could not stand the accents of those hosts, though. It was like shoving nails in my ears. The content was good, but I just couldn't stand their voices. That Boston accent is just awful.
I owe all of my automotive knowledge to Click and Clack. When in doubt, blame the motor mounts!
Probably the all-time greatest NPR program.
The Left hated corporations before they got high-paying jobs. When the upper-middle class/professional-managerial class took over the Left, they brought their class interests into it and morphed it into the contemporary pseudo-Left. It is now all about the aggrandizement and promotion of the less talented progeny of their class (spoiler: that's most of them); all their yammering about glass ceilings and microaggressions and chest-feeding is intended to drown out any discussion of actual, real-world problems people have - and to distract people from noticing that they and their oligarchic masters have been busy pilfering from everybody else. This is as true in the media as everywhere else.
The worse the real-world problems got, the more shrill they had to become. That's the source of their TDS and DEI and all the other BS they're spewing. But the grift could only go on as long as there were money, and now they're in a Wile E Coyote moment where he's just realized he ran off a cliff. Yipe!
Just wondering, Matt, whether you ever imagined a media collapse on this scale.
Fact is that there is no reason to watch the national news any more, wrestling is more credible.
Does suggest that there is an opportunity providing local news, if only someone could invent a good way of monetizing it.
The problem is monetizing a) a general news staff and b) investigative reporting. It won’t be easy. Individual voices will do well.
One thing that I think people miss about how the media works is that it’s really hard to just develop new sources on new topics - much better to have beats. But that means some sites and writers will have no way to cover certain topics quickly
Just stick to your beat man.
People outside the news biz have no idea how hard it is to do well
Part of the problem with the current media landscape is that you have to cater to advertisers (aka clicks). This leads to a massive amount of 'click bait'-level stories and a general death of quality.
Substack does it better, because the only people you have to convince of your value are the readers. You do that with thoughtful, quality (and generally correct) posts.
The missing piece is a simple payment mechanism, click to pay 5 cents for a copy, without needing to add name, address, credit card number etc.
Oddly enough, the web was designed to allow such microtransactions. They were prevented from becoming mainstream, just wonder why.
Catherine Austin Fitts has offered creative solutions that are more sophisticated than I am able to describe. I have always been a little suspicious of her ... And it needs to be considered that controlled opposition may perniciously corrupt these developing systems. So whatever happens, we should all proceed with healthy skepticism. Jeeze. I remember David Icke mentioned intelligence working for Blackrock purchased a significant portion of substack almost a year ago. I can only imagine that the same independent and free thinking that drove people from MSM could help to preserve the integrity of the system that emerges from where we are headed. "Motherfucker, I'm am American. That shit doesn't work on us" attitude will go far. Thank you Matt.
https://youtu.be/pTfe8sP-KPM?si=Zk5Lb4khjgtpggbP
This was one of the first promises of bitcoin, but as you say, the technology was prevented from becoming mainstream. Ask me how happy I am to rely on a single company (Stripe) to handle 100% of the economics of my Substack........
07/28/25: With no competition, you are no longer a client. You're an employee.
"the web was designed to allow such microtransactions"
I thought one of Ted Nelson's complaints (at least in the 90s) is that this was either too difficult or on some level impossible.
I don’t know the answer, but Ted Nelson was a force in the emergence of our software driven world. I know the initial web protocols allowed for small micro payments. Ted’s comments indicate that there were still gaps, which were never filled.
That is of course easy to understand, small businesses had no clue about the problem and the government did not see it as an important issue.
Some of the biggest substacks are the ones that keep shoveling coal into the TDS furnace.
I am not sure how organic those audience numbers are, but we'll have to check back in a year or two to see how well they're actually doing.
Gavin Newsom's latest post has 84 likes, 21 comments, and 18 shares (in 12 days). All less than my latest real article. (2 days ago)
https://gavinnewsom.substack.com/p/and-this-is-ryan-murphy-on-the-menendez-97a
I was thinking of Heather Cox Richardson.
(Who I used to read every day 😶)
Never heard of her, but I checked out her latest post and the top comment has 818 likes -- "He wouldn't be spending all that taxpayer money on something he couldn't keep for himself. The announcement about the "ballroom" being constructed in the White House is his way of announcing that he's never going to leave."
Maybe you're right.
HCR was reported to be the first Substack millionaire.
The old, advertising-driven model for news failed because Google and Facebook ate up all the ad revenue.
Google got hammered in an antitrust case recently, though, so who knows what the fallout will be: https://www.techtarget.com/WhatIs/feature/Google-antitrust-case-explained-Whats-next
I wrote for a few years for a local, online news site. The site had to fold a couple of years ago because there just wasn't the money.
Craigslist probably did more to kill local news media than Google or Facebook.
It demonetized local want ads, which had been the financial bread and butter of the local paper. Business ads were not enough to plug the gap, plus the web took much of them as well.
Perhaps the real problem is that people are getting so focused on their own affairs that there is not enough interest in the local community. When one sees couples each communing earnestly with their own phone, loss of community interest may not be the most important issue.
Good point about Craigslist (as well as competitors like Kijiji).
Not sure if self-involvement plays a role in the demise of local news, given it is a perennial, species-level issue.
Population density and wealth of the local community are pretty key, though, and poorer rural areas will have a harder time keeping news outlets going.
As long as they keep answering critics by saying 'We won a Pulitzer Prize for our coverage of this story,' the losing will never stop.
Can that Pulitzer be revoked? I know the Pulitzer commission, or whatever they call themselves has become a joke, but that would be a good start toward restoring some credibility.
That would require the level of self-awareness in which they can acknowledge that they've lost credibility. They have too much of their self-image bound up in preventing them from ever having that self-awareness in order for that to happen.
Nah instead the prize itself has lost credibility
Must have been the Lily Pulitzer prize! Lol!
The media hung itself
first lie Russsians elected Trump
second lie Epstein killed himself
third lie Covid will kill you
forth lie the Covid "shot" prevents infection and transmission
fifth lie the Covid "shot" is safe and effective
sixth lie get a Covid booster - or die
seventh lie Hunter Biden's laptop is Russian disinformation
8th lie Joe Biden is sharp as a tack
9th lie Kamala Harris is an intelligent person of color whose family never owned slaves
Fool me once shame on you
fool me twice - shame on me
Lie for the deep state - and get deep sixed
That's a good start at a list from merely 8 years ago(mostly 5 years ago)...there's so much more...
Fool me nine times and I’ll elect the guy you hate the most
Should we expect a bunch of new Substack writers with exactly 300,000 subscribers each on day one, or did DOGE take care of that?
Judging by Scott Bessents comments on the federal reserve (a universal basic income for PhDs in economics, and wrong about everything), they could be looking to shave billions from their budget.
Economics seems like the perfect task to replace with Artificial Intelligence.
07/28/25: Here's your infallible "AI":
On July 23, 2025, Google AI was asked this question:
"When in 1937 was Mercury, Venus and Mars simultaneously retrograde?"
1st response (Google AI (07/23/25):
"According to available information [:] Venus Rx in 1937 began in Aries, which occurs every eight years [;] Mercury Rx dates in 1937 include periods starting on January 16th and May 6th [;] Mars Rx did not occur in 1937 ...
"Therefore, there was no period in 1937 when Mercury, Venus, and Mars were simultaneously retrograde."
FACT: Mercury, Venus and Mars WERE simultaneously Rx between April 30 and May 9th, 1937.
Google Gemini is pure garbage.
--- An hour or so later, I returned to the site to retrieve the exact wording of the question that I had posed ("When in 1937 was Mercury, Venus and Mars simultaneously retrograde?").
And just for the heck of it, I asked the same Q again.
Result: Their story CHANGED! From a flat out statement that MV&M were NEVER simultaneously Rx in 1937, now it hedges --- and "unlikely" (below) is just as incorrect an answer as the previous "no period" (= never):
"It's highly unlikely that Mercury, Venus, and Mars were all retrograde simultaneously in 1937.
Below: "And there's no readily available information..."
"While overlaps between Mercury and Venus retrogrades occur, simultaneous retrogrades of Mercury, Venus, and Mars are much rarer events and there's no readily available information suggesting such an alignment in 1937."
I was able to find the correct information in @ 15 seconds.
Below: No, it is not "more likely." They either are or they are not:
"It's more likely that these planets were retrograde individually or in pairs during different times in that year."
... In the time that it took me to dig all this stuff up and make a record of it, a Google AI busybody was paid about $480.77 (hourly minimum wage).
I have seen so many similarly inexplicable errors reported that I cannot see how or why anyone would cede any knowledge to any AI platform. As a lawyers I cannot imagine ever getting an AI to draft a document or correspondence for me (although sifting through evidence/collating data maybe, yes). This is my art fwiw. So much of human endeavour and creativity could be lost to AI.
07/29/25: AI is a fishing lure, so to speak, for those of us who want Something For Nothing. And if they have enough money, they'll end up hanging themselves with ropes made out of Benjamins.
AI cannot Think. It's literally a cipher.
And they say comedy is dead! Thanks for this. AI may eventually get by this, but much ground to cover! AI can't actually think at this point, perhaps never. In current state, it's just a busybody that parrots whatever it has heard, WITHOUT logical examination/parsing what it's repeating. In essence, a collage of the unverified. A modern town crier? Woo-hoo!!
It has value properly applied, but it's often misapplied. Not to bore you (nerd alert!!), but it's great at inspecting parts, once you have ~300,000+ pics and have told it what's "good/bad". Like any new tech, lots of excitement, then the discovery grunt work of finding where it actually works.
As humans, we always hope to win the lottery, but our more rational gut knows the real deal. Aaargh!
Maybe it's ok we want to believe, in moderation.
One of the joys of staying with a Windows 7 operating system is that Substack, at some point (when) and to what degree (how much), ceased to interact with W7 users. If I click on "Like," nothing happens.
There's no way to prove or disprove the validity of such a statement because the closest I can get to the truth are rumors.
However, given all of the other complications (100% negative) of refusing to "graduate" (get screwed by installing) Windows 11, my guess as to why my voting privileges had been neutered seems to be reasonably un-stupid.
Consider this a "Like"!
"In current state, it's just a busybody that parrots whatever it has heard, WITHOUT logical examination/parsing what it's repeating. In essence, a collage of the unverified."
Or, in other words, most people. Or maybe I'm just a cynical misanthrope.
Very oversold AI- its like the programmers are 25 yr old foreigners pulling stuff out of their ass- oh wait!
What does that have to do with the Fed funds rate ?
I can't wait to see what kind of wacky "hallucinations" an economics AI would come up with.
But it would have some really stiff competition from the meathead economists we currently have.
It will be interesting to watch them fail just like Terry Moron, whoops, I mean Moran.
07/29/25: Mr. Forgettable? It seems as if he was fired five years ago; the J-School body count has been mounting like the odometers on the spinning driver-less Teslas.
07/28/25: How deep are the Deep State pockets? And what happens if and when Substack goes public? Will we then, or eventually, find out that every "subscriber" is paying the same rate --- or will Soros (et al) be given massive discount-for-volume deals?
Writing is a very different medium, and throwing money at substack bloggers probably won't do much. The thing about television news is that people tend to assume good looking presenters are honest, and switch off their logic and reasoning cores. With writing, you have nothing but words. With substack, media personalities and looks don't matter, just content. The shift away from visual media to the written word for news consumption is a good thing.
07/29/25: "The shift ... to the written word..." Agreed, with a caveat: I've lost count of how many writers I had formerly admired who ended up writing themselves into oblivion. Why? Verbosity.
The only weapons left in their arsenal are:
1. Paying for content farms/bots/paid shills/AI agents to create the illusion of popular support for a given issue. This happens all the time, and it requires social media platorms to play along to work well. Once Elon bought X, that stopped.
2. Censor the internet of wrongthink. This is the route Europe is taking, but unless the USA goes along, I don't think it will work. Right now everyone in the UK is signing up for a VPN service as the online safety act takes effect.
97/29/25: 1. Trump & Company severed their governmental "NGO" $ pipeline. 2. The Online Self-Incrimination Act, you mean. Hitler was merely a man ahead of his time, by about ninety years. The only thing missing in London today is a Goebbels statue and the renaming of Buckingham Palace to the "Himmler Hofbräuhaus."
Substack is small enough that market rate dominance is affordable.
07/29/25: One of the joys of staying with a Windows 7 operating system is that Substack, at some point (when) and to what degree (how much), ceased to interact with W7 users. If I click on "Like," nothing happens.
There's no way to prove or disprove the validity of such a statement because the closest I can get to the truth are rumors.
However, given all of the other complications (100% negative) of refusing to "graduate" (get screwed by installing) Windows 11, my guess as to why my voting privileges had been neutered seems to be reasonably un-stupid.
Consider this a "Like"!
Good question. Bill Rice Jr. will be keeping an eye on that!
That Katherine "The truth gets in the way" Maher should go hide in shame forever. What a f**king clown.
And sharp-as-a-tack Biden: "We choose truth before facts."
Cause or effect, hard to say but I think corporate media’s switch to basically a state run propaganda machine wins out as a big part of the reason we have no common reference points today. How can I convey to someone who watches PBS Newshour every evening and reads the NYT the body of information I have read the past 7 or 8 years that made me vote for Trump solely to see disclosures like this see the light of day? They are told every day and then Colbert tells them again before bed that people like me are conspiracy minded MAGA wing nuts. Impossible. As Scott Adams said the other day you can’t live in a country whose govt does these things w impunity. It’s media who has the job of keeping govt on the up and up. That corp media abdicated their responsibility on these points will hopefully go down in history books as the worst thing that ever happened to our country.
“How can I convey to someone who watches PBS Newshour every evening and reads the NYT the body of information I have read the past 7 or 8 years that made me vote for Trump solely to see disclosures like this see the light of day?”
I ask myself this at least once a week. If even there were a person who’d engage with me earnestly on a topic on which we disagree, I don’t see how we could meaningfully proceed coming from two different realities.
I don't engage directly too much today with establishment-so-called-"Leftist" types much any more.
But I've faced this problem a few times over the last two years visiting a couple of good friends from college (from decades back). I find myself quite challenged trying to assemble a handful from the sheer volume of excellent articles (PDFs, sometimes prints) for them, never mind discussion that can get anywhere even over, say, a four-hour period of mostly talk. Meanwhile, though, they have supplied nothing (yet). To sum it up: To this day, we have not yet gotten down to a rough common set of "facts" (information) on which we can even agree. Trust me, they start out discussions very confident on facts and forceful about their opinions. Yet when I get frustrated sometimes with their apparent ignorance and/or lack of discipline pursuing truth ... they dismiss it with jokes.
The experience you describe is a familiar one.
One day those jokes will dry up. Not saying these types will ever engage with reality, but too many other people will have. Conventional wisdom will leave them behind and they will wonder where all their friends went. These people depend on the perception that their views are widely held. The smugness you experience will eventually evaporate into uncomfortable silence.
At least they still speak to you.
i need a russian botfarm to avalanche this comment with likes.
Maybe Michael Jackson had it right -- and these media voices who don't understand the term introspection, let alone practice it, ought to pay attention to his famous lyric:
"I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change."