This wonderful piece may well be THE poster child exposing modern political corruption in this country. Seems to me, DOGE is doing God's work. Public attempts to disrupt it's efficacy by the Dems seems like suicide to me.
The problem is... the rot is very very deep. Like the fact that Lab Leak was the absolute most plausible answer since basically day 1, but depending on your political stance it was conspiracy theory, or logic.
I think the greatest accomplishment of Donald Trump (and I very much dislike him as I am not quiet about), is lessening the timeline of Conspiracy theory to Conspiracy fact. In my lifetime that's gone from the 60 years of redacted documents held by our government, to about 60 days....
But... Like all news stories or anything in our life now, the facts only matter based on who delivers them.
The best line in the essay was "Trump did not know how Washington worked". Proof the deep state exists and will thwart the policy of any administration, even one openly hostile to it. The size and scope of government must be reduced significantly.
I said it back in 2016. Trump was out of his league. He was used to the corruption of business, and municipalities. D.C. is the big leagues of fraud and criminality.
Raze it down to its foundation and rebuild anew. Since that will never happen, we are stuck with it. Only upside is more people will understand the severity of it, down side is too many people either get their stipends of bread and butter or their meaningful graft from it.
"We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;
"Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Donald, that the life also of Donald might be made manifest in our network of federal prisons."
I think it goes beyond laziness to a nearly impenetrable mental blockage. It is willful, determined ignorance. Turd is exactly right that the facts only matter based on the source. Except it's changing now--too much is being exposed on too many fronts.
Yeah, 35-40% are unreachable for the foreseeable future. Trump and his successors just need the majority of the middle. Understandable things like DOGE and NGO abuse will sway a lot of these people.
Word on the street is that Trump is hemorrhaging support he once had from millions of "independent" voters. A demographic cohort, I might add, traditionally comprised of voters who think they know the score but in reality they don't even understand the game.
I'm not sure he's "hemorrhaging support" as even CNN reported last week with their data guy, Harry Enten, shocking the anchors by pointing out that 98% of Trump voters would still vote the same... meaning only 2% would change/regret their vote.
This Independent has only ever voted 3rd party, and was all set to vote for RFKJr. After he dropped out and joined Trump's campaign, I held my nose and voted Trump just so Bobby could get into HHS. The first couple weeks of Trump's bull-in-a-china-shop actions were great, but after a mere 3 months, I now have severe voter's remorse, which I've never experienced before. Just confirms what I already knew (but ignored on 11/5/24) - D or R, doesn't matter; it's the same Uniparty.
We should do our best, I think, to understand the mass brain rewiring that has been going on since the advent of television (see Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death") and greatly accelerated with the introduction of the internet (see Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains"). Researchers have regularly pointed out that watching stuff on screens stimulates the emotional sectors of the brain, and the more we spend doing this, the less we spend reading and thus stimulating the reasoning sectors. No wonder so many of us now base our opinions and decisions on "feelz" rather than thoughts.
So it may be that the "intellectual laziness" is not a mere matter of rational choice; the real pandemic is addiction to screen watching.
The questions about free speech got opened up with the Twitter files and the revelations of Biden's government overreach that led to the report in this post. To continue asking the same questions of the Trump admin seems like an obvious choice, and the mechanisms for asking them are available. It's why I have been bummed to see Taibbi whiff the free speech question in his post about Harvard.
Trump admin's anti-speech and anti-privacy actions have been so egregious that yes, I am able--anyone is--to see that there are very real issues even though it's just 100 days into their leadership.
News for you---Taibbi's a Russian asset, so save your disappointment for your next dining-out experience.
Interesting that more people can't figure out this simple, obvious fact or don't wish to find it out. And then there are those who know this to be a fact, but soft-pedal it or, you know...
What's interesting about MAGA, from a purely sociological perspective, is the fact that MAGA is a tightly-bound political cult where most of the members are wholly unaware that they're members of a cult.
I appreciate your honesty regarding your opinions on Trump.
I totally agree with your assessment, and I also think that one of Trump's major accomplishments was in exposing the extent of the Deep State --- which turned out to be much larger than I had ever suspected.
It's much larger still than we even know. I contend that we don't have the capacity as humans to truly realize. I believe the Deep State is far larger than just the United States. I actually think it is a global cabal, and in the arc of "same as it ever was" is essentially the same families/entities that have been running the show for 2,000 years or so.
The Roman empire never really died, it just went into Hibernation until it could figure out how to truly rule the world, and that concept began with organized religion that had all its basis in Eternal Life, and righteous vs infidel's. A commonality among most major religions today.
That's what Alex Jones & David Icke say -- and they make a lot of sense when they start going into it. All of our presidents have connections to the royal families of Europe, for instance. I have not confirmed this, but I think both of them make this claim. There is certainly some bizarre stuff going on, and, as you point out, it has been going on for a long, long time. The more I look into it, the more disturbing it gets.
Check out the Trilateral Commission: all the crowned heads of Europe and the corporate heads of US. They haven't gone away. And just get this: one of their rules is that no notes are taken at the meetings.
What makes absolutely no sense is this tendency we in the West have to forget that the world doesn't revolve around us. It consists of many powerful nations who regard us (increasingly) as largely irrelevant. So obsessed are we by our own internecine warfare (now the U.S. and Europe are on the outs) and the consequences of failed attempt to dominate the world. we can't see beyond these relatively minor and parochial problems and evaluate them from a global perspective. Meanwhile, China and Russia and the other BRICS nations are relishing the spectacle of the West turning its back on working people and paying for its own implosion (now we have a $1 trillion defense budget!), as their leaders focus on long-term stability and sustainability. They are raising all their less privileged citizens up and out of poverty, in part through wealth distribution, for example. Meanwhile, all we have left is U.S. military might in the form of useless F-35s, aircraft carriers (obsolete in the new age drones) and an inept and inexperienced army. When our domestic squabbles turn into civil war, our soldiers will side with their people, not the billionaires. De-dollarization will ruin our so-called economy long before Trump has a chance to force the rich to build their factories here. So here's what "they" have (and we don't): more and more fertile farmland (think Siberia), more and better educated people (think India and China), robust manufacturing and plenty of consumers (see "more people), universal healthcare and public education, fewer billionaires, modest defense budgets, universal recognition that the climate is in crisis and healthy planet is essential for all living things and that humans depend on other species, and vast quantities of both rare earths and he meant to process them, a. ruling elite that is not plotting to use climate and scarcity to depopulate the planet and leave them in peace (in their bunkers and bubbles) to focus on extending their lives and cleaning up the environmental mess they intentionally made.
". . . vast quantities of rare earths and the means to process them, and a ruling elite that is now plotting to use climate breakdown and growing scarcity to depopulate the planet and leave them in peace (in their bunkers and bubbles) to focus on extending their lives and cleaning up the environmental messes they intentionally made.
This is another problem. The people that bring some of this stuff are about as crazy as the Grocery Store tabloids that talked about my Alien Baby and stuff back in the day. Does Bannon or Drudge, or any of those people really have truths, or are they just deranged nutbags... like me.... LOL
In rides our hero Steve Bannon, to singlehandedly bring down the irritatingly opaque global Swiss banking system by finding out just what in the hell people put in all those goddamn mysterious lock boxes in Zurich---the No. 1 priority of America's working class!
That is, as soon as our hero finishes lunch at the Kasbah Grill at 251 W 85th St, Ste 3321) and loading his clean shirts into a rented U-Haul van at Landmark Cleaners, the laundromat right around the corner from Kasbah at 2345 Broadway.
Steve Bannon is as big a moron as Rachel Maddow. Both idiots living in a dreamworld that has no basis in what the rest of us struggle through each day.
No dude, the problem is they're shit at it. If I think violent crime is a problem, and we hire a bunch of cops who just shoot at crowds because some of them might be gangsters, that's not a 'the rot is very deep' situation. It is people not actually addressing the problem in an effective way.
You mean like say... Department of Education, or Department of Truth, or Department of Health and Human Services. Yes... I agree with you, but the topic at hand here was speaking of how information, specifically mis and dis information is a made up construct, and actually PAID for by our own tax dollars.
Yeah, exactly like those things. If you have a problem with crime in a town, the solution is not to nuke the town. if you have a problem with the management of the department of health and human services, the solution is not to simply halt everything they do. It's moronic, and the only reason anyone even pretends to support it is the baseline tribalism that we've had since at least 9/11
The Solution to crime in a town is not to coddle criminals either, or basically make it so... Oh, these people have it hard, so if they steal $500 worth of food it's because they are hungry, or if they murder someone it's not the fault of the murderer, it's the fault of the school that didn't cancel the event because it was raining....
Or... the fact that when I was a kid we had things like Mental Institutions, and kids that were special needs (Back then it was Mentally retarded), they went to a school that specialized in their care, and it wasn't mixed in with everyone else forcing them to come down levels to meet them, rather than the other way around.
We've been backwards for decades now, and it's only going faster and faster in reverse. Just because I roll up my windows and lock my doors when I drive through Kensington Philadelphia, or Camden NJ, or parts of Baltimore, doesn't mean I am a racist. It means I am aware of my surroundings. I do the same in Some Parts of South Philly which are Italian for the most part, or parts of Bristol PA and Croydon that are primarily Irish. It's idiotic that we keep blaming everything on the victims. It's the Victims fault that I murdered them... What level of moron is this world now?
When you read me saying 'wow, shooting into crowds is not effective police work,' what was it that made you say 'but it's the only alternative to coddling criminals'
Thanks for updating us on your highly personalized security protocols in place smartly designed for safer motoring in and around our nation's great urban centers. One can't be too safe these days.
I grew up in Indiana and whenever I go back to visit friends or family, I always have a couple of guys safely secured on the roof rack on my 2008 Monte Carlo and armed with fully-loaded AR-15's (plenty more magazines in the trunk!) and a generous supply of M-67 fragmentation hand grenades.
Nayib Bukele showed how to combat rampant crime. I'm not sure his actions are reproducible in this country. But. Until the thugs are removed from civil society, they will continue to thug and civil society will continue flail at solutions.
"But... Like all news stories or anything in our life now, the facts only matter based on who delivers them."
No. That is ceding too much power to the the entities that do not have our interests in mind- never mind our best interests.
Bullshit is bullshit. We need to be as loud and obnoxious in calling it out as Trump/Musk/DOGE/Miller, et. al. if conditions are ever going to change. Eff the status quo...
Being a former GSer that rose to the senior management level I can say with some personal experience that there were many programs spun up after he won that he had no clue about. And they were there to either undermine him or obfuscate what they were doing to work against his agenda.
They came out in the open after his defeat, never thinking that he'd ever win again.
Included were two of the deep state’s crucial misinformation juggernauts when it refused to issue the ‘real’ results of the 2020 census and let the OBiden admin pad blues states and rob red states of congressional districts for an entire decade. And, of course, the fairest and securest election of all time in 2020.
Define curriculum. If it includes promoting DEI and trans agenda discarded by the trump administration which funds them - then by all means send a letter telling them to stop or be federally defunded
You really want the government to manage the curriculum of a private university? The letter includes a request for an audit of all syllabi! Is that what you want your tax dollars to be spent on? The government overseeing what professors teach in their classrooms? Do you have any instinct to question the assumption that it's all "promoting DEI and trans"? Do you think in a university of 21,000 people that's all that is going on?
They are no longer strictly private institutions when they seek, and receive, billions of taxpayer dollars. For 50 years government has been dictating to private institutions about how they manage their affairs, once they (or even worse, their students by accepting student aid of any sort) begin taking tax money. Weaponization goes both ways. I'm for both projects coming to an immediate halt.
No private university is entitled to public funds. No other charter school gets them. The only legitimate use of public funds is for state colleges controlled by state legislatures.
Don't dither with curriculum review. Just stop funding any private university. They can do whatever they like as long as it's on their dime. State colleges can be overseen by state legislatures, in keeping with the original idea of education being a reserved power, along with insurance and banking.
Ummm, so we're seeing no improvement in transparency and access to government information and reduction in funding to NGOs and other poisonous entrenched political tentacles? Great, you can have 2021 again. Have at it!
There is a reduction and redirection of resources. Those NGO groups were one avenue of deep state power, Trump is simply redirecting funds to the DoD.
Again, he’s pushing for a trillion dollar “defense” budget. If you think that isn’t going to be waste, fraud, and abuse, then you are being played and are a sucker.
Trump did not eliminate waste with DOGE. He shifted the waste into the DoD.
Exactly. What of that 50% reduction in military spending Trump floated? I like a lot of stuff he's doing, and it's still very early, but I'd really like to see action on the Pentagon, Homeland Security, the CIA, and the FBI. When is Patel going to start redeploying all those thousands of FBI people from Washington to actually fight crime throughout the country? And I'd like to start seeing Bobby go after the pharma companies. It's a big to-do list, and I hope they get around to all of it.
That remains to be seen. Meanwhile, because of such foolish foreign policy for so long, we really are in a perilous world right now. With all his enemies watching him so closely, it's less likely that Trump & co will get away with what previous administrations did so easily.
Yes, that's correct, we are seeing no improvement in transparency and access to government information (the opposite, actually) and we are seeing a reduction in funding to NGOs and a redirection to other entrenched political tentacles as well as private and unregulated actors.
Yes. And to see this, we have to be able to see that "misinformation" can be abused by both sides - even the one we agree with. But that ability seems really hard to come by in this thread.
I love that the Biden nonsense is being exposed. But right alongside it is this stupidly blind idea that DOGE is somehow the antidote.
DOGE is just doing the same thing Biden was doing but with different marketing and a different set of values. In both cases the government is policing what the rest of us are thinking and saying.
The idea that DOGE is value neutral is laughable. The agenda is abundantly clear and it's just as biased as the Biden agenda.
The only right approach is meaningful tax reform and a return to basic free speech principles in which no one is "correcting" the values of the other side. This is not what is happening. We are in a backlash, not a reset.
Elections have consequences; the electorate voted to have the Deep State broken up. You have to admit that we all have seen abuses beyond our wildest imaginations. Too soon to say whether the surgery worked. the truth is that too much of our money is being wasted while severe social problems continue to plague our nation. the idea of research into trans issues rather than actual programs to prevent homelessness and drug addiction is obscene, regardless of how you feel about trans.
Jeez, I don't think this is the end of the Republic, agencies have only really been around for the last century at most, most of them for around 50 years. No, the Republic will survive. The water quality will drop, health care outcomes will decrease in quality, a bunch of people won't get their social security and may die or lose their homes, and several million people around the world will die of preventable disease, though.
Please explain how cutting funding for drag shows in Bangladesh will do any of the things you listed.
What has been cut that will affect water quality, or health care outcomes, and what does DOGE have to do with that? The agency heads are the ones making the cuts. If you have concerns, I suggest you take it up with them.
How is Social Security being affected by anything DOGE did, and how will DOGE actions cause "a bunch of people" to "die"?
Several million people around the world are NOT the responsibility of the US taxpayer. How come nobody ever asks why their OWN governments aren't taking care of them?
I also think that "revealing stupid programs" is essential, but my bias would be toward revealing them and putting them through a democratic process by which they could be up or down voted. There are too few people deciding what is valuable and what isn't. Congress is ridiculously impotent, which sucks, but they are still our Congress. They should be involved in some way. If we believe in our system of government, which I do, even though I think it's been corrupted, then any reset needs to align with the structure of our government.
Elections have consequences: the people spoke: they don't want the programs that have been outed. Wasteful to spend any time or money on counting the number of angels on the head of a pin. the programs DOGE has outed are inarguably wasteful and contrary to the best interests as defined by the people. That's democracy.
I'm not sure all that many people voted for this, specifically. People certainly voted for increased economic certainty and a stronger hand at the border, but if you're going to claim democracy you should focus more on citizen referendums rather than a presidential campaign, especially one where the other option was Kamala Harris.
The only people who are protesting at this point seem to be Democrats who are using vague anti slogans, rather than proposing any useful alternatives. It is not possible to argue that there hasn't been waste and inappropriate funding, even anti-American funding, and the Dems aren't engaging with these specifics. Once more it's
"But...Trump". Citizen referendums would be nice, but they are seldom initiated or even permitted by local governments. We have to work with what we have; and what we have are national elections. There were other options on the ballot beside Harris, and a write-in option in some elections. It's an interesting exercise to talk about the perfect setting for democracy, but it's not a practical solution to a bloated government with a disastrous foreign policy and a two party system that is corrupt to the core. Confronted with a cancer, a surgeon doesn't discuss it endlessly with a patient, she cuts deep and wide. That's what is happening now. Even so, it may be too late. Our education system has been corrupted with anti-America hatred and race relations have taken a giant step backward, thanks to the race-baiting Democrats who used it as an election strategy, just as they did the open borders travesty. Throw in the trans/female safe spaces/minor health protections and you have the perfect storm; a nation finally says, "Enough is enough".
I don't recall any citizen referendums on research involving transitioning rats, or funding drag shows in Muslim nations, in an effort to foment unrest.
Nobody said a word while all this stupid spending was going on, but now that it's being cut (because it was exposed), all of a sudden, we're supposed to debate every single item.
My question to your solution of voting up or down on stupid programs is to ask who voted for these programs in the first place? If the programs were instituted without citizen input why does it take citizen input to shut them down?
You are absolutely right that "there are too few people deciding what is valuable and what isn't," but that's how our government has functioned for a long time.
But "stupid" is subjective. "Waste" isn't. Calling something wasteful just because you don't like its values is not the same thing as calling something wasteful because a government agency paid $500 for a stapler or the Pentagon failed its financial audit for the umpteenth year in a row.
To date, I have seen far more from DOGE on the "these values that we don't like are wasteful" side of things than the "this ledger shows that people are overpaying for this outcome." I am suspicious of anything that isn't directly tied to an estimation of financial value.
Programs that funded anything that supported ideas or events that were contrary to what the people wanted are not only wasteful but destructive of our way of life. It isn't all about money. It's about spending tax dollars in a way that reflects the values expressed at the voting booth. that's democracy
I can't find the clip now, but earlier this year, someone asked Musk why he didn't think the government subsidy for SpaceX was a problem, but that he did think the governnment subsidy of [insert whatever it was USAID, Sesame Street, Forest Service] and he said, without hesitation, "because going to Mars is good for humankind."
This blew my mind. It is an answer that rests on his assumption that his opinion of what will save the world is the correct one. This is one thing for a discussion in a bar between equals. It is another thing when it is the opinion of the richest man in the world who bought a social media platform and claimed he made it free, but it platforms his opinions over everyone else. And it is another thing when it is the opinion of the richest man in the world who spent a fortune to get Trump elected and then is appointed to an extremely powerful position with authority to affect millions of people's jobs and literally everyone's data. There is no scenario where one person should have that much unchecked power. I don't care if this person if the smartest person of all time. (Which Musk is not.) It's still madness.
Yet, through DOGE, he wields enormous power over what is considered "waste" and what is not. And worse, I didn't get a chance to vote for him or not vote for him. If he had run for office on a platform to save civilization by going to Mars, and got elected, I would have a different take. I would have to respect the will of the majority. But that is not what happened. And for that reason, on its merits the remit of DOGE is inherently flawed. I would think this even if they were cutting the Pentagon, which is what I wish they would cut. I still don't want an unelected leader wielding that level of power.
What is this weird deification of DOGE? It's so patently cultlike.
We can either have corporate interests and wealthy NGO's and elite universitites deciding what our values should be via their campaign contributions, or we have a more transparent effort to out programs that have not only squandered public funds but done so in ways that threatened our safety and coherence as a nation. citing Musk's wealth is a red herring.
I love the idea of going to Mars, but I think it should be funded privately.
There is a lot of cult-like worship of Elon, and I don't like that, either.
DOGE, on the other hand, is decades overdue.
I am thrilled with their disclosures, and with the media hype surrounding all the idiotic expenditures they are spotlighting.
For decades, US taxpayers have been paying for all kinds of nonsense. Some of it is mentioned once a year by Senator Rand Paul, and it used to be brought up by Senator Proxmire, if I'm not mistaken, but it's never received such prolonged, wide-ranging coverage.
Let the Congress Critters, activists, and agency heads defend the indefensible all they want. The people have spoken, and we want this crap to end.
Agreed. But I also get Courtney's point (or what I think is her point) that in addition to everything they're outing/cutting, they ALSO need to go after the DOD (which, IIRC, Trump campaigned on decreasing). Instead, we're seeing them INCREASE the DOD budget to keep those MIC gears well greased. That's NOT what I voted for when I filled in that bubble next to Trump's name. It just sucks because it confirms that no matter which side of the duopoly is in power, the MIC always wins.
They DEFINITELY need to go after the DOD — and I thought they were planning to, a few weeks back. Then, all of a sudden, Trump’s babbling about a trillion dollar defense budget.
I think part of the issue I have with DOGE, beyond the apparent incompetence, is that it's applying a Private Equity methodology to government. PE is about building a company's facade up to sell it for an exit. It isn't about actually providing services or a sustainable system.
Sure, it's satisfying seeing the few examples of actual corruption they have found be removed, but frankly those are few and far between. Most is waste, not fraud, and they can't actually do anything about waste. So instead, to justify their existence, they are adding more administrative tasks on top and doing mass layoffs to boost the. . . oh wait, there is no stock to boost here, they're just behaving as if there is. There is nothing to hollow out and extract value from, so ultimately the value proposition of PE does not apply.
My bet is that this will ultimately just be a shift from "in-house" teams to external teams doing the same thing but with less oversight, and then over time people will get upset about how much money is being spent externally and a new team will come in to bring it all in-house again.
This kind of comment “ most is waste not fraud” “ few examples of corruption “ “ apparent incompetence “( lol) really smells like the sour grapes of someone who either got caught or someone close to them did. I heard almost the same complaints from someone who is a at a very big US project management /consulting group with contracts worth billions. People here should be honest and declare personal interests
You heard someone at a very big US project management/consulting group with contracts worth billions complain that consultant and private equity people have too much power in the new administration?
This explains a lot of social media posts. They enlisted armies of real and imaginary people as influencers. Absolutely insidious. Once again I say there is no bottom to these people.
Who does it serve, what is the effect and what is the payoff?
The purpose of an obfuscating, distorted and manipulated national conversation vs. the solutions oriented truth/fact based reality the citizens of the American Republic deserve creates "who knows what the truth is" chaos. It is a willfully manufactured psyche numbing LIE/PSYOP that keeps the general public twisting in an ungrounded emotional reality while central banking private equity pirates, and the political marionettes who serve them loot lives, labor and property. It's not something else. It has been operating on a worldwide scale for six decades. Everyone here knows it. Everyone here sees it, and despite the fact, as testament to its power, it continues without a blink.
Living inside a LIE is crazy making. Paranoid much? Paranoia and distrust is the point. The formerly free citizens of Europe are under arrest and the Canadian people are snitch land surveilled. The disease? Ideological utopianism in service to megalomaniacal narcissism. To clarify: Faux "Woke" DEI/political operatives serving the "loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires" who gather at Davos each year. They are an illness, the world is infected and the electronic sewer called the internet is the airborne virus. It is, as this RACKET report illustrates once again, a money making industry that doesn't quit.
Trump won because the DNC/WEF/EU/CCP Davos LIE was so dire the American heart could no longer ignore it. To repeat: SUBSCRIPTION JOURNALISM is possibly the last chance WE the People possess to create the healthy human national conversation that will build the truth/fact based reality and the future the citizens of our Republic deserve. There is the Republic, the Constitution and the free citizen. Depart the psyop and live.
The 'electronic sewer' is actual like a penny. It has two sides and without if we would be back in the world of nothing but alphabet TV/Cable, newsprint and mags churning out the mis/dis information we have lived under since the founding.
It is our portal to reality and so far it has come down in favor of truth - Trump won, again.
The DS still lives on, freely engaging in debauchery for anyone with a working brain to see - because of the ‘sewer’ that Substack exist in.
I agree with you in principle. But having a "working brain" and the vision to "see" clearly when there is a for profit industrial lab working at scale to pathologize healthy thinking and purposefully infect the American psyche with all manner of emotional distortion, misapprehension, distrust and hatred is more than a coin toss. It is a tyranny.
(Starmer's England? Canada's BillC-63? Arrest for "mask violations" in Australia? "Lawfare" and the imprisonment of populist political candidates across Europe? Suicide netted
workers dormitories in China? The rigged game central banking DNC/WEF/EU/CCP Davos crowd?)
Why is it necessary to wear a hazmat suit in order to engage in the healthy human national conversation the citizens of our Republic deserve? SUBSCRIPTION JOURNALISM (the journalists I choose to support straight to my mail box) allows me a minimal entanglement with the psyop actively poisoning the American future. There are worthwhile voices everywhere. Can anyone spend 24/7 staring into the electronic void and remain sane? AI/the internet are tools not weapons. So WHY have they been weaponized? WHY THE NECESSITY TO LIE?
This is a new age and our founding fathers (and
mothers) gave it birth. They clearly elevated human moral reason and human freedom above, and clearly despised, the avaricious bi-
polar machinations of grifting
monarchs and their sycophant toadies. The American Republic, and its Constitution and its battered but free citizens are at present the only engines of survival.
(Here I am ranting again. Have a great Easter Sunday.)
They can argue for days on a single topic, without ever once referencing a single link provided to them. They just keep mindlessly repeating the official line on any given topic.
My favorites are the ones that respond to me like 4 days after I've left a thread with some gotcha nonsense, and then when you go back and engage them, they fade away again.
And it’s generally on some issue involving Covid, J6, or endless wars, in my experience. Although lately, I’ve had a lot of engagement like this on the Israel issue. And I do not now, nor have I ever been a Jew-hater. Nor have I expressed support for Hamas.
On some platforms like You Tube, it is down to an art. Not just sniping comments, but a lengthy comment and about a dozen 'people' from supposedly separate accounts chiming in with, shall we say, very convenient and way-too-on-message replies. It looks like some kind of programming.
The saddest part is that you are right about the programming, but wrong about them being paid. People have been programmed to follow along. We've made it like a sugar high to get likes and replies that agree with us.
The Pink Floyd album, Animals, sums it up pretty well. In the end the sheep go mad, do stuff and after a mad spree of anarchic vengeance, go back to worship the next authority.
I apologize, so many terms are synonymous. I do think there are programmed people, but what I am referring to is phenomena where literal computer programming/AI is showing up in comments.
I don't know if our trolls here are paid or do it in their spare time, but the people setting up these elaborate call and response insertions definitely are getting something out of it.
Yes. I’m starting to believe X is largely paid political actors, and their posts are designed to drive a Narrative imposed from above. This is unfortunate because it could be a really great resource for learning and connecting.
"However, I would say that the descriptions of programs on federal documents under Biden was a notable difference—as some appeared to more specifically align with the ideological priorities of the Democrats: using terms like “racial equity,” “Latinx,” or other left-leaning terminology championed by the Biden administration." Not only "align with the ideological priorities of Democrats" but these programs funneled billions of taxpayer dollars to the allies and foot soldiers of the left. This Niagara of grift has propelled the growth of cancerous NGOs and university adjuncts of the DNC into an active - and very wealthy - Fifth Column, bent on destroying American life, culture and civic structure.
It's the deliberate attempt to wipe out all the culture that has brought us to the greatest civilization in history that worries me. There can be no argument that the work and ideas of our nation have led the world in human progress like no other society previously. And these ideas were the legacy of the ideas we received from cultures that preceded ours. When the so-called progressives burn all that has gone before, what will they build their ideas on? So far, it looks like all they have is ideology.
"A large number of these projects cynically employed the ‘misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation’ framework to counter their political adversaries, with U.S. government funding making it possible,” liber-net’s director, Andrew Lowenthal, told the Free Press."
That was a bonus.
The main benefit was the funding of their ideological allies. Often employing Democrats, in NGOs and the like. If there was no money in these things, they'd be far less interested.
None of it is even possible without the utter ignorance and lack of critical thought in our society that allows this to happen. I've always found it curious that Sun Tzu is just about standard reading in the military and in government circles, but is about hidden from plain site of the masses.
How would it be exposed to the public? Maybe through a game video. The attention span of our children is zip. And of course there’s that pesky 1-31 will have autism.
Video games pushing messages don't work. Nearly all of them fail. When people play games they don't like being preached at.
There has to be a curbing of the smartphone and short form content for minors. That is what is borking long-term concentration. But parents need to be the ones to realize this.
I agree totally. Google and YouTube labels anything it disagrees with as misinformation or hate speech. Gender clinics direct their staff to treat all questions and any disagreement as misinformation. It's the opposite of protecting free speech. That's right. Take the money away.
Whatever i may ultimately think about Elon Musk, I will be forever grateful to him and Matt for the Twitter files! It was the beginning of the Great Unravelling!
The restoration has been imperfect, there are still a few, exiled in the early days of the gender war who are not allowed back yet, but the change has improved the climate greatly.
I think the twitter files were an objectively very good thing--even if musk popped before the zipper even came down.
I think a very strong argument can be made that Musk bought twitter to prevent Trump from becoming president. His fear was that if people who self identified as republicans, but not necessarily Trump supporters, were banned from mainstream internet communication platforms simply for the word they self identified under--that those people would become Trump supporters simply to survive.
Musk's attempt to promote the candidacy of Ron "Gitmo Torture" DeSantis was somehow even more awkward than the candidate himself.
The twitter free speech Musk felt necessary to pull in self-identified republicans was also what Trump used to body Musk into taking a deal. Very interesting to watch.
You're doing great work exposing the Biden propaganda apparatus, but maybe you're being too forgiving in your language?
Writing that
> the Biden administration was very active in targeting misinformation and disinformation,
cedes to the censors the hero's cape: if they were "targeting misinformation and disinformation," that sounds like they were doing a good thing with good intentions.
Yes, you follow with "even as it engaged in those practices", but that's still too gentle.
"Misinformation and disinformation" are just pejorative labels for "information that isn't slanted to support my arguments" and "information that casts doubt on my arguments".
When you frame the government as "fighting mis/disinformation" you're letting them off the hook. This was censorship and propaganda designed to suppress Americans' First Amendment protected dissent, to further the Administration's political ends. Let's call it that.
BTW - let's stop pretending that the laughably named "Free Press" is free. Bari Weiss runs a vicious censorship program for comments, administered by swarms of leftist moderators who censor comments and ban commenters arbitrarily and without notice. Worse, Bari is a hypocrite who refuses to acknowledge or end this practice while posing as a "free speech" champion.
She can't help it. As I said over on JIP (I think it was there :) )... She's surrounded herself with like minded ivy league types all schooled in the same rot. It was inevitable that they would eventually shift to the same BS narrative the mainstream press is all about every day. They do have a handful excellent folks on their staff who do produce excellent work now and then. But all in all, the recent editor hires, etc., they have become the NYT lite as I see it, and I will be canceling my subscription before it renews again. Why do they ignore the biggest story of the last four years? Who was running the F'ing country?
No kidding. As if the dullest detective on the planet could not have put together the emergence of the pandemic in Wuhan - and the existence of the Virology lab in that same city. What fools do they take us for?
My theory is that the people currently running all these official propaganda efforts out of The Blob are just not as bright as their predecessors were. They're nowhere near as well-read, they have no intellectual curiosity, and they are hard-line wokesters.
It's easy for many of us to see through their idiotic cover stories when they first appear.
Don't have to wait 5 years for the answer to that. Lindy Li is spilling the Tea. Check out one of her vids. She was there and names names. Spoiler: It was not Biden.
Sorry, I didn't write down the names. Suffice to say they weren't people I elected, LOL. Hunter, of course, was one of them, but I think this was the interview I saw: Biden Insider: This Is Who Pulled Biden’s Strings Behind the Scenes-
Indeed. I believe I was banned for disparaging Biden as "the Senile Imbecile." Which was abundantly clear to anyone with sight and a brain. Yet the FP, like the rest of the commentariate of the elites remained supinely silent.
I. Can tell you were either a free press subscriber or a former subscriber. I was a subscriber but stopped due to the same concerns you stated. The only one I miss is Douglas Murray.
Not only a subscriber but original supporter of Common Sense. They even quoted me and used me in their promotional pieces. But they soon enough returned to their leftist roots, including indulging the left's penchant for repressive censorship.
He really embarrassed himself on Joe Rogan with his low grasp of the basic facts he was arguing, while simultaneously making the case for expertise as a counterweight.
Couldn't even get Cooper's name right, created strawmen to bash him, and then contradicted the historical record himself by claiming that Hitler never moderated his expressions of anti-Semitism depending on the crowd in the 30's.
I gained a lot of respect for Douglas Murray when he was criticizing mainstream media and defending free speech during the last administration (especially when he teamed up with Taibbi for the Munk Debate against Gladwell & Goldberg). However, after watching that (excruciatingly painful) exchange with Dave Smith on Rogan, I have lost ALL respect for Murray. The number of strawmen and red herrings he kept throwing out to evade, deflect, and outright dismiss Smith's FACTS was astounding! Murray's (willful?) ignorance on history and geopolitical affairs is blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention. Or maybe he's not ignorant but simply lying. Either way, he's absolutely WRONG about MOST of it. Would LOVE to see him debate Scott Horton next time!
It is really strange. In his recent Post article, he trotted out a strawman and still got the names wrong, attributing his distorted version of what Cooper had said to Carroll.
He played so loose with the facts that I thought maybe he was trying to make his point about factual hygiene by example.
This is one thing in a podcast conversation, where mistakes can happen, but to do so in print without correcting himself seems a bit libelous from my layman's perspective.
There are definitely principled attacks that can be made against Carroll and Cooper, but these were strange misfires.
I agree that, on the Gaza conflict itself, Murray v. Horton is a good matchup.
Douglas Murray no longer writes the lovely Sunday Things Worth Remembering column, if that’s any consolation. It is a carousel of different writers, some almost as good as he was so routinely.
Amazing! This is simply excellent, Greg. Congratulations to you and the folks working to document public and private efforts to censor discourse. Many thanks!
Because Bari is incurious, intellectually lazy, and kind of nuts. Bari was a perfect fit at the NYT until very recently and representative of exactly why I cancelled my NYT subscription.
Initially I found FP and its founder interesting, but you're exactly right: there was a reason she got hired at the NYT. And that's because she's a neo-liberal/neo-consevative.
And that hasn't changed. Her disagreements with The Left are mostly over who holds the whip hand, with the possible the exception of policy around Israel (or is that also about who holds the whip hand?).
She's part of the bi-coastal private school to Ivy League PMC elite, and her ideology boils down to maintaining that elite and her place in it. Which means strictly maintaining the overall *status quo*, while perturbing it gently to increase her personal status within it.
Which FP does quite well: now she's the boss of her own plantation, not a labourer in the Grey Lady's fields. But what's being grown in those fields remains essentially the same.
That was in an interview with Joe Rogan. My mouth dropped when I saw that moment. Not only that neither one of them knew exactly what a "toady" is, but they didn't know how to spell it either. A journalist!
Given today’s technology, and since it’s our money, why isn’t more Federal spending posted in detail online so we who fund this nonsense can examine how our elected officials are spending our money? Who could be opposed to more transparency?
If The Great Unwashed saw where their money went, they'd be too ignorant, state-schooled, and flyover to understand its subtle beauty.
So transparency would become "misinformation" that undermines the Very Important Work the 3 letter agencies and their pet NGO cognoscenti are doing with the basket of deplorable racist misogynistic low-information voters' money.
How easy it is to throw around other people's money. Reduce taxes, and not just the income tax, and take care of roads, defense, law enforcement and schools. All others can fundraise. Turn off the spigot.
We have homeless camps all over the place, mentally ill wandering the streets, people keeling over from drug overdoses, and our government is throwing money around like confetti.
How can this be? I was told to believe all women. When Psaki and KJP averred so often that the biden regime was the most transparent in history I believed them . Just as I believe all that I read in NYT and WAPO or hear on MSNBC. Oh and also the View!
This has been why they have been screaming over DOGE. Their “little” deep state network has been uncovered with the monies tied to it. Trump understood he was being undermined at every turn his first time in the White House which is why he spent 4 years examining the swamp in DC meeting with players. The essentially murdered Michael Flynn early in Trump’s first term which derailed his presidency. Flynn knew where all the bodies were buried and without him it was impossible to succeed. This second term has been much more successful so far but I feel if he slows down he will be derailed again. I see the blob in congress doing all they can to kill this recent bill and the reps have done nothing to help to this point. Johnson is a bag of shit too.
Which makes me wonder about the slow roll on Epstein. I bet there are a lot of politicians in that heap of mess from all walks of life. Again, I say, burn it down. I don’t care what side you’re on.
I agree wholeheartedly. If you’re a scumbag you deserve the justice coming to you. Honestly, when I vote I pull the lever for the person who I hope will screw me less. It’s a sad state of affairs. If anything comes of all of this I hope these shitheads start working for us again but I’m not hopeful.
A couple of years ago I first heard about “media literacy “ programs and lessons that could be taught in secondary schools. I wonder how much of that traces back to one of thee grants
Had to switch to “media literacy” after the country gave up on real literacy. Someone in these comments a while back used the word “aliterate”, meaning a person who can read, but doesn’t. Describes a lot of people.
The thing that some of us have known for a decade now is that "MIS"information like facts in Politics for a much longer time is highly subjective to your belief system. Anybody with any sense of rationality or a sliver of intelligence to as we once used to say, "read between the Lines," can see the crazy before getting past the first paragraph or opening statement of those that spew it.
Our media has been a misinformation hub for the government for 60+ years. Laws enacted under Clinton, Bush, and then really hard under Obama shifted Media laws to push our media from, "just the facts," to meh... "my feels tell me this is how you should think too." This is the one bipartisan thing our country truly believes in.
60+ years for sure. W. T. Sherman wrote in the Preface to his Personal Memoirs that even three honest witnesses to a simple barroom fight will not agree on what happened (his point was that reporting on a Civil War battle is going to be selective, misguided, outright deceptive, etc.) More and more people are learning to "read between the lines," be it because of COVID lies, Hunter's laptop lies, "peaceful protest" lies, XX or XY chromosomes being a fact of life, or what have you.
The Trump Admin engaged in a sleazy bit of propaganda earlier this week, when Leavitt started a press conference by speaking about Garcia (the illegal alien deported to El Salvador), then handed the podium over to the mother of a woman who had been raped and murdered by OTHER gang members. It was total emotional manipulation, meant to conflate the two in the minds of viewers.
Yes, and it's terrible. But that has nothing to do with a different man who is accused, not convicted, not tried, of being a gang member. Putting her up there is like saying "other men who kind of maybe look like this man did a terrible thing, therefore this man does not deserve due process."
The emotional manipulation is wrong and impedes due process.
For what it's worth, I'm leaning toward the fact that Garcia was, in fact, a member of MS 13, based on all the research I've done. But this was a sleazy tactic.
The irony of doling out cash to think tanks which their sole objective was to create misinformation to counter what they thought of as misinformation should not be lost.
This wonderful piece may well be THE poster child exposing modern political corruption in this country. Seems to me, DOGE is doing God's work. Public attempts to disrupt it's efficacy by the Dems seems like suicide to me.
The problem is... the rot is very very deep. Like the fact that Lab Leak was the absolute most plausible answer since basically day 1, but depending on your political stance it was conspiracy theory, or logic.
I think the greatest accomplishment of Donald Trump (and I very much dislike him as I am not quiet about), is lessening the timeline of Conspiracy theory to Conspiracy fact. In my lifetime that's gone from the 60 years of redacted documents held by our government, to about 60 days....
But... Like all news stories or anything in our life now, the facts only matter based on who delivers them.
The best line in the essay was "Trump did not know how Washington worked". Proof the deep state exists and will thwart the policy of any administration, even one openly hostile to it. The size and scope of government must be reduced significantly.
I said it back in 2016. Trump was out of his league. He was used to the corruption of business, and municipalities. D.C. is the big leagues of fraud and criminality.
Because they get to write the rules.
Raze it down to its foundation and rebuild anew. Since that will never happen, we are stuck with it. Only upside is more people will understand the severity of it, down side is too many people either get their stipends of bread and butter or their meaningful graft from it.
There’s a reason the DNC convention opened with AFSCME.
Kleptocracies thrive in darkness
"...the deep state exists and will thwart the policy of any administration,even one openly hostile to it."
ESPECIALLY one openly hostile to it!
Getting rid of Trump alone would reduce the size and scope of government by half.
Another TDS sufferer self identifies.
"We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;
"Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Donald, that the life also of Donald might be made manifest in our network of federal prisons."
Intellectual laziness is the real "pandemic."
I think it goes beyond laziness to a nearly impenetrable mental blockage. It is willful, determined ignorance. Turd is exactly right that the facts only matter based on the source. Except it's changing now--too much is being exposed on too many fronts.
Yep. I used to refer to it as "defiant ignorance."
It does take a lot of research, and the ability to separate the biases in the sources being referenced, from the facts.
I think we're all learning to look askance at "unnamed sources" and to know where to go for the facts.
It has to be a sad and lonely place in their minds. That's probably why they're attacking people and burning stuff down
Yeah, 35-40% are unreachable for the foreseeable future. Trump and his successors just need the majority of the middle. Understandable things like DOGE and NGO abuse will sway a lot of these people.
Word on the street is that Trump is hemorrhaging support he once had from millions of "independent" voters. A demographic cohort, I might add, traditionally comprised of voters who think they know the score but in reality they don't even understand the game.
"Word on the street is that Trump is hemorrhaging support..."
That's funny, right there.
Just because it's something you wish for, doesn't mean it's the "word on the street"...
I'm not sure he's "hemorrhaging support" as even CNN reported last week with their data guy, Harry Enten, shocking the anchors by pointing out that 98% of Trump voters would still vote the same... meaning only 2% would change/regret their vote.
This Independent has only ever voted 3rd party, and was all set to vote for RFKJr. After he dropped out and joined Trump's campaign, I held my nose and voted Trump just so Bobby could get into HHS. The first couple weeks of Trump's bull-in-a-china-shop actions were great, but after a mere 3 months, I now have severe voter's remorse, which I've never experienced before. Just confirms what I already knew (but ignored on 11/5/24) - D or R, doesn't matter; it's the same Uniparty.
Too much of what? And where, precisely, are these "fronts?" And who are fronting these fronts?
The actual people busy "fronting" them that might cause one, anyone, to believe that they are, indeed, "fronts?"
Dogma is the virus IMHO.
I think you just extended the metaphor perfectly
you do know that you are infected by the virus of a different, but just as problematic, dogma right?
Based on the context and tenor of your comment, I assume you feel you are immune ? Stunning.
We should do our best, I think, to understand the mass brain rewiring that has been going on since the advent of television (see Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death") and greatly accelerated with the introduction of the internet (see Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains"). Researchers have regularly pointed out that watching stuff on screens stimulates the emotional sectors of the brain, and the more we spend doing this, the less we spend reading and thus stimulating the reasoning sectors. No wonder so many of us now base our opinions and decisions on "feelz" rather than thoughts.
So it may be that the "intellectual laziness" is not a mere matter of rational choice; the real pandemic is addiction to screen watching.
If so, let's hope Taibbi has enough Ivermectin on hand for his subscriber base.
The first thing we do, let's quarantine all the Racket News Commentators...
The magic knowledge you display--only 100 days into this new Administration-- is stunning.
The questions about free speech got opened up with the Twitter files and the revelations of Biden's government overreach that led to the report in this post. To continue asking the same questions of the Trump admin seems like an obvious choice, and the mechanisms for asking them are available. It's why I have been bummed to see Taibbi whiff the free speech question in his post about Harvard.
Trump admin's anti-speech and anti-privacy actions have been so egregious that yes, I am able--anyone is--to see that there are very real issues even though it's just 100 days into their leadership.
The Harvard issue isn't simply a free speech issue; Harvard can say whatever they like, but on THEIR dime, not mine.
Hey Courtney---
News for you---Taibbi's a Russian asset, so save your disappointment for your next dining-out experience.
Interesting that more people can't figure out this simple, obvious fact or don't wish to find it out. And then there are those who know this to be a fact, but soft-pedal it or, you know...
What's interesting about MAGA, from a purely sociological perspective, is the fact that MAGA is a tightly-bound political cult where most of the members are wholly unaware that they're members of a cult.
I appreciate your honesty regarding your opinions on Trump.
I totally agree with your assessment, and I also think that one of Trump's major accomplishments was in exposing the extent of the Deep State --- which turned out to be much larger than I had ever suspected.
It's much larger still than we even know. I contend that we don't have the capacity as humans to truly realize. I believe the Deep State is far larger than just the United States. I actually think it is a global cabal, and in the arc of "same as it ever was" is essentially the same families/entities that have been running the show for 2,000 years or so.
The Roman empire never really died, it just went into Hibernation until it could figure out how to truly rule the world, and that concept began with organized religion that had all its basis in Eternal Life, and righteous vs infidel's. A commonality among most major religions today.
That's what Alex Jones & David Icke say -- and they make a lot of sense when they start going into it. All of our presidents have connections to the royal families of Europe, for instance. I have not confirmed this, but I think both of them make this claim. There is certainly some bizarre stuff going on, and, as you point out, it has been going on for a long, long time. The more I look into it, the more disturbing it gets.
Check out the Trilateral Commission: all the crowned heads of Europe and the corporate heads of US. They haven't gone away. And just get this: one of their rules is that no notes are taken at the meetings.
I believe also that it's mandatory for all Trilateral members to take off their shoes and socks for the duration of the commission's meetings.
What makes absolutely no sense is this tendency we in the West have to forget that the world doesn't revolve around us. It consists of many powerful nations who regard us (increasingly) as largely irrelevant. So obsessed are we by our own internecine warfare (now the U.S. and Europe are on the outs) and the consequences of failed attempt to dominate the world. we can't see beyond these relatively minor and parochial problems and evaluate them from a global perspective. Meanwhile, China and Russia and the other BRICS nations are relishing the spectacle of the West turning its back on working people and paying for its own implosion (now we have a $1 trillion defense budget!), as their leaders focus on long-term stability and sustainability. They are raising all their less privileged citizens up and out of poverty, in part through wealth distribution, for example. Meanwhile, all we have left is U.S. military might in the form of useless F-35s, aircraft carriers (obsolete in the new age drones) and an inept and inexperienced army. When our domestic squabbles turn into civil war, our soldiers will side with their people, not the billionaires. De-dollarization will ruin our so-called economy long before Trump has a chance to force the rich to build their factories here. So here's what "they" have (and we don't): more and more fertile farmland (think Siberia), more and better educated people (think India and China), robust manufacturing and plenty of consumers (see "more people), universal healthcare and public education, fewer billionaires, modest defense budgets, universal recognition that the climate is in crisis and healthy planet is essential for all living things and that humans depend on other species, and vast quantities of both rare earths and he meant to process them, a. ruling elite that is not plotting to use climate and scarcity to depopulate the planet and leave them in peace (in their bunkers and bubbles) to focus on extending their lives and cleaning up the environmental mess they intentionally made.
corrections to typos, above. . ..
". . . vast quantities of rare earths and the means to process them, and a ruling elite that is now plotting to use climate breakdown and growing scarcity to depopulate the planet and leave them in peace (in their bunkers and bubbles) to focus on extending their lives and cleaning up the environmental messes they intentionally made.
I recall Bannon going off on family offices. He was calling for transparency into these safe deposit boxes in Swiss banks.
This is another problem. The people that bring some of this stuff are about as crazy as the Grocery Store tabloids that talked about my Alien Baby and stuff back in the day. Does Bannon or Drudge, or any of those people really have truths, or are they just deranged nutbags... like me.... LOL
The latter. Now go look for a job.
In rides our hero Steve Bannon, to singlehandedly bring down the irritatingly opaque global Swiss banking system by finding out just what in the hell people put in all those goddamn mysterious lock boxes in Zurich---the No. 1 priority of America's working class!
That is, as soon as our hero finishes lunch at the Kasbah Grill at 251 W 85th St, Ste 3321) and loading his clean shirts into a rented U-Haul van at Landmark Cleaners, the laundromat right around the corner from Kasbah at 2345 Broadway.
Steve Bannon is as big a moron as Rachel Maddow. Both idiots living in a dreamworld that has no basis in what the rest of us struggle through each day.
No dude, the problem is they're shit at it. If I think violent crime is a problem, and we hire a bunch of cops who just shoot at crowds because some of them might be gangsters, that's not a 'the rot is very deep' situation. It is people not actually addressing the problem in an effective way.
You mean like say... Department of Education, or Department of Truth, or Department of Health and Human Services. Yes... I agree with you, but the topic at hand here was speaking of how information, specifically mis and dis information is a made up construct, and actually PAID for by our own tax dollars.
Yeah, exactly like those things. If you have a problem with crime in a town, the solution is not to nuke the town. if you have a problem with the management of the department of health and human services, the solution is not to simply halt everything they do. It's moronic, and the only reason anyone even pretends to support it is the baseline tribalism that we've had since at least 9/11
The Solution to crime in a town is not to coddle criminals either, or basically make it so... Oh, these people have it hard, so if they steal $500 worth of food it's because they are hungry, or if they murder someone it's not the fault of the murderer, it's the fault of the school that didn't cancel the event because it was raining....
Or... the fact that when I was a kid we had things like Mental Institutions, and kids that were special needs (Back then it was Mentally retarded), they went to a school that specialized in their care, and it wasn't mixed in with everyone else forcing them to come down levels to meet them, rather than the other way around.
We've been backwards for decades now, and it's only going faster and faster in reverse. Just because I roll up my windows and lock my doors when I drive through Kensington Philadelphia, or Camden NJ, or parts of Baltimore, doesn't mean I am a racist. It means I am aware of my surroundings. I do the same in Some Parts of South Philly which are Italian for the most part, or parts of Bristol PA and Croydon that are primarily Irish. It's idiotic that we keep blaming everything on the victims. It's the Victims fault that I murdered them... What level of moron is this world now?
When you read me saying 'wow, shooting into crowds is not effective police work,' what was it that made you say 'but it's the only alternative to coddling criminals'
Thanks for updating us on your highly personalized security protocols in place smartly designed for safer motoring in and around our nation's great urban centers. One can't be too safe these days.
I grew up in Indiana and whenever I go back to visit friends or family, I always have a couple of guys safely secured on the roof rack on my 2008 Monte Carlo and armed with fully-loaded AR-15's (plenty more magazines in the trunk!) and a generous supply of M-67 fragmentation hand grenades.
You really can't be too safe anymore.
Nayib Bukele showed how to combat rampant crime. I'm not sure his actions are reproducible in this country. But. Until the thugs are removed from civil society, they will continue to thug and civil society will continue flail at solutions.
An imperfect but insightful comment. Thank you.
"But... Like all news stories or anything in our life now, the facts only matter based on who delivers them."
No. That is ceding too much power to the the entities that do not have our interests in mind- never mind our best interests.
Bullshit is bullshit. We need to be as loud and obnoxious in calling it out as Trump/Musk/DOGE/Miller, et. al. if conditions are ever going to change. Eff the status quo...
DOGE cut and then they want to spend it all on a trillion dollar military budget.
So no savings.
Also, Trump admin is continuing the funding of many of these disinformation grants. Including the biggest at the DoD.
He isn’t destroying the deep state, he is reforming it to work for him and to be a leaner operation.
Being a former GSer that rose to the senior management level I can say with some personal experience that there were many programs spun up after he won that he had no clue about. And they were there to either undermine him or obfuscate what they were doing to work against his agenda.
They came out in the open after his defeat, never thinking that he'd ever win again.
Included were two of the deep state’s crucial misinformation juggernauts when it refused to issue the ‘real’ results of the 2020 census and let the OBiden admin pad blues states and rob red states of congressional districts for an entire decade. And, of course, the fairest and securest election of all time in 2020.
So cut the programs. Easy.
But don't send letters to universities demanding an audit of their curriculum. There is a huge difference in approach between these two options.
Define curriculum. If it includes promoting DEI and trans agenda discarded by the trump administration which funds them - then by all means send a letter telling them to stop or be federally defunded
You really want the government to manage the curriculum of a private university? The letter includes a request for an audit of all syllabi! Is that what you want your tax dollars to be spent on? The government overseeing what professors teach in their classrooms? Do you have any instinct to question the assumption that it's all "promoting DEI and trans"? Do you think in a university of 21,000 people that's all that is going on?
They are no longer strictly private institutions when they seek, and receive, billions of taxpayer dollars. For 50 years government has been dictating to private institutions about how they manage their affairs, once they (or even worse, their students by accepting student aid of any sort) begin taking tax money. Weaponization goes both ways. I'm for both projects coming to an immediate halt.
Why are you on this topic? Is it your fetish? What say you about Matt's subject of this SS?
No private university is entitled to public funds. No other charter school gets them. The only legitimate use of public funds is for state colleges controlled by state legislatures.
Literally the entire curriculum. All the courses offered.
Don't dither with curriculum review. Just stop funding any private university. They can do whatever they like as long as it's on their dime. State colleges can be overseen by state legislatures, in keeping with the original idea of education being a reserved power, along with insurance and banking.
lol. The simple minds on this site are not to be believed.
Can I ask - what is a GSer ??
General Schedule employee.
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-systems/general-schedule/
Got it -
Thanks so much- have a great day
Ummm, so we're seeing no improvement in transparency and access to government information and reduction in funding to NGOs and other poisonous entrenched political tentacles? Great, you can have 2021 again. Have at it!
There is a reduction and redirection of resources. Those NGO groups were one avenue of deep state power, Trump is simply redirecting funds to the DoD.
Again, he’s pushing for a trillion dollar “defense” budget. If you think that isn’t going to be waste, fraud, and abuse, then you are being played and are a sucker.
Trump did not eliminate waste with DOGE. He shifted the waste into the DoD.
His trillion dollar defense budget is bonkers, agreed.
Especially since, just a few weeks earlier, they'd all been talking about cutting the budget at the Pentagon.
Exactly. What of that 50% reduction in military spending Trump floated? I like a lot of stuff he's doing, and it's still very early, but I'd really like to see action on the Pentagon, Homeland Security, the CIA, and the FBI. When is Patel going to start redeploying all those thousands of FBI people from Washington to actually fight crime throughout the country? And I'd like to start seeing Bobby go after the pharma companies. It's a big to-do list, and I hope they get around to all of it.
That remains to be seen. Meanwhile, because of such foolish foreign policy for so long, we really are in a perilous world right now. With all his enemies watching him so closely, it's less likely that Trump & co will get away with what previous administrations did so easily.
Maybe. We shall see.
Yes, that's correct, we are seeing no improvement in transparency and access to government information (the opposite, actually) and we are seeing a reduction in funding to NGOs and a redirection to other entrenched political tentacles as well as private and unregulated actors.
Trump is about as transparent as is possible. His loud mouth may save us yet!
Hmmmm.....so you're implying the Media will cover for Trump the way it covered for Biden?
No, I am not implying that.
Yes. And to see this, we have to be able to see that "misinformation" can be abused by both sides - even the one we agree with. But that ability seems really hard to come by in this thread.
Time to stop thinking in terms of sides. There is only one side, the American taxpayer.
As I see it, there are sides. They're just the people vs the elite, as has been the case since the beginning of humanity.
It may be political suicide, but they must attempt to disrupt these efforts. These resource flows are the roots of their power.
I love that the Biden nonsense is being exposed. But right alongside it is this stupidly blind idea that DOGE is somehow the antidote.
DOGE is just doing the same thing Biden was doing but with different marketing and a different set of values. In both cases the government is policing what the rest of us are thinking and saying.
The idea that DOGE is value neutral is laughable. The agenda is abundantly clear and it's just as biased as the Biden agenda.
The only right approach is meaningful tax reform and a return to basic free speech principles in which no one is "correcting" the values of the other side. This is not what is happening. We are in a backlash, not a reset.
Elections have consequences; the electorate voted to have the Deep State broken up. You have to admit that we all have seen abuses beyond our wildest imaginations. Too soon to say whether the surgery worked. the truth is that too much of our money is being wasted while severe social problems continue to plague our nation. the idea of research into trans issues rather than actual programs to prevent homelessness and drug addiction is obscene, regardless of how you feel about trans.
DOGE is just exposing waste, fraud, & abuse.
Cuts are implemented by agency heads.
Yes, they have an agenda, and that agenda is to get rid of all the DEI & censorship crap, while revealing stupid programs.
Agree with you on free speech principles.
Simple as that.
You could describe burning down a house as just getting rid of the mice, sure.
Yeah, I think our Republic will survive the cessation of funding drag shows in Myanmar, and gay comics in Peru.
Jeez, I don't think this is the end of the Republic, agencies have only really been around for the last century at most, most of them for around 50 years. No, the Republic will survive. The water quality will drop, health care outcomes will decrease in quality, a bunch of people won't get their social security and may die or lose their homes, and several million people around the world will die of preventable disease, though.
Please explain how cutting funding for drag shows in Bangladesh will do any of the things you listed.
What has been cut that will affect water quality, or health care outcomes, and what does DOGE have to do with that? The agency heads are the ones making the cuts. If you have concerns, I suggest you take it up with them.
How is Social Security being affected by anything DOGE did, and how will DOGE actions cause "a bunch of people" to "die"?
Several million people around the world are NOT the responsibility of the US taxpayer. How come nobody ever asks why their OWN governments aren't taking care of them?
I also think that "revealing stupid programs" is essential, but my bias would be toward revealing them and putting them through a democratic process by which they could be up or down voted. There are too few people deciding what is valuable and what isn't. Congress is ridiculously impotent, which sucks, but they are still our Congress. They should be involved in some way. If we believe in our system of government, which I do, even though I think it's been corrupted, then any reset needs to align with the structure of our government.
Elections have consequences: the people spoke: they don't want the programs that have been outed. Wasteful to spend any time or money on counting the number of angels on the head of a pin. the programs DOGE has outed are inarguably wasteful and contrary to the best interests as defined by the people. That's democracy.
I'm not sure all that many people voted for this, specifically. People certainly voted for increased economic certainty and a stronger hand at the border, but if you're going to claim democracy you should focus more on citizen referendums rather than a presidential campaign, especially one where the other option was Kamala Harris.
The only people who are protesting at this point seem to be Democrats who are using vague anti slogans, rather than proposing any useful alternatives. It is not possible to argue that there hasn't been waste and inappropriate funding, even anti-American funding, and the Dems aren't engaging with these specifics. Once more it's
"But...Trump". Citizen referendums would be nice, but they are seldom initiated or even permitted by local governments. We have to work with what we have; and what we have are national elections. There were other options on the ballot beside Harris, and a write-in option in some elections. It's an interesting exercise to talk about the perfect setting for democracy, but it's not a practical solution to a bloated government with a disastrous foreign policy and a two party system that is corrupt to the core. Confronted with a cancer, a surgeon doesn't discuss it endlessly with a patient, she cuts deep and wide. That's what is happening now. Even so, it may be too late. Our education system has been corrupted with anti-America hatred and race relations have taken a giant step backward, thanks to the race-baiting Democrats who used it as an election strategy, just as they did the open borders travesty. Throw in the trans/female safe spaces/minor health protections and you have the perfect storm; a nation finally says, "Enough is enough".
I don't recall any citizen referendums on research involving transitioning rats, or funding drag shows in Muslim nations, in an effort to foment unrest.
Nobody said a word while all this stupid spending was going on, but now that it's being cut (because it was exposed), all of a sudden, we're supposed to debate every single item.
The logic escapes me.
My question to your solution of voting up or down on stupid programs is to ask who voted for these programs in the first place? If the programs were instituted without citizen input why does it take citizen input to shut them down?
You are absolutely right that "there are too few people deciding what is valuable and what isn't," but that's how our government has functioned for a long time.
Some programs are being ended by agency heads, and I don't know whether they should have been ended by Congress, or not.
If USAID was a State Department program, shouldn't it be ended by the head of that department?
If the Democrats have issues with that, I suspect they'll raise them.
But "stupid" is subjective. "Waste" isn't. Calling something wasteful just because you don't like its values is not the same thing as calling something wasteful because a government agency paid $500 for a stapler or the Pentagon failed its financial audit for the umpteenth year in a row.
To date, I have seen far more from DOGE on the "these values that we don't like are wasteful" side of things than the "this ledger shows that people are overpaying for this outcome." I am suspicious of anything that isn't directly tied to an estimation of financial value.
Programs that funded anything that supported ideas or events that were contrary to what the people wanted are not only wasteful but destructive of our way of life. It isn't all about money. It's about spending tax dollars in a way that reflects the values expressed at the voting booth. that's democracy
I can't find the clip now, but earlier this year, someone asked Musk why he didn't think the government subsidy for SpaceX was a problem, but that he did think the governnment subsidy of [insert whatever it was USAID, Sesame Street, Forest Service] and he said, without hesitation, "because going to Mars is good for humankind."
This blew my mind. It is an answer that rests on his assumption that his opinion of what will save the world is the correct one. This is one thing for a discussion in a bar between equals. It is another thing when it is the opinion of the richest man in the world who bought a social media platform and claimed he made it free, but it platforms his opinions over everyone else. And it is another thing when it is the opinion of the richest man in the world who spent a fortune to get Trump elected and then is appointed to an extremely powerful position with authority to affect millions of people's jobs and literally everyone's data. There is no scenario where one person should have that much unchecked power. I don't care if this person if the smartest person of all time. (Which Musk is not.) It's still madness.
Yet, through DOGE, he wields enormous power over what is considered "waste" and what is not. And worse, I didn't get a chance to vote for him or not vote for him. If he had run for office on a platform to save civilization by going to Mars, and got elected, I would have a different take. I would have to respect the will of the majority. But that is not what happened. And for that reason, on its merits the remit of DOGE is inherently flawed. I would think this even if they were cutting the Pentagon, which is what I wish they would cut. I still don't want an unelected leader wielding that level of power.
What is this weird deification of DOGE? It's so patently cultlike.
We can either have corporate interests and wealthy NGO's and elite universitites deciding what our values should be via their campaign contributions, or we have a more transparent effort to out programs that have not only squandered public funds but done so in ways that threatened our safety and coherence as a nation. citing Musk's wealth is a red herring.
I love the idea of going to Mars, but I think it should be funded privately.
There is a lot of cult-like worship of Elon, and I don't like that, either.
DOGE, on the other hand, is decades overdue.
I am thrilled with their disclosures, and with the media hype surrounding all the idiotic expenditures they are spotlighting.
For decades, US taxpayers have been paying for all kinds of nonsense. Some of it is mentioned once a year by Senator Rand Paul, and it used to be brought up by Senator Proxmire, if I'm not mistaken, but it's never received such prolonged, wide-ranging coverage.
Let the Congress Critters, activists, and agency heads defend the indefensible all they want. The people have spoken, and we want this crap to end.
Agreed. But I also get Courtney's point (or what I think is her point) that in addition to everything they're outing/cutting, they ALSO need to go after the DOD (which, IIRC, Trump campaigned on decreasing). Instead, we're seeing them INCREASE the DOD budget to keep those MIC gears well greased. That's NOT what I voted for when I filled in that bubble next to Trump's name. It just sucks because it confirms that no matter which side of the duopoly is in power, the MIC always wins.
Agreed.
They DEFINITELY need to go after the DOD — and I thought they were planning to, a few weeks back. Then, all of a sudden, Trump’s babbling about a trillion dollar defense budget.
NOT what I voted for!
"...Seems to me, DOGE is doing God's work."
Only if God is Lucky Luciano himself.
Yes, where will all those poverty-stricken drag queens in Bangladesh go to for funding their next drag show?
Where will the gay comics writer in Peru go for funding?
Who else will fund the shrimps on treadmills, or the transitioning of rats?
Wah! Wah! Wah!
I didn't vote to give Stacey Abrams $2 billion to hand out microwaves in the hood.
I think part of the issue I have with DOGE, beyond the apparent incompetence, is that it's applying a Private Equity methodology to government. PE is about building a company's facade up to sell it for an exit. It isn't about actually providing services or a sustainable system.
Sure, it's satisfying seeing the few examples of actual corruption they have found be removed, but frankly those are few and far between. Most is waste, not fraud, and they can't actually do anything about waste. So instead, to justify their existence, they are adding more administrative tasks on top and doing mass layoffs to boost the. . . oh wait, there is no stock to boost here, they're just behaving as if there is. There is nothing to hollow out and extract value from, so ultimately the value proposition of PE does not apply.
My bet is that this will ultimately just be a shift from "in-house" teams to external teams doing the same thing but with less oversight, and then over time people will get upset about how much money is being spent externally and a new team will come in to bring it all in-house again.
This kind of comment “ most is waste not fraud” “ few examples of corruption “ “ apparent incompetence “( lol) really smells like the sour grapes of someone who either got caught or someone close to them did. I heard almost the same complaints from someone who is a at a very big US project management /consulting group with contracts worth billions. People here should be honest and declare personal interests
You heard someone at a very big US project management/consulting group with contracts worth billions complain that consultant and private equity people have too much power in the new administration?
It's wild that you say "doing God's work." You are equating a government agency with a deity.
Courtney, using well-known phrases is an effective way to communicate. You are welcome to read into it what you will!
So? Why can't someone choose to attribute good work to a spiritual value that means something to him?
Oh dear.
Are you offended?
It's just an expression, Courtney. Lighten up.
This explains a lot of social media posts. They enlisted armies of real and imaginary people as influencers. Absolutely insidious. Once again I say there is no bottom to these people.
It was state media plain and simple
Who does it serve, what is the effect and what is the payoff?
The purpose of an obfuscating, distorted and manipulated national conversation vs. the solutions oriented truth/fact based reality the citizens of the American Republic deserve creates "who knows what the truth is" chaos. It is a willfully manufactured psyche numbing LIE/PSYOP that keeps the general public twisting in an ungrounded emotional reality while central banking private equity pirates, and the political marionettes who serve them loot lives, labor and property. It's not something else. It has been operating on a worldwide scale for six decades. Everyone here knows it. Everyone here sees it, and despite the fact, as testament to its power, it continues without a blink.
Living inside a LIE is crazy making. Paranoid much? Paranoia and distrust is the point. The formerly free citizens of Europe are under arrest and the Canadian people are snitch land surveilled. The disease? Ideological utopianism in service to megalomaniacal narcissism. To clarify: Faux "Woke" DEI/political operatives serving the "loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires" who gather at Davos each year. They are an illness, the world is infected and the electronic sewer called the internet is the airborne virus. It is, as this RACKET report illustrates once again, a money making industry that doesn't quit.
Trump won because the DNC/WEF/EU/CCP Davos LIE was so dire the American heart could no longer ignore it. To repeat: SUBSCRIPTION JOURNALISM is possibly the last chance WE the People possess to create the healthy human national conversation that will build the truth/fact based reality and the future the citizens of our Republic deserve. There is the Republic, the Constitution and the free citizen. Depart the psyop and live.
(Not aimed at you Kendall.)
Sorry! “Electronic sewer” is brilliant. Kudos.
The 'electronic sewer' is actual like a penny. It has two sides and without if we would be back in the world of nothing but alphabet TV/Cable, newsprint and mags churning out the mis/dis information we have lived under since the founding.
It is our portal to reality and so far it has come down in favor of truth - Trump won, again.
The DS still lives on, freely engaging in debauchery for anyone with a working brain to see - because of the ‘sewer’ that Substack exist in.
Thanks for making me think a bit Shelley.
I agree with you in principle. But having a "working brain" and the vision to "see" clearly when there is a for profit industrial lab working at scale to pathologize healthy thinking and purposefully infect the American psyche with all manner of emotional distortion, misapprehension, distrust and hatred is more than a coin toss. It is a tyranny.
(Starmer's England? Canada's BillC-63? Arrest for "mask violations" in Australia? "Lawfare" and the imprisonment of populist political candidates across Europe? Suicide netted
workers dormitories in China? The rigged game central banking DNC/WEF/EU/CCP Davos crowd?)
Why is it necessary to wear a hazmat suit in order to engage in the healthy human national conversation the citizens of our Republic deserve? SUBSCRIPTION JOURNALISM (the journalists I choose to support straight to my mail box) allows me a minimal entanglement with the psyop actively poisoning the American future. There are worthwhile voices everywhere. Can anyone spend 24/7 staring into the electronic void and remain sane? AI/the internet are tools not weapons. So WHY have they been weaponized? WHY THE NECESSITY TO LIE?
This is a new age and our founding fathers (and
mothers) gave it birth. They clearly elevated human moral reason and human freedom above, and clearly despised, the avaricious bi-
polar machinations of grifting
monarchs and their sycophant toadies. The American Republic, and its Constitution and its battered but free citizens are at present the only engines of survival.
(Here I am ranting again. Have a great Easter Sunday.)
No, I didn’t think it was. Actually loved your diatribe. Spot on.
Thank you.
Electr
There are some here. These have existed since the days of AIM.
I've spotted several here.
They can argue for days on a single topic, without ever once referencing a single link provided to them. They just keep mindlessly repeating the official line on any given topic.
It’s probably AI generated responses paid for by our tax dollars.
My favorites are the ones that respond to me like 4 days after I've left a thread with some gotcha nonsense, and then when you go back and engage them, they fade away again.
Exactly!
And it’s generally on some issue involving Covid, J6, or endless wars, in my experience. Although lately, I’ve had a lot of engagement like this on the Israel issue. And I do not now, nor have I ever been a Jew-hater. Nor have I expressed support for Hamas.
To be fair, some of us lead busy (offline) lives and don't get around to reading these articles for 4 days. ;)
That perfectly describes you.
On some platforms like You Tube, it is down to an art. Not just sniping comments, but a lengthy comment and about a dozen 'people' from supposedly separate accounts chiming in with, shall we say, very convenient and way-too-on-message replies. It looks like some kind of programming.
I can see it, but I'm not sure if others do.
The saddest part is that you are right about the programming, but wrong about them being paid. People have been programmed to follow along. We've made it like a sugar high to get likes and replies that agree with us.
We have become a nation of sheep. Except this time, the sheep are aggressive.
The Pink Floyd album, Animals, sums it up pretty well. In the end the sheep go mad, do stuff and after a mad spree of anarchic vengeance, go back to worship the next authority.
I apologize, so many terms are synonymous. I do think there are programmed people, but what I am referring to is phenomena where literal computer programming/AI is showing up in comments.
I don't know if our trolls here are paid or do it in their spare time, but the people setting up these elaborate call and response insertions definitely are getting something out of it.
Yes, I've noticed that, as well.
Yes. I’m starting to believe X is largely paid political actors, and their posts are designed to drive a Narrative imposed from above. This is unfortunate because it could be a really great resource for learning and connecting.
There is also no bottom to the same thing from the other side. You do see that, right?
No, I don’t
"However, I would say that the descriptions of programs on federal documents under Biden was a notable difference—as some appeared to more specifically align with the ideological priorities of the Democrats: using terms like “racial equity,” “Latinx,” or other left-leaning terminology championed by the Biden administration." Not only "align with the ideological priorities of Democrats" but these programs funneled billions of taxpayer dollars to the allies and foot soldiers of the left. This Niagara of grift has propelled the growth of cancerous NGOs and university adjuncts of the DNC into an active - and very wealthy - Fifth Column, bent on destroying American life, culture and civic structure.
The scale of the grift continues to astound. How much of our cultural and media landscape has been manufactured?
It's the deliberate attempt to wipe out all the culture that has brought us to the greatest civilization in history that worries me. There can be no argument that the work and ideas of our nation have led the world in human progress like no other society previously. And these ideas were the legacy of the ideas we received from cultures that preceded ours. When the so-called progressives burn all that has gone before, what will they build their ideas on? So far, it looks like all they have is ideology.
"A large number of these projects cynically employed the ‘misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation’ framework to counter their political adversaries, with U.S. government funding making it possible,” liber-net’s director, Andrew Lowenthal, told the Free Press."
That was a bonus.
The main benefit was the funding of their ideological allies. Often employing Democrats, in NGOs and the like. If there was no money in these things, they'd be far less interested.
None of it is even possible without the utter ignorance and lack of critical thought in our society that allows this to happen. I've always found it curious that Sun Tzu is just about standard reading in the military and in government circles, but is about hidden from plain site of the masses.
And the ambivalence, or worse, the cooperation of the lazy, complicit US Congress.
They are all bought and paid for. And as Molly Ivins used to say, "It's the best job they'll ever have"!
Yes, we have the best congress money can buy.
I've come to enjoy watching the Bernie or Elizabeth outrage rants, as if they actually believe in literally anything other than enrichment!
Yes, it's pure comedy.
How would it be exposed to the public? Maybe through a game video. The attention span of our children is zip. And of course there’s that pesky 1-31 will have autism.
Video games pushing messages don't work. Nearly all of them fail. When people play games they don't like being preached at.
There has to be a curbing of the smartphone and short form content for minors. That is what is borking long-term concentration. But parents need to be the ones to realize this.
Hardly anyone reads anymore, including our last two presidents.
And Machiavelli.
I agree totally. Google and YouTube labels anything it disagrees with as misinformation or hate speech. Gender clinics direct their staff to treat all questions and any disagreement as misinformation. It's the opposite of protecting free speech. That's right. Take the money away.
Ding ding ding, winner!
Elon Musk’s purchase of TwiX made all of this happen.
We would still be in the dark today if not for this move.
🎯🛎️🔨
Whatever i may ultimately think about Elon Musk, I will be forever grateful to him and Matt for the Twitter files! It was the beginning of the Great Unravelling!
The restoration has been imperfect, there are still a few, exiled in the early days of the gender war who are not allowed back yet, but the change has improved the climate greatly.
I think the twitter files were an objectively very good thing--even if musk popped before the zipper even came down.
I think a very strong argument can be made that Musk bought twitter to prevent Trump from becoming president. His fear was that if people who self identified as republicans, but not necessarily Trump supporters, were banned from mainstream internet communication platforms simply for the word they self identified under--that those people would become Trump supporters simply to survive.
Musk's attempt to promote the candidacy of Ron "Gitmo Torture" DeSantis was somehow even more awkward than the candidate himself.
The twitter free speech Musk felt necessary to pull in self-identified republicans was also what Trump used to body Musk into taking a deal. Very interesting to watch.
You're doing great work exposing the Biden propaganda apparatus, but maybe you're being too forgiving in your language?
Writing that
> the Biden administration was very active in targeting misinformation and disinformation,
cedes to the censors the hero's cape: if they were "targeting misinformation and disinformation," that sounds like they were doing a good thing with good intentions.
Yes, you follow with "even as it engaged in those practices", but that's still too gentle.
"Misinformation and disinformation" are just pejorative labels for "information that isn't slanted to support my arguments" and "information that casts doubt on my arguments".
When you frame the government as "fighting mis/disinformation" you're letting them off the hook. This was censorship and propaganda designed to suppress Americans' First Amendment protected dissent, to further the Administration's political ends. Let's call it that.
BTW - let's stop pretending that the laughably named "Free Press" is free. Bari Weiss runs a vicious censorship program for comments, administered by swarms of leftist moderators who censor comments and ban commenters arbitrarily and without notice. Worse, Bari is a hypocrite who refuses to acknowledge or end this practice while posing as a "free speech" champion.
She can't help it. As I said over on JIP (I think it was there :) )... She's surrounded herself with like minded ivy league types all schooled in the same rot. It was inevitable that they would eventually shift to the same BS narrative the mainstream press is all about every day. They do have a handful excellent folks on their staff who do produce excellent work now and then. But all in all, the recent editor hires, etc., they have become the NYT lite as I see it, and I will be canceling my subscription before it renews again. Why do they ignore the biggest story of the last four years? Who was running the F'ing country?
Well, look how long it took to admit COVID was released from Wuhan lab, which btw most people w/o an Ivy League education knew from the beginning.
No kidding. As if the dullest detective on the planet could not have put together the emergence of the pandemic in Wuhan - and the existence of the Virology lab in that same city. What fools do they take us for?
And what about the "pee tape"?
My theory is that the people currently running all these official propaganda efforts out of The Blob are just not as bright as their predecessors were. They're nowhere near as well-read, they have no intellectual curiosity, and they are hard-line wokesters.
It's easy for many of us to see through their idiotic cover stories when they first appear.
It's a gentler form of football hooliganism. My team right or wrong.
You’d be surprised.
Or that a cloth Snoopy face mask that was hanging on your dashboard was going to stop a micro virus?
It just got you invited to the right cocktail parties.
Don't have to wait 5 years for the answer to that. Lindy Li is spilling the Tea. Check out one of her vids. She was there and names names. Spoiler: It was not Biden.
Please add more info, Charlie.
Sorry, I didn't write down the names. Suffice to say they weren't people I elected, LOL. Hunter, of course, was one of them, but I think this was the interview I saw: Biden Insider: This Is Who Pulled Biden’s Strings Behind the Scenes-
https://youtu.be/cOrlW-kQLq0
Indeed. I believe I was banned for disparaging Biden as "the Senile Imbecile." Which was abundantly clear to anyone with sight and a brain. Yet the FP, like the rest of the commentariate of the elites remained supinely silent.
Bruce
I. Can tell you were either a free press subscriber or a former subscriber. I was a subscriber but stopped due to the same concerns you stated. The only one I miss is Douglas Murray.
Not only a subscriber but original supporter of Common Sense. They even quoted me and used me in their promotional pieces. But they soon enough returned to their leftist roots, including indulging the left's penchant for repressive censorship.
Same. They do occasionally have a good article though. I don’t miss it overall.
How could anyone miss Douglas Murray?
He really embarrassed himself on Joe Rogan with his low grasp of the basic facts he was arguing, while simultaneously making the case for expertise as a counterweight.
Couldn't even get Cooper's name right, created strawmen to bash him, and then contradicted the historical record himself by claiming that Hitler never moderated his expressions of anti-Semitism depending on the crowd in the 30's.
I gained a lot of respect for Douglas Murray when he was criticizing mainstream media and defending free speech during the last administration (especially when he teamed up with Taibbi for the Munk Debate against Gladwell & Goldberg). However, after watching that (excruciatingly painful) exchange with Dave Smith on Rogan, I have lost ALL respect for Murray. The number of strawmen and red herrings he kept throwing out to evade, deflect, and outright dismiss Smith's FACTS was astounding! Murray's (willful?) ignorance on history and geopolitical affairs is blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention. Or maybe he's not ignorant but simply lying. Either way, he's absolutely WRONG about MOST of it. Would LOVE to see him debate Scott Horton next time!
I also found this rather enlightening: https://propagandainfocus.com/the-warped-logic-of-douglas-murray/
It is really strange. In his recent Post article, he trotted out a strawman and still got the names wrong, attributing his distorted version of what Cooper had said to Carroll.
He played so loose with the facts that I thought maybe he was trying to make his point about factual hygiene by example.
This is one thing in a podcast conversation, where mistakes can happen, but to do so in print without correcting himself seems a bit libelous from my layman's perspective.
There are definitely principled attacks that can be made against Carroll and Cooper, but these were strange misfires.
I agree that, on the Gaza conflict itself, Murray v. Horton is a good matchup.
Douglas Murray no longer writes the lovely Sunday Things Worth Remembering column, if that’s any consolation. It is a carousel of different writers, some almost as good as he was so routinely.
Handing money out like candy.
That is truly what has been happening for a very long time.
Amazing! This is simply excellent, Greg. Congratulations to you and the folks working to document public and private efforts to censor discourse. Many thanks!
Why not subscribe to "The Free Press," and get it first hand?
Because Bari is incurious, intellectually lazy, and kind of nuts. Bari was a perfect fit at the NYT until very recently and representative of exactly why I cancelled my NYT subscription.
Watching her call the current DNI an "Assad toady" when Bari had to ask what a "toady" actually means is Bari in a nutshell. https://x.com/mtracey/status/1087722028717801472
She has good people working there, but as a journalist she's a fact-free menace.
Initially I found FP and its founder interesting, but you're exactly right: there was a reason she got hired at the NYT. And that's because she's a neo-liberal/neo-consevative.
And that hasn't changed. Her disagreements with The Left are mostly over who holds the whip hand, with the possible the exception of policy around Israel (or is that also about who holds the whip hand?).
She's part of the bi-coastal private school to Ivy League PMC elite, and her ideology boils down to maintaining that elite and her place in it. Which means strictly maintaining the overall *status quo*, while perturbing it gently to increase her personal status within it.
Which FP does quite well: now she's the boss of her own plantation, not a labourer in the Grey Lady's fields. But what's being grown in those fields remains essentially the same.
Well said!
That was in an interview with Joe Rogan. My mouth dropped when I saw that moment. Not only that neither one of them knew exactly what a "toady" is, but they didn't know how to spell it either. A journalist!
My previous regard for Bari Weiss fled.
A toady is a froggy, but with warts. Obviously.
I did like that Joe Rogan challenged her about Gabbard tho.
My criticism about spelling "toady" was in addition to simply being appalled that she would so casually make such an accusation.
The intellectually lazy part appears often enough to prevent TFP from being a go to on anything of importance.
Yes, it's the "good people working there, like Kaminsky. I don't quite see Bari the way you do, yet. I see her as a "trying to be subtle" provocateur.
Free country. I wish her and her team well.
Given today’s technology, and since it’s our money, why isn’t more Federal spending posted in detail online so we who fund this nonsense can examine how our elected officials are spending our money? Who could be opposed to more transparency?
If The Great Unwashed saw where their money went, they'd be too ignorant, state-schooled, and flyover to understand its subtle beauty.
So transparency would become "misinformation" that undermines the Very Important Work the 3 letter agencies and their pet NGO cognoscenti are doing with the basket of deplorable racist misogynistic low-information voters' money.
How easy it is to throw around other people's money. Reduce taxes, and not just the income tax, and take care of roads, defense, law enforcement and schools. All others can fundraise. Turn off the spigot.
Enumerated. Powers. Period.
Exactly!
We have homeless camps all over the place, mentally ill wandering the streets, people keeling over from drug overdoses, and our government is throwing money around like confetti.
It's disgusting.
Too much money too easily gotten. congress is a bunch of spoiled rich kids.
sometimes the answer is just as simple as this. Bravo. Occum's Razor.
How can this be? I was told to believe all women. When Psaki and KJP averred so often that the biden regime was the most transparent in history I believed them . Just as I believe all that I read in NYT and WAPO or hear on MSNBC. Oh and also the View!
I have not known you to be this funny.
This has been why they have been screaming over DOGE. Their “little” deep state network has been uncovered with the monies tied to it. Trump understood he was being undermined at every turn his first time in the White House which is why he spent 4 years examining the swamp in DC meeting with players. The essentially murdered Michael Flynn early in Trump’s first term which derailed his presidency. Flynn knew where all the bodies were buried and without him it was impossible to succeed. This second term has been much more successful so far but I feel if he slows down he will be derailed again. I see the blob in congress doing all they can to kill this recent bill and the reps have done nothing to help to this point. Johnson is a bag of shit too.
Which makes me wonder about the slow roll on Epstein. I bet there are a lot of politicians in that heap of mess from all walks of life. Again, I say, burn it down. I don’t care what side you’re on.
I agree wholeheartedly. If you’re a scumbag you deserve the justice coming to you. Honestly, when I vote I pull the lever for the person who I hope will screw me less. It’s a sad state of affairs. If anything comes of all of this I hope these shitheads start working for us again but I’m not hopeful.
Bumper sticker:
Screwed Less
Love that: "the person who I hope will screw me less."
Sad, but very true.
Republican Congress Critters are a bunch of feckless weenies.
Punch and Judy: two puppets, one puppeteer.
A couple of years ago I first heard about “media literacy “ programs and lessons that could be taught in secondary schools. I wonder how much of that traces back to one of thee grants
Had to switch to “media literacy” after the country gave up on real literacy. Someone in these comments a while back used the word “aliterate”, meaning a person who can read, but doesn’t. Describes a lot of people.
Ditto all the government-channeled BS coming out of the DOD since 2021.
I'll bet those classes teach students to rely solely on government-approved media sources.
The thing that some of us have known for a decade now is that "MIS"information like facts in Politics for a much longer time is highly subjective to your belief system. Anybody with any sense of rationality or a sliver of intelligence to as we once used to say, "read between the Lines," can see the crazy before getting past the first paragraph or opening statement of those that spew it.
Our media has been a misinformation hub for the government for 60+ years. Laws enacted under Clinton, Bush, and then really hard under Obama shifted Media laws to push our media from, "just the facts," to meh... "my feels tell me this is how you should think too." This is the one bipartisan thing our country truly believes in.
60+ years for sure. W. T. Sherman wrote in the Preface to his Personal Memoirs that even three honest witnesses to a simple barroom fight will not agree on what happened (his point was that reporting on a Civil War battle is going to be selective, misguided, outright deceptive, etc.) More and more people are learning to "read between the lines," be it because of COVID lies, Hunter's laptop lies, "peaceful protest" lies, XX or XY chromosomes being a fact of life, or what have you.
Many, but not nearly enough.
The midterms should give us an idea.
The midterms are nearly as fraught as the last general. IMHO. We have far too many all-or-nothings and single issuers in our mix.
It's a great time to be alive!
You’re right, this has gone on since I can remember. And, in order to “read between the lines,” a person has to actually read first.
If public monies funded local government instead of the feds, people might be more involved in how their lives are ruled.
It's honestly harder to even find real information to even just blur the lines anymore.
Yes!
The Trump Admin engaged in a sleazy bit of propaganda earlier this week, when Leavitt started a press conference by speaking about Garcia (the illegal alien deported to El Salvador), then handed the podium over to the mother of a woman who had been raped and murdered by OTHER gang members. It was total emotional manipulation, meant to conflate the two in the minds of viewers.
Wasn't her daughter killed by MS 13 ?
Yes, and it's terrible. But that has nothing to do with a different man who is accused, not convicted, not tried, of being a gang member. Putting her up there is like saying "other men who kind of maybe look like this man did a terrible thing, therefore this man does not deserve due process."
The emotional manipulation is wrong and impedes due process.
Stop wasting time on this case. Takes resources away from all the other criminals who have taken advantage of our open borders.
I do not agree.
Yes, but was Garcia involved?
It was propaganda.
What do you think happens to a person who tattoos MS-13 gang insignias on their body if they aren't in MS-13 ?
Irrelevant; it was still propaganda.
For what it's worth, I'm leaning toward the fact that Garcia was, in fact, a member of MS 13, based on all the research I've done. But this was a sleazy tactic.
Let's see, you admit he was an illegal, correct?
You admit that he's a member of A FTO, correct?
Right? That was grotesque.
Typical propaganda strategy.
Same as it ever was…
This is great stuff. I don’t care WHO does it/ they need to knock it off. Exposing it is step one- thanks to TFP.
The irony of doling out cash to think tanks which their sole objective was to create misinformation to counter what they thought of as misinformation should not be lost.