Monday, January 21, 2019

Truest statement of the week

It’s a brand new year and Democrats running the House of Representatives under Nancy Pelosi, Jim Clyburn and Steny Hoyer need to rebrand themselves in preparation for the 2020 elections. So Team Pelosi has rolled out what they and their far flung chorus of corporate media hacks from MSNBC to so-called “woke” social media are calling their flagship bill for the 116th Congress. To hear them tell it, it’s all about ending corruption in Congress and the White House, about taking the Big Money out of politics, and most of all, it’s about protecting voting rights.
It’s HR 1, a 571 page monstrosity, actually a sleazy ghetto ice cream truckload of empty promises Democrats wouldn’t keep even if they had the power, and which they refused to put forward when they DID have the power. In typical Democrat fashion HR 1 also contains a couple of serious threats against American left dissenters in general and the Green Party in particular which Democrats might just be able to carry out if they seek and secure the support of a modest number of House and Senate Republicans. As of our publication date HR 1 does not yet appear on the official House web site, but we read the version on the web site of its sponsor, Congressman John Sarbanes of Maryland. You can also find it at the Brennan Center for Justice .

HR 1 pretends to be a voting rights bill, but is in fact a sleazy ghetto ice cream truckload of empty campaign promises intended to rebrand Democrats as the party of voting rights, despite their dismal non-record of struggle to protect or expand these rights. They are all commonsense measures Nancy P, who has been part of House Democrat leadership since the 1990s, and has led Democrats in the House since 2003, could have tried to put into law at any time, many times over the past twenty-five and more years. But they didn’t.

-- Bruce A. Dixon, "House Democrats’ HR 1 – Faking the Funk on Voting Rights, Spreading Fear and Gunning For the Greens in 2020" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).





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Truest statement of the week II

At the midway point of the Trump presidency the Democrats have nothing to show in the way of meaningful resistance. The Women’s March has been exposed as a fraudulent get-out-the-vote effort that was dispatched soon after the mid-term election. Now the Democrats have been reduced to using curse words in what passes for opposition to Donald Trump.
Trump’s shutdown of the government in the dispute over the border wall is an opportunity for the Democrats to show their mettle. But they can’t fight what they never really opposed. They may call it a fence or a barrier or some other euphemistic term but they have voted to support the same thing over the years. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama requested and got funding for border walls in the past. They are boxed in by their own past misdeeds and now present nothing but acquiescence to right wing tropes and call themselves a resistance force.

-- Margaret Kimberley, "Freedom Rider: Phony Resistance Can’t Beat Trump" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).









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A note to our readers

Hey --

Early Monday morning on the East Cost, here on the west, it's still Sunday.


Let's thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:






The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen, Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.



And what did we come up with?


Bruce A. Dixon gets another truest.
As does Margaret Kimberley.
What did the media cover last week instead of Iraq?
Ava and C.I. look at four new offerings.
Egos should not triumph.  It needs to be what's best for immigrants.
A product fails our latest test kitchen entry.
Goes to John Stauber.
Did no one else notice this disappeared?
What we listened to while writing.
Mike and the gang wrote this and we thank them for it.



Peace,





-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.











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Editorial: They buried Iraq again

Friday's Iraq snapshot spent over 30 paragraphs dealing with an important report -- long suppressed -- that the US military had just released the night before.  By contrast, MSNBC and CNN -- supposed 'news' networks -- deal with what?

A BUZZFEED 'report' that was surely going to get Donald Trump impeached!

Those of us who have repeatedly seen this film before knows how it ends.  But for newcomers, the BUZZFEED 'report' quickly collapsed as Robert Mueller denied all the points it supposedly made.



  1.  3 hours ago
    My favorite part of this: less than two weeks ago the NYT completely botched a story about Manafort giving polling data to a Kremlin-connected oligarch, and it barely warrants a passing mention because there are just too many other catastrophic botches
    14 replies104 retweets257 likes





 8 hours ago
Thread detailing the dozens and dozens of recent "Russia scandal" media failures. And this list isn't even comprehensive; needless to say, all the "errors" go in the same direction. Which is why the BuzzFeed story can't be looked at in a vacuum

Replying to @djjohnso @aaronjmate
I'll start a thread here to count them (I had started one for a CounterPunch article more than a year ago, but gave up partly because the list just kept growing as I tied to write). So:
8 replies101 retweets170 likes





  1.  11 hours ago
    The rule that applies to BREAKING RUSSIA stories is one that should also generally apply to controversies involving snippets of inflammatory video circulated on social media: wait. Do not react rashly. Resist confirmation bias, seek greater context. I will try to follow this.
    37 replies135 retweets492 likes


  2.  12 hours ago
    The two representatives from BuzzFeed who appeared on Brian Stelter's show this morning were Ben Smith and Cormier. It's fair to ask why Leopold was missing, considering he made the (questionable) claim of having seen primary source evidence, and personally engaged with Mueller.
    14 replies47 retweets179 likes





  1.  13 hours ago
    Aside from a few isolated exceptions, no meaningful costs have been imposed on media outlets responsible for propagating falsehoods and distortions as it relates to the "Russia Scandal." So if you're wondering why this keeps happening: because the entire media ecosystem is broken
    29 replies125 retweets372 likes




  1.  23 hours ago
    Can’t get much more explicit than this. Mueller’s statement constituted a wholesale rejection of the BuzzFeed article’s central premise. So either Mueller is lying to the public, or BuzzFeed is toast
    36 replies108 retweets252 likes





  1.  Jan 19
    Fundamental discrepancy that still hasn't been addressed by BuzzFeed: One reporter, Leopold, says they saw primary documentation. The other, Cormier, says they did not. That's a massive contradiction, and probably played a central role in however this debacle unraveled.
    21 replies76 retweets283 likes


  2.   Retweeted
     Jan 19
    The BuzzFeed story about Trump telling Cohen to lie was front page material in the print NYT yesterday. Mueller’s denial is on p. 11.
    68 replies834 retweets1,876 likes


  3.  Jan 19
    BuzzFeed certainly had real sources; they didn't just fabricate. But some of the greatest debacles in journalistic history have involved reporters giving excessive credulity to sources who had incentive to deceptively characterize sensitive material. (See: Judith Miller, WMDs)
    34 replies78 retweets302 likes


  4.  Jan 19
    Yes: it's easy to poke fun at, but BuzzFeed really has made some great strides over the years, and produced lots of important journalism and analysis. Nonetheless, this is a huge blemish and must be dealt with as transparently as possible.

    I have a lot of respect for & what he's done as an editor. BuzzFeed has long done serious, great reporting. But multiple media outlets have gotten huge Trump/Russia stories wrong & rank-closing among journalists feeds the perception that journalism can't be trusted.
    Show this thread
    23 replies23 retweets93 likes


  5.  Jan 19
    Trump/Russia has always been about elevating and venerating elements of the national security state to serve as a "check" on Trump, but in doing so, the media actually undermined their own capacity to serve as an effective check on Trump. The ironies just keep rolling in.
    20 replies181 retweets558 likes


  6.  Jan 19
    This is not an exaggeration: every single time, since 2016, that I've expressed skepticism of Trump/Russia stories, I've been flooded with accusations of secretly supporting Trump. However, it's the Trump/Russia alarmists who've ended up empowering Trump. Kinda ironic.
    47 replies249 retweets993 likes


  7.  Jan 18
    Aside from the "has receipts" formulation being so boring and cliched: there was no evidence of "receipts" provided in the initial article. There was only second-hand characterization, which warranted major skepticism even before Mueller's denial. So, multiple layers of fail here
    11 replies51 retweets186 likes


  8.  Jan 18
    Laughing about all the people who solemnly declared last night "This one feels different" -- yeah, just like the ten thousand previous ones that "felt different." It's been the same crap since June 2015 and they never, ever learn
    55 replies370 retweets1,317 likes


  9.  Jan 18
    There is MORE THAN ENOUGH to legitimately criticize Trump for: despicable Yemen policy, ridiculous corporate tax giveaways...the list goes on. That this nonstop, frequently-disproven Russia panic has become *the central* criticism of his presidency is both an irony and a tragedy.
    100 replies419 retweets1,432 likes


  10.  Jan 18
    The epic, historic media failure that defined the 2016 election continues to this day. Nothing has changed. If anything, it's only gotten worse
    68 replies726 retweets2,343 likes


  11.  Jan 18
    They've developed a kind of chemical dependency, similar to the sensation associated with inhaling crack, such that caution will never be exercised -- no matter how high the mountain of failures piles up

    I would ask if cable outlets and Twitter journalists will exercise a tad more caution in the future about explosive Trump/Russia stories based on anonymous claims unaccompanied by evidence, but since we've seen this happen over & over, we all already know the answer to that: …
    23 replies111 retweets304 likes


  12.  Jan 18
    Within what seemed like literal seconds, the BuzzFeed story exploded on Twitter and was immediately picked up by every TV network. The reporters were then celebrated as heroes. Can you see why the Trump/Russia saga provides journalists with such misaligned, distorted incentives?
    143 replies1,253 retweets4,369 likes


  13.  Jan 18
    Weird to depict Mueller's statement as "vague" when it was a categorical rejection of the article's central claims, but I guess that's the line BuzzFeed is gonna have to go with
    42 replies304 retweets1,005 likes


  14.  Jan 18
    On a serious note: a vibrant, thriving journalism industry is a vital check on power in this country. That they keep discrediting themselves in such spectacular fashion is horrible for democracy. There is something seriously, catastrophically wrong with media culture right now.
    370 replies2,635 retweets6,962 likes


  15.  Jan 18
    Condolences to all the writers who just got done filing their IMPEACHMENT NOW! columns that were supposed to run on Sunday
    69 replies484 retweets1,783 likes


  16.  Jan 18
    😬😬😬 


    😬
    9 replies48 retweets228 likes


  17.  Jan 18
    Geez, I just can't understand why people often distrust the news media, and some even assume it "fake." Such a mystery!!!!
    30 replies317 retweets1,263 likes


  18.  Jan 18
    If you don't think the brain-rot caused by 2+ years of nonstop Russia alarmism has inflicted incalculable damage on the journalism industry, and on society as a whole, I honestly don't know what else to tell you at this point
    92 replies896 retweets2,391 likes


  19.  Jan 18
    The great infallible Mueller descended from the heavens to rebuke a BuzzFeed story, like Moses from the mountaintop. LOL, sometimes you just have to marvel at the absurdity
    18 replies161 retweets554 likes


  20.  Jan 18
    Don't worry, in another week or two there'll be yet another BOMBSHELL BOOM story that causes the entire media to spastically freak out and declare Trump's imminent downfall, only to be sorely deflated shortly afterwards. At this point, it's as easy to predict as the sun rising
    39 replies280 retweets756 likes


  21.  Jan 18
    How many times does major "RUSSIA SCANDAL" news have to be substantially modified, corrected, retracted, or outright falsified until the media exercises even a modicum of skepticism? Instead they just scream BOOM! together like a bunch of toddlers. Incorrigible hacks
    120 replies1,524 retweets4,234 likes


  22.  Jan 18
    I told you to give it 24 hours

    UPDATE: A spokesperson for the special counsel is disputing BuzzFeed News’ report.
    37 replies150 retweets638 likes






There was real news to explore on Friday -- the findings the military made in 2016, findings that have been suppressed ever since.  They have finally been released: "The U.S. Army in the Iraq War – Volume 1: Invasion – Insurgency – Civil War, 2003-2006" and "The U.S. Army in the Iraq War — Volume 2: Surge and Withdrawal, 2007-2011."


But where is the coverage?

Instead, they rush to jabber away for hours about a BUZZFEED 'report' that ends up false.

What would the American people think if they knew the US government strategy in Iraq was repeatedly to appoint a puppet and hope he managed to become popular?

Or if they knew how quickly Bully Boy Bush turned on his puppet (Nour al-Maliki) and how soon he began speaking of removing Nouri from office?

So much to address.  But it was all too much reality.

So they instead focused again on "Trump's going to be impeached!" based on a 'report' that fell apart on them so quickly.


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