Jim: Roundtable time again. . Remember our e-mail
address is thethirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com but you can also use common_ills@yahoo.com and, in fact, should this week Participating in our roundtable are The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava, and me, Jim; 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); Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix; Mike of Mikey Likes It!; Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz); Ruth of Ruth's Report; Trina of Trina's Kitchen; Wally of The Daily Jot; Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ; Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends; Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub. Betty's kids did the
illustration. You are reading a rush transcript.
Jim (Con't): So let's talk about the US fueling aggression towards Russia through Ukraine. Mike, Wally and Isaiah, you guys wanted to talk about this.
Mike: Yeah. We saw something take place during this that we should have known better to avoid. Idiots weighing in couldn't stick with reality. Basic reality, I'll cover and then toss to Wally and Isaiah. The US overturned the government of Ukraine -- the duly elected government -- in 2014. They instead backed nazis. And that's who controls the Ukraine today. The US then forced Russian president Vladimir Putin's hand with threats of NATO being on the Russian border. Now people who want peace had a ton of things to cover, real issues. The Jimmy Dores ensured that didn't happen. Wally or Isaiah?
Isaiah: I'll go. This is something we were told over and over during the Iraq War but apparently everyone's too damn stupid to learn. Iraq? The war was wrong. Don't make your argument based on what the US military is doing or the Iraq military is doing in terms of so-called progress at any minute. The war itself is wrong. Instead of internalizing that lesson, the Jimmy Dore's rejected it and wanted to make predictions. We don't predictions assholes. Wally?
Wally: Predictions is how corporate media covers the war. They bring on generals, put on the payroll, let them yammer away. That has nothing to do with reality. Now because The Jimmy Dores are so perverted and disgusting, not only did they not grasp this -- and started wasting time predicting Russia would do this or that and then the battle would be turned -- but they brought on their own version of repugnance: convicted child molester Scott Ritter. He's not smart -- he's been arrested three times. He was convicted while crying in court. He tried to run and flee the police at some fast food place when they caught him. And he's an idiot and all he could do was make 'battlefield' projections. Thanks for wasting everyone's time. Maybe next time, Scott Ritter, just do the world a favor and remove yourself from society because no one ever needed you and, yet again, you polluted the process. And shame on all of you who brought a convicted child molester as an expert witness. Clearly, everyone bringing Ritter on is a supporter of child molestation -- if not a supporter, then they are confessing that they themselves molest children.
Mike: And let me just read into this roundtable my favorite media report ever on pedophile Scott Ritter. This is from Matt Bai's "Scott Ritter's Other War" (THE NEW YORK TIMES):
When prosecutors were successful in moving to unseal his New York files and presented evidence from those arrests too, Ritter steadfastly maintained that he was aware, in both instances, that he was talking to undercover cops. He knew his online activities needed to be stopped, Ritter said, so he arranged to meet the officers involved, playing along with the notion that they were teenage girls, so that he could get himself arrested and be forced to face his demons. This would have been a more persuasive defense, perhaps, had one of the arresting detectives not testified that Ritter, upon seeing the police lying in wait for him, tried to evade capture by slamming down the gas pedal and jumping a curb, T.J. Hooker-style.
Wally: He's trash. So is Jimmy Dore, Jackson Hinkle and every other idiot who brought him on their programs -- may they all burn in hell.
Jim: Amen. Trina, you're covering a race right now.
Trina: Will Lehman. He's running to become the president of the United Auto Workers. "Put Rank-and-File Workers in Power" is his campaign slogan. WSWS has endorsed him. As they noted recently, Twitter locked him out of is account -- in the midst of a campaign. They claimed he violated a rule when he didn't. A little later, after enough attention exposed Twitter, they reversed their stance, issued a 'woopsie' and restored his account. He's been smeared by a NYT journalist. He's clearly a threat to the establishment.
Rebecca: How many followers does he have on Twitter?
Trina: I have no idea.
Rebecca: 1044. Okay, I'm 1045.
Ruth: I'll follow too.
Trina: Thank you Ruth and Rebecca. If anyone reading this is on Twitter, please consider following Will Lehman on Twitter.
Jim: Which is another question, why aren't all of us on Twitter?
Elaine: No. No. I barely have time to post to a blog. I'm not getting on Twitter. I'm a grown up with a life and a young child. Not doing it.
Ty: Most of us don't have time. I've got work, my marriage, etc. It's a good week that we can produce an edition here at THIRD.
Rebecca: Ann, you were the only one that got on FACEBOOK, right?
Ann: Right. And I haven't been on that in forever. Besides isn't Twitter 'over'? Isn't it all supposed to be Instagram and recipes and stuff.
Betty: Or Tik-Tok.
Ann: Or Tik-Tok, yes. Oh, and I am on Twitter, just FYI.
Jim: During the week, if I'm online, I'm either reading e-mails or gaming. I don't have time to share likes or look at cat videos or whatever. Okay, Sue Ann e-mailed asking who was covering what TV programs now that fall TV has started?
Mike: I'm continuing to cover THE GOLDBERGS.
Marcia: I'm continuing to cover LA BREA.
Betty: BIG SKY.
Ann: CALL ME KAT.
Rebecca: THE CLEANING LADY.
Stan: I'm looking for something to cover.
Kat: I'm behind on it, but I'll be covering AMERICAN DAD.
Jim: Anybody else? No? Okay, we'll probably go back, as a community, to book coverage in 2023. But right now, book coverage has continued at Rebecca, Ruth, Isaiah and Marcia's sites -- and Marcia plans to have a book review later this week. That's responding to an e-mail from Carter. And, yes, Dona plans to continue to do a book conversation here when community members do book reviews. Now let's talk about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Marcia?
Marcia: It's bad enough that she refused to retire when Barack Obama asked her to. She was dying at that point and she knew it. But the Karen that she was, it was more important to her to swear in Hillary Clinton as president. So she didn't step down. Then Hillary lost and Ruth died. ROE is dead now thanks to Ruth. She should have retired. But there's a new reason to be angry, Nina Totenberg -- alleged reporter for NPR and RBG's gal pal. She knew how sick Ruth was and covered it instead of covering it. For years, NPR had let her cover her gal pal in violation of every known ethic. Now Nina's trying to make a buck with a book about her friendship and we're learning so many things that should have been reported in real time. NPR needs to fire Nina.
Ruth: She is 78, it is past time for her to leave. NPR also needs to fire Kelly McBride, their supposed ombudsperson. I want to put this in from a piece Ava and C.I. wrote two years ago:
And that's just the entertainment side of the equation. NPR doesn't do justice and they really hates the listeners. They think their listeners are stupid. They made that clear
Thursday, Shawn Langlois (MARKETWATCH) reported:
When the New York Post first reported unconfirmed allegations of influence peddling by Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, with a Ukrainian company, Twitter and Facebook FB, +2.39% took steps to limit its spread across social media.
Now, with Biden opponents touting fresh developments and promising the release of more information, mainstream media outlets are left to grapple with how to handle what has become an explosive topic heading in to the November election.
He goes on to note NPR ombudsperson Kelly McBride's Tweet and we're going to ignore the Tweet -- it just links to the NPR newsletter -- and instead quote from the NPR newsletter she linked to where she writes:
Responding to the New York Post
|
But the biggest reason you haven’t heard much on NPR about the Post story is that the assertions don’t amount to much.
“We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions,” NPR Managing Editor for News Terence Samuel told me. “And quite frankly, that's where we ended up, this was … a politically driven event and we decided to treat it that way.”
The handful of stories that NPR has produced about the NY Post investigation have been limited to how Facebook and Twitter are restricting distribution of the story or how families of those seeking treatment for addiction are impacted by the portrayal of Hunter Biden's struggle. — Kelly McBride
What a load of garbage but that is all Kelly McBride is really. She's supposed to be about ethics. That's why she's the ombudsperson. But reading her nonsense about Nina Totenberg and the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it was clear that Kelly didn't get Nina's job or her own. In the column, she repeats Nina's claim that her long friendship with RBG didn't influence her coverage. Guess what? That's not Nina's call. Nina cannot both conceal the friendship in news reports and then be the one who determines that there was no conflict. Listeners should have known, in every report in which she mentioned Ginsburg, that Nina was close friends with her. They should have had that knowledge so they could evaluate the report.
Kelly should grasp that as
public editor but it's clear that she doesn't. It's clear not just in
that report in Nina but in many reports -- reports where Kelly
interjects someone from POYNTER. Yes, Kelly discloses her relationship
with that organization; however, she's there to serve NPR listeners, not
to be part of a circle-jerk where she promotes the other organization
she works for. In fact, as public editor, she shouldn't be quoting
anyone from POYNTER -- it doesn't come off fair and it doesn't come off
impartial. More to the point, since POYNTER is already helping the
helpless Kelly by doing research for any column she writes for the
listeners, they're already weighing in. They don't also need to be
quoted.
Ruth (Con't): That above goes to why she should be fired. She does not grasp ethics. And she has failed to apologize for being so horrifically wrong about the Hunter Biden laptop. They never should have ignored it to begin with. It is a story and it is ethical issue. It may end up being a criminal issue. When you have the fox guarding the hen house, you don't get ethical coverage. Ms. McBride needs to be fired immediately. If she had any ethics or believed anything about journalism that POYNTER is supposed to stand for, she would have tendered her resignation long ago.
Jim: On media, there were two other topics people put down for this roundtable. First up, Katie Halper. Let's note this video.
Jim (Con't): Okay. Stan, Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and C.I. asked that the video be included. Who wants to speak first?
Stan: I'll go. Katie was fired from THE HILL for that video. For three years or so, she's been a regular guest on a segment they post on Saturdays about the media. More recently, she's been used repeatedly as a co-host on the show. I'm not interested in THE HILL. I can't believe they fired Katie for that video. It's disgusting.
Dona: It truly is. They refused to air it and when she asked why it hadn't aired, THE HILL fired her. Disgusting. The comments in the video are her own. THE HILL airs commentary that it disagrees with all the time --also publishes written columns. But that video got her fired? Disgusting.
Ty: This is a problem in so many ways. It was wrong to fire her but it is also a huge problem because THE HILL keeps firing people. It's getting a very bad image. And I agree with everything Katie said in that video.
Jim: I know you and Ava don't want to talk but can one of you discuss what's going on?
C.I.: Ava's looking at me. Katie states that you can't be a progressive and ignore the issue of Palestinian rights. It's an opinion and with her opinion she's drawing a line in the sand. THE HILL's overreaction to her comments are the overreaction of people of a certain age. Rebecca should really be speaking to this and not me. Rebecca?
Rebecca: You're right. So in college I got involved in the issue of Palestinian rights. And I would get very frustrated that people couldn't grasp it. And C.I. would tell me I'd have to give it time and she was right. Now we're at the point where most people realize what Katie does. But we still have a group of people raised to believe that Israel was the height of progress and progressivism. And those people have a knee jerk reaction. Take Barbra Streisand, for example. They will not be moved by facts. They will continue to blindly defend an apartheid system because of what they've instilled over the years. That is what Katie's up against. It's been there forever but it's finally weakening and it will be gone within ten years. Facts have emerged, generations have been raised with them, the knee jerk will not continue to dominate. That is the good news. The sad news is the number of Palestinians who have died in all the years it's taken to get to this point.
Jim: Thank you. Okay another video. And Cedric, Betty and Kat you asked for this video to be included.
Jim: Let's start with Cedric since he's participating by phone while Betty and Kat are in the room with us. Cedric?
Cedric: YOUTUBE demonitized the video. There's nothing false or incorrect in the video. YOUTUBE just doesn't like the facts it contains. This needs to end. YOUTUBE is out of control. That's really all I want to say.
Betty: Kat's pointing to me. Sore loser Hillary spent four years disputing the election results of 2016 and instead of the press calling her out they rewarded her. They should have taken a strong stand against her because no one likes a sore loser. And now that they want to attack 'election deniers,' they've created their own mess because they didn't call her out. The video documents how she and her supporters endlessly pimped lies to deny the results of 2016. The press went along with it and amplified these lies. It's really too damn late for them to start criticizing others who deny 2020's results.
Kat: I would agree. It's the double standard that destroys people's trust in various institutions. And then, on top of that, you get YOUTUBE lashing out and that only makes it worse. The video needs to be seen and should be applauded. It's truthful and we're supposedly a people that cares about the truth.