The Third Estate Sunday Review focuses on politics and culture. We're an online magazine. We don't play nice and we don't kiss butt. In the words of Tuesday Weld: "I do not ever want to be a huge star. Do you think I want a success? I refused "Bonnie and Clyde" because I was nursing at the time but also because deep down I knew that it was going to be a huge success. The same was true of "Bob and Carol and Fred and Sue" or whatever it was called. It reeked of success."
Are elected Democrats bound to be losers forever? We kind of hoped not. We kind of hoped that as the nation suffers through its worst crisis, elected Dems were learning just like, hopefully, the left trash that pretended attacking Kamala Harris wasn't helping to put Donald Crump back in the White House.
We wondered that this morning during CNN's STATE OF THE UNION when Dana Bash spoke with Senator Mark Kelly who was apparently eager to lick all the salt of Donald Chump's nut sack. Right now, more than ever, we need leaders not those who scrape and bow.
Kelly was tonguing Chump's balls for a peace plan.
Did it feel good, on his knees in front of Donald, debasing himself for a 'peace plan'?
Since he gets off on shame, we've got some news for him: It was all for nothing. He humiliated himself for nothing.
There is no peace plan. Phase one, the only thing that most are aware of and the only thing Hamas has really agreed to, is a release of any living hostages in exchange for 2,000 Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons and let's Israel retain control over much of Gaza in a manner. In fact, William Christou and Jason Burke (GUARDIAN) observe, "If negotiators have closed gaps between Hamas and Israel over the details of the first phase of the 20-point plan announced by Trump in the White House last week, it was not immediately certain whether the parties had made any progress on thornier questions, such as how Hamas will be disarmed, as Netanyahu has demanded, and the eventual governance of Gaza."
Exactly.
This could very well be yet another pause masked as a cease-fire.
A true peace plan probably wouldn't result in what took place September 29th -- that's when Chump announced it . . . with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his side -- with only Netanyahu at his side.
The wilful stupidity on the part of the press and the part of elected officials when it comes to this fact speaks to a very anti-Muslim point of view. We get that, right? When Chump pretends to have talks of peace re: Ukraine, the press and politicians notice if a Ukrainian representative is not present.
But leave, for example, Izz al-Din al-Haddad out of the announcement and it doesn't matter?
It matters and it's very significant.
There is no peace plan -- certainly not one that's going to benefit the Palestinian people.
How do you miss that? If it's not assuming that Palestinians are less human -- the anti-Muslim point of view we noted above -- then it's just exhaustion over this conflict that didn't begin in October 2003. But even that exhaustion goes to anti-Muslim bias. Because you're ready to embrace anything just to see it 'ended' -- you're willing to ignore the Palestinian needs.
Israel, to kind of Malcolm X it, didn't land on an empty land in 1948, it landed on Palestine.
Maybe because the United Kingdom has publicly struggled with this issue longer (as opposed to the US media and officals which tended to run with Israel-is-a-saint-Palestinians-are-always-to-blame), their press has been much more honest Take Katie Stallard's conclusion at the end of her piece for THE NEW STATESMAN:
The key clause here is "if agreed," because, as Trump meandered on, it
became clear that his peace plan had not, in fact, been agreed by Hamas.
“We’re at a minimum, very, very close,” he said, despite the fact that
his proposal was not shared with the militant group until after the
press conference. By the following day, Hamas officials had said they
were reviewing the plan “in good faith” but at the time the New Statesman went
to press it was unclear when a response would be issued. In April,
Hamas rejected demands to give up their weapons as a “red line”. During
his press conference, Trump warned that “if Hamas rejects the deal” then
Netanyahu would “have our full backing to do what you would have to
do”.
Or take Alex Boyd and Tom Bateman's BBC NEWS report tonight, "Many details for the later phases of the peace plan could be hard to reach agreement on - such as the governance of Gaza, the extent of Israeli troop withdrawal, and the disarming of Hamas."
Senator Mark Kelly did not look reasonable praising Chump for a fake deal. He looked deeply stupid and deserved to. Why is it that all the Democratic senators and House representatives and MSNBC hosts are just going along with bulls**t as opposed to telling the truth that Elaine did in "Stupid Donald Chump works to create a quagmire" -- Chump's putting US troops in the region. Not to protect Palestinians. So why are they there and, more to the point, considering all of known history, why is left to Elaine to explain he's creating a quagmire for the United States?
What we were left with from STATE OF THE UNION was the impression that Senator Kelly could handle questions about the scent of Chump's taint but not much of anything else as demonstrated when ever Dana Bash was more aware of reality than Kelly.
She asked him, "You mentioned looking forward, and I should mention that you visited the
region several times during this conflict. There are multiple sticking
points in the 20-point plan,
particularly when we get to like point six, and the whole question of
whether or not Hamas will lay down its arms. How realistic is that?"
Like the stereotypical beauty queen pageant drivel of "world peace," Kelly insisted, "I think it’s possible, I am concerned, that they may change their minds here."
Who is this 'they'? Hamas has not signed off the 20-point plan (especially true of disarming).
Mark's stupidity is only matched by CODEPINK's gross ignorance. They spent the fall of 2024 electing Donald Chump. That is the reality. They now spend their final days following Kamala Harris around on her book tour, screeching and disrupting.
Kamala Harris is not the president of the United States -- CODEPINK worked hard to ensure that. And they're too scared to protest Donald Chump -- weren't out at Walter Reed on Friday, for example, despite days of notice that Chump would around for his 'annual' six-month check up. But they managed to boo and his Kamala.
The whole country suffers today due to the actions of CODESTINK and their allies.
And those dumb quacks haven't learned one damn thing. Instead of apologizing to the country for the work they did to put Chump in the White House, they want to distract and waste time by going after Kamala Harris -- who, for the record, is not president of the United States and was not president of the United States. Palestinians are getting screwed over with Chump's supposed peace plan and CODESTINK too busy wasting more time to fight for the people of Palestine or even to garner attention for their plight.
Kelly's actions demonstrate that, even all these months later, we can't count on our elected Dems and CODEPINK's misdirected hysteria makes it clear that they're no one to depend upon either.
YOUTUBE and podcasts have extended the careers of some fired from cable and network news. Sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes.
But for every single Mehdi Hasan there are several Jim Acosta.
Last week, Acosta reminded us again of how lucky the country was when CNN fired him at the start of this year.
That's not to say that Acosta doesn't have some talents -- he does. But too often he undermines what he's covering. During Chump's first administration, he did this repeatedly. Everything is not equal except in Jim Acosta's eyes. In his eyes every action is equal and deserves massive attention and should make your blood boil. That's how he helped Chump from January 2017 through January 2021. He was such a drama queen, that he made people sympathetic to Chump or at least aware enough that somethings were just too much.
Now Jim worked with a staff at CNN and you could argue that the problem was his producer, for example. But on YOUTUBE, Jim's calling all his shots and he's embarrassing and harming the cause so many times of late.
There are stories that need to be told and that need to be amplified.
The new material on the Epstein and Maxwell scandal needs to be
amplified, for example. Immigration needs to be covered more -- and not
justified -- remember that second point, we'll be coming back to it.
He's posted a video Saturday on his YOUTUBE channel andRAW STORY thought it was noteworthy. No, not for any reason that they're covering. It's garbage and his guest is garbage. It helped no one.
Let's start with the topic: They're might be more grab them by the p---- type tapes! Someone would have them!
Who the f**k cares?
What? You want a Congressional investigation on them?
You want to waste our damn time on this bulls**t?
The tapes will never see the light of day -- if they exist. If they exist, they're not going to shock at this late date. But there was Acosta and Billy Bush talking about creepy Mark Burnett (husband of Roma Downey) and in all their gabby and gossiping, the two couldn't even make one important point: Chump's given away another American jobs. Mark Burnett should not be the US Special Envoy to the UK. He shouldn't. He can be. He can't be a US ambassador because he's not a US citizen. But he can be one of this government's special envoy because it doesn't require US citizenship. They usually are US citizens but they don't have to be. Here's Chump giving away another job that could have gone to an American but instead handing it to a foreigner who doesn't even live in the United States.
Some in the public -- people other than political junkies -- are paying attention to important stories. Such as? Epstein-Maxwell, immigration, the looming shut down, inflation, jobs, the abuse of government by targeting people like Comey, etc.
And here comes Acosta dragging in the dead bird that no one cares to see.
Not only do we not want to see it, its harming us.
How so?
On the set of THE APPRENTICE are we supposed to think a rape took place? On camera? Chump probably said something sexist and vile and disgusting.
But what does it matter at this point?
More to the point, the middle of America sees this garbage -- this Acosta garbage -- that time is being wasted on and they see is as unserious and just an effort to get Chump. In other words, they see it as all the work Acosta did before at CNN.
Acosta's not keeping us directed or focused, he's distracting us and he's giving people reason to blow off serious complaints about Chump .
There was nothing of value. Nothing. Acosta let the disgraced Billy Bush lie about his career and he let him float support for Chump's war on immigrants. See, Bush explained, he was just in Ireland and he spoke to some men there and they support Chump. Oh, how we've missed Thomas Friedman and his Taxi Cab Confessions. Whenever Friedman wanted to make a point in the '00s, he generally found a taxi cab driver to hide behind. It's interesting, if you look at his body of work, how every tax cab driver he ever noted in those bad columns agreed with Freidman's own views. Never once was there a NEW YORK TIMES column by Friedman about how a taxi cab driver disagreed with him
We disagreed with Billy Bush. We especially disagreed with his lies about his time on THE TODAY SHOW. He was a victim, Billy insisted, because the producer didn't want someone from ACCESS HOLLYWOOD on a news show.
No, the chief producers and the entire crew and talent objected that a gossip columnist was brought on. And that objection only grew stronger when the gossip couldn't -- or wouldn't -- nail down the facts. Most infamously, Billy was enthralled with a male athlete who was 'attacked.' Only, turns out, he wasn't. And any real journalist would have asked the right questions -- the ones Billy didn't. Not only did Billy fail at journalism, he got into an on air row with Al Roker. Al. Roker. Known as the nicest man on daytime television. And during that on air beef -- Al was right, Billy was wrong.
And Acosta was wrong to waste everyone's time.
In addition to the topics noted prior, there's also a good chance that the government will go into shut down this week. They have until Tuesday night to pass a short term funding bill. At midnight, it's over. Dems were supposed to meet with Chump last week but Chump cancelled the meeting and bluffed and blustered backing off only when polling indicated that the public could blame a shut down on the Republican Party since they control the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Now Chump rushes to meet with the Democrats on Monday.
Dems are concerned about the cuts to healthcare, to cite one important issue. They need to stand up for their concerns.
Without any real messaging, they are already winning.
And if the shut down happens? As soon as Tuesday night turns into Wednesday morning (midnight), Democrats should be in front of every camera pointing out Chump's inability to pull a budget together.
It should, in fact, go something like this.
Minority House Leader Hakeem Jeffries: He had time to golf but didn't have time to work on our nation's budget.
Minority Senate Leader Chuck Schumer: He had time to go after James Comey but he didn't have time to put together a budget.
Senator Patty Murray: He had time to repeatedly attack veterans' health care but he didn't have time to put together a budget.
Senator Ron Wyden: He had time to invade Portland, but he didn't have time to put together a budget.
Senator Maria Cantwell: He had time to demand Microsoft fire Lisa Monaco but he didn't have time to put together a budget.
Senator Tammy Baldwin: He had turn to destroy American farmers while bailing out Argentina but he didn't have time to put together a budget.
US House Rep Alexandria Ocasio Cortez: He had time to work on getting Jimmy Kimmel fired but he didn't have time to put together a budget.
Senator Elizabeth Warren: He's had time to launch attacks on Social Security but he didn't have time to put together a budget.
US House Rep Jasmine Crockett: He made time to terrorize immigrants without criminal records but couldn't make time to put together a budget.
If the country goes into a shutdown, that should be the messaging over and over. How Chump has stuck his big nose into everything -- including in private business, in colleges, in museum, etc, etc -- but he hasn't made time to go the actual work that a president is supposed to focus on.
The showdown all by itself will be evidence of Chump's failure. But Democrats can also use that event to demonstrate all the time he's wasted on everything but helping the American people.
In a crazy and crazed week, it made sense that Charlie Sheen would show up Friday on FOX "NEWS" to speak to speak on GUTFELD! Where else would he go?
Always be wary of programs like GUTFELD! whose titles come with an exclamation point. Does the host mistake himself for a show biz dynamo? GUTFELD WITH A G!
Someone should break it to the 'comedian' who couldn't even handle stand-up, his energy levels weren't high when he was young him, as a failed stand up he couldn't keep audiences awake as a young person and he's 61 now. In fact, if any three words best described Gutfeld they would be "low energy levels."
But there he was making nice with professional leper Charlie Sheen. Charlie can't get work these days -- are you surprised? -- so he's written a book and made a NETFLIX special to try to drum up support. The special -- and his interviews promoting it -- are filled with nothing but one lie after another.
We know Charlie and have for years. He's never been more embarrassing than he is currently. He likes to claim that he's the victim when it comes to AIDS and that no one -- woman or man -- caught AIDS from him. He doesn't know that. No one knows that. What is known? Long after he was diagnosed, he continued to sleep with women and men.
Creeps like Gutfeld and Bill Maher won't touch those topics. They won't call out a person with AIDS who sleeps with people he doesn't disclose his disease -- his sexually transmitted disease -- to.
Maher?
Yeah, Bill had him on too -- but over a week ago: September 12th. Again, the "!" in "GUTFELD!" really needs to go.
Creepy Bill Maher mainly spent his time with Sheen trying to figure out if Charlie was a top or a bottom when having sex with men. For those of you currently being schooled in DeSantis' Florida, a top is the penetrating partner and a bottom is the one receiving. Now don't think the bottom is just passive. There are such things as power bottoms and even alpha bottoms. They are still the party penetrated but they are calling the shots We should also note that two men can have sex without anal penetration and some couples and couplings eschew anal penetration.
Yesterday with Gutfeld, Charlie was mainly attempting to audition for a job insisting that he "saw the dismissal as a potential job opening, and if they want to, you know, fix that show and get some ratings, this guy."
We were embarrassed for him. It's the kind of cringe no one has seen on TV since loopy Sean Young threw together a tacky costume and went on a campaign to insist Tim Burton should cast her as Catwoman.
Though Charlie wasn't on Bill's Friday show last week, it was
still embarrassing. Alex Wagner was the token woman -- in the last
years, Maher's not just screening his guests in the studio audience (he's Rushbo wanting
Dittoheads only), he's also moved to only offer one woman or no women.
Again, he just wants ditto heads.
He proved how useless he was by playing footsie with Tom Homan. The closest to uncomfortable he made the acting head of ICE was when he invented this mythical waitress Carol who got deported and allowed Homan to 'address' the topic with the following:
What I think about every day is, again, we prioritize the worst first and in the numbers show we do it. What I've said, from day one, if you're
in the country illegally you're not off the table. You know why?
Because there are millions of people standing in line, taking their
tests, doing the background investigations, paying their fees to be part
of the greatest nation on earth. If you want to be a part of greatest
nation, there's a right way and wrong way to do it. If, like it or not,
the ones who are here illegally cheated the system.
There are so many ways to respond to that nonsense.
Bill Maher found none of them.
"What I've said, from day one, if you're
in the country illegally you're not off the table." The most obvious response to that is, "What you've said from day one? Nobody elected you to anything fat bitch. The campaign promise was the worst of the worst and that came from Chump and not you, fat bitch."
"We prioritize the worst first and in the numbers show we do it." Really? By targeting home depot and farms? You really think gang bangers and drug traffickers work real jobs to cover up for their secret identities?
Homan blustered, "Because there are millions of people standing in line, taking their
tests, doing the background investigations, paying their fees to be part
of the greatest nation on earth." Yes, there are, millions taking tests, doing the background investigation, etc. And you're targeting them. When they show up for a court hearing, when they show up for their scheduled check ups, you're targeting them. So, fat bitch, stop pretending you're anything but a petty crook.
"Cheated the system"? So you follow the rules, do you, fat bitch?
No, he doesn't and shortly after Homan and Maher skipped off together holding hands as the credits rolled, reality broke on Homan.
A new report
from MSNBC on Saturday reveals that the agents recorded Homan, six
weeks before the 2024 election, allegedly promising to assist in
securing government contracts across the border security industry during
Trump’s second term.
Six sources familiar with the matter told MSNBC that the FBI
and justice department – then run by Joe Biden’s administration – had
intended to hold off and assess whether Homan would follow through on
his alleged promises after he was appointed as Trump’s border czar.
However, the investigation stalled after Trump took office, and in
recent weeks, officials appointed by Trump decided to close the case,
according to MSNBC.
Homan was captured on video accepting $50,000 in cash at a
meeting spot in Texas on 20 September 2024, according to an internal
summary of the case reviewed by MSNBC and sources who spoke to the
outlet.
Four sources familiar with the matter told MSNBC that
multiple federal officials believed they had a solid criminal case
against Homan for conspiracy to commit bribery. However, since Homan was
not a public official at the time he accepted the money and Trump had
not yet become president, his actions did not meet the criteria for a
standard bribery charge.
Officials eventually decided to continue
monitoring Homan once he joined Trump’s second presidential
administration. MSNBC reports that officials had been looking at four
potential criminal charges including conspiracy, bribery and two kinds
of fraud, before Trump’s new justice department shut down the
investigation.
Some idiots in the media were applauding Maher. Why? Because he defended Jimmy Kimmel who Chump, the FCC and NEXSTAR got fired from ABC last week?
Are they ignoring Chump's social media post about how ABC's THE VIEW will be the next to go? The same program Bill has attacked repeatedly and said should be off the air in the last few months?
Donald Chump is openly targeting political enemies. Last night, he posted on social media:
Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that,
essentially, ‘same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing
is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia???
They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.’ Then we
almost put in a Democrat supported U.S. Attorney, in Virginia, with a
really bad Republican past. A Woke RINO, who was never going to do his
job. That’s why two of the worst Dem Senators PUSHED him so hard. He
even lied to the media and said he quit, and that we had no case. No, I
fired him, and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal
pundits, say so. Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes
you, a lot. We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and
credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER
NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT
The
New York Times reported that Siebert had told senior justice department
officials their investigations had not unearthed enough evidence to
prosecute James.
James, a Democrat
who won a civil fraud lawsuit against Trump in 2023, has denied the
mortgage fraud allegations as "baseless" and motivated by "revenge".
"I want him out," President Donald Trump
declared on Friday, referring to Erik Siebert, the career prosecutor he
had tapped less than five months earlier to serve as the U.S. Attorney
for the Eastern District of Virginia. Siebert, who had been in the role
in an acting capacity since January and whose nomination was pending on
the Senate floor, complied in short order. His resignation was not
enough for Trump, who took
to his social-media platform Truth Social just after midnight to make
his point: “He didn’t quit, I fired him!” Trump insisted he had acted
when he was informed that Siebert had received the “UNUSUALLY STRONG
support of the two absolutely terrible, sleazebag Democrat Senators,
from the Great State of Virginia.” He was referring to Senators Mark
Warner and Tim Kaine, who, along with the state’s Republican governor,
Glenn Youngkin, had recommended Siebert for the post.
This odd justification—faulting Warner and Kaine for their
bipartisanship—should fool no one. The source of Trump’s beef with
Siebert was evident. According to numerous reports, Siebert had balked
at bringing criminal charges against two of Trump’s supposed enemies:
New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, who had sued Trump and his
company for fraud; and the former F.B.I. director James Comey, whom
Trump had fired during his first term. This moment was inevitable. Trump
has been proclaiming for years that his political opponents should be
locked up, but there is a gulf between loudly alleging criminal behavior
and amassing the evidence necessary to prove the elements of an actual
crime. The difference in Trump’s second term is that he is not about to
be deterred by such niceties. This time around, the lawyers aren’t going
to stop him.
The Trump Administration’s modus operandi has been to flood the zone
with a torrent of illegal acts. One day it uses the military to blow up
boats suspected of trafficking drugs, without legal authorization and in
defiance of both U.S. and international law; the next it threatens to
revoke the broadcast licenses of television networks
whose speech displeases the Administration. These are not discrete
incidents. They are linked by the common threads of Trump’s disdain for
the rule of law, his bloated conception of Presidential power, and his
readiness to bend the state to his will. The scope of the assault seems
intended to inure the public to the outrages it is witnessing. It is
impossible, emotionally and intellectually, to be worked up about
everything, everywhere, all at once.
But here we are. In the hierarchy of the
Administration’s horrors, the Siebert firing is about as bad as it gets.
Since Trump regained office, the Department of Justice has dismissed
career prosecutors for an array of unjustified and self-serving reasons:
for daring to have worked on the criminal cases against Trump; being
the daughter of Comey; failing to remove personal pronouns in a
signature block. It has dismissed pending cases to serve political ends,
such as that of New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams.
What’s happening now is worse. Dropping the criminal charges against
Adams amounted to a political perversion of the justice system. But
using the criminal law to punish political opponents as retribution
inflicts far greater damage. Here, a potentially guilty person doesn’t
walk free; an innocent person is harmed. The prospect of eventual
acquittal in the case of an unjustified prosecution is of little
comfort; as Trump well understands, being indicted and having to stand
trial is ruinous enough. Firing a prosecutor for refusing to pursue a
political opponent without a sufficient legal basis crosses the reddest
of lines. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd
Blanche were reported
to have privately defended Siebert and questioned the viability of the
case against James. On Saturday evening, Trump directed a Truth Social post
at his Attorney General, demanding action. “We can’t delay any longer,
it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” the President wrote. “They
impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE
MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT.” For good measure, Trump said he
would nominate his former criminal-defense lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, to
take Siebert’s place. “She will be Fair, Smart, and will provide,
desperately needed, JUSTICE FOR ALL!” Trump wrote,
of Halligan, who has been the White House staffer in charge of removing
“improper ideology” from museums, as it’s described in an executive
order. “Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot,”
he publicly assured Bondi.
In another era, of stiffer spines and greater integrity, we would be in Saturday Night Massacre
territory. On the evening of October 20, 1973, President Richard Nixon
ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire the Watergate special
prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson refused and resigned, followed by
Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. (The deed was ultimately
done by the No. 3 official, Solicitor General Robert Bork; unlike
Richardson and Ruckelshaus, he hadn’t assured lawmakers he could not
interfere with Cox’s work.) To expect a similar display of principle
from Bondi and Blanche would be to ignore their track record of
servility to Trump.
At dangerous moments like this, we need a strong media. Sadly, our media keeps failing. Take Jimmy Kimmel losing his job. That would never have happened had a compromised and lying media not wanted to ride the easy ratings bandwagon by turning The Demagogue shot dead into a hero -- see our previous reports "Media: The canonization of a demagogue" and "Media Failures."
As we noted, it was the Whiteness of it all, the shutting Black people out of the conversation, the bond among the media with their White skin. We'd also refer you to Ta-Nehisi Coates piece for VANITY FAIR last week:
Before he was killed last week, Charlie Kirk
left a helpful compendium of words—ones that would greatly aid those
who sought to understand his legacy and import. It is somewhat difficult
to match these words with the manner in which Kirk is presently being
memorialized in mainstream discourse. New York Times columnist Ezra Klein dubbed Kirk
“one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion” and a man
who “was practicing politics in exactly the right way.” California
governor Gavin Newsom
hailed Kirk’s “passion and commitment to debate,” advising us to
continue Kirk’s work by engaging “with each other, across ideology,
through spirited discourse.” Atlantic writer Sally Jenkins saluted Kirk, claiming he “argued with civility” and asserting that his death was “a significant loss for those who believe engagement can help bridge disagreements.”
The mentions of “debate” and “engagement” are references to Kirk’s
campus tours, during which he visited various colleges to take on
whoever come may. That this aspect of Kirk’s work would be so attractive
to writers and politicians is understandable. There is, after all, a
pervasive worry, among the political class, that college students,
ensconced in their own bubbles, could use a bit of shock therapy from a
man unconcerned with preferred pronouns, trigger warnings, and the
humanity of Palestinians. But it also shows how the political class’s
obsession with universities blinds it to everything else. And the
everything-else of Kirk’s politics amounted to little more than a
loathing of those whose mere existence provoked his ire.
It is not just, for instance, that Kirk held disagreeable views—that he was pro-life, that he believed in public executions, or that he rejected the separation of church and state.
It’s that Kirk reveled in open bigotry. Indeed, claims of Kirk’s
“civility” are tough to square with his penchant for demeaning members
of the LGBTQ+ community as “freaks” and referring to trans peoplewith the slur “tranny.” Faced with the prospect of a Kamala Harris presidency, Kirk told his audience that the threat had to be averted because Harris wanted to “kidnap your child via the trans agenda.”
Garden-variety transphobia is sadly unremarkable. But Kirk was a master
of folding seemingly discordant bigotries into each other, as when he
defined “the American way of life”
as marriage, home ownership, and child-rearing free of “the lesbian,
gay, transgender garbage in their school,” adding that he did not want
kids to “have to hear the Muslim call to prayer five times a day.” The
American way of life was “Christendom,” Kirk claimed, and Islam—“the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America”—was antithetical to that. Large “dedicated” Islamic areas were “a threat to America,” Kirk asserted, and New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was a “Mohammedan,”
with Kirk supposing that anyone trying to see “Mohammedism take over
the West” would love to have New York—a “prior Anglo center”—“under
Mohammedan rule.”
Kirk habituallyrailed against “Black crime,” claiming that “prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people.” He repeated the rape accusations against Yusef Salaam, a member of the exonerated Central Park Five who is now a New York City councilman, calling him a “disgusting pig”
who had gotten away with “gang rape.” Whatever distaste Kirk held for
Blacks was multiplied when he turned to those from Haiti. Haiti was, by
Kirk’s lights, a country “infested with demonic voodoo,” whose migrants were “raping your women and hunting you down at night.”
These Haitians, as well as undocumented immigrants from other
countries, were “having a field day,” per Kirk, and “coming for your
daughter next.” The only hope was Donald Trump, who had to prevail, lest Haitians “become your masters.”
We refer to the person as The Demagogue and we don't normally include links to hate speech but Coates has written a very important article. Klein's not the only one distorting truth -- and as Coates points out later in the article, to canonize TD, you have to refuse to quote his words.
And that's what they did -- even on MSNBC -- in the days after the murder.
And when Jimmy Kimmel got pulled from the airwaves last week, they still didn't have their act together. See the "The Snapshot" for September 18th, we're not going into it again. But we will note that when you do a segment on it, if you're factual, you don't say Jimmy Kimmel was incorrect in what he stated and you also don't refuse to quote what he actually said.
He was attacking TD! He was lying!
And there's an MSNBC host refusing to quote what he actually said while she insists he got his facts wrong.
What was Jimmy Kimmel's 'objectionable' statement:
The MAGA Gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who
murdered [The Demagogue] as anything other than one of them and doing
everything they can to score political points from it.
That is not a lie. It is factual. They went to town with the murder until they learned about the family of the shooter. Then they backed off. Then they rushed in to claim that it was because he was radicalized in college (one semester at Utah State University -- they leave out his multiple years after at a trade school Dixie Technical College where you get certificates, not degrees). Then they wanted to blame it on his roommate who is apparently transgender. The shooter is the shooter. And they've bent the truth repeatedly throughout their telling of The Demagogue's life and murder.
When the stupidity bled into the coverage of Jimmy Kimmel, it was noted we can't afford this stupidity. We never really could but especially not in these dark times.
Chump is committing crimes. Unlike Nixon, Chump's doing it right out in the open.
Last week,was really something. The media and various politicians made it clear that GET OUT wasn't just a film, it was their actual attitude.
If you missed it -- how could you, it had wall to wall coverage drowning everything else -- a right-wing demagogue was shot dead and every outlet tried to act as though the target was a combination of MLK, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi . . . In fact, one insane fool, a preacher in another country, actually said TD (The Demagogue, which is how we'll refer to the deceased throughout the rest of this article) was Jesus Christ, put it up on YOUTUBE on September 11th, the day after the man died. We've searched this morning's news outlets and not one word that TD rose from the dead yesterday so, hate to break it freaks who distort the Gospel of Jesus, but three days is the number required. Three days after his death, Jesus rose. We searched and searched but found no witnesses to a miracle on Saturday.
TD was just a hate merchant who offered nothing but hatred aimed at Black people, aimed at women who believed they had rights, aimed at the LGBTQ+ community, aimed at Muslims, aimed at Jews, aimed at everyone who wasn't Anglo White and straight and either dominating a woman or a woman allowing herself to be dominated.
But somehow this didn't matter.
And those of us who aren't Anglo White weren't supposed to notice.
And we certainly weren't supposed to notice when Matthew Dowd tried to provide perspective early on, MSNBC fired him. He told no lie. Everything he said was accurate.
Around 3 p.m. ET, as networks were scrambling for more details of what
happened, MSNBC’s Katy Tur spoke about Utah’s gun laws before asking
Dowd to talk about the “environment in which a shooting like this
happens.” He told her, “We don’t know if this was a supporter shooting
their gun off in celebration. So we have no idea about this.”
He added about [TD], “He’s been one of the most divisive, especially
divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this
sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go
back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to
hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You
can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying
these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s
the unfortunate environment we are in.”
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade suggested the best way
to deal with violent homeless people, if they refuse government help or
are not sent to prison, could be to execute them.
Kilmeade shared his suggestion on the Sept. 10 episode of Fox & Friends.
“Involuntary lethal injection or something,” Kilmeade said. “Just kill ’em.”
Now during that discussion, I wrongly said they should get lethal
injections. I apologize for that extremely callous remark. I am
obviously aware that not all mentally ill, homeless people act as the
perpetrator did in North Carolina and that so many homeless people
deserve our empathy and compassion.
Scapegoat an entire group of people -- you know, the way TD did his entire adult life -- and someone who points that reality out is fired but call for the homeless to be executed and offer a three sentence "apology"
Second, it wasn't just that MSNBC fired him. It was the silence from all the anchors on air. Joy Reid gets fired -- we thought that was wrong -- and there's a really around her after the fact. A useless rally as some -- including Reid -- felt. No effort to keep her on but the firing of a Black woman from solo hosting a show is disturbing -- especially for those of us on the left. So to a lot of us, some of the MSNBC on airs 'protesting' Joy's firing after the fact appeared to just be attempting to look like they cared about diversity.
We saw no concern over diversity on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday from MSNBC -- and CBS and NBC and ABC.
The very Whiteness of their coverage, in fact, made clear that a line existed -- had always existed -- even on the left. The line where White people are friends with one another at the end regardless of politics or racism or anything else. To watch even MSNBC was, for those of us who are not Anglo White, to grasp that TD was their friend due to skin color and that, also due to skin color, we were not. Or as Barbra Streisand's character tells the epitome of Whiteness Robert Redford in THE WAY WE WERE, "Your friends make me feel like I'm invited for drinks and everyone else is staying for supper."
The rest of us got in on a guest pass and that pass is now being revoked.
That does explain how what happened with the media.
If we dared to point out reality -- and this was true even for White people who tried to point out reality -- we were attacked.
It never should have happened.
That response never should have happened. It especially shouldn't have been the response of Cowardly Democrats. The Democratic Party's base -- their most loyal voters -- are Blacks, women and LGBTQIA+ people. And those groups got shoved to the ground as various elected Dems rushes to reassure the country that White is right. Always.
The party didn't just tick off voters, they also begged for attacks from the Republicans.
Someone was shot and they died That event happens multiple times a day. And multiple times a day, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders and so many other elected Dems do not feel the need to go before microphones or release statements saying "That's bad. That's wrong."
But there they were showing up in public, wearing hairshirts, self-flagellating as though it was a sexual turn on.
It's murder. We've made it a crime as a nation because we believe it's wrong.
TD was not well known before his death.
Most Americans had no idea who he was. Sorry to break it to the political types -- whether you provide commentary, serve in Congress or work on campaigns, most Americans don't know who you are and don't care. The last true political celebrities emerged in 1992 and their names are Mary Matalin and James Carville. Their couple hood inspired a film (SPEECHLESS with Geena Davis and Michael Keaton). She worked on George HW Bush's campaign while he worked on Bill Clinton's campaign and they fell in love and married (and are still married today). It gave a human interest quality and it made them famous. No one knows who David Axelrod is married to -- not even the limited number of Americans who know the name David Axelrod is.
But damned if the panty-pissing, flood the zone that MSNBC led on and others followed didn't canonize TD. Especially when they wouldn't allow reality to be presented. Only hagiography. And as hour after hour was wasted on TD, the message became: Here is someone wonderful.
Why else would you be talking about them constantly? Especially when you weren't broadcasting the truth about them.
Chump saw the reaction, Chump saw it and used it. He and others calling for leftists to be arrested for remarks. The left's being demonized and it's a direct result of the coverage supposedly left MSNBC provided. There were real issues if you were going to cover the death of TD but MSNBC made clear with the firing of Matthew Dodd that real issues would not be allowed on air.
So the message they sent to those uninformed was: A very wonderful and important person has died.
And the message they sent to those of us who were the targets of TD's hate speech -- women, LGBTQ+ people, Black people, immigrants, Muslims and Jews -- was that we don't matter and we're not part of their group. They're not going to stand up for us but they will canonize a hate merchant provided he's White.
Again, Jordan Peele's GET OUT made it very clear that was a bonding feature but MSNBC and the rest of the media made even clearer last week.
The thing about the media is when it does its job, that's great. But when it does its job, that's only about 1% of the time. Sometimes it just provides meaningless fluff. That's sad but what's worse is when it actively makes errors or promotes lies.
FOX "NEWS"?
They have so much to answer for.
That includes: Who's the secret MR. ED fan at the network.
There is one, right?
That's the only explanation for horse-faced, 62-year-old Laura Ingraham being on the network for nearly two decades now when she should have been put out to pasture -- or dropped off at a glue factory -- over 15 years ago. Instead, they inflict her nightly on shut-ins around the country.
Must be for the laughs.
Like on her program tonight where she felt the most important thing to do was to castigate young American women over the results on an NBC NEWS poll. Young women were not making marriage their number one goal -- or number two, or number three, or number four . . .
This distressed Laura so much she had to call in professional metrosexual Charlie Kirk.
While he unsuccessfully attempted to come off manly, Laura tsk-ed tsk-ed and we had to wonder if we were the only ones laughing?
Others watching were aware, right, that 62-year-old Laura has never, ever married?
She also attacked young American women for wanting to put off having children.
Viewers were aware that Laura was over 40 when she adopted, right?
For years and years, the network's slogan was "Fair and balanced." More and more, it seems to be "Hypocrites in hiding."
Take 'Christian' Charlie who told Laura that young women had their rankings wrong and the order of them wrong. They should have babies right now and can work later in life. He insisted that "young men are ordering their life correctly. They want to first and foremost have children, get married, and then they have a nice job or to be able to travel."
Oh, so the right order, per Charlie, is that a man gets a woman pregnant, then they get married and then the men get "a nice job or [the ability] to be able to travel." Such passes for 'family values' from con artists pimping Chump.
And Charlie never looks less manly then when he opens his mouth and multiple clutch bags fall out.
We caught Laura wallowing in her own hypocrisy, stewing in it, basting in her own foul juices back on Thursday, August 28th when friends started calling saying she was making a bigger ass of herself than usual. What was she doing?
She was raging against California Governor Gavin Newsome. She bitched, moaned and whined that he wasn't being fair to Convicted Felon Donald Chump.
Worse than that, she insisted, his mocking Chump could lead to another assassination attack!!!!!
!!!!
She had a lot of rage and anger to express . . . over a fantasy she came up with herself.
What struck as odd was that all month, she's ignored a very real example of how words bring about violence.
Two weeks prior to her trashing Gavin Newsome, police officer David Rose was killed during an attack on the US Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. He was 33 years old.
On August 8, 2025, 30-year-old Patrick Joseph White of Kennesaw, Georgia, attacked the CDC's Roybal Campus in Atlanta, Georgia. White attempted to enter the headquarters, but was thwarted by security. White then drove across the street to a CVS Pharmacy
where he barricaded himself inside on the second floor, and fired at
the campus with a rifle, striking four CDC buildings on multiple floors
over 180 times, breaking about 150 windows and piercing some of the
blast-resistant windows; authorities recovered more than 500 shell
casings and five firearms after the shooting.[100][101] 33-year-old David Rose, a DeKalb County Police Department officer, was fatally wounded by White as he arrived on the scene.[102] Officers entered the pharmacy and found White dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.[103][104]
White is believed to have been motivated by distrust in vaccines, and believed the COVID-19 vaccine had made him depressed and suicidal.[102] He had reached out for mental health assistance for weeks before the attack.[102]
Fired But Fighting, a group of laid-off CDC employees, blamed the
attack on the anti-vaccine rhetoric of members of the Trump
administration, saying that Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,
"is directly responsible for the villainization of CDC's workforce
through his continuous lies about science and vaccine safety".[105][102]
A union representing CDC employees called on both the CDC and the
leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services to denounce
vaccine misinformation, and said that the attack was a result of
compounding misinformation and obloquy towards science and health
officials. While Kennedy Jr. had reached out to CDC staff and said "no
one should face violence while working to protect the health of others",
Dr. Jerome Adams, a former Surgeon General, described Kennedy Jr.'s response as "tepid" and that Kennedy Jr. must do more given his past "inflammatory rhetoric".[106] On August 11, Kennedy Jr. toured the Roybal Campus with deputy secretary Jim O'Neill and CDC director Susan Monarez, but did not speak with the media during the visit, although he did meet privately with Rose's widow.[100] A day later, in an interview with Scripps News,
when Kennedy Jr. was asked if he had a message for CDC employees
concerned about the consequences of misinformation about vaccines, he
said political violence was "wrong" and claimed not enough was known
about White's motives yet to draw conclusions before criticizing the
government's previous vaccination efforts as "overreaching" and that the
government had said "things that are not always true" in order to get
people vaccinated.[107] Trump did not respond to the shooting of the police officer.[108][109]
Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention staffers are voicing frustration over Health
Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s past vaccine comments, following
Friday’s shooting at the agency’s headquarters in Atlanta that left one police officer dead.
Although
the motive of the suspected shooter -- Patrick White, 30, from Kennesaw,
Georgia -- remains unknown, he told a neighbor that he believed the
Covid vaccines had made him sick, a source told NBC News on the condition of anonymity.
[. . .]
For some employees, the shooting highlighted growing hostility toward
public health officials, which they feel has been shaped by Kennedy’s
long history of spreading vaccine misinformation, including the Covid
vaccine.
In 2021, Kennedy filed a citizens’ petition
requesting that the Food and Drug Administration revoke the
authorization of the Covid vaccines. The same year, he described the
Covid shot as the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”
For
some employees, the shooting highlighted growing hostility toward
public health officials, which they feel has been shaped by Kennedy’s
long history of spreading vaccine misinformation, including the Covid
vaccine.
In 2021, Kennedy filed a citizens’ petition
requesting that the Food and Drug Administration revoke the
authorization of the Covid vaccines. The same year, he described the
Covid shot as the "deadliest vaccine ever made."
Just last week, Kennedy terminated 22 contracts
focused on developing mRNA vaccines -- the same technology used to
develop Pfizer’s and Moderna's Covid shots. In an announcement on X,
Kennedy claimed "mRNA technology poses more risks than benefits for
these respiratory viruses."
She's ignored that but she feels Gavin mocking Chump the way Chump mocks others was just too risky. Or that's the latest lie she told her viewers.
Of course, FOX "NEWS" is not the only problem.
Norah O'Donnell demonstrated this week how much damage that even a professional and trained journalist can do. Bounced from the anchor desk on CBS EVENING NEWS, she's trying to reinvent herself and she did so this week via an interview with Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Interview?
More like infomercial. Amy's got a book to sell and she used CBS' airtime to sell her wares while Norah appeared to snooze through the remarks.
If there was any reason to interview the justice -- this was her first TV interview since joining the Supreme Court in 2020 -- it was to get an understanding of DOBBS and grasp what it mean for future rulings from the ethically challenged Amy.
DOBBS overturned ROE V WADE. Norah pressed her on that. Ames can't take responsibility so she yammered away including claiming, "The Supreme Court's decision in DOBBS gave that decision to the democratic process and to the states. It didn't roll back rights. It didn't render abortion illegal, unconstitutional or anything else and -- in effect -- many states very fully protected abortion rights -- more than under the regime of ROE since the time of the decision in DOBBS."
Norah tried to follow it up by pointing out that it overturned the Constitutional right to an abortion and Ames insisted, "Well, what it said" -- "it"? she was one of the six justices who voted to strike down ROE -- "is that the Constitution had not protected the abortion right under the Due Process Clause. And it said that Roe had been an error and Casey had been an error to hold otherwise."
Amy's a liar and we all know it. But we hope you read the above because Norah soon decided to take a nap during the interview. That was right after she asked about the Court and whether it would attempt to overturn marriage equality?
In 2015, OBERGEFELL V HODGES was the case that decided marriage equality. Amy replied to Norah, "You know, what the court is trying to do is see what the American people have decided. And sometimes the American people have expressed themselves in the Constitution itself, which is our fundamental law; sometimes in statutes. But the court should not be imposing its own values on the American people. That's for the democratic process."
Norah just snoozed through it. Worse, some idiots in the press are hailing that remark as proof that OBERFEFELL is safe.
No, it's not. And the idiot justice just told you that: "You know, what the court is trying to do is see what the American
people have decided. And sometimes the American people have expressed
themselves in the Constitution itself, which is our fundamental law;
sometimes in statutes. But the court should not be imposing its own
values on the American people. That's for the democratic process."
Too many moderates are reading that to mean that she's saying the Court she's on now "should not be imposing its own values on the American people," which, in fact, she's not. She's saying that the 2015 decision was a case of the Supreme Court "imposing its own values on the American people."
That's what she's saying.
And that's how journalists -- even real ones -- disappoint the American public. They refuse to cut through the nonsense and instead rush to tie a bow around everything.
If we had a media we deserved, we wouldn't have Chump in the White House. This week, in "Stop Acting Like This Is Normal" (NEW YORK TIMES), Ezra Klein offered, "I often heard people complain that Democrats lacked a message. What
Democrats really lacked was power. They didn’t have the House or the
Senate [. . .]" And he's right. But the Dems also didn't have the media. Not even at MSNBC which is to Dems what FOX "NEWS" is to Republicans. We could have had it and we certainly had the facts on our side. But we were betrayed and backstabbed by Norman Solomon and Rashida Tlaib. The most important issue in any American election is and always should be: America.
Sitting out the election or voting for Jill Stein or Donald Chump did not end the war on Gaza and only idiots and liars thought it would. We do not believe that Kamala Harris was 'the lesser of two evils.' But for those fools who did, grasp that Operation Iron Wall has killed over a thousand people and displaced 4,000 more per UNRWA. Operation Iron Wall? Netanyahu kicked it off January 21st -- the same day Chump was sworn in for his second term. That's blood on a lot of hands -- the hands of people like Amy Goodman who used their 'left' outlets to tear down Kamala Harris and elect Donald Chump.
We don't get the government we deserve, we get the government the media markets.
Last week, in a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump took
the Smithsonian’s museums to task for emphasizing “how bad slavery was.”
The White House staff followed up on August 21 with a statement titled “President Trump Is Right About the Smithsonian,” flagging several objectionable exhibits, including one, weirdly, on Anthony Fauci.
Trump is in eminent company. For nearly a century, between the 1860s
and the 1950s, defenders of slavery succeeded in creating a dominant
narrative in the nation’s textbooks, trying to show that slavery wasn’t
so bad and that the real outrage was the abbreviated period of
Reconstruction.
The whitewashing of slavery began as early as 1867, with publication of a book by Edward Pollard, titled The Lost Cause.
In this account, slavery was mostly a benign system that uplifted
Blacks; plantation owners were typically kindly. This echoed a century
of antebellum Southern propaganda. Pollard contended that the Civil War
was not really about slavery; it was a war over states’ rights.
As public education systems became more widespread in the South after
the Civil War, states of the former Confederacy set standards to ensure
that textbooks for public schools would portray a sympathetic view.
These laws influenced Northern publishers. Meanwhile, some prominent
Northern scholars embraced the Lost Cause view. The most notable of
these was William Archibald Dunning of Columbia University.
Jim, Dona, Jess, Ty, "Ava" started out this site as five students enrolled in journalism in NY. Now? We're still students. We're in CA. Journalism? The majority scoffs at the notion.
From the start, at the very start, C.I. of The Common Ills has helped with the writing here. C.I.'s part of our core six/gang. (C.I. and Ava write the TV commentaries by themselves.) So that's the six of us. We also credit Dallas as our link locator, soundboard and much more. We try to remember to thank him each week (don't always remember to note it here) but we'll note him in this. So this is a site by the gang/core six: Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I. (of The Common Ills).
