Reading this right here, I’m reminded why the news feels unreal: a freakin Fox alum at Defense, influencers shaping policy, and even a chatbot calling reality “impossible.” You ain’t crazy. You’re tired because your attention is being worked while the money moves. The fix is small and stubborn: choose receipts over spectacle, back reporters who show their work, vote in the quiet races, and talk to the neighbor who trusts you.
Restore the Fairness doctrine and them some, like allowing third parties air-time as well. ⚖️ Representative Crockett has a great campaign ad that uses Trump's crassly classless behavior against himself. 💡 Great idea: get Trump to drumpf himself. 🥳 Cornered scorpions sting the other scorpions and then sting themselves. 😠
My wife (who is much smarter than I am) and I were discussing the marketing genius of Trump. He is not a smart man or a kind man. He is unable to empathize with anyone but himself. He and his sycophants have done exactly nothing to make America great, in fact quite the opposite. But he is still, in his feeble and demented state a great marketer.
In the late 1970's and throughout the 1980's, I attended several IBM rollouts of new mainframes, peripherals and software enhancements. IBM put on amazing dog and pony shows bragging about their hardware and software. In passing, they put down their rivals while lying about their products. In other words, they were using the Roger Ailes marketing model.
They were bullies just like Trump and their products were inferior to Hitachi's and Amdahl's, their major competitors. Furthermore they were much more expensive, slower and not as well engineered. A good friend of mine became a rep for Hitachi and he took me to the Hitachi showroom in San Jose. On display, they had the largest IBM mainframe and peripherals and the comparable Hitachi machines. They opened up the machines to see the electronics. IBM's machines were filled with spaghetti wiring while Hitachi's were neat and much smaller. BIGGER, BETTER, FASTER, CHEAPER. It was obvious which was better. And so our company replaced our IBM equipment with Hitachi's.
The local IBM manager in Springfield, IL called each of our board members telling them that I was basically an idiot for switching from their equipment and it wasn't too late to cancel the Hitachi order. Fortunately, our Board saw through their BS and we went with Hitachi.
And this is the Donald Trump marketing model. If you aren't on board, he will do everything he can to make your life miserable.
GJ, last year, I was watching a podcast on YouTube, and woman who is an expert in her field, ( sorry, I can't remember her name) said something which explained so much about the Trump followers. She said that Trump is one of the most skilled propogandist who's ever lived. With the help of big money and FOX "News", he was able to focus on people's fears, prejudices, and discontent with how they perceived as being "used" by those they see as undeserving. These fears were focused on over and over and they realized that, at last, they've found a leader who agrees with them, and will do all he can to fan the flames of his propoganda. They saw a "savior." Trump has NOTHING else going for him except his ability to promote and encourage those people's fears and racist beliefs. I always wondered why in the world mothers in cults would allow their 10 year-old daughters to marry old men who were in their 80s and had 80 other young wives. Propoganda, appeal to people's weaknesses and fears over and over, the wearing down of rational minds can cause people to discard any sense of integrity or compassion or reality. Trump is that 80 year old cult leader who can make his suseptible followers do anything he wants without question. That's just my take.
It’s not ‘just your take’. And Trump isn’t a great con-man really, any more than the classroom bully ‘converts’ weaklings to submit & join his gang in order to belong & attain power they otherwise wouldn’t have.
Jay Jay Eh, if Trump isn't a great con man, then please tell me who who think IS a great con man. He's a big bully who thinks he can throw his weight and money around and people will cower in obedience. Consider his pathetic yes-people Cabinet. Seems as if you're downplaying the devastating effects on people by bullies and con men.
By ‘not great’ I mean not especially smooth or skilled, often just plain bullying, pandering to the lowest common denominator - his *success is something else & undeniable … but even then he LOST the popular vote to Clinton & came very close to Harris.
His tactics appear clear to anyone outside his undereducated, racist etc. base.
And just the other day used the phrase "insubordinate" in his horrible verbal assault on a black reporter.
Not to someone in his employ, but 100% in violation of the 1A that Gov't cannot suppress free speech and the press - except DJT expects DPRK sycophancy.
- JFC, "insubordinate" ???
He literally is decompensating to his true self of how he sees people and reporters as subjects to be his loyal water carriers for his insane BS!
You’re right Pam! Other facts…Americans have become a very pathetic, hopeless electorate…because it requires little or no effort! Remember 2024! They like shiny objects which pleasure them. This something tRump understands and plays to. Our present Government contains a majority of self serving, “do nothings” or perhaps just cowards! There is a sickening scarcity of American Patriots. Then there are the fools who believe everything will be put right by the Midterms. Can you imagine what this country will look like in November of 26? Cause tRump ain’t going anywhere! Oh yeah…if he died tomorrow we would be in a worse situation! Of course all the convicted and imprisoned felons probably would know they wouldn’t be pardoned …maybe!!!
While I share your hatred for the man and everything he stands for I would humbly submit that you are greatly underestimating his super power. When all is said and done and hopefully the country returns to sanity, Trump will go down as the greatest most successful con man in history. Morally depraved, character devoid of substance yes but still the greatest con man ever. It makes me sick to think that 50 years from now historians will still be talking about him. Evil yes but when all is said and done he has achieved a permanent level of notiriety that rivals Hitler.
So yes in this one area, conning, this evil POS has unrivaled skill.
If he's remembered as an evil, immoral con man, in my opinion that would be good. Let him and his sycophants be named and remembered along with Hitler, Stalin, drug lords, grifters, and gangsters. Hold him and them up for scorn so that future generations will be reminded!
Marc, I, for one do not underestimated his super power. He has so many degenerates around him to further empower him. How they can smile and bow down to his cruelness and stupidity is beyond my comprehension, but that's what keeps him in power. Republican Congress members who have sold their souls to him could have stopped some of his dangerous nonsense, but they were and are afraid I d of his perceived "strength" and super power.
He had a helluva a lot of help from the Master of Evil Propaganda, Putin himself, and the Project 2025 goons that got SCOTUS and the GOP stacked with their lawbreaking disciples
Well, said Pam. It is perplexing but having Fox News perpetuate your BS is likely a game changer as was having Charlie Kirk and Joe Rogan, etc. supporting you.
“There is no one left,” McClure wrote, “none but all of us.”
Where have I heard that before? Let me think … wait a minute! Now I remember:
“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children.” (Matthew 11:25)
I think it's more of a reflection on how the media, social and otherwise, have dumbed down America more than a reflection on any "skill" exhibited by the orance menace.
“ After a century of gradual expansion of press rights in the United States, the country is experiencing its 🔻 first significant and prolonged decline in press freedom in modern history, and 🔥 Donald Trump's return to the presidency is greatly exacerbating the situation.
At a time when press freedom is experiencing a worrying decline in many parts of the world, a major — yet often underestimated — factor is seriously weakening the media: economic pressure.
Much of this is due to *ownership concentration, *pressure from advertisers and *financial backers, and *public aid that is restricted, absent or allocated in an opaque manner.”
The U.S. lists at 🔹57, Canada 22, UK 20, Australia 29, Israel 122, Ireland 7, Sweden 4, Norway 1 … just to give an idea.
I have to agree with you. Joseph Smith started one of the biggest protestant religions with a total grift. So many times, these folks come along who have that kind of magnetic ability to hypnotize followers. Now we have the biggest grifter and conman in history walking among us.
Right out of the Goebbels playbook. Read or reread IN THE GARDEN OF THE BEASTS by Erik Larson and watch the rise of the Third Reich in the early 1930's. Berlin owns that past. Even as the city acknowledges what happened there, theirs has risen again in a vibrant celebration of art, science, culture, history, and humanity at-large.
Maybe that was true, even 10 years ago, but not anymore. He's been a puppet ever since the election. He is controlled by the oligarchs who bribe him and Steven Miller who is controlling the plan (Project 2025) and the narrative. Here's a great explanation of why WE need to change the narrative, ignore DT and go after his "handlers" and co-conspirators. (Looking at you John Roberts and SCOTUS!) https://substack.com/home/post/p-181001631 "DAMMIT It's Not Alzheimer's! Here's Why It's A Far Worse Nightmare Scenario"
Yeah, it's bad. But there was good (happy?) news today.
A Democrat won the mayoral race in Miami for the first time in 30 years. That is a big fucking deal when you consider that a majority of the voters in Miami are brown.
And Mackenzie Scott has given away over $7.2 billion to 186 different organizations, with no strings attached, around the world.
Nancy, pupper masters is the reason I want him to shed his mortal coils in front of all of us. Otherwise, I fear the cabal will hide it and continue to do evil in his name.
Totally agree. And I found the facts in the article fascinating. I sent it on to a group of people, who would recognize the differences in frontal lobe dementia to Alzheimers. It’s also frankly terrifying because of Miller & Vought, the evil duo
pulling the strings-writing the scripts.
But, that win in Miami, FL is huge.
Yay 😃 I need to stay buoyed, head up moving forward thinking positive thoughts
Dr. George notes that if you understand the symptoms of Frontotemporal Dementia, such as confabulation and disorganized speech, you can "move from a stressful “Why the fuck is he saying this!?!” to an objective “Hmmm, another confabulation story.”
Unfortunately, much of the MSM, including NPR, are still trying to make his statements and actions make sense. They are using the wrong lens for analysis. It is like debating the quality of the clothes the naked person is wearing.
Hi William! Good to know there are at least 2 of us making these connections! Don't loose hope. Here is a post I think you'll find very, very, interesting, as are the rest of his writings. https://thewestpointhistoryprofessor.substack.com/p/a-powerful-cell-is-operating-the Another person I follow who covers the current events from a legal, and if possible -hopeful, perspective is Robert B Hubbell's Todays Edition newsletter. He's my first read in the am before I have my coffee and tackle HCR and many others. https://substack.com/profile/3956425-robert-b-hubbell Chin up! Remember the French revolution? And we have a big advantage in that the middle class is NOT going to accept becoming poor without a fight! And a large portion of the population (at least in New England) have ancestors that fought in the American Revolution. And we won't give up our democracy without a fight!
The GOP is working overtime with suppression tactics, even though DJT is so unpopular and cruel. I will be surprised if we win the midterms given the GOP’s record of voter suppression.
Back then, we had no idea what was really going on, and if not for the great journalists and newsmen of the time, we would have known considerably less. CBS and Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, and a few others were trusted because of their gravitas. Cronkite was "the most Trusted Man in America". Wonder who the most trusted man in America is now?!
Now, the decades long republican attacks on education, Citizens United, and blanket corruption has dumbed down America to the point that a con man liar rapist pedophile grifter, and many like him, have taken over our country in record time. The venom of lies spat at Americans continues minute by minute and the general public remains angry, fearful and apathetic, obliviously shopping for Xmas.
I started as a mainframe programmer on IBM equipment in 1977 and I drank the kool-aid for several years. But when I started going to their marketing events and seeing the mismatch between what they were saying and using the equipment (hardware, software and documentation) that I slowly came around.
I live about 20 minutes from Binghamton NY where the main IBM facilities were for many years - worked for a construction co that did lots of in-plant work - we also built many of their facilities in NYS.
Obviously, those buildings are empty or "gone" now. But IBM was a big deal here for many years. Also the clean-up of hazardous materials went on for quite a while afterwards.
Of course, our company used IBM computers etc.
Hearing of your experience and your viewpoints regarding IBM caught my eye!!
I just spent the night in Binghamton last week on my way to the NE-PSU football game. It was much larger than I expected. I found a really nice Mexican restaurant and I was the only customer the entire time I was there from about 7:30 - 8:15.
But first, Intel and Microsoft. I was living in Sacramento in 1979-1981 and had several friends that worked for Intel at the time. We spent quite a bit of time in Santa Clara with several Intel engineers. Intel, Apple and the other tech companies in the Bay Area were driving up real estate prices like crazy at the time. One of the engineers bought a small 2 bedroom house in 1975 for $40k and sold it for $120k in 1980. Insanity.
Yes, since day 1- coming down the escalator - I have always thought of him as being a marketing genius. I saw right through the choreography of that clip and wondered who that slimy guy was.
I knew who he was from one 10 minute viewing of The Apprentice well before that. He made my skin crawl and an instinctual revulsion. I told everyone I knew and my Congressional delegation in 2016. Oh, well. We aren't the brightest species.
This quote states what Heather and MOST Americans have been saying since the attack of the US Capitol with Trump’s blessings and cruel support of the elite that he answers to. He is their very willing puppet becomes he craves the stage ( remember all his TV shows). “Trump has always been a salesman with an instinctive understanding of the power of media. That sense helped him to rise to power in 2016 by leveraging an image Republicans had embraced since the 1980s: that the reason certain white Americans were being left behind in the modern world was not that Republican policies had transferred more than $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%, but that lazy and undeserving Black and Brown Americans and women were taking handouts from the government rather than working.”
Gary, being in graphics and desktop publishing, I can tell a similar story about Adobe Systems, whose flagship software app is Photoshop, which has become a genericized trademark. Photoshop's image-editing capabilities aren't that impressive. But the addition of "filters" produced by third parties (at extra cost) is what makes it powerful.
In the 1990s, Adobe attempted to capture the graphics and publishing industry by developing a suite of apps that handled all aspects of publishing. The apps were, as software critics describe them, "bloatware." That is, the software was designed with excessive amounts of code, causing them to take up disproportionate hard-drive space, while running slowly and inefficiently. Moreover, the user interface was unfriendly and inefficient. Adobe created the myth that this suite of apps interacted with each other to provide a "streamlined workflow," and use of competitors' software would interfere with this workflow. A lot of user-companies bought into it and Adobe achieved dominance.
Adobe added insult to injury by releasing "version updates" that included precious few improvements or new features, to the tune of over $1,000 per update. For that reason, many customers skipped updates.
Adobe didn't like this, so they led the software industry transition from the perpetual license model to the subscription model. This required customers to have an internet connection to use Adobe software. Upon launching an app, the app would "phone home" to verify the user had paid their monthly ransom. If the ransom was paid, the app would work. If not, the app was unusable and files could not be opened.
My former boss had already caved to Adobe pressure when I joined his agency. He used Adobe Illustrator to create drawings and illustrations and I preferred Macromedia Freehand. We maintained an ongoing, good-natured feud about which was better. Eventually, Adobe bought Freehand with the sole intention of killing it, which they promptly did. After much research, I transitioned to the Affinity creative suite from Serif, which still offered perpetual licenses for very reasonable prices. The software is just as powerful and far more efficient. Unfortunately (in my opinion), Serif recently sold its software to Canva, an online platform that operates by persuading uneducated novices that they can create professional-looking graphics all by themselves without hiring professionals. I am dubious about the future of the Affinity suite, and will probably find myself searching (again) for a replacement. Such is our world these days.
IBM was a big disappointment. When they came out with their computer we felt that the competition with Apple was over. IBM and Microsoft should have dominated the market.
IBM never understood the individual PC market and how they would be business work stations in the future, until it was too late. I'm not sure why they didn't realize that the home computer market was an incredible opportunity for them. For one thing, it was easy for a radio shack junkie to buy the parts necessary to build their own machine that would run MS-DOS software. And when Microsoft released Windows, it was game over for IBM in the PC market.
Outside of the Trumpian MAGA world, it seems to me that people are kinder to one another than pre-Trump. Maybe it's just me, but it feels like we're all looking for kindness in one another and most people here in downcast Maine seem to be on board.
But, it's not just here either. Since Trump came to power in 2016, I have traveled to well over half of the states and Northern Europe. People seem to be friendly and kind where ever I travel.
Agreed. When I come across people being unkind, at least two-thirds of the time, I seem 'coincidentally' to be in what my sister calls a sh*tful mood.
There was parable that my father often told when I was little, A local Congregationalist Minister in Vermont, who grew up in Atlanta, speaks with two members of the flock, both dyed in the blue-wool Yankees, who are moving to Atlanta.
The first congregant says, "I am moving to Atlanta. You grew up there. Can you tell me what people are like there?"
The Minister answers with a question, "Well how are the people here?"
The answer us terse, "Cold and provincial; that has never changed."
The Minister replies, "Well, I hate to break the bad news. People in Atlanta are distant and almost parochial."
The next Sunday, the other congregant moving to Atlanta asks the Minister what the people are like in Atlanta. The Minister answers with the same question about people in Vermont.
The second congregant's eyes and expression light up. "That's what worries me, Padre. People in Vermont are so nice and friendl, just lovely, really. My wife and I love it here . . . ." Ad infinitum.
Finally, the Minister gets his word in edgewise, "Well, y'all are going to discover that Atlantans are warming and welcoming. You're in luck!"
I've been fortunate to have worked in over 35 states, visited 14 others and traveled and worked in about 10 foreign countries. I have found that ______ (fill in the blank) people are warm and welcoming everywhere I've been.
I know this wasn't the point of your comment, but....back in the day, what sold IBM on a lot of companies was their service. Products were good, but the service was the gold standard.
True, until it wasn't. Their mainframes required constant maintenance and so their SEs would come on site at least once a week to check for problems. It wasn't until circa 1990 that IBM's machines phoned home when there was a hardware or software cliche. Once in the late 1970's the company mainframe was down for an entire week with a hardware/software issue. They ended up flying someone in from Germany to fix it. The mean time between failures on the older mainframes was under 100 hours. Many of the largest companies had dedicated IBM staff on-site to monitor and fix their hardware.
It was fun being a programmer back then because we would play dominoes or UNO when the machine was down.
By the mid-1990's the mainframes were self-diagnosing and we rarely saw our CE's, SE's etc.
The Fairness Doctrine does not apply to cable news. Cable news channels are owned, and are not transmitted over public airwaves.
If the Very Right Wing Ellisons own CBS, that channel is broadcast over public airwaves. "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride" No one in government will EVER bring back The Fairness Doctrine. Don't look backwards; what is the fix today and going forward?
The fix is the application of something like the Fairness Doctrine. Look at Trump attacking the BBC for a quilt quotation of his unquestionably incendiary speech to his base which provoked the Capitol siege on 6 January 2021. Yet he lies every time he speaks and his lies are faithfully transmitted and repeated on right-wing media. The situation has become so biased that even Fox News has been banned from Pentagon press briefings.
The Trump administration has told the EU they unless they drop their restrictions on the digital giants they will face the full toll of tariffs on steel and other goods.
Australia has passed a law banning under-16s from social media because it doesn't adequately protect them. The answer is to grow some balls and do something about it.
Plainly his first book should have been titled, “The Art of the Lie” instead of The Art of the Deal. And Roy Cohen originally jerked his chain.
I think the good side must borrow from these propagandists by using the Madison Avenue approach. That term is is defunct now but the Madison Ave package was a marketing project to sell products. And that’s what we need to be vigilant with. But I’m afraid that we won’t use this approach. We will insist on unpopular issues because they are part of the progressive package. But now we have a gift being presented to us and that gift is the lunatics in office.
TRUE, per Reuters, trump has just seized Venezuelan Oil tanker. See, my summary of Reuters 5:10 Eastern Update below or just Google "trump oil tanker seizure".
BBC America identifies the oil tanker as "The Skipper" under a Guyana flag
With all due respect - the "progressive package" to which you refer, with a derogatory flourish, should be renamed "let's finally stop underbussing [thank you, Dr. HCR for that word!!] marginalized people to get a deal." It started with the 3/5 compromise and it's high time we stopped.
I agree with you about using a Madison Avenue approach, but naming our values and connecting these values with specific promises of support, inclusion, stewardship, and compassion, are better options than the watery pap that mainstream Dems keep reverting to.
Nice hearing from *you, as always, Russell. The West in general, and Europe in particular, *need hang tough. The American Century is over, if it ever really existed. That means that we Americans live in a time and in a world in which the United States needs her allies more than the allies need her.
Europe, perhaps with the Commonwealth Countries, ought to invest in a de novo social network that incorporates lessons-learned; once that platform is up-to-scale, then ban the U.S. social media, with the exceptions of Bluesky and, perhaps, Linked-In.
Thank you, Frau Katze; I had overlooked the broad-vs-narrowcasting distinction. Perhaps the Fairness Doctrine could be restored for broadcast channels. At least, then, there will be a place for people to go when they do seek both sides. 🤞🏼
The point you make likely fails with broadcast networks since they channel come through narrowcasting for the overwhelming majority of the country's populace. 😳
Sooo . . . we must rest content with 'PBS News Hour', though many deem that as biassed, and C-Span for two sided views. ⚖️
One way to use the Shitizens United decision to create an alternate Fairness Doctrine is for Progressive Organizations, blessed with resources, to buy advert. time on Fox News and the other right-wingnut networks. 🤔
Doing so could well require legislation that networks can not discriminate against advertisers for their speech. 🗽
That is sub-optimal, too, since the right-wingnuts have a lot more money and could overwhelm the more progressive of neutral channels; additionally, these organizations could create a dependency and then coerce networks by threatening to pull their advertising. 😱
If anyone can think of a work-around to the pointed and likely accurate constraints neatly observed by Frau Katze, I would be most grateful.🙏🏾
She's been appearing on Heather's site here, too, Gregory.
So far as I know, giving "like" to comments that follow the deep corruptions of big money, dark money, and other forms of indifference to regular human life.
Funny I should read this just now. I saw that she “liked” some comments I made on The Pillar (Catholic news website) regarding employee benefits of all things. I thought it was another Erika Kirk but it wasn’t. Weird. Very niche-y topic.
Is it really her or someone using her name as their moniker? She seems to be liking nearly every post I put up, and none of my posts would be acceptable to the genuine person's public face.
I have noticed "Isaac Mirhazi" commenting on here. It is the real fashion designer? Somehow I wonder if someone with a very recognizable name would use it in a public forum like this.
I suspect a troll or someone using her name for whatever reason. Now, IF it is someone using her name, and somehow it got out that "Erica Kirk" is liking all these left/Dem posts---that would be interesting, wouldn't it?!?
Phil, I'm pretty sure the Erika Kirk appearing here is a deepfake. She "liked" a couple of my comments here, so I looked at her Substack page. Her like history showed her liking comments that absolutely savaged her.
The wedding pic could have been real, but I'm sure it would be easy to find it & use it. I don't understand what the point is of this trolling, but whatever.
Erika Kirk is the widow of Charlie Kirk, the r-wing nut job who founded, um, Turning Point USA, which is a horrible organization. Charlie was a "good pal" of Trump's.
Please see my response to Frau Katze below. I basically wiggle and wriggle to same place where you are. Looking for a work-around; can not think of one. Perhaps, you can.
We need to call it what it is and make the word "angertainment" Merrian-Wesbster's 2026 word of the year! As others have replied, the Fairness Doctrine is NOT returning. So how do we close the loudness gap in the current media landscape?
I subscribe to G. Elliot Morris' Strength in Numbers Substack and have access to the comments. The first person to comment on the post HCR referenced today wrote the following: "It's cable news and a lot more. And it is something that has grown from big to massive to overwhelming. It has a start date: 1987 and the end of the Fairness Doctrine. I think it's really important and it needs a name." They called it angertainment. I agree. Name it and shame it.
That captures the "thing" well. And all "things" need their proper names in order to classify them, understand them, determine how best not to let them win.
After reading so many comments about this "thing" I'm convinced it isn't really about him, but about us, about the human condition, about the devils within us barely confined. Hillary once tried to shame these people by calling them "deplorable" -- we see how far that got her. Perhaps that was date shame officially died in this country, I don't know. By contrast, He Who Must Not Be Named told them to fly their freaks flags proudly, to let it all hang out, every despicable bit. They returned the favor by signing up to become his savage, dimwitted MAGA base. It combines elements of the lumpenproletariat resentful of money and power -- together with the most extreme examples of money, power and the corruption it so often buys. It defies description.
Which is why I don't see it as primarily an economic phenomenon, not about have-nots raging against the "system" but a cultural one-- the same "joy" felt by Romans openly watching the lions eat the Christians. There's a savagery here that can barely be understood. Boorishness is their religion. Cruelty makes them feel good. And anger stokes the fire, again and again. Lost souls. But important to keep reminding ourselves there are still many more of us than them.
The Fairness Doctrine only covered traditional broadcast media, which was free to view with television connected to an antenna. You could watch anywhere you could receive the signal, and you didn’t pay a broadcaster for the reception. The trade off was having to receive advertisements, which paid for the network broadcasts. Networks had to hew to the Doctrine to keep their licenses. The cable industry upended this concept, because subscribers paid for the content as well as the delivery of that content, and the cable broadcasters could essentially show what they wanted, including material not suitable to be viewed by just anyone, namely (at the start) the 7 words you can’t say on TV and nudity/salacious images.
Even now, the traditional broadcasters, (ABC, CBS, NBC,) bleep the 7 ‘dangerous’ words, and don’t gratuitously show nudity/sexual behavior. Apparently men’s nipples are OK, but women’s nipples are verboten.
My first experience with the nascent Weather Channel concept on the new Cable TV was a camera focused on analog thermometer and wind speed/wind direction meters. You had to watch and listen to a person on traditional networks tell you the forecast.
Derek, when I first got cable TV (we have zero reception at our house from our three local stations) and I was thrilled to get Discovery, ESPN, and TWC. I was a weather junkie, and loved watching the weather, especially when they covered major events. Jim Cantore was a favorite, and the best clip ever was showing Warren Mann (their overnight guy who was USAF Reserve) broadcast from the right seat of a Hurricane Hunter during a Florida hurricane. Now? It is just more "reality" TV.
Your description of the original Weather Channel requiring the viewer to do the work of interpreting raw data, rather than having a trusted meteorologist explain it, created a bit of an "a ha!" moment for me, re the evolution of how we receive and process information, encapsulating much of what Dr Richardson wrote about today. Citizens cannot realistically be experts on every topic, whether that be civics, world affairs, economics or meteorology, thus we rely on trusted experts to interpret realms of history and current events in a way that we can understand present reality. Fortunately, with few exception- one of course being the miscreant with a sharpie- there's not been a run on fabricating weather reporting. If your local TV morning meteorologist tells you day after day that the sun is shining when it's pouring down rain, it won't take long for you to stop believing him. If only the same were true of all the other categories where trust and truth are critically important, but require a bit more critical thinking to discern truth from lies.
Dylan sang: "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" yet here we are decades later, witnessing corrupt weathermen convince huge segments of the publc to disbelieve what they see and feel, a society reaping the corrosive impact of the erosion of trust.
"Everything Trump Touches Dies". Including himself. Justice is coming for you Donald Trump. After what you've done to America, you will not saii off to a happy retirement with the loving respect of the nation behind you.
Fairness doctrine was designed for broadcast media which the FCC could oversee. It wasn't designed for cable and enforcement would be virtually impossible, but a responsible Congress (if we ever see one again) could come up with something workable if it tried.
Thank you, all, for taking the time to write out your thoughts; ✍️ I found them to be helpful. 🫱🏻🫲🏽 This time, I started at the last commentary and headed North. ✈️ The wordier content will be further down and will answer, unintentionally, many of the comments that precede it. 😴
EDIT P.S., per the discussions of the Erika Kirk 'likes', ¿does anyone else receive repeated 'new followrers' on sub-stack from the good Dr Richardson. I have received four or five. 😳
Now I know I am brilliant, but . . . ¡I am NOT THAT BRILLIANT! 😉
My fear is that these fake requests are portals through which right-wingnut schei¡ße can careen through my digital man-cave.🤭
ned you have not been paying attention, nor reading my posts. Of all the people here… pretty much most of the people here I’m probably the most content and happy and optimistic. And looking forward to the next three years.
Why would I move from the greatest country on the planet?
HOWEVER.. There is an organization, whose acronym is GTFO. Go to suggesting that people, in fact should move out en masse. And where should they go to the Netherlands the whitest area on the planet. Kind of funny.
Check it out. I’m not kidding the organization named itself GTFO. I’m not making that up. But that’s what I keep telling people if they hate their lives of the country so much why are you here go where you find peace and happiness. There’s a very young lady on the news today that made a very profound comment. Stop complaining and do something about it
So it’s a free country many people here on happy Can move… Aldi it’s nearly impossible to find all the blessings we have here
We need to make the Constitution mean something again. Not only is the Secretary of Defense a former jerk from Fox News, the Deputy Director of the FBI a guest-host on Sean Hannity’s show, and Jeanine Pirro of Fox News now the U.S. District Attorney for DC, but the President himself is a former host of a Reality TV show. Reagan, and Sonny Bono were also celebrities and they went to Washington D.C. Schwarzenegger, like Reagan, also served as California Governor. All these persons are Republicans. It appears the Republican party cannot tell the difference between a qualified politician and a “Star.” Don’t get me wrong. I am a fan also but I know better than to vote for Mermaid Man to be President. When we amend our constitution we need to add some required qualifications for the jobs. For Christ's sake, if our toilet drain pipe needed to be replaced we would expect the Sanitation System Contractor we hire to fix it to be experienced, licensed and to secure a building permit for their work so it will be inspected when they finish. But all we expect from the person we hand the nuclear football to, the President of the United States, is be born in the USA 35 years before taking the oath. The framers really believed the Electors would never allow such a populist to be President. Thus we need to also repeal the Elector system as it is as much a miserable failure as the felon they elected twice.
And the current SCOTUS which has been manipulated to support unconstitutional positions. Not only did the last several justices misrepresent their intentions during their confirmation hearings, they now are using the "shadow docket" to avoid the public hearing the arguments for and against an issue.
And Congress is M.I.A. Congress can prevent mergers and acquisitions (M&A) through antitrust laws like the Clayton Act, which empowers federal agencies (FTC & DOJ) to review large deals and block them if they substantially lessen competition, create monopolies, or harm consumers, with new legislation often proposed to strengthen these powers and update review processes for modern markets.
Then you need to write the law so that means something and that includes your Constitution which has been interpreted every which way by bad actors and good. A clearly-worded constitution would rule out specious doctrines like Originalism and the Unitary Executive Theory. Don't leave this to judicial activism because that cuts both ways as we've seen ever since there has been a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
As Heather's post today reveals, Right Wing media is intellectual sugar. Thinking is hard. It requires a lot of cognitive energy. Asking people to think is like asking them to eat the broccoli instead of the ice cream cone.
Fox News dominates. So much for full news so much for fake news… beating CBS, NBC ABC and having more viewership than CNN (soon to be sold or spun off for its failing ratings) an MSNBC(already being separated from NBC) more than the two networks combined.
FOX News dominates all news brands with 1.1 billion YouTube views during Q3, topping NBC, ABC, CBS combined
FOX News Media closed out the third quarter of 2025 as the No. 1 news brand on YouTube with more than one billion video views.
FOX News led runner-up MSNBC by more than 200 million video views and also topped NBC News, ABC News and CBS News combined.
During the news-heavy third quarter, FOX News grew 45% compared to last year to pile up 1.1 billion video views compared to 848 million for MSNBC, 627 million for CNN, 424 million for NBC News, 359 million for ABC News and 163 million for CBS News, according to Emplifi.
It was the fourth consecutive quarter that FOX News surpassed all news brands on YouTube.
FOX News finished the quarter strong with 408 million video views during September, while MSNBC settled for 254 million and CNN managed 232 million. NBC News had only 135 million video views during the month, ABC News delivered 128 million, and CBS News finished with 70 million video views.
The FOX News Clips platform, which launched in May and provides the latest reporting and analysis from FOX News Channel, continues to grow while the flagship FOX News account has over 14.5 million subscribers. FOX Business also nabbed 166 million views on YouTube during the quarter.
FOX News also dominated linear television during the quarter, surging past broadcast competition to lead all of television with weekday primetime viewers for the entire year.
FOX News drove 283 million Facebook interactions, 98 million Instagram interactions, 19.4 million X interactions and 105.4 million TikTok interactions.
FOX News Channel averaged 3.3 million weekday primetime viewers through September, compared to 3.1 million for CBS, 3.1 million for ABC and 3 million for NBC. Its weekday primetime also topped ESPN’s average audience of 2.1 million and dominated cable news options, as MSNBC managed 1.2 million and CNN settled for 641,000.
Well what Heather’s peace did not reveal was the one sidedness of the entire media politic. For example, Apple news was in researched about their news articles and apparently where they were 597 left-wing stories coming from left-wing sources only one out of 597 came from a right wing source, and it was behind a paid only wall
I have mentioned other stories which I could give you the link. If you like about what Google is like when it comes to the links, they list to back up their stories.
I have sometimes searched issues regarding Trump and had to go to 112 links deep to get to the first right wing link and it was 22 pages later. And you wonder why you don’t know what’s going on?
Yeah, just in case you missed it try this: in the Christie Noe, hearing today one of the panelist I think his name was Mr. Robinson started talking about the national guards Men having an unfortunate accident. Kristi gnome excuse me unfortunate accident they were shot in the head. He tried to shut her up by talking to his chair person to get her to answer the question. And said it again unfortunate accident
As I posted above and now I’m gonna copy and paste as many times as I can I wonder if somebody came up behind him and shot him in the head if everybody would say he had an unfortunate accident. And this is what explicit says yeah we’re gonna go out there and tell the truth. I’m not a Christian, but I think that you guys if I were would call you the antichrist.
Read: ‘’Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business’’ by Neil Postman First published in 1985. 2005 reissue contains new introduction by Andrew Postman.
I Hey, I’ve got a real comment for you tonight, baby. And here’s one of your progenies Mister explicit saying you’re gonna go out there and tell the truth
So here’s the way you, people and Christie noems hearing told the truth today this ugly piece of shit that actually said that the shooting of the national guardsman was an unfortunate accident. When they came up behind him and shot him in the head. I wonder if I went back behind Mr. Robinson and shot him in the head if everybody would think it was an unfortunate accident. This is why you people keep losing you can’t freaking tell the truth and then he tried to shut her up when she said it wasn’t an accident and he was shot in the head and then he asked permission to continue his question to the witness rather than her tell the truth.
Re Fox shaping the world, another quote: Roger Ailes was asked in an interview about the quality of Fox News; his response was that "news" was not their business, it was about ratings, and Fox is the winner.
Well look who fell behind. Sorry, Bob, but Roger Ailes is long gone, but Fox is now the king of all viewership. Including ABC, NBC and CBS has more viewership than MS NBC oh I’m sorry MMS now and CNN. COMBINED. And just for you I’ll post you a little special little ditty here. So try to catch up Bob it’s December 20 25 and here’s even a message about the viewership and a message from ad week. Who measures analytic
Wq primetime (6-11 pm ET), Fox News has consistently been the top-rated cable news network, according to Adweek and other sources. Their top shows, like "The Five," "Jesse Watters Primetime," and "Hannity," typically attract millions of viewers. MSNBC and CNN also have strong primetime viewership, with programs like "The Rachel Maddow Show" and "Anderson Cooper 360" being popular.
Q1 2025’s Top 15 Shows Among Total Viewers
1. The Five — Fox News (4,552,000)
2. Jesse Watters Primetime — Fox News (4,103,000)
3. Hannity — Fox News (3,544,000)
4. Special Report with Bret Baier — Fox News (3,503,000)
5. The Ingraham Angle — Fox News (3,418,000)
6. Gutfeld! — Fox News (3,333,000)
7. The Will Cain Show — Fox News (2,591,000)
8. Outnumbered — Fox News (2,453,000)
9. The Faulkner Focus — Fox News (2,392,000)
10. America Reports — Fox News (2,351,000)
11. The Story with Martha MacCallum — Fox News (2,338,00)
12. America’s Newsroom — Fox News (2,285,000)
13. The Rachel Maddow Show — MSNBC (1,981,000)
14. Fox News at Night — Fox News (1,907,000)
15. Fox & Friends — Fox (1,519,000)
Q1 2025’s Top 15 Among Adults 25-54
1. Jesse Watters Primetime — Fox News (507,000)
2. The Five — Fox News (500,000)
3. Hannity — Fox News (465,000)
4. Gutfeld! — Fox News (453,000)
5. The Ingraham Angle — Fox News (414,000)
6. Special Report with Bret Baier — Fox News (404,000)
7. The Will Cain Show — Fox News (312,000)
8. Fox News at Night — Fox News (302,000)
9. Outnumbered — Fox News (284,000)
10. The Faulkner Focus — Fox News (281,000)
11. America Reports — Fox News (280,000)
12. The Story — Fox News (266,000)
13. America’s Newsroom — Fox News (260,000)
14. Fox & Friends — Fox (198,000)
15. The Rachel Maddow Show — MSNBC (177,000)
FROM ADWEEK.
Here's the 1st Quarter of 2025 Cable News Ratings
Fox News beat ABC and NBC during weekday primetime
(This is the satire Fox News knew was coming. Read and enjoy the satire and then click the link at the end for the no lipstick on the pig version.)
A democracy does not collapse overnight. It is sold, segmented, branded, and streamed. This satire exposes how media, politicians, and audiences collaborated, often gladly, in trading responsibility for spectacle, until outrage became governance and attention replaced citizenship. Funny, furious, and uncomfortably familiar for modern America... https://essayx.substack.com/p/everyone-is-innocent-somehow
And you are a proud member of that asylum there ally. Just saw a great segment on TV that describes you all. This is not the Democrat party. It’s the anti-Trump party.
Trump says, arrest the illegals you say protect the immigrants but forget about the word illegal
You protect the wife beater and the trafficker and send a senator or a congressman down to El Salvador to have tea with him.
Trump says stop funding the illegals we don’t have the money and we’ve already spent hundreds of billions of dollars on illegals to house feed and provide medical care and no expense while you were here complaining about you can’t afford your health insurance but we give it to them for free
Trump destroys a couple of drug infested boats you say protect the drug dealers and the narco terrorist
Trump says let’s gather up all the illegals who are criminals here and abroad and let’s deport them and you build sanctuary cities
Trump says I’m going to lower prices and all you can do is blame him for the high prices when it was on Biden, the 22% confirmed, factual evidence
Gas prices were 459 average during Biden now there are less than three dollars
So keep talking about affordability. In fact, there’s five states now that I have gas prices under two dollars. And in California they’re in the mid to high five dollars right now.
You demonized Trump for questioning the 2020 election and many of you still think he stole the current election and yet you support Maduro, who actually lost the election by HUUUUUGE margin rather than supporting the lady who won WHO HAPPENS TO BE A WOMAN…
You demonize Trump for building a ballroom so that we don’t have the house International events in a tent on the White House lawn well not having to shell out a dime for it while Obama paid 400,000 of your money to remodel it himself
And four other presidents every remodel
And you give Trump crap for the war, Ukraine. ?? there’s people here actually think that Trump supports Russia when who do you think supports Russia Obama who let Russia take over Crimea in total or Biden that let him take over eastern Ukraine in total with no hopes of getting it back and you think Trump can just snap his fingers and Russia will say OK sure, we’ll just give it back
Or maybe we should send over more money to kill 25,000 more men each month.
If you had any empathy at all as you’re supposed to have, why don’t you picture the war happening here at 25,000 people in your city or your county is dying every month I think you’re gonna want to stop the war you’re gonna want to spend more money to kill more people ?
I Hey, I’ve got a real comment for you tonight, baby. So here’s the way you, people and Christie gnomes hearing told the truth today this ugly piece of shit that actually said that the shooting of the national guardsman was an unfortunate accident. When they came up behind him and shot him in the head. I wonder if I went back behind Mr. Robinson and shot him in the head if everybody would think it was an unfortunate accident. This is why you people keep losing you can’t freaking tell the truth and then he tried to shut her up when she said it wasn’t an accident and he was shot in the head and then he asked permission to continue his question to the witness rather than her tell the truth.
Per Reuters', Phil Stewart, A. Ali & Steve Holand, trump has seized a Venezulan oil tanker the largest oil tanker ever seized.
This attack is meant to destroy Venezuelan's revenue. No word yet on any "distressed mariners" aboard the tanker. No word on where trump is taking the tanker. No word yet on international oil markets.
BBC America has identified the oil tanker as "The Skipper" under a Guyana Flag.
You bet and we’re gonna seize a few more, but you keep protecting the wicked you keep protecting the Naco terrorist you keep protecting the drug smugglers who are killing our children and you’re supposed to be an attorney. You should be a defensive defense attorney in defensive America. Not a prosecuting attorney against America when it has to do with narcotics and other drug
The right to freedom of speech and press is not absolute. If we had a level playing field FOX News could have been prevented from spewing lies. Television is a much more dangerous medium than the written word. It is called a hypnotic medium for a reason. And now we have a dystopian nightmare so disastrous that even a bot won't believe it.
The EPA removed mentions of human contributions to climate change on its website yesterday.
Yesterday, SCOTUS declined to hear an appeal on a Texas 5th circuit ruling that said that "government speech" the ability to express a viewpoint trumps the public's "right to information" in a case about removing books about LGBTQ+, race, and slavery from a school library. The argument was you could always buy the books or borrow them.
The ruling appears to contradict Board of Education v. Pico (1982), the Court applied it to school libraries, noting that removing books could infringe students’ access to ideas essential for free expression.
There is no level playing field with this government.
Used to be “precedent” meant something to SCOTUS. Not any more. The idea was consistency in interpretation of the law was good for society.
Now precedent—even the court’s OWN DECISIONS—are to be manipulated in accordance with the right-wing justices societal ideology, not the law of constitution.
I used to respect SCOTUS. Seeing them so corrupted is a huge blow.
These decisions which have big implications and would have been lead stories in MSM in other administrations are submerged by the “flood the zone” strategy.
We don’t even know all the ways we are being screwed!
My two sons give me cause to celebrate having been born mid century. One is in high level strategic advertising and the other in high level strategic communications. “We don’t even know all the ways we are being screwed!” Instead of being rooted we are being route-ed. How does it feel to be a baitfish balled up by the leviathans?
The two-step process to impeach a Supreme Court Justice
1. Impeachment by the House of Representatives
Initiating articles: A member of the House can introduce a resolution to impeach a federal judge.
Investigation: The House Judiciary Committee typically investigates the charges before drafting articles of impeachment. Majority vote: For impeachment to proceed, the House must adopt the articles with a simple majority vote.
2. Conviction by the Senate
Trial: The Senate holds a trial to consider the articles of impeachment. In the case of a Supreme Court Justice, the Chief Justice of the United States presides over the trial.
Senate acts as jury: The Senate acts as the jury, hearing arguments from House managers (who act as prosecutors) and the defense counsel for the impeached Justice.
Two-thirds vote: A conviction requires a two-thirds majority vote by the senators present. If convicted, the Justice is removed from office.
Thanks for the recitation of impeachment process but your last paragraph is the obvious impediment to ANY impeachment success. There is no way that 2/3 of the Senate in the next or subsequence election is going to convict ANY GOP-oriented executive or judicial member for virtually any offense except POSSIBLY actually committing murder on the streets of New York or Washington.
This will actually become even MORE important if the Dems take back the House and the Senate because the remaining GOP (those who haven't gotten out by a pension-rich retirement) will rally around to make sure no impeachment EVER gets a conviction.
This is going to take a long time, probably four or five election cycles (or even more) and it may even fail in the end, because many Americans are essentially stupid and simply will follow like sheep.
It's not MY last paragraph. That's a simple cut and paste description of the process. Whether or not some Republicans turn on the hand that has been feeding them is not all that far out in the realm of impossibility. Rats jumping from a sinking ship, as it were.
My apologies for misidentifying the paragraph although if you are cutting and pasting something, you should identify it as such. From the perspective of a reader, without quotes or other identification, it appears to be your words.
No, but that is what we must work to preserve. The leveling of the playing field is what the Constitution was meant to prescribe. The realities that preceded and followed it have been short of the mark, and yet our "better angels" have carried that impulse forward.
"a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. "
or any govt, ANYwhere, pretty much, before this...the way it seems to me is this... people establish some sort of colony...some prosper...they want their assets protected and they institute laws and, more or less, hire/promote people to enforce the laws...but it will almost always favor the employer...
corporations form policies and support those that will support them...look at Trump's favoritism of oil...and nobody messes with the military/industrial complex...just those two have initiated invasions in other countries...while polluting the planet...
and if they can control armies, who's to stop them...?
Yes Annabel. We need standards for news, or it should not be allowed to be called news. We know that Hungary has swung right under Orbán because he controls the media. MSM is not reliable. I have a lot of friends who still subscribe to the NYT because they do not see the faults that I do. They try to tell me it is balanced, and how it is good to read people who are telling the other POV. I read about the other POV from people I trust. I also read people who I am somewhat skeptical about to see how they pan out because they are giving me information I am not getting elsewhere.
I no longer subscribe to the NYT, WaPo, or LAT, or Chicago Tribune. I subscribe to the Chicago Sun Times, the Guardian, and my Chicago neighborhood paper. As well as the national news in Germany and European news, and reading the local and news in my German city.
Trump knows how to manipulate the social medium, but so does Putin. We all get a double whammy. Fortunately, the only social media I are individual Substackers. We all need to be vigilant about our sources of news, but make them varied enough to have a big picture of what is going on. In our reimagined world, the one we create once we overthrow the far right in the religious realm, the tech world, the business world, and the media world, we must make sure that SCOTUS members are held accountable and impeached for defying our constitution, and then that media is held accountable, and not allowed to tell people lies are news. I am hoping that Europe does not go down the slippery slope that the US with US tech, in the hopes of keeping up. That will just enlarge the playing field of far right wing disinformation in the world.
I use Feedly as a news aggregator--it is free. You can set up sources you want to scan, and topics like US Politics, and it updates what has been released every minute. You can set up boards for specific topics and add articles to them. It lets you one click to the source. I just use "headline" view to see what is starting to trend.
AP and Reuters usually publish first.
You can also get information on how many other feeds are covering the story over time and lists them in order of popularity.
Linda and Xplisset, check it out if you don't already use it. I like it better than ground news.
Found through Feedly in the 11th block down of multiple article topics in the NYTimes website, well below the typeface wars, is the news that Zelensky has agreed to elections in 60-90 days if there are US security guarantees and the Ukrainian legislature agrees.
Thanks for your Substack. Zelensky actually did this once before, last summer when he said he would be fine with elections if they can be secure, and that he would probably not run. No one took him up on it. I think that he gets energy from the spotlight but is getting tired of getting jerked around. He is looking old (except when talking with Meloni 😁). He might welcome the opportunity to step back. He is assured his place in history anyway. He might be better off not running and just assisting Zaluzhny to run and win and assist in the transition. It will be hard for him to give up the trappings but really, he looks sometimes like he has had enough.
For crying out loud, he was a fricking TV actor! Is that what this world has now come to, country leaders being actors and influencers instead of actually being sane, solid, smart political representatives? No wonder we are probably doomed.
He was smiling with the Pope as well. I agree he looks exhausted.
Here is an article from yesterday from the Kyiv Independent which is rated as neutral bias in reporting and a source for fact checking, pro-Ukraine in the opinion pieces, and for continuing the war.
Zaluzhny, currently the ambassador to the UK, is in second place at 19.1% in a poll conducted between Nov. 13 and Nov. 28, just after the kickback scandal broke and as the 28-point plan was released on Nov. 21.
In October, a month before the corruption scandal, 24.3% voters said they would support Zelensky.
Elizabeth, I am sure he would like to step down, at the same time, like the soldiers on the front he cannot. He knows that Trump will not take him up on his offer, and yet by saying this he shows that he has read the plan and he is offering a concession. Russia is not. He is saying to Trump, put your actions where your mouth is, without saying it directly. Ukraine and Europe have got Trump's number and they are remaining respectful but wary. They do not ultimately see the US as the enemy, although Trump is a different matter.
Here is what West Point History Professor has to say about Europe.
I'm betting he would far prefer to be back on his old TV series Servant of the People. Being a fictional President of Ukraine was probably a hell of a lot easier and safer than being the ACTUAL President of Ukraine.
The Guardian, Kyiv Independent, Institute for the Study of War, The Economist, NYT, HCR and Timothy Snyder’s Substacks, give me enough to work out what is actually going on. Knowing that terrible things have happened in the past (I’ve actually lived through some of them!) and that I am going through a terrible time now alongside lots of other people really helps me get from day to day. I am grateful to all the conscientious journalists and historians who bring me that news.
Linda, like Ally’s, your perspective is priceless. Thank you for reminding us of your sources and continuing to let us know what you’re learning. It’s your caring for US that shines through as encouragement when we need it.
I seems to me the "Fox News" is actually a fraud. Even they waffle about the nature of what they sell. Perhaps there should be an "accrediting" body of evidence-based news that organizations pledge to display the sticker. A pledge of due diligent, evidence justified, and correct by retraction as necessary news releases. I don't know how you keep that certification from being Trumpinated, but perhaps a pledge to an externally maintained standard would reduce fudging.
And for heaven's sake, dust off anti-trust. Bigly.
It's interesting, BTW, that corporations can sue Fox successfully, but can an affected public do so as a class action? Uphold robust free speech for sure, but some speech is predictably harmful, and in some cases there is provable harmful intent. The old example of maliciously shouting fire in a theater referenced real events that had caused death. The example was misapplied to quell dissent, but the real thing remains a public danger, although perhaps less likely to panic with modern buildings and fire codes. Dishonest hate speech, especially from official positions, can get people killed. Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss were terrorized by Giuliani callous fictions and were victorious in court. What Giuliani did was circumstantially different than insensitive BS in a pub.
There is NO WAY that Fox News would ever be found guilty or liable for what it reports. None. Freedom of the press is still there in the Constitution and if you don't like what they say, start your own damn press or tv news service. That's what freedom is supposed to be about.
And yet Fox was successfully sued for lies about Dominion Voting Systems, and paid a big judgement. That's the sort of thing I am talking about. "Freedom" is complicated. MAGAs try to make it permission to do whatever they like with no accountability, but then there is the problem of the impact one's behavior may have on others, and that gets tricky. I have a right to drink until I pass out in my home, but not when piloting an automobile. That's due to unacceptable risks to the safety of others. Giuliani's lies unquestionably and predictably harmed those he slandered. That was enough over that line that they sued and won. We have every right to pursue happiness, but not by harming others. We certainly have a right to criticize others, especially people in high places. We mostly have a right to lie, yet not under oath, and not to the IRS; and there are other circumstances where lies invite civil suits if not prosecution and/or public scorn.
Is anti-trust anti freedom? Milton Freedman thought it was, but I think a real free society is one that puts checks on monopolization of money and political power. It's a matter of universal rights, and of checks and balances. It is cold comfort for all people are to be created equal if they are subject to subjugation as soon as they are born. We the people get to make rules that serve the interests of we the people as a whole, including rights that protect each and every one of us, rules that would-be bullies are obliged to observe.
Fox was not found guilty or liable, they settled. It is unclear if they were found liable whether the verdict would have stood. The Supreme Court has for the most part agreed with media, not those who sue the media.
As for Guiliani, he is NOT "the media", he was an individual loose cannon. Ditto all the other individuals who were sued. That does not change the general view of media as exempt in most cases. And Dominion was an extraordinary case, where even Fox admitted that they had lied. That is very rare.
Well Linda, as I have said repeatedly you are just wrong. You can NOT use far-left wing news sources as "reliable" any more than you can use Fox Snooze as reliable, because they both (Fox and the Guardian) have an ax to grind in the fire. Neither is objective. The NYT is and you refuse to read them because you just don't like their objectivity. THAT is what is going to doom our country, when BOTH sides retreat to their "protected sphere and refuse to actually engage in a balanced, even-handed approach to events and news. That is what is happening now, and the end will NOT be good for any of us. Once we are FULLY polarized, either we will engage in another civil war or we will dissolve because we refuse to try to reconcile our differences.
I breathe a big sigh when i read stuff like you wrote, because I had greater hopes for the people theoretically on our side (like you) but it is clearly not working. The divisiveness is lethal to this society in the end, and no one is going to recognize America in 20-30 years if what you say comes to pass.
Jon, you do not know what you are talking about. I hardly call the Guardian or AP far left wing, nor are any of the regular German sources that I use. You do not know what "The Left "is, let alone "far left wing" beliefs or news sources. I do. The Left is a viable party in Germany, and my mom's childhood friend is a member. I have not talked to her for a while, but I know what she and her partner believe. They also have given me publications and sent me articles, which I do not agree with. I see them as Russian propaganda. You clearly have no idea what far left publications say.
Here are some publications that are considered left and far left. Notice I did not mention one.
Magazines/Journals (US): Jacobin, The Nation, Dissent, Monthly Review, American Prospect, In These Times.
Magazines/Journals (UK/Intl.): New Left Review, Tribune, Red Pepper, The Left Berlin.
Historical/Academic: The Left Index (database), Left Book Club (historical), Marxism Today, New Socialist.
Radical/Anarchist: Publications like Anarchy, The Catalyst, Freedom Socialist, or those linked to groups like the International Socialist Group.
Of these I have read The Nation articles, perhaps 2 in the past 5 years. I don't consider it "far" left, but left. I have also read "In These Times" but not for over 30 years. You are just so so so so so so off in your characterization of media that is centrist as far left.
Social media is an opiate of the masses as well, be it print or visual. We need to be careful we are spending time on people passing us legitimate information. There are so many who are out there making money on disinformation and politicians banking on it.
Schools need to encourage children to think critically but sadly it's going in the other direction in the United States with indoctrination the objective.
Trump has in the past claimed that his policies are merely common sense (this was before he started resorting only to barefaced lies), but Bertrand Russell called common sense 'the metaphysics of the savage'. It leaves no room for nuance and doubt and it opens the door to hegemony of the powerful.
Let's hope that the Democrats' stunning win in Miami will presage a major change in the fortunes of that stricken party.
"Common sense" may be a fiction insofar as it is presented a verifiable sense that is common, but there may well be a virtue in pursuing clarity, which I see a the ability to grasp the most relevant features for both the broad view of the forest and well as the telling details of the trees. We can't begin to do that for even the mass of distinctions and connections to be found on our planet, like trying to stuff the earth into a thimble; but we can succeed is in some degree of recognizing which features are most vital/suitable to our individual/social human purposes. My sense it that is one of the key pillars of wisdom, something we don't seem to talk about much anymore.
In childhood, my parents never allowed me to watch children oriented TV on Saturday mornings. No Howdy Doody, no Mighty Mouse, no Advrntures of Bullwinkle, no Roy Roger’s. Nothing. They obviously felt that this programing was not good for the early stages of growth. The same way today I feel toward cell devises. It has really messed with two or three generations of children. I watched to kids at an open mic performance once. One of the kids held the devise while the other obsessed and watched it while the parents were happily engage with the stage events. Just my opinion.
The TV was rarely on before I was 5 and if there were kids programs my folks didn't tell me. I watched TV in Kindergarten when my favorite programs were "Watch Mr Wizard" and "Sky King". I sometimes watched "Flash Gordon" but had trouble making sense of it. Mostly my folks discouraged early exposure to gratuitously violent entertainment, although I think was still in elementary school when I saw Hitchcock's "Psycho". There were things we did not let our daughter watch, but tried not to over sugar-coat reality. We mostly fed her PBS. More than the content of TV, I am creeped out by the commercials, especially those for kids. I stopped watching commercial TV in the run-up to GWB's Iraq war, and turned to the 'Net for news. I tried to watch the Olympics on broadcast TV a few years ago but found the commercial breaks way excessive, intrusive and irritating. I never connected to cable. We have let our daughter follow her heart and I admire her values.
incredibly important to access "news" information from multiple sources
none are completely trustworthy
IMO: anyone who gets all their news from just one or two sources, is very misinformed. Each caters to their most loyal base and filters their output accordingly.
I think it is wise to cast a wide net, but I find some sources, by verification , far more diligent and trustworthy than others. I have watched Fox but have found it at best only loosely evidence-based. I sometimes read things that are so disturbing, yet under-reported, that I seek multiple additional sources to verify.
Of course. When I don't verify from multiple sources I regret it. Still, because I belong to political Signal chat groups in activism, we post things, and people in the group will point out if something does not seem credible.
To some extent, I agree *with the hypnotic quality of television and the addictive ways of social media. 🫱🏻🫲🏽 Nevertheless, we are citizens of a republic and democracies work only when buttressed by a citizenry socialized into exercising republican virtue. ⚖️
We are all responsible for the country getting here; 😥 we are responsible for digging ourselves out. 😳 No one will do it for us. 😱 On balance, I remain confident that we shall overcome this dash toward dictatorship. ✌🏼
Yup, that "republican" with a small "r" is a whole different animal, as Lincoln was to Trump. And socialized stands in contrast to subjugated, at least where there are universal baseline human rights. Democracy requires a conversion, not a dictate. What part of government of the people, BY the people, FOR the people do we not understand?
Ned, I really wish that we would take on some social media laws like Australia just did. My daughter thinks it is a useless effort, but I don't. I think it will set a tone, and Australia will figure out how to do it better as they go along. She sees it as a big data mining opportunity. I see it as a bump for big tech that may snowball. People are aware of how harmful it is for youth. Let them go back to parent supervised usage.
I have been saying this, and there is a movement to do this inside of Germany, led by the Green party. It is not an overnight change though, but EU is thinking of following in Australia's footsteps, and right now there is discussion of banning phones from schools, which is a start. There are two contingents in Germany, those who want to embrace existing AI to help catch the country up in a business sense, and those who want caution and not using things. I know plenty of people who are not using US platformed media.
This was posted today by someone on a political chat abroad, but we all know Spotify needs to be updated because it is being boycotted.
This is wonderful news, in the link. The European Union needs to grow into a superpower. If the U.S. threatens tariffs, then tell the U,S,, "Fine, we want to build a better relationship with China . . . ." Adiós, ¡tariffs!
Yes Ned. Also, Australia also led on gun control with their tough laws and collection of guns and has had one mass shooting since then in 2019, which was a murder suicide.
Well, I had to look Minnow up.. He was chairman of FCC under John Kennedy. Are you referring to his 1961 speech citing television as a "vast wasteland"??? If so, I can't help but agree with Minnow!!! (Except for PBS and Colbert and Kimmel and Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell and a few others...)
You can't choose the folks YOU like in an argument about what is or is not a vast wasteland. That's just biased argument, especially all the ones you mention except for PBS. Colbert and Kimmel aren't even news, they are ENTERTAINERS for gods sake, and Maddow and O'Donnell are heavily biased opinionated COMMENTATORS, not reporters. You certainly can like how they commentate but that doesn't make them any kind of reliable source of accurate news. Especially O'Donnell who I consider to be a pompous idiot who just likes to hear himself talk. I have more respect for Rachel and do enjoy listening to her and hearing her opinions, but I recognize that they are JUST her opinions.
PBS, IMHO, does a pretty good job, but then so does the NYT and it seems there is a huge contingent here on HCR that disagree. Even Heather uses the NYT as a major source (look at her references every day and you find NYT listed regularly) so it always surprises me at the hostility towards the NYT in this group.
As Michelle 2 wrote in a comment above, Newton Minnow was chairman of the FCC under President Kennedy. He gave a speech describing Television as " a vast wasteland". I was in college at the time, & I remember it being a seminal moment, because of the fact that Minnow spoke the honest truth about television at that time. And, of course, it has only gotten much worse over the years, particularly when cable news arrived.
There was real concern over "Truth in Advertising", even attempts at legislation. Media owners could not own too much of any one market, even newspapers. "Payola", hidden payments to promote certain music products, was a scandal, as was deception in the $64,000 Question. There was worry that political candidates would be "sold like corn flakes". Johnson's "Daisy Ad" was considered a scandal. Not really "the good old days" but some higher public standards of media ethics.
Free speech is essential but tricky. Some speech is harmful, and the social consequences rise with exposure. There is social protection in public conversation and debate, but commercial broadcast media tends to dominate. I think we are allowing commercial broadcast (over the air, cable, or 'Net) to replace us as authors of our own culture. I believe that commercial media, and advertising in particular, has the overall effect of encouraging narcissism. How to regulate without discarding the baby with the bathwater?
One thing I am sure of is that we would be wise to find ways to include many more perspectives in the public conversion, and while i don't regard profit in itself as inherently evil (in fact it can be mutually beneficial) it can become evil when insufficiently balanced by other, essential human values. I think that is blazingly obvious in current circumstances if we see the forest past the trees.
There once was a 'fairness doctrine' which forced TV stations to give equal time to political parties. The operative phrase being 'once was'. Now we have Faux News spewing lies 24/7 and what used to be the major networks spewing whatever their owners tell them to say. I keep the salt lick handy.
James, the kicker is that the Fairness Doctrine covered broadcast news, not cable news. I am also thrilled to see another person using the "salt lick" substitution!
But there were other laws that could have prevented media monopolization, namely antitrust, that has been all but sidelined since Reagan. My 1950s school history book cast "Trust Busting" as a good thing.
You are mixing up two different policies regarding TV news. The fairness doctrine was a general doctrine which required TV stations (but not cable) to be fair in their reporting. The equal time rule required that IF a TV station broadcast one candidate for office, it MUST make the same time available to their opponent(s) at the same price (or free). Fairness doctrine did NOT have anything specifically to do with politics. it was a generic news doctrine. Here is a quote from wikipedia which is essentially accurate:
"The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented. The demise of this FCC rule has been cited as a contributing factor in the rising level of party polarization in the United States."
The fairness doctrine was removed from FCC rules in 1987 (under Reagan) and has never been revived.
The equal time rule remains in effect and is used by all parties during political races.
If we permit the freedom of speech and press to be limited to one side, or to what one group calls "a level playing field" then we lose our democracy. A solid democracy has to rely on the wisdom and intelligence of its populace to refute and ignore those who spew lies. The problem is NOT with who we permit or prevent from telling lies, its that people are so STUPID today that they don't recognize the lies. If they did, none of this would be a problem. Unfortunately, this dumbing down of the citizenry is going to cost us our democracy and our freedom at some point, probably in the not too distant future.
MORE GOOD ELECTION NEWS... Joyce Vance reports tonight that "Ellen Higgens became the first Democrat elected Mayor in the city (of Miami) in almost 30 years." The previously elected Republican (in 2021) won by 78.6% of the vote. But this time around, Ellen Higgens (in unofficial results) won by 59% of the vote to her opponent's 41% of the vote. MSN reports that the opponent, Emilio Gonzalez, was backed by Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Sen Rick Scott. Ellen Higgens had the support of the U.S Ambassador to Japan(Rahm Emmanuel), Pete Buttigieg, and Senator Ruben Gallego.
An interesting sidenote -- the county's population is roughly 70% Latino or Hispanic. Recent polling had suggested declining support for the Administration among Latino voters, so this election may be a good indicator of what 2026 elections may portend. And, finally, Joyce Vance makes the astute observation that, "A Trump endorsement is no longer a magic touch - more like a kiss of death." We can put that "gift" under the Christmas tree to cheer us on...
Thank you Michele2 and Brian Sean McKown! I'm going to add more good news of a general nature. Heather's letter today was informative, factual and depressing. Important, for sure.
But I did the old AI Google thing. "Who watches cable TV?" (Cause we don't :)
You can just read the first and last paragraphs if you are short of time:
"Older adults (65+) are the primary demographic still watching significant amounts of cable TV, driven by habit and preference for live news/sports, while younger generations (Gen Z, Millennials) overwhelmingly favor streaming, though overall cable viewership continues to decline, with about a third of Americans still using it, often for live events or as part of internet bundles.
Who Still Watches Cable:
Older Generations: Americans 65 and older are the most likely to subscribe to cable/satellite (around 64%), valuing the familiar interface and consistent access to news and sports.
Sports Fans: A significant portion of remaining cable subscribers (around 27%) keep it for live sports, which can be harder to find on streaming.
Comfort & Habit: Many long-term subscribers (70% of cable users in one survey) stay due to habit and the simplicity of a single service they've used for years.
Bundled Services: Some households keep cable because it's bundled with high-speed internet, making it a cost-effective option compared to standalone internet.
Declining Trends:
Younger Viewers: Streaming is nearly universal for those under 50, with Gen Z (around 21%) and younger adults having very low cable adoption.
Cord-Cutting: Millions have canceled cable, with satisfaction rates among former users being very high.
Overall Decline: Less than a third (around 30%) of Americans use traditional cable/satellite, a steep drop from past years.
In essence, while cable's dominance has ended, it persists with older, less tech-savvy users, live sports enthusiasts, and those locked into bundled plans, even as streaming becomes the standard for most other demographics."
Me: If we want to make an impact on the minds of voters, the place to do it is YouTube. Or other social media sites. Cable isn't dead yet. But there is a reason Netflix didn't want CNN. It is caught in the spiral dive to technological media irrelevance.
But MSNOW is my trusted news channel and it’s cable: Maddow, Weissemann, ICE raids, Mika Brzezinski, Eugene Daniels, Judge Luttig, to name a few I’ve heard. (It’s a tiny list before coffee.)
It's a strange new world... I watch MSNOW as well. And right now I'm in the throes of taking care of a family member who depends on cable TV at the moment... In a rural area, sometimes the choices are limited...
Thanks, Bill. Where we live in our little town, we have zero broadcast TV (between ridges which block the waves from all three local stations, and Comcast is our only internet option (we'd go with T-Mobile, but said ridge gives us at best two bars of service). In doing our research, Starlink is our best, most reliable option for the internet (and we ain't going there). I'm hoping to find an internet only service from Comcast...
Similar situation here in the Colorado high country… I hate giving my business to Musk but Starlink is our best by far option (to date). It’s reliable, month by month no-contract, uses low orbit satellites in a long line so up and down signals have virtually zero lag, the dish is heated and auto-locates the signal. It’s the best and it’s essential for our survival up here in part due to the availability of satellite cell service via our Starlink router. I wish there was a better option. I tell myself it’s OK to use Starlink because I will never own or lease a Tesla. Our other big issue is Amazon Prime. For us it’s unavoidable, again due to our location. We do have UPS delivery but Amazon has become something we can’t routinely avoid. Then, when we drive 30 miles down into town, where can we shop? Whole Foods (Amazon again), Safeway (where workers recently went out on a righteous strike), Target, Home Depot? Simply said, these quasi-monopolies have a lock on us and many others in America!
Indeed and then there are those of us who live in highly modern and diverse places like San Francisco (my city) but I live on Social Security and the idea of NOT using Amazon and instead shopping at the various high end independent stores in San Francisco would break my piggy bank in several pieces. I have done cost comparison shopping and I would be spending at least 50% more and possibly up to 75% more on various significant purchases. That would cost me almost $750 a month more, and I live on a pre-tax social security amount of $3,000 a month from which I also pay rent and medical. If I didn't have Amazon to help with purchases, I'd be totally broke. So I basically accept the pain of that. I don't like Bezos, but for now, it is the best option I have.
Comcast offers internet only in MA. But we dumped them for Verizon Fios. Faster and cheaper. But not a stand up company either.
In my perfect fantasy world, no private entity would be allowed to have satellites in the sky or space. On my first day as president, the U.S will nationalize Starlink. Musk won't be objecting as he will be in a no bail holding cell with several Black South Africans as he awaits trial for sedition and grand theft...among other things.
Yes they have - with a vengeance. But social media is still broad and diverse so theoretically it's level playing field. For now. If Ellison/Kushner/Saudi Arabia buy Substack I will be headed for the bomb shelter. Substack already has been invaded by some enemies of human kind. Disappointing, to say the least.
I looked that up. It is on the way, apparently. Supposed to be "creator controlled". We'll see. I do everything in my power to avoids ads. I consider them an attack on my consciousness. Hence, no legacy TV.
So I find this idea really disturbing.
I am considering taking my writing to a Wordpress website. I'd hate leave this community that Heather introduced me too....
And, to put a cherry on top of your good news, Michele2, the Hispanic vote in Florida is dominated by the descendants of Batista-collaborators who left Cuba when Castro defeated that brutal, rightwing dictator, after spending their earlier lives oppressing the other 90% of the Cuban population. And they left with the expectation their new host country would help them get back the portion of their wealth that they couldn’t take with them on their exodus. They have consistently voted for Republicans since then because they have a natural affinity with the Republican Party, the party that aligns with the notion of systematic oppression of the people without monetary resources. When former oppressers such as these turn against Republicans, it’s a very important change.
What Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and the Acting Archivist of the United States, Marco Rubio is working on instead of, say, peace in Gaza or Ukraine or Sudan or …
From the NYTimes:
"Secretary of State Marco Rubio waded into the surprisingly fraught politics of typefaces on Tuesday with an order halting the State Department’s official use of Calibri, reversing a 2023 Biden-era directive that Mr. Rubio called a “wasteful” sop to diversity."
Duh! If it was “wasteful” to change it during the Biden administration, why isn’t it wasteful to change it back?
Was this done in your capacity as Acting Archivist because Calibri offended your aesthetic sensibilities, or were you just looking for a swipe at “wokeness”?
The switch to Calibri by the Biden administration was made to accommodate people who are vision-impaired, dyslexic, or who use page readers.
Are you going to remove ramps and bathroom stalls for people in wheelchairs next? Take away braille plaques in federal buildings? Does making people with disabilities more employable waste money?
PT this is why I think we should do a nationwide tax boycott. See how it is to run the country without, or even track people down with a reduced IRS staff.
wow. FInally. i've said this to people for decades now...you want to get their attention, hit em where it hurts...inSTEAD of enabling them with taxes...right on, Linda...
That’s very interesting. The United Sugar Company represented, as I remember, the US controlling of Cuba, which was why so many welcomed Castro. The company’s supporters became Florida’s Republicans. I wonder where Rubio’s parents stood. I knew an American who went to fight with Castro.
I said “Good bye” to corporate media news; ABC, CBS, and NBC decades ago. It’s been all downhill since Waiter Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley. I never trusted CNN. PBS was my trusted national news source until a few years ago.
I wandered in the wilderness until I found Heather Cox Richardson, Substack, and the Meidas Touch on YouTube.
The propagandists are right; critical thinking is work and most people are lazy thinkers, especially when it involves national
politics. We are paying the price of that laziness now. What a mess! However, it’s made people at last start thinking; we all need to pay attention all the time.
The only ones who can clean up the mess is all of us.
I’ve been singing praises for PBS a lot lately for having Amanpour & Co., Frontline, Nova, Rick Steves travelogues. The latest Ken Burn’s documentary, ‘The American Revolution’, was just on, so informative and outstanding like his always are. PBS is commercial free even and needs our support and appreciation right now as well as much needed financial help to keep local public television stations like this on air with such great content and programming.
I have started spending what I used to donate to democrats to support public broadcasting. I have three wonderful local radio stations and OPB that now get my money. (KWAX-classical, and KRVM-music in Eugene, and JPR (don't know their K station assignment; Jefferson Public Radio in southern Oregon).
Very good of you Ally. There are so many organizations, causes and campaigns that need donations that it’s overwhelming and I can only donate a smattering of money to them. Really wish I could donate like Mackenzie Scott has done so I could give some real financial help to PBS, Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other worthy causes and candidates that stand up for democracy, work for a better future and a more perfect union.
For some reason Ralph your comment brought to mind watching coyote families in the wild. Everything eats coyotes and coyotes eat everything. Their vigilance is legendary. When they think no one can see them their play is shameless. Now coyotes are neither good nor evil but their antics lead them in both directions. Both predators and prey. Indigenous peoples recognized their many talents conceding admiration for their skills. Like coyotes “we all need to pay attention all the time.” With holidays coming on let us instigate some “shameless” fun as well. Let’s take em by surprise and cause some joy.
I've been doing my best. The tuba is both a serious and a silly instrument; a buddy of mine and I are going to busk at our local Holiday (crafters) market this weekend. If it works out, I will borrow my old sousaphone, and in another week we'll do it with a sousaphone and a helicon...now that's silly!
And now they’re lightning, which is unbelievable Rachel Maddow and John Stewart as the new Walter Cronkite. If Walter if Walter Krank could breathe right now he’d get up and shoot them both in the face for destroying what is left of news
And people snickered and laughed at Hilary Clinton when she commented during her husband's impeachment proceedings about a "vast, right-wing conspiracy in America." I wonder if they're laughing now. Project 2025 didn't just appear. And the tech brothers behave as if they should be worshipped, while their AI data factories' enormous energy requirements drive up electricity prices for everyone.
Hillary is about his honest as Bill and if she had the opportunity to lie under oath , she might well just take it as well. She wrote the damn Russia hoax herself pretty much from what evidence we have so you keep backing up Hillary Clinton.
Your perspective is rare and invaluable because you bring the historian’s discipline of context to every situation enabling your readers, listeners and viewers to understand how and why we are here.
My book discussion group read The Great Gatsby this month. Someone noted that it was published exactly 100 years ago. Someone else reminded us of the Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago. I couldn't help wondering where our new "gilded age" is leading. Will we end up with a stock market crash and another depression? "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" is not a reassuring understanding of our situation. As many of us have noted in the past, Pogo's "We have met the enemy and he is us" can be viewed optimistically as a call to action or pessimistically as a capitulation. My favorite story of the week is of a church Nativity scene with the notice in front that ICE has been in the neighborhood so the holy family is in hiding. Some people have objected; others have pointed out that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were immigrants, fleeing persecution. Where are our stories that will move us to resist the regime of Fitzgerald's "careless" people?
"Where are our stories . . . to resist the regime of Fitzgerald's 'careless' people" Betsy?
films like “The Florida Project,” “Knives Out,” “The Verdict,” and “Winter’s Bone”;
novels like Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead,” Walter Mosley’s “Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned,” Tom Hanks’ “The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece,” and many by Richard Russo and Stephen King;
memoirs like Mary Karr’s “The Liars’ Club,” Joan Didion’s “Where I Was From,” Jeannette Walls’ “The Glass Castle,” Sarah Kendzior’s “The Last American Road Trip,” Tia Levings’ “A Well-Trained Wife,” Erin Gruwell’s “The Freedom Writers Diary,” and Beth Macy's “Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America”;
essay collections such as Arlie Russell Hochschild’s “Stolen Pride,” Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America”; Sarah Smarsh’s “Bone of the Bone, and George Packer’s “The Unwinding”;
biographies such as Lindsey Stonebridge’s “We are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience”;
histories like Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money,” Rachel Maddow’s “Prequel,” Heather Cox Richardson’s “How the South Won the Civil War,” and Timothy Snyder’s “The Road to Unfreedom”;
poems such as Philip Levine’s Detroit factory poems,
songs like Tim Grimm’s “Broken Truth,” Bob Seger’s “Feel Like a Number,” Carsie Blanton’s “Rich People,” Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught,” and any number of Bruce Springsteen or hip hop Ari Melber will cite.
Love your book list, but as a retired librarian, I can say that in my area, those titles (and any “real” books, really) are read by maybe one person per thousand.
And the Archdiocese of Boston ordered the parish to take down the sign. They refused. The non-shock is Arch/Boston ordered it removed. This is the kind of capitulation to the Rs Pope Leo talked about, imho.
Yes, Betsy Smith, the holy family in hiding is a powerful message two weeks before the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.
We as gift bearers today, 2025 years later, would do well to gift the WORDS of our trusted messengers out to the world…a world that needs the good news of a lowly carpenter born in a manger and other good messengers amongst our human family.
We can double our favorite Substack writers’s followers by gifting their WORDS that are mightier than the sword!
Will Substack let us do that for one month only to familiarize the recipient??
But for the accident of his birth, full-on moron David Ellison, one of those guys I have met too many of in Hollywood over 40 years - the moron convinced he's a genius - would be failing at living in a cardboard box under a freeway overpass. Don't believe me? Go download "Flyboys" the World War I flying movie where he bought himself a role by investing in the production with the first of daddy's money. If his acting talent rose to "wooden," he'd have been in good shape. All his other games here have been as an "executive" on projects that went nowhere - until he invested in "Top Gun: Maverick" and his buddy Tom made him rich along with everyone else connected to that piece of dreck. But daddy's limitless supply of money and the general dimwittedness of the people in Hollywood who choose the executive side of the desk meant people "took him seriously" even as they laughed behind his back. Now that Hollywood is run by the talentless fuckwits like David Zaslav, whose only talent is taking outrageous amounts of cash out of deals he does, everything's down at Ellison's level, and he looks pretty smart, comparatively. We really are at "Idiocracy" and "A Confederacy of Dunces." And it's not just in Hollywood.
Having read another of HCR‘s brilliant and insightful articles I end up feeling like the wedding guest in the rhyme of the ancient mariner and go on my way a sadder but a wiser man. In the meantime your president has decided to put Europe to rights. We are not too happy about that but on the other hand we all know he’s not quite right in the head.
No Donold hasn’t been right in the head for years, decades even. Which doesn’t bode well for any of us, including the nitwits that voted for him and the MAGANazi loyalists. And now Donold and Hegseth both have albatrosses hanging around their necks while the regime plows full steam ahead into deeper murkier depths of lawlessness, war crimes, corruption and never ending diabolical schemes.
You must remember that we in the UK are a nation of pedants so I have to point out that the ancient mariner was finally relieved of his albatross and of course, his was a sailing ship. but I agree with your sentiments entirely wouldn’t it be great if we took your president at his words about our weakness and corruption and all European countries decided to withdraw from the FIFA World Cup.
You can’t keep a good pedant down so I did a bit of research to check if there was any possibility of the ancient mariners ship being steam powered-probably not Coleridge died before the SS Great Britain made its epic voyage and after all he was referring to an ancient mariner
Not at all safe before bed, quite the opposite. Control of media is control of minds. I had asked for you to talk about fox in the past, I'm glad you waited until now because this was the right time.
Reading this right here, I’m reminded why the news feels unreal: a freakin Fox alum at Defense, influencers shaping policy, and even a chatbot calling reality “impossible.” You ain’t crazy. You’re tired because your attention is being worked while the money moves. The fix is small and stubborn: choose receipts over spectacle, back reporters who show their work, vote in the quiet races, and talk to the neighbor who trusts you.
There is no cavalry coming.
so we do what we gotta do
There is no one left but us
so we tell the truth.
There is no one left but us
so we protect each other.
There is no one left but us,
so we make the law mean something again. www.xplisset.com
Restore the Fairness doctrine and them some, like allowing third parties air-time as well. ⚖️ Representative Crockett has a great campaign ad that uses Trump's crassly classless behavior against himself. 💡 Great idea: get Trump to drumpf himself. 🥳 Cornered scorpions sting the other scorpions and then sting themselves. 😠
EDIT P.S.: Representative Crockett's clever advert. https://youtu.be/bom6iadL9mI Courtesy of 'Everything Briefing'. https://everythingbriefing.substack.com/p/december-9-2025
My wife (who is much smarter than I am) and I were discussing the marketing genius of Trump. He is not a smart man or a kind man. He is unable to empathize with anyone but himself. He and his sycophants have done exactly nothing to make America great, in fact quite the opposite. But he is still, in his feeble and demented state a great marketer.
In the late 1970's and throughout the 1980's, I attended several IBM rollouts of new mainframes, peripherals and software enhancements. IBM put on amazing dog and pony shows bragging about their hardware and software. In passing, they put down their rivals while lying about their products. In other words, they were using the Roger Ailes marketing model.
They were bullies just like Trump and their products were inferior to Hitachi's and Amdahl's, their major competitors. Furthermore they were much more expensive, slower and not as well engineered. A good friend of mine became a rep for Hitachi and he took me to the Hitachi showroom in San Jose. On display, they had the largest IBM mainframe and peripherals and the comparable Hitachi machines. They opened up the machines to see the electronics. IBM's machines were filled with spaghetti wiring while Hitachi's were neat and much smaller. BIGGER, BETTER, FASTER, CHEAPER. It was obvious which was better. And so our company replaced our IBM equipment with Hitachi's.
The local IBM manager in Springfield, IL called each of our board members telling them that I was basically an idiot for switching from their equipment and it wasn't too late to cancel the Hitachi order. Fortunately, our Board saw through their BS and we went with Hitachi.
And this is the Donald Trump marketing model. If you aren't on board, he will do everything he can to make your life miserable.
GJ, last year, I was watching a podcast on YouTube, and woman who is an expert in her field, ( sorry, I can't remember her name) said something which explained so much about the Trump followers. She said that Trump is one of the most skilled propogandist who's ever lived. With the help of big money and FOX "News", he was able to focus on people's fears, prejudices, and discontent with how they perceived as being "used" by those they see as undeserving. These fears were focused on over and over and they realized that, at last, they've found a leader who agrees with them, and will do all he can to fan the flames of his propoganda. They saw a "savior." Trump has NOTHING else going for him except his ability to promote and encourage those people's fears and racist beliefs. I always wondered why in the world mothers in cults would allow their 10 year-old daughters to marry old men who were in their 80s and had 80 other young wives. Propoganda, appeal to people's weaknesses and fears over and over, the wearing down of rational minds can cause people to discard any sense of integrity or compassion or reality. Trump is that 80 year old cult leader who can make his suseptible followers do anything he wants without question. That's just my take.
It’s not ‘just your take’. And Trump isn’t a great con-man really, any more than the classroom bully ‘converts’ weaklings to submit & join his gang in order to belong & attain power they otherwise wouldn’t have.
Jay Jay Eh, if Trump isn't a great con man, then please tell me who who think IS a great con man. He's a big bully who thinks he can throw his weight and money around and people will cower in obedience. Consider his pathetic yes-people Cabinet. Seems as if you're downplaying the devastating effects on people by bullies and con men.
he's not only a con man...he's a gangster.
By ‘not great’ I mean not especially smooth or skilled, often just plain bullying, pandering to the lowest common denominator - his *success is something else & undeniable … but even then he LOST the popular vote to Clinton & came very close to Harris.
His tactics appear clear to anyone outside his undereducated, racist etc. base.
And just the other day used the phrase "insubordinate" in his horrible verbal assault on a black reporter.
Not to someone in his employ, but 100% in violation of the 1A that Gov't cannot suppress free speech and the press - except DJT expects DPRK sycophancy.
- JFC, "insubordinate" ???
He literally is decompensating to his true self of how he sees people and reporters as subjects to be his loyal water carriers for his insane BS!
You’re right Pam! Other facts…Americans have become a very pathetic, hopeless electorate…because it requires little or no effort! Remember 2024! They like shiny objects which pleasure them. This something tRump understands and plays to. Our present Government contains a majority of self serving, “do nothings” or perhaps just cowards! There is a sickening scarcity of American Patriots. Then there are the fools who believe everything will be put right by the Midterms. Can you imagine what this country will look like in November of 26? Cause tRump ain’t going anywhere! Oh yeah…if he died tomorrow we would be in a worse situation! Of course all the convicted and imprisoned felons probably would know they wouldn’t be pardoned …maybe!!!
While I share your hatred for the man and everything he stands for I would humbly submit that you are greatly underestimating his super power. When all is said and done and hopefully the country returns to sanity, Trump will go down as the greatest most successful con man in history. Morally depraved, character devoid of substance yes but still the greatest con man ever. It makes me sick to think that 50 years from now historians will still be talking about him. Evil yes but when all is said and done he has achieved a permanent level of notiriety that rivals Hitler.
So yes in this one area, conning, this evil POS has unrivaled skill.
If he's remembered as an evil, immoral con man, in my opinion that would be good. Let him and his sycophants be named and remembered along with Hitler, Stalin, drug lords, grifters, and gangsters. Hold him and them up for scorn so that future generations will be reminded!
See my additional comment addressing f this above.
🔻I simply do not conflate ‘Great’ with ‘Successful’ here.
With a ‘great’ conman we would be happily singing along with him now, virtually unaware & unopposed to his destructiveness.
Most of the actual heavy lifting in a con is done by the people being conned. They are willing participants.
The hard part of running a con is finding the mark(s). Not actually that hard in politics.
Marc, I, for one do not underestimated his super power. He has so many degenerates around him to further empower him. How they can smile and bow down to his cruelness and stupidity is beyond my comprehension, but that's what keeps him in power. Republican Congress members who have sold their souls to him could have stopped some of his dangerous nonsense, but they were and are afraid I d of his perceived "strength" and super power.
He had a helluva a lot of help from the Master of Evil Propaganda, Putin himself, and the Project 2025 goons that got SCOTUS and the GOP stacked with their lawbreaking disciples
Don't forget his love affair with Kim Jong Un. It explains who he really is and what he wants our country to be. Complete obedience.
Agreed, and his cult is increasingly lazy and ignorant thanks to media.
‘The media’ is waking up, but the horse is already out of the gate.
Well, said Pam. It is perplexing but having Fox News perpetuate your BS is likely a game changer as was having Charlie Kirk and Joe Rogan, etc. supporting you.
To say nothing of Musk, who helped BUY his presidency. 🙄
“There is no one left,” McClure wrote, “none but all of us.”
Where have I heard that before? Let me think … wait a minute! Now I remember:
“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children.” (Matthew 11:25)
Good to see you, Sir James!
It's a Raygun rerun.
Thanks, Pam, for the insight.
I think it's more of a reflection on how the media, social and otherwise, have dumbed down America more than a reflection on any "skill" exhibited by the orance menace.
‘The Media’ here …
This is why the U.S. in Press Freedom is ranked so low in the world now. 💥
https://rsf.org/en/index (Reporters Sans Frontiers / Without Borders)
“ After a century of gradual expansion of press rights in the United States, the country is experiencing its 🔻 first significant and prolonged decline in press freedom in modern history, and 🔥 Donald Trump's return to the presidency is greatly exacerbating the situation.
At a time when press freedom is experiencing a worrying decline in many parts of the world, a major — yet often underestimated — factor is seriously weakening the media: economic pressure.
Much of this is due to *ownership concentration, *pressure from advertisers and *financial backers, and *public aid that is restricted, absent or allocated in an opaque manner.”
The U.S. lists at 🔹57, Canada 22, UK 20, Australia 29, Israel 122, Ireland 7, Sweden 4, Norway 1 … just to give an idea.
I have to agree with you. Joseph Smith started one of the biggest protestant religions with a total grift. So many times, these folks come along who have that kind of magnetic ability to hypnotize followers. Now we have the biggest grifter and conman in history walking among us.
Right out of the Goebbels playbook. Read or reread IN THE GARDEN OF THE BEASTS by Erik Larson and watch the rise of the Third Reich in the early 1930's. Berlin owns that past. Even as the city acknowledges what happened there, theirs has risen again in a vibrant celebration of art, science, culture, history, and humanity at-large.
https://gober.substack.com/p/letters-from-inside-the-whale-be5?utm_source=activity_item
Maybe that was true, even 10 years ago, but not anymore. He's been a puppet ever since the election. He is controlled by the oligarchs who bribe him and Steven Miller who is controlling the plan (Project 2025) and the narrative. Here's a great explanation of why WE need to change the narrative, ignore DT and go after his "handlers" and co-conspirators. (Looking at you John Roberts and SCOTUS!) https://substack.com/home/post/p-181001631 "DAMMIT It's Not Alzheimer's! Here's Why It's A Far Worse Nightmare Scenario"
Yeah, it's bad. But there was good (happy?) news today.
A Democrat won the mayoral race in Miami for the first time in 30 years. That is a big fucking deal when you consider that a majority of the voters in Miami are brown.
And Mackenzie Scott has given away over $7.2 billion to 186 different organizations, with no strings attached, around the world.
Yes, T Allen. It’s time for a full on pivot to put a spotlight on the puppet masters.
Nancy, pupper masters is the reason I want him to shed his mortal coils in front of all of us. Otherwise, I fear the cabal will hide it and continue to do evil in his name.
Agree, Michele
Totally agree. And I found the facts in the article fascinating. I sent it on to a group of people, who would recognize the differences in frontal lobe dementia to Alzheimers. It’s also frankly terrifying because of Miller & Vought, the evil duo
pulling the strings-writing the scripts.
But, that win in Miami, FL is huge.
Yay 😃 I need to stay buoyed, head up moving forward thinking positive thoughts
encouraging myself to keep taking action!
We all need to be buoyed.
Dr. George notes that if you understand the symptoms of Frontotemporal Dementia, such as confabulation and disorganized speech, you can "move from a stressful “Why the fuck is he saying this!?!” to an objective “Hmmm, another confabulation story.”
Unfortunately, much of the MSM, including NPR, are still trying to make his statements and actions make sense. They are using the wrong lens for analysis. It is like debating the quality of the clothes the naked person is wearing.
That's the word I've been trying to spread. I'm stealing your analogy. :-)
Good point about trying to make sense of Trump. Why bother?
Hi William! Good to know there are at least 2 of us making these connections! Don't loose hope. Here is a post I think you'll find very, very, interesting, as are the rest of his writings. https://thewestpointhistoryprofessor.substack.com/p/a-powerful-cell-is-operating-the Another person I follow who covers the current events from a legal, and if possible -hopeful, perspective is Robert B Hubbell's Todays Edition newsletter. He's my first read in the am before I have my coffee and tackle HCR and many others. https://substack.com/profile/3956425-robert-b-hubbell Chin up! Remember the French revolution? And we have a big advantage in that the middle class is NOT going to accept becoming poor without a fight! And a large portion of the population (at least in New England) have ancestors that fought in the American Revolution. And we won't give up our democracy without a fight!
The GOP is working overtime with suppression tactics, even though DJT is so unpopular and cruel. I will be surprised if we win the midterms given the GOP’s record of voter suppression.
And I always thought IBM was the best. I’m not a techie. Just believed the Bull.
Back then, we had no idea what was really going on, and if not for the great journalists and newsmen of the time, we would have known considerably less. CBS and Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, and a few others were trusted because of their gravitas. Cronkite was "the most Trusted Man in America". Wonder who the most trusted man in America is now?!
Now, the decades long republican attacks on education, Citizens United, and blanket corruption has dumbed down America to the point that a con man liar rapist pedophile grifter, and many like him, have taken over our country in record time. The venom of lies spat at Americans continues minute by minute and the general public remains angry, fearful and apathetic, obliviously shopping for Xmas.
I think the most trusted man in America is a woman - Heather!!
The substackers are stacking up to be equivalents of the revolutionary pamphleteers of the 1770s.
Dan Rather puts out a Substack "Steady" about twice a week. I often forward it on, and one senior said "I miss journalists like him".
I started as a mainframe programmer on IBM equipment in 1977 and I drank the kool-aid for several years. But when I started going to their marketing events and seeing the mismatch between what they were saying and using the equipment (hardware, software and documentation) that I slowly came around.
I live about 20 minutes from Binghamton NY where the main IBM facilities were for many years - worked for a construction co that did lots of in-plant work - we also built many of their facilities in NYS.
Obviously, those buildings are empty or "gone" now. But IBM was a big deal here for many years. Also the clean-up of hazardous materials went on for quite a while afterwards.
Of course, our company used IBM computers etc.
Hearing of your experience and your viewpoints regarding IBM caught my eye!!
I just spent the night in Binghamton last week on my way to the NE-PSU football game. It was much larger than I expected. I found a really nice Mexican restaurant and I was the only customer the entire time I was there from about 7:30 - 8:15.
And then along came Apple!
But first, Intel and Microsoft. I was living in Sacramento in 1979-1981 and had several friends that worked for Intel at the time. We spent quite a bit of time in Santa Clara with several Intel engineers. Intel, Apple and the other tech companies in the Bay Area were driving up real estate prices like crazy at the time. One of the engineers bought a small 2 bedroom house in 1975 for $40k and sold it for $120k in 1980. Insanity.
Yes, since day 1- coming down the escalator - I have always thought of him as being a marketing genius. I saw right through the choreography of that clip and wondered who that slimy guy was.
I knew who he was from one 10 minute viewing of The Apprentice well before that. He made my skin crawl and an instinctual revulsion. I told everyone I knew and my Congressional delegation in 2016. Oh, well. We aren't the brightest species.
This quote states what Heather and MOST Americans have been saying since the attack of the US Capitol with Trump’s blessings and cruel support of the elite that he answers to. He is their very willing puppet becomes he craves the stage ( remember all his TV shows). “Trump has always been a salesman with an instinctive understanding of the power of media. That sense helped him to rise to power in 2016 by leveraging an image Republicans had embraced since the 1980s: that the reason certain white Americans were being left behind in the modern world was not that Republican policies had transferred more than $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%, but that lazy and undeserving Black and Brown Americans and women were taking handouts from the government rather than working.”
He’s no better than a side show Circus barker.
I totally agree.
Three-quarters of that wealth-transfer represents the national debt.
Gary, being in graphics and desktop publishing, I can tell a similar story about Adobe Systems, whose flagship software app is Photoshop, which has become a genericized trademark. Photoshop's image-editing capabilities aren't that impressive. But the addition of "filters" produced by third parties (at extra cost) is what makes it powerful.
In the 1990s, Adobe attempted to capture the graphics and publishing industry by developing a suite of apps that handled all aspects of publishing. The apps were, as software critics describe them, "bloatware." That is, the software was designed with excessive amounts of code, causing them to take up disproportionate hard-drive space, while running slowly and inefficiently. Moreover, the user interface was unfriendly and inefficient. Adobe created the myth that this suite of apps interacted with each other to provide a "streamlined workflow," and use of competitors' software would interfere with this workflow. A lot of user-companies bought into it and Adobe achieved dominance.
Adobe added insult to injury by releasing "version updates" that included precious few improvements or new features, to the tune of over $1,000 per update. For that reason, many customers skipped updates.
Adobe didn't like this, so they led the software industry transition from the perpetual license model to the subscription model. This required customers to have an internet connection to use Adobe software. Upon launching an app, the app would "phone home" to verify the user had paid their monthly ransom. If the ransom was paid, the app would work. If not, the app was unusable and files could not be opened.
My former boss had already caved to Adobe pressure when I joined his agency. He used Adobe Illustrator to create drawings and illustrations and I preferred Macromedia Freehand. We maintained an ongoing, good-natured feud about which was better. Eventually, Adobe bought Freehand with the sole intention of killing it, which they promptly did. After much research, I transitioned to the Affinity creative suite from Serif, which still offered perpetual licenses for very reasonable prices. The software is just as powerful and far more efficient. Unfortunately (in my opinion), Serif recently sold its software to Canva, an online platform that operates by persuading uneducated novices that they can create professional-looking graphics all by themselves without hiring professionals. I am dubious about the future of the Affinity suite, and will probably find myself searching (again) for a replacement. Such is our world these days.
IBM was a big disappointment. When they came out with their computer we felt that the competition with Apple was over. IBM and Microsoft should have dominated the market.
IBM never understood the individual PC market and how they would be business work stations in the future, until it was too late. I'm not sure why they didn't realize that the home computer market was an incredible opportunity for them. For one thing, it was easy for a radio shack junkie to buy the parts necessary to build their own machine that would run MS-DOS software. And when Microsoft released Windows, it was game over for IBM in the PC market.
And what happened to IBM? Isn’t that the real lesson?
I'm guessing yes!
Honda and a Chevrolet were the same, open up the hood and it was elegant, clearer, organized, the Chevy was spaghetti. In oil.
Of course the greatest spokesdroid was the RR man, Saint Ronnie! Selling handmade nuclear power plants, expensive, unsafe. But he was so good!
And thee were fairly scary member of his cabinet too, James ‘What the…!’ Wa a real gem…and we are still paying a prices, aids and climate change.
Thank you, G. J., for drawing on your VERY relevant experience to teach the rest of us. 🫱🏻🫲🏽 My tuition check is in the mail.😉
Thanks for the very kind words Ned.
Outside of the Trumpian MAGA world, it seems to me that people are kinder to one another than pre-Trump. Maybe it's just me, but it feels like we're all looking for kindness in one another and most people here in downcast Maine seem to be on board.
But, it's not just here either. Since Trump came to power in 2016, I have traveled to well over half of the states and Northern Europe. People seem to be friendly and kind where ever I travel.
What say you?
Agreed. When I come across people being unkind, at least two-thirds of the time, I seem 'coincidentally' to be in what my sister calls a sh*tful mood.
There was parable that my father often told when I was little, A local Congregationalist Minister in Vermont, who grew up in Atlanta, speaks with two members of the flock, both dyed in the blue-wool Yankees, who are moving to Atlanta.
The first congregant says, "I am moving to Atlanta. You grew up there. Can you tell me what people are like there?"
The Minister answers with a question, "Well how are the people here?"
The answer us terse, "Cold and provincial; that has never changed."
The Minister replies, "Well, I hate to break the bad news. People in Atlanta are distant and almost parochial."
The next Sunday, the other congregant moving to Atlanta asks the Minister what the people are like in Atlanta. The Minister answers with the same question about people in Vermont.
The second congregant's eyes and expression light up. "That's what worries me, Padre. People in Vermont are so nice and friendl, just lovely, really. My wife and I love it here . . . ." Ad infinitum.
Finally, the Minister gets his word in edgewise, "Well, y'all are going to discover that Atlantans are warming and welcoming. You're in luck!"
I've been fortunate to have worked in over 35 states, visited 14 others and traveled and worked in about 10 foreign countries. I have found that ______ (fill in the blank) people are warm and welcoming everywhere I've been.
I know this wasn't the point of your comment, but....back in the day, what sold IBM on a lot of companies was their service. Products were good, but the service was the gold standard.
True, until it wasn't. Their mainframes required constant maintenance and so their SEs would come on site at least once a week to check for problems. It wasn't until circa 1990 that IBM's machines phoned home when there was a hardware or software cliche. Once in the late 1970's the company mainframe was down for an entire week with a hardware/software issue. They ended up flying someone in from Germany to fix it. The mean time between failures on the older mainframes was under 100 hours. Many of the largest companies had dedicated IBM staff on-site to monitor and fix their hardware.
It was fun being a programmer back then because we would play dominoes or UNO when the machine was down.
By the mid-1990's the mainframes were self-diagnosing and we rarely saw our CE's, SE's etc.
The same scrambled wiring effect was obvious in 70's Japanese cars where everything was buttoned down neat, A beautiful thing to behold.
Thank you.
The Fairness Doctrine does not apply to cable news. Cable news channels are owned, and are not transmitted over public airwaves.
If the Very Right Wing Ellisons own CBS, that channel is broadcast over public airwaves. "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride" No one in government will EVER bring back The Fairness Doctrine. Don't look backwards; what is the fix today and going forward?
The fix is the application of something like the Fairness Doctrine. Look at Trump attacking the BBC for a quilt quotation of his unquestionably incendiary speech to his base which provoked the Capitol siege on 6 January 2021. Yet he lies every time he speaks and his lies are faithfully transmitted and repeated on right-wing media. The situation has become so biased that even Fox News has been banned from Pentagon press briefings.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/06/pentagon-press-corps-rightwing-takeover
The Trump administration has told the EU they unless they drop their restrictions on the digital giants they will face the full toll of tariffs on steel and other goods.
https://www.politico.eu/article/us-steel-tariff-relief-eu-digital-concessions/
Australia has passed a law banning under-16s from social media because it doesn't adequately protect them. The answer is to grow some balls and do something about it.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/dec/10/australias-kids-are-saved-the-social-media-ban-is-here-and-all-the-teens-are-outside-touching-grass
Plainly his first book should have been titled, “The Art of the Lie” instead of The Art of the Deal. And Roy Cohen originally jerked his chain.
I think the good side must borrow from these propagandists by using the Madison Avenue approach. That term is is defunct now but the Madison Ave package was a marketing project to sell products. And that’s what we need to be vigilant with. But I’m afraid that we won’t use this approach. We will insist on unpopular issues because they are part of the progressive package. But now we have a gift being presented to us and that gift is the lunatics in office.
"The Art of the Deal" - instead, "The Art of the Steal".
TRUE, per Reuters, trump has just seized Venezuelan Oil tanker. See, my summary of Reuters 5:10 Eastern Update below or just Google "trump oil tanker seizure".
BBC America identifies the oil tanker as "The Skipper" under a Guyana flag
With all due respect - the "progressive package" to which you refer, with a derogatory flourish, should be renamed "let's finally stop underbussing [thank you, Dr. HCR for that word!!] marginalized people to get a deal." It started with the 3/5 compromise and it's high time we stopped.
I agree with you about using a Madison Avenue approach, but naming our values and connecting these values with specific promises of support, inclusion, stewardship, and compassion, are better options than the watery pap that mainstream Dems keep reverting to.
More like 'The Fart of the Deal'.😉
Nice hearing from *you, as always, Russell. The West in general, and Europe in particular, *need hang tough. The American Century is over, if it ever really existed. That means that we Americans live in a time and in a world in which the United States needs her allies more than the allies need her.
Europe, perhaps with the Commonwealth Countries, ought to invest in a de novo social network that incorporates lessons-learned; once that platform is up-to-scale, then ban the U.S. social media, with the exceptions of Bluesky and, perhaps, Linked-In.
The American First Amendment is far too powerful to ever permit anything like the Fairness Doctrine again.
Thank you, Frau Katze; I had overlooked the broad-vs-narrowcasting distinction. Perhaps the Fairness Doctrine could be restored for broadcast channels. At least, then, there will be a place for people to go when they do seek both sides. 🤞🏼
The point you make likely fails with broadcast networks since they channel come through narrowcasting for the overwhelming majority of the country's populace. 😳
Sooo . . . we must rest content with 'PBS News Hour', though many deem that as biassed, and C-Span for two sided views. ⚖️
One way to use the Shitizens United decision to create an alternate Fairness Doctrine is for Progressive Organizations, blessed with resources, to buy advert. time on Fox News and the other right-wingnut networks. 🤔
Doing so could well require legislation that networks can not discriminate against advertisers for their speech. 🗽
That is sub-optimal, too, since the right-wingnuts have a lot more money and could overwhelm the more progressive of neutral channels; additionally, these organizations could create a dependency and then coerce networks by threatening to pull their advertising. 😱
If anyone can think of a work-around to the pointed and likely accurate constraints neatly observed by Frau Katze, I would be most grateful.🙏🏾
Define propaganda in law and prohibit it through the airwaves and on the Internet. Destroy the propagandists.
so we are all just worker bees making honey for queen bee trump? Time to "Queen ball" him as he is an imposter queen in America's hive.
Yes, we are working on it! It's getting cold out there though. Need to cluster to get through the winter but wait until the first 50* day! :-)
Thanks to all of you for the information. Trying to understand this one. Is it to line us up for ICE?
Erica Kirk the widow of Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA appears on a CBS Town Hall this coming Saturday Night at 8:00 P. M. Deal with it. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/erika-kirk-town-hall-cbs/
Propaganda on prime time. I will watch it because I need to inform myself how the snakes are slithering onto prime time.
She's been appearing on Heather's site here, too, Gregory.
So far as I know, giving "like" to comments that follow the deep corruptions of big money, dark money, and other forms of indifference to regular human life.
Funny I should read this just now. I saw that she “liked” some comments I made on The Pillar (Catholic news website) regarding employee benefits of all things. I thought it was another Erika Kirk but it wasn’t. Weird. Very niche-y topic.
I received about 6 messages from “Erika Kirk” yesterday. I’m thinking troll farm.
Is it really her or someone using her name as their moniker? She seems to be liking nearly every post I put up, and none of my posts would be acceptable to the genuine person's public face.
I have noticed "Isaac Mirhazi" commenting on here. It is the real fashion designer? Somehow I wonder if someone with a very recognizable name would use it in a public forum like this.
Miselle, I'm guessing it's someone else.
I seem to remember that Daniel Radcliffe was posting on HCR's (?) Substack, a few years ago, so it's possible a celeb would use their name.
Phil, she has “liked” many of my comments recently. I can’t figure it out. She and I are opposites. So are we positive she’s that Erika?
I also got a "like" from Erika Kirk and I seldom post comments. So I'm definitely thinking now that someone is using her name
I suspect a troll or someone using her name for whatever reason. Now, IF it is someone using her name, and somehow it got out that "Erica Kirk" is liking all these left/Dem posts---that would be interesting, wouldn't it?!?
And do we really think it's the Black Widow herself or just some troll using her name?
Because while Substack is known to support Nazi's, I can't see them being comfortable hanging out here.
Phil, I'm pretty sure the Erika Kirk appearing here is a deepfake. She "liked" a couple of my comments here, so I looked at her Substack page. Her like history showed her liking comments that absolutely savaged her.
I'm thinking this Erika Kirk is a bot.
May be not-so-deep fake. 😉
The wedding pic could have been real, but I'm sure it would be easy to find it & use it. I don't understand what the point is of this trolling, but whatever.
Who are you talking about?
Erika Kirk is the widow of Charlie Kirk, the r-wing nut job who founded, um, Turning Point USA, which is a horrible organization. Charlie was a "good pal" of Trump's.
So you’re taking the word of a assumed porn star prostitute as gospel?
She was almost as good as the convicted perjurer who was the other witness for the prosecution.
Stellar. Omg.
Yes, I'll take HER word over the convicted sexual assault criminal who lies with every breath he takes.
Please see my response to Frau Katze below. I basically wiggle and wriggle to same place where you are. Looking for a work-around; can not think of one. Perhaps, you can.
We need to call it what it is and make the word "angertainment" Merrian-Wesbster's 2026 word of the year! As others have replied, the Fairness Doctrine is NOT returning. So how do we close the loudness gap in the current media landscape?
I subscribe to G. Elliot Morris' Strength in Numbers Substack and have access to the comments. The first person to comment on the post HCR referenced today wrote the following: "It's cable news and a lot more. And it is something that has grown from big to massive to overwhelming. It has a start date: 1987 and the end of the Fairness Doctrine. I think it's really important and it needs a name." They called it angertainment. I agree. Name it and shame it.
Yes, also 🔻 ‘Rage baiting’ as a term. 🔥
That captures the "thing" well. And all "things" need their proper names in order to classify them, understand them, determine how best not to let them win.
After reading so many comments about this "thing" I'm convinced it isn't really about him, but about us, about the human condition, about the devils within us barely confined. Hillary once tried to shame these people by calling them "deplorable" -- we see how far that got her. Perhaps that was date shame officially died in this country, I don't know. By contrast, He Who Must Not Be Named told them to fly their freaks flags proudly, to let it all hang out, every despicable bit. They returned the favor by signing up to become his savage, dimwitted MAGA base. It combines elements of the lumpenproletariat resentful of money and power -- together with the most extreme examples of money, power and the corruption it so often buys. It defies description.
Which is why I don't see it as primarily an economic phenomenon, not about have-nots raging against the "system" but a cultural one-- the same "joy" felt by Romans openly watching the lions eat the Christians. There's a savagery here that can barely be understood. Boorishness is their religion. Cruelty makes them feel good. And anger stokes the fire, again and again. Lost souls. But important to keep reminding ourselves there are still many more of us than them.
I share your world-view and humanity's place in it, It's Come to This. Thank you for clarifying my thinking.
The Fairness Doctrine only covered traditional broadcast media, which was free to view with television connected to an antenna. You could watch anywhere you could receive the signal, and you didn’t pay a broadcaster for the reception. The trade off was having to receive advertisements, which paid for the network broadcasts. Networks had to hew to the Doctrine to keep their licenses. The cable industry upended this concept, because subscribers paid for the content as well as the delivery of that content, and the cable broadcasters could essentially show what they wanted, including material not suitable to be viewed by just anyone, namely (at the start) the 7 words you can’t say on TV and nudity/salacious images.
Even now, the traditional broadcasters, (ABC, CBS, NBC,) bleep the 7 ‘dangerous’ words, and don’t gratuitously show nudity/sexual behavior. Apparently men’s nipples are OK, but women’s nipples are verboten.
My first experience with the nascent Weather Channel concept on the new Cable TV was a camera focused on analog thermometer and wind speed/wind direction meters. You had to watch and listen to a person on traditional networks tell you the forecast.
Derek, when I first got cable TV (we have zero reception at our house from our three local stations) and I was thrilled to get Discovery, ESPN, and TWC. I was a weather junkie, and loved watching the weather, especially when they covered major events. Jim Cantore was a favorite, and the best clip ever was showing Warren Mann (their overnight guy who was USAF Reserve) broadcast from the right seat of a Hurricane Hunter during a Florida hurricane. Now? It is just more "reality" TV.
Hence the words "and then some".
Your description of the original Weather Channel requiring the viewer to do the work of interpreting raw data, rather than having a trusted meteorologist explain it, created a bit of an "a ha!" moment for me, re the evolution of how we receive and process information, encapsulating much of what Dr Richardson wrote about today. Citizens cannot realistically be experts on every topic, whether that be civics, world affairs, economics or meteorology, thus we rely on trusted experts to interpret realms of history and current events in a way that we can understand present reality. Fortunately, with few exception- one of course being the miscreant with a sharpie- there's not been a run on fabricating weather reporting. If your local TV morning meteorologist tells you day after day that the sun is shining when it's pouring down rain, it won't take long for you to stop believing him. If only the same were true of all the other categories where trust and truth are critically important, but require a bit more critical thinking to discern truth from lies.
Dylan sang: "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" yet here we are decades later, witnessing corrupt weathermen convince huge segments of the publc to disbelieve what they see and feel, a society reaping the corrosive impact of the erosion of trust.
"Everything Trump Touches Dies". Including himself. Justice is coming for you Donald Trump. After what you've done to America, you will not saii off to a happy retirement with the loving respect of the nation behind you.
Perfect comment Ned. And I loved the links. Are you sure you're not a former coffee pot salesman?
Just a pot salesman, lol.
I am suing you for 'pre-emptive' plagiarism. 😉
Guilty as charged.
hahahaha-hiccup.
The Fairness Doctrine only ever applied to broadcast media, as the air waves were held to be a common good.
You could not apply it to cable TV: it would fail on First Amendment grounds.
Thank you.
You are welcome, Julie.
Fairness doctrine was designed for broadcast media which the FCC could oversee. It wasn't designed for cable and enforcement would be virtually impossible, but a responsible Congress (if we ever see one again) could come up with something workable if it tried.
Thank you, all, for taking the time to write out your thoughts; ✍️ I found them to be helpful. 🫱🏻🫲🏽 This time, I started at the last commentary and headed North. ✈️ The wordier content will be further down and will answer, unintentionally, many of the comments that precede it. 😴
EDIT P.S., per the discussions of the Erika Kirk 'likes', ¿does anyone else receive repeated 'new followrers' on sub-stack from the good Dr Richardson. I have received four or five. 😳
Now I know I am brilliant, but . . . ¡I am NOT THAT BRILLIANT! 😉
My fear is that these fake requests are portals through which right-wingnut schei¡ße can careen through my digital man-cave.🤭
If you honestly believe that representative Crockett is clever this country of a lot worse off than I thought.
You can always move somewhere else.
ned you have not been paying attention, nor reading my posts. Of all the people here… pretty much most of the people here I’m probably the most content and happy and optimistic. And looking forward to the next three years.
Why would I move from the greatest country on the planet?
HOWEVER.. There is an organization, whose acronym is GTFO. Go to suggesting that people, in fact should move out en masse. And where should they go to the Netherlands the whitest area on the planet. Kind of funny.
Check it out. I’m not kidding the organization named itself GTFO. I’m not making that up. But that’s what I keep telling people if they hate their lives of the country so much why are you here go where you find peace and happiness. There’s a very young lady on the news today that made a very profound comment. Stop complaining and do something about it
So it’s a free country many people here on happy Can move… Aldi it’s nearly impossible to find all the blessings we have here
We need to make the Constitution mean something again. Not only is the Secretary of Defense a former jerk from Fox News, the Deputy Director of the FBI a guest-host on Sean Hannity’s show, and Jeanine Pirro of Fox News now the U.S. District Attorney for DC, but the President himself is a former host of a Reality TV show. Reagan, and Sonny Bono were also celebrities and they went to Washington D.C. Schwarzenegger, like Reagan, also served as California Governor. All these persons are Republicans. It appears the Republican party cannot tell the difference between a qualified politician and a “Star.” Don’t get me wrong. I am a fan also but I know better than to vote for Mermaid Man to be President. When we amend our constitution we need to add some required qualifications for the jobs. For Christ's sake, if our toilet drain pipe needed to be replaced we would expect the Sanitation System Contractor we hire to fix it to be experienced, licensed and to secure a building permit for their work so it will be inspected when they finish. But all we expect from the person we hand the nuclear football to, the President of the United States, is be born in the USA 35 years before taking the oath. The framers really believed the Electors would never allow such a populist to be President. Thus we need to also repeal the Elector system as it is as much a miserable failure as the felon they elected twice.
And the current SCOTUS which has been manipulated to support unconstitutional positions. Not only did the last several justices misrepresent their intentions during their confirmation hearings, they now are using the "shadow docket" to avoid the public hearing the arguments for and against an issue.
And Congress is M.I.A. Congress can prevent mergers and acquisitions (M&A) through antitrust laws like the Clayton Act, which empowers federal agencies (FTC & DOJ) to review large deals and block them if they substantially lessen competition, create monopolies, or harm consumers, with new legislation often proposed to strengthen these powers and update review processes for modern markets.
So much said in such few words. If 10% more voters were informed of it we would have the movement we need.
the sexual abuser hegseth is still a jerk - a murderous one at that...
👆👆👆
Then you need to write the law so that means something and that includes your Constitution which has been interpreted every which way by bad actors and good. A clearly-worded constitution would rule out specious doctrines like Originalism and the Unitary Executive Theory. Don't leave this to judicial activism because that cuts both ways as we've seen ever since there has been a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
As Heather's post today reveals, Right Wing media is intellectual sugar. Thinking is hard. It requires a lot of cognitive energy. Asking people to think is like asking them to eat the broccoli instead of the ice cream cone.
See also: “The Brainwashing of my Father” on YouTube. He recovers after giving up Fox.
I saw that several years ago. Little did I know how much more harmful it would become.
Show this to your father frau
Fox News dominates. So much for full news so much for fake news… beating CBS, NBC ABC and having more viewership than CNN (soon to be sold or spun off for its failing ratings) an MSNBC(already being separated from NBC) more than the two networks combined.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/fox-news-channel-surges-past-abc-nbc-cbs-among-weekday-primetime-viewers-dominant-third-quarter
FOX News dominates all news brands with 1.1 billion YouTube views during Q3, topping NBC, ABC, CBS combined
FOX News Media closed out the third quarter of 2025 as the No. 1 news brand on YouTube with more than one billion video views.
FOX News led runner-up MSNBC by more than 200 million video views and also topped NBC News, ABC News and CBS News combined.
During the news-heavy third quarter, FOX News grew 45% compared to last year to pile up 1.1 billion video views compared to 848 million for MSNBC, 627 million for CNN, 424 million for NBC News, 359 million for ABC News and 163 million for CBS News, according to Emplifi.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/fox-news-channel-surges-past-abc-nbc-cbs-among-weekday-primetime-viewers-dominant-third-quarter
It was the fourth consecutive quarter that FOX News surpassed all news brands on YouTube.
FOX News finished the quarter strong with 408 million video views during September, while MSNBC settled for 254 million and CNN managed 232 million. NBC News had only 135 million video views during the month, ABC News delivered 128 million, and CBS News finished with 70 million video views.
The FOX News Clips platform, which launched in May and provides the latest reporting and analysis from FOX News Channel, continues to grow while the flagship FOX News account has over 14.5 million subscribers. FOX Business also nabbed 166 million views on YouTube during the quarter.
FOX News also dominated linear television during the quarter, surging past broadcast competition to lead all of television with weekday primetime viewers for the entire year.
FOX News drove 283 million Facebook interactions, 98 million Instagram interactions, 19.4 million X interactions and 105.4 million TikTok interactions.
FOX News Channel averaged 3.3 million weekday primetime viewers through September, compared to 3.1 million for CBS, 3.1 million for ABC and 3 million for NBC. Its weekday primetime also topped ESPN’s average audience of 2.1 million and dominated cable news options, as MSNBC managed 1.2 million and CNN settled for 641,000.
It’s not my father. Read the comment again. It’s a video on YouTube.
REALLY - the stupidest ideas come from the left
- Men can get pregnant
- Women are the same as Men
- Russia will not invade Ukraine
- Afghans will maintain control
- Massive deficit spending isn't inflationary
- Climate change is apocalyptic (world is going to end)
- We need a big Congressional bill to stop illegal immigration
- If we give money to IRAN they won't build a nuclear weapon
- COVID vaccines are better than NATURAL IMMUNITY
- COVID vaccines work
- EVERY Leftwing PResidential Poll in 2024 (Kamala was going to win IOWA)
Should I go on?
No mention of Hunter’s laptop? Yikes!!
Well what Heather’s peace did not reveal was the one sidedness of the entire media politic. For example, Apple news was in researched about their news articles and apparently where they were 597 left-wing stories coming from left-wing sources only one out of 597 came from a right wing source, and it was behind a paid only wall
I have mentioned other stories which I could give you the link. If you like about what Google is like when it comes to the links, they list to back up their stories.
I have sometimes searched issues regarding Trump and had to go to 112 links deep to get to the first right wing link and it was 22 pages later. And you wonder why you don’t know what’s going on?
100% brother. Amen!
Yeah, just in case you missed it try this: in the Christie Noe, hearing today one of the panelist I think his name was Mr. Robinson started talking about the national guards Men having an unfortunate accident. Kristi gnome excuse me unfortunate accident they were shot in the head. He tried to shut her up by talking to his chair person to get her to answer the question. And said it again unfortunate accident
As I posted above and now I’m gonna copy and paste as many times as I can I wonder if somebody came up behind him and shot him in the head if everybody would say he had an unfortunate accident. And this is what explicit says yeah we’re gonna go out there and tell the truth. I’m not a Christian, but I think that you guys if I were would call you the antichrist.
Love best your tucked-away adverbial phrase, Xplisset, "while the money moves."
Of course, it's just a subordinate clause, but all the biggest truths perch in it.
Explicit is a man with testicles that have grown inward
Read: ‘’Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business’’ by Neil Postman First published in 1985. 2005 reissue contains new introduction by Andrew Postman.
no sarcasm, good luck.
I Hey, I’ve got a real comment for you tonight, baby. And here’s one of your progenies Mister explicit saying you’re gonna go out there and tell the truth
So here’s the way you, people and Christie noems hearing told the truth today this ugly piece of shit that actually said that the shooting of the national guardsman was an unfortunate accident. When they came up behind him and shot him in the head. I wonder if I went back behind Mr. Robinson and shot him in the head if everybody would think it was an unfortunate accident. This is why you people keep losing you can’t freaking tell the truth and then he tried to shut her up when she said it wasn’t an accident and he was shot in the head and then he asked permission to continue his question to the witness rather than her tell the truth.
Re Fox shaping the world, another quote: Roger Ailes was asked in an interview about the quality of Fox News; his response was that "news" was not their business, it was about ratings, and Fox is the winner.
Well look who fell behind. Sorry, Bob, but Roger Ailes is long gone, but Fox is now the king of all viewership. Including ABC, NBC and CBS has more viewership than MS NBC oh I’m sorry MMS now and CNN. COMBINED. And just for you I’ll post you a little special little ditty here. So try to catch up Bob it’s December 20 25 and here’s even a message about the viewership and a message from ad week. Who measures analytic
Wq primetime (6-11 pm ET), Fox News has consistently been the top-rated cable news network, according to Adweek and other sources. Their top shows, like "The Five," "Jesse Watters Primetime," and "Hannity," typically attract millions of viewers. MSNBC and CNN also have strong primetime viewership, with programs like "The Rachel Maddow Show" and "Anderson Cooper 360" being popular.
Q1 2025’s Top 15 Shows Among Total Viewers
1. The Five — Fox News (4,552,000)
2. Jesse Watters Primetime — Fox News (4,103,000)
3. Hannity — Fox News (3,544,000)
4. Special Report with Bret Baier — Fox News (3,503,000)
5. The Ingraham Angle — Fox News (3,418,000)
6. Gutfeld! — Fox News (3,333,000)
7. The Will Cain Show — Fox News (2,591,000)
8. Outnumbered — Fox News (2,453,000)
9. The Faulkner Focus — Fox News (2,392,000)
10. America Reports — Fox News (2,351,000)
11. The Story with Martha MacCallum — Fox News (2,338,00)
12. America’s Newsroom — Fox News (2,285,000)
13. The Rachel Maddow Show — MSNBC (1,981,000)
14. Fox News at Night — Fox News (1,907,000)
15. Fox & Friends — Fox (1,519,000)
Q1 2025’s Top 15 Among Adults 25-54
1. Jesse Watters Primetime — Fox News (507,000)
2. The Five — Fox News (500,000)
3. Hannity — Fox News (465,000)
4. Gutfeld! — Fox News (453,000)
5. The Ingraham Angle — Fox News (414,000)
6. Special Report with Bret Baier — Fox News (404,000)
7. The Will Cain Show — Fox News (312,000)
8. Fox News at Night — Fox News (302,000)
9. Outnumbered — Fox News (284,000)
10. The Faulkner Focus — Fox News (281,000)
11. America Reports — Fox News (280,000)
12. The Story — Fox News (266,000)
13. America’s Newsroom — Fox News (260,000)
14. Fox & Friends — Fox (198,000)
15. The Rachel Maddow Show — MSNBC (177,000)
FROM ADWEEK.
Here's the 1st Quarter of 2025 Cable News Ratings
Fox News beat ABC and NBC during weekday primetime
''Everyone Is Innocent, Somehow''
(This is the satire Fox News knew was coming. Read and enjoy the satire and then click the link at the end for the no lipstick on the pig version.)
A democracy does not collapse overnight. It is sold, segmented, branded, and streamed. This satire exposes how media, politicians, and audiences collaborated, often gladly, in trading responsibility for spectacle, until outrage became governance and attention replaced citizenship. Funny, furious, and uncomfortably familiar for modern America... https://essayx.substack.com/p/everyone-is-innocent-somehow
Well said, Sarge. I use the phrase that the inmates have taken over the asylum.
And you are a proud member of that asylum there ally. Just saw a great segment on TV that describes you all. This is not the Democrat party. It’s the anti-Trump party.
Trump says, arrest the illegals you say protect the immigrants but forget about the word illegal
You protect the wife beater and the trafficker and send a senator or a congressman down to El Salvador to have tea with him.
Trump says stop funding the illegals we don’t have the money and we’ve already spent hundreds of billions of dollars on illegals to house feed and provide medical care and no expense while you were here complaining about you can’t afford your health insurance but we give it to them for free
Trump destroys a couple of drug infested boats you say protect the drug dealers and the narco terrorist
Trump says let’s gather up all the illegals who are criminals here and abroad and let’s deport them and you build sanctuary cities
Trump says I’m going to lower prices and all you can do is blame him for the high prices when it was on Biden, the 22% confirmed, factual evidence
Gas prices were 459 average during Biden now there are less than three dollars
So keep talking about affordability. In fact, there’s five states now that I have gas prices under two dollars. And in California they’re in the mid to high five dollars right now.
You demonized Trump for questioning the 2020 election and many of you still think he stole the current election and yet you support Maduro, who actually lost the election by HUUUUUGE margin rather than supporting the lady who won WHO HAPPENS TO BE A WOMAN…
You demonize Trump for building a ballroom so that we don’t have the house International events in a tent on the White House lawn well not having to shell out a dime for it while Obama paid 400,000 of your money to remodel it himself
And four other presidents every remodel
And you give Trump crap for the war, Ukraine. ?? there’s people here actually think that Trump supports Russia when who do you think supports Russia Obama who let Russia take over Crimea in total or Biden that let him take over eastern Ukraine in total with no hopes of getting it back and you think Trump can just snap his fingers and Russia will say OK sure, we’ll just give it back
Or maybe we should send over more money to kill 25,000 more men each month.
If you had any empathy at all as you’re supposed to have, why don’t you picture the war happening here at 25,000 people in your city or your county is dying every month I think you’re gonna want to stop the war you’re gonna want to spend more money to kill more people ?
OK
Well said. You want a hero? Look in the damn mirror.
It is high time.
I Hey, I’ve got a real comment for you tonight, baby. So here’s the way you, people and Christie gnomes hearing told the truth today this ugly piece of shit that actually said that the shooting of the national guardsman was an unfortunate accident. When they came up behind him and shot him in the head. I wonder if I went back behind Mr. Robinson and shot him in the head if everybody would think it was an unfortunate accident. This is why you people keep losing you can’t freaking tell the truth and then he tried to shut her up when she said it wasn’t an accident and he was shot in the head and then he asked permission to continue his question to the witness rather than her tell the truth.
You gotta love America and support your president. That’s the answer.
Per Reuters', Phil Stewart, A. Ali & Steve Holand, trump has seized a Venezulan oil tanker the largest oil tanker ever seized.
This attack is meant to destroy Venezuelan's revenue. No word yet on any "distressed mariners" aboard the tanker. No word on where trump is taking the tanker. No word yet on international oil markets.
BBC America has identified the oil tanker as "The Skipper" under a Guyana Flag.
You bet and we’re gonna seize a few more, but you keep protecting the wicked you keep protecting the Naco terrorist you keep protecting the drug smugglers who are killing our children and you’re supposed to be an attorney. You should be a defensive defense attorney in defensive America. Not a prosecuting attorney against America when it has to do with narcotics and other drug
The right to freedom of speech and press is not absolute. If we had a level playing field FOX News could have been prevented from spewing lies. Television is a much more dangerous medium than the written word. It is called a hypnotic medium for a reason. And now we have a dystopian nightmare so disastrous that even a bot won't believe it.
The EPA removed mentions of human contributions to climate change on its website yesterday.
Yesterday, SCOTUS declined to hear an appeal on a Texas 5th circuit ruling that said that "government speech" the ability to express a viewpoint trumps the public's "right to information" in a case about removing books about LGBTQ+, race, and slavery from a school library. The argument was you could always buy the books or borrow them.
The ruling appears to contradict Board of Education v. Pico (1982), the Court applied it to school libraries, noting that removing books could infringe students’ access to ideas essential for free expression.
There is no level playing field with this government.
Used to be “precedent” meant something to SCOTUS. Not any more. The idea was consistency in interpretation of the law was good for society.
Now precedent—even the court’s OWN DECISIONS—are to be manipulated in accordance with the right-wing justices societal ideology, not the law of constitution.
I used to respect SCOTUS. Seeing them so corrupted is a huge blow.
These decisions which have big implications and would have been lead stories in MSM in other administrations are submerged by the “flood the zone” strategy.
We don’t even know all the ways we are being screwed!
Rohypnol for the electorate!
My two sons give me cause to celebrate having been born mid century. One is in high level strategic advertising and the other in high level strategic communications. “We don’t even know all the ways we are being screwed!” Instead of being rooted we are being route-ed. How does it feel to be a baitfish balled up by the leviathans?
Democrats MUST take the House and the Senate.
The two-step process to impeach a Supreme Court Justice
1. Impeachment by the House of Representatives
Initiating articles: A member of the House can introduce a resolution to impeach a federal judge.
Investigation: The House Judiciary Committee typically investigates the charges before drafting articles of impeachment. Majority vote: For impeachment to proceed, the House must adopt the articles with a simple majority vote.
2. Conviction by the Senate
Trial: The Senate holds a trial to consider the articles of impeachment. In the case of a Supreme Court Justice, the Chief Justice of the United States presides over the trial.
Senate acts as jury: The Senate acts as the jury, hearing arguments from House managers (who act as prosecutors) and the defense counsel for the impeached Justice.
Two-thirds vote: A conviction requires a two-thirds majority vote by the senators present. If convicted, the Justice is removed from office.
Thanks for the recitation of impeachment process but your last paragraph is the obvious impediment to ANY impeachment success. There is no way that 2/3 of the Senate in the next or subsequence election is going to convict ANY GOP-oriented executive or judicial member for virtually any offense except POSSIBLY actually committing murder on the streets of New York or Washington.
This will actually become even MORE important if the Dems take back the House and the Senate because the remaining GOP (those who haven't gotten out by a pension-rich retirement) will rally around to make sure no impeachment EVER gets a conviction.
This is going to take a long time, probably four or five election cycles (or even more) and it may even fail in the end, because many Americans are essentially stupid and simply will follow like sheep.
It's not MY last paragraph. That's a simple cut and paste description of the process. Whether or not some Republicans turn on the hand that has been feeding them is not all that far out in the realm of impossibility. Rats jumping from a sinking ship, as it were.
My apologies for misidentifying the paragraph although if you are cutting and pasting something, you should identify it as such. From the perspective of a reader, without quotes or other identification, it appears to be your words.
No, but that is what we must work to preserve. The leveling of the playing field is what the Constitution was meant to prescribe. The realities that preceded and followed it have been short of the mark, and yet our "better angels" have carried that impulse forward.
"a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. "
I like your beard JL.
or any govt, ANYwhere, pretty much, before this...the way it seems to me is this... people establish some sort of colony...some prosper...they want their assets protected and they institute laws and, more or less, hire/promote people to enforce the laws...but it will almost always favor the employer...
corporations form policies and support those that will support them...look at Trump's favoritism of oil...and nobody messes with the military/industrial complex...just those two have initiated invasions in other countries...while polluting the planet...
and if they can control armies, who's to stop them...?
Ans. Hopefully a few Congressional Republicans.Members of the armed services committees.
And with luck we the people can with our (intelligent) votes.
Yes Annabel. We need standards for news, or it should not be allowed to be called news. We know that Hungary has swung right under Orbán because he controls the media. MSM is not reliable. I have a lot of friends who still subscribe to the NYT because they do not see the faults that I do. They try to tell me it is balanced, and how it is good to read people who are telling the other POV. I read about the other POV from people I trust. I also read people who I am somewhat skeptical about to see how they pan out because they are giving me information I am not getting elsewhere.
I no longer subscribe to the NYT, WaPo, or LAT, or Chicago Tribune. I subscribe to the Chicago Sun Times, the Guardian, and my Chicago neighborhood paper. As well as the national news in Germany and European news, and reading the local and news in my German city.
Trump knows how to manipulate the social medium, but so does Putin. We all get a double whammy. Fortunately, the only social media I are individual Substackers. We all need to be vigilant about our sources of news, but make them varied enough to have a big picture of what is going on. In our reimagined world, the one we create once we overthrow the far right in the religious realm, the tech world, the business world, and the media world, we must make sure that SCOTUS members are held accountable and impeached for defying our constitution, and then that media is held accountable, and not allowed to tell people lies are news. I am hoping that Europe does not go down the slippery slope that the US with US tech, in the hopes of keeping up. That will just enlarge the playing field of far right wing disinformation in the world.
I use Feedly as a news aggregator--it is free. You can set up sources you want to scan, and topics like US Politics, and it updates what has been released every minute. You can set up boards for specific topics and add articles to them. It lets you one click to the source. I just use "headline" view to see what is starting to trend.
AP and Reuters usually publish first.
You can also get information on how many other feeds are covering the story over time and lists them in order of popularity.
Linda and Xplisset, check it out if you don't already use it. I like it better than ground news.
Found through Feedly in the 11th block down of multiple article topics in the NYTimes website, well below the typeface wars, is the news that Zelensky has agreed to elections in 60-90 days if there are US security guarantees and the Ukrainian legislature agrees.
You can read my thoughts here:
https://georgiafisanick.substack.com/p/zelensky-takes-a-gamble
Thanks for your Substack. Zelensky actually did this once before, last summer when he said he would be fine with elections if they can be secure, and that he would probably not run. No one took him up on it. I think that he gets energy from the spotlight but is getting tired of getting jerked around. He is looking old (except when talking with Meloni 😁). He might welcome the opportunity to step back. He is assured his place in history anyway. He might be better off not running and just assisting Zaluzhny to run and win and assist in the transition. It will be hard for him to give up the trappings but really, he looks sometimes like he has had enough.
Surely he would love a break but he would be a tough act to follow.
For crying out loud, he was a fricking TV actor! Is that what this world has now come to, country leaders being actors and influencers instead of actually being sane, solid, smart political representatives? No wonder we are probably doomed.
He was smiling with the Pope as well. I agree he looks exhausted.
Here is an article from yesterday from the Kyiv Independent which is rated as neutral bias in reporting and a source for fact checking, pro-Ukraine in the opinion pieces, and for continuing the war.
Zaluzhny, currently the ambassador to the UK, is in second place at 19.1% in a poll conducted between Nov. 13 and Nov. 28, just after the kickback scandal broke and as the 28-point plan was released on Nov. 21.
In October, a month before the corruption scandal, 24.3% voters said they would support Zelensky.
Former Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi https://kyivindependent.com/tag/valerii-zaluzhnyi/, now Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.K., ranks second with 19.1%, a 3% increase from the October poll.
Kyrylo Budanov, https://kyivindependent.com/tag/kyrylo-budanov/, head of Ukraine's military intelligence, placed third with 5.1% support, according to the poll.
Around 23.6% of those asked either couldn't decide or chose not to answer the question.
https://kyivindependent.com/zelenskys-presidential-rating-drops-to-20-poll-shows/
Elizabeth, I am sure he would like to step down, at the same time, like the soldiers on the front he cannot. He knows that Trump will not take him up on his offer, and yet by saying this he shows that he has read the plan and he is offering a concession. Russia is not. He is saying to Trump, put your actions where your mouth is, without saying it directly. Ukraine and Europe have got Trump's number and they are remaining respectful but wary. They do not ultimately see the US as the enemy, although Trump is a different matter.
Here is what West Point History Professor has to say about Europe.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thewestpointhistoryprofessor/p/the-russian-plot-implemented-by-amateurs?r=f0qfn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
I'm betting he would far prefer to be back on his old TV series Servant of the People. Being a fictional President of Ukraine was probably a hell of a lot easier and safer than being the ACTUAL President of Ukraine.
You are undermining his excellent leadership.
I subscribe to AP as well. Thanks for the recommendations Georgia.
The Guardian, Kyiv Independent, Institute for the Study of War, The Economist, NYT, HCR and Timothy Snyder’s Substacks, give me enough to work out what is actually going on. Knowing that terrible things have happened in the past (I’ve actually lived through some of them!) and that I am going through a terrible time now alongside lots of other people really helps me get from day to day. I am grateful to all the conscientious journalists and historians who bring me that news.
Linda, like Ally’s, your perspective is priceless. Thank you for reminding us of your sources and continuing to let us know what you’re learning. It’s your caring for US that shines through as encouragement when we need it.
I seems to me the "Fox News" is actually a fraud. Even they waffle about the nature of what they sell. Perhaps there should be an "accrediting" body of evidence-based news that organizations pledge to display the sticker. A pledge of due diligent, evidence justified, and correct by retraction as necessary news releases. I don't know how you keep that certification from being Trumpinated, but perhaps a pledge to an externally maintained standard would reduce fudging.
And for heaven's sake, dust off anti-trust. Bigly.
It's interesting, BTW, that corporations can sue Fox successfully, but can an affected public do so as a class action? Uphold robust free speech for sure, but some speech is predictably harmful, and in some cases there is provable harmful intent. The old example of maliciously shouting fire in a theater referenced real events that had caused death. The example was misapplied to quell dissent, but the real thing remains a public danger, although perhaps less likely to panic with modern buildings and fire codes. Dishonest hate speech, especially from official positions, can get people killed. Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss were terrorized by Giuliani callous fictions and were victorious in court. What Giuliani did was circumstantially different than insensitive BS in a pub.
There is NO WAY that Fox News would ever be found guilty or liable for what it reports. None. Freedom of the press is still there in the Constitution and if you don't like what they say, start your own damn press or tv news service. That's what freedom is supposed to be about.
And yet Fox was successfully sued for lies about Dominion Voting Systems, and paid a big judgement. That's the sort of thing I am talking about. "Freedom" is complicated. MAGAs try to make it permission to do whatever they like with no accountability, but then there is the problem of the impact one's behavior may have on others, and that gets tricky. I have a right to drink until I pass out in my home, but not when piloting an automobile. That's due to unacceptable risks to the safety of others. Giuliani's lies unquestionably and predictably harmed those he slandered. That was enough over that line that they sued and won. We have every right to pursue happiness, but not by harming others. We certainly have a right to criticize others, especially people in high places. We mostly have a right to lie, yet not under oath, and not to the IRS; and there are other circumstances where lies invite civil suits if not prosecution and/or public scorn.
Is anti-trust anti freedom? Milton Freedman thought it was, but I think a real free society is one that puts checks on monopolization of money and political power. It's a matter of universal rights, and of checks and balances. It is cold comfort for all people are to be created equal if they are subject to subjugation as soon as they are born. We the people get to make rules that serve the interests of we the people as a whole, including rights that protect each and every one of us, rules that would-be bullies are obliged to observe.
Fox was not found guilty or liable, they settled. It is unclear if they were found liable whether the verdict would have stood. The Supreme Court has for the most part agreed with media, not those who sue the media.
As for Guiliani, he is NOT "the media", he was an individual loose cannon. Ditto all the other individuals who were sued. That does not change the general view of media as exempt in most cases. And Dominion was an extraordinary case, where even Fox admitted that they had lied. That is very rare.
We still have freedom of the press and we should.
Well Linda, as I have said repeatedly you are just wrong. You can NOT use far-left wing news sources as "reliable" any more than you can use Fox Snooze as reliable, because they both (Fox and the Guardian) have an ax to grind in the fire. Neither is objective. The NYT is and you refuse to read them because you just don't like their objectivity. THAT is what is going to doom our country, when BOTH sides retreat to their "protected sphere and refuse to actually engage in a balanced, even-handed approach to events and news. That is what is happening now, and the end will NOT be good for any of us. Once we are FULLY polarized, either we will engage in another civil war or we will dissolve because we refuse to try to reconcile our differences.
I breathe a big sigh when i read stuff like you wrote, because I had greater hopes for the people theoretically on our side (like you) but it is clearly not working. The divisiveness is lethal to this society in the end, and no one is going to recognize America in 20-30 years if what you say comes to pass.
Double sigh...
Jon, you do not know what you are talking about. I hardly call the Guardian or AP far left wing, nor are any of the regular German sources that I use. You do not know what "The Left "is, let alone "far left wing" beliefs or news sources. I do. The Left is a viable party in Germany, and my mom's childhood friend is a member. I have not talked to her for a while, but I know what she and her partner believe. They also have given me publications and sent me articles, which I do not agree with. I see them as Russian propaganda. You clearly have no idea what far left publications say.
Here are some publications that are considered left and far left. Notice I did not mention one.
Magazines/Journals (US): Jacobin, The Nation, Dissent, Monthly Review, American Prospect, In These Times.
Magazines/Journals (UK/Intl.): New Left Review, Tribune, Red Pepper, The Left Berlin.
Historical/Academic: The Left Index (database), Left Book Club (historical), Marxism Today, New Socialist.
Radical/Anarchist: Publications like Anarchy, The Catalyst, Freedom Socialist, or those linked to groups like the International Socialist Group.
Of these I have read The Nation articles, perhaps 2 in the past 5 years. I don't consider it "far" left, but left. I have also read "In These Times" but not for over 30 years. You are just so so so so so so off in your characterization of media that is centrist as far left.
Television and video media are the contemporary opiate of the masses, especially as videos have become so accessible on our phones.
Social media is an opiate of the masses as well, be it print or visual. We need to be careful we are spending time on people passing us legitimate information. There are so many who are out there making money on disinformation and politicians banking on it.
Schools need to encourage children to think critically but sadly it's going in the other direction in the United States with indoctrination the objective.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/09/abbott-charlie-kirk-turning-point-usa-texas-schools
Trump has in the past claimed that his policies are merely common sense (this was before he started resorting only to barefaced lies), but Bertrand Russell called common sense 'the metaphysics of the savage'. It leaves no room for nuance and doubt and it opens the door to hegemony of the powerful.
Let's hope that the Democrats' stunning win in Miami will presage a major change in the fortunes of that stricken party.
"Common sense" may be a fiction insofar as it is presented a verifiable sense that is common, but there may well be a virtue in pursuing clarity, which I see a the ability to grasp the most relevant features for both the broad view of the forest and well as the telling details of the trees. We can't begin to do that for even the mass of distinctions and connections to be found on our planet, like trying to stuff the earth into a thimble; but we can succeed is in some degree of recognizing which features are most vital/suitable to our individual/social human purposes. My sense it that is one of the key pillars of wisdom, something we don't seem to talk about much anymore.
In childhood, my parents never allowed me to watch children oriented TV on Saturday mornings. No Howdy Doody, no Mighty Mouse, no Advrntures of Bullwinkle, no Roy Roger’s. Nothing. They obviously felt that this programing was not good for the early stages of growth. The same way today I feel toward cell devises. It has really messed with two or three generations of children. I watched to kids at an open mic performance once. One of the kids held the devise while the other obsessed and watched it while the parents were happily engage with the stage events. Just my opinion.
The TV was rarely on before I was 5 and if there were kids programs my folks didn't tell me. I watched TV in Kindergarten when my favorite programs were "Watch Mr Wizard" and "Sky King". I sometimes watched "Flash Gordon" but had trouble making sense of it. Mostly my folks discouraged early exposure to gratuitously violent entertainment, although I think was still in elementary school when I saw Hitchcock's "Psycho". There were things we did not let our daughter watch, but tried not to over sugar-coat reality. We mostly fed her PBS. More than the content of TV, I am creeped out by the commercials, especially those for kids. I stopped watching commercial TV in the run-up to GWB's Iraq war, and turned to the 'Net for news. I tried to watch the Olympics on broadcast TV a few years ago but found the commercial breaks way excessive, intrusive and irritating. I never connected to cable. We have let our daughter follow her heart and I admire her values.
incredibly important to access "news" information from multiple sources
none are completely trustworthy
IMO: anyone who gets all their news from just one or two sources, is very misinformed. Each caters to their most loyal base and filters their output accordingly.
I think it is wise to cast a wide net, but I find some sources, by verification , far more diligent and trustworthy than others. I have watched Fox but have found it at best only loosely evidence-based. I sometimes read things that are so disturbing, yet under-reported, that I seek multiple additional sources to verify.
Of course. When I don't verify from multiple sources I regret it. Still, because I belong to political Signal chat groups in activism, we post things, and people in the group will point out if something does not seem credible.
I passed along something once to a person I admire that turned out to be fake. I did preface by saying I could not verify it, but it still bugs me.
To some extent, I agree *with the hypnotic quality of television and the addictive ways of social media. 🫱🏻🫲🏽 Nevertheless, we are citizens of a republic and democracies work only when buttressed by a citizenry socialized into exercising republican virtue. ⚖️
We are all responsible for the country getting here; 😥 we are responsible for digging ourselves out. 😳 No one will do it for us. 😱 On balance, I remain confident that we shall overcome this dash toward dictatorship. ✌🏼
Yup, that "republican" with a small "r" is a whole different animal, as Lincoln was to Trump. And socialized stands in contrast to subjugated, at least where there are universal baseline human rights. Democracy requires a conversion, not a dictate. What part of government of the people, BY the people, FOR the people do we not understand?
Ned, I really wish that we would take on some social media laws like Australia just did. My daughter thinks it is a useless effort, but I don't. I think it will set a tone, and Australia will figure out how to do it better as they go along. She sees it as a big data mining opportunity. I see it as a bump for big tech that may snowball. People are aware of how harmful it is for youth. Let them go back to parent supervised usage.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/dec/09/australia-under-16-social-media-ban-begins-apps-listed
and
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce86381p70eo
Great article by the B.B.C. Still think y'all over there should give the companies the BIG-BOOT.
You and me both Ned.
I have been saying this, and there is a movement to do this inside of Germany, led by the Green party. It is not an overnight change though, but EU is thinking of following in Australia's footsteps, and right now there is discussion of banning phones from schools, which is a start. There are two contingents in Germany, those who want to embrace existing AI to help catch the country up in a business sense, and those who want caution and not using things. I know plenty of people who are not using US platformed media.
This was posted today by someone on a political chat abroad, but we all know Spotify needs to be updated because it is being boycotted.
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1pgev8g/the_full_guide_to_switching_from_big_us_tech_to/
This is wonderful news, in the link. The European Union needs to grow into a superpower. If the U.S. threatens tariffs, then tell the U,S,, "Fine, we want to build a better relationship with China . . . ." Adiós, ¡tariffs!
Linda, it would not be the first time Australia has shown "the greatest nation in history" toward a better democracy (i.e., the secret ballot and ranked-choice voting). https://www.c-span.org/clip/public-affairs-event/user-clip-australia-to-the-rescueagain-3-minvid/4680357
Yes Ned. Also, Australia also led on gun control with their tough laws and collection of guns and has had one mass shooting since then in 2019, which was a murder suicide.
https://www.voanews.com/a/australian-surrender-guns-during-amnesty/4061258.html
Newton Minnow was right.
Well, I had to look Minnow up.. He was chairman of FCC under John Kennedy. Are you referring to his 1961 speech citing television as a "vast wasteland"??? If so, I can't help but agree with Minnow!!! (Except for PBS and Colbert and Kimmel and Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell and a few others...)
You can't choose the folks YOU like in an argument about what is or is not a vast wasteland. That's just biased argument, especially all the ones you mention except for PBS. Colbert and Kimmel aren't even news, they are ENTERTAINERS for gods sake, and Maddow and O'Donnell are heavily biased opinionated COMMENTATORS, not reporters. You certainly can like how they commentate but that doesn't make them any kind of reliable source of accurate news. Especially O'Donnell who I consider to be a pompous idiot who just likes to hear himself talk. I have more respect for Rachel and do enjoy listening to her and hearing her opinions, but I recognize that they are JUST her opinions.
PBS, IMHO, does a pretty good job, but then so does the NYT and it seems there is a huge contingent here on HCR that disagree. Even Heather uses the NYT as a major source (look at her references every day and you find NYT listed regularly) so it always surprises me at the hostility towards the NYT in this group.
Triple sigh...
I did not renew my NYT subscription for one reason: I stopped trusting what I was reading.
What did Newton Minnow say? A cartoon character, by chance?
As Michelle 2 wrote in a comment above, Newton Minnow was chairman of the FCC under President Kennedy. He gave a speech describing Television as " a vast wasteland". I was in college at the time, & I remember it being a seminal moment, because of the fact that Minnow spoke the honest truth about television at that time. And, of course, it has only gotten much worse over the years, particularly when cable news arrived.
There was real concern over "Truth in Advertising", even attempts at legislation. Media owners could not own too much of any one market, even newspapers. "Payola", hidden payments to promote certain music products, was a scandal, as was deception in the $64,000 Question. There was worry that political candidates would be "sold like corn flakes". Johnson's "Daisy Ad" was considered a scandal. Not really "the good old days" but some higher public standards of media ethics.
Free speech is essential but tricky. Some speech is harmful, and the social consequences rise with exposure. There is social protection in public conversation and debate, but commercial broadcast media tends to dominate. I think we are allowing commercial broadcast (over the air, cable, or 'Net) to replace us as authors of our own culture. I believe that commercial media, and advertising in particular, has the overall effect of encouraging narcissism. How to regulate without discarding the baby with the bathwater?
One thing I am sure of is that we would be wise to find ways to include many more perspectives in the public conversion, and while i don't regard profit in itself as inherently evil (in fact it can be mutually beneficial) it can become evil when insufficiently balanced by other, essential human values. I think that is blazingly obvious in current circumstances if we see the forest past the trees.
There once was a 'fairness doctrine' which forced TV stations to give equal time to political parties. The operative phrase being 'once was'. Now we have Faux News spewing lies 24/7 and what used to be the major networks spewing whatever their owners tell them to say. I keep the salt lick handy.
James, the kicker is that the Fairness Doctrine covered broadcast news, not cable news. I am also thrilled to see another person using the "salt lick" substitution!
But there were other laws that could have prevented media monopolization, namely antitrust, that has been all but sidelined since Reagan. My 1950s school history book cast "Trust Busting" as a good thing.
Exactly so, JL. Shoulda been stopped right there.
You are mixing up two different policies regarding TV news. The fairness doctrine was a general doctrine which required TV stations (but not cable) to be fair in their reporting. The equal time rule required that IF a TV station broadcast one candidate for office, it MUST make the same time available to their opponent(s) at the same price (or free). Fairness doctrine did NOT have anything specifically to do with politics. it was a generic news doctrine. Here is a quote from wikipedia which is essentially accurate:
"The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented. The demise of this FCC rule has been cited as a contributing factor in the rising level of party polarization in the United States."
The fairness doctrine was removed from FCC rules in 1987 (under Reagan) and has never been revived.
The equal time rule remains in effect and is used by all parties during political races.
…and no blue or red pills in this case.
If we permit the freedom of speech and press to be limited to one side, or to what one group calls "a level playing field" then we lose our democracy. A solid democracy has to rely on the wisdom and intelligence of its populace to refute and ignore those who spew lies. The problem is NOT with who we permit or prevent from telling lies, its that people are so STUPID today that they don't recognize the lies. If they did, none of this would be a problem. Unfortunately, this dumbing down of the citizenry is going to cost us our democracy and our freedom at some point, probably in the not too distant future.
Sigh...
Life in the United States has been a dystopian nightmare for significant portions of its population for a majority of its history.
I wonder what Gemini would say to the same input?
UPDATE on HCR Post: "Since voters in November, elections against the Republicans ....
Per Politico, Miami Voters yesterday elected the first Woman Mayor, EILEEN HIGGINS, ending a 28 year GOP reign.
Per The Hill, yesterday Democrat ERIC GEISLER won Georgia state District 121 in a District trump won by 12 points.
And, Heather over 2.7 Million Subscribers!
Send Texas some of that Miami magic! We’re tying to break a 31 year hiatus of statewide Democratic officeholders, could Jasmine Crockett be the one?
Bryan, that is great news.
MORE GOOD ELECTION NEWS... Joyce Vance reports tonight that "Ellen Higgens became the first Democrat elected Mayor in the city (of Miami) in almost 30 years." The previously elected Republican (in 2021) won by 78.6% of the vote. But this time around, Ellen Higgens (in unofficial results) won by 59% of the vote to her opponent's 41% of the vote. MSN reports that the opponent, Emilio Gonzalez, was backed by Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Sen Rick Scott. Ellen Higgens had the support of the U.S Ambassador to Japan(Rahm Emmanuel), Pete Buttigieg, and Senator Ruben Gallego.
An interesting sidenote -- the county's population is roughly 70% Latino or Hispanic. Recent polling had suggested declining support for the Administration among Latino voters, so this election may be a good indicator of what 2026 elections may portend. And, finally, Joyce Vance makes the astute observation that, "A Trump endorsement is no longer a magic touch - more like a kiss of death." We can put that "gift" under the Christmas tree to cheer us on...
Thank you Michele2 and Brian Sean McKown! I'm going to add more good news of a general nature. Heather's letter today was informative, factual and depressing. Important, for sure.
But I did the old AI Google thing. "Who watches cable TV?" (Cause we don't :)
You can just read the first and last paragraphs if you are short of time:
"Older adults (65+) are the primary demographic still watching significant amounts of cable TV, driven by habit and preference for live news/sports, while younger generations (Gen Z, Millennials) overwhelmingly favor streaming, though overall cable viewership continues to decline, with about a third of Americans still using it, often for live events or as part of internet bundles.
Who Still Watches Cable:
Older Generations: Americans 65 and older are the most likely to subscribe to cable/satellite (around 64%), valuing the familiar interface and consistent access to news and sports.
Sports Fans: A significant portion of remaining cable subscribers (around 27%) keep it for live sports, which can be harder to find on streaming.
Comfort & Habit: Many long-term subscribers (70% of cable users in one survey) stay due to habit and the simplicity of a single service they've used for years.
Bundled Services: Some households keep cable because it's bundled with high-speed internet, making it a cost-effective option compared to standalone internet.
Declining Trends:
Younger Viewers: Streaming is nearly universal for those under 50, with Gen Z (around 21%) and younger adults having very low cable adoption.
Cord-Cutting: Millions have canceled cable, with satisfaction rates among former users being very high.
Overall Decline: Less than a third (around 30%) of Americans use traditional cable/satellite, a steep drop from past years.
In essence, while cable's dominance has ended, it persists with older, less tech-savvy users, live sports enthusiasts, and those locked into bundled plans, even as streaming becomes the standard for most other demographics."
Me: If we want to make an impact on the minds of voters, the place to do it is YouTube. Or other social media sites. Cable isn't dead yet. But there is a reason Netflix didn't want CNN. It is caught in the spiral dive to technological media irrelevance.
Cable TV is the new AM radio.
Thank you! That is fascinating!
But MSNOW is my trusted news channel and it’s cable: Maddow, Weissemann, ICE raids, Mika Brzezinski, Eugene Daniels, Judge Luttig, to name a few I’ve heard. (It’s a tiny list before coffee.)
It's a strange new world... I watch MSNOW as well. And right now I'm in the throes of taking care of a family member who depends on cable TV at the moment... In a rural area, sometimes the choices are limited...
Thanks, Bill. Where we live in our little town, we have zero broadcast TV (between ridges which block the waves from all three local stations, and Comcast is our only internet option (we'd go with T-Mobile, but said ridge gives us at best two bars of service). In doing our research, Starlink is our best, most reliable option for the internet (and we ain't going there). I'm hoping to find an internet only service from Comcast...
Similar situation here in the Colorado high country… I hate giving my business to Musk but Starlink is our best by far option (to date). It’s reliable, month by month no-contract, uses low orbit satellites in a long line so up and down signals have virtually zero lag, the dish is heated and auto-locates the signal. It’s the best and it’s essential for our survival up here in part due to the availability of satellite cell service via our Starlink router. I wish there was a better option. I tell myself it’s OK to use Starlink because I will never own or lease a Tesla. Our other big issue is Amazon Prime. For us it’s unavoidable, again due to our location. We do have UPS delivery but Amazon has become something we can’t routinely avoid. Then, when we drive 30 miles down into town, where can we shop? Whole Foods (Amazon again), Safeway (where workers recently went out on a righteous strike), Target, Home Depot? Simply said, these quasi-monopolies have a lock on us and many others in America!
Indeed and then there are those of us who live in highly modern and diverse places like San Francisco (my city) but I live on Social Security and the idea of NOT using Amazon and instead shopping at the various high end independent stores in San Francisco would break my piggy bank in several pieces. I have done cost comparison shopping and I would be spending at least 50% more and possibly up to 75% more on various significant purchases. That would cost me almost $750 a month more, and I live on a pre-tax social security amount of $3,000 a month from which I also pay rent and medical. If I didn't have Amazon to help with purchases, I'd be totally broke. So I basically accept the pain of that. I don't like Bezos, but for now, it is the best option I have.
Comcast offers internet only in MA. But we dumped them for Verizon Fios. Faster and cheaper. But not a stand up company either.
In my perfect fantasy world, no private entity would be allowed to have satellites in the sky or space. On my first day as president, the U.S will nationalize Starlink. Musk won't be objecting as he will be in a no bail holding cell with several Black South Africans as he awaits trial for sedition and grand theft...among other things.
Cable TV is in decline but the right wing has moved to all the social media to make up for it.
Yes they have - with a vengeance. But social media is still broad and diverse so theoretically it's level playing field. For now. If Ellison/Kushner/Saudi Arabia buy Substack I will be headed for the bomb shelter. Substack already has been invaded by some enemies of human kind. Disappointing, to say the least.
I read that Substack is moving into ads. That will be a HUGE turnoff for me. We’re already paying.
I looked that up. It is on the way, apparently. Supposed to be "creator controlled". We'll see. I do everything in my power to avoids ads. I consider them an attack on my consciousness. Hence, no legacy TV.
So I find this idea really disturbing.
I am considering taking my writing to a Wordpress website. I'd hate leave this community that Heather introduced me too....
Michele2, thank you for sharing this information on the Miami election. Such good news.
And, to put a cherry on top of your good news, Michele2, the Hispanic vote in Florida is dominated by the descendants of Batista-collaborators who left Cuba when Castro defeated that brutal, rightwing dictator, after spending their earlier lives oppressing the other 90% of the Cuban population. And they left with the expectation their new host country would help them get back the portion of their wealth that they couldn’t take with them on their exodus. They have consistently voted for Republicans since then because they have a natural affinity with the Republican Party, the party that aligns with the notion of systematic oppression of the people without monetary resources. When former oppressers such as these turn against Republicans, it’s a very important change.
Thank you... Very important information and historical "backdrop"...
What Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and the Acting Archivist of the United States, Marco Rubio is working on instead of, say, peace in Gaza or Ukraine or Sudan or …
From the NYTimes:
"Secretary of State Marco Rubio waded into the surprisingly fraught politics of typefaces on Tuesday with an order halting the State Department’s official use of Calibri, reversing a 2023 Biden-era directive that Mr. Rubio called a “wasteful” sop to diversity."
Duh! If it was “wasteful” to change it during the Biden administration, why isn’t it wasteful to change it back?
Was this done in your capacity as Acting Archivist because Calibri offended your aesthetic sensibilities, or were you just looking for a swipe at “wokeness”?
The switch to Calibri by the Biden administration was made to accommodate people who are vision-impaired, dyslexic, or who use page readers.
Are you going to remove ramps and bathroom stalls for people in wheelchairs next? Take away braille plaques in federal buildings? Does making people with disabilities more employable waste money?
He sounds pretty tone deaf to me.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/us/politics/rubio-state-department-font.html
These people have done nothing but waste taxpayer money on stupid stuff. They have done absolutely nothing to help the American people.
PT this is why I think we should do a nationwide tax boycott. See how it is to run the country without, or even track people down with a reduced IRS staff.
wow. FInally. i've said this to people for decades now...you want to get their attention, hit em where it hurts...inSTEAD of enabling them with taxes...right on, Linda...
Yes Isaac! I think we need to be defunding this evil regime. It is unethical to give them money.
Dead-eyes Rubio. He is now like something out of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Nothing left of his soul; his heart; his integrity.
Was Rubio part of the Cuban sugar“aristocrats” who have fouled Florida politics since their arrival?
His parents were from Cuba. They came before Castro however. More details at Wikipedia.
That’s very interesting. The United Sugar Company represented, as I remember, the US controlling of Cuba, which was why so many welcomed Castro. The company’s supporters became Florida’s Republicans. I wonder where Rubio’s parents stood. I knew an American who went to fight with Castro.
nice.
That’s sounds like very important stuff! /s
I said “Good bye” to corporate media news; ABC, CBS, and NBC decades ago. It’s been all downhill since Waiter Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley. I never trusted CNN. PBS was my trusted national news source until a few years ago.
I wandered in the wilderness until I found Heather Cox Richardson, Substack, and the Meidas Touch on YouTube.
The propagandists are right; critical thinking is work and most people are lazy thinkers, especially when it involves national
politics. We are paying the price of that laziness now. What a mess! However, it’s made people at last start thinking; we all need to pay attention all the time.
The only ones who can clean up the mess is all of us.
I’ve been singing praises for PBS a lot lately for having Amanpour & Co., Frontline, Nova, Rick Steves travelogues. The latest Ken Burn’s documentary, ‘The American Revolution’, was just on, so informative and outstanding like his always are. PBS is commercial free even and needs our support and appreciation right now as well as much needed financial help to keep local public television stations like this on air with such great content and programming.
I have started spending what I used to donate to democrats to support public broadcasting. I have three wonderful local radio stations and OPB that now get my money. (KWAX-classical, and KRVM-music in Eugene, and JPR (don't know their K station assignment; Jefferson Public Radio in southern Oregon).
Very good of you Ally. There are so many organizations, causes and campaigns that need donations that it’s overwhelming and I can only donate a smattering of money to them. Really wish I could donate like Mackenzie Scott has done so I could give some real financial help to PBS, Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other worthy causes and candidates that stand up for democracy, work for a better future and a more perfect union.
The PBS evening news with Amna Nawaz, Geoff Bennett & William Brangham, plus John Yang on the weekends is still excellent. It's well worth supporting.
For some reason Ralph your comment brought to mind watching coyote families in the wild. Everything eats coyotes and coyotes eat everything. Their vigilance is legendary. When they think no one can see them their play is shameless. Now coyotes are neither good nor evil but their antics lead them in both directions. Both predators and prey. Indigenous peoples recognized their many talents conceding admiration for their skills. Like coyotes “we all need to pay attention all the time.” With holidays coming on let us instigate some “shameless” fun as well. Let’s take em by surprise and cause some joy.
I've been doing my best. The tuba is both a serious and a silly instrument; a buddy of mine and I are going to busk at our local Holiday (crafters) market this weekend. If it works out, I will borrow my old sousaphone, and in another week we'll do it with a sousaphone and a helicon...now that's silly!
And shameless. A coyote congress. I hope your busk keeps your costume straight and upright.
No, not all of us, Ralph.
Teachers with some connections to our novels, memoirs, and histories would be a starter.
And now they’re lightning, which is unbelievable Rachel Maddow and John Stewart as the new Walter Cronkite. If Walter if Walter Krank could breathe right now he’d get up and shoot them both in the face for destroying what is left of news
And people snickered and laughed at Hilary Clinton when she commented during her husband's impeachment proceedings about a "vast, right-wing conspiracy in America." I wonder if they're laughing now. Project 2025 didn't just appear. And the tech brothers behave as if they should be worshipped, while their AI data factories' enormous energy requirements drive up electricity prices for everyone.
Yes, everyone who made a disbelieving face at Hilary’s vast right-wing conspiracy, myself included, owes her an apology.
yeah...but when you realize you've made a mistake you adjust...a lot of the times we can turn mistakes into lessons, given some thought...
Hillary is about his honest as Bill and if she had the opportunity to lie under oath , she might well just take it as well. She wrote the damn Russia hoax herself pretty much from what evidence we have so you keep backing up Hillary Clinton.
“It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.” - Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister
WOW. That quote says it all.
Unfortunately, yes.
here’s how I respond to anybody that uses the Nazi propaganda minister stuff
You’re out of your fucking mind Kennedy IMO
who only put into words what's been practiced for millenia...and not always without violence as an ingredient of 'supervision'...
Your perspective is rare and invaluable because you bring the historian’s discipline of context to every situation enabling your readers, listeners and viewers to understand how and why we are here.
Some random but interconnected thoughts:
My book discussion group read The Great Gatsby this month. Someone noted that it was published exactly 100 years ago. Someone else reminded us of the Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago. I couldn't help wondering where our new "gilded age" is leading. Will we end up with a stock market crash and another depression? "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" is not a reassuring understanding of our situation. As many of us have noted in the past, Pogo's "We have met the enemy and he is us" can be viewed optimistically as a call to action or pessimistically as a capitulation. My favorite story of the week is of a church Nativity scene with the notice in front that ICE has been in the neighborhood so the holy family is in hiding. Some people have objected; others have pointed out that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were immigrants, fleeing persecution. Where are our stories that will move us to resist the regime of Fitzgerald's "careless" people?
My mother in laws pastor shared this gem:
I set up my nativity scene this morning. I eliminated all Jews, Arabs,and foreigners. All I had left was a dumb ass and a bunch of sheep!!!!
"Where are our stories . . . to resist the regime of Fitzgerald's 'careless' people" Betsy?
films like “The Florida Project,” “Knives Out,” “The Verdict,” and “Winter’s Bone”;
novels like Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead,” Walter Mosley’s “Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned,” Tom Hanks’ “The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece,” and many by Richard Russo and Stephen King;
memoirs like Mary Karr’s “The Liars’ Club,” Joan Didion’s “Where I Was From,” Jeannette Walls’ “The Glass Castle,” Sarah Kendzior’s “The Last American Road Trip,” Tia Levings’ “A Well-Trained Wife,” Erin Gruwell’s “The Freedom Writers Diary,” and Beth Macy's “Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America”;
essay collections such as Arlie Russell Hochschild’s “Stolen Pride,” Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America”; Sarah Smarsh’s “Bone of the Bone, and George Packer’s “The Unwinding”;
biographies such as Lindsey Stonebridge’s “We are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience”;
histories like Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money,” Rachel Maddow’s “Prequel,” Heather Cox Richardson’s “How the South Won the Civil War,” and Timothy Snyder’s “The Road to Unfreedom”;
poems such as Philip Levine’s Detroit factory poems,
songs like Tim Grimm’s “Broken Truth,” Bob Seger’s “Feel Like a Number,” Carsie Blanton’s “Rich People,” Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught,” and any number of Bruce Springsteen or hip hop Ari Melber will cite.
Love your book list, but as a retired librarian, I can say that in my area, those titles (and any “real” books, really) are read by maybe one person per thousand.
And the Archdiocese of Boston ordered the parish to take down the sign. They refused. The non-shock is Arch/Boston ordered it removed. This is the kind of capitulation to the Rs Pope Leo talked about, imho.
Yes, Betsy Smith, the holy family in hiding is a powerful message two weeks before the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.
We as gift bearers today, 2025 years later, would do well to gift the WORDS of our trusted messengers out to the world…a world that needs the good news of a lowly carpenter born in a manger and other good messengers amongst our human family.
We can double our favorite Substack writers’s followers by gifting their WORDS that are mightier than the sword!
Will Substack let us do that for one month only to familiarize the recipient??
we didn't talk Germany into losing in WWII...all the horses and all the kings men haven't talked Palestine and Israel into a peaceful solution...
i appreciate what you're getting at, though...inform people TRUTHfully...then they actually have a choice as to how to act.
thanks. well put/laid out...
And although it’s more than 100 years old, McClure’s statement could have been written today.
But for the accident of his birth, full-on moron David Ellison, one of those guys I have met too many of in Hollywood over 40 years - the moron convinced he's a genius - would be failing at living in a cardboard box under a freeway overpass. Don't believe me? Go download "Flyboys" the World War I flying movie where he bought himself a role by investing in the production with the first of daddy's money. If his acting talent rose to "wooden," he'd have been in good shape. All his other games here have been as an "executive" on projects that went nowhere - until he invested in "Top Gun: Maverick" and his buddy Tom made him rich along with everyone else connected to that piece of dreck. But daddy's limitless supply of money and the general dimwittedness of the people in Hollywood who choose the executive side of the desk meant people "took him seriously" even as they laughed behind his back. Now that Hollywood is run by the talentless fuckwits like David Zaslav, whose only talent is taking outrageous amounts of cash out of deals he does, everything's down at Ellison's level, and he looks pretty smart, comparatively. We really are at "Idiocracy" and "A Confederacy of Dunces." And it's not just in Hollywood.
people have always been people, T...
I'm glad to see your "review" of "Top Gun: Maverik", TC. Haven't bothered to watch it yet, and now I don't plan to.
Having read another of HCR‘s brilliant and insightful articles I end up feeling like the wedding guest in the rhyme of the ancient mariner and go on my way a sadder but a wiser man. In the meantime your president has decided to put Europe to rights. We are not too happy about that but on the other hand we all know he’s not quite right in the head.
No Donold hasn’t been right in the head for years, decades even. Which doesn’t bode well for any of us, including the nitwits that voted for him and the MAGANazi loyalists. And now Donold and Hegseth both have albatrosses hanging around their necks while the regime plows full steam ahead into deeper murkier depths of lawlessness, war crimes, corruption and never ending diabolical schemes.
You must remember that we in the UK are a nation of pedants so I have to point out that the ancient mariner was finally relieved of his albatross and of course, his was a sailing ship. but I agree with your sentiments entirely wouldn’t it be great if we took your president at his words about our weakness and corruption and all European countries decided to withdraw from the FIFA World Cup.
You can’t keep a good pedant down so I did a bit of research to check if there was any possibility of the ancient mariners ship being steam powered-probably not Coleridge died before the SS Great Britain made its epic voyage and after all he was referring to an ancient mariner
Not at all safe before bed, quite the opposite. Control of media is control of minds. I had asked for you to talk about fox in the past, I'm glad you waited until now because this was the right time.
Three follow-the-money maps behind the billionaire takeover of the media.
Follow the money behind Larry Ellisons' buyout of CBS and 60 minutes.
https://thedemlabs.org/2025/07/19/stephen-colbert-canceled-trump-lawmakers-oracle-tiktok-ellison/
Why do billionaire owned media outlets promote Trump? Follow the money!
https://thedemlabs.org/2024/06/11/billionaire-owned-media-promotes-trump-for-tax-cuts/
Follow the Saudi money funding Musk and Jared Kushner’s takeover of American media.
https://thedemlabs.org/2024/12/21/saudis-fund-muck-purchase-of-twitter-being-used-to-attack-democracy/
As an antidote, stick to independent newsletters.
Check this app for 100 Incredible Pro-Democracy Newsletters (including Heather's Letters From An American)
https://thedemlabs.org/2025/11/24/100-incredible-pro-democracy-newsletters/
Gift subscriptions make meaningful gifts!
Perhaps AI does have a future if it considers key parts of the current arrangement to be "satire".
Eric Beechers book, The Men that Killed the News is a very solid insight into this mess also.