About an interesting tactic to combat authoritarianism & irrational blither

The San Fran Chronicle published a very interesting idea about how to report about the usual blithering nonsense that essentially all radical right authoritarians are forced to spew because facts, true truths, sound reasoning and majority public opinion are usually all against them:

Analysis: Trump’s incomprehensible child care 

comments appear to have broken a dam

In a “30 Rock” episode called “Governor Dunston,” the writing staff of the fictional sketch comedy show is confronted with a conundrum: The newly tapped Republican vice presidential candidate looks exactly like one of the show’s actors, and happens to also be prone to mortifying gaffes. They’ve been handed a comedic golden ticket, but there’s one problem.

The network’s boss insists they shouldn’t write any jokes making fun of the candidate. So the head writer, played by Tina Fey, finds a loophole. Instead of writing jokes, she simply enlists an actor to quote the candidate verbatim.

It is a not-so-subtle sendup of how Fey actually handled a real vice presidential candidate — then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — on “Saturday Night Live” in the run-up to the 2008 election.

Fey understood a valuable truth: In the end, nothing was funnier — or provided a clearer window into her fitness for the job — than Palin’s own words.

It’s a lesson many mainstream journalists are beginning to endorse when it comes to covering former President Donald Trump.

Longtime Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle called out major newspapers’ coverage of Trump on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday, suggesting they’re sanitizing Trump’s comments by simply describing them instead of allowing readers to see his actual words in their entirety.

“There’s a false equivalency going on in the coverage of this race, in that Donald Trump can say whatever crazy things he wants to say about submarines and sharks and electric batteries, whatever he wants to say, and it’s not really covered in the sense that it’s covered describing who said it, why he said it and who the man is. … And always in that story, in the false equivalency by too many reporters and too many American newspapers, is ‘By the way, Kamala Harris changed her mind on fracking.’”

Charges that Trump benefits from the media cleaning up his speeches are not new. And plenty of journalists do, of course, scrutinize and fact-check Trump’s bizarre claims. (See, for example, Joe Garofoli’s account of Trump’s speech to the California Republican Party last year, in which he promises to address the state’s wildfire crisis by wetting forest floors.)

But just a day after Barnicle’s criticisms aired, Trump’s comments at an economic forum in New York appeared to break the dam.

When asked what specific policies he would advance to make child care more affordable, here is Trump’s response, in full:

“Well, I would do that and we’re sitting down, you know, I was, somebody, we had Sen. Marco Rubio and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that because the child care is, child care is you couldn’t, you know there’s something you have to have it in this country, you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to — but they’ll get used to it very quickly. .... [long stretch of blither] .... We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people. But we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first, it’s about ‘Make America Great Again,’ we have to do it because right now we’re a failing nation. So we’ll take care of it.”

The New York Times characterized Trump’s remarks as “an extended discourse on the glories of William McKinley and the power of tariffs to cure all that ails what Mr. Trump called a nation nearing economic collapse.” Not a glowing review, by any means, but it certainly does not paint a full picture of the incoherence of Trump’s musings on a monumentally important policy issue that impacts millions of families.

The Washington Post did not quote Trump’s response in full, but did include substantial portions of it. The story called it a “confusing answer.”

“Here’s my challenge to journalists over the next two months: quote Trump in full,” Max Kennerly, a lawyer and legal commentator, wrote on X on Thursday, alongside a video posted by the Harris campaign of Trump’s comments. “Don’t clean him up, don’t reinterpret what he says in a more sensible way, don’t secretly editorialize. Just quote him. Let the voters see how this man’s mind doesn’t work.”

Journalist Parker Malloy posted the same clip, and wrote: “It really is jarring to read Trump’s comments as he actually delivers them vs. how they’re eventually cleaned up in mainstream news outlets.”

Still, liberal columnist Greg Sargent argued, there’s a difference between highlighting individual speeches or wild comments and taking them seriously as a collective whole.

“What’s really at issue here is whether the media — as an institution, and in a comprehensive sense — is treating Trump’s mental state as an overarching and critically important factor in determining whether he is fit to be president,” Sargent wrote in the New Republic.

But the media appears to be coming far closer to embracing Sargent’s vision for an effective way to cover Trump after this week.

On Friday, an NBC News headline on Trump’s child care answer declared: “ ‘Incoherent word salad’: Trump stumbles when asked how he’d tackle child care.”

The proposal here is simple. Take journalists significantly out of it and let the news source just speak for himself or herself. That's an interesting idea.

For open-minded people who can tolerate reading long stretches of blither, this tactic maybe could change a few minds. If so I'm all for it, even if it is just a few minds. This election still looks to be very close. So, maybe just ~60,000 minds and votes spread across 6 or 7 swing states could be enough to get the job done. Don't sanitize what DJT and the rest of America's authoritarian radical right is saying, just quote it. Let people decide for themselves.

False equivalence vs false balancing

Musing about Germaine's MSM darts

This is a companion post to my other post today, About an interesting tactic to combat authoritarianism & irrational blither. With this included, that post would have been TL/DR.

Over the last few months I've been tossing darts (emails) at reporters, columnists and editors of news sources, including the big ones. Recently, I started applying the term false balancing to situations were news sources refer to DJT and the MAGA wealth and power movement as conservative. I argue that calling radical right authoritarians amounts to false balancing, or bothsidesism. This article raises the issue of false equivalence, a similar concept.

False equivalence (FE) is when a person or organization (not an MSM journalist, columnist or news source) says that two or more things or concepts are the same, when they actually are significantly different. Examples are “politicians are all the same” and “global warming denial is as valid as global warming belief”. Both assertions are false. 

False balance (FB) is similar to FE, but (i) it applies to news reporters or commentators, or generally the MSM, and (ii) usually applies to covering opposing opinions where one opinion has significantly more expert or empirical evidence support than the other. An example is interviewing a person who claims that global warming denial is true and/or equally valid as global warming belief and/or evidence. 

FE and FB are both frequently used to deliberately mislead people in disinformation and deceit campaigns generally. FB applies just to professional journalism, such as it is with its warts and whatnot. The mental leap from the narrower FB to the broader FE concept is small. 

So, could some of my FB darts have maybe nudged a few MSM minds to think more deeply about these two FE/FB deceit tactics? Probably not, but it's fun to speculate. 🤪

Q: Is crackpot or false Faux News opinion content that engages in bad comparisons a matter of FB or FE?

A: FE because the bloviating crackpot opinionologists and liars at Faux are not part of the MSM. They are part of an authoritarian propaganda organization dedicated to deceiving people and killing democracy. Faux does have a real MSM news group, but that reporting is different from what the professional liar-propagandists like Hannity spew on us.

Election tricks: Authoritarian shenanigans in Georgia

Radical right authoritarians love filthy dirty tricks. They love 'em to bits. This story is juicy. The NYT reports (not paywalled):

Heritage Foundation Spreads Deceptive Videos 

About Noncitizen Voters

The right-wing think tank has been pushing misinformation about voting into social media feeds. The Georgia secretary of state’s office called one video “a stunt.”

In July, two men went door to door at a sprawling apartment complex in Norcross, Ga., an Atlanta suburb that is a hub for the region’s fast-growing Latino population, asking residents if they were U.S. citizens and whether they were registered to vote.

Speaking in Spanish, often peeking from behind half-closed doors, seven people told the men that they were not citizens but that they were registered to vote.

Although the two men claimed to represent a company helping Latinos navigate the election system, they were actually working with the Heritage Foundation and carrying a hidden camera. Days later, the conservative think tank posted a video on the social media platform X containing some of the footage the men had captured, calling it “staggering” evidence that 14 percent of noncitizens in Georgia — which Heritage said extrapolated to more than 47,000 people — were registered to vote.

“Based on our findings,” the video concluded, “the integrity of the 2024 election is in great jeopardy.”

The video was reposted by Elon Musk, X’s owner, who called it “extremely disturbing.” It quickly went viral.

But under scrutiny, those claims do not hold up. Three of the seven people Heritage filmed later said they had misspoken. State investigators found no evidence that any of the seven people on the tape had ever registered to vote. A spokesman for Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, called the video “a stunt.” [A stunt? How about corrupt authoritarian sleaze?]

It was one of several misleading videos that the Heritage Foundation has pumped into social media feeds this year. While the once-staid think tank has received attention recently for Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for a future Trump administration that the group funded, it has also made its mark with an aggressive effort to shape public opinion, seeding falsehoods about the integrity of the 2024 election across social media and conservative news outlets.

At the center of that effort is the Oversight Project, an arm of Heritage that conducts what it describes as investigations into immigration policy, among other topics. Borrowing from covert tactics used by the group Project Veritas, the Oversight Project has published videos about the supposed threat of migrant voting in shelters on the Texas border, in New York City and in North Carolina.

Few groups have done more to propel the false, but snowballing, theory that noncitizens are preparing to vote in droves in November, threatening the integrity of the election.

“The immigrant becomes the boogeyman,” said Richard L. Hasen, an expert on elections law at U.C.L.A. law school. “It provides a means of delegitimizing Democratic victories and creates a path for challenging them.”

Several election experts derided the Oversight Project’s methodology as deeply flawed. The group’s figures suggest it spoke to a total of 50 people — statistically, a tiny sampling — before coming to a determination that one in seven noncitizen residents of Georgia may be illegally registered to vote.

In the interest of honesty, the Heritage Foundation ought to change its name to the CCALF (Corrupt Cynical Authoritarian Liar Foundation). CCALF has a nice, truthful ring to it.

Heritage has branched out

from just climate science denial

Trump's 2020 election admission revisited; Federal court rot update; Update on the Russkis

USA Today reports:

The reaction to Trump's most recent comments from some far-right activists and influencers has been unusually stark.

White nationalist Nick Fuentes blasted Trump Sept. 4 for admitting that he lost the 2020 election, and said that he will work to get voters not to back Trump.

"So, why did we do Stop the Steal? Why did did anyone go to Jan. 6? Why did any one go to jail? ... It would have been good to know that before 1,600 people got charged," Fuentes said on his podcast, referring to the criminal charges for those who invaded and ransacked the Capitol. "It would’ve been good to know that before (I) had all my money frozen, put on a no-fly list, banned from everything, lost all my bank and payment processing.”

Fuentes, a podcaster and Holocaust denier who dined with Trump and the notorious rapper Ye at Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Fla., in 2022 went on to call it a "tremendous betrayal" and "callus indifference to the sacrifices that his supporters made on his behalf."

That is weird. Some White nationalists are in a snit because DJT is pretending to be more or less moderate. They are too stupid to know that everything DJT says is a lie to get re-elected. What a bunch of idiots.

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A couple of recent fun-filled items remind us of the long-lasting damage DJT inflicted on the federal courts with his radical and/or incompetent judge picks. Well, at least the radical right authoritarian Federalist Society and Leonard Leo are happy about the presence of radical authoritarian crackpot Trump judges on the federal bench.

Above the Law reports: 

Ninth Circuit Judges Sick And Tired Of Unqualified Trump Judge's 

Spamming The Record With Irrelevant Screeds

Lawrence VanDyke is unqualified to be a United States Circuit Judge. The ABA warned everyone about this, noting that VanDyke was “arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice including procedural rules.” But Leonard Leo and Donald Trump rammed VanDyke onto the Ninth Circuit anyway and he’s used his tenure to confirm the ABA’s prescience.

He’s used his dissents to compare his colleagues to criminals or claim that they are “possessed.” The former included a lampshading footnote explaining that he preferred to not cite any caselaw, instead just insulting the rest of the court.

Eventually Judge Andrew Hurwitz penned a pointed concurrence chastising the VanDyke’s unprofessional language as the province of “pundits and partisans” and inappropriate for a legal opinion.

Alas, this is a feature not a bug, these rambling dissents emanating from VanDyke’s corner and designed to stake his claim to MAGA Supreme Court papabile [worthy of being or eligible to be pope] should Judge Ho [a radical authoritarian far more dangerous than the blithering but compliant idiot VanDyke] lose his touch for disingenuous bullshit that exists merely as writing samples for Leonard Leo to ruminate over between calling the cops and causing wrongful arrest settlements.

That's wonderful, right? Not? OK. Another article by Above the Law reports about another delightful authoritarian radical crackpot DJT judge:

Trump Judge Very Sad About Being Called 'Trump Judge' 

When He Does Stuff Only Trump Judges Do

Judge strikes down Illinois law banning concealed weapons from public transit as unconstitutional... but he would prefer you not mention how he got that job

Yesterday, Judge Iain Johnston of the Northern District of Illinois struck down a law banning guns from Chicago’s trains. State law included a provision that a concealed carry license did not cover bringing a weapon onto public transit. If you thought fireworks on a train platform were dangerous, imagine an errant gunshot. Alas, Judge Johnston isn’t worried about these safety concerns.

What Judge Johnston is worried about is the possibility that people might connect his conversion of NRA talking points into a published opinion to him being a Federalist Society-vetted (member 1995-1998!) Trump appointee. And rather than just suck that up, he decided to lampshade it off the top with a footnote, I guess to guilt some reporter into not hurting the judge’s fee-fees with an accurate headline.

“Trump-appointed judge allows firearms on Illinois public transit” is a likely chyron for this decision. That’s unfortunate. Federal judges—including those who will review this decision—engage in exacting, thoughtful, and careful analyses that are not results oriented or reducible to headlines and chyrons. We’re doing the best we can.

Counter: You’re not.

.... No one wants to be saddled with the same title as Aileen Cannon. But if the robe fits, you know?

However, let us heed Judge Johnston’s call and not render this opinion “reducible to headlines and chyrons.” How does the opinion stand on its own intellectual merits?

To describe this decision as “exacting, thoughtful, and careful” does grave violence to the English language. It is an amateurish trainwreck… pun obviously intended. Just a collection of clumsy examples, contradictory arguments, and “historical” chestnuts gathered by FedSoc academics and published in student journals dumped beneath a caption.

Since Judge Johnston is so convinced that governments cannot exclude guns from their property [public transit in this case], folks you might think people could try to bring shotguns into his courtroom sometime and see how that goes for them. The answer would be NOT WELL! That’s because, having decided that the Second Amendment would cover regulating government property generally, the burden shifts to whether the government can categorize the location as a “sensitive place.” And for any would-be courtroom cowboys, Justice Thomas explained in Bruen that while other people can and should dodge bullets on their way home from work, he and his fellow judges personally exist in a sensitive place.

Judge Johnston sounds like more fun than a barrel of enraged, heavily armed monkeys! MAGA to that. Gun fights on the choo-choo and in busses sound like a lot of fun for all involved, participants and audience alike!

The 9th Circuit is the big purple blob on the left

with 9 states included in it, incl. AK and HI

The 5th Circuit, TX, LA, MS, is

where Trump judges really dominate with most

major MAGA anti-democracy appeals now coming from there

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Those darned Russkis are at it again. They like to participate in US elections. Vox reports:

The right-wing podcasters turned Russian 

propaganda dupes, explained

The DOJ says Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson and others were unwitting Russian stooges

A cadre of right-wing online personalities including Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Lauren Southern have all allegedly become unwitting agents of Russian information warfare and its activities in the United States, according to an alarming 32-page federal indictment unsealed by the US District Court of the Southern District of New York on Wednesday.

The group of far-right and right-leaning influencers, most of whom are known for podcasts and YouTube shows, are all members or former members of Tenet Media, a Nashville-based content creation company co-owned by yet another well-known conservative media pundit, Lauren Chen.

The Department of Justice is alleging that since its founding in 2022, Tenet has served as a front for Russian agents to spread Russian state-directed content using each of these pundits’ platforms.

“The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda efforts,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

Merrick Garland? Hey Merrick! Why not prosecute Trump? Oh right, you're protecting him. Never mind.

Good ole' American radical right authoritarian pundits. They are either dumb as a sack of rocks, cynical authoritarian liars and manipulators or both. While I still can, I vote for the latter.