Following the flow of power and the battle for minds: Headlines & commentary

One can get a sense of where things are and will probably go from a scan of some headlines from two different points of view, the MSM and MAGA.

From the MSM

"Democrat propaganda": Marjorie Taylor Greene plans to team up with Musk to defund NPR -- Germaine's 11/6/24 prediction: Federal funding for NPR and PBS will either be shut off, or they will be turned into authoritarian propaganda outlets. 

Texas bill would reclassify abortion drugs as controlled substances -- The bill is modeled after a Louisiana law that doctors say has created chaos for other gynecological issues best treated by these drugs

Trump’s cabinet is filling up with Project 2025 authors despite him saying he has ‘no idea’ what it is -- Trump said he didn’t know who’s behind the blueprint for his return. He just hired the authors for key roles

Elon Musk and the age of shameless oligarchy -- We’ve never seen a political donor this loud, proud, and culturally influential -- “We are in an era that I call ‘in-your-face oligarchy,’” says Jeffrey A. Winters, a professor at Northwestern who researches oligarchs and inequality. Twenty years ago, it was a challenge to get his students to understand that there were oligarchs in the US. Now, he says, “I have a very hard time getting students to accept the idea that there’s democracy.”

Why Elon Musk can never balance the budget, in one chart -- Elon Musk wants to slash trillions in “waste.” Good luck, buddy! -- Germaine: Here, the MSM authors don't get it. Musk can cut trillions by calling what is cut waste even if it isn't. That's the point. Here's the budget.

Big cuts are not going to come from

defense, so where will they come from?

Trump Pentagon pick attacks UN and Nato and urges US to ignore Geneva conventions -- Revealed: Pete Hegseth writes scathingly of key institutions and says ‘If you love America, you should love Israel’ -- Germaine: "Ignore Geneva conventions" = mass slaughter of Palestinians -- Germaine's 11/6/24 prediction: There will be hideous genocide in Gaza, Lebanon and the Ukraine. 

From MAGA

Antony Blinken Holding Therapy Cry Sessions After Trump Win -- The Washington Free Beacon reported earlier this month about certain therapy sessions the State Department had been hosting for employees dealing with election fallout. 

The 2024 Presidential Election Landslide -- The SWAT raid on P’Nut’s house symbolizes an out-of-control totalitarian government. Elon Musk grasped this symbolism in his pithy posts on X. Thus, Elon Musk and Joe Rogan called P’Nut’s killing “proof America is no longer the land of the free...” P’Nut may be gone, but, with the election over, we can look back at the statist behemoth that killed him, and that may finally be reaching its end, leaving room for the Founders’ vision to bloom again.

P’Nut was killed by an out-of-control 

totalitarian statist behemoth

America is no longer the land of the free

Justice for P’Nut and Fred the Raccoon!!

Let’s say man is changing the climate. So what? -- if anthropogenic climate change were occurring, why should we assume it wouldn’t be beneficial? Oh, it’s not just that the Earth is greener and crop yields are higher when CO2 levels are greater [that is actually true but misleading]; it’s not just that relative warmth breeds life [that's incoherent]. It’s also this: Some scientists have said the Earth will soon enter, or has already entered, a significant cooling phase. Others even contend that another ice age is nigh. And if this is so, any man-caused temperature increase would merely mitigate this naturally induced but deadly phenomenon. [expert consensus says that is false]

Migrant murders put American communities on edge as over 1.4 million avoid deportation with shady tactics -- Laken Riley, Lizbeth Medina, Jocelyn Nungaray and Rachel Morin are among Americans allegedly killed by illegal immigrants -- VENEZUELAN MIGRANT GANG TREN DE ARAGUA NOW OPERATING IN 16 STATES: REPORT -- Question: Is it mostly migrant murders or mostly demagoguery about migrant murders that put US communities on edge, assuming "US communities" are "on edge"?

Leftists Are Fleeing X for Bluesky, But One Telling Statistic Reveals the Truth About Them -- “In the past 24 hours, we have received more than 42,000 reports (an all-time high for one day),” the Bluesky Safety team posted to its platform on Nov. 15. .... Of particularly notable concern, the safety team added: “We’re triaging this large queue so the most harmful content such as [child sexual abuse material -- CSAM] is removed quickly.” To say nothing of the CSAM content, that whole post is a bit telling, no? A public square is flooded by whiny leftists, and complaints exponentially skyrocket? That should tell you everything you need to know about the modern left in a nutshell. Leftism, at its core, is about division, and that’s why it just doesn’t work. Oh sure, it pretends to be all-inclusive, but inclusivity is the antithesis of intersectionality, and the latter is the primary currency of the left. -- Question: Does Bluesky trying to block CSAM support the allegation that leftists are whiney or that all Bluesky users are leftists? 

‘Sarah’ McBride Isn’t Just A Congressman In A Dress But A Trojan Horse To Force Men Into Women’s Spaces Everywhere -- McBride and his allies want women to give up privacy and safety, and all of us to give up our integrity and become complicit in their lies. -- The state of Delaware has elected a dude in a dress to the House of Representatives. Sarah (formerly Tim) McBride is a man who pretends to be a woman, and he will be going to Congress next year, which has provoked a fight over where he will, well, go when he is in Congress next year.

Q: Can you feel a difference in tone and degree of good will in MSM vs MAGA reporting?

The state of American ignorance/misunderstanding; About echo chambers

Lots of Americans are ignorant or misinformed about a lot of important things. Tom Nichols posted this bit of data on Bluesky. It's from a 2022 YouGov poll.

More data from the poll.

Nichols wrote the 2017 book The Death of Expertise (book review here). His key points include (i) there is a growing belief that everyone's opinions are equally valid, regardless of expertise or knowledge, (ii) many people are increasingly resistant to learning and hostile towards established knowledge, despite having unprecedented access to information, and (iii) metacognition, the ability to recognize one's own limitations and lack of knowledge in certain areas, is important to understand for democracy to survive in the face of toxic social media and dark free speech generally. He argues that rejection of expertise poses significant risks to society and democratic institutions.

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AOC posted this interesting thought about echo chambers on Bluesky:

It's coming to Canada too..........

 I too, am dismayed, that Trump won so easily. So, spending the last couple of weeks reading what the pundits have had to say and listening to talk radio, everyone is an expert all of a sudden on HOW it happened and WHY it happened.

It's coming to Canada too. The talk has started. And when the ruling Liberals lose, and the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre win, the same experts and pundits will have their say.

Just for fun, after the Trump win, one radio program I listened to decided to simply gauge their audience and the results might surprise you.

Not much about the well-oiled Republican propaganda machine, not even much about Kamala not being a good choice. Every day Americans calling in and simply saying............. we aren't being listened to.

I hear it here too now. Here in Canada. Just every day people saying Trudeau has tuned them out. They are getting fed up with being ignored.

Now, before I go further - even if Poilievre wins, he is NO Trump. There will be no attacks against abortion rights, or gay marriage or any move to "replace" our universal health care. But the themes will be similar......

Americans "felt", whether we acknowledge the fact or not, that the left and Democrats were tuning them out. The fact that Trump will do worse didn't factor into their calculation. Or maybe it did factor in, and they decided, hey, you ain't listening to us so what do we have to lose?

Tent cities. Unchecked illegal immigration. Transgender males beating girls in sports. Being forced to use the correct pronouns. Unsafe streets. Rising food prices. Watching anti-Semitism rise on college campuses. Being told constantly that we are being bigots for being upset by the things that we see.

Now in Canada, the same dialogue. 

In the town I lived for 30 years prior to moving back there was NEVER a tent city. Now tent cities everywhere. Rising crime as well. Complain, and be called intolerant, bigoted, small-minded.

People are angry. Not as angry as Americans, because, well because Canadians aren't quite as angry in general as Americans tend to get. Is it OK to say that?

Now the ads have come out, and you would swear they resemble the attacks made by the Right in the US, just watch........

Could the message be any more obvious? And how will the Liberals respond? Like this...............

A positive instead of a negative ad. As it should be................

 Problem is, it dismisses grievances that Canadians are expressing. It simply says we are a great people and should all get along. But when you speak against issues the left support, you get put down. You don't "get it." 

So, when you hear and read "how could Americans have voted for Trump, is something wrong with Americans? Were they hoodwinking? Were they taken in by rightwing media and Fox? Were we stupid?'............

THEN, you will know why Americans voted for Trump and likely,why Canadians will vote for Poilievre. 

Why Dems lost; In support of authoritarianism and kleptocracy; California CSP update

Why Dems lost in 2024

A recent Bill Maher show interviewed physicist Neil Tyson and former DNC chair Donna Brazile. Maher mentioned to Tyson a Dem argument that men and women are treated differently because of social structures, not because of biology. Maher said "that's nuts." After multiple attempts by Maher to explain the problem, Tyson refused to agree the Dem dogma-reality disconnect is real. Maher ended that bit by saying "OK, I'll put you down as part of the problem." I agree with Maher on this point.

When asked why the Dems lost the 2024 elections, Brazile was far worse than Tyson. Her answer (paraphrasing), "inflation was a beast we could not slay", was right for the wrong reason and it ignored the rest of the answer. The data I've seen so far indicates that inflation, illegal immigration at the border and aggressive wokeness, including like what Tyson was trying to assert, were the top three reasons the Dems got blown out. 

Regarding inflation, the GOP effectively put all blame for inflation on Biden and Harris. The beast the Dems could not slay was the false narrative that inflation was all Biden's and Harris' fault. The data I am aware of indicates that the top three causes of recent inflation were mostly (i) serious supply chain problems due to COVID (that is the reason I wound up with a Tesla instead of something else), (ii) Russia's war on Ukraine, and (iii) corporate greed. Biden's spending bills (mainly COVID relief and infrastructure bills) came in a distant 4th, not a close 4th. In other words, Brazile let the false MAGA narrative stand unchallenged. Worse yet, she did not even mention illegal immigration. Even worse than that, when the Republican in the interview mentioned aggressive wokeness was one of the causes, she simply denied it was a relevant factor. 

In my opinion, as long as Dem and liberal elites stay so shockingly wrong, clueless and rhetorically ineffective, they will remain out of power. They are not woke about themselves or American society generally.

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Democracy vs authoritarianism wars

In my opinion, there is a massive, ongoing attitude shift from staunch support for democracy to support for both authoritarianism and corruption in government. From what I can tell, a significant amount of rank and file support, probably most, comes from ignorance about what is really going on. The rank and file vigorously say they are pro-democracy and anti-corruption, but in my opinion, their votes say the opposite with equal vigor, but a lot more political impact.

But now for the first time, I've seen a defense of authoritarianism and kleptocracy openly asserted by a person who says they are pro-democracy and pro-reasonably helping people in real need (pro-service to the public interest, in my opinion). The reasoning goes about like this:

Authoritarianism or kleptocracy is not producing current excesses. Instead, the main culprits of widespread discontent and anger are a combination of American culture, skewed distribution of income and wealth, abuse of public and personal budgets (debt), and a poor alignment of education with available jobs. That situation in America produces a negative feedback loop leading us into deeper debt to keep people afloat while worsening the money gap (federal debt). That is an outcome of democracy, which isn't perfect, because people aren't.

How one can reconcile support for (or neutral acceptance of) authoritarianism and deep corruption (kleptocracy) with support for democracy and service to the public interest is beyond me. I do not know how to pound square pegs into smaller round holes. Is that the wrong way to see it?

Although people and democracy are not perfect, I also cannot understand why necessarily imperfect authoritarians and kleptocrats would not lead to worse income skewing and debt than our necessarily flawed democratic system. Again, I see square pegs and smaller round holes. Things can be a hell of a lot worse than they are now. In terms of fiscal policy, the Dems have been far less pro-debt than the Repubs at least since the 1990s. Compared to the Dems, the Repubs stand most solidly for federal and personal debt, authoritarianism and deep corruption.

What am I not understanding here, if anything? I really do believe there is a lot of ignorance and false beliefs going on here. I recently tried to make it clear that too many people do not know the difference between democracy and authoritarianism. I still stand by that belief and the facts and reasoning that support it.

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The effort to get official party status for the Common Sense Party of California has more or less ended in failure. The group could not get the ~75,000 signatured needed to qualify for official party status. I ended my affiliation with the group. Lots of people bitch and whine about how horrific the two parties are, but they are either ignorant about politics and opposition, or they won't or can't lift a finger to even try to put up a fight. So, the status quo remains in serenely place unchallenged, fat, lazy and happy.

Double nuts

Summing up the nut harvest: In California, the Green Party is socialist. That's nuts. The Dems are clueless woke. Nuts. The Libertarian Party is enslaved to its sacred property and personal rights crackpottery. The LPs are completely unaware that there even is such a thing as the public interest. Double nuts. The California GOP is just as double nuts as it is in other states. The Peace and Freedom Party ("California's Feminist Socialist Political Party") is more aggressively and cluelessly woke than the Dems. Double nuts. The American Independent Party is hard core Christian nationalist theocrat, and it tries to hide that fact from the public. Triple nuts.

My goodness gracious, there a lot of nuts in the harvest this year. And last year. And next year. . . . . . . 

Double nuts