I live in North Jersey. People are losing their shit over the 'drones'. The skies here are very busy, nothing new here.
The drones seem to be nocturnal creatures. I am not aware of any daytime sightings. We have our own brand of morons here, pointing lasers at (federal crime) and trying to shoot down the drones.
There was a very similar craze during the 1960s involving "UFOs". There were reports of unidentified lights over a local reservoir and suddenly the roads were jammed with people wanting to catch a glimpse of the UFOs.
New Jersey was also where War of the Worlds radio broadcast caused hysteria in the 1930s.
Ignore the drone story for 72 hours and there will be a new shiny object to grab people's attention.
In interviews and podcast I keep hearing the last 5% of voters that made a late decision, voted for Trump and put him over the top basically say....I don't like him, I hate his antics but I just want the cost of living to go down and "the border" to go away. Well, neither of those things is going to happen and I think Trump's "approval" is going to crash and stay there just like before
trup maga clowns will get change all right, change back in the form of higher prices for everything, and stiff job loses. Tariffs, deportations, and isolationism will come at a steep cost to maga and, sadly, those who stayed home. In fact, few but the musk and bezo bros will feel the pain. I look forward to seeing them react to that change they brought upon themselves, as their wealthy overlords gorge themselves on the nation's wealth. They haven't seen the real feed the wealthy and starve the poor, but they will get that change.... I can only hope that the demented trump will isten to some of his billionaire suck ups and limit the damage the orange monster can do. That is best case scenario.
Steve Bannon, and others, may well LOVE to talk about the PLANS, THREATS and the FAFO scenarios, THIS FAST, but I found the news conference, and comments from Trump, most interesting and cringey.
But first, the DOJ, are who capitulated first, over all we speak of today...all the way back to Russia, Russia, Russia and campaign details and omissions from 2015, regarding Trump, and those who knew. Smith wasn't bound by law to drop anything either.
That said, doesn't make this settlement sit any less grossly perverse when ABC/GS, were only "semantically" parroting a judges own words, not their own. Trump's lawyer, for immunity, loved the word semantics, semantically speaking.
Back to most interesting. Does friendship, by declaring a new personality, seemingly not a Sybil scenario although he's capable, and warm thoughts of now wanting to hold hands in public, come by an organic change through realizing the shelves are empty of anything decent and restocking with moral clarity? I don't think so! No one would be that fooled except the most malleable of fools. Was that fool present in the room at the news conference?
So, the authoritarian, as weak as they are, seem to relish in others grifting attention and adulation, in reverse to avoid consequences, to see this new grift, as a true and authentic new found fondness of what, the receiver states changed to their great surprise, as if, but knows they've only gotten worse and is putting a show on for us or themselves?
It can't be authentic or organic but a grift of the grifter, right or not? Am I off base that this is a realization or a BIG LIE to themselves they purely aren't aware of? It's embarrassing to watch at this level.
If that's the case, what do the masses do, to push back if we have no worthy grift, to give, to radically change stance or play reverse psychology? Wonder what professor Snyder would say? We aren't Russia, circa 1990, or Germany, circa 1930-40s, but we have the internet and Muskrat and a billion other shitty things like the SCOTUS and now a declared post constitutional era.
I opine it was all due to the pandemic that only the Dems/libs were capable of unleashing, on purpose, to hurt themselves in reality, but only if one thinks like a MAGA. The dynamic here is unfolding so fast is burnout likely?
A grand one night stand, that steams to a full relationship, of lust over love, when it's before the "unrobing", and potential possibilities, that will never look good once the robe is gone.
The couple's, threesomes, infinite-somes, raging, petting, horny to bed, perverse tendencies fulfilled, wake only to find out that what they went to bed with wasn't what they want to look at every day, for four years, as penetration has now infected the very thing that led to the grand one night stand and they have pain and itching and it won't stop.
Knowing the infection existed, doesn't matter, they both went forward, but does the infection indicate death for one of them or does it tie them together forever and for all? Bromance/Billionmance may not want tied down that long as autonomy, for them, will be hard to give up, for so long, knowing it only takes a few hundred million to stop things they know leaves them at the alter alone in the end. Give or take a few more loopholes or regulations or assassinations.
Can it possibly look that way or end that way in this scenario?
If a hillbilly or a suburbanite or a "fill in the blank" can vote against their interests and be unaware for so long, can it happen to those, together with enough money to step up, after integrity and the wife and kids finally show up, save what matters to them or are they all destined to remain infected, sick, itchy and painful for.......more fake adulation or something like crypto?
Citizen with no answers. I suggested "tolling" the election until he proved his innocence but was thrown the book at!!!! College is not for all. Christianity isn't and certainly some will never take enough puberty blockers to come down to the reality that men are, in fact, physically stronger than most women, in body, for sports.....etc, etc. I'll get rolled but it's facts that matter when comprise was and is necessary, for things and people to get uninfected/unwoke or whatever du jour.
Gotta have radical ideas to a novel radical situation no one seems to interpret any way other than just a wholesome democracy, voting in the dark, playing jurors, just bellied up and folded over to the tune of migrants, messaging, irony, lies and inflation. I'm not convinced. Corruption will always be a force. How does it end if we can't enter the mud pit, counter ambition with ambition, and not leave something out, as we just witnessed and lost another, now to the Founders idea of tyranny, for the third time?
This post is one for the ages. It's so true, and it's been nagging at me for 30 years, that the fragmentation and dissolution of the Fourth (Fifth?) Estate leaves our society with *no one* to make the public aware of what is true, what is false, and what is bullshit.
This is not, as some weak pundits state, simply "concerning" or even "dangerous." The damage is already done. This election proves it. Drastic changes, driven by immense courage, are required.
With in incoming president who is still hawking his crap ( perfume the latest I’ve heard) , CEOs getting shot and they are only talking about how to better protect CEOs ( Ny is considering a hotline for them) . 3 people killed today in a Christian school in Madison Wisconsin 2 kids and a teacher ( one the shooter) 7 injured. All the headlines will be about the CEOs who are scared. No one cares our kids are getting shot at school. Our teachers as well. This is going to be a brutal 4 years.
Well, I don't think the press will ignore the school shooting. But they will fail, as they always do, to address the issue head-on. Already the TV news says "police are trying to determine a motive," and "questions are being asked about whether greater security at the school might have helped."
What on God's green earth is the point of searching for a "motive" here? This is not an Agatha Christie novel. It doesn't matter if the teen who committed the murder had a grudge against the teacher, or was on drugs, or was hearing voices, or had written a manifesto. The problem is easy access to deadly firearms.
Similarly, it doesn't matter if locking doors or hiring a team of security guards would have stopped this particular shooter. The problem is easy access to deadly firearms.
Agreed. It would have been a slam-dunk win for ABC. Like Bezos sacrificing the Washington Post's integrity to rake in government contracts for his other business and to worship at the feet of Donald Trump, ABC's "settlement" was a not too discretely disguised goodwill offering that they expect will enhance their bottom line. Their boardroom must be rejoicing.
Mr. Kristol your column was chilling, not that I wasn’t almost frozen before, but it brought home once again the need for folks to band together against the very real authoritarian power grab we are facing. Count me in with your band!
Good old Mitch. Way too little way too late. Who does he think will listen to him? Trump’s sycophantic R Senators? While they are simultaneously noisily actually considering Hesgarth and Gabbard? No Mitch. You let hope die. This will be how we and the history books remember you. Oh yeah—we may get polio again. That too is down to you.
If this reporting was wrong then a clarification should have been promptly broadcast and now you should be taking Trump to the 4-hour deposition woodshed over whether you have done 50 cents worth of damage to his "brand." Walk him through every other damned thing that he has done, such as hoarding classified documents and sitting watching TV during a riot...and then asking him whether he has actually been re-elected in spite of all of it? We are watching everything unfold that John McCain was afraid of, the rich have bought themselves a government and the rest of us cannot trust them or anything (including the Supreme Court) that they have touched.
Dear God, it never ends, does it? "Breaking News: Teacher and Student Are Killed in Wisconsin School Shooting, Police Say Officials revised the death toll to three, including the shooter, who they identified as a teenage student. At least six others were injured."
Color me cynical, but at the rate we're seeing norms crumble when challenged I half expect to see Trump order the arrest of Biden on stage at the inauguration
My H, an attorney (so am I), looked up the ABC case and discovered that Stephanopoulos, during that interview, said 10 times that Trump was “convicted of rape”. Trump was only convicted of sexual assault, not rape. What the judge said, and he shouldn’t have said it, in his order was just dicta. Dicta is extraneous judicial speech that counts for nothing. Stephanopoulos shouldn’t have said there was a rape conviction, and he definitely shouldn’t have said it 10 times. This wasn’t going to be a case ABC could win, and it was a good corporate decision to settle, even if Trump haters (I am one) wish it were different. Besides which, how many people actually think of digital penetration when they hear the word “rape”? Not many is my guess. This whole ABC thing may be frustrating but it’s a logical result on the facts.
Shit. I hate to say it, but if your characterization of what Stephanopoulos said is accurate, you are right.
Was he really that dumb, given how frantically cautious reporters generally are when talking about legal issues? I mean, even the reporting of today's school shooting in Madison is referring to the perpetrator, who took her own life, as the "alleged suspect."
If so, then they really did have little choice. And for what? Was Stephanopoulos's statement going to have the slightest impact on the election, especially when it was inaccurate?
I just looked into what Stephanopoulos actually said. According to the Columbia Journalism Review (https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/questions-abc-news-should-answer-16-million-trump-settlement.php), Per that article, "Stephanopoulos first said 'judges in two juries have found [Trump] liable for rape,'” and later "said nine separate times that Trump was 'found liable for rape.'” However, he did once say "the judge said Trump was found to have committed rape.”
So, it looks to me like the only instance where he crossed the line into using the word "committed" was in referencing what the trial judge had said. Is that enough for Trump to have prevailed in this suit?
The judge did not find Trump “liable for rape”. The jury found Trump guilty of sexual assault. In a jury trial, the jury makes the finding, not the judge. The judge made an extrajudicial statement that was, as I said, dicta. Dicta is meaningless and superfluous. It’s unnecessary, means nothing, and has no legal significance. Trump was NEVER found liable for rape, so to say that 9 different times (in the same interview, no less!) was definitely actionable and Trump would probably have won on the merits. All 10 statements by Stephanopoulos were factually and legally incorrect. Personally, I think Stephanopoulos knew, or certainly should have known, that these statements were incorrect and inflammatory. I’m certain Stephanopoulos meant for his statements to be inflammatory and damaging to Trump. The chances of Trump proving all the elements of defamation are/were pretty high. Had Trump won, that would be very damaging to ABC’s reputation, and to Stephanopoulos’s reputation and credibility going forward. It’s pretty unconscionable that Stephanopoulos did what he did and put ABC in the crosshairs to this extent. I hate Trump with a passion, so to totally blow it in this fashion just makes going after him legitimately that much harder. Stephanopoulos should be fired.
I wonder, though, how much of what is said by Fox, Newsmax and OAN, about various Democrats. would be legally just as egregious? My hope is that answer is "yes", as this may be the only effective way to combat the influence they have over the right and swing voters through the lies they tell their audience.
Is anybody assessing whether MSM is cleansing websites of anti trump content during past 9 years?
Supreme court banished anticorruption laws on officials taking gifts for past favors in 2024.
I live in North Jersey. People are losing their shit over the 'drones'. The skies here are very busy, nothing new here.
The drones seem to be nocturnal creatures. I am not aware of any daytime sightings. We have our own brand of morons here, pointing lasers at (federal crime) and trying to shoot down the drones.
There was a very similar craze during the 1960s involving "UFOs". There were reports of unidentified lights over a local reservoir and suddenly the roads were jammed with people wanting to catch a glimpse of the UFOs.
New Jersey was also where War of the Worlds radio broadcast caused hysteria in the 1930s.
Ignore the drone story for 72 hours and there will be a new shiny object to grab people's attention.
In interviews and podcast I keep hearing the last 5% of voters that made a late decision, voted for Trump and put him over the top basically say....I don't like him, I hate his antics but I just want the cost of living to go down and "the border" to go away. Well, neither of those things is going to happen and I think Trump's "approval" is going to crash and stay there just like before
trup maga clowns will get change all right, change back in the form of higher prices for everything, and stiff job loses. Tariffs, deportations, and isolationism will come at a steep cost to maga and, sadly, those who stayed home. In fact, few but the musk and bezo bros will feel the pain. I look forward to seeing them react to that change they brought upon themselves, as their wealthy overlords gorge themselves on the nation's wealth. They haven't seen the real feed the wealthy and starve the poor, but they will get that change.... I can only hope that the demented trump will isten to some of his billionaire suck ups and limit the damage the orange monster can do. That is best case scenario.
Steve Bannon, and others, may well LOVE to talk about the PLANS, THREATS and the FAFO scenarios, THIS FAST, but I found the news conference, and comments from Trump, most interesting and cringey.
But first, the DOJ, are who capitulated first, over all we speak of today...all the way back to Russia, Russia, Russia and campaign details and omissions from 2015, regarding Trump, and those who knew. Smith wasn't bound by law to drop anything either.
That said, doesn't make this settlement sit any less grossly perverse when ABC/GS, were only "semantically" parroting a judges own words, not their own. Trump's lawyer, for immunity, loved the word semantics, semantically speaking.
Back to most interesting. Does friendship, by declaring a new personality, seemingly not a Sybil scenario although he's capable, and warm thoughts of now wanting to hold hands in public, come by an organic change through realizing the shelves are empty of anything decent and restocking with moral clarity? I don't think so! No one would be that fooled except the most malleable of fools. Was that fool present in the room at the news conference?
So, the authoritarian, as weak as they are, seem to relish in others grifting attention and adulation, in reverse to avoid consequences, to see this new grift, as a true and authentic new found fondness of what, the receiver states changed to their great surprise, as if, but knows they've only gotten worse and is putting a show on for us or themselves?
It can't be authentic or organic but a grift of the grifter, right or not? Am I off base that this is a realization or a BIG LIE to themselves they purely aren't aware of? It's embarrassing to watch at this level.
If that's the case, what do the masses do, to push back if we have no worthy grift, to give, to radically change stance or play reverse psychology? Wonder what professor Snyder would say? We aren't Russia, circa 1990, or Germany, circa 1930-40s, but we have the internet and Muskrat and a billion other shitty things like the SCOTUS and now a declared post constitutional era.
I opine it was all due to the pandemic that only the Dems/libs were capable of unleashing, on purpose, to hurt themselves in reality, but only if one thinks like a MAGA. The dynamic here is unfolding so fast is burnout likely?
A grand one night stand, that steams to a full relationship, of lust over love, when it's before the "unrobing", and potential possibilities, that will never look good once the robe is gone.
The couple's, threesomes, infinite-somes, raging, petting, horny to bed, perverse tendencies fulfilled, wake only to find out that what they went to bed with wasn't what they want to look at every day, for four years, as penetration has now infected the very thing that led to the grand one night stand and they have pain and itching and it won't stop.
Knowing the infection existed, doesn't matter, they both went forward, but does the infection indicate death for one of them or does it tie them together forever and for all? Bromance/Billionmance may not want tied down that long as autonomy, for them, will be hard to give up, for so long, knowing it only takes a few hundred million to stop things they know leaves them at the alter alone in the end. Give or take a few more loopholes or regulations or assassinations.
Can it possibly look that way or end that way in this scenario?
If a hillbilly or a suburbanite or a "fill in the blank" can vote against their interests and be unaware for so long, can it happen to those, together with enough money to step up, after integrity and the wife and kids finally show up, save what matters to them or are they all destined to remain infected, sick, itchy and painful for.......more fake adulation or something like crypto?
Citizen with no answers. I suggested "tolling" the election until he proved his innocence but was thrown the book at!!!! College is not for all. Christianity isn't and certainly some will never take enough puberty blockers to come down to the reality that men are, in fact, physically stronger than most women, in body, for sports.....etc, etc. I'll get rolled but it's facts that matter when comprise was and is necessary, for things and people to get uninfected/unwoke or whatever du jour.
Gotta have radical ideas to a novel radical situation no one seems to interpret any way other than just a wholesome democracy, voting in the dark, playing jurors, just bellied up and folded over to the tune of migrants, messaging, irony, lies and inflation. I'm not convinced. Corruption will always be a force. How does it end if we can't enter the mud pit, counter ambition with ambition, and not leave something out, as we just witnessed and lost another, now to the Founders idea of tyranny, for the third time?
This post is one for the ages. It's so true, and it's been nagging at me for 30 years, that the fragmentation and dissolution of the Fourth (Fifth?) Estate leaves our society with *no one* to make the public aware of what is true, what is false, and what is bullshit.
This is not, as some weak pundits state, simply "concerning" or even "dangerous." The damage is already done. This election proves it. Drastic changes, driven by immense courage, are required.
With in incoming president who is still hawking his crap ( perfume the latest I’ve heard) , CEOs getting shot and they are only talking about how to better protect CEOs ( Ny is considering a hotline for them) . 3 people killed today in a Christian school in Madison Wisconsin 2 kids and a teacher ( one the shooter) 7 injured. All the headlines will be about the CEOs who are scared. No one cares our kids are getting shot at school. Our teachers as well. This is going to be a brutal 4 years.
Well, I don't think the press will ignore the school shooting. But they will fail, as they always do, to address the issue head-on. Already the TV news says "police are trying to determine a motive," and "questions are being asked about whether greater security at the school might have helped."
What on God's green earth is the point of searching for a "motive" here? This is not an Agatha Christie novel. It doesn't matter if the teen who committed the murder had a grudge against the teacher, or was on drugs, or was hearing voices, or had written a manifesto. The problem is easy access to deadly firearms.
Similarly, it doesn't matter if locking doors or hiring a team of security guards would have stopped this particular shooter. The problem is easy access to deadly firearms.
Agreed. It would have been a slam-dunk win for ABC. Like Bezos sacrificing the Washington Post's integrity to rake in government contracts for his other business and to worship at the feet of Donald Trump, ABC's "settlement" was a not too discretely disguised goodwill offering that they expect will enhance their bottom line. Their boardroom must be rejoicing.
Taking lessons in manhood from Trump is an empty exercise.
Mr. Kristol your column was chilling, not that I wasn’t almost frozen before, but it brought home once again the need for folks to band together against the very real authoritarian power grab we are facing. Count me in with your band!
Good old Mitch. Way too little way too late. Who does he think will listen to him? Trump’s sycophantic R Senators? While they are simultaneously noisily actually considering Hesgarth and Gabbard? No Mitch. You let hope die. This will be how we and the history books remember you. Oh yeah—we may get polio again. That too is down to you.
If this reporting was wrong then a clarification should have been promptly broadcast and now you should be taking Trump to the 4-hour deposition woodshed over whether you have done 50 cents worth of damage to his "brand." Walk him through every other damned thing that he has done, such as hoarding classified documents and sitting watching TV during a riot...and then asking him whether he has actually been re-elected in spite of all of it? We are watching everything unfold that John McCain was afraid of, the rich have bought themselves a government and the rest of us cannot trust them or anything (including the Supreme Court) that they have touched.
Dear God, it never ends, does it? "Breaking News: Teacher and Student Are Killed in Wisconsin School Shooting, Police Say Officials revised the death toll to three, including the shooter, who they identified as a teenage student. At least six others were injured."
Color me cynical, but at the rate we're seeing norms crumble when challenged I half expect to see Trump order the arrest of Biden on stage at the inauguration
Wow, you just brought back visions of Saddam Hussein. Nicely done.
My H, an attorney (so am I), looked up the ABC case and discovered that Stephanopoulos, during that interview, said 10 times that Trump was “convicted of rape”. Trump was only convicted of sexual assault, not rape. What the judge said, and he shouldn’t have said it, in his order was just dicta. Dicta is extraneous judicial speech that counts for nothing. Stephanopoulos shouldn’t have said there was a rape conviction, and he definitely shouldn’t have said it 10 times. This wasn’t going to be a case ABC could win, and it was a good corporate decision to settle, even if Trump haters (I am one) wish it were different. Besides which, how many people actually think of digital penetration when they hear the word “rape”? Not many is my guess. This whole ABC thing may be frustrating but it’s a logical result on the facts.
Shit. I hate to say it, but if your characterization of what Stephanopoulos said is accurate, you are right.
Was he really that dumb, given how frantically cautious reporters generally are when talking about legal issues? I mean, even the reporting of today's school shooting in Madison is referring to the perpetrator, who took her own life, as the "alleged suspect."
If so, then they really did have little choice. And for what? Was Stephanopoulos's statement going to have the slightest impact on the election, especially when it was inaccurate?
I just looked into what Stephanopoulos actually said. According to the Columbia Journalism Review (https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/questions-abc-news-should-answer-16-million-trump-settlement.php), Per that article, "Stephanopoulos first said 'judges in two juries have found [Trump] liable for rape,'” and later "said nine separate times that Trump was 'found liable for rape.'” However, he did once say "the judge said Trump was found to have committed rape.”
So, it looks to me like the only instance where he crossed the line into using the word "committed" was in referencing what the trial judge had said. Is that enough for Trump to have prevailed in this suit?
The judge did not find Trump “liable for rape”. The jury found Trump guilty of sexual assault. In a jury trial, the jury makes the finding, not the judge. The judge made an extrajudicial statement that was, as I said, dicta. Dicta is meaningless and superfluous. It’s unnecessary, means nothing, and has no legal significance. Trump was NEVER found liable for rape, so to say that 9 different times (in the same interview, no less!) was definitely actionable and Trump would probably have won on the merits. All 10 statements by Stephanopoulos were factually and legally incorrect. Personally, I think Stephanopoulos knew, or certainly should have known, that these statements were incorrect and inflammatory. I’m certain Stephanopoulos meant for his statements to be inflammatory and damaging to Trump. The chances of Trump proving all the elements of defamation are/were pretty high. Had Trump won, that would be very damaging to ABC’s reputation, and to Stephanopoulos’s reputation and credibility going forward. It’s pretty unconscionable that Stephanopoulos did what he did and put ABC in the crosshairs to this extent. I hate Trump with a passion, so to totally blow it in this fashion just makes going after him legitimately that much harder. Stephanopoulos should be fired.
Yes, but what were his damages? Loss of good reputation? (Cue the dead people laughing)
I agree.
I wonder, though, how much of what is said by Fox, Newsmax and OAN, about various Democrats. would be legally just as egregious? My hope is that answer is "yes", as this may be the only effective way to combat the influence they have over the right and swing voters through the lies they tell their audience.
Agree, but Democrats have not shown any inclination to fight fire with fire, so we’re stuck.