What ever happened to professional courtesy?
(Hat tip: Scissorhead Purplehead)
“There’s always room for one more…”
RoJo must have been feeling Tommy of the Tubers breathing down his neck to take the title of the Stupidest Man in the Senate. “Think,” RoJo didn’t mutter to himself, “there must be something I can say to reclaim my rightful position!”
So, lemme see if I got this right: We have to keep the Gestapo masked because Minneapolis is a city in Central America, run by a Somali drug cartel.
The original Stupidest Man in the Senate, and still the best!
Take THAT, Tuberville!
Everything sucks, ya know? And so having a moment where we hoomins are not the bad guys (and the very chill bird is not a jerk) is so welcome. If the world were always like this, imagine what a paradise it would be?
(Hat tip: Scissorhead Purplehead)
Best No Kings Rally Protest Sign Ever
The Journos at NOTUS’s email thingie try punditry, again. Sigh.
How should Democrats campaign on Epstein? One strategy playing out in the field: Epstein was a rich sex offender who had rich friends like Trump.
That’s what Sen. Jon Ossoff did: “We were told that MAGA was for working-class Americans. You remember that? But this is a government of, by and for the ultrarich. It is the wealthiest Cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class ruling our country,” the purple-state senator said on the stump Saturday.
“Ossoff is on the right track, which is to say, I need to connect this thing, this saga, to something deeper about who fights for you and who doesn’t fight for you,” said Faiz Shakir, a progressive strategist and former Bernie Sanders presidential campaign manager.
Not all Democrats are into it: “This is also an important issue, and we should talk about it, but at the same time, it isn’t the biggest issue for the American people,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz said. “The cost of rent has nothing to do about Epstein.”
How to talk about Epstein has become an ongoing dilemma for liberals. One activist suggested Democrats lean in and “ditch the out-of-touch advisers in their ranks, some of whom are connected to Jeffrey Epstein.” Others have called it a sideshow.
Republicans have found their message: “Frankly, I think our country is facing far greater problems, and I have not devoted much time to following the Epstein hysteria,” Rep. Tom McClintock told NOTUS’ Riley Rogerson.
Look, we can walk and chew gum at the same time (“or at least some of us can,” I say icing an ankle), but these things are easily connected. So much of our collapsing social safety net is because Republicans had to pay for tax cuts for billionaires like Epstein. You wanna know why your healthcare premiums doubled? The Broligarchs are the beneficiaries of our misery.
But here’s an interesting item about what it is costing them to be on the wrong side of us:
“Security measures once reserved for presidents and royalty—safe rooms, biometric access controls, laser-powered perimeter defenses—are now mainstream items in luxury homes. Executive-protection teams and armed guards patrol gated enclaves and suburban estates, while tech startups are rolling out predictive threat-detection systems built for the ultra-wealthy.”
“The shift reflects a hardening view among the affluent: Traditional policing and communal safety are no longer enough, so security is being privatized, customized.”
So really, who is the animal in the zoo?
Not that it is a surprise (or much of one), but we Americans don’t trust the media any more:
A majority of Americans (57%) express low confidence in journalists to act in the best interests of the public, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis from the Pew-Knight Initiative. This includes 40% who say they have not too much confidence and 17% who say they have none at all. By comparison, 43% of adults say they have a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in journalists.
The Enemy of the People, amirite?
We continue to find large differences by political party on this topic. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (61%) are more than twice as likely as Republicans and GOP leaners (25%) to say they have confidence in journalists to act in the best interests of the public.
I guess Democrats have not yet connected the dots between billionaire owners and the propaganda being served?
As part of the new survey, we also conducted focus groups with 45 Americans. Regardless of political party, some of the participants in these focus groups described this broader loss of confidence in the news industry, saying they no longer know who or what to trust. For example, a Democratic woman in her 50s said, “We don’t have any really good journalists right now that are doing accurate news.”
Some participants said they now curate their news more carefully, whether by verifying what they come across or by narrowing their consumption to a small set of trusted sources.
“It used to be, as a kid, I could just turn on the news on TV and it’s like everything is believable and credible,” a Republican woman in her 40s said. “But in a world where everything has become much more biased, and there’s unreliable and biased sources, you have to kind of take things with a grain of salt and look at where is it coming from, and who’s the source, and what is their main goal? And you just have to put a filter on it.”
Democrats are starting to do that, too.
The difference is that the media is owned/captured by Republican Billionaires, and there is no equivalent on the Left. Getting news from a handful of sub stacks and pod casts is not the equivalent of MAGA getting their news poured over them from all of their many distribution channels, from Hate Radio to (now) CBS.
There is no equivalent media ecosystem for the Left.
I think in general all of us know what Brain Worm is doing, but I cannot understand why he’s doing it. Nothing makes sense.
The Pod Save Whatevs boys email thingie has an interview with Former CDC vaccine chief Dr. Demetre Daskalakis about Bobby Brain Worm’s tenure. It is interesting, and he opines his answer to the Why question.
I’m gonna be a bad blogger and copy and paste it:
Matt Berg: What are your thoughts on RFK Jr.’s disdain for experts?
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis: In my infectious diseases space, almost everything that he’s implemented has been generated based on vibes.
Expertise is something that he doesn’t value because he doesn’t have it, and he surrounds himself with grifters and people who are going to profit off of some of the changes that he has made. Experts are their kryptonite, and that’s why you see them attacking organizations that are working so hard to maintain the health of Americans.
It’s grifting, of course, and getting rid of experts helps the grift.
MB: What do you make of Dr. Oz urging Americans to get the measles vaccine?
DD: I’m not going to say anything bad about someone who actually is supporting common sense. But the bottom line is: You can’t pick and choose your experts. People are either experts or they’re not.
The things that [RFK Jr.] is changing… there’s just so much conflict of interest embedded in what he does. Of course he doesn’t like an expert, because an expert is the thing that debunks the stuff that he says, like keto diets are curing schizophrenia. What are you talking about?
MB: Is RFK Jr. correct that AI chatbots are better than doctors? [Ed.’s note: See NYT and BBC for more background.]
DD: Artificial intelligence is a very important tool, and I think that we’re just learning how to use it best in medicine. The notion that expertise can be replaced by algorithms is very aligned to RFK vision, because you can influence an algorithm to give you whatever answer you want.
There’s knowledge, and then there’s the experience of talking to a human. I understand AI can be pretty close to an emotional connection, but I would guess that most people in America would prefer to get their medical advice from a sentient, living being that has blood flowing through their veins.
MB: Are you still in touch with people in HHS? How are they doing?
DD: Yeah, they’re not doing well. When they see misinformation coming out that’s under their moniker, it hurts them. You have these people who are frankly yahoos, saying whatever they want or using talking points that serve a base rather than actually serve the people.
MB: What’s it like advising, or trying to advise, Kennedy?
DD: I wouldn’t know. Despite many offers to brief him on things, I was never taken up on it, and neither were any of my staff. You can’t advise someone who doesn’t want advice. You have people retrofitting data and retrofitting material to try to achieve their end, which they’ve already decided. The guy is unbriefable as far as I can detect, because he already knows what he thinks he knows.
MB: Do you have any expectations for the next three years?
DD: I think that we’re in for a ride. In the absence of really good oversight, or someone who tries to dislodge this very dangerous person, I think that we’re going to have consistent, consistent bad decisions being made.
If we keep going down the path of destruction on vaccines, eventually our rates are going to go low enough where we’re going to have a bunch of measles, and then kids are going to die. Is it going to happen in a year? Maybe, probably not. Is it going to happen in 10 years if we don’t change the course? Probably.
El Paso?
I didn’t post about this yesterday because it was still evolving and was nearly impossible to follow and understand, but I think this just about sums it up:
Kamala Harris would not have shut down El Paso air space FOR 10 DAYS, and then reveal secret weaponry to shoot down a party balloon… and just saying if the Balloon Boy storyline had happened, well, ZAP!
So why the Secretary of Day Drinking Pete Hic(!)seth let Cosplay Kristi have access to what was probably a Top Secret laser weapon? Your guess is as good as mine, but it’s turtles all the way down. These eff’ing clowns, that’s all I can say.
BTW, I am claiming El Paso Party Balloon as my new band name.
Pam Bondi
(Undated File Photo)
AG Pam Bondi appeared before the House Judiciary Committee today, and what a circus it was:
That picture (⬆︎) is the stuff of history future books. Congrats, Ursula, you’ve become a meme.
The Journos at NOTUS’ afternoon email thingie:
“We’re not saying it was the ugliest House hearing ever, but Pam Bondi’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee was certainly a contender:”
- Bondi apologized to victims of Jeffrey Epstein in the hearing room for the suffering “that monster” caused them. But when Pramila Jayapal asked Bondi to turn around and apologize for the DOJ’s role in the case, Bondi said she wasn’t going to “get in the gutter with these theatrics” and then called Jayapal “unprofessional.”
- Jerry Nadler asked Bondi how many of Epstein’s co-conspirators she’d indicted. Bondi tried to change the subject. When Nadler objected, she said: “I’m going to answer the question the way I want to answer the question,” then told Chair Jim Jordan that she wasn’t going to “get in the gutter with these people.”
- Ranking Member Jamie Raskin jumped in to say he’d previously told Bondi she couldn’t filibuster members. She shot back: “You don’t tell me anything, you washed-up loser lawyer.”
- After the hearing, Thomas Massie claimed Bondi’s staff gave her cue cards with insults prepared for her inquisitors, “but she couldn’t memorize them” so she had to “shuffle through them to find the flash-cards-insult that matches the member.”
And I thought Bob Barr was going to be the most complicit AG in US History; he looks like a piker.
Behold! The majesty of the cat!
 | calcurmudgeon on Midday Palate Cleanser |
| calcurmudgeon on News That Will Drive You To… |
 | Ten Bears on The Rich Are Different From Us… |
 | MDavis on Report: There Is No Equivalent… |
 | chrisliebenthal on Report: There Is No Equivalent… |
Mock Paper Scissors 