I determined this morning to challenge everyone who works at the Free Press to watch 2 Prager U videos this week. On anything. Absolutely anything. Here is the link: https://www.prageru.com/series/5-minute-videos
I think many of us were attracted by the semi-family vibe of a small, shall we say boutique, publication with a public and largely sincere commitment to truth telling.
And I will grant all of you the virtue of being less crazy than the crazies. But I think all of you do not REALLY understand what conservatives think, and why we think it. Not really. You seem to be still viewing all of us through a lens of distaste that was introduced at some point when you were in Kindergarten. It's emotional. It is a feeling tone. And you have it, and have never gotten over it.
But the proposition needs to be seriously considered by all genuinely well intentioned and sincere people that our ideas actually ARE better than those proposed even by traditional Democrats. We had good arguments in the 1960's, too, that were ignored then, too, by what became Big Government.
It's time to rethink everything. The only two possible directions for the seemingly inevitable coming social changes are complete decay and destruction, and a revolution of thought in the direction of actually useful economic and social policies.
The point of Prager U is not necessarily to convince people of a specific position, although that of course is one goal. To my mind, the MAIN value of those videos is that they show normal human beings, articulating reasonable ideas, and who plainly know what they are talking about. They humanize conservatives, for people who have been taught to view us as Untermenschen. That is an inherently valuable activity.
Give it a shot. All you have to lose are ten minutes and some bad or incomplete ideas.
Hey Bari - how about you make "Unsaint Finbar" a regular columnist? He's a whole lot smarter and more measured than most of the cranks you inflict on us. If you're just going to be a copycat of the NY Times -except without the censorship and lies - then how about offering content from both sides? Because Finbar is about as "down the middle" as possible - except he only sounds conservative because he isn't bat shit crazy like Wiseman.
I've been commenting since the first days of Common Sense, and back then they spoke to the community directly.
Nellie regularly says, "see you in the comments" etc, and sometimes on announcement articles we will see pins and likes.
I even get the feeling that some articles include subject matter that appears directly relevant to what commentors were previously writing.
All that to say, yes I think at least some of the staff read at least some of the comments. But they were looking for moderate and civil conversations, and they're not pleased that it's usually angry conservatives being angry.
I was wondering what this campaign season's "May Surprise" would be. They started the BLM push with Ahmed Arbery in April but it didn't get going until Floyd. This year's theme is Gaza and they're ramping up, but don't have the broader backing this time.
Nellie looks for her name and ‘likes’ the comments where she is praised.
I think someone took notice of the comments regarding Wiseman’s TDS, because such remarks have been noticeably reduced (although he remains worth skipping).
My subscription expires in November. I doubt I will peruse many of the articles till then, especially after today’s installment, but I will continue to learn from the comments.
I subscribed for the comments. Many of the articles I just scan, although some are quite good. The majority of them, well I get more from the comments.
Anthony, too true! And Bari et al deserve huge praise for NOT culling the extreme comments, mostly (I have to say) from the cultist MAGA crowd spouting their Fox News talking points (“Biden crime family; Biden is an imbecile; senile; a fool; we are are going broke so we can’t afford to help Ukraine - but can afford to help Israel; Ukraine anyway is a corrupt place; Putin is a stand-up guy - this one not so much anymore; ALL the Trump charges are fabrications by zealous Democrats”). It’s SO boring! Why? Because reasoned arguments CAN be persuasive, but this is just ranting (or wanking).
Anybody writing words like "cultist MAGA" and "Fox News" is pretty much the kind of worthless extremism I'm talking about.
I mean Obama's famous quote from years ago was, "never underestimate Joe Biden's ability to fuck things up," and you want to tell me that Obama's words are now "Fox News talking points". I don't take that seriously. You're regurgitating extremist, programmed propaganda like "MAGA cult" while praising yourself for not being like "those people."
Hey, maybe the commenters can take over the content of The Free Press, like the Left has taken over every worthwhile institution in America. All we have to do is review the Left's tactics. Anybody know them?
I will say that I am a man of many moods, and at my best I can hang with the best of them, but at some point or other I've also said something that would offend or bother just about every person on the planet. I will be honest that I feel fully the anxiety Bari would feel even thinking about putting me in front of a paying audience, and I for one assume that is just too scary a thought to contemplate long, and there is no blame in that at all.
What I WILL suggest, though, is that she assign one of her writers to spend half a day watching Prager U videos and then write a piece on that experience. Or maybe even interview Dennis Prager. He seems to give a lot of interviews. Actually, David Horowitz would be a great one too. I think he lives in California somewhere, as does or did Dennis Prager.
The problem with most Americans is that they don't know what they don't know. In principle the job of our schools would be to educate our kids fully, but what in practice they do is provide one sided information that neglects alternative viewpoints entirely; and for this reason, good journalism might in some respects be viewed as a form of remedial education that will in the medium and long terms support public peace.
David Horowitz would be interesting. He’s a “red diaper baby” who went to Berkeley, got in with the Black Panthers, and then had a huge epiphany when he saw what corrupt murderers they were. He seems to have spent the rest of his life atoning for the stupidity of his youth.
There’s a famous video of him speaking years ago at a college campus with militant Muslims in the audience. He got one of them to admit that killings Jews was OK. Total defiance in her attitude. That should have been a wake up call, but no. Universities are so “enlightened”, we should accept differing views, right?
Which brings me to another point— how about a long expose on the infiltration of college campuses by Islamic interests? It’s been going on for decades. Big money. And here we are now, with a full force, coordinated onslaught on our campuses. Why are we surprised?
I often wonder how, if Soviet Communism and adherence to its views and tenets was deemed legally unacceptable in America, then why is radical Islam and teaching that Sharia law should replace American law not also viewed as criminally subversive. After all, if Communism - a "religion of atheism" and worship of the God that Failed was deemed not worthy of First Amendment protection, then why is Islam - a tenet just as subversive and antithetical to Western values and civilization, not deemed equally subversive and unworthy of protection?
Because the Leftists find the Islamists to be useful allies. They share a deep hatred of Western civilization and the Jews. And Islamists are far more willing (and able) to do the violence necessary to the goal of destroying the West and Israel than the Leftists' "useful idiots" are.
Or is it as simple as the enemy ( Islam)) of my enemy ("..we the people..") is my (the DNC/CCP/WEF/EU Davosphere) friend.
Consider that Alejandro Mayorkas was a board member of an NGO dedicated to flooding Western nations with illegals. Crickets!! Or the "I'm a God" Soros open admission that he considers the flooding of nations with illegals a legitimate tactic to bring them to their knees. Manufactured chaos serves criminal financial fascism. While you can't leave your house or go for a walk in your city park for fear of assault the same globalist grifters that gutted American industry and collapsed the world economy are destroying the dollar and pushing US one step further toward debt enslavement and misery.
When was adherence to the views of Soviet Communism illegal? I remember people being arrested for espionage or sabotage, and I have read about people losing jobs or contracts because they were Communists in the 1950s, but when was believing in Communism a crime?
In the beginning the FBI and CIA were founded, manned by and created to serve (still does) corporate business. The current assault on the Constitution, general citizen confusion and economic chaos being experienced by America is the failure to understand that "we the people" have been(are) being commodified and colonized.The chasm and consternation in American reality is the citizens inability to comprehend the moral disconnect between what is happening to his life and the manufactured hyperreality of the ascending totalitarianism.
The accountant that he asked them to hire, who discovered they were stealing from public donations. They were just using politics as a hustle. Her body was found in the Bay. He became a conservative that day and has never looked back.
He has told this story often. How ODD it is that someone who values knowledge as much as you obviously do is unaware of this history. It seemingly escaped your diligent efforts somehow.
Let us not overlook that the Panthers were infiltrated and undermined by government operatives who introduced drugs and corruption into the organization and planned and executed the assassination of many legitimate Black voices. Collapse of the Panthers led to the rise of crip/blood warfare and the school to prison pipeline/prison industrial complex and also fueled the introduction of crack cocaine and other drugs into Black neighborhoods by again, operatives of the Federal government (Ollie North/Freeway Ricky Ross/Gary Webb). The Black fratricide today is a result of that interference. And the mask is completely off political, financial, cartel complicity and corruption.
Yes. For an entire group, with various offices, including international chapters as well as chapters in 48 states, to murder one person, would be impossible. You got it right, cornhole. :) Good for you!
Jeezez, I've been listening to Dennis Prager's radio show, since the 1980s. All us (we?) Hollywood agnostics found "Religion on the Line," the most interesting of programs. I left SoCal 20 years ago and continue listening to him on Internet, here in Bumfuck Ozark -- a nice place, cheap golf.
Me too. I am a former So Cal gal who started listening to his show and Religion on the Line in 1985, Was it KABC? I think so. I started out as what would then be considered a moderately liberal Democrat & committed atheist too. Prager changed my mind way back then.
Yep, ABC, Sunday nights, after the Dodger game. Yeah, Prager talked me out of Atheism too, but I couldn't quite go Christian (raised Catholic), but I'd go to Synagogue, if there were one within a hundred miles. The Christians I know here have no idea of what's going on, that's why I'm on TFP, to have somebody to talk to and listen to.
Yep. Lived most of my life in So. Cal after being raised in the Midwest. Found Prager and listened for that whole time. Living now in the PNW and still listen to him online.
"Most Americans don't know what they don't know" I agree and use this phrase often!!
The bigger question is, "Do they WANT to know? Do they CARE?" It's obvious that what they focus their attention on is Social Media, FOMO, Selfish & being Self- absorbed. And that's right where Politicians and Govt Leaders ( ON BOTH SIDES) want them.
In the last two years, I have advocated to Bari to choose a poster or three to write a TFP article. It has fallen on deaf ears. Unsaint is an excellent choice.
I'd love to see an article from compro. It would force him to post a real, well researched article, which he has never done on this BBS, and it would show just how batshit crazy he really is. But to do that, he would have to put his bullhorn down and stop spurring on his university pro-Hama rallies while he researches and writes the article.
I wonder: are you self aware enough to realize that you do nothing but evade honest answers to anything? It never ends with you, so what sane person would begin?
It takes sincerity to have an honest dialogue. Your sole purpose is to put up a foul smelling fog that makes rationality absolutely impossible.
When was the last time you admitted you were wrong? Have you EVER done so? I very much doubt it.
True, but it's pretty clear that adding noise to any discussion degrades the discussion, so pushing back on the noise helps, to some small extent.
And I have always noticed that even in exchanges that are utterly hopeless as far as convincing anyone of anything, I myself do still have good ideas that may not otherwise have occurred to me. It's useful friction, frequently.
Good points.. I always learn more when I articulate in a challenging situation, even if it seems to go nowhere, It helps me understand where I am really at.
Well I got tricked when I first subscribed and responded to a couple of his comments. I learned right quick he wasn't interested in actual dialogue, only in being right. Now I don't take the bait.
I'm aware. I just feel like he or she needs to be kept within the bounds he or she creates for itself. I would be happy to expand the dialogue, if dialogue were possible. Since it's not, I just like to make sure that the BS is kept to a low boil.
I wonder if you're ever going to answer the question I posed to you yesterday?
Why do you never answer questions, Communist Prof? That would be an honest dialogue.
What in his interview with Tucker do you disagree with? Surely you are not making the argument that even if that were him, that you would thereby be absolved from responding in any way to the substantive and extensive claims he made?
John Brennan is intimately involved in a company that manipulates public perceptions. So is Michael Hayden. They call it "fact checking", which is 2024-speak for censorship and disinformation.
You have "responded" to my queries with your usual gibberish and deception. Hardly "answers." But if that's what you need to console your fragile ego, fine.
It is the freedom that matters. The freedom has always been what matters. It is the only conversation. Hard times, good times. Rich man, poor man. Success or failure. On the bottom or on the top. Win or lose. Freedom of speech, thought, expression, action and movement within the lines of human moral reason as defined in our Republic's constitution is the "pearl of great price". Everything else is grift.
"We the people" need a new conversation backed by citizen action and responsibility not the convenient abdication of responsibility afforded by faux indignation, comment on the latest antics of moral cowards and the divisive fear driving psyop manipulation of American reality. I understand frustration at a dialogue focused on the symptomatology of our decline that avoids the disease creating it. Subscription journalism is OUR chance to create the solutions oriented truth/fact based national conversation America deserves. Subscription journalism is in its infancy. Citizen consideration of the actual potential of a trusted citizen powered journalism hasn't even scratched the surface of American consciousness. But the enemies of free peoples have considered it. And they're taking action. If they win bye bye freedom. Hello serfdom.
The FIGHT is over who will control the future. Will it be the free citizen or fascist criminal finance. Hence the war on free speech. The funding of cancel culture. The fear mongering psyop and the heavy investment in a national conversation that promotes hatred and division. And the trillion dollar canard meant to convince you that you've lost. Behind the lie? WHAT, WHY, WHEN, WHERE, WHO AND HOW!!
Bari Weiss and the crew at the Democratic Party Rehabilitation Project (aka The Free Press) have built their entire careers on casual disregard for conservatives as being "right-wing". Understanding conservatism would mean that they might consider the concept of "unintended consequences". But they don't consider unintended consequences because the one certainty they cannot surrender is that their intentions are superior to all others. And so, no consequence can be bad as long as the "intentions" were theirs...
What kills me is that 90% of the unintended consequences were predictable by us normies. It’s like progressives lack the ability to look at anything as potentially having negative impacts. Let children change their gender on a whim, what could go wrong with that?
While most conservatives worked, with nose to the grindstone, the progressive movement schemed and wrote. When I stopped and looked up, the damage was done..
No, a sane person realizes he has to look at both sides of an issue and objectively evaluate them. People on the left I know refuse to even hear there’s another side.
The great thing about Prager U videos is they are only five minutes. You are not committing a bloc of your life. Just a little bit of time you likely would have wasted fidgeting somewhere on the internet.
And the ease with which anyone can watch these videos makes them a good litmus test. Anyone capable of watching one or two, and saying I disagree, and this is why, is not really the problem. They may be frustrating, because you think the arguments are great, but if they listen and have something intelligent to say in response, they are not really the problem.
The problems are those who say I CAN'T WATCH A PRAGER U VIDEO BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL PROPAGANDA. I've had this precise argument used against me. My answer is simple: you could watch a video by Hitler or Mussolini, couldn't you? Hearing words you disagree with will not physically hurt you, and you may learn something.
But they deal only in fear, all day every day, and they fear Difference. They fear the Other, the one who doesn't share their childish assumptions. THESE people are the problem.
I have to chuckle when I read the request to forward The Free Press to someone who may like it. The people I know who should read it are the ones who will refuse to read it, claiming that old propaganda excuse. Ironic, that.
I agree with Ben- I definitely "lean right" & years ago started listening to more and more "sane lefties" who, like Bari, left their sweet gigs at the NYT, or Matt Taibbi who left Rolling Stone, Glen Greenwald- Intercept. They're are still Left but not afraid to call out SOME of the bullshit ob the Left. I'm good with disagreeing with many of their perspectives. My biggest issue is their inability to describe Joe Biden as a much bigger threat than Trump- simply by comparing both President's terms in Office, Biden has caused actual death, harm, economic disaster to the people of this Country and it is QUANTIFIABLE .
Someone at TFP should be able to keep their emotions out of it and do a side by side comparison that is legitimate.
They have been grossly dishonest about Biden since day one. They are desperate to view and portray him as a success.
I did, once, see Bari acknowledge for two sentences that Trump's Abraham Accords were a good thing. So I can't truthfully say that they NEVER say a good thing about Trump. But other than some jokes and giggling, I don't believe they have ever published a single word genuinely critical of Grampa Joe.
Well, Anthony, you picked a bad example with the Abraham Accords as a Trump success. It looked good on the surface - who could argue with reconciling Israel and Saudi Arabia? - but Kushner, in bed with his ultra orthodox mates, thought he could totally ignore the Palestinians. We now all know how that went, don’t we? For all its appalling fanaticism and atrocities, Hamas reminded kushner (and all of us) that, “we’re still here; we never went away; and don’t think you can bury us”.
As for Biden being a bigger threat than Trump, I’m speechless: who tried to overthrow the government?
If being crazy is lacking reason, and if supporting ideas that consistently fail to achieve their purported ends is lacking reason, then there are no sane lefties, in my view. There is a continuum from crazy to crazier. Madness has degrees. John Nash was a functional schizophrenic, but only because he knew that he was insane.
The game really isn't funny. Joe Biden is being used as an agent of destruction, and this is obvious and open. Only a fool would deny it. And yet many still want him to stay in the White House, because he would be a corpse with a D behind his name. That is crazy.
My intent with this post is simply to ask everyone involved to stop a SECOND and think more deeply about their reflexive assumptions. A D means nothing, if the person is not a good person. This should be obvious but it isn't.
I have said before the Dem/Soc could exhume Charlie Manson. Put him in a suit and roller skates on his feet and parade him around the country and the Dem/Soc would vote for him.
Isn't that what they are doing with the brain dead, the ever senile Joe?
Nothing is ever destroyed by fuller understanding, and all I am preaching is dialogue, knowledge, and reason. As MLK Jr. put it, I only seek to destroy my enemies by enlisting them as friends.
They are "sane" only in the sense of achieving a common ground with us on the sanctity of free expression. All similarities between their world view and one that actually works ends there.
A lifelong lover of earth sciences, Judith Curry has advocated for integrity and scientific truth since she was a child. Despite facing discrimination and bullying in a male-dominated field, Judith spoke out against the lies and manipulation of climate scientists attempting to enforce a political narrative. After being marginalized by the universities, Judith left academia. She now fights for truth and offers the following advice: Keep your mind open, do your research, and live your best life.
Your comment is well and good but for one thing: it pre-supposes that as part of Bari's job she should pick a side -- on this issue or that slate of issues -- and in the process seek to convince readers to follow suit.
I would submit that the great majority of us, including you (?), are here because Bari & Co specifically avoid advocacy journalism.
As long as she does her best to give me unvarnished facts that i can use to inform my own views, I don't care what Bari's politics are.
If she were poking only at conservatives, that would be one thing. Yet although I don't keep score, it feels like there are every bit as many barbs pointed at Ds as at Rs. If that's not the case, I'm sure other readers will let me know.
I am making suggestions as a paying customer. And one thing that has become obvious in recent years is the root social and political problem we have is not so much lies that are told by the left wing press--which is most of it--but the truths that are studiously, carefully, and very consistently ignored.
Donald Trump is not a racist. Joe Biden has advanced dementia and is not fit to run a hot dog stand. Yet both obvious truths are ignored even here.
Bari reminds me of my brother and many others I know who agree that he's unfit to run a hot dog stand, and knows he has done faaaar more harm than good for our country and our planet, but can't agree it was a mistake to vote for him, can't commit to not voting for him again, and certainly will never ever entertain the thought of voting for That Bad Fat Orange Man. I don't know how you can see Biden is a disaster in every sense of the word, can't defend anything he's done, but still can't vote against him. They just can't follow those breadcrumbs. But they probably think the same of me.
The crazy thing about that is that nearly everything they think they "know" about Trump is simply untrue, other than that he acts, as a leader, in ways that most Democrats delegate to their subordinates, which of course includes most of the press. Obama, to take an obvious example, rarely got down in the dirt, but he sure supported those who did. So of course does Biden. Biden, though, comically and unbelievably, does still notice phrases like "dog faced pony soldier" coming out of lips he no longer has full control over.
Yes I agree. I also have yet to hear which policies trump has that are so extreme and unlikeable. He’s foul mouthed and impolite, sure, but man was my life better back then. I’ll just keep watching my pragerU videos and hope for better days.
Could not agree more that the worst of the news media's innumerable failings is the sin of omission. If a fact or a whole story doesn't support their political advocacy, they don't include it. It's despicable, and one thing I give Bari & Co credit for is they don't omit relevant facts. (Or, if they do, I'm missing it.)
I realize you are making a slightly different point -- that a newer staffer may repeat that "Trump is a [your adjective here]" without challenging its veracity.
I probably haven't read the FP as thoroughly the past year as before then, owing to a change in schedule. But I also recall cases where Bari herself took down an inaccurate far-left narrative or two. One was her point-by-point rebuttal of virtually every MSM-reported "fact" about Kyle Rittenhouse. Another was a "no, he didn't actually suggest injecting bleach" line in another article.
They aren’t terrible about launching barbs equally at Dems and Republicans. Although I’m pretty sure it’s heavier on the Republicans if you were to keep score.
Where they completely lack objectivity is with Trump. Which is sad and kind of pathetic. It’s the lazy journalist’s way of virtue signaling to the left that they’re still good guys. So many stupid tropes repeated over and over again. Also general disdain is signaled to any of his supporters. Must you use the term MAGA as a pejorative?
I think the only reason conservatives are here is because TFP is the least crazy of the left. That’s a really, really low bar. If they don’t moderate more someone new will come along and eat their lunch.
True, however right now the trans cult activists are anti gays. There are many gays and lesbians who are vehemently against transing kids as all people should be regardless of part affiliation. The Free Press published the whistleblowers and the Finnish psychiatrist, but now TFP has gone silent on this scandal. The question is why?
The Christian Right clearly still exists, but in nothing like the form it did in the 1980's. By and large most Republicans are moderates on most of the social issues, now. Donald Trump is on his third marriage: his candidacy would not have been possible with another generations Republican Party.
We have been reduced to supporting ANYONE willing to speak obvious truths in the face of relentless, well organized and well funded lies. Trump is that man, now, today, and I am very sure as a lifelong New Yorker he is very socially liberal himself. He has already ruled out a VP who draws a hard line on abortion.
The idea that politicians lie is probably at least as old as the Greeks--who indeed gave us the word "politics".
What I like to believe, in my ruminations where I feel the world was once better in at least some ways, is that politicians did not used to be able to get away with such obvious and flagant lies. Today, in 2024, you can say one thing one day and the exact opposite the next, and with no overt coercion, no threat of force, people CHOOSE to go along with it, simply to support their "side" in a conflict whose nature and principles they really cannot articulate in any way, other than as pure tribalism.
I agree completely, but I can understand why it's difficult for historically liberal people to accept that the Democrats no longer represent the values they once stood for and that the constant anti-Trump propaganda is largely false.
For the average liberal, I certainly agree. But the liberals on this site are reporting on a constant stream of bad things their party is actively doing, let alone has done for years. If anyone should be at least more on the fence it should be these folks.
At this point, I don't understand what exactly they DO support in their party. They almost never talk about any actual good accomplishments.
Fair. I won't disagree. But doing what little I can to try and change that is very much useful work, in my view. That was what motivated my initial post. I'm not trying to hate on anyone, even though I will confess to being frustrated. All of us see less than what we could see, and none of us can really say for sure what we would see if we were omniscient, because we aren't!!! Still, better is a reasonable daily goal for all of us. The task is not to protect a position, but rather to foster the habit of seeking truth, wherever it can be found.
There are some Republicans who would think that creating a baby in a test tube (while millions are being aborted) to live with two women (which means the child will never have a father in her life which is proven to contribute to human flourishing) should not exist. But how many Republicans would say that Bari and Nellie shouldn't exist because they are Jews? If I were a Democrat and a Jew, I think I would prefer the Republicans who disapprove of my marriage, but aren't trying to wipe out my race.
I’ve been following and recommending the great Dennis Prager for many years, so of course Prager U; and I’ll recommend two other podcasts: “Dennis and Julie,” and “Timeless” by Julie Hartman, his brilliant protege.
I’ve watched many of Prager U videos and follow them on X. They are very informative and have helped me understand their position and also clarify my position.
I also recommend the "Stories of Us" series of videos on Prager's site. Mostly people who have personal experience with the insane left telling their stories. Some are stories of immigrants about why they became Americans. I really think it would be smart for Republicans to just book all of those people for prime-time presentations at their national convention. Real people exposing what people are voting for if they vote for Joe Biden.
No, I think we are best ignorant dupes to them, and to the recently indoctrinated we are out and out evil racists and all the other -ists' they feel the need to add in order to properly express their hate and rage.
For them Prager U is like that good parent that warns their child about the consequences of doing something questionable. The child just doesn’t want to hear it.
I want to eat all my Halloween candy tonight! (Stomps feet)
Finally. My initially high hopes from the beginning, from the times of Common Sense, have been dashed by the never-ending sarcasm and self-promotion at The Free Press. At one point, Bari actually said there were no two sides to the Hamas-Israel conflict. She said there was only one side. From a journalist? The Free Press has devolved to the level of sardonic potshots. I'm disappointed.
I’m not sure what the two sides to the Hamas Israeli conflict are. The whole situation is very complicated with many layers but are you suggesting that Hamas might somehow have been justified or that Israel has an alternative to destroying Hamas?
I think the Free Press should be free of naked partisanship. Is it your contention that not being an open advocate for patently absurd Democrat ideas makes a publication Republican?
Because I am not here to gain anything, and have no reason not to be honest other than that it could be (and probably will be) used against me, I will confess my two go-to websites are the Gateway Pundit and Infowars. I go other places, including of course the Free Press, Yahoo, and elsewhere, but my reasoning for those two is that they will reliably cover the stuff I won't see anywhere else.
I won't claim they are even remotely non-partisan. But from my own perspective, what I believe has happened is that the window of mainstream discourse has been shifted so far to the Left that anything to the right of insane is now "right wing". If you say we should have a border, or Israel has the right to defend itself (or that Oct. 7th actually DID involve the atrocities claimed) or that boys can't become girls, you are right wing now, aren't you?
What sort of batshit insanity is this? Personally, I gravitate to the people give zero F's, and those two sites fit the bill.
I of course don't expect that sort of coverage here, but as one example I would like to see an honest legal analysis of the cases against Trump. The cases are all absurd. The current one involves violations of campaign finance law, as I understand it. The prosecutor is claiming, without evidence--and actually in the face of the evidence and testimony he does have--that Trump used campaign funds to pay off Stormy Daniels and lied about it. Even if he did, this is a very mild offense. What this prosecutor has done is list every single payment as a separate felony. The whole things boggles the mind of anyone who understands the first thing about the facts in question and the legal process generally. That is the sort of thing they can and should bring out more of, not articles describing how honest the jurors look, in a trial that should not be happening at all.
They are the same ones people who, just last year, were agitating about “safe spaces,” “micro-aggressions,” and “intolerance.” Now they shout about murdering Jews and “Death to America,” and they defend Hamas’ rapes, mutilations, and slaughter on October 7.
Do you think the Columbia University "administrators" (to use the term charitably) would have been this supportive of students' "First Amendment rights" (to use the term mostly incorrectly) if the protesters took over the campus to protest compulsory pronouns?
Or, just to stay closer to target, how supportive would they be to protests about Islamist views on the rights of women or homosexuals? Wouldn't that be prohibited as "Islamophobic"?
And why are these protestors not being treated like the Charlottesville racists? Why no outrage from the Democrats and their culture allies? Where are the hordes of furious counter:protests from the "anti-racists"?
Because, like most of the whining from the Dems, they never actually cared about the Charlottesville racists. They were just something convenient to point at to make their opponents look bad.
Nazis learned every and all particulars by studying the American democrat party from Thomas Jefferson to fdr.
Slavery, Jim Crow, kkk terrorists, gerrymandering, Tammany hall, endless warfare, lawfare, and taxfare , stealing elections, secret police, everything they ever did they learned from democrats.
1. Not everyone who was a National Socialists thought t would lead to The Ovens. Once it did...To Late.
2. The Ideology that lead the National Socialists to build the gas chambers/ovens/work people to death did not Just Happen. Darwin leads to Eugenic, which leas to The Camps. They didn't think it up, they just took it logical conclusion and did so as efficiently as they could. BTW with the exception of no gas chambers/ovens The Soviets starting with Lenin (He wrote there manual Stalin just followed it) did The Very Same Thing.
We found out the "stabbed in the eye" girl is the same one who made up the "Israeli couscous" BS at the dining hall.
We found out the person yelling "Kill the Jews" was actually a pro-Zionist who was in the middle of a sit-in trying to get a chant going.
Wasn't struck. Wasn't spit on, etc. But I do have videos of Zionists attacking and spitting on people on various campuses.
LOL! Gotta come with something better than that, dude. Especially since someone drove a car into a crowd in Charlottesville and killed/injured people as well as 5 dudes attacking a man with a 2×4 in a parking garage, etc. Which you have no problem with.
The Free Press Debate was disappointing for more than one reason. Cenk Uyghur is an ill informed bully who spews falsehoods on many topics and has no credibility for many people. Listening to him is a waste of time..
The vast majority of Americans want the borders closed to illegal migration and have been very vocal about the travesty at the borders. The Biden Administration is violating the existing laws. There really was no need for a debate in this topic. Only the far left want this flood of illegal migrants for votes. They are posting Spanish language leaflets in the migrant camps telling these ppl to vote for Biden! Mayorkas was grilled on this in Congressional hearings.He exemplifies all that is horrific about this Administration
I felt no need to listen to the debate. There is no debate possible, in my considered view. They are literally asking the question: should Federal Law be enforced, or not? The answer is yes. That is why the law was made a law by Congress.
Yeah I liked her at first, roughly agree with her positions, but then she starts talking and I just can't.
And anything including Cenk is a non-starter, although I love that they got him in the room with the people he hates so much, so you can see how these cowards diminish enormously when actually challenged.
If the vast majority of Americans want our borders enforced then why are we tolerating in the Office of the President a vicious lunatic who has actively subverted our immigration laws? A nation of sane and sober patriots would remove him and his cabal immediately. I am disgusted with my fellow citizens at this point.
The question is how?? The citizens no longer have free and fair elections. The Dem machine cheats in multiple ways. How to oust the machine from power?
By convincing our fellow citizens that this is untenable. Look at the drivel Bari's colleagues post. No sense of outrage at our open borders. No deep understanding that this is both racist and untenable for any serious nation. We need an engaged and enraged citizenry. Now we have mostly sheep.
I’ve never voted for Trump, I’ve posted many times that neither of the two candidates are people I can vote for.
Suppressing the Hunter Biden Laptop at a critical point in the election was a cheat.
The lawfare against Trump is cheating.
Mail in ballots for all is cheating pushing for no voter ID is cheating .
Blocking RFK jr , a lifelong Democrat from getting on the ballot is cheating.
I have no opinions or comments about what did or did not take place on Election Day itself, I really have no idea. Enough of the above went on that more than half the country doesn’t trust election outcomes anymore. That is tragic and it does not bode well for the country
Whenever you ask that kind of question, remember that most people do not vote like robots who were fed data and made a logical conclusion. They may fully buy into protecting the border, but also be falling for fake or slanted info that still pushed them to believe that dems will make it better. Also, many voters have fallen for the trap of having certain issues be something they cannot vote for/against. For example, a gay democrat may totally agree that Biden is horrible for the border. But that voter may also believe that Republicans want them burned at the stake for their sexuality. That latter one trumps the former. Doesn't matter that it isn't true. Just they they believe it is (usually helped by the Dems control over much of the media).
Voters have LONG been tricked into sticking to parties and voting for and against things that don't actually align with what they want or believe. This is the real issue...that so much of politics these days is theater.
These lefties know full well that closing the border is not the same as no immigration.
They want illegal immigration( until the migrants show up in busses and planes from the border) to keep themselves in power.
This past week, Adam Schaffer, a mayor in California and another Dem politician were victims of serious crimes( auto theft, a second house break in). Their policies are destroying the country
Ship every one of them to the "Islamic Republic of Whatthefuckistan" and enjoy the popcorn as the stones fly. If this is what the Ivy League is now producing, keep your kid as far away from these lunatic asylums as possible
"Classics professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta led over a dozen students in a takeover of Clio Hall."
Ah, yes, that guy -- the guy who wants to "save classics from whiteness," according to an article some years ago in The New York Times.
He received every benefit from "white" society: scholarships here and there including, early on, to the Collegiate School, backing from white politicians.
I cannot access the Times article any more, but I seem to remember that he reads ancient writers mostly in translation. Spouse, on the other hand, with only an MA in classics, spends when possible an hour every day reading Greek and Latin (and Hebrew) just to keep in practice.
Dan-el Padilla Peralta needs to get over it: The Greeks and Romans were white. White people created the Western civilization which has given him both his livelihood -- and the freedom to try to destroy it. I wasn't impressed with him when I read the Times article years ago and thought only, Poor Princeton -- another classics department down the tubes.
Blinken is a tool and his rhetoric and double talk is appalling. Hamas has turned down countless “ very generous offers” from Israel. Hamas is stalling . Hamas just wants to survive to continue terrorizing Gazans, and Israelis in their quest for continued power and billions in foreign money that they steal on their march towards a vision of a global Caliphate. Anyone who has watched as our campuses have been flooded with public Muslim prayers and shouts of Allah uAkhbar knows they mean what they say.
There are over 130 hostages ( 8 are American cilitzens) still being raped and tortured in the tunnels. We need them back ( dead or alive).
Please watch the Daniel Pearl Memorial lecture this past week at Stanford. Tossing Klein Halevi in conversation offers deep and unique insights into the conflict, and the regional wars
Exactly! By making these misleading statements Blinken tries to give the impression that Hamas is a group that should and can be negotiated with. The only language they understand is force. Hamas has mastered the art of propaganda and double talk.Bliken and the Rest of this scary Administration is giving them credence. The US could have pressured Qatar on 10-8 to oust the Billionaire Hamas mouthpieces from their luxurious hotels and release the hostages. Instead it has been nonstop pressure on Israel to allow Hama# to survive. Enough
Jen, everyone should read this article. Of all the tragedies of Palestine for the last 100 years, the biggest and saddest was Arafat turning down Clinton and Ehud Barak’s Taba Accords peace offer in 2000, or early 2001. He said it was because the deal didn’t include a right of return but more likely it was that he was afraid of being overthrown or even murdered if he made peace, as Islamist and Jewish fanatics did to their own president and prime minister. But just imagine if he’d done it! Today, an independent and prosperous Palestine would occupy the West Bank and Gaza in peace alongside a secure Israel. Sigh…
Peace is not the intention. A successful society is not the intention. It's hard to have empathy for poverty and economic ruin when the majority of Palestinians "vote" for and support the ideology of death to Isreal and America. When the endless stream of aid does nothing but fund that ideology, nothing will change.
Great to see TFP linking to more substacks. We are the media now, ignore the predictable propaganda from MSM. Pathetic to see Howard Stern fall from rebel to bootlicker.
We'll see. Might just be Oliver being off his meds. Tomorrow he might treat us to more links to Maureen Dowd and Vox. I'm actually surprised he hasn't linked to The View yet.
“For his interview with the real Joe Biden, Stern forgoes his usual attire for an ill-fitting suit, and proceeds to slobber all over the forty-sixth president. “You’re the kind of leader I love because we’re lucky to have you in the Oval Office,” Stern, in the hardball section of his interview, said.”
It feels like I’m in some bizarre fever dream. Is any of this really happening?
Yeah, that was weird to read. I had seen some things showing Stern had fallen, but this is so blatantly boot licking that I could almost see it as some kind of performative satire. The fact that it isn't is almost chilling...when someone known for being a rule breaker so readily falls in line and slavers over Great Leader, something has gone wrong.
Right out of the gate, a comment on Oliver’s opening statement that Columbia “tried - and failed” - to close its encampment. Yoda had the perfect rejoinder: “Do. Or do not. There is no try.” A video shows the cops at Indiana University clearing out the “protesters” and their camp in a no-nonsense manner. If Columbia had truly tried to clear its campus, the Jew haters there would be gone. But they aren’t. The will to “do” is lacking. Appeasement never works.
Columbia could have given a meaningful ultimatum: all students who refused to leave by the designated time would be expelled; all professors who refused to leave would be fired (from what I understand, even tenure cannot protect a professor from being fired for criminal behavior).
I read on X that the word circulating among the protesting students was that Columbia didn't actually intend to do anything to them: the warnings were meant only to appease the public. I have yet to see any evidence that this is not the case.
The academic ‘leaders’ are paralyzed by the collision of the lunatic ideologies that they’ve allowed/encouraged on their campuses (that is the correct plural form of the word) and the reality of the absolute mess that it has now led to. F them.
I heard from a Chicago friend who reads a CPD website that 1,000 Chicago cops will retire or take desk jobs before the DNC convention there. Going to be a replay of 1968.
First, that's kinda mean. But also, Republicans aren't much better, consideirong how many of them voted for Ukraine funding. The uniparty is not your friend.
My fear about the Nov. election is that too many people on BOTH sides believe that the election is rigged by the other side in some fundamental way. Mail-in ballots fraud, voting machines that can be rigged, etc. Perception is everything here. I worry that no matter who wins, he will not be able to govern the country.
Why do you say BOTH sides? I’m an Independent and it appears to me that it’s the Dems who have done the election cheating( suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story is a non Election Day example, so is ignoring RFK jr and changing the rules to prevent him from getting on the ballot)
I think Louisa's point was that the perception in the media and among people (especially a lot of the rich donor class) is that if Trump wins, it will be illegitimate. And the DNC has lawyers in every state (Rolling Stone ran a pice on it very proudly talking about how they were "fortifying" by changing election laws and having attorneys on standby). So even a very clear win by Trump will be contested.
It will be contested either way, but even with your facts it is the Democratic Party doing the cheating and manipulating.
I never voted for Trump , but these banana republic tactics by the Dems are destroying the country. The fact that Trump( a past President of the USA , wealthy) is unable to stop these ridiculous court cases , enormous dollar amount fines, etc shoes just how much powe4 the Dem machine has. I don’t really understand how this is happening. So many ppl who are not Trump supporters are horrified( Alan Dershowitz, Alex Berensen to name two) and talk and write about it endlessly ….and yet it is still going on. Wha5 would happen if he and the Republicans just say no more, this is not legitimate etc?..
Why does Trum0 have to pu5 up with this and they get to flaunt the laws and the Constitution?
Agree. But if the Dems lose they will claim the vote was bad—in some way. They have already set the table for that reaction. I left the Dems a few years back. Disgusted totally. Independent now.
Considering that the President isn't supposed to govern the country, I don't care so much. We focus on that position, when it is Congress and the House that we should be looking at...and of course local and state
I wonder if the Democrats will go so far as to simply cancel their convention? They've already subverted any sort of voter-driven process for choosing their nominee, so it isn't as if the convention is necessary for any reason except tradition.
The reality is that the convention will be a HUGE bad-optics event for them, no matter what they do. The anti-Israel Leftists have vowed to disrupt it violently. But the Democrats cannot use any sort of law enforcement tactics without looking "pro-police." It's a no-win situation.
How's this: They cancel and/or move it because Biden stepped down at the last minute so we can get the real candidate in there with no real time for the public to vet them
Oh, I fully expect them to sub in someone else--probably Newsom--at the last possible moment. Canceling the convention gives them a lot more time before the election to do that. Even an October surprise.
I'd be more likely to agree that it would be Newsome. I think Michelle would have a similar effect that Hillary had, where more people turned up to vote against her. But that could absolutely be my own bias.
It will all depend. I am fairly convinced that if actual cops show up to stop them with force, they will crumble. Most of these modern protestors see protests as a day outing. not something that could get them put in jail or killed.
And the front page of the Telegraph made me laugh -- the top headline -- Biological Sex is a Fact, Declares the NHS. (Is this the new dog bite man? Bears, woods? Any other simple fact?) The story is about the NHS changing its constitution to put biological sex at the forefront, and ensure things like single sex wards and the right to have single sex intimate care for privacy and dignity reasons. It also should do away with gender neural terms like 'chestfeeding', body feeding' or people with ovaries. This is the actual press release from the government: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nhs-constitution-plans-to-strengthen-privacy-dignity-and-safety
The Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer attempted to apologise to Rosie Duffield saying that they often have discussion and that she was right to say 'only women have cervixes' on Good Morning Britain this morning. People who have specific knowledge of the situation in Labour have pointed out that Starmer has not spoken to Duffield in two years. https://twitter.com/polblonde/status/1785223479723266478
Ben Ryan on X has been a fearless science reporter took on GLAAD ( a gay and lesbian trans activist organization that has been bullying and silencing anyone who dares question the transing of minors industry) for falsely claiming that the GAC model is “ settled science”.
We need to demand that the US government( Congress, RLevine, Beccera) and the medical associations( WPATH, psychiatry, endocrinology, pediatrics surgeons) answer for their duplicity.Thus far they are ignoring the growing mountains of evidence that they lied to sacrifice troubled kids for their trans cult ideology.
The US government did answer. Haven't you heard? The Biden administration issued new rules re Title IX last week.
But we won't fault you if you aren't aware, since Oliver Wiseman decided to omit any mention or report on the most significant part of the changes but instead humble gloat about the dismantling of due process Betsy DeVos put in place instead.
The Free Press should do an article on the newly “ trained” surgeons ( multiple disciplines) who now need young people to sterilize and operate on. I have not seen anything dealing with this angle of this scandal. Interviewing some of these young surgeons( pediatric gynecology, peds urology, reconstructive surgery etc) would be eye opening.
It is an epic medical scandal. If they had mountains of evidence that this was 'settled science' why was Cass unable to uncover it? When the review was announced, the last thing the NHS England wanted to do was to shut down GIDS at the Tavistock. Far easier to keep these things going but the evidence wasn't there and Cass had enough integrity to say -- the sector must adhere to the norms of medical science, the safeguards including robust benefit/harm analysis, hard evidence must be adhered to.
What is also concerning is that two senior people in the NHS (see the above reports in the Guardian and the Telegraph) appear to be saying that trans and nonbinary people have the worst health outcomes without offering any evidence. It is why the review of the Adult clinics must go ahead with all speed. Is the evidence there? What are these health outcomes and can they be prevented? I am sure you saw the latest research on pelvic floor dysfunction and trans and how many do suffer from problems (94.1% of transgender men aka trans identified females suffer) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00192-024-05779-3
There are already misinfo spreading out there that the Cass report is a politically motivated report, that it intentionally ignored some research findings. A lot of people still want to be willfully blind and will see only what they want to see.
As Cass said, she had expected the abuse but not the misinformation.
The UK government and indeed Labour who will most likely be the next UK government have accepted the findings from the Cass Report in full.
The SNP have deferred the clinicians at Sandyford who went further than Cass (blocking cross sex hormones for the under 18). This is what caused the break with the Greens as Patrick Harvie refused to accept that clinicians could actually and understand the significance of Cass.
Apparently the Welsh government are discussing the results this week.
The problem is that the education department has yet to publish its guidance in wake of Cass. I do hope that they will take on board Prof Louis Appleby's intervention in mid March that there is no link between suicide prevention and gender affirming care. Appleby is the UK lead on suicide prevention. Too many schools are still teaching that gender affirmation is the way to go. The tide may be be turning but a lot of work remains to be done.
Meanwhile in the US, 5 middle school female students are now banned from competing in shot put after stepping out of the ring to forfeit in silent protest against having to compete against a boy calling himself trans. (He won, of course, being allowed to cheat).
Good for the 5 middle school females who took a stand for fairness in sport. They showed a great deal of moral courage (something which Bari Weiss has often commented that she approves of)
That is typical in today's schools. It quickly became apparent that the No Tolerance for bullying policies meant that it was only the victims who finally fought back who got in trouble, not the bullies.
I can only imagine they are. A kid at that age doesn't come up with that kind of backbone on their own very often. It usually comes from the home. So I too hope those parents are supportive and PROUD.
I applaud the 5 females for refusing to compete with a male. However it is gross injustice for the females to forfeit competitions after all the training they put into their sport. Asking all females to stop competing until this travesty is overturned is not realistic and in a perverse way hands a win to the trans cult. It functionally ends female athletics for an unknown amount of time.
Like anyone that has to stand up for change, the people doing so often are not doing so for themselves...that is why it is a sacrifice. They are sacrificing so the next group of girls doesn't have to. Yes it sucks and is not fair, but sometimes it is what must be done.
To keep competing is to be an enabler. You are just helping feed the egos of those boys and the virtual signaling folkx that support them.
No these girls shouldn't have to do this...but doing so is one of the best ways to help make it stop. And I would argue that doing so...standing up will be far more formative than simply continuing to play the sport.
Great point. This should be articulated to parents of female athletes across the country , and for athletes of all ages. The fact that in spite of the outcry from female athletes, the NCAA lawsuit , Congressional hearings the tone deaf White House, in an aggressive in your face move, rolled back Title IX. No deiscussions , debate or hearings on this most contentious issue. The far left is in control and must be beaten
Another great idea, especially for elementary and middle school girls.
I’ve not seen or heard that suggested.
It is so frustrating that the majority of sane people from all sides, see it this way ( that fairness to females trumps” inclusivity of males who call themselves female and cheat) There are supposedly so few of these ppl and yet they are wreaking havoc. It’s always a male claiming to be female and not the other way around. This defies the statistics that the majority of these new GD kids are girls. That’s how I know it’s cheating( sports) and misogyny( women’s prisons and other female only spaces )
I am now certain that it is counterproductive to discuss testoerone levels, bone and muscle mass/with the trans activists. Keep it simple . No males in female sports an. Sex is binary.
They love discuss some obscure case where some trans person was puberty blocked early enough …blah blah. It’s a mistake to allow that discussion because it is irrelevant to the overarching importance of fairness to females. Period . We can’t allow them to dictate and control the dialogue anymore. They activists have bullied and lied enough
Thank you Michelle as always for your updates. Hopefully the turning tide will become a tsunami and we'll start to see some reason and common sense here in the U.S..
We here in the US must figure out how to force the government to admit the lies and reverse course . Thus far silence from the administration and Congress( except for Dan Crenshaw grilling Sec of HHS Beccera in a hearing. Beccera is a snake who repeated “ we really on the WPATH and other medical associations” for our guidelines.
The science is clear that GAC model is not the least bit evidence based as the trans activists claimed.
The Cass report is comprehensive and the facts are the same on every continent .
Should we shut our borders? What does "our" even mean, anymore? We need to answer that. Or when we needed to answer that, we didn't. Who are we and what are we? A piece of real estate with no allegiances or prevailing principles? A landing pad for gangs? The land of commit the crime don't do the time? The uprooting and chaos on campus has brought graphic proof of change: student groups, fleets of professors, it's not apparent this is a Western country. The student groups/activists hate us, our form of government, capitalism. They are anti- semitic and anti- white. They are chock-full of failed state, hate+envy- based ideologies. The agitators come from oppressive failed states and become revolutionaries in the free ones. When married to radical and racial theories, the overwhelming influx of non-Westerners is suicidal. A country is a country based on the social contract and social cohesion. How's that working for us?
Shafik's (Columbia) and Maher's (NPR) resumes are global. The U. S. is being not so stealthily refitted, from culture to finance, to serve global interests, while losing its own identity - a key goal-- in the sea of identity politics. Everyone's identity but our own. The great leveling. Western society is the host species because we've - our society-- got the goods.
They wouldn't dare try this in China. They'd have their heads handed to them literally, as they would of course in Gaza! Plus China will take over. It's not going to tolerate this global crap. The West is the soft target.
There is no our, there is no we. We have nothing in common, having become a nation of atomized individuals scrambling to either grab an ever greater piece of the pie or to just maintain a tenuous grip on middle class life while dangling precariously above the yawning pit of poverty.
The article on wealth inequality today really summed up the core problem in the West, and in reading the comments for that, it’s obvious that few see any problem with 10% of the population owning 75% of the pie and the bottom 50% owning 2% of the pie. Most of the commenters see no problem with that, and there is no shared sense of common community as a nation of people.
I feel like a chump for being patriotic all these years and honestly caring about the welfare of my fellow countrymen. Clearly my loyalty was never reciprocated and it was a huge mistake not to have endeavored to just focus on getting rich by any means possible. There is a stench of moral rot in the air.
The "yawning pit of poverty" has ever been with mankind.
In the West, though, we had a few halcyon decades when manufacturing was booming and gave those without a college education plenty of work, unions were strong but not suicidally covetous, and the welfare state had not yet made it easy to have babies brought up to have babies and not much more. The global economy was the death knell for those good manufacturing jobs, and no one wanted to think that lots of people have neither the brain power nor the inclination to do jobs in, say, the sciences and engineering, that require the kind of knowledge you get from lots of years of study.
In New York City at least, those on welfare and other subsidies earn a tidy middle-class living, far more than the hardworking immigrants who keep our city functioning. They're actually not poor.
Of course, the city relies on its remaining wealthy residents whose high taxes keep our sadly diminished coffers from disappearing altogether. That's what happens when a municipality attempts to alleviate the poverty you so abhor but places no responsibility on the poor to limit the number of children they have or on the federal government to control the hordes pouring across our southern border and sucking up money the city no longer has.
We can thank Democrats for their deep forgiveness of aberrant behavior of all sorts. Entire neighborhoods here are boarded up because rampant shoplifting and robberies have driven businesses away. Jobs are lost, shopping is lost, luncheonettes are closed, revenue has plummeted.
So now we're back to square one, the rich and the poor -- and the very uncomfortable middle classes who keep their heads down, keep working, and wonder where they can flee.
Something went haywire. At mid- century the earnings differential between the head of a company and a middle manager was much smaller than it is today. There were maybe different values, anti-conspicuous consumption and work ethics, it was a different country. Businesses actually made things. There were plenty of small stores. And fewer people. Today we've these huge behemoths -- name the industry --a
big blobs that suck up all the oxygen and by the way control our information. I agree with you, Art, there is something obscene about Bezos preening around ,I was about to say something unkind, with too much money for a million people let alone one.I think a country has iterations. Today the gap is stratospheric. The middle class has lost ground since the seventies. We watched five or six episodes of a 50s sitcom called "Father Knows Best" on YouTube. It's fascinating. From a monetary or greed perspective, wow, have things have changed. The father, Robert Young, came home every night, paused by the coat closet, took off his suit jacket, and donned a worn, corduroy sport jacket to relax in. Bud, the son, wore the same shirt in every show, the type of cheap, striped T-shirt Susie wore in Mrs. Maisel. The younger sister wore only two costumes. In one episode, when the older daughter wanted a new dress for the prom, that meant serious discussions about cost. Finally, they broke down and got the dress. The family lived in a nice house -- the dad was an insurance broker, so that must have been fairly representative of the way things were. The production was so frugal the mother/actress cooked real food --and they ate it! The shows inculcated lessons on honesty, loyalty, kindness to friendless kids.
Sociologically it is astonishing how far women have come. But that's another subject.
I used to work in on-campus recruiting for new grads and summer interns for the business world. While there are always exceptions, in-general, the ivy league students were overconfident snobs that thought general clerical work was beneath them. The academic overachievers from public universities with 4.0 gpa's were book smart, but had trouble functioning at work. They were anxious and afraid to make a phone call.
The best interns and new hires were students with a 3.0 (ish) gpa from public universities that actually had to work while in college. Students with the best test scores and GPA's often aren't the best employees, hire the average student with a good work ethic and ambition.
'Stanford University in 2017 admitted Ziad Ahmed, who in response to the application prompt “What matters to you, and why?” wrote “#BlackLivesMatter” 100 times. “Everyone who reviewed your application was inspired by your passion, determination, accomplishments and heart,” the university’s acceptance letter read. “You are, quite simply, a fantastic match with Stanford.” Mr. Ahmed decided Yale was a better match for him.'
So that was his essay, hey?
Wasn't there anyone on the admissions committee who, frightened to do so in public, fled to the rest room to choke on his laughter?
"PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE" without the candidates since that's obviously not gonna happen. Instead, get 2 strong Conservatives and 2 strong Liberals to represent Trump and Biden- who are able to list both the accomplishments and the horrific disasters of each President's Terms in Office? Do you know how many people would LOVE to see that?
And if TFP does it, they should first ask their readers for their suggestions on WHO should debate. Thoughts?
I wrote one of my my senators, who voted yes on the latest aid bill and asked for an explanation why, and an accounting of how the money was spent. I pointed out the obvious fact that we were printing money to do this. I was told my state got funds earmarked to a weapon contractors worth 300 million this year which would help the people who worked there.
Pretty much shows how this works. Vote yes, get money in return and likely get campaign donations.
Sad we are a war economy now and therefore always need a convenient was to prevent overstock issues…
I filled the response with another letter asking where the other 57.5 billion went and pointing out that the deficit spending fueled inflation costing the states citizens over 500 million in the same year.
I asked why not demand a cut elsewhere of 60 billion such as solar or wind subsidies?
I suspect though, that it’s an indirect source of campaign funds for another senator or two.
The stupidity and irresponsibility of our elected representatives needs to stop!
Email your reps and ask them how the ponzu scheme will end?
People still do not understand that the COVID lockdowns basically cost us a flat 20% permanent tax on everything.
They can't tax the people any more than they already do, so the next step is using far more sophisticated tools to strip the real wealth from the people, though asset and currency manipulation.
No, Democrats won't raise your taxes. They will raise inflation instead, and their rich won't feel it one bit.
The Democrats will also blame Republicans for tax cuts! That’s supposedly why we have the deficit we have! They will literally go back to Regan and blame him. Well here’s a question how did Clinton balance the budget?
It was never Clinton's intent to balance the budget.
Clinton had the good fortune of serving during the tech explosion, massive private spending to prepare for Y2k, strong economy which resulted in enormous tax revenue, and most importantly, reduced military spending because of the peace dividend.
The stars were all aligned for Clinton, resulting in a budget surplus
Good info and my comment spoke more to the fact that if Regan policies and tax cuts were so bad for the country then how did we end up with a balanced budget in the next administration!
Tax cuts are never detrimental. We are better at spending our own money than the government, which has never produced anything but overhead, much of it unnecessary, like the Depts. of Energy & Education.
Liberals do not understand what you tax you get less of.
Charles, I wrote, repeatedly. My Republican representative responded with MSM propaganda the first time. The second response basically explained that I could not possibly understand the complicated reasons for his support of this bill. I have not received a response to my last letter.
I determined this morning to challenge everyone who works at the Free Press to watch 2 Prager U videos this week. On anything. Absolutely anything. Here is the link: https://www.prageru.com/series/5-minute-videos
I think many of us were attracted by the semi-family vibe of a small, shall we say boutique, publication with a public and largely sincere commitment to truth telling.
And I will grant all of you the virtue of being less crazy than the crazies. But I think all of you do not REALLY understand what conservatives think, and why we think it. Not really. You seem to be still viewing all of us through a lens of distaste that was introduced at some point when you were in Kindergarten. It's emotional. It is a feeling tone. And you have it, and have never gotten over it.
But the proposition needs to be seriously considered by all genuinely well intentioned and sincere people that our ideas actually ARE better than those proposed even by traditional Democrats. We had good arguments in the 1960's, too, that were ignored then, too, by what became Big Government.
It's time to rethink everything. The only two possible directions for the seemingly inevitable coming social changes are complete decay and destruction, and a revolution of thought in the direction of actually useful economic and social policies.
The point of Prager U is not necessarily to convince people of a specific position, although that of course is one goal. To my mind, the MAIN value of those videos is that they show normal human beings, articulating reasonable ideas, and who plainly know what they are talking about. They humanize conservatives, for people who have been taught to view us as Untermenschen. That is an inherently valuable activity.
Give it a shot. All you have to lose are ten minutes and some bad or incomplete ideas.
Hey Bari - how about you make "Unsaint Finbar" a regular columnist? He's a whole lot smarter and more measured than most of the cranks you inflict on us. If you're just going to be a copycat of the NY Times -except without the censorship and lies - then how about offering content from both sides? Because Finbar is about as "down the middle" as possible - except he only sounds conservative because he isn't bat shit crazy like Wiseman.
Do you think Bari pays attention to what you guys are saying? Im honestly curious because the comments are superior to the articles
I agree. The comments are better than the content.
I've been commenting since the first days of Common Sense, and back then they spoke to the community directly.
Nellie regularly says, "see you in the comments" etc, and sometimes on announcement articles we will see pins and likes.
I even get the feeling that some articles include subject matter that appears directly relevant to what commentors were previously writing.
All that to say, yes I think at least some of the staff read at least some of the comments. But they were looking for moderate and civil conversations, and they're not pleased that it's usually angry conservatives being angry.
The tone is grtting angrier and for good reasons as the world goes crazy
i remember "the old days" when nellie used to LIKE certain comments after she wrote something.
Too much to read now.
for nellie? perhaps. if i'm being charitable, i will add she has a toddler, so i'm sure that has a lot to do with it, too.
It's an election year, it's no doubt going to get worse.
I was wondering what this campaign season's "May Surprise" would be. They started the BLM push with Ahmed Arbery in April but it didn't get going until Floyd. This year's theme is Gaza and they're ramping up, but don't have the broader backing this time.
Nellie looks for her name and ‘likes’ the comments where she is praised.
I think someone took notice of the comments regarding Wiseman’s TDS, because such remarks have been noticeably reduced (although he remains worth skipping).
My subscription expires in November. I doubt I will peruse many of the articles till then, especially after today’s installment, but I will continue to learn from the comments.
I subscribed for the comments. Many of the articles I just scan, although some are quite good. The majority of them, well I get more from the comments.
Anthony, too true! And Bari et al deserve huge praise for NOT culling the extreme comments, mostly (I have to say) from the cultist MAGA crowd spouting their Fox News talking points (“Biden crime family; Biden is an imbecile; senile; a fool; we are are going broke so we can’t afford to help Ukraine - but can afford to help Israel; Ukraine anyway is a corrupt place; Putin is a stand-up guy - this one not so much anymore; ALL the Trump charges are fabrications by zealous Democrats”). It’s SO boring! Why? Because reasoned arguments CAN be persuasive, but this is just ranting (or wanking).
Anybody writing words like "cultist MAGA" and "Fox News" is pretty much the kind of worthless extremism I'm talking about.
I mean Obama's famous quote from years ago was, "never underestimate Joe Biden's ability to fuck things up," and you want to tell me that Obama's words are now "Fox News talking points". I don't take that seriously. You're regurgitating extremist, programmed propaganda like "MAGA cult" while praising yourself for not being like "those people."
You are, Will. You are those people.
I do think they read the comments. Not always but often. As a "science experiment" let's see if they respond to this.
Hey, maybe the commenters can take over the content of The Free Press, like the Left has taken over every worthwhile institution in America. All we have to do is review the Left's tactics. Anybody know them?
Alinsky's rules?
Yes, I guess -- I never read them, but I know Val Lenin pretty well.
Best idea ever!
Probably the interns read the comments for them
Thanks!!!
I will say that I am a man of many moods, and at my best I can hang with the best of them, but at some point or other I've also said something that would offend or bother just about every person on the planet. I will be honest that I feel fully the anxiety Bari would feel even thinking about putting me in front of a paying audience, and I for one assume that is just too scary a thought to contemplate long, and there is no blame in that at all.
What I WILL suggest, though, is that she assign one of her writers to spend half a day watching Prager U videos and then write a piece on that experience. Or maybe even interview Dennis Prager. He seems to give a lot of interviews. Actually, David Horowitz would be a great one too. I think he lives in California somewhere, as does or did Dennis Prager.
The problem with most Americans is that they don't know what they don't know. In principle the job of our schools would be to educate our kids fully, but what in practice they do is provide one sided information that neglects alternative viewpoints entirely; and for this reason, good journalism might in some respects be viewed as a form of remedial education that will in the medium and long terms support public peace.
David Horowitz would be interesting. He’s a “red diaper baby” who went to Berkeley, got in with the Black Panthers, and then had a huge epiphany when he saw what corrupt murderers they were. He seems to have spent the rest of his life atoning for the stupidity of his youth.
There’s a famous video of him speaking years ago at a college campus with militant Muslims in the audience. He got one of them to admit that killings Jews was OK. Total defiance in her attitude. That should have been a wake up call, but no. Universities are so “enlightened”, we should accept differing views, right?
Which brings me to another point— how about a long expose on the infiltration of college campuses by Islamic interests? It’s been going on for decades. Big money. And here we are now, with a full force, coordinated onslaught on our campuses. Why are we surprised?
I often wonder how, if Soviet Communism and adherence to its views and tenets was deemed legally unacceptable in America, then why is radical Islam and teaching that Sharia law should replace American law not also viewed as criminally subversive. After all, if Communism - a "religion of atheism" and worship of the God that Failed was deemed not worthy of First Amendment protection, then why is Islam - a tenet just as subversive and antithetical to Western values and civilization, not deemed equally subversive and unworthy of protection?
Because the Leftists find the Islamists to be useful allies. They share a deep hatred of Western civilization and the Jews. And Islamists are far more willing (and able) to do the violence necessary to the goal of destroying the West and Israel than the Leftists' "useful idiots" are.
You forgot that many on the left don't think Soviet Communism is actually that bad. Russia just 'did it wrong'.
Great points.
We are seeing this @ Columbia and across the US.
Do they actually “hate the Jews”, or is this rhetoric in line with the Israeli left’s furious struggle to get rid of Netanyahu, once and for all?
Or is it as simple as the enemy ( Islam)) of my enemy ("..we the people..") is my (the DNC/CCP/WEF/EU Davosphere) friend.
Consider that Alejandro Mayorkas was a board member of an NGO dedicated to flooding Western nations with illegals. Crickets!! Or the "I'm a God" Soros open admission that he considers the flooding of nations with illegals a legitimate tactic to bring them to their knees. Manufactured chaos serves criminal financial fascism. While you can't leave your house or go for a walk in your city park for fear of assault the same globalist grifters that gutted American industry and collapsed the world economy are destroying the dollar and pushing US one step further toward debt enslavement and misery.
When was adherence to the views of Soviet Communism illegal? I remember people being arrested for espionage or sabotage, and I have read about people losing jobs or contracts because they were Communists in the 1950s, but when was believing in Communism a crime?
Well, it was a crime to be a member of the Communist Party. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Control_Act_of_1954#:~:text=%C2%A7%C2%A7%20841%E2%80%93844)%20is,in%20determining%20participation%20in%20the
Sure would be nice to know if the FBI is investigating these domestic terrorists.
The FBI sympathizes with them. Don't expect any convictions.
unfortunate but true , my buddy left the FBI 15 years ago he saw where it was headed
In the beginning the FBI and CIA were founded, manned by and created to serve (still does) corporate business. The current assault on the Constitution, general citizen confusion and economic chaos being experienced by America is the failure to understand that "we the people" have been(are) being commodified and colonized.The chasm and consternation in American reality is the citizens inability to comprehend the moral disconnect between what is happening to his life and the manufactured hyperreality of the ascending totalitarianism.
There was an article on that very subject here a couple of months ago.
Who did "The Black Panthers" murder?
The accountant that he asked them to hire, who discovered they were stealing from public donations. They were just using politics as a hustle. Her body was found in the Bay. He became a conservative that day and has never looked back.
He has told this story often. How ODD it is that someone who values knowledge as much as you obviously do is unaware of this history. It seemingly escaped your diligent efforts somehow.
Oh...so "The Black Panthers" are a "He?"
For people so obsessed with pronouns, you're not very good at them.
Let us not overlook that the Panthers were infiltrated and undermined by government operatives who introduced drugs and corruption into the organization and planned and executed the assassination of many legitimate Black voices. Collapse of the Panthers led to the rise of crip/blood warfare and the school to prison pipeline/prison industrial complex and also fueled the introduction of crack cocaine and other drugs into Black neighborhoods by again, operatives of the Federal government (Ollie North/Freeway Ricky Ross/Gary Webb). The Black fratricide today is a result of that interference. And the mask is completely off political, financial, cartel complicity and corruption.
Probably you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sybrZXnWx60
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that would be impossible right cornhole
Yes. For an entire group, with various offices, including international chapters as well as chapters in 48 states, to murder one person, would be impossible. You got it right, cornhole. :) Good for you!
Jeezez, I've been listening to Dennis Prager's radio show, since the 1980s. All us (we?) Hollywood agnostics found "Religion on the Line," the most interesting of programs. I left SoCal 20 years ago and continue listening to him on Internet, here in Bumfuck Ozark -- a nice place, cheap golf.
Me too. I am a former So Cal gal who started listening to his show and Religion on the Line in 1985, Was it KABC? I think so. I started out as what would then be considered a moderately liberal Democrat & committed atheist too. Prager changed my mind way back then.
Yep, ABC, Sunday nights, after the Dodger game. Yeah, Prager talked me out of Atheism too, but I couldn't quite go Christian (raised Catholic), but I'd go to Synagogue, if there were one within a hundred miles. The Christians I know here have no idea of what's going on, that's why I'm on TFP, to have somebody to talk to and listen to.
Yep. Lived most of my life in So. Cal after being raised in the Midwest. Found Prager and listened for that whole time. Living now in the PNW and still listen to him online.
"Most Americans don't know what they don't know" I agree and use this phrase often!!
The bigger question is, "Do they WANT to know? Do they CARE?" It's obvious that what they focus their attention on is Social Media, FOMO, Selfish & being Self- absorbed. And that's right where Politicians and Govt Leaders ( ON BOTH SIDES) want them.
Bread and Circus...distracts. As long as all were ok financially and healthy, it worked. But now?
In the last two years, I have advocated to Bari to choose a poster or three to write a TFP article. It has fallen on deaf ears. Unsaint is an excellent choice.
I'd love to see an article from compro. It would force him to post a real, well researched article, which he has never done on this BBS, and it would show just how batshit crazy he really is. But to do that, he would have to put his bullhorn down and stop spurring on his university pro-Hama rallies while he researches and writes the article.
Yeah...he can just repetively ask buffoonish questions, never answer any, then leave.
I wonder: are you self aware enough to realize that you do nothing but evade honest answers to anything? It never ends with you, so what sane person would begin?
It takes sincerity to have an honest dialogue. Your sole purpose is to put up a foul smelling fog that makes rationality absolutely impossible.
When was the last time you admitted you were wrong? Have you EVER done so? I very much doubt it.
Why do you or anybody for that matter respond to this jerk. All you are doing is feeding the beast and a not very bright beast at that.
Face it. They/them is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
True, but it's pretty clear that adding noise to any discussion degrades the discussion, so pushing back on the noise helps, to some small extent.
And I have always noticed that even in exchanges that are utterly hopeless as far as convincing anyone of anything, I myself do still have good ideas that may not otherwise have occurred to me. It's useful friction, frequently.
Good points.. I always learn more when I articulate in a challenging situation, even if it seems to go nowhere, It helps me understand where I am really at.
Well I got tricked when I first subscribed and responded to a couple of his comments. I learned right quick he wasn't interested in actual dialogue, only in being right. Now I don't take the bait.
comprof only asks questions, never answers. he's the troll to end all trolls.
I'm aware. I just feel like he or she needs to be kept within the bounds he or she creates for itself. I would be happy to expand the dialogue, if dialogue were possible. Since it's not, I just like to make sure that the BS is kept to a low boil.
Not he, she, it's they, them.
I wonder if you're ever going to answer the question I posed to you yesterday?
Why do you never answer questions, Unsaint? That would be an honest dialogue.
Is that the same guy - Yes or No?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sybrZXnWx60
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I wonder if you're ever going to answer the question I posed to you yesterday?
Why do you never answer questions, Communist Prof? That would be an honest dialogue.
What in his interview with Tucker do you disagree with? Surely you are not making the argument that even if that were him, that you would thereby be absolved from responding in any way to the substantive and extensive claims he made?
John Brennan is intimately involved in a company that manipulates public perceptions. So is Michael Hayden. They call it "fact checking", which is 2024-speak for censorship and disinformation.
Answer the question.
Used to, until I realized you never reciprocate.
So...is that the same white nationalist dude? - Yes or No?
The poster boy for the DNC appears, accusing others of his own sins.
Lol.
Sorry. Still waiting on your boyfriend's series of insipid, repetitive questions before he scampers off.
"Own sins?" Lol. Hardly. I've answered every question ever posed to me. They provide great opportunities to own you and others on here.
You have "responded" to my queries with your usual gibberish and deception. Hardly "answers." But if that's what you need to console your fragile ego, fine.
He seems very desperate for an egoboo this morning. Replying to him only feeds it.
Nope. Answered everything straight up. Day 1. You're just frustrated because you always lose, Bruce.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sybrZXnWx60
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sybrZXnWx60
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It is the freedom that matters. The freedom has always been what matters. It is the only conversation. Hard times, good times. Rich man, poor man. Success or failure. On the bottom or on the top. Win or lose. Freedom of speech, thought, expression, action and movement within the lines of human moral reason as defined in our Republic's constitution is the "pearl of great price". Everything else is grift.
"We the people" need a new conversation backed by citizen action and responsibility not the convenient abdication of responsibility afforded by faux indignation, comment on the latest antics of moral cowards and the divisive fear driving psyop manipulation of American reality. I understand frustration at a dialogue focused on the symptomatology of our decline that avoids the disease creating it. Subscription journalism is OUR chance to create the solutions oriented truth/fact based national conversation America deserves. Subscription journalism is in its infancy. Citizen consideration of the actual potential of a trusted citizen powered journalism hasn't even scratched the surface of American consciousness. But the enemies of free peoples have considered it. And they're taking action. If they win bye bye freedom. Hello serfdom.
The FIGHT is over who will control the future. Will it be the free citizen or fascist criminal finance. Hence the war on free speech. The funding of cancel culture. The fear mongering psyop and the heavy investment in a national conversation that promotes hatred and division. And the trillion dollar canard meant to convince you that you've lost. Behind the lie? WHAT, WHY, WHEN, WHERE, WHO AND HOW!!
Not always-or even usually-a fan of Finbar but I agree with this!
Bari Weiss and the crew at the Democratic Party Rehabilitation Project (aka The Free Press) have built their entire careers on casual disregard for conservatives as being "right-wing". Understanding conservatism would mean that they might consider the concept of "unintended consequences". But they don't consider unintended consequences because the one certainty they cannot surrender is that their intentions are superior to all others. And so, no consequence can be bad as long as the "intentions" were theirs...
Exactly. They blew up the world, but their goals were virtuous. So…no apologies, no reflection.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and an ignorance of second and third order consequences.
Virtue being the most operative word here.
Moral superiority to gain power over the dialogue.
no apologies, no reflection, and above all, always double down.
The world has been blown up?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sybrZXnWx60
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What kills me is that 90% of the unintended consequences were predictable by us normies. It’s like progressives lack the ability to look at anything as potentially having negative impacts. Let children change their gender on a whim, what could go wrong with that?
While most conservatives worked, with nose to the grindstone, the progressive movement schemed and wrote. When I stopped and looked up, the damage was done..
Consequences can be a bitch.
I feel like they're more critical of the left than most, even if not casting it off completely?
I also recommend Christopher Rufo’s book—America’s Cultural Revolution. How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.
Hell, man, that’s why I subscribe here
They’re lefties, they make no bones about being lefties, but they’re sane lefties
No, a sane person realizes he has to look at both sides of an issue and objectively evaluate them. People on the left I know refuse to even hear there’s another side.
The great thing about Prager U videos is they are only five minutes. You are not committing a bloc of your life. Just a little bit of time you likely would have wasted fidgeting somewhere on the internet.
And the ease with which anyone can watch these videos makes them a good litmus test. Anyone capable of watching one or two, and saying I disagree, and this is why, is not really the problem. They may be frustrating, because you think the arguments are great, but if they listen and have something intelligent to say in response, they are not really the problem.
The problems are those who say I CAN'T WATCH A PRAGER U VIDEO BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL PROPAGANDA. I've had this precise argument used against me. My answer is simple: you could watch a video by Hitler or Mussolini, couldn't you? Hearing words you disagree with will not physically hurt you, and you may learn something.
But they deal only in fear, all day every day, and they fear Difference. They fear the Other, the one who doesn't share their childish assumptions. THESE people are the problem.
I have to chuckle when I read the request to forward The Free Press to someone who may like it. The people I know who should read it are the ones who will refuse to read it, claiming that old propaganda excuse. Ironic, that.
Another good person to follow for short videos is John Stossel. They may be a little longer but very informative.
"The great thing about Prager U videos is that they are only five minutes."
- LOL!!!!! That explains a lot.
What does it explain?
It expalins that a maximum of 5 minutes is all you can handle/digest about a topic before you form your complete, total opinion on it.
Now....answer my question from yesterday. Yes or No?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sybrZXnWx60
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I agree. They absolutely refuse AND they move to silence you, defriend you, etc.
I agree with Ben- I definitely "lean right" & years ago started listening to more and more "sane lefties" who, like Bari, left their sweet gigs at the NYT, or Matt Taibbi who left Rolling Stone, Glen Greenwald- Intercept. They're are still Left but not afraid to call out SOME of the bullshit ob the Left. I'm good with disagreeing with many of their perspectives. My biggest issue is their inability to describe Joe Biden as a much bigger threat than Trump- simply by comparing both President's terms in Office, Biden has caused actual death, harm, economic disaster to the people of this Country and it is QUANTIFIABLE .
Someone at TFP should be able to keep their emotions out of it and do a side by side comparison that is legitimate.
They have been grossly dishonest about Biden since day one. They are desperate to view and portray him as a success.
I did, once, see Bari acknowledge for two sentences that Trump's Abraham Accords were a good thing. So I can't truthfully say that they NEVER say a good thing about Trump. But other than some jokes and giggling, I don't believe they have ever published a single word genuinely critical of Grampa Joe.
Well, Anthony, you picked a bad example with the Abraham Accords as a Trump success. It looked good on the surface - who could argue with reconciling Israel and Saudi Arabia? - but Kushner, in bed with his ultra orthodox mates, thought he could totally ignore the Palestinians. We now all know how that went, don’t we? For all its appalling fanaticism and atrocities, Hamas reminded kushner (and all of us) that, “we’re still here; we never went away; and don’t think you can bury us”.
As for Biden being a bigger threat than Trump, I’m speechless: who tried to overthrow the government?
It's utterly laughable propaganda to claim that Trump tried to overthrow the government.
The Gaza war doesn't in any way diminish the great accomplishment of the Abraham Accords.
You continue your bigoted and hateful language with phrases like "ultra orthodox males". ULTRA. FAR RIGHT. FOX NEWS.
You are completely programmed. I don't take propaganda drones seriously
👍👍
If being crazy is lacking reason, and if supporting ideas that consistently fail to achieve their purported ends is lacking reason, then there are no sane lefties, in my view. There is a continuum from crazy to crazier. Madness has degrees. John Nash was a functional schizophrenic, but only because he knew that he was insane.
The game really isn't funny. Joe Biden is being used as an agent of destruction, and this is obvious and open. Only a fool would deny it. And yet many still want him to stay in the White House, because he would be a corpse with a D behind his name. That is crazy.
My intent with this post is simply to ask everyone involved to stop a SECOND and think more deeply about their reflexive assumptions. A D means nothing, if the person is not a good person. This should be obvious but it isn't.
I was recently accused by an uber liberal relative of being too logical, too rational (gasp). J’accuse, but I loved the compliment.
I have said before the Dem/Soc could exhume Charlie Manson. Put him in a suit and roller skates on his feet and parade him around the country and the Dem/Soc would vote for him.
Isn't that what they are doing with the brain dead, the ever senile Joe?
No. Charles Manson and Joe Biden are two different people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sybrZXnWx60
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Yeah - chicks dug Charlie…
Careful that you don’t become the monsters you seek to destroy.
Nothing is ever destroyed by fuller understanding, and all I am preaching is dialogue, knowledge, and reason. As MLK Jr. put it, I only seek to destroy my enemies by enlisting them as friends.
They are "sane" only in the sense of achieving a common ground with us on the sanctity of free expression. All similarities between their world view and one that actually works ends there.
Ben, I used to think (hope) that. But, although they continually approach the water, they repeatedly refuse to drink.
And honest... and objective....
Judith Curry: Climate Scientists Can’t Intimidate Me
https://www.prageru.com/video/judith-curry-climate-scientists-cant-intimidate-me?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_9632715
Apr. 30 2024
A lifelong lover of earth sciences, Judith Curry has advocated for integrity and scientific truth since she was a child. Despite facing discrimination and bullying in a male-dominated field, Judith spoke out against the lies and manipulation of climate scientists attempting to enforce a political narrative. After being marginalized by the universities, Judith left academia. She now fights for truth and offers the following advice: Keep your mind open, do your research, and live your best life.
I read her most recent book, very informative.
She has a blog / web page where she publishes often, usually about current climate media communications.
Climate Debate - Mann vs Curry & Moore June 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVXHaSqpsVg
Jul 22, 2018
Charleston, West Virginia, June 12, 2018.
Dr. Michael Mann, Dr. David Titley, Dr. Patrick Moore and Dr. Judith Curry met in to discuss climate change.
They were asked two questions:
- To what extent is the use of fossil fuels affecting climate change?
- What can and should be done to offset those effects?
_____________________________________________________
Lets just say Moore & Curry beat them like a bongo drum
Something I've noticed. On anything like a level playing field our Climate Alarmist friends do not come off looking good.
Thanks for sharing.
I am embarrassed to say, in this very rare instance, that I went to Penn State.
Luckily, I chose to be an accounting major.
Michael Mann. The term A Real Piece Of Work come to mind.
Your comment is well and good but for one thing: it pre-supposes that as part of Bari's job she should pick a side -- on this issue or that slate of issues -- and in the process seek to convince readers to follow suit.
I would submit that the great majority of us, including you (?), are here because Bari & Co specifically avoid advocacy journalism.
As long as she does her best to give me unvarnished facts that i can use to inform my own views, I don't care what Bari's politics are.
If she were poking only at conservatives, that would be one thing. Yet although I don't keep score, it feels like there are every bit as many barbs pointed at Ds as at Rs. If that's not the case, I'm sure other readers will let me know.
Long live the Free Press!
I am making suggestions as a paying customer. And one thing that has become obvious in recent years is the root social and political problem we have is not so much lies that are told by the left wing press--which is most of it--but the truths that are studiously, carefully, and very consistently ignored.
Donald Trump is not a racist. Joe Biden has advanced dementia and is not fit to run a hot dog stand. Yet both obvious truths are ignored even here.
Bari reminds me of my brother and many others I know who agree that he's unfit to run a hot dog stand, and knows he has done faaaar more harm than good for our country and our planet, but can't agree it was a mistake to vote for him, can't commit to not voting for him again, and certainly will never ever entertain the thought of voting for That Bad Fat Orange Man. I don't know how you can see Biden is a disaster in every sense of the word, can't defend anything he's done, but still can't vote against him. They just can't follow those breadcrumbs. But they probably think the same of me.
The crazy thing about that is that nearly everything they think they "know" about Trump is simply untrue, other than that he acts, as a leader, in ways that most Democrats delegate to their subordinates, which of course includes most of the press. Obama, to take an obvious example, rarely got down in the dirt, but he sure supported those who did. So of course does Biden. Biden, though, comically and unbelievably, does still notice phrases like "dog faced pony soldier" coming out of lips he no longer has full control over.
Yes I agree. I also have yet to hear which policies trump has that are so extreme and unlikeable. He’s foul mouthed and impolite, sure, but man was my life better back then. I’ll just keep watching my pragerU videos and hope for better days.
Could not agree more that the worst of the news media's innumerable failings is the sin of omission. If a fact or a whole story doesn't support their political advocacy, they don't include it. It's despicable, and one thing I give Bari & Co credit for is they don't omit relevant facts. (Or, if they do, I'm missing it.)
I realize you are making a slightly different point -- that a newer staffer may repeat that "Trump is a [your adjective here]" without challenging its veracity.
I probably haven't read the FP as thoroughly the past year as before then, owing to a change in schedule. But I also recall cases where Bari herself took down an inaccurate far-left narrative or two. One was her point-by-point rebuttal of virtually every MSM-reported "fact" about Kyle Rittenhouse. Another was a "no, he didn't actually suggest injecting bleach" line in another article.
They aren’t terrible about launching barbs equally at Dems and Republicans. Although I’m pretty sure it’s heavier on the Republicans if you were to keep score.
Where they completely lack objectivity is with Trump. Which is sad and kind of pathetic. It’s the lazy journalist’s way of virtue signaling to the left that they’re still good guys. So many stupid tropes repeated over and over again. Also general disdain is signaled to any of his supporters. Must you use the term MAGA as a pejorative?
I think the only reason conservatives are here is because TFP is the least crazy of the left. That’s a really, really low bar. If they don’t moderate more someone new will come along and eat their lunch.
Is it really hard to understand why Bari and Nellie don't support Republicans that historically didn't want their own nuclear family to exist?
True, however right now the trans cult activists are anti gays. There are many gays and lesbians who are vehemently against transing kids as all people should be regardless of part affiliation. The Free Press published the whistleblowers and the Finnish psychiatrist, but now TFP has gone silent on this scandal. The question is why?
The Christian Right clearly still exists, but in nothing like the form it did in the 1980's. By and large most Republicans are moderates on most of the social issues, now. Donald Trump is on his third marriage: his candidacy would not have been possible with another generations Republican Party.
We have been reduced to supporting ANYONE willing to speak obvious truths in the face of relentless, well organized and well funded lies. Trump is that man, now, today, and I am very sure as a lifelong New Yorker he is very socially liberal himself. He has already ruled out a VP who draws a hard line on abortion.
Funny how Hillary Clinton and Obama were both against gay marriage.
They were for borders, too.
Liars say what they need to say, when they need to say it.
Votes
The idea that politicians lie is probably at least as old as the Greeks--who indeed gave us the word "politics".
What I like to believe, in my ruminations where I feel the world was once better in at least some ways, is that politicians did not used to be able to get away with such obvious and flagant lies. Today, in 2024, you can say one thing one day and the exact opposite the next, and with no overt coercion, no threat of force, people CHOOSE to go along with it, simply to support their "side" in a conflict whose nature and principles they really cannot articulate in any way, other than as pure tribalism.
I agree completely, but I can understand why it's difficult for historically liberal people to accept that the Democrats no longer represent the values they once stood for and that the constant anti-Trump propaganda is largely false.
For the average liberal, I certainly agree. But the liberals on this site are reporting on a constant stream of bad things their party is actively doing, let alone has done for years. If anyone should be at least more on the fence it should be these folks.
At this point, I don't understand what exactly they DO support in their party. They almost never talk about any actual good accomplishments.
Fair. I won't disagree. But doing what little I can to try and change that is very much useful work, in my view. That was what motivated my initial post. I'm not trying to hate on anyone, even though I will confess to being frustrated. All of us see less than what we could see, and none of us can really say for sure what we would see if we were omniscient, because we aren't!!! Still, better is a reasonable daily goal for all of us. The task is not to protect a position, but rather to foster the habit of seeking truth, wherever it can be found.
Yes. Nelson Rockefeller was eliminated as a presidential candidate because he was divorced.
TxFrog-- there were probably some other reasons. That might've been the superficial one.
There are some Republicans who would think that creating a baby in a test tube (while millions are being aborted) to live with two women (which means the child will never have a father in her life which is proven to contribute to human flourishing) should not exist. But how many Republicans would say that Bari and Nellie shouldn't exist because they are Jews? If I were a Democrat and a Jew, I think I would prefer the Republicans who disapprove of my marriage, but aren't trying to wipe out my race.
Hang on, are Democrats trying to wipe out the Jews? Really? Evidence please.
Not all Democrats. It appears there are some that are actively on board with it.
I’ve been following and recommending the great Dennis Prager for many years, so of course Prager U; and I’ll recommend two other podcasts: “Dennis and Julie,” and “Timeless” by Julie Hartman, his brilliant protege.
I’ve watched many of Prager U videos and follow them on X. They are very informative and have helped me understand their position and also clarify my position.
I wrote for Prager.
I also recommend the "Stories of Us" series of videos on Prager's site. Mostly people who have personal experience with the insane left telling their stories. Some are stories of immigrants about why they became Americans. I really think it would be smart for Republicans to just book all of those people for prime-time presentations at their national convention. Real people exposing what people are voting for if they vote for Joe Biden.
Great idea!
Very well said. Sadly, democrats I know aren't open to another way of thinking. Conservatives are nerds to them.
No, I think we are best ignorant dupes to them, and to the recently indoctrinated we are out and out evil racists and all the other -ists' they feel the need to add in order to properly express their hate and rage.
Yes, you described what we are to them much better than I did.
For them Prager U is like that good parent that warns their child about the consequences of doing something questionable. The child just doesn’t want to hear it.
I want to eat all my Halloween candy tonight! (Stomps feet)
Finally. My initially high hopes from the beginning, from the times of Common Sense, have been dashed by the never-ending sarcasm and self-promotion at The Free Press. At one point, Bari actually said there were no two sides to the Hamas-Israel conflict. She said there was only one side. From a journalist? The Free Press has devolved to the level of sardonic potshots. I'm disappointed.
I’m not sure what the two sides to the Hamas Israeli conflict are. The whole situation is very complicated with many layers but are you suggesting that Hamas might somehow have been justified or that Israel has an alternative to destroying Hamas?
Concur. Dennis Prager and Prager U convey more wisdom than the dreck you will find in the majority of universities. Hence the name, Prager U.
So TFP should just be another Republican voice?
I think the Free Press should be free of naked partisanship. Is it your contention that not being an open advocate for patently absurd Democrat ideas makes a publication Republican?
What are some sources that fit your definition or at least come close?
Because I am not here to gain anything, and have no reason not to be honest other than that it could be (and probably will be) used against me, I will confess my two go-to websites are the Gateway Pundit and Infowars. I go other places, including of course the Free Press, Yahoo, and elsewhere, but my reasoning for those two is that they will reliably cover the stuff I won't see anywhere else.
I won't claim they are even remotely non-partisan. But from my own perspective, what I believe has happened is that the window of mainstream discourse has been shifted so far to the Left that anything to the right of insane is now "right wing". If you say we should have a border, or Israel has the right to defend itself (or that Oct. 7th actually DID involve the atrocities claimed) or that boys can't become girls, you are right wing now, aren't you?
What sort of batshit insanity is this? Personally, I gravitate to the people give zero F's, and those two sites fit the bill.
I of course don't expect that sort of coverage here, but as one example I would like to see an honest legal analysis of the cases against Trump. The cases are all absurd. The current one involves violations of campaign finance law, as I understand it. The prosecutor is claiming, without evidence--and actually in the face of the evidence and testimony he does have--that Trump used campaign funds to pay off Stormy Daniels and lied about it. Even if he did, this is a very mild offense. What this prosecutor has done is list every single payment as a separate felony. The whole things boggles the mind of anyone who understands the first thing about the facts in question and the legal process generally. That is the sort of thing they can and should bring out more of, not articles describing how honest the jurors look, in a trial that should not be happening at all.
Thanks for the honest answer. I may not always agree with you but you are insightful and thought provoking. Have a great day!
Someone posted on X a photo from 1938 of Nazis blocking Jews from entry into Univ of Vienna.
Who are the Nazis now?
Will the Nazis at Columbia U. start constructing mock gas chambers on the quad?
They are the same ones people who, just last year, were agitating about “safe spaces,” “micro-aggressions,” and “intolerance.” Now they shout about murdering Jews and “Death to America,” and they defend Hamas’ rapes, mutilations, and slaughter on October 7.
And doing so from their safe space no less.
Yep. Those police interactions look really safe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sybrZXnWx60
666
Do you think the Columbia University "administrators" (to use the term charitably) would have been this supportive of students' "First Amendment rights" (to use the term mostly incorrectly) if the protesters took over the campus to protest compulsory pronouns?
Or, just to stay closer to target, how supportive would they be to protests about Islamist views on the rights of women or homosexuals? Wouldn't that be prohibited as "Islamophobic"?
This has been my main issue with how universities handle this...not that they allow it, but they they don't allow it for everyone.
The outcome from a MOB.
Aw look....and NOW you're suddenly in support of those concepts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sybrZXnWx60
666
NC, these asshole will follow anyone with a bullhorn, what a bunch of lemmings, The best and the brightest, my ass!
They are nothing but useful idiots
Jan. 6th/Stolen Election.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sybrZXnWx60
666
Jan. 6th/Stolen Election.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sybrZXnWx60
666
And why are these protestors not being treated like the Charlottesville racists? Why no outrage from the Democrats and their culture allies? Where are the hordes of furious counter:protests from the "anti-racists"?
Because, like most of the whining from the Dems, they never actually cared about the Charlottesville racists. They were just something convenient to point at to make their opponents look bad.
Nazis learned every and all particulars by studying the American democrat party from Thomas Jefferson to fdr.
Slavery, Jim Crow, kkk terrorists, gerrymandering, Tammany hall, endless warfare, lawfare, and taxfare , stealing elections, secret police, everything they ever did they learned from democrats.
They talked about this many, many times.
Mock ones? I suspect they’d like to get some Zyklon B and really go for it. ~That’s~ what scares me.
2 things
1. Not everyone who was a National Socialists thought t would lead to The Ovens. Once it did...To Late.
2. The Ideology that lead the National Socialists to build the gas chambers/ovens/work people to death did not Just Happen. Darwin leads to Eugenic, which leas to The Camps. They didn't think it up, they just took it logical conclusion and did so as efficiently as they could. BTW with the exception of no gas chambers/ovens The Soviets starting with Lenin (He wrote there manual Stalin just followed it) did The Very Same Thing.
The people who marched at Charlottesville.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sybrZXnWx60
666
https://twitter.com/jessicaschwalb7/status/1785197024041652372
We found out the "stabbed in the eye" girl is the same one who made up the "Israeli couscous" BS at the dining hall.
We found out the person yelling "Kill the Jews" was actually a pro-Zionist who was in the middle of a sit-in trying to get a chant going.
Wasn't struck. Wasn't spit on, etc. But I do have videos of Zionists attacking and spitting on people on various campuses.
LOL! Gotta come with something better than that, dude. Especially since someone drove a car into a crowd in Charlottesville and killed/injured people as well as 5 dudes attacking a man with a 2×4 in a parking garage, etc. Which you have no problem with.
f course you do huggy
Of course....what?
That response makes no sense.
Go sit down await the next hoax.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sybrZXnWx60
666
Was it an fbi agent?
Lol. Nope. Just a regular ol' Zionist student.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sybrZXnWx60
666
There’s only one way you could know that.
The Free Press Debate was disappointing for more than one reason. Cenk Uyghur is an ill informed bully who spews falsehoods on many topics and has no credibility for many people. Listening to him is a waste of time..
The vast majority of Americans want the borders closed to illegal migration and have been very vocal about the travesty at the borders. The Biden Administration is violating the existing laws. There really was no need for a debate in this topic. Only the far left want this flood of illegal migrants for votes. They are posting Spanish language leaflets in the migrant camps telling these ppl to vote for Biden! Mayorkas was grilled on this in Congressional hearings.He exemplifies all that is horrific about this Administration
I felt no need to listen to the debate. There is no debate possible, in my considered view. They are literally asking the question: should Federal Law be enforced, or not? The answer is yes. That is why the law was made a law by Congress.
Yeah, Ann Coulter and Cenk Ugher? Ugh!
What's wrong with Ann? She dares speak truth?
I grew tired of her style. She seems to be an opinion opportunist
Yeah I liked her at first, roughly agree with her positions, but then she starts talking and I just can't.
And anything including Cenk is a non-starter, although I love that they got him in the room with the people he hates so much, so you can see how these cowards diminish enormously when actually challenged.
Cenk in real life -
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x-oCHWsNZwI
She's a bit nuts, I agree. But in a sort of sweet way.
Agree, will not watch the debate. Please more print, fewer debates, and interviews
If the vast majority of Americans want our borders enforced then why are we tolerating in the Office of the President a vicious lunatic who has actively subverted our immigration laws? A nation of sane and sober patriots would remove him and his cabal immediately. I am disgusted with my fellow citizens at this point.
The question is how?? The citizens no longer have free and fair elections. The Dem machine cheats in multiple ways. How to oust the machine from power?
By convincing our fellow citizens that this is untenable. Look at the drivel Bari's colleagues post. No sense of outrage at our open borders. No deep understanding that this is both racist and untenable for any serious nation. We need an engaged and enraged citizenry. Now we have mostly sheep.
Disa, Dems cheat at elections? How? Trump claimed that and lost 48 lawsuits on it; he won one and that on a technicality. What are you smoking?
I’ve never voted for Trump, I’ve posted many times that neither of the two candidates are people I can vote for.
Suppressing the Hunter Biden Laptop at a critical point in the election was a cheat.
The lawfare against Trump is cheating.
Mail in ballots for all is cheating pushing for no voter ID is cheating .
Blocking RFK jr , a lifelong Democrat from getting on the ballot is cheating.
I have no opinions or comments about what did or did not take place on Election Day itself, I really have no idea. Enough of the above went on that more than half the country doesn’t trust election outcomes anymore. That is tragic and it does not bode well for the country
Whenever you ask that kind of question, remember that most people do not vote like robots who were fed data and made a logical conclusion. They may fully buy into protecting the border, but also be falling for fake or slanted info that still pushed them to believe that dems will make it better. Also, many voters have fallen for the trap of having certain issues be something they cannot vote for/against. For example, a gay democrat may totally agree that Biden is horrible for the border. But that voter may also believe that Republicans want them burned at the stake for their sexuality. That latter one trumps the former. Doesn't matter that it isn't true. Just they they believe it is (usually helped by the Dems control over much of the media).
Voters have LONG been tricked into sticking to parties and voting for and against things that don't actually align with what they want or believe. This is the real issue...that so much of politics these days is theater.
I did not even bother. Framing the question "[S]ould the border be closed?" was a tell.
Better topic - “Why was the border opened to unrestricted and illegal immigration in the first place?”
Another topic- How to restore election integrity so that the Dem machine can no longer cheat to stay in power?
The trouble with that question is too easy. The border was open because Joe Biden invited them here.
For some reason, the left insists that closing the border = no immigration.
These lefties know full well that closing the border is not the same as no immigration.
They want illegal immigration( until the migrants show up in busses and planes from the border) to keep themselves in power.
This past week, Adam Schaffer, a mayor in California and another Dem politician were victims of serious crimes( auto theft, a second house break in). Their policies are destroying the country
Adam Schiff
Like many issues, by making it a binary choice is makes it easier to lie and easier for people to fall in line.
“Dykes for Decolonization”
Ship every one of them to the "Islamic Republic of Whatthefuckistan" and enjoy the popcorn as the stones fly. If this is what the Ivy League is now producing, keep your kid as far away from these lunatic asylums as possible
Stealing "Islamic Republic of Whatthefuckistan"
the name for kanada in 20 years
"Classics professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta led over a dozen students in a takeover of Clio Hall."
Ah, yes, that guy -- the guy who wants to "save classics from whiteness," according to an article some years ago in The New York Times.
He received every benefit from "white" society: scholarships here and there including, early on, to the Collegiate School, backing from white politicians.
I cannot access the Times article any more, but I seem to remember that he reads ancient writers mostly in translation. Spouse, on the other hand, with only an MA in classics, spends when possible an hour every day reading Greek and Latin (and Hebrew) just to keep in practice.
Dan-el Padilla Peralta needs to get over it: The Greeks and Romans were white. White people created the Western civilization which has given him both his livelihood -- and the freedom to try to destroy it. I wasn't impressed with him when I read the Times article years ago and thought only, Poor Princeton -- another classics department down the tubes.
Blinken is a tool and his rhetoric and double talk is appalling. Hamas has turned down countless “ very generous offers” from Israel. Hamas is stalling . Hamas just wants to survive to continue terrorizing Gazans, and Israelis in their quest for continued power and billions in foreign money that they steal on their march towards a vision of a global Caliphate. Anyone who has watched as our campuses have been flooded with public Muslim prayers and shouts of Allah uAkhbar knows they mean what they say.
There are over 130 hostages ( 8 are American cilitzens) still being raped and tortured in the tunnels. We need them back ( dead or alive).
Please watch the Daniel Pearl Memorial lecture this past week at Stanford. Tossing Klein Halevi in conversation offers deep and unique insights into the conflict, and the regional wars
“In this moment, the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a cease-fire is Hamas,” he said.
In this moment? WTF? Hamas had been murdering Gazans that wanted peace for decades before they decided to murder fourteen hundred Israeli’s on 10/7.
Exactly! By making these misleading statements Blinken tries to give the impression that Hamas is a group that should and can be negotiated with. The only language they understand is force. Hamas has mastered the art of propaganda and double talk.Bliken and the Rest of this scary Administration is giving them credence. The US could have pressured Qatar on 10-8 to oust the Billionaire Hamas mouthpieces from their luxurious hotels and release the hostages. Instead it has been nonstop pressure on Israel to allow Hama# to survive. Enough
Rafa now
I can't share this enough. Clinton was president in 1993 and wasn't the first president to attempt a deal. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/bill-clinton-palestinians-israel-223176
Jen, everyone should read this article. Of all the tragedies of Palestine for the last 100 years, the biggest and saddest was Arafat turning down Clinton and Ehud Barak’s Taba Accords peace offer in 2000, or early 2001. He said it was because the deal didn’t include a right of return but more likely it was that he was afraid of being overthrown or even murdered if he made peace, as Islamist and Jewish fanatics did to their own president and prime minister. But just imagine if he’d done it! Today, an independent and prosperous Palestine would occupy the West Bank and Gaza in peace alongside a secure Israel. Sigh…
Trump was smart to work around Palestinian leadership in reguard to the Abraham Accords.
Peace is not the intention. A successful society is not the intention. It's hard to have empathy for poverty and economic ruin when the majority of Palestinians "vote" for and support the ideology of death to Isreal and America. When the endless stream of aid does nothing but fund that ideology, nothing will change.
Great to see TFP linking to more substacks. We are the media now, ignore the predictable propaganda from MSM. Pathetic to see Howard Stern fall from rebel to bootlicker.
We'll see. Might just be Oliver being off his meds. Tomorrow he might treat us to more links to Maureen Dowd and Vox. I'm actually surprised he hasn't linked to The View yet.
“For his interview with the real Joe Biden, Stern forgoes his usual attire for an ill-fitting suit, and proceeds to slobber all over the forty-sixth president. “You’re the kind of leader I love because we’re lucky to have you in the Oval Office,” Stern, in the hardball section of his interview, said.”
It feels like I’m in some bizarre fever dream. Is any of this really happening?
Yeah, that was weird to read. I had seen some things showing Stern had fallen, but this is so blatantly boot licking that I could almost see it as some kind of performative satire. The fact that it isn't is almost chilling...when someone known for being a rule breaker so readily falls in line and slavers over Great Leader, something has gone wrong.
Yes, this is really happening.
Right out of the gate, a comment on Oliver’s opening statement that Columbia “tried - and failed” - to close its encampment. Yoda had the perfect rejoinder: “Do. Or do not. There is no try.” A video shows the cops at Indiana University clearing out the “protesters” and their camp in a no-nonsense manner. If Columbia had truly tried to clear its campus, the Jew haters there would be gone. But they aren’t. The will to “do” is lacking. Appeasement never works.
Columbia could have given a meaningful ultimatum: all students who refused to leave by the designated time would be expelled; all professors who refused to leave would be fired (from what I understand, even tenure cannot protect a professor from being fired for criminal behavior).
I read on X that the word circulating among the protesting students was that Columbia didn't actually intend to do anything to them: the warnings were meant only to appease the public. I have yet to see any evidence that this is not the case.
The Columbia administration should just have said "Don't". We know how well that works.
Plenty of Universities have done this. Your Yoda quote is exactly right. They Fail because they don't actually want to Do.
The academic ‘leaders’ are paralyzed by the collision of the lunatic ideologies that they’ve allowed/encouraged on their campuses (that is the correct plural form of the word) and the reality of the absolute mess that it has now led to. F them.
I heard from a Chicago friend who reads a CPD website that 1,000 Chicago cops will retire or take desk jobs before the DNC convention there. Going to be a replay of 1968.
Good. Fuck the Democrats. I hope that DNC burns the whole time. They deserve it. They honestly deserve it
First, that's kinda mean. But also, Republicans aren't much better, consideirong how many of them voted for Ukraine funding. The uniparty is not your friend.
I agree, I dont give them a slide either.
It'll be fun to watch liberal MSM spin it as "peaceful protest" when they storm the convention hall.
The MSM/Legacy media will diligently follow the instructions to blame it on the evil orange man.
My fear about the Nov. election is that too many people on BOTH sides believe that the election is rigged by the other side in some fundamental way. Mail-in ballots fraud, voting machines that can be rigged, etc. Perception is everything here. I worry that no matter who wins, he will not be able to govern the country.
Why do you say BOTH sides? I’m an Independent and it appears to me that it’s the Dems who have done the election cheating( suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story is a non Election Day example, so is ignoring RFK jr and changing the rules to prevent him from getting on the ballot)
I think Louisa's point was that the perception in the media and among people (especially a lot of the rich donor class) is that if Trump wins, it will be illegitimate. And the DNC has lawyers in every state (Rolling Stone ran a pice on it very proudly talking about how they were "fortifying" by changing election laws and having attorneys on standby). So even a very clear win by Trump will be contested.
It will be contested either way, but even with your facts it is the Democratic Party doing the cheating and manipulating.
I never voted for Trump , but these banana republic tactics by the Dems are destroying the country. The fact that Trump( a past President of the USA , wealthy) is unable to stop these ridiculous court cases , enormous dollar amount fines, etc shoes just how much powe4 the Dem machine has. I don’t really understand how this is happening. So many ppl who are not Trump supporters are horrified( Alan Dershowitz, Alex Berensen to name two) and talk and write about it endlessly ….and yet it is still going on. Wha5 would happen if he and the Republicans just say no more, this is not legitimate etc?..
Why does Trum0 have to pu5 up with this and they get to flaunt the laws and the Constitution?
Agree. But if the Dems lose they will claim the vote was bad—in some way. They have already set the table for that reaction. I left the Dems a few years back. Disgusted totally. Independent now.
Also Independent. Thoroughly agree.
Agree too. But I am talking about what people are choosing to believe, which will drive their reaction to a loss.
This presidential election will not be decided by voters, it will be decided by judges choosing which votes to count. This is what we have come to.
Considering that the President isn't supposed to govern the country, I don't care so much. We focus on that position, when it is Congress and the House that we should be looking at...and of course local and state
I wonder if the Democrats will go so far as to simply cancel their convention? They've already subverted any sort of voter-driven process for choosing their nominee, so it isn't as if the convention is necessary for any reason except tradition.
The reality is that the convention will be a HUGE bad-optics event for them, no matter what they do. The anti-Israel Leftists have vowed to disrupt it violently. But the Democrats cannot use any sort of law enforcement tactics without looking "pro-police." It's a no-win situation.
How's this: They cancel and/or move it because Biden stepped down at the last minute so we can get the real candidate in there with no real time for the public to vet them
Oh, I fully expect them to sub in someone else--probably Newsom--at the last possible moment. Canceling the convention gives them a lot more time before the election to do that. Even an October surprise.
By ‘real’ you mean someone like Moochelle?
I'd be more likely to agree that it would be Newsome. I think Michelle would have a similar effect that Hillary had, where more people turned up to vote against her. But that could absolutely be my own bias.
Bias, maybe, but an optimistic one. 😁
It’s going to make 1968 look like a scouting jamboree.
It will all depend. I am fairly convinced that if actual cops show up to stop them with force, they will crumble. Most of these modern protestors see protests as a day outing. not something that could get them put in jail or killed.
One can only hope
And the front page of the Telegraph made me laugh -- the top headline -- Biological Sex is a Fact, Declares the NHS. (Is this the new dog bite man? Bears, woods? Any other simple fact?) The story is about the NHS changing its constitution to put biological sex at the forefront, and ensure things like single sex wards and the right to have single sex intimate care for privacy and dignity reasons. It also should do away with gender neural terms like 'chestfeeding', body feeding' or people with ovaries. This is the actual press release from the government: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nhs-constitution-plans-to-strengthen-privacy-dignity-and-safety
This is the Telegraph's take: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/30/nhs-sex-biological-landmark-shift-against-gender-ideology/
This is the Guardian's Take: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/30/trans-patients-to-be-treated-in-separate-rooms-in-hospital-under-tory-plans
The Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer attempted to apologise to Rosie Duffield saying that they often have discussion and that she was right to say 'only women have cervixes' on Good Morning Britain this morning. People who have specific knowledge of the situation in Labour have pointed out that Starmer has not spoken to Duffield in two years. https://twitter.com/polblonde/status/1785223479723266478
And finally because the tanker does appear to be turning the ECAP (Europe Child and Adolescent Psychiatry) have issued a statement about Cass and the way they expect members to treat patients going further (hint evidence based) https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s00787-024-02440-8?sharing_token=ERjNJOHSy4YhqGvWoQ1ipve4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY4C72yZjIv0u-RHIPy5vJO4vtqh3xa9D5_dq1-s5bgSPJBBnEKujp5A863TwFoUaTi4thoQjUA5kDlciSbSy2wwfkhB8BqJDpUhjFEj1xHWxIM_l5EepHv5RJdeXRm2lzk%3D
Ben Ryan on X has been a fearless science reporter took on GLAAD ( a gay and lesbian trans activist organization that has been bullying and silencing anyone who dares question the transing of minors industry) for falsely claiming that the GAC model is “ settled science”.
We need to demand that the US government( Congress, RLevine, Beccera) and the medical associations( WPATH, psychiatry, endocrinology, pediatrics surgeons) answer for their duplicity.Thus far they are ignoring the growing mountains of evidence that they lied to sacrifice troubled kids for their trans cult ideology.
The US government did answer. Haven't you heard? The Biden administration issued new rules re Title IX last week.
But we won't fault you if you aren't aware, since Oliver Wiseman decided to omit any mention or report on the most significant part of the changes but instead humble gloat about the dismantling of due process Betsy DeVos put in place instead.
And do not forget the “business of medicine” which may be the most important factor including from pharma.
The Free Press should do an article on the newly “ trained” surgeons ( multiple disciplines) who now need young people to sterilize and operate on. I have not seen anything dealing with this angle of this scandal. Interviewing some of these young surgeons( pediatric gynecology, peds urology, reconstructive surgery etc) would be eye opening.
It is an epic medical scandal. If they had mountains of evidence that this was 'settled science' why was Cass unable to uncover it? When the review was announced, the last thing the NHS England wanted to do was to shut down GIDS at the Tavistock. Far easier to keep these things going but the evidence wasn't there and Cass had enough integrity to say -- the sector must adhere to the norms of medical science, the safeguards including robust benefit/harm analysis, hard evidence must be adhered to.
What is also concerning is that two senior people in the NHS (see the above reports in the Guardian and the Telegraph) appear to be saying that trans and nonbinary people have the worst health outcomes without offering any evidence. It is why the review of the Adult clinics must go ahead with all speed. Is the evidence there? What are these health outcomes and can they be prevented? I am sure you saw the latest research on pelvic floor dysfunction and trans and how many do suffer from problems (94.1% of transgender men aka trans identified females suffer) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00192-024-05779-3
There are already misinfo spreading out there that the Cass report is a politically motivated report, that it intentionally ignored some research findings. A lot of people still want to be willfully blind and will see only what they want to see.
Yes Cass had to put out a FAQ explaining about the misinformation campaign and what the truth was.
https://cass.independent-review.uk/entry-10-post-publication-reflections/
And the faq which shows the sort of disinformation being spread: https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/final-report-faqs/
As Cass said, she had expected the abuse but not the misinformation.
The UK government and indeed Labour who will most likely be the next UK government have accepted the findings from the Cass Report in full.
The SNP have deferred the clinicians at Sandyford who went further than Cass (blocking cross sex hormones for the under 18). This is what caused the break with the Greens as Patrick Harvie refused to accept that clinicians could actually and understand the significance of Cass.
Apparently the Welsh government are discussing the results this week.
The problem is that the education department has yet to publish its guidance in wake of Cass. I do hope that they will take on board Prof Louis Appleby's intervention in mid March that there is no link between suicide prevention and gender affirming care. Appleby is the UK lead on suicide prevention. Too many schools are still teaching that gender affirmation is the way to go. The tide may be be turning but a lot of work remains to be done.
For money!
Meanwhile in the US, 5 middle school female students are now banned from competing in shot put after stepping out of the ring to forfeit in silent protest against having to compete against a boy calling himself trans. (He won, of course, being allowed to cheat).
https://www.wtrf.com/west-virginia/west-virginia-files-brief-in-support-of-5-female-middle-school-athletes-banned-from-competition-after-protesting-a-transgender-athlete/
Good for the 5 middle school females who took a stand for fairness in sport. They showed a great deal of moral courage (something which Bari Weiss has often commented that she approves of)
Yep. And in these days of moral inversion, THEY are the ones penalized for it.
That is typical in today's schools. It quickly became apparent that the No Tolerance for bullying policies meant that it was only the victims who finally fought back who got in trouble, not the bullies.
I would offer those girls scholarships if I were a college. That is some integrity right there.
Let's hope their parents are supportive. They have certainly done a brilliant job at raising them thus far.
I can only imagine they are. A kid at that age doesn't come up with that kind of backbone on their own very often. It usually comes from the home. So I too hope those parents are supportive and PROUD.
I applaud the 5 females for refusing to compete with a male. However it is gross injustice for the females to forfeit competitions after all the training they put into their sport. Asking all females to stop competing until this travesty is overturned is not realistic and in a perverse way hands a win to the trans cult. It functionally ends female athletics for an unknown amount of time.
Like anyone that has to stand up for change, the people doing so often are not doing so for themselves...that is why it is a sacrifice. They are sacrificing so the next group of girls doesn't have to. Yes it sucks and is not fair, but sometimes it is what must be done.
To keep competing is to be an enabler. You are just helping feed the egos of those boys and the virtual signaling folkx that support them.
No these girls shouldn't have to do this...but doing so is one of the best ways to help make it stop. And I would argue that doing so...standing up will be far more formative than simply continuing to play the sport.
Great point. This should be articulated to parents of female athletes across the country , and for athletes of all ages. The fact that in spite of the outcry from female athletes, the NCAA lawsuit , Congressional hearings the tone deaf White House, in an aggressive in your face move, rolled back Title IX. No deiscussions , debate or hearings on this most contentious issue. The far left is in control and must be beaten
I have also wondered if the parents and coaches of these girls could then hold private events, taking government out of the equation.
Another great idea, especially for elementary and middle school girls.
I’ve not seen or heard that suggested.
It is so frustrating that the majority of sane people from all sides, see it this way ( that fairness to females trumps” inclusivity of males who call themselves female and cheat) There are supposedly so few of these ppl and yet they are wreaking havoc. It’s always a male claiming to be female and not the other way around. This defies the statistics that the majority of these new GD kids are girls. That’s how I know it’s cheating( sports) and misogyny( women’s prisons and other female only spaces )
I am now certain that it is counterproductive to discuss testoerone levels, bone and muscle mass/with the trans activists. Keep it simple . No males in female sports an. Sex is binary.
They love discuss some obscure case where some trans person was puberty blocked early enough …blah blah. It’s a mistake to allow that discussion because it is irrelevant to the overarching importance of fairness to females. Period . We can’t allow them to dictate and control the dialogue anymore. They activists have bullied and lied enough
Thank you Michelle as always for your updates. Hopefully the turning tide will become a tsunami and we'll start to see some reason and common sense here in the U.S..
We here in the US must figure out how to force the government to admit the lies and reverse course . Thus far silence from the administration and Congress( except for Dan Crenshaw grilling Sec of HHS Beccera in a hearing. Beccera is a snake who repeated “ we really on the WPATH and other medical associations” for our guidelines.
The science is clear that GAC model is not the least bit evidence based as the trans activists claimed.
The Cass report is comprehensive and the facts are the same on every continent .
This is such good news!
Should we shut our borders? What does "our" even mean, anymore? We need to answer that. Or when we needed to answer that, we didn't. Who are we and what are we? A piece of real estate with no allegiances or prevailing principles? A landing pad for gangs? The land of commit the crime don't do the time? The uprooting and chaos on campus has brought graphic proof of change: student groups, fleets of professors, it's not apparent this is a Western country. The student groups/activists hate us, our form of government, capitalism. They are anti- semitic and anti- white. They are chock-full of failed state, hate+envy- based ideologies. The agitators come from oppressive failed states and become revolutionaries in the free ones. When married to radical and racial theories, the overwhelming influx of non-Westerners is suicidal. A country is a country based on the social contract and social cohesion. How's that working for us?
A nation without borders is no nation, at all.
Which, of course, is precisely the outcome the Democrat Party seeks for our beloved nation.
Shafik's (Columbia) and Maher's (NPR) resumes are global. The U. S. is being not so stealthily refitted, from culture to finance, to serve global interests, while losing its own identity - a key goal-- in the sea of identity politics. Everyone's identity but our own. The great leveling. Western society is the host species because we've - our society-- got the goods.
I think the goal is for the US to be the seat of global government without autonomy. Sort of a global DC.
We're the ATM.
They wouldn't dare try this in China. They'd have their heads handed to them literally, as they would of course in Gaza! Plus China will take over. It's not going to tolerate this global crap. The West is the soft target.
“What does "our" even mean, anymore?”
There is no our, there is no we. We have nothing in common, having become a nation of atomized individuals scrambling to either grab an ever greater piece of the pie or to just maintain a tenuous grip on middle class life while dangling precariously above the yawning pit of poverty.
The article on wealth inequality today really summed up the core problem in the West, and in reading the comments for that, it’s obvious that few see any problem with 10% of the population owning 75% of the pie and the bottom 50% owning 2% of the pie. Most of the commenters see no problem with that, and there is no shared sense of common community as a nation of people.
I feel like a chump for being patriotic all these years and honestly caring about the welfare of my fellow countrymen. Clearly my loyalty was never reciprocated and it was a huge mistake not to have endeavored to just focus on getting rich by any means possible. There is a stench of moral rot in the air.
The "yawning pit of poverty" has ever been with mankind.
In the West, though, we had a few halcyon decades when manufacturing was booming and gave those without a college education plenty of work, unions were strong but not suicidally covetous, and the welfare state had not yet made it easy to have babies brought up to have babies and not much more. The global economy was the death knell for those good manufacturing jobs, and no one wanted to think that lots of people have neither the brain power nor the inclination to do jobs in, say, the sciences and engineering, that require the kind of knowledge you get from lots of years of study.
In New York City at least, those on welfare and other subsidies earn a tidy middle-class living, far more than the hardworking immigrants who keep our city functioning. They're actually not poor.
Of course, the city relies on its remaining wealthy residents whose high taxes keep our sadly diminished coffers from disappearing altogether. That's what happens when a municipality attempts to alleviate the poverty you so abhor but places no responsibility on the poor to limit the number of children they have or on the federal government to control the hordes pouring across our southern border and sucking up money the city no longer has.
We can thank Democrats for their deep forgiveness of aberrant behavior of all sorts. Entire neighborhoods here are boarded up because rampant shoplifting and robberies have driven businesses away. Jobs are lost, shopping is lost, luncheonettes are closed, revenue has plummeted.
So now we're back to square one, the rich and the poor -- and the very uncomfortable middle classes who keep their heads down, keep working, and wonder where they can flee.
Something went haywire. At mid- century the earnings differential between the head of a company and a middle manager was much smaller than it is today. There were maybe different values, anti-conspicuous consumption and work ethics, it was a different country. Businesses actually made things. There were plenty of small stores. And fewer people. Today we've these huge behemoths -- name the industry --a
big blobs that suck up all the oxygen and by the way control our information. I agree with you, Art, there is something obscene about Bezos preening around ,I was about to say something unkind, with too much money for a million people let alone one.I think a country has iterations. Today the gap is stratospheric. The middle class has lost ground since the seventies. We watched five or six episodes of a 50s sitcom called "Father Knows Best" on YouTube. It's fascinating. From a monetary or greed perspective, wow, have things have changed. The father, Robert Young, came home every night, paused by the coat closet, took off his suit jacket, and donned a worn, corduroy sport jacket to relax in. Bud, the son, wore the same shirt in every show, the type of cheap, striped T-shirt Susie wore in Mrs. Maisel. The younger sister wore only two costumes. In one episode, when the older daughter wanted a new dress for the prom, that meant serious discussions about cost. Finally, they broke down and got the dress. The family lived in a nice house -- the dad was an insurance broker, so that must have been fairly representative of the way things were. The production was so frugal the mother/actress cooked real food --and they ate it! The shows inculcated lessons on honesty, loyalty, kindness to friendless kids.
Sociologically it is astonishing how far women have come. But that's another subject.
I used to work in on-campus recruiting for new grads and summer interns for the business world. While there are always exceptions, in-general, the ivy league students were overconfident snobs that thought general clerical work was beneath them. The academic overachievers from public universities with 4.0 gpa's were book smart, but had trouble functioning at work. They were anxious and afraid to make a phone call.
The best interns and new hires were students with a 3.0 (ish) gpa from public universities that actually had to work while in college. Students with the best test scores and GPA's often aren't the best employees, hire the average student with a good work ethic and ambition.
Sadly, the rigor at many universities has dropped so much since covid that a 3.0 GPA is a disaster and can be obtained with almost zero effort.
From the WSJ:
'Stanford University in 2017 admitted Ziad Ahmed, who in response to the application prompt “What matters to you, and why?” wrote “#BlackLivesMatter” 100 times. “Everyone who reviewed your application was inspired by your passion, determination, accomplishments and heart,” the university’s acceptance letter read. “You are, quite simply, a fantastic match with Stanford.” Mr. Ahmed decided Yale was a better match for him.'
So that was his essay, hey?
Wasn't there anyone on the admissions committee who, frightened to do so in public, fled to the rest room to choke on his laughter?
I'm requesting that TFP do a
"PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE" without the candidates since that's obviously not gonna happen. Instead, get 2 strong Conservatives and 2 strong Liberals to represent Trump and Biden- who are able to list both the accomplishments and the horrific disasters of each President's Terms in Office? Do you know how many people would LOVE to see that?
And if TFP does it, they should first ask their readers for their suggestions on WHO should debate. Thoughts?
I wrote one of my my senators, who voted yes on the latest aid bill and asked for an explanation why, and an accounting of how the money was spent. I pointed out the obvious fact that we were printing money to do this. I was told my state got funds earmarked to a weapon contractors worth 300 million this year which would help the people who worked there.
Pretty much shows how this works. Vote yes, get money in return and likely get campaign donations.
Sad we are a war economy now and therefore always need a convenient was to prevent overstock issues…
I filled the response with another letter asking where the other 57.5 billion went and pointing out that the deficit spending fueled inflation costing the states citizens over 500 million in the same year.
I asked why not demand a cut elsewhere of 60 billion such as solar or wind subsidies?
I suspect though, that it’s an indirect source of campaign funds for another senator or two.
The stupidity and irresponsibility of our elected representatives needs to stop!
Email your reps and ask them how the ponzu scheme will end?
People still do not understand that the COVID lockdowns basically cost us a flat 20% permanent tax on everything.
They can't tax the people any more than they already do, so the next step is using far more sophisticated tools to strip the real wealth from the people, though asset and currency manipulation.
No, Democrats won't raise your taxes. They will raise inflation instead, and their rich won't feel it one bit.
The Democrats will also blame Republicans for tax cuts! That’s supposedly why we have the deficit we have! They will literally go back to Regan and blame him. Well here’s a question how did Clinton balance the budget?
It was never Clinton's intent to balance the budget.
Clinton had the good fortune of serving during the tech explosion, massive private spending to prepare for Y2k, strong economy which resulted in enormous tax revenue, and most importantly, reduced military spending because of the peace dividend.
The stars were all aligned for Clinton, resulting in a budget surplus
Good info and my comment spoke more to the fact that if Regan policies and tax cuts were so bad for the country then how did we end up with a balanced budget in the next administration!
Tax cuts are never detrimental. We are better at spending our own money than the government, which has never produced anything but overhead, much of it unnecessary, like the Depts. of Energy & Education.
Liberals do not understand what you tax you get less of.
Charles, I wrote, repeatedly. My Republican representative responded with MSM propaganda the first time. The second response basically explained that I could not possibly understand the complicated reasons for his support of this bill. I have not received a response to my last letter.
Keep writing!
They obviously have no words to defend the deficit spending
“Merch”. Seriously, merch? I know you been pushing this crap (China made?) for a couple of months but give it a rest. You sound like PBS or npr.
Besides, who but Democrat, well heeled women buy it? Why signal your smug idiocy?
What I'm questioning is why a sweatshirt is being offered at the beginning of summer.
Wait a few months and you can pick one up at Goodwill.
I am gonna assume this is intended as sarcasm ...
Nature Lover is right. Showing TFP merch in rich Democrat areas is a public announcement that you are Not On Board.
Absolute not sarcasm. TFP merch in dem areas is the same as wearing MAGA merch.
Yikes.
Same.