Bullshit Brigade: Now with More NYT Bullshit [Action Item Included]

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[NB: Check the byline, please. Action item at bottom. /~Rayne]

I know I’m not the only person who’s raging at The New York Times, yet again. They’ve somehow managed to do it again and at the worst possible time — the day the Build Back Better bill will go to a vote in the House.

And whoever wrote this latest bullshit managed to do it cloaked behind the Editorial Board byline, leaving no one individual exposed to a well-deserved pummeling.

I’m talking about this POS: Democrats Deny Political Reality at Their Own Peril

Utterly unglued from reality, missing completely that:

– this country has become more progressive over the last 20 years;
– the country on a bipartisan basis supports the Build Back Better bill, with a majority supporting each of its key deliverables;
– Congress doesn’t represent a true reflection of this country thanks to gerrymandering and the corrupting effects of Citizens United on elections;
– Joe Biden was elected by a majority of voters, winning the popular vote with the most votes ever, to deliver a bill which both fixed decades of infrastructure problems AND helped the nation recover from the pandemic.

Seriously, they missed the true bipartisanship:

The opening graf sets the tone for the entire op-ed:

Tuesday’s election result trend lines were a political nightmare for the Democratic Party, and no Democrat who cares about winning elections in 2022 and the presidential race in 2024 should see them as anything less.

It’s a disaster for Democrats when one goddamned state with a weak sauce Democratic candidate narrowly lost to their GOP opponent — and by narrowly I mean 2.4% margin, less than the typical margin of error?

A disaster when that same state has a history of voting for a gubernatorial candidate from the party opposing that in the White House?

And of course it’s a disaster when the incumbent Democrat wins re-election as governor in New Jersey, right?

Never mind the NYT had also published this piece:

Murphy Narrowly Wins Re-Election as New Jersey Governor
The victory over Jack Ciattarelli, which ended Democrats’ 44-year re-election losing streak in the state, was far tighter than polls had predicted.

Oh yeah, what a disaster, breaking 44 years of New Jersey kicking out one-term Democratic governors.

~insert image of Hindenburg on fire~

Not to mention the wide swath of Democrats and in some cases Democratic Socialists who won their mayoral races across the country which I noted in my previous post.

The NYT’s editorial board had the gall to summon neoliberalism, saying, “Bill Clinton’s mantra from 1992 of ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ is rarely out of vogue, and it certainly isn’t now.”

Which is why this bullshit must be dealt with, shoveled and tossed in the manure heap to rot. This economy isn’t like any economy we’ve seen before and certainly not the one in 1992. Neoliberalism and centrism haven’t worked if one pries their privileged head out of their ass and takes a look around at this country. After so many inane pieces on “economic anxiety,” the NYT still doesn’t grasp that anxiousness doesn’t belong just to those folks who were told in 2016 and earlier that immigrants were coming for their jobs.

In spite of their access to research and likely their own reporting, the NYT editorial board still hasn’t cottoned onto that 50 years of data show trickle-down economics promulgated in tandem with moderate austerity don’t work — not here, not across 18 countries.

Though the pandemic placed a premium on the lowest paid jobs, minimum wage workers still cannot afford rent anywhere in the country — if they can even find a place to rent.

Lower wage workers who can save enough for a down payment are living in their cars because they can’t find affordable homes to buy.

But sure, let’s do what worked in the 1990s during the dot com boom, when we still had a huge middle class which could save money and buy houses with good paying blue collar jobs.

With the pandemic COVID came for their jobs. Then Trump’s disastrous handling of the pandemic came for their jobs. With that came the societal Jenga following more than 750,000 COVID deaths and more than 800,000 excess deaths, creating greater uncertainty about who was going to work where and would they and their families and loved ones survive this tectonic shift.

What families have had to go through during the pandemic requires more than temperate centrism:

Did the babysitter survive their exposure to COVID? Are they vaccinated? Are the other children in the daycare vaccinate (no, of course not, we don’t have a vaccine and won’t for a while for little ones)? Are the other parents vaccinated? Who will stay home with the kids if school is closed again because of an outbreak? Will either parents’ employer fire them for taking the time to watch their children since not all jobs permit working from home? How will we make the rent, car payment, health care, food bill, even if we’re getting $300 month for each child if we can’t work because we have no daycare and school is remote again? Who will take the time needed to provide the extra coaching the kids need through at-home coursework?

But yeah, let’s be careful and restrained right now after nearly 22 months of a rolling massive death event. Let’s not rock the boat because Tuesday was a disaster and not the pandemic or decades of starving infrastructure combined with offshoring industry, critically damaging supply chains.

Don’t even get me started on how this nation is flirting with looming disasters like the 2007 I-35W Mississippi River bridge collapse when a third of the bridges in this country are in disrepair, and the mounting climate emergency demands hardening of infrastructure, not more centrist restraint.

Fuck you editorial assholes at The New York Times. You’re privileged, blinkered morons, the lot of you. How do you even sit up and take nourishment each day?

~ ~ ~

ACTION ITEM: You can tell those NYT editorial assholes to fuck off more effectively by calling your representative and senators IMMEDIATELY this morning and insisting they vote to support the Build Back Better bill. More specifically, ask your representative to:

Pass the infrastructure bill which has already passed the Senate
Pass the Build Back Better Act which is a reconciliation bill

And then ask your Senators to pass the Build Back Better Act.

Call them at Congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121 or use Resist.bot.

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107 replies
  1. Rayne says:

    Oh hey, NYT editorial board? Your competitor bothered to check with 61 economists who said pass the fucking bill.

    NYT: not even fit for bird cage liner.

    EDIT 2:30 p.m. EDT 05-NOV-2021 — In a thread related to another idiotic NYT op-ed columnist’s stupidity, Twitter user @TheFreeForum wrote,

    I liked NYT better when they were being a crypto-PR firm for Big Chicken.

    LMAO me too, but I have no idea when the NYT wasn’t doing crypto-PR for Big Pick-The-Industry.

    • Diane Orehek says:

      Have subscribed to, and subsequently cancelled a couple of times over the past few years. I like to stay aware of what they’re up to, but cannot stomach their manipulation a moment longer. I do not understand why any self-respecting journalist would choose to write for them, except as a mole.
      The monthly subscription can be better spent on independent journalism untethered to the interests of the ‘elites’.

      • Rayne says:

        I almost caved in because they have dropped their online subscription substantially. But I find WaPo and LAT piss me off much less – WaPo is a little more but it’s worth it for my blood pressure. I wish LAT would price itself closer to WaPo for folks outside CA with online access only.

        EDIT: I saw Propublica is hiring national staff – might be time to donate to them since they’re ready to scale up.

        • Theodora30 says:

          Lately the WaPo has really been pissing me off. The headline writers are terrible, the editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt is still peddling his neocon garbage and they allow right wing columnists like Hugh Hewitt to regularly peddle their lies as opinion. (No news outlet should allow blatantly false facts to be published at their site. The WaPo’s motto is “democracy dies in darkness” but aids and abets the spreading of that darkness by publishing lies because they are opinion. Too bad their policy isn’t “you are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts”.

          However the Post has some excellent columnists like Jennifer Rubin, the Plum Line’s Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman, and Margaret Sullivan who don’t hesitate to call out the lies or to hammer the mainstream media when they play along. Rubin, Sargent and Waldman write daily, often more than one piece. Unfortunately Sullivan, who used to the the public ombudsman for the NY Times doesn’t write that often. She, not Eric Wemple, should be the Post’s media critic. Wemple puts far too much emphasis on media insider issues, ignoring the blatant misreporting of politics which usually damages Democrats.
          If it weren’t for these columnists I would drop by subscription. I keep hoping that if more and more people click on those columnists’ articles the Post might give them more prominence.

      • holdingsteady says:

        Same here, I’ve quit and rejoined a couple of times after Dean Baquet supporting Bret Stephens with climate denial propaganda. Recently when they quadrupled the rate, I quit again then kept it when they offered another year for $4 a month… seems like they’re desperate.

        It used to seem so cool to pick up the paper copy of NYT back in the day, so appreciated that they made it available back in the 80s and 90s in Anchorage. No longer:(

      • Leoghann says:

        I’ve maintained a subscription to the NYT since the early 80’s, switching from print to digital in 2003. Over the past two years, I’ve become appalled at the amount of positive coverage afforded to every wingnut theory, in the name of covering both sides. My subscription recently doubled, with one e-mail warning a week or so before my payment date. As well, several departments are no longer part of the subscription. As extras mount up, it’s beginning to remind me of cable television. And I trust the coverage far more from the Washington Post, LA Times, Houston Chronicle, and Miami Herald. I realized Thursday that I’ve only opened their website twice in the past month. Looks like it’s time to save $18/month.

    • posaune says:

      And then there was the NYT board member, Joichi Ito, who laundered Epstein’s rep through the MIT Media Lab while steering the NYT away from all else.

      • Rayne says:

        Some day I will have to write about that situation. I was two degrees of separation from that mess though I fortunately never had any contact within one degree of Epstein. It’s all just so damned creepy.

        • gmoke says:

          You might want to talk to Xeni Jardin about Joi Ito, Epstein, and the Media Lab. But then the Media Lab has been a high-class grift since the inception.

          I remember listening to Nicholas Negroponte, brother of possible war criminal John Negroponte and founding director of the Media Lab, talk soon after the death of Jerome Weisner. Negroponte eulogized his friend and mentor by explaining how Weisner taught him how to whipsaw donors – go to one and tell them another was giving x amount and then go to that other donor and tell them the first donor was giving x+.

        • Rayne says:

          Xeni and I would have entirely different relationships with very different persons associated with these people, would be of no use to compare notes.

          And no, not all of Media Lab has been a high-class grift. I think there was some valuable work which became compromised by contact with the wrong people — and that may have been part of the point, to assure it could be compromised.

        • gmoke says:

          There are many good people doing good work at the Media Lab but the founding of the Lab and the upper management of the Lab has been donor grift from the beginning, by my definition. Have you ever been to an MIT “show and tell” for donors? The greed exhibited can be cut with a knife.

          PS: That you and Xeni Jardin had different relationships with different people associated might be one very good reason to share notes, although I have my doubts that Xeni Jardin is willing to share what she knows, explicitly, with anyone. Yet.

        • gmoke says:

          I fondly remember attending the publication lecture of a report on “sustainable mobility” at the ‘Tute in the 1990s. It started with a slide thanking the sponsors of the research which was all automobile, petroleum, and tire companies. When I pointed out that these were the corporations which brought us to this pass in the first place, the presenter took on a pained expression and said, “Oh, please, don’t be disagreeable.”

        • Rayne says:

          The results I saw from MIT Media Lab’s efforts were those my kids used, like LEGO Mindstorms and the coding language SCRATCH. These things helped create a technology literate generation and will continue to fill the tech education gaps in our K-12 education system (which shouldn’t exist after decades but they still do).

          And no, Xeni and I will NOT have experiences for which comparison will help. Please don’t press this anymore because you’re well out over your skis on this matter.

  2. Mike R says:

    Agree completely, it always amazes, actually infuriates, me that those who will have to make no sacrifice seem to always want someone else to take the beating. Low wage workers are basically unseen by the motu and their hangers on. As far as the ftfnyt same old story same old song and dance.

    • JamesJoyce says:

      “…actually infuriates, me that those who will have to make no sacrifice seem to always want someone else to take the beating.“

      X2

      Calling out the modern day Slaveowners for adopting the slaveowner’s tactics today results in censorship and being monitored by the thought police who want no competition like all monopolies.

      Big Lies atop big lies..

      Sand 🏰

      Who need any truth anymore?

      We do…

      AA Style..

  3. harpie says:

    By The Editorial Board
    The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. [link] It is separate from the newsroom.

    • Rayne says:

      Neat trick, huh? Hide who’s actually written this crap while claiming there’s anything serious behind this except they don’t like progressives? And shelter the newsroom which deals in facts — like that article about the NJ governor’s race. ~smh~

        • Rayne says:

          Long-time community member harpie already pointed to the key bit on that page: “The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. [link] It is separate from the newsroom.”

          Funny how none of those expert journalists appeared to have consulted actual reporting or research to write this piece; it’s purely opinion which they can shove up their privileged slack backsides.

        • RAB says:

          I’ve thought about this for a long time, in relation to my local paper. The unsigned editorial with societally damaging or extremely biased views, written by the “Editorial Board,” appears to be at the behest of the owners or some power aligned with the owners. Logically, the thing is, at least, written at the behest of one or more people who have the power to overrule more rational, honest, or decent objections, if such a thing exists among the employees. “May you never read The Cincinnati Enquirer”, a blessing I toss your way.

          Forgive me for lurking, which I have done for years.

        • Rayne says:

          Oh, I wholeheartedly agree about the Cincinnati Enquirer. Wretched waste of print, that, been cursed too many times with needing to read that for research.

          Glad you delurked, join more often. Welcome to emptywheel!

        • bmaz says:

          To my understanding, and I know one of them a little, if it is per curium, ie unsigned, it has been at least sent around. But who knows?

        • Rayne says:

          Which is the point of publishing this as the board: the reading public has no way of knowing if all of these board members agreed with this opinion and what if any journalism they performed to draft this dreck.

        • Leoghann says:

          It also gives each and every member of the editorial board deniability, should some shit they publish blow up in their collective face.

    • MB says:

      And…this editorial was prominently boosted this morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. Scarborough, blowhard that he has always been, even before joining the anti-Trump faction, was just delighted with it.

      And a pet peeve of mine: stop calling folks (Manchin, Sinema, Gottheimer, Spannberger etc.) “moderate” or “centrist” Democrats. They are not. At best, they are “conservative Democrats”, equivalent to what used to be called “center-right”. David Brooks definitely falls into this category, and this lines up with the NYT editorial board’s purview as well. Corporatists (as opposed to “humanists”) to the bone.

  4. P J Evans says:

    I wish NYT would admit they prefer conservatives attempting to run things. They’re certainly not liberal.

  5. Jon says:

    This is an excellent analysis of the Times’ opinion piece. But you are making the same mistake the media often makes in this story, just to a lesser extent. Yes, the board is providing cover to these obstructionist and centrist democrats, but, more importantly, this kind of piece provides cover to the republicans. This broader context is hardly ever talked about in the MSM. The world is burning; our climate is in crisis. Yet, not a single republican senator has offered a single solution to it. In fact, the republicans continue to try and protect the very processes that led to this problem. Why isn’t THAT the story. The fact that the democrats can’t unanimously agree on a solution is nothing compared to the fact that the other party opposes any viable solution and promulgates the problem. That should receive 90% of the attention from this editorial board and others. And, you should have mentioned it in your critique.

    [Welcome to emptywheel. Please use a more differentiated username when you comment next as we have several community members named “Jon” or “Jonathan.” Thanks. /~Rayne]

    • Rayne says:

      You’re entitled to your opinion, but the fundamental difference between you and me is that I don’t believe the GOP is a legitimate political party acting in good faith. I believe it’s an organized crime syndicate with transnational reach which uses the old GOP’s carcass as its front. And I’d be damned crazy to expect a crime syndicate which is bought and owned by fossil fuel entities and the military-industrial complex will act in a way which benefits the interests of the people versus their owners’ desires.

      Yelling at criminals has proven ineffective thus far.

      • jonf says:

        I guess I did not explain myself well, which is not surprising. I agree with everything you just said about the republican party. I don’t think the media needs to point out the problems with republicans to try and change republicans. As you said, that’s not going to happen. No, the media needs to provide this broader context and continually point out the failures and illegitimacy of that party so that they are not normalized to AMERICAN CITIZENS. That is the audience they continue to mislead. When the media spends 90% of its coverage on how the democrats screwed up instead of how it is really the fault of the other party, people will also view it that way or be more likely to both-sides it. How many times in news reports do they show reporters going up to republican politicians and asking them, for example, “Overwhelming evidence shows that our climate is in crisis and is getting worse every day. So, why have you not offered a single solution to that problem that would actually help fix it? Why do you instead protect the interests that are harming our environment?” We should see that on the news every night. We should read opinion pieces about that every day. Instead we get this. The media is not going to change republicans. But I don’t want them to enable republicans.

      • subtropolis says:

        You’re missing the point. Regardless of your opinion that the Republican Party is illegitimate, it happens to be a huge political force in the United States. Jon’s suggestion that the Press should more often point out that the GOP has no solutions to our current problems wouldn’t be “[y]elling at criminals”. It would be an honest appraisal of its shitty performance in civic stewardship. The point is simply that always focusing on complaints that the Democrats struggle with making things right is an epic distortion in light of the fact that the republicans not only are mostly responsible for the mess that we are in but stubbornly refuse to offer any credible means towards saving ourselves.

        It’s not an argument against what you’ve said in this post, in any case.

        • Rayne says:

          Here’s the problem: what the GOP isn’t doing isn’t news. Sitting on their hands doing absolutely nothing isn’t going to garner limited journalistic resources.

          Figure out how to make news out of GOP doing nothing but being their usual brand of stupid and you might get traction.

        • Tburgler says:

          CRT isn’t news.
          Migrant caravans aren’t news.
          Wearing a mask or taking a life-preserving vaccine isn’t news.
          Antifa isn’t news.
          “Economic anxiety” isn’t news.
          The war on Christmas isn’t news.
          Gun grabbing isn’t news.
          Election fraud isn’t news.

          Republicans can set a frame and make any bs they want into news. As long as the press can find some down to earth folks with Deeply Held Beliefs(TM) about an issue, it’s treated as news.

          That one of our 2 major parties is concerned, not with any of the very real problems facing our country and world, but only with imaginary issues they themselves invented, that republicans have taken themselves out of any meaningful conversation about moving the country forward, that they do this with the purpose of discrediting the idea of governance itself so that they can wield power on behalf of the ultra-wealthy, that’s news.

          Or, at least it would be if Dems were half as skillful in crafting a narrative from reality as republicans are in crafting a narrative from nothing at all.

        • Rayne says:

          It’d be nice if it were simply up to Dems to craft narrative, but narrative isn’t news. Try working for a news outlet to learn how it works. A Democrat standing around talking isn’t news.

          Hell, the GOP has had frequent spaz outs about AOC who has managed to convey narrative to her constituents using technology with which her audience is more comfortable (TikTok/Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, video games, so on) and the GOP gets her covered because they are spazzing, not because a Democrat is providing narrative. Now that this one progressive isn’t brand squeaky new causing daily GOP spaz outs, the news media has moved on.

          Keep working on that narrative theory.

        • Rayne says:

          Pretty much.

          I meant to point out for folks here one could tell things went really well in Wisconsin on Tuesday by searching Twitter for “Wisconsin election” and noting what surfaced: nothing but the freak-out of a sheriff who claimed there had been election fraud in the 2020 election. That was it, nothing else came up to the top. This was a failure on the part of Wisconsin news media — they couldn’t report anything else because nothing else met its criteria for news except for a right-wing law enforcement official complaining about a long-certified election a year later.

          Kudos to Ben Wikler, Democratic activist who moved to Wisconsin in order to provide effective opposition to the right-wingers in Wisconsin; he’s helped them kick ass and take names..

        • Rayne says:

          The left didn’t build an ecosystem like the right-wing did beginning in the 1970s, John Birch Society and YAF not withstanding. Once the Heritage Foundation took off, the right deliberately constructed both think tanks to generate conservative content and outlets like Townhall to disseminate it, combined with entities which could whip up outrage and direct it in sync with the content and outlets. Parents Television Council and the Superbowl nipplegate when PTC encouraged 80,000 angry phone calls to CBS demonstrated they could use entertainment industry missteps as part of their attack on what they saw as leftist culture (the racist undertow in nipplegate was a Black woman and a white man performing together combined with unintended nudity). With that organized outrage they’ve conditioned traditional media to hope when GOP/self-identified conservatives spazz out.

          There simply hasn’t been the same degree of focus on the left operating in parallel to the right. There are hints of capability but it’s not focused on long-term strategy, acts wholly organically. Tens of millions of K-pop fans have mustered amusing attacks on fascist targets like Dallas police surveillance of BLM and the booking system for Trump’s 2020 Tulsa rally; can they organize for longer projects? Very unclear. It would be nice if they could condition media to respond the same way they do when right-wingers get on their poutrage.

        • Tburgler says:

          (For whatever reason, I didn’t see a Reply button below.)

          Exactly that.

          They have the machinery to create narratives and inject them into the conversation and we don’t. And it’s easy for them now as conservatism has become as much a lifestyle brand as an ideology.

          Why we don’t is another question.

  6. Bay State Librul says:

    I missed the previous “bullshit brigade” comment about ex-Red Sox Manager Bobby Valentine’s run for mayor in Connecticut. It brought back scarring memories of the 2012 season.
    There have been 828 baseball managers since Abner Doubleday invented baseball. From Manny Acta to Don Zimmer, the field generals have been glorified, castigated and fired. Bobby was fired in 2012, after his disastrous 69-93 season. He couldn’t handle the “beer and chicken” Sox team and his press conferences were even worse.
    It is fitting that as a Republican, he lost the election. I’m also pissed at Bobby Orr for telling folks to vote for Trump.
    What makes professional sport athletes such dickheads?

    • Rugger9 says:

      Short answer: Money. Add Aaron Rodgers (who needs to spend the rest of the season off for deliberately endangering the league) and Herschel Walker to the list.

    • Rayne says:

      “What makes professional sport athletes such dickheads?”

      1 – No educational minimum requirement for their profession;

      2 – Athlete/fandom relationship tends to encourage narcissism;

      3 – Higher than average propensity to brain damage.

      That’s my guess.

        • Rayne says:

          I don’t actually believe money makes dickheads of athletes automatically, unless these other factors are present to varying degrees.

          I’m sure you can think of athletes who aren’t dickheads. Rhetorical question: what separates them from their dickhead cohort?

        • Rugger9 says:

          I wonder how long it will take for the proper question to be asked: why was Kaepernick made persona non grata for the entire NFL for kneeling in protest when Aaron Rodgers apparently got a free pass from the league for eight weeks (the NFL HAD to know Rodgers’ unvaxxed status because of his appeal) and as far as I know hasn’t suspended him at all for potentially exposing a whole lot of people to COVID (including Jeopardy contestants, perhaps). It also places Rodgers’ reluctance to participate in preseason (allegedly a contract dispute where Aaron threatened to retire IIRC) in a whole different light.

          Perhaps I can figure out what’s different between Kaep and Rodgers that isn’t a racially charged explanation, but I think it will take months….

        • Rayne says:

          Why do you need to find an excuse unrelated to race, to the point you are willing to invest months into this search? You really need to examine that – not here, this is on you, it’s your problem to solve.

        • Rugger9 says:

          I think you missed my point, it’s that the racial difference IS the only reason Kaep sits and Rodgers isn’t suspended indefinitely. After all, Kaep hurt no one with his protest and took his lumps like a man, while Rodgers deliberately endangered hundreds in a league where players are banished for lesser offenses and has proceeded to whine about it. As an Old Blue I expected better out of Rodgers.

        • Sonso says:

          Yes, I think it’s a satirical remark. It’s like the conservatives, when they make all their efforst to create some alternate reality, which is transparently a fantasy. We know it’s BS, but the BS-eaters eat it up.

  7. joel fisher says:

    It’s always been my impression that Presidential elections are decided by swing voters in swing states, and Congressional elections (and control) are decided by swing voters in swing districts. Doesn’t it, therefore, become an obvious priority to court those voters and not let the messaging of the lying scum in the GOP alienate them from the Democratic party. It doesn’t do the left any good to brag about how the progressive numbers are growing when a lot of that growth is in geographic areas that are already wall to wall lefties. Gerrymandering? A terrible evil, but the only people whose votes are based on being against gerrymanders are its victims and they rare have any–due to the presence of a gerrymander–actual power. The left should have seen a GOP emergence in 2020 when the loser Trump actually had pretty good coattails and the Democrats lost ground in the House and across the country in various state legislatures. In that light, VA and NJ. are a continuation of a worrisome trend, not a bolt out of the blue. Biden had a good message that clearly resonated with swing voters: “I’m not a degenerate criminal.” Down ballot, candidates couldn’t objectify their opponents in the same way. People don’t vote for stuff; they vote against stuff and right now the swing voters in the swing states are not looking kindly on the Democratic party because the only info they get (that they understand) about the Dem’s stuff comes from the GOP message machine.

    • Rayne says:

      “Gerrymandering? A terrible evil, but the only people whose votes are based on being against gerrymanders are its victims and they rare have any–due to the presence of a gerrymander–actual power.”

      Wow. Nice fucking privilege you have there. What a luxury not having more Democrats in the House doesn’t affect you personally.

      • joel fisher says:

        If I conveyed anything other than I want more Democrats in the House I very much beg your pardon. My point was: running against gerrymandering does not seem to me to be likely to attract very many voters in swing districts as swing districts are, almost by definition, less likely to be gerrymandered and, thus, the voters in those districts are not likely to see themselves as victims of a gerrymander. TBH, I can’t say I’m entirely anti-gerrymander: as long as the GOP does it, the Democrats must do it as well, especially until the big gerrymander–the Electoral College–goes by the board.

  8. cablecargal says:

    I’m reading “The Gray Lady Winked” about the NYT. They have been so wrong for so long…especially in really important global stories. On Chapter 5 about the Holocaust and OMG, did they screw that up. (Did the same with Vietnam and Cuba.)
    Great book!

    • Sonso says:

      Unfortunately, in America, past errors are considered bygones. Being an American means never having to say you’re sorry!

      • joel fisher says:

        And not that far in the past; witness the resurgence of moderate left approval of murdering scum W. What’s a few 100,000 deaths if it was years ago?

        • Rugger9 says:

          Well, W did try to opine on some stuff, but no one is really buying the rehabilitation tour. I don’t think it was really covered much and TBF it’s not like W would have many useful observations to add now.

          After all, W was the one who thought dictatorships were great as long as he was the dictator (heh he, heh he) and about catapulting the propaganda among other totalitarian themes.

    • madwand says:

      Chomsky relates in one of his books that in the lead up to the Iraq War NYTimes published 43 op-eds of which 42 were FOR the war and 1 was neutral. If people are expecting NYTimes to be fair and objective, they are not.

      It’s easy to see by reading Rayne’s post and the replies here that NYTimes hasn’t changed and why people, like here in the south, figure that they are a liberal bent paper I have no clue. They’re a little smoother than the Wall Street Journal, but basically they support the same thing.

  9. Bay State Librul says:

    Speaking of baseball, I came across this 1972 interview with artist/cartoonist Saul Steinberg
    I’m sure Saul also had a take/vision on the art of politics with their “bullshit brigade”.

    “Now, what struck me about baseball was that I couldn’t figure out how a big crowd of primitive, simple people would sit down on their seats and watch no action … I was saying, What’s going on here? This was no entertainment. What are they doing? But later on I figured it out and I understood that people who watch the so-called “no action” of baseball, actually they are making their own strategy. They impersonate the manager of the game; they impersonate the pitcher. They go through all the sweating and the emotions of the pitcher. They try to impersonate the confrontation of the man at bat and the man on the mound in the situation. And the situation can be very complex. One has to know the score; one has to know the personal lives of the players… If you read really the stories in the paper day by day you can find out how certain family situations can upset the pitcher, or how certain situations can become dramatic because of jealousy or interoffice fights between managers and owners and competition between clubs. Or the fact that a certain pitcher is high-strung at this moment; he’s lost so many games. He had made the almost no-hit game and something went wrong, so his luck is running out. He has cold hands, sweaty hands … and you feel it with him. These are human situations—the situations which are interesting for a novelist.” Paris Review

  10. earlofhuntingdon says:

    This grossly exaggerated bullshit – “Tuesday’s election result trend lines were a political nightmare….” – is squarely on brand for today’s New York fucking Times.

    We have reasons aplenty to scream about today’s politics. Tuesday’s election is not one of them. It deserves a groan and renewed energy to combat the things the NYT, like Joe Lieberman, wants us to consider inevitable. The NYT: All the News Not Fit to Print.

  11. KevinP says:

    The NJ & VA gubernatorial races were both decided by just under 80,000 votes yet one is described as a shocker & the other as a squeaker.

    • Rayne says:

      Amazing, isn’t it, how these races are colored by media’s use of adjectives in a way that tips their hand if one is paying attention. How much did media coverage ahead of each race using similar coloring change voters’ attitudes about voting?

      • Geoguy says:

        I can say that in NJ, the local “opinion” was that Murphy would easily win re-election. That was my cue to make sure we vote. Just what we don’t need, another republican governor using the state pension fund to back the GOP. See Christie + Chatham Capital + the National Inquirer.

  12. graham firchlis says:

    This from the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, a new take on the ‘black friend’ trope:

    “Voters called ‘white supremacists’ elected a black Lt. Governor.”

    It descends from there to a galling reducto ad absurdum, yet a new Big Lie.

    [There’s a paywall, but the Audio icon cues a very pleasant soothingly confident voice to read it all and set you straight. The punch in the gut line comes right at the end.]

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/virginia-governor-election-glenn-youngkin-race-11635979212

    • Rayne says:

      This is a perfect example of why one should be able to ask for or easily locate a spectrum of opinions from BIPOC on candidates because they will tell you straight up which Black/non-white candidates are sketchy sell-outs.

      This one isn’t even a “black friend,” just a plain old puppet.

        • Rayne says:

          Yeah. That. West needs to be added some very pointed questions about Texas’s energy grid because he’s not up to the job to protect Texans from another market-based failure.

    • Sonso says:

      Winsome Sears is bad news, and, essentially, unqualified. Another bad choice in VA; fortunately she won’t be governor, and has few responsibilities, as is the case in most states.

  13. earlofhuntingdon says:

    The president of the UF reversed his and his board’s decision to ban eight of its professors from testifying in court in cases against the state of Florida, amid national pushback against their campaign against free speech and academic freedom. A necessary reversal. The UF president should still resign.

    https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/education/campus/2021/11/05/uf-president-fuchs-reverses-decision-allows-professors-testimony-florida-voter-fraud-lawsuit/6300410001/

  14. Randy says:

    I think you pretty well identified what was going on in the NY Times editorial. I would note, however, that on the average the Times’ journalism often, perhaps 50% of the time, elects to provide more or less reasonable accounts of the world. I think that distinguishes it from most corporate media, which stray far less than the Times from establishment sources and accounts.
    What worries me most about this editorial is that it may be an indication that liberal wing of the corporate establishment, and thus its media, might have decided Biden and the D’s no longer can be trusted — and that they, including ABC, CBS, NBC etc. will become “the opposition,” rather than merely slanting R, which is their typical position. Were that to occur, an R sweep in 22′ and 24′ would be pretty hard to stop absent an extraordinary level of organizing and/or the left pouring tons of money into progressive media.

    • Rayne says:

      If the “liberal wing of the corporate establishment” is already making it difficult to achieve fairly moderate gains when a pandemic offers a chance at reset, this is an enlargement of a war for the survival of democracy. Throwing for corporatists is a move toward fascism.

  15. Randy says:

    By the way, the Times editorial board might be just a bit sensitive about having dropped their drawers so noticeably. Over, the years, I have commented on pieces in the Times, perhaps half a dozen times. I believe they all were published — except the comment I submitted right after the editorial, which appears below. The comment, which actually lauded Krugman’s column that day, noted the malevolent role of the corporate media in shaping public perception of BIden’s programs:

    “Your points seem quite well taken. I would add that the crushing majority of the public, insofar as they follow politics at all, rely on the major corporate media to do so. It does seem that, with some important exceptions, they have covered the national political stories largely from the “moderate” perspective, i.e. the Democrats are incompetent and in disarray, because President Biden has fallen in with the nutty progressives. While the progressive proposals, as you note, in fact are quite popular, to the many not closely following politics, the bottom line appears to be that the Dems and Biden have gone off the deep end. I would submit that substantially distorted corporate media generated image is an additional source of Biden’s and the Dems’ problems.”

  16. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Some developments on that unexplained wealth order case in Scotland involving the piles of cash the former guy has dumped into his Turnberry golf resort. A Scottish court heard arguments last week about whether the government can refuse – without explanation – to pursue a UWO. The government claims it has no legal obligation to pursue a UWO – an anti-money laundering provision – and no obligation to explain its reasoning.

    The Scottish government is also acting as if it were the Scarecrow giving Dorothy directions to the Emerald City. On one hand, it claims the decision is up to Scotland’s chief prosecutor. On the other hand, the decision is also a political one, which means the buck stops with Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. For Sturgeon (and Westminster), pursuing UWOs would be like releasing plague rats among the donor class.

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/scottish-govt-offers-bizarre-defense-for-not-investigating-donald-trump-golf-course-turnberry

  18. Tom S. says:

    The “BIF” bill was a “compromise” in which all parties agreed not to include tax increases on the wealthiest or increased funding for the IRS. It is funded entirely with borrowed money, including the repurposed unspent covid-19 relief funds. The CBO says it will add at least $256 to the national debt, others believe as much as $400 billion.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/opinion/infrastructure-bill-financing.html

    The “moderate” or “centrist” democrats as MSM describes them, pushed passage of this bill but our delaying support on the Biden BBB until they are assured by CBO scoring that the revenue increases included in the BBB pay for all of the costs of it.

    The Times is similar to most Dems in congress and all G.O.P. Their top priority is protecting, to the extent possible, protecting the wealth of the wealthiest political donors from being subjected to any tax increases or to increased tax compliance and other collection efforts. The six progressives are collateral damage in the struggle between what great wealth fully controls, versus what it doesn’t,

    • Rayne says:

      You know what the solution is? Get more progressives elected to office. Until there are enough in Congress to firmly implement their policies, they will have to do the work of the left’s Overton window and force the conversation away from the center.

      I’m really annoyed with the lack of comprehension about this situation, so many progressives demanding the BBB and BIF go down in flames until they get every jot and tittle they wanted. That’s not how democracy works, and it’s not how *this* democracy works when progressives are still a minority even inside their own party.

      Set the stake with this BBB and BIF, then using the Overton window once again, keep pushing left.

  19. d4v1d says:

    More years ago than I care to admit, I got a degree in journalism, though by senior year I saw where this was headed – and it is with relief (and disbelief) that my intuition about the business has extravagantly played out as I feared. And I give thanks every day that I spent not one minute in the news-entertainment complex. The most important thing I learned even in the three-network days was that if you wanted to get the truth, you couldn’t depend on the news media. (To recover from journalism I spent an additional eighteen months earning an additional degree in an academic subject from an academic school.)

  21. harpie says:

    WANTED by the FBI American seeks ASYLUM in BELARUS
    [LOL!]

    As A. Weisburd says:
    https://twitter.com/webradius/status/1457713108739231750
    9:14 AM · Nov 8, 2021

    Perhaps the ultimate Jan. 6 poster child. [link]

    Links to: https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1457682142826221573
    7:11 AM · Nov 8, 2021

    “Goodbye, America!” That’s the title of this segment on Belarusian state TV in which American Evan Neumann of California explains he fled the US to evade the FBI. He’s wanted on 6 counts related to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and now wants asylum in authoritarian Belarus. [THREAD]

    • harpie says:

      Further on in that thread:

      […] Things just get more interesting. US authorities say Neumann partook in Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution that overturned the rigged presidential election of Viktor Yanukovych.
      Neumann says this on his LinkedIn profile.
      Pics from Jan 6 show him wearing a scarf from the revolution. [Really, “commemorating”] [photos] [THREAD]

      A highlighted section of NEUMAN’s LinkedIn page from the screenshot]:

      About: […] In 1990 he was involved in German reunification protests and in 2004 and 2005 he participated in the Ukrainian Orange revolution.

      Here’s a thread that Marcy retweeted earlier today
      https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1457630463087063041
      3:45 AM · Nov 8, 2021
      And from there, Eckel links to Matthew Kupfer whose linked thread about NEUMAN ends with:

      And, lo and behold, in 1994 he was briefly co-founder of a website “specialized in matching California men with Ukrainian woman.”
      Sigh…

    • harpie says:

      CapitolHunters has done a THREAD on this guy:

      https://twitter.com/capitolhunters/status/1457744184576823302
      11:17 AM · Nov 8, 2021

      #SeditionHunters – reports today of the first Jan 6 figure to request asylum abroad. Evan Neumann of Mill Valley CA (#DrunkenTrashStache) [LOL] attacked police on the Plaza wearing the scarf of the Ukrainian revolution, fled to Ukraine, now wants to live in .. autocratic Belarus. 1/ [THREAD]

  22. harpie says:

    #J6TL
    I have a little bit to finish on the thoughts I started here:
    https://www.emptywheel.net/2021/11/03/january-6-defendants-succeed-in-proving-they-were-treated-better-than-other-dc-detainees/#comment-907080

    […] There is a straight line from:
    Marine Corps Memorial
    Lincoln Memorial
    World War II Memorial
    Washington Monument [with the Ellipse and White House directly North]
    The Capitol
    to the Supreme Court

    These are all places which are mentioned in POLICE REPORTS from J6. […]

    I left off at the police report about Lonnie COFFMAN’s parking place on J6:

    The 300 block of First Street, Southeast is pinpointed on this map:

    https://www.google.com/maps/place/301+First+St+SE,+Washington,+DC+20003/@38.89042,-77.0130809,16z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x89b7b82b99d4c5d3:0xc02b738eff2bb025!8m2!3d38.8860399!4d-77.0058711

    That’s also where The Capitol Hill Club and The RNC are.
    The DNC is shown about a block south and two blocks west.

    .

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