Politico’s new "contrarian" owner sent out an email to his fellow executives asking them to “pray” for Donald Trump’s re-election in late 2020 – then not only denied he sent it, but once confronted with evidence of the email’s existence said that yeah, he might have meant it “as an ironic, provocative statement.” Because if there’s one thing people love having explained to them, it’s irony! And are his politics “hard to pin down,” really? He loves the Trump tax-cuts-for-the-rich “reform” of 2017, he worries about “cancel culture” and “identity politics,” his response to anti-Semitic attacks is to fly an Israeli flag like there’s literally no other way to show solidarity with Jews – c’mon, I’m not a schmuck.
When I hear that folks experience “crisis fatigue” because of all the news they consume, I feel compelled to ask if we’re experiencing “crisis fatigue” as much as we’re experiencing sensationalism fatigue. I’m sure crisis fatigue is a real thing that real people suffer, but I don’t think the sheer volume of tragedy we read about is the only problem we face when trying to make sense of the world – right-wing news sources, in particular, love ramping up the drama. I’d also like to know if folks who read news experience less crisis fatigue than folks who watch the news.
President Biden endorses a bill in the California state legislature that would help farmworkers organize more easily for better pay and working conditions – a bill California Governor Newsom apparently intends to veto. You’d hate to think Joe Biden endorsed this bill (fairly persuasively, too) merely because he knows Gavin Newsom will veto it, but you can’t rule it out. The good news? It doesn’t matter: when the President endorses a good idea – and letting farmworkers unionize is a good idea, regardless of the cowards who’ll say it’ll “cause inflation” – it makes a difference.
Tamara Pearson at TruthOut charges the corporations building wind farms in Mexico with stealing, dividing, and destroying Indigenous land – in addition to using carbon credits to keep polluting and giving the clean energy they produce to Americans, rather than locals – and, yeah, I’d have to say this is the wrong way to fight climate change. I would also remind everyone (especially certain think tank morons who provide sound bites to the Wall Street Journal) that respecting the rights of Indigenous folks does not mean no one can fight climate change, ever. We need to stop listening to folks who hold such rigid dichotomies, not least because they’re not even being honest about it.
When I hear that Republicans are trying to soften their stances on abortion in the wake of our Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization being unpopular, all I can say is they are too fucking late. Does anyone think that the Democratic Party’s two-year effort to create hard-hat jobs will erase the common stereotype of them as out-of-touch latte-swilling liberals? No, they do not, so Republicans ain’t gonna reinvent themselves as abortion “moderates” in just two months. When you spend four decades screaming at the top of your lungs, you should expect folks’ opinions of you to harden.
Finally, ads about guns featuring Mehmet Oz skeet-shooting sure are funny – go skeet-shooting, and get ready for revolution against the liberal elites! – but Mr. Oz’s apparent endorsement of second-cousin marriage from 2014 should put a couple more nails in the coffin of his Senate campaign. I sure hope John Fetterman – eager to bash Mr. Oz for living in New Jersey or pretending to shop for groceries – bashes him hard for this, because no sane person thinks it’s OK to marry your second or third cousin, even if your resulting children will be much less likely to have hemophilia.
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