You really gotta listen for the breakdown on this to truly grok what's going on. I was there! January 6th! I didn't go inside though. no, not me! Nope! I did nothing illegal. nope nope. But boy what a tragedy for our heroes. Love our heroes! But I ain't about to cop to anything illegal...
Watch this sleight of hand:
- If there is heroism to be found in the crowds of rioters who broke into the capitol and ransacked Pelosi’s office and searched the chambers of Congress for proof of malfeasance, it is surely this: People like Straka believed they were saving democracy from tyranny. They did not make this story up. This story was told to them, by people they trusted, for months.
CHOSE to believe. Chose. Made the choice to listen to the seditionists. Selected the craziest of voices to pay attention to, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Laura Jedeed has, in many ways, Hirsched it - interesting things to say, but has gotten way too close to her subjects. Either that or she legitimately doesn't have any experience with the John Birch Society or the LaRouche Democrats. There's a real desire to find the empathetic qualities in her subjects, and then pretend that our ability to empathize with them somehow exonerates them.
Cult of martyrs it may be but that video has 2400 views.
I didn't read it quite like that, though I see your point. My reading of what she's saying is that the average terrorist at Guantanamo means fuckall next to Bin Laden. Seems like her real confusion is that we haven't tried to hunt down the Bin Ladens of the J6 movement, which I guess she thinks is the Fox News guys. I'm not sure I agree with her, because our civil court system is hunting them down with a coldblooded killer's instinct. The only thing Fox will ever understand is punitive monetary penalties, so I hope that Dominion's ask of $5 billion or whatever ridiculous number is actually close to the true judgement against Fox. We're only in pretrial and they've already got Murdoch to admit that he knew it was a lie but thought it was good business nonetheless.There's a real desire to find the empathetic qualities in her subjects, and then pretend that our ability to empathize with them somehow exonerates them.
She's one of my favorite journalists right now, but our opinions have diverged greatly when it comes to the threat potential of the remaining Trumpers. She's embedded with them and was chased out of Portland by the Antifa purity-ring there so she's got a little bit of an axe to grind against us poor, poor, benighted liberals. I think that fundamentally she sees teh craziey within the fascists and applies it to the power they had on the assumption that they will have it again... and fundamentally I see teh craziey within the fascists and recognize it as a death spiral. I've seen this death spiral before. It happened in the wake of Iran-Contra. As soon as Reagan's halo was tarnished the opportunists of the Republican Party started scrambling for Life After Reagan while the guys who had gone all-in went Giuliani on it. There's a real need among the extremist idealists to presume that the extremist opportunists hold their beliefs for ideological, rather than opportunistic reasons. They're wrong and always have been. Much of politics is executed by people who like the sausage-making. They like the backroom deals. They like the posturing. And, like cockroaches, they survive every nuclear holocaust. That video up there is the death throes of a movement.
It's a $1.6 billion defamation suit, so still a bit less than 10% of Fox Corp. They'd feel it, but not enough to shudder their doors. And judging by some of Tucker's ongoing behavior, it's pretty unclear to me that a loss for Fox would really change much besides the network telling slightly more legally-defensible lies.
I wonder how much the judgment would matter to Comcast/Charter/Etc's carry packages. Fox is a net loss from an advertising standpoint; at this point if Comcast were to decide you need to opt in to buy Fox News they'd be dead in six months. There will come a time when the country has decided Fox is too toxic to be subsidized and when that happens it will vanish with a quickness. Really, the only thing that gives them an edge over NewsMax or NRATV is legacy.
Ah, and Smartmatic has another $2.7 billion case against Fox, so you're basically correct. Yeah lol the discovery process has been brutal. Depositions too. Surely these are winnable suits.
Looks like Billy B is auditioning for a 3rd stint as AG https://www.wsj.com/articles/dominion-should-lose-its-case-against-fox-defamation-voting-trump-election-malice-sullivan-hosts-1e6a8a11?st=wud2ju69afjm6wg&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Alt-title: "I regret not endorsing Trump's election lies". Motherfucker, everybody knew the claims were false! YOU knew! If you don't think Murdoch or other Fox organizational mechanisms had an obligation to step in after reviewing proposed teleprompter transcripts from people who genuinely may be too stupid to parse fact from fiction (looking at you, Dobbs, Bartiromo, Hannity, Watters, Pirro), then that's because you're stupid. But you're not stupid, Bill! You're fucking bad-faithing it. The slandering of Dominion and SmartMatic extended FAR after your little DoJ investigations of nothing had finished up. It wasn't like pundits were saying "Donald Trump claims the election was stolen", they were saying "THE ELECTION WAS STOLEN!". This is so fucking simple, Bill. And you're absolutely right, this is EXACTLY like when he wrote an article savaging the Mueller investigation that landed him the Trump AG role. And then famously mischaracterized the results of the Mueller investigation, according to Mueller. Since J6, I think Trump has managed to dissolve many people's last remaining shred of dignity. There is now no bridge too far for folks like Billy Barr. Meanwhile, Merrick Garland cosplays Butters from South Park. "W-w-w-w-w--w-w-well but I, I-I-I-I-I don't wanna b-be called p-p-p-pol-political". Dude there is nothing you can do to elevate your standing among fascists if you're not fully on board with their bullshit or staying completely silent. It's damned if you do, damned if you don't. Prosecuting even low-level J6 offenders was more than enough to put you in the "not fully on board with their bullshit" camp. edit: do NOT go the WSJ article's comments section. WSJ subscribers are supposed to be the most sophisticated and intellectual people in the conservative movement! They are lost.subjecting news outlets to the prospect of outsize liability whenever they report on newsworthy allegations that turn out to be false
I have a theory. So back in the '50s the networks got busted for faking quiz shows. This launched an amendment to the communications act and the flourishing of offices devoted to "Broadcast Standards and Practices" (BS&P) to ensure that games of chance and skill portrayed on television were actually games of chance and skill. As you might imagine, BS&P had a hard time with reality television. Plenty of suits, none of them ever made it to judgement. Always around BS&P and fairness. The standard approach to getting this shit to settle is by arguing that reality television isn't a competition, it's pro wrestling. 'cuz thing of it is? The network won't take a hit if they say reality television is fake. People will still watch it, because it's entertainment. Thus, for 20 years, plaintiffs have taken their pennies-on-the-dollar settlements. I don't think the Murdochs suffer from saying Fox News isn't news. I think the conservative movement, on the other hand, suffers A LOT. They will never again be able to argue that reality is on their side - their principle outlet will have been revealed to be biased entertainment and everything they've ever argued for will be over. They'll have to start over with MSNBC and CNN, who will point at the Murdochs going "we aren't actually news" and say "but we ARE news and if we don't toe the line, we're fucking toast." I think the Bill Barrs of the world are abso-fucking-lutely terrified of Fox's easiest layup defense: "we aren't actually news, just look at all the hare-brained shit we air." Fox will have to post a disclaimer before every show, pay some sort of fine for not clearly labeling entertainment and move the fuck on. The conservative movement, on the other hand, will be in the wilderness. That'd be my defense, anyway. If I'm the Murdochs, and I've determined that my dog has gone rabid, I'm going to put it down. I'm diversified enough that it won't really matter, and besides it worked last time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_of_the_World#End_of_publication _________________________ I think Garland hasn't lowered the boom yet because there's so much more rot than we know. Russia is explicitly involved, we just don't know how much. Who knows who else is gonna show up in this. The fact that the National Enquirer has been allowed to skate so far is really suspicious to me... and while I don't want to get all pins-on-maps with it, I do think that "conspiracy" is a pretty easy allegation to make against the Trump organization and conspiracy charges always take fucking forever. And if you want to keep this sort of thing from happening again? You'd best do it right. And yes. The WSJ's comments section makes me lose faith in humanity freshly every time.
Tucker simply yearns for a more effective and sinister tyrant than Trump. Less buffoonish. It'd make Tucker's job easier. Ron DeSantis has entered the chat
Tucker Carlson doesn't see himself as a professional buffoon, which is all that matters to Tucker Carlson. He behaves accordingly. "Could a professional buffoon be the nation's singularly most-watched political commentator? Besides Joe Rogan? And, occasionally, other buffoons?" - Tucker Carlson's conscience And he's actually got a point! He feeds the base what they want, one node downstream of Trump himself. As recent court filings show. DeSantis probably won't win the GOP nomination, btw. Tiny Meatballs, Tiny D., Ron, will be skewered in the primaries by Trump, unless DeSantis stoops lowwwww, which seems surprisingly hard for DeSantiwhatever given Ron's scumbaggery on LGBTQ rights, censorship of e.g. school books, press criticisms, and bucking of many other policies that are generally popular among Florida voters. The disconnect between voting issues yielded via poll and actual voter choices has perhaps never been more pronounced than it is right now in Florida. I dunno. You'll probably have a hot take, I'm sure, which is A-OK. Trump will probably be more easily defeated by a Biden re-run than Ronnie, so, hey, what're you gonna do? (rhetorical) All that said, you used to think Trump would've lost much more of his support by now, right? What do you think now? (not rhetorical)
Oh yes he does. Paul Blart Mall Cop is fucking over the minute the public views him unfiltered, without the fawning press and edits created by the bothsides teach-the-controversyism of the professional punditry. Dude makes Jeb Bush look like The Fonz. What support are we talking about, exactly? You linked this yourself - CPAC has gone from this heralded anointing at the heart of half a season of Succession to a John Birch Society sideshow. At no point in my college career could I cross the quad and not be heckled by LaRouche cultists. Once a failure has been canonized he will lock in some supporters for life. It didn't matter that LaRouche hadn't been relevant for ten years, there were eager young dewy-eyed dipshits who wanted to tell you about America's Best Socialism every fuckin' day of the week. Trump will be with us for the foreseeable future? But he's become a wedge issue, not a threat.Tucker Carlson doesn't see himself as a professional buffoon
DeSantis probably won't win the GOP nomination, btw.
All that said, you used to think Trump would've lost much more of his support by now, right?
Even WSJ has started writing editorials saying, “Um this is kinda fuct.” The thing is though, you have to read between the lines because they say that but couched in a very heavy dose of Hunter Biden and Deep State so that they don’t make their readers’ heads explode.
Piggybacking the thread... even though it's Tim Miller (former Jeb! 2016 GOP primary campaign staffer), his CPAC journaling was pretty OK. But like is the case w/ Tim, I struggle with forgiveness for the types who drew a line in the sand wayyyyyy too far down the beach from me. Pseudo-neutral MSM (like Jonathon Chait, Matt Yglesias) is in the process of failing due to religious both-sidesing. I have enjoyed Jedeed's work, and we've interacted in the tweetzone (I cringed at this but will inflict it upon ye), but she's just a little too gun-enthusiast for my liking. I guess I can kinda understand why. Great sense of humor, though.