On the subject of journalistic lying, I long ago noticed a technique that is very frequently used. I suppose you could call it “headline deception.” It is ubiquitous. Does anyone know if this is taught as a deliberate propaganda technique in journalism schools, perhaps with more deceptive poetic name?
It starts with a half truth or outright lie in headlines of printed media. The article following begins by supporting the deception, then ends with a short paragraph that contains the truth. This allows
plausible deniability if the deception is exposed and becomes an issue. It spreads deception because almost nobody reads all the articles. Many false beliefs are implanted from searching the headlines.
Well, there's Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
You could think of the "lie in the headline, admit the truth below the fold" as an extension of the basic principle here.
Plenty of people talk about this problem but I haven't heard anybody name the phenomena. And I think you're right, it's completely intentional.
There are some subtler ways to lie to people who can't be bothered to read the full article too, like deceptive emphasis. For example, in the phrase, "there is no evidence that so-and-so is a murderous lunatic", you bold "so-and-so is a murderous lunatic". People who only skim articles will tend to read the emphasized text and pass over the contradictory context, since normally bolding is meant to set out key points in an article.
Another even subtler practice that you sometimes see is crafting a convoluted sentence with multiple clauses and parentheticals, in which emphasis is placed on the lie and difficult-to-parse qualifiers contradict it, knowing that less literate readers won't be able to parse it correctly. Unfortunately I'm not a trained propagandist and so cannot craft an effective example of this one, but I sometimes notice the technique being employed.
The end result of these and other practices is that a whole lot of not-very-bright people get the impression the propagandist wants them to have, but the propagandist can't be sued for libel, which I suppose is the intention.
Fukitol: I really appreciate your comment and support. I’m getting quite a few replies without comment, so I’m not sure others have seen this propaganda technique or if my brief message caused them to think. Can you think of a catchier more memorable and descriptive name? I have to say spellcheck thoroughly got me. I intended “more descriptive,” not “more deceptive.” Mea culpa. I probably left the “s” out of descriptive.
While intelligence varies widely in the public, my purpose is to get more people to learn this propaganda technique. Then, perhaps you might be able to change to a more optimistic screen name. I do entirely sympathize with your sentiment in our current state!
In marketing there’s something called a “Loss leader,“ we’re an item is loudly advertised at a price so low that it results in a loss to the seller. But, that loss pricing lures people into the store, where they will spend more money on other things.

This  propaganda tactic your reference  might be called a, ”Lie leader”.
Excellent. Thanks. Also makes me think “Head Lie” or “Head Lie Leader.” What do you think? I lean toward “Head Lie Leader,” but “Lie Leader” may be clearer.
Hah, I'm a little beyond optimism in the short term. I think we have a real rough ride ahead of us. Hopeful that after the dust settles something good will come of it.
Anyway, no I don't have any clever turns of phrase to offer. It seems like a lot of people know it's all bullshit and that's a good start (and a fine word).
@GlennG You yourself mentioned recently that traditional political labels are failing us. Ascribing 'free speech' to 'the Right' instead of it's traditional home on 'the Left' reinforces that as well as the decidedly illiberal behavior of Progressives in their support of censorship. This episode in the House leadership squabble reinforces that.
So long as we continue to support the traditional 'teams' we all lose. So let's lose the capital letters and move from noun to adjectives, perhaps. I'd love to hear/participate in a discussion of what characterizes the bulk of this nation and how we label it.
We need an viable alternative to Dems and Repubs. I think there is a yearning for equality, fairness, honesty, and a focus on people over institutions. That yearning I believe includes a swath of people that supercede today's labels.
but the bigger problem is LEADERSHIP! you can create all the alternatives you want but without leadership, they will fail. Our government yearns for leadership (there is none). The president is not a leader, he is a follower. The congress and senate have no leadership. The country is desperate for leadership. We are failing as a republic without leadership. No where to be found.
I don't know whether you are kidding or not, but even though I didn't vote for Trump, or Clinton I I felt better with Trump in office, even though he implemented policies I didn't agree with at all. However no wars, and now the democrats seem down right crazy, and it wouldn't surprise me if Biden doesn't end his reign with a nuclear war. A black woman for vice president, okay, but this one doesn't know what the f*k she's doing, and a president who can't find his way off a stage. You just wonder whose running this show.
Since 95% or more of corporate media journalists (aka liars) self-identify as Democrats, I think it’s entirely accurate to say at this time, that Democrats are the party representing censorship and state propaganda. Should that change, I have faith that Glenn will report it.
This time is different. Voters have never before been so fed up with dysfunctional warring political duopoly. A new party ("Rino Party"?) would draw from independents, Democrats and Republicans and would quickly become the majority party,
Voters are definitely fed up, but the duopoly advantages are baked into the entire system, the entire mainstream media consists of propaganda outlets pledged to one or the other; it would have to be a popular uprising large enough to surmount all of that and there are too many sheep out there.
Ah, OK, tomorrow will always be the same as today. Big inflection points never happen.
Funny, you sound just like the folks who told me in 1982 that social media would never be a thing. That was a decade before we sold our Delphi social network to Rupert Murdoch and AOL bought Time Warner (not the other way around) for $160 billion.
So yeah, things never change. Get back to sleep, niitey nite...
Voters have been so fed up they voted the democrats back into office and they have control of the Senate while the republicans beat them in the house by a very small margin? People are a big part of the problem. Most of the people in this country are not all that knowledgeable. Look at their news sources.
I was always a registered democrat and certainly have seen them become more conservative, less liberal in their policies through the years. Bill Clinton really shifted the party to the right and I was no longer happy with them, although I did vote for Gore, because of his position and concern on the issue of climate change. For various reasons I always thought the 2001 election was stolen. Although I voted for Obama and thought he would shift the party back to a more liberal stance, he didn't. The only one I've come across who feels he was no liberal is Jimmy Dore. During the Trump years they lost me forever, and not only because they tried to remove an elected president from office, and gave their continued support for our neo-liberal wars, but during the Trump years I saw them become very authoritarian. They all thought Trump was an illegitimate president and had to go. No one who adopts that position is any kind of liberal. Their rigidity in this regard grew over a period of four years, and all stuck to the same Trump story operating in lockstep. I saw the same thing happened to those who voted for the democrats, their base, and on CNN, and MSNBC as well. They have become more hateful, and more extreme. No wonder they demand full allegiance from their base, all authoritarians do.
This really has gone too far. I don't know what's going on, whether it's the desire to increase your subscriber base or you've actually become a gullible fool for or a tool of the right/GOP. Going after what's become of the left is great, but trying to portray the right as if they're substantially better is beyond ludicrous. Here, you seem to to be saying the right is a diverse lot that doesn't engage in attempts to enforce a party line while the left ruthlessly enforces its narrow-minded views, as if you never heard RINO, or know of the countless republicans who got primaried or just quit to avoid it, starting back in the tea party days. You seem to actually think Trump isn't as bad as he's seen by most non-MAGATs to be [excepting all the Russian BS] when anyone half-aware for the past 30+ years knows exactly who and what he is [grifter/con man], and it doesn't take fake news to see it, all you need do is listen to what he says. E.g., his usually quite open contempt for anyone not going along with whatever he says, and open calls for and obvious attempts to retaliate against violators. The fear of by far the majority of GOP to not cross Trump couldn't be more obvious, or pathetic, just look at Graham and Cruz FFS.
And worse, calling Schiff a pathological liar while quoting that odious toad Carlson about Trump losing tens of millions while president. Really? As if he hasn't engaged in massive tax fraud and is really the most honest president? If he lost millions while raking in the $$ exploiting the office, he's even more incredibly incompetent a businessman than was already apparent before becoming president. Does anyone know if Trump actually knows when he's lying?
I'm all for going after the left's recent and very lamentable resorting to dishonesty, to attacks on free speech, and even conspiracy theory nonsense, but they're just noobs compared to the GOP where this stuff is their bread and butter, honed to pro-levels by decades of practice. Maybe it's the attacks you've suffered due to your factual reporting, that doesn't excuse attacking the left with contrasting favorable views of the right when what the left is doing is essentially behaving exactly like the right has always behaved.
As David Carradine (Grasshopper) told us in “Kung Fu”, “A man is defined by his actions”.
Right now, the Democrats are the authoritarian, pro-war, anti-free-speech party. Sorry if the truth hurts. Hopefully this will change one day. I mean, look how the Republicans morphed from the big corporation country club party, to one supported primarily by blue collar workers. It could happen similarly to the Dems, theoretically. But for right now, the Dems are borderline Nazi.
This exemplifies exactly what I was talking about. The Republicans are anti-war? What's your evidence? Have they tried to slash the DoD budget? Have exhibited any significant remorse over their past record? Being against the one war in Ukraine is not anti-war. And free speech? The don't say gay, book-banning, library attacking GOP, those free speech advocates? And FFS, you're about as gullible as they come, where donations come from isn't a reliable indicator of the policies of those getting the funds, tell me how the GOP has been consistently less corporate than the Dims. The Dims are way better at acting like they support blue collar workers, they've just had a lot more practice at such deceits.
I'm surprised not to see a bunch of hate-filled spewings by the usual MAGATs that inhabit these comment sections, even more surprised that I got 2 likes. This made me reread what I said and unfortunately there was something I wrote that somehow got edited out [by me] while re-rewriting. And that was to say something like:
It may have been wrong to bar Marjorie Taylor Greene from committees but she's a truly horrible human being and doesn't deserve respect, she's made it clear she hates reality and the 1st Amendment. She's a hateful, ignorant, moronic bigot, if you think pointing that out that makes me some kind of elitist, then you think being a hateful ignorant moronic bigot is the norm. I can't abide anyone who isn't appalled by such folks.
Look in the mirror. You're the person Glenn is talking about. Someone who will jump on the bandwagon of hate because, feelings. It may have been "wrong" to take away Marjorie Taylor Green's committee's, "BUT" she is a terrible human being who doesn't deserve respect. Is she any worse on the first amendment than say Adam Schiff? Who actually asked to get a reporter kicked off Twitter? She hates reality!! Is calling men woman reality? You dress up the most misogynistic men in women's clothing and then when he spews the most vile shit at actual women you hate, you clap like a trained seal. Because these fake women are fighting the patriarchy or something. Is she more bigoted than Cori Bush, calling Byron Donalds a token black for the Republicans, while ignoring that Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Sam Brinton, Richard Levine, aka Rachel Levine, are all tokens. It's strange how certain people depending on your ideologies are held to different standards. You proved Glenn's point
Anyone with the racism, homophobia, and religious zealotry of Greene is a terrible human being, that she promotes policies that reflect her thinking is more than enough justification for my 'feelings'. This is amplified by her being a Q'Anon delusional. She's an admitted Christian Nationalist and, despite her BS denials, is a white supremacist. Her attacks on gays is repugnant, all the BS you listed in garbled prose about men/woman is incoherent, what are you trying to say? Is it about drag queens, or trans folks, or gays in general? Greene hates reality because she's a Q'Anon fool, because she's a Christian Nationalist which entails a hatred of the 1st Amend and a core principle of the founding of this nation, because she hates gays which is a product of her rancid christianity which also entails a mindset where facts are anathema, she hates reality because she thinks the election was stolen, she hates reality because she denies climate change calling it a 'woke agenda'. I could go on but that's more than enough. Just being a christian nationalist should bar you from public office since you can't truthfully swear to uphold the Constitution. Show me where I exhibited a double standard? You seem to think I support the Dims and that couldn't be more wrong.
That's the problem with feelings is sometimes they're irrational and illogical. Feelings give you permission to rationalize hate, because someone doesn't hold the same ideology as you. Do you hold the same contempt for other religions as you do for her Christian Nationalism? How about the Black Hebrew Israelites? How about the Nation of Islam? Catholic's,?Buddhism? Jewish faith? Her attack on gays? Have you ever called a gay Republican a fag. A Black Republican a nig**r? A White Republican woman a cunt? It's all okay though because your feelings tell you so. You live in your feelings, so I guess you don't believe in reality either. You don't believe in the first amendment either, or the founding principles. Nobody who holds that amendment dear like you say you do, would ever deny it to another person. But, here you are. Should certain religion beliefs bar you from holding office? Or, just the ones you don't like. Does election denial only run one way? Hakeem Jeffreys denied that Trump won in 2016, and was nominated for Speaker of the House. Or, does your feelings say that's different. Your whole explanation is a double standard.
It was refreshing to listen to all the GOP debate that occurred during the Trump presidency. Oh wait that never happened. The second any Republican steps out of line, the party looks to throw a new candidate against them in the next primary.
This is pathetic how badly Greenwald turns a blind eye to the GOP. Rightfully criticize the Democrats as much as they deserve, but show a tiny bit of intellectual honesty when it comes to Republicans.
It seems you are turning a blind eye to reality. There is a lot of truth to the problem of primary’s being used to push self thinkers to one or the other ideological poll in both parties. Democrats also use single issues to primary the ideological outliers. The Democrats are more aggressive in this as befits their totalitarian leanings.
The abortion issue clearly demonstrates this. Democrats, with rare exceptions, have to show loyalty to unlimited abortion. A few even endorse postnatal infanticide. Every Republican state abortion regulation has some exceptions. Very few of the Democratic legislations conform to Roe Vs Wade in the third trimester. Look it up. Find the original decision. Don’t rely on media or Wiki.
Not really what I was talking about. Glenn was speaking about the Democrats at the federal level. On what topics or subjects are Republicans having vibrant debates? It never happened under Trump and hard to see that happening now. McCarthy not getting the speaker voted isn’t evidence of that either
On the topic of party leadership, for one, and what that represents policy-wise. The conservative factions of the Repubs are today (Thursday) gaining concessions from McCarthy. It’s authentically “democracy in action”.
Question to you : if Biden is impeached, how many Democrats will vote to impeach, or to convict? If the answer is 0, then how can you refute the articles title, “Democrats obey, Republicans debate”?
There were how many Republicans voting for Trump’s impeachment??? Again, on what topics are Republicans having debates? Democrats deserve the criticism they get, but acting like the GOP is some well functioning, open minded political party is bogus. The House speaker vote just points to their current dysfunction and nothing more.
You’re trying to force in a narrative that just isn’t accurate. What debate is happening right now? It’s failing vote after failing vote. There’s nothing substantive being discussed.
You make a very clear, indisputable point. We won’t see Democrats do what Republicans did with Nixon, They pretty much always put party and power over the good of the people.
Sadly, we are condemned to a two party system which, some people argue, is really two competing groups within a single party dominated by corporate and wealthy interest groups - not unlike the AFC and NFC within the NFL. Instead of a democracy, our country has become a kleptocracy with people elected to public office having no concerns for the public welfare and concerns only for their own selfish interests. This is true for Republicans and Democrats alike and would probably be true for any politicians from any other political party.
I suspect that moral bankruptcy is a requirement for becoming a politician. Who else would want the job? Only those who seek power, influence and wealth compete for the job and most, if not all, will do anything to achieve their goal.
As an alternative, I have often proposed that, instead of electing our public officials, we draft them at random from the population excluding only those under 18 years of age and those who are institutionalized - pay them what we pay jurors serving jury duty - deny them all the perks of office enjoyed by our politicians - and compel them to serve a single 3 year term.
How could that possibly be any worse than what we have?
Sorry, no. One of the worst aspects of our politics is that the people who aim for political or "policy" positions from a young age *have no experience of living as adults* under the systems they create, vote for, and administer. Recall--if you're old enough--I think it was George Mitchell who, after retiring from politics opened a B&B, and wrote of what an eye-opener it was for him to have to be on the other side of all the laws and regulations...
So no. Let's have a random draft of those 35 and older.
You are almost there. It was George McGovern, a long time liberal Senator who ran for president in 1972. He lost in landslide. He was considered far left at the time, but would be called a moderate or left of center today. After the Senate he bought a small resort. He was honest enough to admit he was overwhelmed by all the regulations he had helped pass off to the regulatory state.
I was in college at the time of that election and thought almost everyone but me was pretty far left based on the loud voices. For a lib/con issue that was being voted in a straw poll, I did a quixotic campaign against an organized group, with the school paper backing them. In a secret ballot the conservative votes won the majority. Today that’s known as the Sandinista effect. Wiki, et al, has pushed that down the memory hole.
Term limits might be good but they are hardly sufficient. Let's add to them a *residency requirement*. Something about being ineligible to run for an office representing "X" until you've been a resident of "X" for one term or 4 years, whichever is greater.
That too. How about a soul? I once heard Pelosi say she was on the intel comm at the time they were deciding to go to war with Iraq, knew there were no weapons of mass destruction. Of course she told no one, or maybe she did, but maybe she is sworn to secrecy. She seemed totally unaware of the horror of such a statement. A decision that destroyed a country, killed and displaced millions.
I wish that member of our Congress, the Senate, like the president had term limits, then you wouldn't have people like, well, McConnell, and too often getting sickeningly rich from there many years of making connections.
Then the previous office staff, who know the ropes, are usually hired by a new member (except with known ideological conflict with the new member). They could end up in charge.
It is a big issue. The congressional staff have connections with each other and lobbyist. The founders of the Constitution put BOUNDARIES in place to protect us from the horrors of DIRECT democracy. The chief dangers are temporary public passions or charismatic scoundrels who can threaten freedom. Consider the French, Bolshevik, and Nazi Germany Revolutions or the democratic execution of Socrates in Athens.
The Constitution’s boundaries are first the Bill of Rights, then the separation of powers with staggered elections for each branch: House- direct election every two years, Senators- elected for six years by elected state legislatures with elections of 1/3 of the Senate every 2 years, The more indirectly elected Senate chose Supreme Court Justices for life terms. Except for the House, which the founders considered the most risky part, all came from increasingly indirect democratic votes. Note that even the Supreme Court has democratic roots.
Woodrow Wilson did some damage by creating direct Senate election, and further empowering the bureaucratic agencies, far and away the most indirectly democratic power.
How did McConnel get so rich? Insider trading. In fact congress doesn't write laws. They lobbysists do.
All congress does is vote on how many trillions to counterfeit, who will get the counterfeit money, and then they inside trade, knowing where the counterfeit money will go. Some of the worst ones also launder some of the counterfeit back to their families and campaigns.
I was always a registered democrat and certainly have seen them become more conservative, less liberal in their policies through the years. Bill Clinton really shifted the party to the right and I was no longer happy with them, although I did vote for Gore, because of his position and concern on the issue of climate change. For various reasons I always thought the 2001 election was stolen. Although I voted for Obama and thought he would shift the party back to a more liberal stance, he didn't. The only one I've come across who feels he was no liberal is Jimmy Dore. For a long time many recognized they side lined their liberals and were more conservative, and less concerned with their base. During the Trump years they lost me forever, and not only because they tried to remove an elected president from office, and gave their continued support for our neo-liberal wars, but during the Trump years I saw them become very authoritarian. They all thought Trump was an illegitimate president and had to go. They tried to lie him out of office, and defined his base as a bunch of deplorables. No one who adopts that position is any kind of liberal. Their rigidity in this regard grew over a period of four years, and all stuck to the same Trump story and operated in lockstep. I saw the same thing happen to those who voted for the democrats, their base, and on CNN, and MSNBC as well. They have become more hateful, and more extreme. No wonder they demand full allegiance from their base, all authoritarians do.
Fran, I saw the same change. I have always been independent and switched my vote and even in some elections, couldn’t vote. In 2016 I saw fatal character flaws in both candidates and wrote in Rand Paul, for less government and no wasteful spending. I talked with a diehard Hillary voter when Trump won and told her that even though my candidate didn’t win I always wished and prayed the new president would lead our nation well. I was disappointed in the looting, burning and screaming done in January 6, 2017😔. This person’s narrative was so negative towards Trump that I finally said she sounded like a “sore looser.” Mind you I didn’t vote for Trump However, our relationship was and is forever changed 😞 After that I noticed more and more the vitriol and hate filled msm media. I am no longer listening to msm media and have gone to whole other news platforms that are not part of the elitist bureaucracy. The best democrat with an open mind that I follow is Tulsi and she left the dnc. Sticking independent and common sense values. The dnc and msm is an echo chamber that doesn’t see me.
Just an aside, I also like Rand Paul, and Tulsi and feel both have a genuine sense of integrity. I too had a similar experience. I didn't vote for anyone in the 2016 election, which brought down the wrath of a life long friend, a cousin, now dead from cancer, and a brother, and that relationship has become strained. I no longer talk to that friend since she felt my choice entitled her to be verbally abusive. I still don't fully understand the degree of enmity Trump's presidency caused. They hated his base, and thought of them as inferior, stupid, and yet saw themselves as liberal. They could justify the lies the democrats spewed which tried to remove an elected president from office, which I could not. A distant cousin, very nice, educated, her husband is a doctor, well off, ran an anti-Trump Facebook page, and titled it Republicans for Biden. All her well off, well educated friends on Facebook loathed Trump and his base. When Covid reared it's ugly head Trump made a remark about chlorine and said something could be developed that was like it and could be taken internally to kill the virus, Of course he was talking about the development of an anti-viral. However all her Facebook friends gobbled up the anti-Trump propaganda lie pushed by the highly biased media that he was telling people to drink chlorine. I confronted one woman on this issue who was pushing this lie, and she responded by telling me to kill myself by drinking chlorine. I got her back, since that was over the top. I told her I was going to report her death threat to Facebook, and she unfriended herself to the site. Good riddance! A meme circulating on Facebook was put up by a second cousin who came from a wealthy family, and had everything she could possibly want, but she posted the meme that Trump's base were an uneducated and immoral lot. I told her no one who professes to be liberal entertains such a thought and puts that on display. Of course that propaganda was pushed by Clinton when she referenced Trump's base as a half basket of deplorables. The hypocrisy was mind boggling, and still is. I'm sure there are a lot of people who had this kind of experience in one way or another during a period that was insane, and still is.
We both have a lot of experience among the tolerable intolerants. Just mind boggling. So I go to rumble and substack and locals and callin to see the whole gamma and find refreshing air. I read over thirty doctors off the top of my head regarding the covid disaster from the beginning and of course, not taking the jabs, I was a non compassionate outlaw. Trump should have talked to Drs. From Africa, India, Argentina, Honduras etc. to get better advice. He trusted the cdc and fda, but so did a lot of Americans. Enough said. I am not bothered anymore about being on the edge of the boiling pot. Censorship and derogatory name calling is used as their defense from the truth.
In regard to Covid let me bring up Fauci and AIDS. My brother died of it back in the late 1980's and I knew from everything I heard and read it was transmitted through the exchange of bodily fluids. Not long ago someone posted a video clip of Fauci telling a reporter at the height of the epidemic that they're finding that some small children living in AIDS household are getting AIDS. He then claimed it might be more easily spread then we thought. My background is in science and I know that based on such minimal information you do not make that kind of assertion, and of course it went viral, people went nuts, and caused such needless suffering for those who had the disease. Hospital personnel, doctors, nurses, aids wouldn't come near these patients. There care was atrocious, needlessly so. Fauci is just too self serving. God knows what were're going to find out years from now about covid.
Big pharma and the bureaucrats in power whose goal is money will cover Fauci. I am just amazed that some consider him a benevolent godfather. His lies were one right after another and the dunces from the Lancet covered him. Malfeasance. Sorry about your brother. Awful and tragic.
Thank you. Sometimes I think people put to much faith in those who are scientists, True science is a subject that seeks truth, but too often those who implement it misinterpret results, or just make things up.
Glenn, you wonderfully and informatively did it again. Nailed the truth about the both parties and their pitfalls as well as the savage lies in journalism that have led to the polarization and total mistrust of normal Americans for the msm. So disgusting. Personally I am glad to see the house members fighting for rule changes that are NOT insignificant. We, who are not in the elitist group, vote for common sense, moral integrity, and down to business rules that limit/stop big hidden selfish agendas (corruption). How is the msm media framing these arguments? A disaster, division, weakness? No, it is democracy in action. The Republican Party, like some members of Fox, just have more than one voice. As an independent for all my years, I think this is what our forefathers would want: Open debate. Sadly, the elite bureaucracy and mainstream media has no idea what that’s all about. But we have all heard you and many others blocking the din. Thanks for bringing us a clear view.
The story about your dad first realizing the media is in the business of lies - yeah, that's often how it starts. You notice an indefensible lie about something that you personally witnessed or were a part of. Not a mistake, not an error, but just a flat-out easily demonstrable lie.
And then you start listening when other people say the media lied about something they had personally witnessed or were a part of, and you see their stories often add up because it's really not that hard these days to find original sources and evidence if you're not terrified of wrongthink. And then you start to wonder, is any of it actually true? How could you know?
This is the thing about being a liar - once you establish yourself as liar, nobody will believe you even when telling the truth happens to serve your interests. We have no way of knowing whether you're telling the truth this time, because there's no presumption of trust.
So when a liar makes a claim, you have to assume you know nothing more than you did before other than "this is what this known liar wants me to believe". You can't know if they're lying or telling the truth without independently proving it.
That's my position on the media. When they say something I only know that they want me to think it's true. If it's something I care about then I have to go do the work of digging up original sources, looking for independent verification, checking whether it lines up with established fact, doing the math for myself. If only there was some sort of profession dedicated to doing this work for me...
Greenwald's stuff about the Twitter controversy over Andrew Tate adds little to this episode and would be better left out. Greenwald is complaining that a small number of mainstream journalist who mentioned Tate's presence on Rumble also tied Rumble to Greenwald in their tweets. But there is a substantial connection between Greenwald and Rumble. Greenwald is not only paid by Rumble but is in a sense Rumble's biggest advocate. And of the people with a Rumble show, Greenwald may be the best known in some sense -- Greenwald has even *designed* his Rumble show to attract attention in the circles where the topics debated on Twitter are followed. Still, Greenwald spends the last few minutes of this episode vituperating because a couple of reporters on Twitter called Rumble a "Peter Thiel and Glenn Greenwald Company" or "Glenn Greenwald and Peter Thiel's YouTube knockoff" -- it may not be exactly how he would like the connection between himself and Rumble described, but there is a genuine connection between Greenwald and Rumble and these Twitter descriptions are vague enough that they're arguably accurate. When Greenwald tries to twist this into Yet Another Proof That The Mainstream Media Lies, it's tedious because it's too centered on himself and too much a matter of subjective interpretation. Arguably these reporters did nothing wrong; Greenwald himself is not always quite as scrupulous about truth as I would like.
This kind of thing can reasonably stay on Twitter, and there's no need to stuff it in during the last few minutes of an episode of Greenwald's daily news video series.
> it's too centered on himself and too much a matter of subjective interpretation
In what way is Glenn Greenwald's ownership of rumble a matter of subjective interpretation? Rumble either is or isn't Glenn Greenwald's company. If it is not, someone lied. Glenn either did or did not pay this Tate character money. If he did not, someone lied.
If media personalities uncritically repeated those lies, which would be very easy for them to "fact check", then they are liars, not reporters. They casually engage in the act of spreading falsehood, and have no moral or professional concern with ensuring the things they say are truthful. They feel no shame in lying, and lying does not harm their career or reputation. We can safely say they are in the business of lying, since whatever you do for money and fame is your business.
So here's another liar we can add to the list of liars in the media, and in that sense it's a relevant anecdote.
It would be easier to keep a list of the ones who have not yet been proven to be liars.
I see your point, but the tweets by @lib_crusher and @MarlowNYC that Greenwald mentioned didn't claim to report "Glenn Greenwald's ownership of Rumble". They didn't specifically call him an owner of Rumble, and their vague language about "Greenwald's" company could arguably just mean that it's a company Greenwald's associated with, not one he has an ownership stake in. So some of it does depend on "interpretation". Here are the tweets:
Still, I think the tweets' language counts as misleading -- this language could easily give readers the impression Greenwald is an owner of Rumble without saying so directly. So I'm going to withdraw my comment that these tweeters did nothing wrong. Greenwald is right to seek to correct the record when he sees these misleading tweets about him. I still wouldn't call the tweets lies though -- they're just misleading while arguably being technically true under one interpretation. And I think that when Greenwald spends the last part of his show claiming that they're lies and portraying it as yet another example of media lying, it does come off as too self-centered because his eagerness to call it "lying" blurs the role of interpretation. So on balance, I think it would be better if Greenwald just responded on Twitter rather than risking sounding tedious by spending the last part of his show saying flatly that these tweets are lies.
Greenwald's partisan attachments keep him from taking a genuinely populist position on the House Speaker's race. The Speakership has developed into a highly anti-democratic institution, constantly pushing Congress's work more and more into the realm of backroom deals, welcoming the lack of transparency that favors shady legislative outcomes, and pressuring members of Congress to listen to those with influence in DC rather than their own voters back home. But even though the current drama over the Speaker's election is an excellent opportunity to strengthen the people's voice over DC insiders, Greenwald instead treats it as a chance to glorify the Republican party as a whole over the Democrats, and the Greene-Gaetz wing of Congressional Republicans over the current leadership wing. What we should be opposing, above all, is an outcome where the Speaker and his leadership team still retains most of the centralized power that insider Speakers like Pelosi have grabbed for themselves, and yet Greenwald refuses to clearly oppose it and it's still likely to happen.
Just look at what Greenwald is willing to praise here. He actually praises the "horse trading" process where Kevin McCarthy offers sweet deals to various rank-and-file Republicans so that they will put him into the exalted power of the Speakership. Of course a lot of this horse-trading between politicians involves hidden secret deals, and inevitably many of them will be shady, but Greenwald praises the horse-trading and says "That's how politics ought to work". He steers his readers away from wanting to make improvements in this corrupt closed-door process. I guess Greenwald feels that the horse-trading process may, for now, possibly give more power to what he sees as an "anti-establishment" faction of Republicans, so he's willing to overlook the corruption in the process if it empowers the faction he likes. Likewise, he tries to make his readers think that the bargaining with so-called "anti-establishment" federal politicians has a chance of leading to a good outcome. But he shouldn't be thinking about how to give leverage to politicians in a given faction, but rather about how to empower regular voters as opposed to DC power centers like the Speakership and shady DC deals.
A longtime ally of Greenwald's, ex-representative Justin Amash, has been offering the kind of constructive way forward here that Greenwald conspicuously avoids. Amash has offered himself as a candidate for Speaker (a position he's eligible for despite not being in Congress) and he does want to cut down the centralized power of the Speakership, in a way that's far more serious than anything Kevin McCarthy has been offering to people like Rep. Greene and Rep. Gaetz. He has pledged to let committees do their work without interference, allow any representative to amend bills from the floor without prescreening of the amendments, and make sure representatives have adequate time to review bills before voting. He's promised to refrain from regularly waiving or suspending the rules the way Pelosi did, and he'll push for single-issue bills. He writes "The House should work as an open, accountable, deliberative body that welcomes the participation of every representative, regardless of party. Any speaker who doesn’t run the House this way is perpetuating oligarchy, dysfunction, and hyperpartisanship." -- twitter.com/justinamash/status/1610350324568449024
That seems clearly right to me, but Greenwald can't stand up for it and instead just endorses horse-trading instead. Resting content with horse-trading, which is likely to end up giving the eventual Speaker something fairly close to the excessively powerful central authority that people like Pelosi had, is a recipe for more disaster. Greenwald should be more straight with us about how serious changes in the Speakership are necessary, just as Amash did in the tweet I cited. In fact, Greenwald knows that the current process where leadership can stop certain things from coming up for a vote leads to awful outcomes -- he even mentions that Bernie Sanders' Yemen resolution would likely be denied a vote not just by Kevin McCarthy, but by "Republicans" in general. But he never reaches the conclusion that should be obvious: we need major changes in the rules, more or less on the scale of at least the changes Amash talked about..
Greenwald used to praise Amash from time to time, but the last time he did so on Twitter was November 13, two days before Amash announced his run for Speaker.. Amash has consistently stood up for a lot of the values Greenwald thinks are important -- probably more so than any current member of Congress. And Amash's campaign for speaker has aroused some interest. But Greenwald doesn't put in a good word for him. I'm aware that Amash has been willing to condemn some of Trump's more serious wrongdoing which Greenwald has remained at best silent on, and I would say that this is a point in favor of Amash's integrity. But why doesn't Greenwald put in a good word, either for Amash himself as a candidate or for the kind of changes Amash advocated even apart from Amash's own candidacy? Is it partly because Amash's integrity led him to a different position on Trump? I don't know, but it sure looks like Greenwald is letting himself be induced, by Amash's distance from power, to downplay what Amash is saying -- and that doesn't feel far from journalistic corruption to me. Amash's integrity doesn't shine as brightly as it should in Greenwald's mind, nor does Amash's history as a fellow fighter for many good causes.
More broadly, I would say that Greenwald is falling into a version of one of the mainstream media's corrupt practices. When the mainstream media has to report on a voting process that takes a long time with lots of failed votes, their reflex is to praise it as if it's "democracy in action". What they should be doing, however, is to look at why the voting process isn't straightforward, and whether there's any shadiness that their readers should know about. Often when shadiness is going on, nothing of that shadiness is visible to viewers except for a series of failed votes, unless journalists look deeper. But I don't think Greenwald even wants to look much deeper into the deals that reps are seeking and being offered (often quite selfish ones). He's boosting a faction of power-seekers, and he's not advocating for a better process like someone who supports the people would.
Correction: I should have mentioned that Greenwald did make a positive comment about Amash (not related to the Speaker race) a few weeks ago in his Dec 14 System Update episode. He also had Amash appear for a System Update interview, this time specifically on the Speaker race, just the other day. It's clear Greenwald hasn't forgotten how good Amash is, and even apart from Amash personally, Greenwald is doing some justice to the concerns I mentioned.
> [Pelosi] wanted the appearance of bipartisanship without the annoyance of actual disagreement and thus herself put the easier to manipulate Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger on the committee as her Republican pets
I see -- when Republicans disagree with the GOP establishment, they're independent thinkers; but when they happen to agree with the Democrats but not with most of their own party, at grave risk to their careers in the House, they're Pelosi's "pets". Got it.
I cannot sign in to Rumble to read the comments there. I tried using the "Forgot your password?" button to reset my password (to the same one), but I still could not sign in. I don't think I ever registered on Rumble, but I'm a subscriber to Glenn's Substack site, and I thought subscribers got free access to his articles on Rumble. Any advice?
I mostly share Glenn's views regarding the DNC and mainstream media and appreciate both his anger and the reasons for it, though not his affection for Republicans. Remember, their signature achievement under The Donald's regime was a massive tax break for the rich.
But he sometimes lets his rhetoric get a bit out of control. Two examples from this posting:
1) Ms Green "is clearly one of the most influential, trusted, and respected members of Congress"? Is this the same person who
- Claimed “If you want to win the war on Christmas, first you take out the person who makes Christmas possible. As I speak, Jewish space lasers are being trained on the North Pole.”
- "Liked" the commment "a bullet to the head would be quicker" as a way of dealing with Ms Pelosi.
- Claimed George Soros is a Nazi.
- Seems to think some of California's wildfires were caused by beaming down solar energy from satellites. Jewish space lasers again?
2) While Ms Pelosi's neighborhood does have private security and there is in fact a gate at its entrance, I believe it is not a gated community in the sense of requiring ID to enter. It's also true Google Maps will not show you street views other than from right outside, presumably for security reasons. From the street outside it you can see there is no guard station so you can walk right through the gate.
When the ACLU represented the White Supremacists in Skokie, Illinois. Do you think that they were supporting White Supremacists? Or, were they supporting the White Supremacists first amendment rights?
"In its 1934 pamphlet entitled 'Shall We Defend Free Speech for Nazis in America?' the ACLU had declared: 'We do not choose our clients. Lawless authorities denying their rights choose them for us..." "
Since you brought it up, having been politically sentient and followed the arguments, it was perfectly clear to me at the time: the 1st Amendment. I've seen no reason since to change that analysis.
Freedom of Speech is meaningless unless it extends to others whose views you find appalling.
You are confusing Trump with Biden. Trump cut taxes for everyone equally, but he did end a big tax loophole for the super rich. Don’t worry about them though. .Biden reinstated the loophole for them shortly after he took office with the help of Pelosi and Schumer.
On the other hand, it is true that MTG, as you say, speculated that a California fire was caused by beaming down solar energy from space (via "laser beam or light beam"). And she mentioned that she thought there was a suspicious connection to Rothschild Inc. This is where the idea came from that MTG was concerned about Jewish space lasers; she never said anything directly about Jews using lasers but a lot of people figured that, since she was coining a ridiculous conspiracy theory about Rothschild Inc being involved with starting a fire via "laser beam or light beam" and conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds are pretty much always anti-semitic, she must be concerned about Jewish space lasers. That then got turned into the New Yorker satirical piece which purported to actually quote her saying "Jewish space lasers are being trained on the North Pole", although the New Yorker should have realized that some people would have taken this as a real MTG quote as you did.
When MTG was misled by false online rumors into saying that Soros was a Nazi, that may not be much worse than MTG's adversaries being misled by a New Yorker satire into thinking that she claimed Jewish space lasers are being aimed at Santa.
I haven't seen the full "bullet in the head" post that was liked by MTG's account. MTG has refused to make clear whether she herself or someone on her staff was the one who pressed Like on that post.
But in general, while it's true that MTG is an authoritarian nut, we shouldn't be eager to believe she said every single crazy thing attributed to her without checking the facts.
Fair point. But there had to be parody in the first example: I was and remain confident that Ms Greene does not believe in Santa Claus. While you are also correct that she's refused to say she pressed the "like" button, she did not disavow it.
The thing is that liberal media satire of "dumb" Republican women regularly does get taken as fact. After a Saturday Night Live actress in 2008 portrayed the Republican vice-presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin as saying "I can see Russia from my house", many voters became convinced that Palin had actually spoken that falsehood, although Palin had really only made the true statement that there's an island in Alaska from which you can see Russia. Given that precedent, the New Yorker and Andy Borowitz (who wrote the New Yorker satire about MTG) should have known that Borowitz's piece would likely also lead many to believe as fact the false statement that MTG had claimed "Jewish space lasers are being trained on the North Pole".
You weren't the only one who was misled by that.
I did start out enjoying Borowitz's New Yorker satire about MTG, or at least some parts of it at the beginning. I even find myself thinking "Wouldn't it be funnier if Borowitz had written in a way which subtly indicated that MTG thought the North Pole was located in Alaska, on American soil, with the Jewish space lasers aimed there posing a threat not just to Santa but the USA homeland?" But being amusing like that isn't all that matters. It's just a false deprecating picture of MTG, the kind where the stupidity of the picture infects the person who enjoys it too much. There's a lesson to learn here and it's not simply that MTG is dumb.
You've questioned Greenwald's point that MTG is "clearly one of the most influential, trusted, and respected members of Congress" but you failed to mention that Greenwald included the qualifier "among the Republican voting base". That makes his statement a little more believable. I still don't think Greenwald's line is 100% correct, despite the 1.7 million followers on her congressional Twitter account, because I don't believe MTG could win a Republican primary in most congressional districts or even in most Republican-held congressional seats. The national polls of Republican voters about her have been, as far as I can see, mediocre. Perhaps if you stretch you could find an interpretation of Greenwald's words which comes out true, but it is not "clearly" true as Greenwald claims. He's trying to point to something real about MTG's popularity among Republicans, or among certain Republicans, but he's overstating it. Many Republican voters haven't heard of her, and many of them wouldn't be as quick to trust her as they would be to trust more sober Republicans who point out her nuttiness. Some of this is even healthy.
Mainstream Media ("MSM") doesn't just lie about their political opponents. They lie to protect their allies. John Fetterman was the perfect example. Anyone who actually took the time to watch the debate against Oz could clearly see Fetterman has suffered severe cognitive impairment. Yet MSM aggressively reported that he was fine and to state the obvious was akin to attacking stroke victims. Some MSM outlets even declared Fetterman the winner.
MSM also viciously attacked one of their own - a reporter from NBC (Dasha Burns). Burns interviewed Fetterman with a lap top so he could read the questions, but she dared to report that Fetterman wasn't able to hold a simple unscripted conversation, prior to the interview. She was crucified by her colleagues for telling the truth and was actually branded a liar. That is next level gaslighting.
On the subject of journalistic lying, I long ago noticed a technique that is very frequently used. I suppose you could call it “headline deception.” It is ubiquitous. Does anyone know if this is taught as a deliberate propaganda technique in journalism schools, perhaps with more deceptive poetic name?
It starts with a half truth or outright lie in headlines of printed media. The article following begins by supporting the deception, then ends with a short paragraph that contains the truth. This allows
plausible deniability if the deception is exposed and becomes an issue. It spreads deception because almost nobody reads all the articles. Many false beliefs are implanted from searching the headlines.
Well, there's Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
You could think of the "lie in the headline, admit the truth below the fold" as an extension of the basic principle here.
Plenty of people talk about this problem but I haven't heard anybody name the phenomena. And I think you're right, it's completely intentional.
There are some subtler ways to lie to people who can't be bothered to read the full article too, like deceptive emphasis. For example, in the phrase, "there is no evidence that so-and-so is a murderous lunatic", you bold "so-and-so is a murderous lunatic". People who only skim articles will tend to read the emphasized text and pass over the contradictory context, since normally bolding is meant to set out key points in an article.
Another even subtler practice that you sometimes see is crafting a convoluted sentence with multiple clauses and parentheticals, in which emphasis is placed on the lie and difficult-to-parse qualifiers contradict it, knowing that less literate readers won't be able to parse it correctly. Unfortunately I'm not a trained propagandist and so cannot craft an effective example of this one, but I sometimes notice the technique being employed.
The end result of these and other practices is that a whole lot of not-very-bright people get the impression the propagandist wants them to have, but the propagandist can't be sued for libel, which I suppose is the intention.
Fukitol: I really appreciate your comment and support. I’m getting quite a few replies without comment, so I’m not sure others have seen this propaganda technique or if my brief message caused them to think. Can you think of a catchier more memorable and descriptive name? I have to say spellcheck thoroughly got me. I intended “more descriptive,” not “more deceptive.” Mea culpa. I probably left the “s” out of descriptive.
While intelligence varies widely in the public, my purpose is to get more people to learn this propaganda technique. Then, perhaps you might be able to change to a more optimistic screen name. I do entirely sympathize with your sentiment in our current state!
In marketing there’s something called a “Loss leader,“ we’re an item is loudly advertised at a price so low that it results in a loss to the seller. But, that loss pricing lures people into the store, where they will spend more money on other things.

This  propaganda tactic your reference  might be called a, ”Lie leader”.

Excellent. Thanks. Also makes me think “Head Lie” or “Head Lie Leader.” What do you think? I lean toward “Head Lie Leader,” but “Lie Leader” may be clearer.
Hah, I'm a little beyond optimism in the short term. I think we have a real rough ride ahead of us. Hopeful that after the dust settles something good will come of it.
Anyway, no I don't have any clever turns of phrase to offer. It seems like a lot of people know it's all bullshit and that's a good start (and a fine word).
@GlennG You yourself mentioned recently that traditional political labels are failing us. Ascribing 'free speech' to 'the Right' instead of it's traditional home on 'the Left' reinforces that as well as the decidedly illiberal behavior of Progressives in their support of censorship. This episode in the House leadership squabble reinforces that.
So long as we continue to support the traditional 'teams' we all lose. So let's lose the capital letters and move from noun to adjectives, perhaps. I'd love to hear/participate in a discussion of what characterizes the bulk of this nation and how we label it.
We need an viable alternative to Dems and Repubs. I think there is a yearning for equality, fairness, honesty, and a focus on people over institutions. That yearning I believe includes a swath of people that supercede today's labels.
but the bigger problem is LEADERSHIP! you can create all the alternatives you want but without leadership, they will fail. Our government yearns for leadership (there is none). The president is not a leader, he is a follower. The congress and senate have no leadership. The country is desperate for leadership. We are failing as a republic without leadership. No where to be found.
You're right, and a populace that pays attention and participates constructively in the dialogue.
Lot's of ways to oppose leaders in this country, and who would you be thinking of?
I don't know whether you are kidding or not, but even though I didn't vote for Trump, or Clinton I I felt better with Trump in office, even though he implemented policies I didn't agree with at all. However no wars, and now the democrats seem down right crazy, and it wouldn't surprise me if Biden doesn't end his reign with a nuclear war. A black woman for vice president, okay, but this one doesn't know what the f*k she's doing, and a president who can't find his way off a stage. You just wonder whose running this show.
Since 95% or more of corporate media journalists (aka liars) self-identify as Democrats, I think it’s entirely accurate to say at this time, that Democrats are the party representing censorship and state propaganda. Should that change, I have faith that Glenn will report it.
I agree, but unfortunately, there is no viable alternative to the duopoly they have established.
As a former, card carrying Libertarian, I am well acquainted with voting for failed third party candidates.
This time is different. Voters have never before been so fed up with dysfunctional warring political duopoly. A new party ("Rino Party"?) would draw from independents, Democrats and Republicans and would quickly become the majority party,
Voters are definitely fed up, but the duopoly advantages are baked into the entire system, the entire mainstream media consists of propaganda outlets pledged to one or the other; it would have to be a popular uprising large enough to surmount all of that and there are too many sheep out there.
Ah, OK, tomorrow will always be the same as today. Big inflection points never happen.
Funny, you sound just like the folks who told me in 1982 that social media would never be a thing. That was a decade before we sold our Delphi social network to Rupert Murdoch and AOL bought Time Warner (not the other way around) for $160 billion.
So yeah, things never change. Get back to sleep, niitey nite...
Well, you find one that has a snowball's chance in hell, and I'll vote for him, how's that?
Voters have been so fed up they voted the democrats back into office and they have control of the Senate while the republicans beat them in the house by a very small margin? People are a big part of the problem. Most of the people in this country are not all that knowledgeable. Look at their news sources.
I was always a registered democrat and certainly have seen them become more conservative, less liberal in their policies through the years. Bill Clinton really shifted the party to the right and I was no longer happy with them, although I did vote for Gore, because of his position and concern on the issue of climate change. For various reasons I always thought the 2001 election was stolen. Although I voted for Obama and thought he would shift the party back to a more liberal stance, he didn't. The only one I've come across who feels he was no liberal is Jimmy Dore. During the Trump years they lost me forever, and not only because they tried to remove an elected president from office, and gave their continued support for our neo-liberal wars, but during the Trump years I saw them become very authoritarian. They all thought Trump was an illegitimate president and had to go. No one who adopts that position is any kind of liberal. Their rigidity in this regard grew over a period of four years, and all stuck to the same Trump story operating in lockstep. I saw the same thing happened to those who voted for the democrats, their base, and on CNN, and MSNBC as well. They have become more hateful, and more extreme. No wonder they demand full allegiance from their base, all authoritarians do.
This really has gone too far. I don't know what's going on, whether it's the desire to increase your subscriber base or you've actually become a gullible fool for or a tool of the right/GOP. Going after what's become of the left is great, but trying to portray the right as if they're substantially better is beyond ludicrous. Here, you seem to to be saying the right is a diverse lot that doesn't engage in attempts to enforce a party line while the left ruthlessly enforces its narrow-minded views, as if you never heard RINO, or know of the countless republicans who got primaried or just quit to avoid it, starting back in the tea party days. You seem to actually think Trump isn't as bad as he's seen by most non-MAGATs to be [excepting all the Russian BS] when anyone half-aware for the past 30+ years knows exactly who and what he is [grifter/con man], and it doesn't take fake news to see it, all you need do is listen to what he says. E.g., his usually quite open contempt for anyone not going along with whatever he says, and open calls for and obvious attempts to retaliate against violators. The fear of by far the majority of GOP to not cross Trump couldn't be more obvious, or pathetic, just look at Graham and Cruz FFS.
And worse, calling Schiff a pathological liar while quoting that odious toad Carlson about Trump losing tens of millions while president. Really? As if he hasn't engaged in massive tax fraud and is really the most honest president? If he lost millions while raking in the $$ exploiting the office, he's even more incredibly incompetent a businessman than was already apparent before becoming president. Does anyone know if Trump actually knows when he's lying?
I'm all for going after the left's recent and very lamentable resorting to dishonesty, to attacks on free speech, and even conspiracy theory nonsense, but they're just noobs compared to the GOP where this stuff is their bread and butter, honed to pro-levels by decades of practice. Maybe it's the attacks you've suffered due to your factual reporting, that doesn't excuse attacking the left with contrasting favorable views of the right when what the left is doing is essentially behaving exactly like the right has always behaved.
As David Carradine (Grasshopper) told us in “Kung Fu”, “A man is defined by his actions”.
Right now, the Democrats are the authoritarian, pro-war, anti-free-speech party. Sorry if the truth hurts. Hopefully this will change one day. I mean, look how the Republicans morphed from the big corporation country club party, to one supported primarily by blue collar workers. It could happen similarly to the Dems, theoretically. But for right now, the Dems are borderline Nazi.
This exemplifies exactly what I was talking about. The Republicans are anti-war? What's your evidence? Have they tried to slash the DoD budget? Have exhibited any significant remorse over their past record? Being against the one war in Ukraine is not anti-war. And free speech? The don't say gay, book-banning, library attacking GOP, those free speech advocates? And FFS, you're about as gullible as they come, where donations come from isn't a reliable indicator of the policies of those getting the funds, tell me how the GOP has been consistently less corporate than the Dims. The Dims are way better at acting like they support blue collar workers, they've just had a lot more practice at such deceits.
I'm surprised not to see a bunch of hate-filled spewings by the usual MAGATs that inhabit these comment sections, even more surprised that I got 2 likes. This made me reread what I said and unfortunately there was something I wrote that somehow got edited out [by me] while re-rewriting. And that was to say something like:
It may have been wrong to bar Marjorie Taylor Greene from committees but she's a truly horrible human being and doesn't deserve respect, she's made it clear she hates reality and the 1st Amendment. She's a hateful, ignorant, moronic bigot, if you think pointing that out that makes me some kind of elitist, then you think being a hateful ignorant moronic bigot is the norm. I can't abide anyone who isn't appalled by such folks.
Look in the mirror. You're the person Glenn is talking about. Someone who will jump on the bandwagon of hate because, feelings. It may have been "wrong" to take away Marjorie Taylor Green's committee's, "BUT" she is a terrible human being who doesn't deserve respect. Is she any worse on the first amendment than say Adam Schiff? Who actually asked to get a reporter kicked off Twitter? She hates reality!! Is calling men woman reality? You dress up the most misogynistic men in women's clothing and then when he spews the most vile shit at actual women you hate, you clap like a trained seal. Because these fake women are fighting the patriarchy or something. Is she more bigoted than Cori Bush, calling Byron Donalds a token black for the Republicans, while ignoring that Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Sam Brinton, Richard Levine, aka Rachel Levine, are all tokens. It's strange how certain people depending on your ideologies are held to different standards. You proved Glenn's point
Anyone with the racism, homophobia, and religious zealotry of Greene is a terrible human being, that she promotes policies that reflect her thinking is more than enough justification for my 'feelings'. This is amplified by her being a Q'Anon delusional. She's an admitted Christian Nationalist and, despite her BS denials, is a white supremacist. Her attacks on gays is repugnant, all the BS you listed in garbled prose about men/woman is incoherent, what are you trying to say? Is it about drag queens, or trans folks, or gays in general? Greene hates reality because she's a Q'Anon fool, because she's a Christian Nationalist which entails a hatred of the 1st Amend and a core principle of the founding of this nation, because she hates gays which is a product of her rancid christianity which also entails a mindset where facts are anathema, she hates reality because she thinks the election was stolen, she hates reality because she denies climate change calling it a 'woke agenda'. I could go on but that's more than enough. Just being a christian nationalist should bar you from public office since you can't truthfully swear to uphold the Constitution. Show me where I exhibited a double standard? You seem to think I support the Dims and that couldn't be more wrong.
That's the problem with feelings is sometimes they're irrational and illogical. Feelings give you permission to rationalize hate, because someone doesn't hold the same ideology as you. Do you hold the same contempt for other religions as you do for her Christian Nationalism? How about the Black Hebrew Israelites? How about the Nation of Islam? Catholic's,?Buddhism? Jewish faith? Her attack on gays? Have you ever called a gay Republican a fag. A Black Republican a nig**r? A White Republican woman a cunt? It's all okay though because your feelings tell you so. You live in your feelings, so I guess you don't believe in reality either. You don't believe in the first amendment either, or the founding principles. Nobody who holds that amendment dear like you say you do, would ever deny it to another person. But, here you are. Should certain religion beliefs bar you from holding office? Or, just the ones you don't like. Does election denial only run one way? Hakeem Jeffreys denied that Trump won in 2016, and was nominated for Speaker of the House. Or, does your feelings say that's different. Your whole explanation is a double standard.
It was refreshing to listen to all the GOP debate that occurred during the Trump presidency. Oh wait that never happened. The second any Republican steps out of line, the party looks to throw a new candidate against them in the next primary.
This is pathetic how badly Greenwald turns a blind eye to the GOP. Rightfully criticize the Democrats as much as they deserve, but show a tiny bit of intellectual honesty when it comes to Republicans.
It seems you are turning a blind eye to reality. There is a lot of truth to the problem of primary’s being used to push self thinkers to one or the other ideological poll in both parties. Democrats also use single issues to primary the ideological outliers. The Democrats are more aggressive in this as befits their totalitarian leanings.
The abortion issue clearly demonstrates this. Democrats, with rare exceptions, have to show loyalty to unlimited abortion. A few even endorse postnatal infanticide. Every Republican state abortion regulation has some exceptions. Very few of the Democratic legislations conform to Roe Vs Wade in the third trimester. Look it up. Find the original decision. Don’t rely on media or Wiki.
Not really what I was talking about. Glenn was speaking about the Democrats at the federal level. On what topics or subjects are Republicans having vibrant debates? It never happened under Trump and hard to see that happening now. McCarthy not getting the speaker voted isn’t evidence of that either
On the topic of party leadership, for one, and what that represents policy-wise. The conservative factions of the Repubs are today (Thursday) gaining concessions from McCarthy. It’s authentically “democracy in action”.
Question to you : if Biden is impeached, how many Democrats will vote to impeach, or to convict? If the answer is 0, then how can you refute the articles title, “Democrats obey, Republicans debate”?
There were how many Republicans voting for Trump’s impeachment??? Again, on what topics are Republicans having debates? Democrats deserve the criticism they get, but acting like the GOP is some well functioning, open minded political party is bogus. The House speaker vote just points to their current dysfunction and nothing more.
No debate is more substantive than who should be speaker, with all that implies re: congressional policy.
I rest my case.
You’re trying to force in a narrative that just isn’t accurate. What debate is happening right now? It’s failing vote after failing vote. There’s nothing substantive being discussed.
You make a very clear, indisputable point. We won’t see Democrats do what Republicans did with Nixon, They pretty much always put party and power over the good of the people.
Sadly, we are condemned to a two party system which, some people argue, is really two competing groups within a single party dominated by corporate and wealthy interest groups - not unlike the AFC and NFC within the NFL. Instead of a democracy, our country has become a kleptocracy with people elected to public office having no concerns for the public welfare and concerns only for their own selfish interests. This is true for Republicans and Democrats alike and would probably be true for any politicians from any other political party.
I suspect that moral bankruptcy is a requirement for becoming a politician. Who else would want the job? Only those who seek power, influence and wealth compete for the job and most, if not all, will do anything to achieve their goal.
As an alternative, I have often proposed that, instead of electing our public officials, we draft them at random from the population excluding only those under 18 years of age and those who are institutionalized - pay them what we pay jurors serving jury duty - deny them all the perks of office enjoyed by our politicians - and compel them to serve a single 3 year term.
How could that possibly be any worse than what we have?
Not a bad idea, except for this:
excluding only those under 18 years of age
Sorry, no. One of the worst aspects of our politics is that the people who aim for political or "policy" positions from a young age *have no experience of living as adults* under the systems they create, vote for, and administer. Recall--if you're old enough--I think it was George Mitchell who, after retiring from politics opened a B&B, and wrote of what an eye-opener it was for him to have to be on the other side of all the laws and regulations...
So no. Let's have a random draft of those 35 and older.
You are almost there. It was George McGovern, a long time liberal Senator who ran for president in 1972. He lost in landslide. He was considered far left at the time, but would be called a moderate or left of center today. After the Senate he bought a small resort. He was honest enough to admit he was overwhelmed by all the regulations he had helped pass off to the regulatory state.
I was in college at the time of that election and thought almost everyone but me was pretty far left based on the loud voices. For a lib/con issue that was being voted in a straw poll, I did a quixotic campaign against an organized group, with the school paper backing them. In a secret ballot the conservative votes won the majority. Today that’s known as the Sandinista effect. Wiki, et al, has pushed that down the memory hole.
You are correct: McGovern
I won't argue with that.
I wish they would have term limits, that would help.
Term limits might be good but they are hardly sufficient. Let's add to them a *residency requirement*. Something about being ineligible to run for an office representing "X" until you've been a resident of "X" for one term or 4 years, whichever is greater.
That too. How about a soul? I once heard Pelosi say she was on the intel comm at the time they were deciding to go to war with Iraq, knew there were no weapons of mass destruction. Of course she told no one, or maybe she did, but maybe she is sworn to secrecy. She seemed totally unaware of the horror of such a statement. A decision that destroyed a country, killed and displaced millions.
I wish that member of our Congress, the Senate, like the president had term limits, then you wouldn't have people like, well, McConnell, and too often getting sickeningly rich from there many years of making connections.
Then the previous office staff, who know the ropes, are usually hired by a new member (except with known ideological conflict with the new member). They could end up in charge.
That's an issue too, for sure.
It is a big issue. The congressional staff have connections with each other and lobbyist. The founders of the Constitution put BOUNDARIES in place to protect us from the horrors of DIRECT democracy. The chief dangers are temporary public passions or charismatic scoundrels who can threaten freedom. Consider the French, Bolshevik, and Nazi Germany Revolutions or the democratic execution of Socrates in Athens.
The Constitution’s boundaries are first the Bill of Rights, then the separation of powers with staggered elections for each branch: House- direct election every two years, Senators- elected for six years by elected state legislatures with elections of 1/3 of the Senate every 2 years, The more indirectly elected Senate chose Supreme Court Justices for life terms. Except for the House, which the founders considered the most risky part, all came from increasingly indirect democratic votes. Note that even the Supreme Court has democratic roots.
Woodrow Wilson did some damage by creating direct Senate election, and further empowering the bureaucratic agencies, far and away the most indirectly democratic power.
How did McConnel get so rich? Insider trading. In fact congress doesn't write laws. They lobbysists do.
All congress does is vote on how many trillions to counterfeit, who will get the counterfeit money, and then they inside trade, knowing where the counterfeit money will go. Some of the worst ones also launder some of the counterfeit back to their families and campaigns.
I can't remember when I first learned that Congress doesn't write the bills they vote on, but it changed how I viewed those in government.
I was always a registered democrat and certainly have seen them become more conservative, less liberal in their policies through the years. Bill Clinton really shifted the party to the right and I was no longer happy with them, although I did vote for Gore, because of his position and concern on the issue of climate change. For various reasons I always thought the 2001 election was stolen. Although I voted for Obama and thought he would shift the party back to a more liberal stance, he didn't. The only one I've come across who feels he was no liberal is Jimmy Dore. For a long time many recognized they side lined their liberals and were more conservative, and less concerned with their base. During the Trump years they lost me forever, and not only because they tried to remove an elected president from office, and gave their continued support for our neo-liberal wars, but during the Trump years I saw them become very authoritarian. They all thought Trump was an illegitimate president and had to go. They tried to lie him out of office, and defined his base as a bunch of deplorables. No one who adopts that position is any kind of liberal. Their rigidity in this regard grew over a period of four years, and all stuck to the same Trump story and operated in lockstep. I saw the same thing happen to those who voted for the democrats, their base, and on CNN, and MSNBC as well. They have become more hateful, and more extreme. No wonder they demand full allegiance from their base, all authoritarians do.
Fran, I saw the same change. I have always been independent and switched my vote and even in some elections, couldn’t vote. In 2016 I saw fatal character flaws in both candidates and wrote in Rand Paul, for less government and no wasteful spending. I talked with a diehard Hillary voter when Trump won and told her that even though my candidate didn’t win I always wished and prayed the new president would lead our nation well. I was disappointed in the looting, burning and screaming done in January 6, 2017😔. This person’s narrative was so negative towards Trump that I finally said she sounded like a “sore looser.” Mind you I didn’t vote for Trump However, our relationship was and is forever changed 😞 After that I noticed more and more the vitriol and hate filled msm media. I am no longer listening to msm media and have gone to whole other news platforms that are not part of the elitist bureaucracy. The best democrat with an open mind that I follow is Tulsi and she left the dnc. Sticking independent and common sense values. The dnc and msm is an echo chamber that doesn’t see me.
Just an aside, I also like Rand Paul, and Tulsi and feel both have a genuine sense of integrity. I too had a similar experience. I didn't vote for anyone in the 2016 election, which brought down the wrath of a life long friend, a cousin, now dead from cancer, and a brother, and that relationship has become strained. I no longer talk to that friend since she felt my choice entitled her to be verbally abusive. I still don't fully understand the degree of enmity Trump's presidency caused. They hated his base, and thought of them as inferior, stupid, and yet saw themselves as liberal. They could justify the lies the democrats spewed which tried to remove an elected president from office, which I could not. A distant cousin, very nice, educated, her husband is a doctor, well off, ran an anti-Trump Facebook page, and titled it Republicans for Biden. All her well off, well educated friends on Facebook loathed Trump and his base. When Covid reared it's ugly head Trump made a remark about chlorine and said something could be developed that was like it and could be taken internally to kill the virus, Of course he was talking about the development of an anti-viral. However all her Facebook friends gobbled up the anti-Trump propaganda lie pushed by the highly biased media that he was telling people to drink chlorine. I confronted one woman on this issue who was pushing this lie, and she responded by telling me to kill myself by drinking chlorine. I got her back, since that was over the top. I told her I was going to report her death threat to Facebook, and she unfriended herself to the site. Good riddance! A meme circulating on Facebook was put up by a second cousin who came from a wealthy family, and had everything she could possibly want, but she posted the meme that Trump's base were an uneducated and immoral lot. I told her no one who professes to be liberal entertains such a thought and puts that on display. Of course that propaganda was pushed by Clinton when she referenced Trump's base as a half basket of deplorables. The hypocrisy was mind boggling, and still is. I'm sure there are a lot of people who had this kind of experience in one way or another during a period that was insane, and still is.
We both have a lot of experience among the tolerable intolerants. Just mind boggling. So I go to rumble and substack and locals and callin to see the whole gamma and find refreshing air. I read over thirty doctors off the top of my head regarding the covid disaster from the beginning and of course, not taking the jabs, I was a non compassionate outlaw. Trump should have talked to Drs. From Africa, India, Argentina, Honduras etc. to get better advice. He trusted the cdc and fda, but so did a lot of Americans. Enough said. I am not bothered anymore about being on the edge of the boiling pot. Censorship and derogatory name calling is used as their defense from the truth.
In regard to Covid let me bring up Fauci and AIDS. My brother died of it back in the late 1980's and I knew from everything I heard and read it was transmitted through the exchange of bodily fluids. Not long ago someone posted a video clip of Fauci telling a reporter at the height of the epidemic that they're finding that some small children living in AIDS household are getting AIDS. He then claimed it might be more easily spread then we thought. My background is in science and I know that based on such minimal information you do not make that kind of assertion, and of course it went viral, people went nuts, and caused such needless suffering for those who had the disease. Hospital personnel, doctors, nurses, aids wouldn't come near these patients. There care was atrocious, needlessly so. Fauci is just too self serving. God knows what were're going to find out years from now about covid.
Big pharma and the bureaucrats in power whose goal is money will cover Fauci. I am just amazed that some consider him a benevolent godfather. His lies were one right after another and the dunces from the Lancet covered him. Malfeasance. Sorry about your brother. Awful and tragic.
Thank you. Sometimes I think people put to much faith in those who are scientists, True science is a subject that seeks truth, but too often those who implement it misinterpret results, or just make things up.
Glenn, you wonderfully and informatively did it again. Nailed the truth about the both parties and their pitfalls as well as the savage lies in journalism that have led to the polarization and total mistrust of normal Americans for the msm. So disgusting. Personally I am glad to see the house members fighting for rule changes that are NOT insignificant. We, who are not in the elitist group, vote for common sense, moral integrity, and down to business rules that limit/stop big hidden selfish agendas (corruption). How is the msm media framing these arguments? A disaster, division, weakness? No, it is democracy in action. The Republican Party, like some members of Fox, just have more than one voice. As an independent for all my years, I think this is what our forefathers would want: Open debate. Sadly, the elite bureaucracy and mainstream media has no idea what that’s all about. But we have all heard you and many others blocking the din. Thanks for bringing us a clear view.
The story about your dad first realizing the media is in the business of lies - yeah, that's often how it starts. You notice an indefensible lie about something that you personally witnessed or were a part of. Not a mistake, not an error, but just a flat-out easily demonstrable lie.
And then you start listening when other people say the media lied about something they had personally witnessed or were a part of, and you see their stories often add up because it's really not that hard these days to find original sources and evidence if you're not terrified of wrongthink. And then you start to wonder, is any of it actually true? How could you know?
This is the thing about being a liar - once you establish yourself as liar, nobody will believe you even when telling the truth happens to serve your interests. We have no way of knowing whether you're telling the truth this time, because there's no presumption of trust.
So when a liar makes a claim, you have to assume you know nothing more than you did before other than "this is what this known liar wants me to believe". You can't know if they're lying or telling the truth without independently proving it.
That's my position on the media. When they say something I only know that they want me to think it's true. If it's something I care about then I have to go do the work of digging up original sources, looking for independent verification, checking whether it lines up with established fact, doing the math for myself. If only there was some sort of profession dedicated to doing this work for me...
Greenwald's stuff about the Twitter controversy over Andrew Tate adds little to this episode and would be better left out. Greenwald is complaining that a small number of mainstream journalist who mentioned Tate's presence on Rumble also tied Rumble to Greenwald in their tweets. But there is a substantial connection between Greenwald and Rumble. Greenwald is not only paid by Rumble but is in a sense Rumble's biggest advocate. And of the people with a Rumble show, Greenwald may be the best known in some sense -- Greenwald has even *designed* his Rumble show to attract attention in the circles where the topics debated on Twitter are followed. Still, Greenwald spends the last few minutes of this episode vituperating because a couple of reporters on Twitter called Rumble a "Peter Thiel and Glenn Greenwald Company" or "Glenn Greenwald and Peter Thiel's YouTube knockoff" -- it may not be exactly how he would like the connection between himself and Rumble described, but there is a genuine connection between Greenwald and Rumble and these Twitter descriptions are vague enough that they're arguably accurate. When Greenwald tries to twist this into Yet Another Proof That The Mainstream Media Lies, it's tedious because it's too centered on himself and too much a matter of subjective interpretation. Arguably these reporters did nothing wrong; Greenwald himself is not always quite as scrupulous about truth as I would like.
This kind of thing can reasonably stay on Twitter, and there's no need to stuff it in during the last few minutes of an episode of Greenwald's daily news video series.
I was almost with you until:
> it's too centered on himself and too much a matter of subjective interpretation
In what way is Glenn Greenwald's ownership of rumble a matter of subjective interpretation? Rumble either is or isn't Glenn Greenwald's company. If it is not, someone lied. Glenn either did or did not pay this Tate character money. If he did not, someone lied.
If media personalities uncritically repeated those lies, which would be very easy for them to "fact check", then they are liars, not reporters. They casually engage in the act of spreading falsehood, and have no moral or professional concern with ensuring the things they say are truthful. They feel no shame in lying, and lying does not harm their career or reputation. We can safely say they are in the business of lying, since whatever you do for money and fame is your business.
So here's another liar we can add to the list of liars in the media, and in that sense it's a relevant anecdote.
It would be easier to keep a list of the ones who have not yet been proven to be liars.
I see your point, but the tweets by @lib_crusher and @MarlowNYC that Greenwald mentioned didn't claim to report "Glenn Greenwald's ownership of Rumble". They didn't specifically call him an owner of Rumble, and their vague language about "Greenwald's" company could arguably just mean that it's a company Greenwald's associated with, not one he has an ownership stake in. So some of it does depend on "interpretation". Here are the tweets:
twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1608874294821683200
twitter.com/MarlowNYC/status/1608607410033393664
Still, I think the tweets' language counts as misleading -- this language could easily give readers the impression Greenwald is an owner of Rumble without saying so directly. So I'm going to withdraw my comment that these tweeters did nothing wrong. Greenwald is right to seek to correct the record when he sees these misleading tweets about him. I still wouldn't call the tweets lies though -- they're just misleading while arguably being technically true under one interpretation. And I think that when Greenwald spends the last part of his show claiming that they're lies and portraying it as yet another example of media lying, it does come off as too self-centered because his eagerness to call it "lying" blurs the role of interpretation. So on balance, I think it would be better if Greenwald just responded on Twitter rather than risking sounding tedious by spending the last part of his show saying flatly that these tweets are lies.
Fair enough.
Greenwald's partisan attachments keep him from taking a genuinely populist position on the House Speaker's race. The Speakership has developed into a highly anti-democratic institution, constantly pushing Congress's work more and more into the realm of backroom deals, welcoming the lack of transparency that favors shady legislative outcomes, and pressuring members of Congress to listen to those with influence in DC rather than their own voters back home. But even though the current drama over the Speaker's election is an excellent opportunity to strengthen the people's voice over DC insiders, Greenwald instead treats it as a chance to glorify the Republican party as a whole over the Democrats, and the Greene-Gaetz wing of Congressional Republicans over the current leadership wing. What we should be opposing, above all, is an outcome where the Speaker and his leadership team still retains most of the centralized power that insider Speakers like Pelosi have grabbed for themselves, and yet Greenwald refuses to clearly oppose it and it's still likely to happen.
Just look at what Greenwald is willing to praise here. He actually praises the "horse trading" process where Kevin McCarthy offers sweet deals to various rank-and-file Republicans so that they will put him into the exalted power of the Speakership. Of course a lot of this horse-trading between politicians involves hidden secret deals, and inevitably many of them will be shady, but Greenwald praises the horse-trading and says "That's how politics ought to work". He steers his readers away from wanting to make improvements in this corrupt closed-door process. I guess Greenwald feels that the horse-trading process may, for now, possibly give more power to what he sees as an "anti-establishment" faction of Republicans, so he's willing to overlook the corruption in the process if it empowers the faction he likes. Likewise, he tries to make his readers think that the bargaining with so-called "anti-establishment" federal politicians has a chance of leading to a good outcome. But he shouldn't be thinking about how to give leverage to politicians in a given faction, but rather about how to empower regular voters as opposed to DC power centers like the Speakership and shady DC deals.
A longtime ally of Greenwald's, ex-representative Justin Amash, has been offering the kind of constructive way forward here that Greenwald conspicuously avoids. Amash has offered himself as a candidate for Speaker (a position he's eligible for despite not being in Congress) and he does want to cut down the centralized power of the Speakership, in a way that's far more serious than anything Kevin McCarthy has been offering to people like Rep. Greene and Rep. Gaetz. He has pledged to let committees do their work without interference, allow any representative to amend bills from the floor without prescreening of the amendments, and make sure representatives have adequate time to review bills before voting. He's promised to refrain from regularly waiving or suspending the rules the way Pelosi did, and he'll push for single-issue bills. He writes "The House should work as an open, accountable, deliberative body that welcomes the participation of every representative, regardless of party. Any speaker who doesn’t run the House this way is perpetuating oligarchy, dysfunction, and hyperpartisanship." -- twitter.com/justinamash/status/1610350324568449024
That seems clearly right to me, but Greenwald can't stand up for it and instead just endorses horse-trading instead. Resting content with horse-trading, which is likely to end up giving the eventual Speaker something fairly close to the excessively powerful central authority that people like Pelosi had, is a recipe for more disaster. Greenwald should be more straight with us about how serious changes in the Speakership are necessary, just as Amash did in the tweet I cited. In fact, Greenwald knows that the current process where leadership can stop certain things from coming up for a vote leads to awful outcomes -- he even mentions that Bernie Sanders' Yemen resolution would likely be denied a vote not just by Kevin McCarthy, but by "Republicans" in general. But he never reaches the conclusion that should be obvious: we need major changes in the rules, more or less on the scale of at least the changes Amash talked about..
Greenwald used to praise Amash from time to time, but the last time he did so on Twitter was November 13, two days before Amash announced his run for Speaker.. Amash has consistently stood up for a lot of the values Greenwald thinks are important -- probably more so than any current member of Congress. And Amash's campaign for speaker has aroused some interest. But Greenwald doesn't put in a good word for him. I'm aware that Amash has been willing to condemn some of Trump's more serious wrongdoing which Greenwald has remained at best silent on, and I would say that this is a point in favor of Amash's integrity. But why doesn't Greenwald put in a good word, either for Amash himself as a candidate or for the kind of changes Amash advocated even apart from Amash's own candidacy? Is it partly because Amash's integrity led him to a different position on Trump? I don't know, but it sure looks like Greenwald is letting himself be induced, by Amash's distance from power, to downplay what Amash is saying -- and that doesn't feel far from journalistic corruption to me. Amash's integrity doesn't shine as brightly as it should in Greenwald's mind, nor does Amash's history as a fellow fighter for many good causes.
More broadly, I would say that Greenwald is falling into a version of one of the mainstream media's corrupt practices. When the mainstream media has to report on a voting process that takes a long time with lots of failed votes, their reflex is to praise it as if it's "democracy in action". What they should be doing, however, is to look at why the voting process isn't straightforward, and whether there's any shadiness that their readers should know about. Often when shadiness is going on, nothing of that shadiness is visible to viewers except for a series of failed votes, unless journalists look deeper. But I don't think Greenwald even wants to look much deeper into the deals that reps are seeking and being offered (often quite selfish ones). He's boosting a faction of power-seekers, and he's not advocating for a better process like someone who supports the people would.
Correction: I should have mentioned that Greenwald did make a positive comment about Amash (not related to the Speaker race) a few weeks ago in his Dec 14 System Update episode. He also had Amash appear for a System Update interview, this time specifically on the Speaker race, just the other day. It's clear Greenwald hasn't forgotten how good Amash is, and even apart from Amash personally, Greenwald is doing some justice to the concerns I mentioned.
> [Pelosi] wanted the appearance of bipartisanship without the annoyance of actual disagreement and thus herself put the easier to manipulate Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger on the committee as her Republican pets
I see -- when Republicans disagree with the GOP establishment, they're independent thinkers; but when they happen to agree with the Democrats but not with most of their own party, at grave risk to their careers in the House, they're Pelosi's "pets". Got it.
Come on, Glenn, you can do better than this.
I cannot sign in to Rumble to read the comments there. I tried using the "Forgot your password?" button to reset my password (to the same one), but I still could not sign in. I don't think I ever registered on Rumble, but I'm a subscriber to Glenn's Substack site, and I thought subscribers got free access to his articles on Rumble. Any advice?
I mostly share Glenn's views regarding the DNC and mainstream media and appreciate both his anger and the reasons for it, though not his affection for Republicans. Remember, their signature achievement under The Donald's regime was a massive tax break for the rich.
But he sometimes lets his rhetoric get a bit out of control. Two examples from this posting:
1) Ms Green "is clearly one of the most influential, trusted, and respected members of Congress"? Is this the same person who
- Claimed “If you want to win the war on Christmas, first you take out the person who makes Christmas possible. As I speak, Jewish space lasers are being trained on the North Pole.”
- "Liked" the commment "a bullet to the head would be quicker" as a way of dealing with Ms Pelosi.
- Claimed George Soros is a Nazi.
- Seems to think some of California's wildfires were caused by beaming down solar energy from satellites. Jewish space lasers again?
2) While Ms Pelosi's neighborhood does have private security and there is in fact a gate at its entrance, I believe it is not a gated community in the sense of requiring ID to enter. It's also true Google Maps will not show you street views other than from right outside, presumably for security reasons. From the street outside it you can see there is no guard station so you can walk right through the gate.
When the ACLU represented the White Supremacists in Skokie, Illinois. Do you think that they were supporting White Supremacists? Or, were they supporting the White Supremacists first amendment rights?
Deb,
Thanks for your reply.
"In its 1934 pamphlet entitled 'Shall We Defend Free Speech for Nazis in America?' the ACLU had declared: 'We do not choose our clients. Lawless authorities denying their rights choose them for us..." "
(From "Democracy If We Can Keep It" by Ellis Cose
Yes. Guaranteeing somebody's rights, does not automatically mean that you agree with them.
Since you brought it up, having been politically sentient and followed the arguments, it was perfectly clear to me at the time: the 1st Amendment. I've seen no reason since to change that analysis.
Freedom of Speech is meaningless unless it extends to others whose views you find appalling.
Yep!
You are confusing Trump with Biden. Trump cut taxes for everyone equally, but he did end a big tax loophole for the super rich. Don’t worry about them though. .Biden reinstated the loophole for them shortly after he took office with the help of Pelosi and Schumer.
You're citing a bogus quote from Marjorie Taylor Greene. The "war on Christmas" line was attributed to MTG only in a New Yorker article that was explicitly marked as 'humor", "satire", and "satirical": https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/marjorie-taylor-greene-accuses-jewish-space-lasers-of-trying-to-shoot-down-santa
On the other hand, it is true that MTG, as you say, speculated that a California fire was caused by beaming down solar energy from space (via "laser beam or light beam"). And she mentioned that she thought there was a suspicious connection to Rothschild Inc. This is where the idea came from that MTG was concerned about Jewish space lasers; she never said anything directly about Jews using lasers but a lot of people figured that, since she was coining a ridiculous conspiracy theory about Rothschild Inc being involved with starting a fire via "laser beam or light beam" and conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds are pretty much always anti-semitic, she must be concerned about Jewish space lasers. That then got turned into the New Yorker satirical piece which purported to actually quote her saying "Jewish space lasers are being trained on the North Pole", although the New Yorker should have realized that some people would have taken this as a real MTG quote as you did.
When MTG was misled by false online rumors into saying that Soros was a Nazi, that may not be much worse than MTG's adversaries being misled by a New Yorker satire into thinking that she claimed Jewish space lasers are being aimed at Santa.
I haven't seen the full "bullet in the head" post that was liked by MTG's account. MTG has refused to make clear whether she herself or someone on her staff was the one who pressed Like on that post.
But in general, while it's true that MTG is an authoritarian nut, we shouldn't be eager to believe she said every single crazy thing attributed to her without checking the facts.
Fair point. But there had to be parody in the first example: I was and remain confident that Ms Greene does not believe in Santa Claus. While you are also correct that she's refused to say she pressed the "like" button, she did not disavow it.
The thing is that liberal media satire of "dumb" Republican women regularly does get taken as fact. After a Saturday Night Live actress in 2008 portrayed the Republican vice-presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin as saying "I can see Russia from my house", many voters became convinced that Palin had actually spoken that falsehood, although Palin had really only made the true statement that there's an island in Alaska from which you can see Russia. Given that precedent, the New Yorker and Andy Borowitz (who wrote the New Yorker satire about MTG) should have known that Borowitz's piece would likely also lead many to believe as fact the false statement that MTG had claimed "Jewish space lasers are being trained on the North Pole".
You weren't the only one who was misled by that.
I did start out enjoying Borowitz's New Yorker satire about MTG, or at least some parts of it at the beginning. I even find myself thinking "Wouldn't it be funnier if Borowitz had written in a way which subtly indicated that MTG thought the North Pole was located in Alaska, on American soil, with the Jewish space lasers aimed there posing a threat not just to Santa but the USA homeland?" But being amusing like that isn't all that matters. It's just a false deprecating picture of MTG, the kind where the stupidity of the picture infects the person who enjoys it too much. There's a lesson to learn here and it's not simply that MTG is dumb.
You've questioned Greenwald's point that MTG is "clearly one of the most influential, trusted, and respected members of Congress" but you failed to mention that Greenwald included the qualifier "among the Republican voting base". That makes his statement a little more believable. I still don't think Greenwald's line is 100% correct, despite the 1.7 million followers on her congressional Twitter account, because I don't believe MTG could win a Republican primary in most congressional districts or even in most Republican-held congressional seats. The national polls of Republican voters about her have been, as far as I can see, mediocre. Perhaps if you stretch you could find an interpretation of Greenwald's words which comes out true, but it is not "clearly" true as Greenwald claims. He's trying to point to something real about MTG's popularity among Republicans, or among certain Republicans, but he's overstating it. Many Republican voters haven't heard of her, and many of them wouldn't be as quick to trust her as they would be to trust more sober Republicans who point out her nuttiness. Some of this is even healthy.
"But he sometimes lets his rhetoric get a bit out of control."
Obfuscation? Camouflage?
Mainstream Media ("MSM") doesn't just lie about their political opponents. They lie to protect their allies. John Fetterman was the perfect example. Anyone who actually took the time to watch the debate against Oz could clearly see Fetterman has suffered severe cognitive impairment. Yet MSM aggressively reported that he was fine and to state the obvious was akin to attacking stroke victims. Some MSM outlets even declared Fetterman the winner.
MSM also viciously attacked one of their own - a reporter from NBC (Dasha Burns). Burns interviewed Fetterman with a lap top so he could read the questions, but she dared to report that Fetterman wasn't able to hold a simple unscripted conversation, prior to the interview. She was crucified by her colleagues for telling the truth and was actually branded a liar. That is next level gaslighting.