Saturday Morning Coffee (June 22, 2024)
From oblivious talking head Joy Reid to Disney trying to cancel movie reviewers, pull up a chair and grab a cup of coffee, and let's chat a while.
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The most un-self-aware person on TV (or the most sociopathic)?
I was looking for something else and I came across this clip of Joy Reid on the Reid Out. Listen to the first two minutes. I don’t think I have ever heard anything like it, and I’ve watched more than my fair share of Rachel Maddow clips.
Starting at :49
In short, it is the job of the media, our job, to not just tell you what happened but to give you context around what happened in a way that informs you and helps you make decisions in your busy life. But too often what the media actually does is create a mass consensus around the preferences of the financial and moneyed elite to subtly make their preferences your preferences.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s that subtle, especially when it comes to Joy Reid. But I digress.
This is especially true when selling wars and sometimes elections.
Actually, it’s mostly true when “selling” elections.
Let’s take this clip. I’m sure there is some context here that needs to be given, and using Alyssa Farah, who is now on the retirement home for bitter old hens known as The View, as a “source” is a context all on its own to be clarified.
So which is it? Is she lacking in self-awareness or does she understand but she can lie so easily? I mean, there’s not even a glimmer of any recognition there of the irony of her talking about manufacturing consent to win an election while she’s, well, trying to manufacture consent to help her guy win an election.
Speaking of manufacturing consent for war and national myths . . .
I have found if I search long enough, I find people smart enough to explain to me patterns I’m seeing that I can’t articulate. I won’t pretend to know the people Dr. Mearsheimer is talking about, but the overall gist makes sense.
We take a lot of “truths” for granted that under further examination tend to fall apart. If your true goal is the survival of your own country, you don’t risk wars that expend your power for no reason. And this country as done that plenty and we continue even now in Ukraine and tempting a big one in the Middle East.
But as I watched this, I finally found a name for what I’ve been trying to tell people about Israel and Ukraine. Even if you remove what I see as a moral issue, from a realist perspective, the situations seem even more dire. The US is hollowed out and our leaders’ mouths are writing checks our body can’t cash. They’re living in a 1990s reality while the world has moved on.
Which leads us to . . .
Are we headed into World War III?
I was going to include this, but as I outlined it, I realized it would get too long for a Saturday morning, and we’d need something much stronger than Bailey’s or whiskey. So, instead, this is a teaser for next week’s article (fingers crossed and the river don’t rise).
Are there signs that the US is stumbling with abandon into World War III? Yes. Is it inevitable? Depends on who you ask. What can you do? Not much, but you can plant your feet, pull out your tinfoil hat, and refuse to be driven over the edge of the buffalo jump.
The Democrats’ “but . . . but . . . but . . .” problem
So some liberals are starting to wake up, sort of.
This opinion column, by Nicholas Kristof, appeared originally in the New York Times.
Centrist voters can reasonably ask: Why put liberals in charge nationally when the places where they have greatest control are plagued by homelessness, crime and dysfunction?
Honey, it’s not just “centrist” voters, but go on.
I’ll try to answer that question in a moment, but liberals like me do need to face the painful fact that something has gone badly wrong where we’re in charge, from San Diego to Seattle. I’m an Oregonian who bores people at cocktail parties by singing the praises of the West, but the truth is that too often we offer a version of progressivism that doesn’t result in progress.
Conservatives argue that the problem is simply the left. Michael Shellenberger wrote a tough book denouncing what he called “San Fransicko” with the subtitle “Why Progressives Ruin Cities.” Yet that doesn’t ring true to me.
He thinks Shellenberger is a conservative. I suppose that should tell you everything.
At least Kirstoff understands that there is a problem, and he gives examples.
Consider a volunteer group called the Portland Freedom Fund that was set up to pay bail for people of color. The organization raised money from well-intentioned liberal donors, and the underlying problems were real: Bail requirements hit poor people hard.
In 2022, the Portland Freedom Fund helped a Black man named Mohamed Adan who had been arrested after allegedly strangling his former girlfriend, holding a gun to her head and then — in violation of a restraining order — cutting off his G.P.S. monitor and entering her building. “He told me that he would kill me,” the former girlfriend, Rachael Abraham, warned.
The Freedom Fund paid Adan’s bail, and he walked out of jail. A week later, Adan allegedly removed his G.P.S. monitor again and entered Abraham’s home. The police found Abraham’s body drenched in blood with a large knife nearby; three children were also in the house.
Adan was charged with murder — no bail this time — and the incident prompted soul-searching in Portland. But perhaps not enough. A well-meaning effort to help people of color may have cost the life of a woman of color.
His solution?
We need to get our act together. Less purity and more pragmatism would go a long way. But perhaps the first step must be the humility to acknowledge our failures.
A little pragmatism would be a good start, especially when it comes to migration.
The Democrat Party has a problem with knowing when to quit, and it’s biting them in the keister.1
From Newsweek . . .
The CBS News/YouGov poll found that a majority of registered voters overall (62 percent) would favor the government starting “a new national program to deport all undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S. illegally.” Thirty-eight percent said they would oppose it.
And when it comes to that bloc of voters the Democrats count on?
Notably, the poll found that mass deportation was popular with Hispanics, with 53 percent saying they would favor such a program and 47 percent saying they would oppose it. White people were more supportive of mass deportations, with 67 percent saying they would back the program, and 33 percent saying they would oppose it. Among Black people, it was 47 percent in favor and 53 percent opposed.
And almost half of black people. That’s an awful lot of Uncle Toms and Aunt Tinas. (That’s sarcasm.)
Bill Maher is one of those trying to save his party from itself.
Someone needs to tell Ana Navarro that no one really cares where she came from because she obviously didn’t learn from the experience.
At some point, you have to stop making excuses and listen yourself, though I don’t suppose I should be surprised that an author of a book called “In Defense of Elitism” or Ana Navarro can’t.
So who do you think will win out? The Bill Mahers or people who would write “In Defense of Elitism”?
Department of Treasury fights . . . opioids?
This came from Fox News and is by Janet Yellen. Yes, that Janet Yellen. I have no problem with their printing it. I just wonder why. The content on Fox News (like the content on MSNBC or CNN) is heavily, um, curated.
Drug traffickers and their organizations operate in many respects like legitimate businesses, relying on access to banking systems and to the U.S. dollar to operate day-to-day. This gives the Treasury Department a unique ability to disrupt the cartels poisoning our communities: by targeting the financial infrastructure they need to function.
At President Biden’s direction, Treasury has used all the tools at our disposal to fight this epidemic and target the drug traffickers fueling it through our financial system.
I have established a new Counter-Fentanyl Strike Force, bringing together Treasury’s law enforcement, sanctions, and financial intelligence capabilities to coordinate our domestic and international actions.
Of course, this will just be used to go after drug cartels.
So my two questions are: who do you really think this is targeting, because obviously this isn’t about keeping Americans safe from opioids (a secure border would be more likely to do that)? And why would Fox News publish this (yes, that really bothers me)?
Juneteenth: The ultimate in performative virtue
Dramatic footage has surfaced on X showing a Juneteenth celebration in Oakland, California, which was transformed into a warzone in the overnight hours. What appears to be gang-on-gang violence sparked an insane shootout on city streets. In a state governed by radical leftist Gavin Newsom, where common sense law and order are seemingly absent, such scenes are becoming more frequent. This incident further exemplifies why people and businesses continue to flee to safer, red states.
Local media outlet SFGate reported that as many as 5,000 people attended the Juneteenth celebration in Oakland’s Lake Merritt area.
Around 2015 local time, a fight broke out at a sideshow involving “motorbikes and vehicles” at Grand and Bellevue avenues—and that was the moment when all hell erupted.
Look, Oakland is just violent from what I can tell, so why Juneteenth should be any different, I don’t know.
I have a problem with “Juneteenth.” I mean, let’s start with the name. You couldn’t call it “Emancipation Day”? You had to “ebonics” the holiday’s name?
But here is my other problem. There are horrendous issues in the black community, violence being chief among them. Maybe rather than giving banks and the federal government a day off so that Biden can have another software glitch in public . . .2
perhaps try working on those problems, hmm?
Disney’s “toxic” fans: The Acolyte bombs and it’s all the fault of the male fanbase
Okay, this story . . .
So I honestly haven’t watched anything “Star Wars” related since Episode 8. No, I have not seen Episode 9, the “Rise of Skywalker,” because I frankly don’t care. I’ve gone back and watched the original trilogy (the middle three), because those are good, the classic quest stories with a few twists and turns. I might go back and watch the first three. But anything after Disney bought LucasFilms?
And I most assuredly have not watched any of the TV shows.
But this story caught my eye because I like watching the Critical Drinker, and it’s just such a nuts situation.
You see, people hate The Acolyte. They loathe it, even.
Okay, 14 percent, there might be a bit of crowd mania in here, but I think we can safely say the average “audience member” does not think it’s good.
The Critical Drinker did scathing reviews of the first three episodes, as did a bunch of other people.
And then this happened . . .
I know, it’s insane, right? Why would you expend such power on people hating a show? But here is a corroborating clip from The Quartering with a personal experience of one YouTuber, backed up by screenshots of his fight with YouTube itself.
Both of these—Benny Johnson and The Quartering—are right leaning, but they don’t tend toward hysteria, at least that I’ve found.
So I think this phenomenon is very real.
Critical Drinker and Nerdotic are not the only two film critics to trash the show, but for some reason they are the ones that YouTube (and Disney) are going after (they may have the most subscribers—I don’t know).
But they’re not giving up. This was Nerdrotic’s video on Friday about Episode 4.
You know, this is emblematic of a larger problem: the tendency to try to shame people into supporting you rather than offering them something solid to get behind. It happens in politics, and it’s happening more and more in “entertainment.”
But it is still an awful lot of effort to expend on such a trivial matter, so what do you think the reason really is?
How do you help loved ones who are suffering?
I’m including this for two reasons: (1) Not From Texas is a good writer who doesn’t get enough notice. (2) I have an earnest question based on his essay: How do you help loved ones who are going through hard times?
Cosmic event: No seriously
Just in case you’re a stargazer . . .
An impending nova event will be so bright that people on Earth will be able to see the burst of light with the naked eye, NASA scientists said.
The “Blaze Star,” which is a binary system in the Northern Crown about 3,000 light years from Earth, is comprised of a white dwarf, an Earth-sized remnant of a dead star with a mass comparable to the sun, and an “ancient red giant” that’s slowly being ripped away by its neighbor's gravitational pull, according to NASA.
The result is a thermonuclear explosion that will be bright enough to be seen from Earth this summer. The exact date when that will happen is unknown, although NASA continues to track it.
The last time the “Blaze Star” nova was seen was 1946.
Here are NASA’s three tips for American stargazers
1. The burst of light will be “brief,” according to NASA, but it’s expected to be visible to the naked eye for a little less than a week.
2. Expect the unexpected. The exact timing of the nova is unknown, as of mid-June. . . .
3. Finding where to look could be tricky.
NASA suggested first locating the Northern Crown, a horseshoe-shaped curve of stars west of the Hercules constellation (included in an illustration below), as the starting point.
The two brightest stars in the Northern Hemisphere (Arcturus and Vega) create a straight line from one to the other, which will lead stargazers to the Hercules constellation and Corona Borealis, where the burst of light will be most visible.
“Look up after sunset during summer months to find Hercules, then scan between Vega and Arcturus, where the distinct pattern of Corona Borealis may be identified,” NASA said.
Of course, if you really want to give yourself a headache, understand that what you’re seeing happened a thousand years before the birth of Christ, when Rome itself did not even exist.
Escapism
So I finished Erik Lason’s The Demon of Unrest.
I’ve read several of Larson’s books, including The Splendid and the Vile, about the Blitzkrieg. I did so during 2020. Trust me, it’s surreal reading about people carrying on with daily life while bombs are literally being dropped on their heads while you yourself are living in a world that shut everything down over a flu-like virus. Winston Churchill would regularly spend the night in London, even as the Germans bombarded the city, but Biden couldn’t even come out of his basement to campaign. Yes, humanity has taken a fall.
This book . . . it was good. There was nothing revelatory in it, really. It moved along, like all his books do, with interesting little tidbits thrown in here and there.
But . . . from the beginning I had qualms, and I’ll let you see why by reading the first two pages.
Anybody who takes J6 this seriously . . .
But I kept on, and I’m glad I did. Yes, there’s a slant, but it’s not overt, though he tends to see the events through “modern” sensibilities. However, he isn’t overly effusive toward Lincoln and the North, either.
I’d like to do longer piece because there are quotes in the book that show that nothing really ever changes. So I’ll just say, overall, if you like nonfiction without a lot of editorialization, it’s a good read.
My goodness, the Fourth of July is right around the corner.
How was your week? Any opinions on any of the above, or any opinions on anything else? That’s what the comments are there for. Have at it.
To be completely honest, the Republican Party also doesn’t know when to quit. Witness the moved goalpost of “abortion should be up to the states—yay, Dobbs” (I’m fine with that) to “we’re going to do a national abortion ban because we didn’t get our butts kicked enough in 2022.” Just quit while you’re ahead.
No, not everybody dances, but you can clearly tell when the wheel may be turning but the hamster is more than likely dead.
You quote Fox News, which opines, "Drug traffickers and their organizations operate in many respects like legitimate businesses, relying on access to banking systems and to the U.S. dollar to operate day-to-day. This gives the Treasury Department a unique ability to disrupt the cartels poisoning our communities: by targeting the financial infrastructure they need to function."
Holy Hannah!
Does anyone need to point out that "the cartels" are not "poisoning out communities," but people are poisoning themselves, and drug dealers and the cartels supply a demand they do not create and operate on a cash-only basis? I suppose you could target any businesses created or taken over to laundry cash through commercial accounts (I remember a notorious pizza parlor in NYC that was a front for Mafia heroin dealing), but the T-Men have always been finding and busting these shell companies, so why create a "strike force" that will, as you say, eventually be yet another institutional weapon, supposedly deployed specifically against Fentanyl trafficking, that will eventually be used against citizens for other purposes?
Everyone knows China is the major source of Fentanyl and its precursor chemicals which they export to Mexico and elsewhere, with little or no resistance from anyone, as far as I can tell.
Fentanyl ascended to the top of the market precisely because of prohibition. It is totally synthetic, eliminating the need for processing opium latex, thus eliminating entirely the need for poppy crops. It is dosed in micrograms, so smuggling enormous amounts of it goes undetected and street junkies OD constantly.
I maintain that only ending prohibition and legalizing the sale of all drugs OTC to people 21+, with severe penalties for public intoxication and no marketing/advertising, can solve this problem, which is to say it will never be solved.
Always interested to hear what you have to say. But now I’ve spent longer than 5 minutes thinking about Star Wars and Disney (even watched one of the clips!), and that is 5 minutes I will never get back. Just how far can they shrink the human brain, before it crosses the line from inane into unintelligible? We’re getting there.