Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

The revolution will be supervised.

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

This chaos was totally avoidable.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

Books are my comfort food!

Their shamelessness is their super power.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

In after Baud. Damn.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

T R E 4 5 O N

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Working On Alignment

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Working On Alignment

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(click on the photo to see the topmost planet)


Trolling, trolling, trolling…

WaPo newbie gets shoved in front of the videocam to explain the Moron Caucus telegraphing its wildest fantasies:

Reader Interactions

87Comments

  6. 6.

    Elizabelle

    @germy:   From the mouth of Kahn:

    But the idea that the only thing the New York Times should cover—at the expense of the politics that are motivating voters around the country—is the threat to undermine the democratic system, and that therefore everything on—if you’re a Democrat—the other side of the fence, the Republican side of the fence, is nothing but a threat to democracy, is the formula to not having any more independent journalism in the United States. I honestly think that if we become a partisan organization exclusively focused on threats to democracy, and we give up our coverage of the issues, the social, political, and cultural divides that are animating participation in politics in America, we will lose the battle to be independent. 

    Don’t make us stop covering the fake outrage that emanates from those white people in the diners we so value!

  7. 7.

    hueyplong

    Birx is one of those actors who, due to some poor choices of roles, gets typecast.  She’s no longer credible playing any role other than a GOP bootlicker.  Surely her agent has explained this to her.

  8. 8.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @germy: Proud non-subscriber to the FTFNYT going on 5 years now. Highly recommend for those not desirous of living in a fascist country.

  9. 9.

    germy

    @Elizabelle: @rikyrah:

    It seems a certain type of person rises through the ranks at the NYT, and it isn’t a person who would threaten their business model. He sounds like a real company man.

  10. 10.

    Elizabelle

    @germy:  I am rather amazed at how Baquet and now Kahn (cats paws for the Sulzbergers/owners, both of them) show such contempt for their actual readership base (as seen in the reader comments), as opposed to the “conservatives” they so covet and seem loathe to criticize or cover honestly (ie. not “both sides”, as much as possible), even at the price of our democracy.

    Contempt for their readers.  It comes through loud and clear.

    I wonder about their rising digital subscriber base.  Wouldn’t that be easy to manipulate/use as a cover for other funding sources?

  11. 11.

    Butter Emails!

    @germy:

    On one hand Republicans are a threat to democracy and are doing things that threaten democracy on the other Republicans think Democrats threaten democracy. It’s our job to occasionally cover the things that are actual threats to democracy, but because those are pretty much exclusively being done by Republicans it would be partisan to give them the attention they deserve. In order to balance this it’s essential that the bulk of our focus be writing stories about what Republicans think fed to us by Republican operatives in bars.

    Similarly, we will focus on polls about what Americans believe. If what they believe is absolute bullshit, we’ll write about how it spells trouble for Democrats and represents savvy strategy by Republicans. After all, it’s not as though a majority of Americans represents a failure of the media to inform the public.

  12. 12.

    danielx

    …the other side of the fence, the Republican side of the fence, is nothing but a threat to democracy, is the formula to not having any more independent journalism in the United States. I honestly think that if we become a partisan organization exclusively focused on threats to democracy, and we give up our coverage of the issues, the social, political, and cultural divides that are animating participation in politics in America, we will lose the battle to be independent. 

    You know, I’m trying to imagine what could be considered “partisan” about focusing on threats to democracy and I’m drawing a blank. What reality has this individual been inhabiting in the last few years?

  13. 13.

    germy

    @Elizabelle:

    The Sulzbergers are a powerful NYC family and I’ve always wondered if they got into some of the same sketchy real estate stuff the FormerGuy got into.

  14. 14.

    Salt Creek

    @Elizabelle: A disaster hire?

    It looks to me to be a sincere preppy talking to his tribe, telling them what they want to hear. Spouting wishful thinking.

    He is doing exactly what they hired him to do, this is no disaster, this is journalistic malfeasance.

  15. 15.

    germy

    Kahn went to Harvard, where this rule tends to express itself most vividly, and where he left an extensive footprint in the archive of the student paper, The Harvard Crimson. From a look at his old clips, it seems college-era Kahn, who also eventually became the paper’s editor-in-chief, did not deviate from that norm.

    Kahn’s beat at the Crimson was the university’s leadership, and many of his clips toed the ostensibly objective, two-sided line the Times has long favored, but did so with exceptional generosity towards his most powerful subjects. Among them: billionaire presidential candidate Ross Perot (whom Kahn hailed as potentially “one of the greatest Harvard benefactors in recent decades”) and more-successful presidential candidate Ronald Reagan (whose 1986 Reykjavik Summit with Mikhail Gorbachev Kahn approvingly contrasted with Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 meeting with Adolph Hitler). Notably, Kahn had less generous things to say about Rev. Jesse Jackson, whose progressive activism, particularly around apartheid South Africa, he lambasted in a 1985 piece as “political,” “opportunistic,” and lacking “moral authority.”

    A recurring character was Harvard’s president at the time, legal scholar Derek Bok. Bok’s greatest hits included inviting then-president Ronald Reagan to be the 1986 commencement speaker and a pointed lack of engagement with student protests over the school’s investments in apartheid South Africa. Kahn covered both of these developments, and the latter more than almost anything else. In a series of articles on the apartheid divestment protests, he painted Bok as a well-intentioned educator beleaguered by sanctimonious student activists.

    His most explicit defense came in a piece titled, “Moral Fences Do Not Make Good Neighbors,” about Bok’s widely-mocked proposal to fund a $1 million program that would send 30 Harvard students to South African schools rather than divest. Kahn compared that program to FDR’s New Deal — “a bold initiative designed to fight the greatest depression this country has ever faced” — and suggested that students who felt otherwise merely “claim[ng] a monopoly on morality.” Activists would remain dissatisfied by all of Bok’s efforts, Kahn argued, short of “personally hiring a plane, flying to Pretoria, and splitting P.W. Botha’s head with an Uzi submachine gun.”

  16. 16.

    Butter Emails!

    @danielx: He’s basically acknowledging that it’s Republicans that are attacking and undermining democracy. Focusing on that would be advantageous to Democrats and therefore partisan.

    Somehow this twisted logic only applies to things that would assist Democrats. When the reverse is true they have no issue saturating the front page for weeks.

  19. 19.

    Elizabelle

    @Butter Emails!:  I wonder if the Sulzbergers et al wanted the mask to slip this early.

    Check out the “most liked” reader comments on this story in the WaPost on Kahn’s selection.  They sound like a pack of jackals.  Taking the NY Times, and the WaPost under Sally Buzbee, to task.

    I am going to put up the top-rated comments next, for those who don’t have a WaPost subscription.

  20. 20.

    Amir Khalid

    @hueyplong:
    I have a little sympathy for Dr Birx. She was trying to save her career in the Trump administration while being a voice for medical science re the pandemic. And unlike Dr Fauci, she didn’t have a boss like NIH Director Francis Collins who was able to shield Dr Fauci from TFG’s worst. So her situation was always more precarious.
    But not that much sympathy. Hers was always a lost cause: she ended up partly abetting the TFG administration’s bungling, at great cost to her own professional reputation, by not speaking up more. She should have recognised that and bailed out.

  21. 21.

    Jeffro

    @Butter Emails!:He’s basically acknowledging that it’s Republicans that are attacking and undermining democracy. Focusing on that would be advantageous to Democrats and therefore partisan.

    It’s a choice.  He could, alternatively, choose to spotlight the anti-trumpov Republicans and how they have committed themselves to this fight.  Even to the point of working with the dirty hippies Democrats, as in the cases of Cheney and Kinzinger.  Even to the point of running as a traitor to the GOP independent, as in the case of Evan McMullen out in Utah.

    Technically, there is a (bless me) bipartisan coalition here trying to fight for what’s left of democracy in this country.  But no…gotta have the Ds vs Rs, bothsidesallatime BS

  22. 22.

    HinTN

    @germy: Or the nasty little business of supporting and arming Nazi Germany like grandaddy Bush.

    Rich folk are (mostly) ever thus.

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    On 11 April the Federal Aviation Administration concluded its investigation into the incident and determined that Jacob had crashed his 1940 Taylorcraft BL-65 as a stunt, saying, “On November 24, 2021, you demonstrated a lack of care, judgment, and responsibility by choosing to jump out of an aircraft solely so you could record the footage of the crash.”

    The FAA justified its conclusion by pointing out the fact that Jacob had attached multiple cameras to the outside of his plane, including a camera pointed in the direction of the propeller “in order to record video footage of the outside and inside of the plane during the flight.”

    Other pieces of evidence the FAA cited included the sport parachute backpack container that Jacob put on before the flight, his opening the left side pilot door before claiming that the engine had failed, his failure to contact air traffic control on the emergency frequency before jumping out the plane and his lack of attempts to restart the engine by increasing airflow over the propeller.

    The FAA also said that Jacob did not make any attempts to search for safe areas to land, even though “there were multiple within gliding range” in which he could have made a safe landing, and that he jumped out of the plane while holding a camera attached to a selfie stick and continued to record the plane during his descent.

    Additionally, the agency found that Jacob had recovered then disposed of the plane wreckage, as well as recovered the cameras that he had attached to the plane before the flight.

    As a result of its findings, the FAA has revoked Jacob’s pilot license and informed him in a six-page letter that if “you fail to surrender your certificates immediately, you will be subject to further legal enforcement action, including a civil penalty of up to $1,644.00, for each day you fail to surrender it”.

    In response to the letter, Jacob posted a video on YouTube on Saturday, saying, “I didn’t think that just posting a video of an adventure gone south would ruffle so many feathers….. The aviation community has been pretty tough on me, so I’m thinking about quitting altogether and giving up, just because I’m hated,” he added, while filming himself on his way to the post office to mail his pilot’s license.

    Pobrecito…

  24. 24.

    Elizabelle

    WaPost story on Joe Kahn being selected as NY Times executive editor.

    Top comment, by pblotto1:
    Dean Baquet will not be missed. He seemed to think that the role of the paper of record was to normalize the behavior of an obviously unfit occupant of the Oval Office and that the world needed a never ending series of interviews with angry white Trump supporters in diners. Let’s see if his successor continues that ignominy, or he restores journalistic integrity to the Gray Lady.

    #2 comment by amarantine (!):
    In celebration, the NYT will have an entire issue dedicated to Hillary’s emails and how MAGAts in diners feel. Oh wait, that’s every issue.

    #3 comment by GeorgiaLiberal:
    Bothsiderism is not objectivity. It is a form of hedging to maintain access to the corrupt and powerful.

    #5 comment (4 was a variation of 2): Andrew Stack:
    I have to say… good riddance to Dean Baquet. I unsubscribed from the NYT during the 2016 election when they devoted seemingly endless front page coverage to a crisis manufactured by the GOP to swing the election in their favor. I’m talking about HRC’s e-mails of course: totally unfounded claims that were trumpeted by the NYT and others just endlessly. I blame the editors, and Dean Baquet specifically. He has never authentically apologized for it as far as I can tell. Scandals sell papers I guess?

    I hate to say it, but George Orwell was right about the media (and remember, he fought on the side of the working-class communists in the Spanish Civil War, hardly a right-wing wacko). I will not forgive the NYT and especially Dean Baquet for their role in determining what our country has become.

  25. 25.

    Betty Cracker

    I read the CJR piece and did not come away convinced Kahn will be as bad or worse than Baquet. I still think there’s hope he might do better. There’s context that’s missing from the tweets that has bearing on the quoted matter.

    Was it depressingly both-sidesy? Absolutely! I certainly don’t expect a transformation any time soon. But Kahn acknowledged that democracy is in peril because of Republican behavior and said there’s room for improvement at the paper. Even stating the obvious like that is kind of a departure from the Baquet regime, which has been militantly anti-introspection.

  26. 26.

    Amir Khalid

    When long-time ruling coalition Barisan Nasional lost the general election here in 2018, Malaysia’s corps of senior editors were cut adrift from their newly powerless political patrons, who had for so long been theit ticket to career advancement. Whom should they support now?

    I would say to Joseph Kahn what I would have said in 2018 to those brown-nosing editors, had they but asked me: how about supporting the public interest, genius? If protecting democracy means being partisan, then do the right thing and be partisan.

  28. 28.

    mrmoshpotato

    And Nancy SMASH checked her inventory of fucks to give, but, alas, she was all out!

  29. 29.

    Elizabelle

    @Amir Khalid:

    how about supporting the public interest, genius? If protecting democracy means being partisan, then do the right thing and be partisan.

    Thank you, Amir.

  30. 30.

    mrmoshpotato

    WaPo newbie gets shoved in front of the videocam to explain the Moron Caucus telegraphing its wildest fantasies:

    Woah!  Eyes and ears assaulted with Matt Gaetz’s disgusting face and voice at this hour!

  31. 31.

    hueyplong

    @Amir Khalid: In the context of this thread, Birx comes off better than Kahn.  At least Birx is trying.

    Kahn is straight-up telling us he ain’t gonna do the objectively right thing because that wouldn’t be “objective.”  He’s essentially a gatekeeper for the worst of the power structure, and as far as he’s concerned there is no line that can’t be crossed by his masters.

  32. 32.

    OzarkHillbilly

    On a balmy day in early October, I found an aged polo pony named Abuelita panting in a locked stall, her matted hair bearing the mark of the saddle that had recently been on her, a gash across her cheek. Her legs were trembling from exhaustion, her eyes sunken from dehydration, her ribs pushing through her coat.

    It was my third week riding at the private farm of a Connecticut-based polo player, a property I’d landed at when my arena polo club closed during the pandemic, leaving me without the hobby that had proved an unlikely medicine for my chronic insomnia. Desperate to keep up the riding that tempered my anxiety, but operating on a freelance writer’s salary, a fellow rider cautiously suggested that I contact a man that we’ll call Roger, a horse flipper and polo professional who had more horses than he could ride.

    Roger had a problem with the bottle, my friend warned, but a fantastic eye for horses. I called him and visited his property. It was storybook bucolic: stone walls, red oaks, and a pasture full of polo mounts. We worked out a deal where I’d pay a flat fee every month to ride as often as I liked.
    ……………………..
    When October hit and the east coast polo season ended, things started to unravel. By the time I found the injured mare locked up without food or water, Roger’s drinking had reached a Bacchanalian level and he was feeding the horses erratically in between blackouts.

    The hay supply had dwindled to several dusty bales and the pipes froze after an early frost, making it impossible to get water to the animals. The farrier who was supposed to rid the horses of their summer shoes never materialized; neither did the groom that Roger claimed he’d hired to cover his increasingly long absences.

    What was supposed to be a low-stakes place for me to blow off steam had become a boiler room of stress, but as a middle-aged, amateur rider with more expertise in word processing than animal rescue, I wasn’t sure what to do. I badgered Roger, begged and threatened, decreased what I was paying him. None of this convinced him to buy groceries for his animals.

    I lost track of who needed saving. The horses? Roger? Me?
    ……………………………
    In her poetry collection, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, the Somali British writer Warsan Shire writes, “You think I’ll be the dark sky so you’ll be the star? / I’ll swallow you whole,” a sentiment that sums up the shift in my attitude toward Abuelita after I learned about her past. I’d thought I was being generous by rescuing this mare, but my generosity had come with expectations that she would become “nice”. What reason did this poor horse have to be nice? And what kind of generosity comes with expectations? If generosity comes with an agenda, isn’t it a bribe?

    Four months into our partnership, Abuelita has put on hundreds of pounds. She’s barefoot (which means she has no horseshoes on) and her improved circulation has her coat shining a fiery red instead of the dull, doorknob-brown she was when I first found her. Though I can’t speak for her, she expresses the running and bucking and playing and whinnying of a happy horse.

    I look back now and cheer for the old lady mare ready to defend her access to food and water with her life, who kicked me when I tried to dress her facial wound because she thought that I was coming for her hay.

    At a healthy weight now with her energy restored, Abuelita is more than rideable –she’s a pleasure under saddle if you survive tacking her up. But I don’t feel comfortable imposing my desires on her. It feels like an act of sisterhood to just let her be a horse.

    Go read the whole, it won’t take long.

  33. 33.

    sab

    @Amir Khalid: At least you acknowledge her good intentions. She was politically way over her head, but I think she was in there trying and hoping to make things less bad.

    Useful object lesson. Sometimes good intentions are not enough if you don’t have the political chops (connections and skills) to do the job. All you do is damage your own reputation. Amy Acton saw the pointlessness of staying and bailed. Brix stayed on. I think Acton made the right choice, both morally (why be coerced into lying?)  and for her own career.

  35. 35.

    Betty Cracker

    Whoa — a GHWB-appointed judge (J. Michael Luttig, retired) is spilling all the tea on his party in a CNN opinion piece. An excerpt:

    That objective is not somehow to rescind the 2020 election, as [Republicans] would have us believe. That’s constitutionally impossible. Trump’s and the Republicans’ far more ambitious objective is to execute successfully in 2024 the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020 and to overturn the 2024 election if Trump or his anointed successor loses again in the next quadrennial contest.

    The last presidential election was a dry run for the next.

    Luttig mentions many of the same themes we’ve talked about here, including the concern that certain SCOTUS justices would go along with the “independent state legislature” doctrine to screw Dems out of the presidency. Glad he’s raising the alarm.

  37. 37.

    zhena gogolia

    @debbie: They’re from WaPo, I believe. But the NYT commenters are (generally) also better than their writers, if a little more totebaggy than WaPo. As Elizabelle says, the WaPo commenters sound like BJ.

  38. 38.

    debbie

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Beautiful. A friend’s father stabled the horses for a local polo club, and I helped exercise and care for them from time to time. These horses were well loved and attended, and Abuelita’s situation is tragic.

  40. 40.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    The worst part for me about reading the text messages is I think they were right. If they had been able to raise questions about one or two states they would have had conservative media onboard, followed by mainstream media, and they might have succeeded. They just wanted to put one of them back in play- MI, WI, PA, GA because it isn’t even “electoral count” anymore at that point, it’s would they succeed in throwing enough shit against the wall for some of it to stick.

    We were more lucky than we were smart or strong. They weren’t able to chip out a chink in the time they had, and a chink was all they needed. We may get a preview of the next tactics if there’s a close Senate race which I consider a plus. I’d rather have a preview in 2022 than just get hit with it in 2024. I hate surprises :)

  41. 41.

    SFAW

    @Elizabelle:

    I honestly think that if we become a partisan organization exclusively focused on threats to democracy, and we give up our coverage of the issues, the social, political, and cultural divides that are animating participation in politics in America, we will lose the battle to be independent. 

    A few questions for Kahn:

    1) Are you a fucking moron?

    2) How is it that “threats to democracy” is a partisan issue? Does one party want to defend democracy, and the other doesn’t?

    3) How does covering “threats to democracy” require that the FTFTFNYT “give up our coverage of the issues, the social, political, and cultural divides that are animating participation in politics in America“? How is it an either/or, zero-sum situation?

    4) How does the FTFTFNYT “lose the battle to be independent” by covering “threats to democracy”?

    5) Are you a fucking moron?

    Asking for a country on the brink of fascism. You fucking moron.

  42. 42.

    germy

    I honestly think that if we become a partisan organization exclusively focused on threats to democracy, we’ll piss off our boss and his friends, who really don’t want Democrats raising their taxes.

    (I ran his statement through the Our Media Betters translator)

  45. 45.

    germy

    @Elizabelle:

    I can imagine Kahn being called in to Sulzberger’s office after running a bunch of front page stories detailing the assault on democracy:

    “Kahn!  I suspect your journalism is partly responsible for Democrats winning in a landslide across the country.”

    “Really Mr. Sulzberger?   Thanks!”

    “You’re fired.”

  48. 48.

    Kay

    @germy:

    I don’t think they need a sub headline saying “this is a threat to democracy” and I honestly am baffled at how such supposedly smart people are so rigid that they insist on portraying this like that.

    No one is asking them to literally mark the story with “threat to democracy!” No, no, no.

    What we’re asking them to do it not work so hard to portray it as something else.

    So if we find out Mark Meadows was industrially working to overturn an election just don’t fucking COVER UP for that by making it a story about who will be the next majority leader. Just don’t add anything. I don’t want them to “lead” us. I want them to stop leading us in the direction they prefer.

    People will get to “threat to democracy” – ya know, eventually- but not if they’re constantly told this is a story about who is up and who is down in the Republican Party. Is that what’s it about? Who says?

  50. 50.

    germy

    @Kay:

    But that’s a game they play.  If you ask them to simply cover what the GOP is doing, they’ll reply that you’re insisting they include ThreatToDemocracy in every headline.

    Kahn’s logic reminds me of what he wrote at Harvard:

    Activists would remain dissatisfied by all of Bok’s efforts, Kahn argued, short of “personally hiring a plane, flying to Pretoria, and splitting P.W. Botha’s head with an Uzi submachine gun.”

  51. 51.

    SFAW

    @zhena gogolia:

    As (I think) Barney Frank once said “What color is the sky on your planet?”

    “Highly liberal” Elise Stefanik? Sorta like the “highly intelligent” Louie Gohmert or Jim Hoft?

    ETA: In case it wasn’t obvious, the Barney Frank quote was aimed at Cucker, not you.

  53. 53.

    SFAW

    @germy:

    Kahn took that position because one of the activists called it a “clip” instead of a “magazine” (or vice versa?), and was just trying to invalidate the “activist’s” argument in that way.

  54. 54.

    Kay

    @germy:

    They did the same thing with “Trump lies”. They don’t have to use the word “lies”. That wasn’t the point of the criticism. About midway thru his term they started covering the fact that he lies constantly in a variety of careful ways they are comfortable with and guess what? People figured it out. Most of them described him as a liar by the end. Because he is. They somehow manage to both take too much responsibility for power while also not taking enough. I don’t know why they can’t think this tru and come up with some kind of consistent approach. I know it’s new! Everyone has to learn new things at work. Join the club.

  56. 56.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro: Ready for a frost tonight? That’s kind of late for this part of Virginia. The weather was extreme yesterday in Waynesboro. The National Weather service verified that a tornado touched down around 2pm.

  58. 58.

    Betty Cracker

    @zhena gogolia: I’ve got a post that mentions that in the hopper. My theory is Carlson is trying to position Scalise for GOP leader. People stopped talking about it after he got shot at the congressional baseball practice, but Scalise notoriously called himself “David Duke without the baggage.” That would recommend him to Carlson.

  60. 60.

    Betty Cracker

    @louc: I’m pretty sure Luttig came up in the John Eastman text dump — Pence’s lawyer mentioned that Luttig didn’t buy Eastman’s crackpot scheme.

    ETA: I hope the Jan. 6th committee calls Luttig to testify at the upcoming hearings.

  61. 61.

    Kay

    The NYTimes will always be hard for me because in two kind of big events in recent history they were just really, really bad.

    Iraq invasion and the 2016 election. Those seem like very big errors to me. I roll those into evaluations. I think they need a lot of A’s to add to the ol average to counter those two giant F’s. It doesn’t matter how great they are if they choke when it really matters. That’s the difference between “good” and “great”.

  66. 66.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I love how they moved directly from doing no work other than attacking Democrats and inciting various dumb-ass panics to doing no work other than positioning within their Party. They work EXCLUSIVELY for themselves.

  67. 67.

    Anyway

    @Betty Cracker:

    This is what I have been afraid of ever since AZ, GA and other states made changes to the way electors are seated. This could be disastrous for 2024.

  68. 68.

    Kay

    @zhena gogolia:

    They can do 50 long form climate change stories with great graphics. If they mistakenly employ a propogandist for war in the lead up to an invasion and don’t catch it they failed at a really basic and essential aspect of what they are and what they do. It doesn’t all get weighted the same. Some errors are bigger than others.

  69. 69.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Elizabelle: Kahn’s statement reads like kind of a strawman. Nobody is saying the NYT should drop all news other than coverage of Republican efforts to undermine democracy–just that it ought to be above the fold

    I mean, the Washington Post isn’t as great as they think they are on this but compared to the NYT it’s an obvious positive example. Which is why the WaPo has my money and the NYT doesn’t.

  70. 70.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Kay:

    I’m hoping that the drip drip drip of revelations from the both the stenographers’ trove of inside info saved for their tell all books and the January Six committee just increases the size of the circular firing squad aka “positioning within the party.” 

  71. 71.

    Nomdeguerre

    @Kay: The times was awful in the Gore-Bush election as well. Tons of disingenuous “Gore has a problem with the truth” articles…establishing a standard for veracity  they did not feel the need to maintain with Trump. Their wen ho Lee reporting was also bad. This has been going on a long time.

  72. 72.

    Amir Khalid

    Because no one’s quoted it yet:

    When the Moon is in the Seventh House
    And Jupiter aligns with Mars
    Then Peace will guide the planets
    And Love will steer the stars

    A song from a more innocent time.

  73. 73.

    gene108

    @Betty Cracker:

    Judge Luttig’s commentary is nightmare fuel.

    If Republicans pull off getting the Presidency, while losing the popular vote nationally and switching electors in states they lost, I have no idea what we can do.

    The whole thing is so unAmerican, I think the only recourse maybe liberals storming DC in protest.

  74. 74.

    WaterGirl

    @sab: disagree strongly.  She was in a position of trust.  In a position of trust, you have your integrity and your reputation.  She poured both of those down the toilet so she could keep her job?  During a pandemic!

    She is worse than pond scum.

  75. 75.

    prostratedragon

    partisan organization exclusively focused on threats to democracy
    Wow, I’m really hankering to hear the other party in that discussion.

  76. 76.

    prostratedragon

    @germy: ​ They used to have a by-line there whose drum major articles on NYC planning and projects convinced me that the company must be fully in on some of the sharper practices.

  77. 77.

    J R in WV

    @Amir Khalid:

    I was shocked to find the FNYT piece on that good German leader,  Mr Hitler, whom the timesman assured us was not really a violent person,  published in 1922. Google found many pieces like that clear into 1938, when a timesman actually visited the so-tasteful mountain hideaway in the Bavarian alps. The times archive is full of revelations like that!

    My grandfather took his wife and 4 kids to Europe for 3 months  from June to September of 1938, they were in Vienna, Austria for the Anschluss, and in England for Chamberlain’s speech about “peace in our time” by giving Hitler Czechoslovakia, then the industrial power of Europe, producing more tanks than Germany.  They heard that speech live in a movie theater when they stopped the film and put the audio feed on their sound system!

    They made it home safely, my dad and both uncles all eventually volunteered for service in the world war that started so soon after that European tour. The family passport still exists, full of border crossing stamps, some with the beloved German Swastika included.

    And now another psychopathic dictator has started a land war in Europe… doomed to repeat the worst history of all!?!

  78. 78.

    Brantl

    @Butter Emails!: After all, it’s not as though a majority of Americans represents a failure of the media to inform the public.

     

    I can’t fathom what that sentence is supposed to mean?

  80. 80.

    coin operated

    @WaterGirl:

    She was in a position of trust.  In a position of trust, you have your integrity and your reputation.  She poured both of those down the toilet so she could keep her job?  During a pandemic!

    She is worse than pond scum.

    Just wanted to quote that again for truth…

  81. 81.

    Montanareddog

    @Kay: there was another egregious case: that “journalist” they hired from some right-wing site who was carrying water for Giuliani over Hunter Biden and completely missed the President was extorting Ukraine

  82. 82.

    opiejeanne

    @OzarkHillbilly: There should be a bigger penalty for the pilot than just losing his license. The crash could have started a massive fire in the Los Padres National Forest, and God knows, that area has already suffered a lot from fires.

  83. 83.

    VOR

    @germy: There is a long list of people positioning themselves to be TFG’s VP pick. Just looking at female governors, there is Kristi Noem from South Dakota, Kim Reynolds from Iowa, and Nikki Haley from South Carolina.

  84. 84.

    Geminid

    @VOR: Kristi Noehm can’t be the VP pick if she is not reelected this fall. That is not a certainty. While South Dakota is now reliably Republican in federal elections, Noehm beat her Democratic opponent in 2018 by only 12,000 votes out of 330,000 votes cast. Noehm has made the South Dakota news in bad ways during her current term. Her obvious national ambitions may work against her too. Noehm’s Democratic challenger can credibly attack her for using South Dakotans as stepping stones.

  85. 85.

    WhatsMyNym

    @opiejeanne:

    There should be a bigger penalty for the pilot than just losing his license. The crash could have started a massive fire in the Los Padres National Forest,…

    Maybe he can now be charged with littering (?) and have to pay for the removal of the plane.

  86. 86.

    StringOnAStick

    @WhatsMyNym: How convenient that his “engine failure” happened over open uninhabited area instead of over a city, and he didn’t have to risk a fancy parachute landing tangled in powerlines or on a busy street.  Amazing coincidence, that is.

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