Realistically speaking, predicting the timing for any of these lawsuits is nearly impossible. Still, it feels to me like we will some big action on at least one of these suits this week, possibly today but more likely tomorrow.
It’s interesting, even the people whose podcasts I listen to don’t agree on everything. The GA Grand Jury foreperson who wanted her 15 minutes of fame. Most say it wasn’t ideal but it won’t have any real effects legally, but one says it’s a big deal. Some thing Michael Cohen’s testimony will hold sway; some think his testimony won’t hold sway because he has lied before.
The only conclusion I have really drawn, to a near certainty, is that in their podcasts and videos, Meidas Touch seems to have turned into the Rush Limbaugh of the Left. Less news, less informed speculation, more bloviating. Am I being too harsh?
Even Preet annoys me. I loved him when he first started his podcast, but he is way too both sides-y for me. SO GLAD he was not chosen as AG. I dropped my paid subscription to his Tuesday show, and mostly stopped listening to the free Thursday one. The farther Preet gets from his time in the Southern District, the more he has turned into just one more Talking Head. Too harsh?
I used to pay $10 a month as a Lawfare patron, but I ditched that well over a year ago. Even Popehat and his Republican sidekick are kind of annoying. I am paying $6 a month for what, maybe 3 35-minute episodes a month?
I find that I can’t even listen to Pod Save America regularly anymore. Jon Favreau has had some really dumb takes lately, as has Tommy. I really like Andy McCabe on the podcast Jack, but even the Mueller She Wrote lady is too cute by half, with something like 4 or 5 different podcasts, so I am not appreciating her much these days, either. I like swearing as much as the next person, but some of her swearing feels contrived, like it’s part of her schtick. Disingenuous.
Am I just in a cranky phase? Maybe the endless waiting for consequences is getting to me.
Update: To be clear, I know that all of this takes time. But it’s becoming more and more clear to me that even most of the “experts” who used to be on the inside of these things are just speculating, and I’m not sure they know that much more than the rest of us who are paying attention.
SFAW
“You just don’t understand that these things take time to get it right.”
Or something like that.
ETA: Excellent bracket — or whatever they call it — however.
WaterGirl
@SFAW: Oh, I completely understand that. And I agree with it. Knowing that doesn’t keep me from feeling on edge lately. And feeling irritated by all the talking heads.
Ohio Mom
I don’t think you’re cranky. I think there’s a ratio: the better informed you are, the harder you have to look to read/hear something you didn’t
SFAW
@WaterGirl:
Oh, I’m with ya, kid. I was just “pre-fetching” one of the expected responses.
MisterDancer
Punditry is a trap. It feels like even the wisest people can end up churning out poor work under some of these systems of regular output.
Add to that the impact of the bubble, and yeah, I can certainly see how the shine can come off some of these otherwise-wise communicators and thinkers.
narya
I’m gonna say “cranky phase”–which is absolutely fine!! I listen to a lot of the ones you mention, especially Jack, Pod Save America, and Serious Trouble, and I find enough nuggets in them to keep me coming back. I also really like Strict Scrutiny, which is very in the weeds on legal matters. To me, I think of it the way I used to consume movie reviews, back when I went to movies a LOT: I’d read Roger Ebert, the FYNYT, and a local radio guy (“The Regular Guy” on WXRT), and I could tell whether I wanted to see the movie. There were definitely movies that one or more liked a lot, but I could tell from the triangulation that I would not like the movie. I’m doing the same w/ the podcasts. Also too: occasionally one of them has a truly good explainer of something, and that, to ME, outweighs the blather on some other episodes. YMMV, of course!!
WaterGirl
@Ohio Mom: Yes! I just wrote that very thing in my update up top in the post itself.
Quiltingfool
Well, managed to hoist myself outta bed this morning by myself! Did the walker shuffle to the bathroom and it wasn’t quite as painful getting up and down! Progress!
The cat is thoroughly discombobulated. Mama isn’t sitting correctly on the recliner (she likes to snuggle against my left (new knee!) leg. Mama also has a noisy contraption to go up and down the hall. Mama accidentally smacked me in the head when she threw back the bed covers. Woe is she!
Doug R
Podcast, shmodcast-just follow Mueller She Wrote on twitter. She’ll point you in the right directions.
Raoul Paste
I think you’ve got it right WG. These broadcasters are constantly grasping for content, and then the content quality goes down.
Butch
I usually try to avoid making the “I haven’t seen any of them” or “I haven’t heard any of them” comments when the subject is the nominees for an award show. Howsomever, in this case I’ll admit that I have yet to listen to a podcast. Don’t own a cell phone and don’t feel like sitting at the ‘puter to listen to one, so I just haven’t taken the time yet.
Ohio Mom
As for me (this is a personal quirk), I am impatient with all the details. They are important for law enforcement, attorneys, judges and juries. I am glad there are people collecting and organizing all the details to make strong cases.
But for my purposes, all I feel I need to know is, Trump broke the law repeatedly and please, Powers of the Universe, let at least some justice be done. Call it the meta approach.
StringOnAStick
@Quiltingfool: Hang on there, keep moving (it avoids blood clots) and keep the ice packs coming. I used a icing/compression machine called a Nice1 that I had to pay extra to rent, but I think that thing is how I ended up with a excellent result and able to go back to work in 4 weeks to an on my feet all day job. Not that I wanted to go back, but the boss was frantic.
UncleEbeneezer
“Less news, less informed speculation, more bloviating. Am I being too harsh?”
No. Everything you say is true. I love Meidas and Allison Gill’s shows but they are both leaning so hard into trying to have Breaking News/Hot Takes, that they end up having way too much of it being crap. To be fair though, there’s so much happening that I do understand their motivation.
Yes, I think you are also being cranky. Fwiw, I’m right there with you, as are most of us.
CaseyL
@Quiltingfool: You are violating the universal feline law of “My Comfort and Convenience First, Last, and Always.” Very glad to hear you’re getting more mobile!
@Ohio Mom:
I would add, the better informed you are, the less well informed other people seem to be. Including people who do it for a living.
I’ve gotten so impatient with punditry – including liberal punditry – that I just don’t listen to it anymore. The “all-news” channels, like MSNBC, are 80% punditry,
I don’t want or need their opinions. I have my own, tyvm.
Baud
On MJ this morning, they were worried that the NY case was weak and would taint the more important criminal cases.
WaterGirl
@Quiltingfool: Mama’s gonna have some making up to do when this is all over! :-)
Seriously, though, kitties seem to know when something hurts, i bet all is forgiven. Except maybe the noisy part!
Baud
@CaseyL:
Agreed on punditry.
UncleEbeneezer
@SFAW: No, if she didn’t understand the process, she’d be screaming about Feckless Merrick Garland and Alvin Bragg while simultaneously hand-waving away any/all signs that indictments are coming.
Leto
@Ohio Mom: yes to both of your comments. #teamcrankypants
artem1s
@MisterDancer:
24/7/365 news is the trap. That’s why a normally sane, reliable pundit ends up with stupid hot takes. Sometimes there is nothing to report. When there is, they should suck it up and learn to say so.
I stopped listening to Pod Save America when they decided to stan their way thru the 2020 primary coverage and demanded Dem voters take the “crawl over broken glass” Wilmer loyalty oath before the campaigning even began. Talk about turning ‘nothing to report’ into a stupid hot take – that one was a big one.
Another Scott
I’ve not been attracted to podcasts.
There are too many sources of information these days, and only 24 hours in a day. That means I skim – a lot! Probably too much! I haven’t read an actual book in a very, very long time (though I still buy books for references and to grab bits and pieces of information for work).
It must be tough to come up with new things to talk about every day, on a deadline. I don’t envy the folks trying to make a living that way, but it’s not for me.
So, no I don’t think you’re cranky. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@UncleEbeneezer
Political podcasts = takes no expertise for any dimbulb to shout into a megaphone.
UncleEbeneezer
@Ohio Mom: I like all the nerdy law details and being very informed, but I totally get the alternative approach and sometimes even think of adopting it myself (at least for awhile) for the sake of my own sanity.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I’ve heard that a lot. Last night Michael Moore (former GA prosecutor not… the other one) said that the three main prosecutors ought to get together and coordinate who goes first and who has the strongest case which strikes me as 1) a good idea and 2) kind of sketchy?
I think I finally bailed on Nicolle Wallace yesterday. She can’t see the trees for the forest and has convinced herself the Feds are just gutless because people have Said Things, and it should be a slam-dunk! I’ve noticed Chuck Rosenberg, who actually practiced law at the levels we’re talking about and has been cautioning against oversimplifying these cases, has been pretty much un-personed at MSNBC
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
We all know that this stuff takes time. But this one is out in the open, we’ve all seen enough to want/need to see bars in front of any picture of SFB, I mean if we have to see a picture, that one is at least not as unpleasant. (I already imagine them in front of any picture that shows up – it helps!) One of the things I think about is that there is lot of lawing going on here, and all of it is very serious. And I also believe that all of the insurrectionists being locked up, one at a time, strengthens any case against SFB, so all of that happening is good as well.
IOW, I look for whatever bright side I can find, imagine, hope for. The dark side is that justice will never be served against an even former president, we have history of centuries showing that, even though this one was the worst ever by a very long and strong list, a traitor in my book – not just a shitty president and human. This is the kind of shitty human who gets away with his shitty life, even as he flaunts his shittyness to all. But this one went way, way, way too far, an almost fatal pain on the country, the government, the democracy we all live in and with. I believe he is a traitor to the country and all of us, and in the past we have dealt with that very harshly. I think we should be better this time, because while he is the very model of shitty – we should be better. It can’t/shouldn’t be difficult at all to be better than this extremely sorry excuse for a human.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@artem1s: always amuses me how purity-curious three guys who owe their media careers to the pragmatic Obama have become, until they do focus groups or in-depth polling. Not un-related, I think, to the fact that they are (now middle-aged) ex-wunderkinder. “But I can’t be some boring bougie centrist… can I?”
brendancalling
When I was at Raw Story, my job was to cover the daytime cable TV talking heads—this would be CNN, MSNBC, FOX, CNBC, the Today Show (if I caught it), and the View (generally for the daily Meghan McCain smackdown or unhinged rant). One thing I came to realize is that most of the analysis could be described as “wishful thinking” or “spitballing.” Other choose words I could use include “blathering,” “blockading,” “guessing”, and “newsporn.” Most of the guests were usually proved wrong by events, and many of their opinions were steeped in the guest’s ideology. And then there were the shows I didn’t have to watch, but which were on my radar—Young Turks and similar shows. That stuff is just AWFUL—Cenk Uyger had my sister thinking Hillary Clinton was a Nazi and Joe Biden was a rapist. Thank God she came to her senses and cast a vote for Biden, but she still very much thinks there is little difference between the GOP and the Dems, thanks to that propaganda.
After that experience, I stopped watching cable TV news. I have no doubt the politics podcasts are just as bad. When I want news or analysis, I read the Post, occasionally the NYT, my local paper (the Philly inquirer), and a few magazines. When I want commentary, I come to Balloon Juice, LGM, Progress Pond, and Daily Kos. There’s far less bullshit and wishful thinking.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It would be portrayed as sketchy, but I think prosecutors coordinate all the time.
tomtofa
I think that’s why the left-leaning radio/TV shows/networks don’t last; the left-leaning public tends to be better informed and gets irritated with and tired of the same old same old bloviating. Whereas the right-leaners can’t get enough of hearing the same thing over and over.
WaterGirl
@Doug R: Yeah, it’s all about ratings, one way or another.
“I have to be the first place they come for the news!”
What they don’t seem to realize is that all their “hot takes” and “non-breaking breaking news” diminish their brand!
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
Gibraltar may crumble as a result but once — just once — would love to hear one of the guest self-styled pundits say, “I don’t know and am not going to speculate based on partial data.”
Baud
@brendancalling:
I’ve been catching Good Morning America lately for reasons I really can’t explain. While I’m not a fan of George Stephanopoulos, the GMA episodes I’ve seen have been fairly straight news, with little fake drama or anti-Dem bias.
ETA: Still a small sample size.
Baud
@tomtofa:
Interesting theory. I’ve certainly tired a bit of the sameness to a lot of the punditry. It’s like watching a romcom and expecting the plot to be different.
StringOnAStick
@CaseyL: I spent some time at an out of town friend ‘s house recently and the older husband insists that the kitchen TV be on all day and night to MSNBC. It was maddening; I’m better informed by reading here and a few other sites, and now I fully understand how she gets into such black moods about, well, everything. Constant news means constant fear being pumped into your brain, TV is very effective as a way to overwhelm people emotionally while providing no incremental improvement in knowledge, and most importantly, no solutions or common action! My black moods lifted once I quit Twitter and started writing postcards because I was actually DOING something to, you know, be the change I want to see in the world.
NotMax
@Baud
As the slogan so aptly goes, “Don’t worry; they’ll make more.”
//
WaterGirl
@tomtofa: You might be on to something there!
Xavier
Sure been a lot of bad takes on the Silicon Valley Bank failure. I thought Fortune’s interview with Prof. Diamond was good. Basically, too much exposure to tech customers on the liability side and long-term bonds on the asset side, both of which were hit by the Fed’s interest rate actions.
narya
I will also add that I watch VERY little news–Chris Hayes is about it, maybe Maddow on Mondays–so I am not inundated all day/every day. I still read the FYNYT (don’t hate me), but avoid their opinion pieces like the damn plague, and avoid quite a bit of their political reporting as well. Thus, podcasts, and one or two people online (Marcy Wheeler, mostly–even though she can get into name-calling/everyone but me is stupid, I like her analyses) are the vast majority of what I get from someplace other than BJ. I think if I consumed more cable news/talking heads the podcasts would grate more; what I like about the good podcasts is that they can dig more deeply rather than just give a top-line headline. Whatever media one consumes, breaks are definitely helpful.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@narya: I’ve long thought there’s media space out there for a “translated from the angry and impatient” for Marcy Wheeler’s analysis
narya
@Xavier: I thought Pod Save America’s Tuesday episode did a pretty good explainer on that–and, actually, one of my banks (Fifth Third) had their CEO on CNN, and a link to that on their website, and I actually watched it and he was quite good.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Andy McCabe does say that. Example: he may say that X is how something is done at the FBI, and he’ll follow up it with something like “unless that has changed since I left 2 years ago”.
He is the only one who is good about that. But he’s still new to podcasting.
They will also talk about some player in the DOJ lawsuit and he’ll talk about how this is the guy who – even after the grand jury refused to give the prosecutors the nod to indict McCabe – and was finally only stopped by Judge X who said “you have to stop holding the sword of Damocles over this guy (McCabe) and let it go. And then McCabe will follow it up with “but I an see what he would have been on the short list for Jack Smith because he was the head of the PIN (public integrity unit) at the FBI and he has a lot of experience in the area of corruption. And then he’ll say, “so I have some reservations, but the proof will be in the pudding, and let’s see what he does.”
The Moar You Know
@Quiltingfool: My dog is a licensed therapy dog and a damn good one, but he has issues with both crutches and walkers for some unfathomable reason (I suspect he has a very vivid “doomer” imagination). He doesn’t get hostile (about anything, he’s a Golden!) but it’s very clear he’s a bit scared of them.
Oddly enough, wheelchairs are not a problem.
narya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, I kinda do that in my head . . . I like her measured approach. I’ve dipped into some of the folks live-tweeting the sedition trials, and Marcy’s info is helpful for that, too.
Geminid
@Baud: I think that the network news shows on TV and radio are an underrated news source. They don’t neccesarily give much depth, but breadth of reporting is important too.
Also, these “legacy media” have much bigger audiences than podcasts, blogs etc. This is another reason to know what they are putting out.
Alison Rose
@brendancalling: I worked in online political news for a couple years, and a LOT of what we did was “watch the cable news shows and get clips of people saying stuff”. If it was a Dem, we’d grab clips of them saying smart or tough things, but far more often, we’d be looking for Republicans saying shitty things so we could be like “wow look how shitty they are” and it got so fucking tiresome. I flat out told them I would not watch Fox, though. Thankfully I had a coworker who had no problem doing so, so I was like, great that’s your beat.
Baud
@Geminid:
I used to occasionally watch Today show, but comparing it to GMA, Today seems always on edge when it comes to Dems and a little too deferential to Big Daddy GOP.
Brachiator
No. Clips of episodes keep popping up on YouTube, and consistently blow up speculation and news out of proportion. I can’t be bothered.
But I guess a number of left pundits really, really want something to happen already.
StringOnAStick
@brendancalling: Interesting about Raw Story. I stopped going to that site first out of guilt that I didn’t feel like paying for it, but also because I grew to suspect that it was exactly as you describe. I never go there anymore, signal to noise ratio is crappy.
WaterGirl
@narya: It’s so interesting (to me) to see who wears well and who doesn’t. Take Pod Save America, for instance.
I thought Tommy was the really smart foreign policy nerd, but he has had some ridiculous takes lately.
Joe Lovett is who I was most drawn to – I love his sassy, irreverent takes.
Never the biggest fan of Jon Favreau, but he’s okay. Except for his stupid, stupid, stupid take on something a few weeks ago, which is why I mostly stopped listening.
Dan’s nasal voice drove me crazy at first, but he is clearly the smartest one of the 4 and he’s not just bloviating, he is writing serious books. He is still seriously engaged in the political world, not just talking about politics. Of course, he’s the only one of the 4 who isn’t an owner of Pod Save America. Interesting story there, but we’ll never know it.
It’s interesting to see who does which interviews when they have a guest. When Obama was on Pod Save America, Dan was the one who interviewed him, and I’ll bet that was Barack’s choice.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Not quite as nail-on-the-blackboardy as “only time time will tell,” the ultimate CYA vagary.
The Moar You Know
A lot of these pundit industry fools keep yammering on about any prosecution of Trump being a “slam dunk”. I would remind them:
Nixon was a slam dunk.
Reagan too. (Iran/Contra if you forgot)
Bush #2, the murderer of Iraq and war criminal extraordinaire. And his garbage human of a vice president even more so.
Every one of them, slam dunks. Yet none of them was remotely concerned that they might face prosecution, never mind punishment.
To be very clear, I am not slamming the DOJ or Garland or anyone else involved with trying to prosecute Trump. They are dealing with a VERY experienced manipulator of the court system and a huge reluctance on the part of the citizenry to hold a president accountable for anything at all. If Trump skates on everything I am not going to blame the people trying to prosecute him.
I blame us. Americans. For not having the will to demand equal justice for all of our citizens.
UncleEbeneezer
@Ruckus: “The dark side is that justice will never be served against an even former president, we have history of centuries showing that”
The only thing that can save Trump’s ass this time are 1.) Presidential pardons, 2.) State/Governor pardons, 3.) Jury acquittal and 4.) SCOTUS overturning conviction.
• Option three is the only realistic possibility for NY State charges and Civil cases. No NY governor will pardon him.
• I don’t believe Kemp can pardon Trump on GA State charges (I think pardons have to go through a Commission). Kemp also has shown little interest in saving Trump.
• A Republican President will surely pardon Trump of any Federal convictions, but a GOP President is hardly a given.
• SCOTUS, so far, has shown no interest in saving Trump either
So really, the only off-ramp he has to avoid justice is in Federal charges, and that relies mostly on a future GOP President or SCOTUS. The documents and related obstruction crimes are very straight-forward.
Which is to say, most of the conditions/factors that have prevented former Presidents from being brought to justice, just aren’t there in this case. This is really an unprecedented situation so I don’t think that history is a good predictor. The slow time-line of trials may mean that Trump dies before he ever sees a prison cell, but I think he will be indicted and likely convicted in criminal courts (in addition to losing civil cases).
different-church-lady
I think you’re just reacting to the fact that every-single-body in the entire world is an idiot.
brendancalling
@Alison Rose: Finding a GOP moron saying something stupid was the essence of my job, as well as coming up with endless variations of “BOOM: GOP STOOGE GOES DOWN IN FLAMES IN EPIC CNN SMACKDOWN.” Sometimes I’d try to mix it up with “KABLAM!” or “POW!” I always wanted to try “[INSERT EXPLOSION SOUND HERE!]” as in intro, but never pushed it.
On a related note, I don’t read Raw Story at all anymore. Too much “BOOM!”
Hildebrand
I find that Jon Favreau is better on the Thursday podcast when he is reined in by Dan Pfeiffer. I think that Dan is the best of the that particular bunch because he knows his lane and tends to stay in it (and is pretty darn smart about communications and politics).
A couple of weeks ago, Jon and Dan were play-acting a Sunday morning talk show, with Jon playing the role of a Democrat who decided to primary Biden. Dan played a Russert-like host and did a great job of absolutely boxing ‘the candidate’ in – and you could tell (especially watching the YouTube clip) that it really frustrated/bothered Jon.
I really wish that they would give the Thursday podcast to Dan Pfeiffer and Alyssa Mastromonaco, they are awesome when they work together (they are both brilliant – and tend not to take themselves too seriously).
CaseyL
@StringOnAStick:
Yes. The “dopamine hit” idea: get people addicted to fear/anger/doom-scrolling, so they keep coming back.
I’m angry enough on my own, don’t need anyone feeding it to me via an electronic IV. (If I need anything, it’s someone to talk me down; problem is, I wouldn’t believe them!
@different-church-lady: Yes. You know that saying, 20% of people cause 80% of the problem? I think the ratio needs to be reversed :)
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Whom did you sue for that privilege?
ETA: Damn, you fixed it!
StringOnAStick
I guess the overall conclusion is there’s too much out there trying to grab our attention (and $), and that leads to too many just shouting louder and louder about too much that doesn’t warrant it. It’s also possible that in the grand overarching scheme of things, all this is leading to a coming crescendo.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Yeah, this was very different from “time will tell.” This was him saying, “I have reservations about him from personal experience, but we don’t know whether he wasn’t given a choice about whether to continue to go after me, and I can see why he was on the short list, so I’ll keep an open mind and we’ll find out what he’s made of.”
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
?
ETA: got it.
UncleEbeneezer
@StringOnAStick: I see you’ve met my in-laws. There are two tv options (tv must be on during all waking hours): Football or MSNBC. It drives us fucking bonkers when we visit.
different-church-lady
@brendancalling: Ah,yes, Cenk. Another one of those guys the DKos crowd was smart enough to heckle off their stage.
The Moar You Know
@StringOnAStick: I think there’s an unexplored and very fruitful connection between “American politics becoming lunacy” and the rise of 24 hour news. I don’t even think the source matters that much. The more “news”, the more terrified.
NotMax
@Baud
Bring back J. Fred Muggs (who is still with us, last I checked).
;)
Hitchhiker
At some point I understood that none of these people know what’s going to happen or when it’s going to happen, or who it’s going to happen to. So I stopped listening to them for that, and started listening only to the ones who are (a) not annoying and (b) possessed of background knowledge I don’t have or can’t find in print. I’ve never paid $$ for any of their special extra stuff.
Is the Meidas empire too full of itself? Sure. I enjoy about 1.5 minutes of their current favorite guest (Michael Cohen), and then I move on. I can see how they’d be appealing to people who haven’t spent the last few decades following political stories, but I’d never compare them to Rush. He went after vulnerable people whose crime was existing. Their network matters at election time, I think.
Are the Obama Bros over? I stopped with them sometime before the 2022 election. They’re okay, but what they know is from a former time. I think a couple of them should run for office. Favreau would be an appealing candidate, no?
Preet was a voice of sanity during the trump time, but — like everybody else — he doesn’t know what’s going to happen. And I sure don’t need to be told that he doesn’t know what’s going to happen over and over and over. And over.
One person I find both entertaining and informative is Tim Miller, who appears on (barf) Charlie Sykes’ show on Fridays. His book about the taxonomy of trump insiders told me things I didn’t know, plus he’s got no fucks to give, he’s a married gay man with a kid, and he goes straight into the places where the loonies hang out (CPAC, Kari Lake’s election night party). Sykes himself is insufferable with his reflexive contempt for the Democratic party … it seems to be in his blood, in spite of his nasal hatred for everybody who sucks up to/tries to ignore trump. Sykes helped elect Ron Johnson, for fuck’s sake. He thinks Paul Ryan has intellectual heft. So, the Bulwark is okay, but only on Fridays.
I do like Jack, because Andy McCabe is very, very inside and manages not to be irritating while he’s not knowing things. I don’t listen to anything else from Alison Gill.
Now that twitter is so weird, I don’t go there for breaking news … the best place for that is on the reddit politics sub. It’s quite liberal, very active, and reliably gets actual news when it happens. So, reddit r/politics, hit NEW when I want to see if anything’s happened, and I’m caught up.
Plus this place, of course, which is both entertaining and full of people who know shit that I don’t. Appreciate you, watergirl.
oklahomo
This morning on CBS Morning News the asshat Tony Dukopil kept calling the drone incident a “shoot down” instead of a downing by fuckery; he kept saying “shoot down” while he was interviewing Lil Marco and allowing a anti-Biden spin without any push-back in regards to facts. Of course, somehow Biden is escalating a risky situation according to these two dimwits, but sendind up planes to escort the drones would be a solution they both seemed happy with. Aren’t drones supposed to lessen the risk to a human pilot? Also apparently losing pilots would be more acceptable than a $30 million drone — that number was used in many sentences too.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
That’s something. I left kos in 2010 and never looked back. Don’t know what they are like now, but that community had become toxic.
different-church-lady
@CaseyL: 100% of the people create 1000% of the problems?
Geminid
@Baud: It’s been a while since I watched any TV news show, cable or broadcast. I catch the short CBS radio news shows featured at the “top and bottom of the hour.” I think that’s a good, efficient source.
I also happen to be in range of WTOP’s Fredericksburg transmitter. That’s Washington D.C.’s main all-news station. They are part of the CBS news network, and have their own Capitol Hill and Pentagon reporters whose stories air between network news.
I find interesting to see that a couple local labor unions advertise on the station:
The Steamfitters also advertise. They pitch union membership to tradesmen who want better pay and “someone on your side.” There is a sustained commercial building boom in the DC metropolitan area. The Steamfitters need more members to help install HVAC and sprinkler systems, and they will train them as apprentices with the prospect of a good income to start.
Kristine
@StringOnAStick: I used to spend way too much time on Twitter. After the Purchase, I drifted away and joined replacements, but none of those held me for long. Overall, I’d say less time spent in the hot takes area of the internet has led to a much better mood overall.
Also, postcards. I agree that writing those has helped.
different-church-lady
@Baud: I abandoned it after the 2016 fuckery. I dip back in every once in a great while and it seems saner now.
StringOnAStick
@The Moar You Know: Agreed; 24 hours news is the devil.
Baud
@Geminid:
I wonder if unions advertise in other areas.
NotMax
@different-church-lady
Best decision Ben Mankiwewicz ever made was fleeing association with The Young Turks.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
On Michael Cohen, the commentary I’ve been hearing from lawyers who know what they’re talking about (experienced prosecutors who also personally know Cohen and TFG’s lawyer) don’t seem overly concerned. Yes, the opposing lawyer is likely to “do some damage” in cross-examination, but prosecutors know how to present co-conspirators as witnesses to juries, and collaborating evidence / testimony goes a long way to increasing the credibility.
There’s a reason Cohen has been brought into the grand jury 17 or 18 times, to drill down into every tiny detail of his testimony and how he’s likely to be attacked.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
I gave up on Booman I’m 2016 after he let his old site be used for primary conspiracy theories. I used to read him as much as BJ.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Geminid: I used to live pretty close to the WTOP transmitter in Wheaton, MD. You would hear their signal on the phone landlines during quiet moments, and there were reports people in nearby apartments picked up the signal in the metal studs in their walls.
I used to listen to them a lot when I drove in that area, more than to music stations.
StringOnAStick
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I wonder if Michael Cohen has bodyguards? You’d think so.
UncleEbeneezer
I find that Legal AF, when it’s Michael Popok and Karen Friedman Agnifilo (the Weds edition) is the best Meidas Touch show by far. It’s also pretty good when Ben is co-hosting but the Popok/FA combo is the one that is the least OMG BREAKING NEWS!!!1! in tone. They have fun, but it’s much less obnoxious in its’ self-promotion than the other Meidas shows. Likewise the Jack podcast is imo, much better than Gill’s Daily Beans (which I only sometimes like) and takes a similar, more serious approach without the desperate-for-clicks vibe.
AM in NC
I am with you WG on Preet and Pod Save America. The bro stench coming out of PSA made them unlistenable for me awhile ago, and lately Preet has been getting on my nerves for the reasons you cite. I mean, I like when he uses his measured demeanor to explain points of law, not so much when he’s promoting No Labels fools or telling us he can’t come down on a side because he doesn’t have perfect knowledge.
Ohio Mom
@UncleEbeneezer: Yes, Go ahead and revel in all the nerdy details! Just because it’s not my thing doesn’t mean you aren’t entitled to your small pleasure.
Brachiator
@Geminid:
By the time the network news comes on, you could have read a summary or detail from online sources.
TV news, like a lot of network TV in general, is mainly watched by older people. There are younger people who never watch TV for news. The same is even more true of newspapers, an industry which is disappearing.
StringOnAStick
@UncleEbeneezer: I’ve started listening to the Jack podcast when using a exercise bike, though mostly I go outdoors so their frequency of shows works for me. I have to be careful to not conflate that podcast with the brilliant Jack Smith Twitter parody account, the only person I will click on when I see a link, go catch up on his posts, then close that demon spawn site.
NotMax
@Ceci n est pas mon nym
No defense attorney present, nor what we generally think of as cross-examination when appearing before a grand jury,
StringOnAStick
Ok, time to go accomplish a few things. Have a nice day everyone.
MattM
Absolutely no offense meant, I’ve been there myself, but there’s a lot of grift among the names you named. There’s such a hunger for justice, and there are plenty of people out there trying to monetize that hunger.
Geminid
@Baud: I think I have heard unions advertising on a couple stations I listen to at night. I think some was on a Pittsburgh or Philly station.
The DC area has so much commercial construction work that contractors have a hard time keeping up. Besides trying to recruit members, the trade unions pitch themselves to contractors as efficient and knowledgeable partners.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Sorry for being unclear. The question they were discussing is “will Michael Cohen be an effective witness at the trial or will the opposing lawyers be able to destroy his credibility because he was convicted and because he lied to investigators?”
Anoniminous
Pundits predict no more accurately than a coin toss
MomSense
I don’t think you are too cranky. I wanted to like Mary Trump’s podcast but it is constantly Dems are messaging wrong (it’s the new Dems in disarray). I hate listened a bit. Then on one episode she and her guest didn’t know how many Democratic Senators we had and I decided it’s fucking arrogant to constantly criticize when you aren’t even at the 101 level of political knowledge.
Most of the podcasts are garbage.
I listen to the Bob Cesca show and The Professional Left. I read Heather Cox Richardson every day and she is the best there is.
Sometimes I listen to The Necessary Conversation. It’s disturbing. Liberal adult children try to discuss politics with their MAGA parents. Some of the things the parents say are so twisted and gross but if you want to know what the MAGA down the street is really thinking, this will do it. Make sure you have taken your blood pressure meds before you listen.
CaseyL
It’s kind of sad how many blogs I used to frequent, that I dropped without looking back between 2014 and 2017 when the leftier-than-thou types showed everyone their asses (I think that started under Obama; it came to full necrotic bloom in 2016 with the Hillary Hate). Not sure how many of them are even still around.
@Hitchhiker: Thanks for the tip! I do sometimes miss my Twitter feed. (I like Mastodon just fine, but it’s not good for following breaking events.) I rely on a lot of news sites, and BJ, for news information, and will check out Reddit’s news feed.
Baud
@Anoniminous:
I’d listen to the Coin Toss podcast.
Ohio Mom
There are a few people in my circles who are mainstream news consumers who periodically feel the need to update me on something they just learned that I already know all about, most likely from Balloon Juice, Josh Marshall or some other of my regular stops in tne blogosphere.
I am polite, I encourage them in their lefty leanings but inside I am rolling my eyes at their earnestness and yes, I feel cranky.
But there is no going back to my more innoncent days, a mind stretched and all that. At least I have company here.
Ohio Mom
Duplicate
Redshift
@Ohio Mom:
This ties into something I’ve always believed — the reason liberal media has never been had the success of conservative media is that conservatives enjoy being told things they already believe over and over again, whereas liberals actually want to learn stuff.
UncleEbeneezer
@Hitchhiker: The best legal pundits, imo, are the ones who can get into the weeds but always have deep respect for our justice system. As soon as they get too into cheerleading for indictments, they lose me. This is why I generally love McCabe, Friedman-Agnifilo & Popok (Legal AF) and even Ben Meisalas (though his constant self-promotion does bug me), Renato and Asha (It’s Complicated podcast), Harry Litman (Talking Feds) and Jocye White Vance and Barb McQuade of Sisters-In-Law podcast. All of them clearly want to see Trump held accountable, but they always and often point out the complexities of our our system and why some of the legal hurdles that are allowing Trump to delay, are in fact, incredibly important to our system of justice and the presumption of innocence.
Unlike people like Elie Mystal, Brian Beutler and Mehdi Hassan who are just awful…
brendancalling
@Baud: I went back for the Ukraine posts by Kos and Marc Sumner. It’s good stuff, generally comports with Adam Silberman’s analyses, and is fun to read. Other than that, same chaotic carnival of leftier-than-thou cranks, kooks, and bad writers.
SFAW
@UncleEbeneezer:
As we used to say in the design engineering biz: RSN (Real Soon Now). [Of course, ADN (Any Day Now) can also work.]
Redshift
@Anoniminous:
The best description of punditry I ever read is – Punditry is hit-based, like music or video games. It rewards outrageous takes, because if you make well-informed predictions of things that are really likely, you don’t stand out. If you make wild predictions, all the times you were wrong will mostly be forgotten, but if you’re right one time and everyone else is wrong, it’ll make your career and you can coast on it for years.
Ohio Mom
@Anoniminous: Ah, but when you find a pundit or a blogger who, in retrospect, was right, they are a keeper.
I am thinking back to the start of the Iraq War, there were bloggers back then I followed whom I didn’t expect to be so gung-ho. Time proved how wrong they were and I dropped them. If you get something so simple wrong, there goes your credibility.
On the hand, I forgive Paul Krugman his occasional mistaken predictions because he always owns up.
CaseyL
@UncleEbeneezer: I think you’d like Teri Kanefield, who has a blog and left Twitter for Mastodon. Her blog front page has a FAQ which explains why indictments are not falling as the spring rain on TFG’s head, and her Mastodon feed reviews the latest from the courts.
NotMax
@Baud
Inevitably to be called Chasing Tail.
//
Fleeting Expletive
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I wonder what really IS the deal with MSNBC these days. There used to be a larger pool of interesting commentators who were called in every once in a while, now it’s the same sad stable almost every day. You got your Charlie Sykes, your David Jolly, your Donna Edwards, etc.
Is it editorial timidity or laziness, or what?
Geminid
@Brachiator: Yes, it is easy to low-rate “legacy” media: older audieces, lag time between reports, etc. But when something really important happens I’ll hear about it on radio within an hour. The audiences are still relatively large, and while they tend to be older, older people are as influential as younger ones, maybe even more.
And I would make a general criticism of using online media as a principal source: it is easier for news consumption to be “siloed,” resulting in a less broad view of events including local news. At least, I have observed this among my friends.
Baud
@NotMax:
Haha.
Roger Moore
@CaseyL:
This. The “news” channels have figured out that actual reporting is way more expensive than punditry, so they spend more and more time on punditry and less and less on reporting.
Another Scott
@Ohio Mom: “Ignorance is precious. Once you lose it, it’s gone forever.” – my favorite uncle.
Cheers,
Scott.
Anoniminous
@Baud:
Either the coin will land head’s up or the coin will land tail’s up.
Impossible to say. Really.
Redshift
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Years ago I was driving the Beltway in Maryland listening to WHFS in (one of its incarnations), when suddenly Rush Limbaugh was on my radio! It went away after a bit. Later I figured out that the frequency for one of the stations was exactly double the other (and the wingnut station was presumably nearby and much more powerful.)
Only time I ever experienced something like.
Ruckus
@MisterDancer:
A production line can churn out crap just as easy as reasonable product. And that’s what daily podcasts, websites can produce. Trying to do too much, especially with news can produce from anyone – pure crap. Having to put out 24 hr news brings what, at least 18 hrs of crap a day. Doing this on every TV channel and the web makes it worse. My yardstick, your’s may be different.
WaterGirl
@SFAW: At least I don’t think the coming indictments are vaporware!
UncleEbeneezer
@SFAW: You could also say “We are step Y in the process, where step Z is typically when indictments drop.” That gap between Y and Z can be excruciatingly long and frustrating and Z isn’t guaranteed, but the fact that we are at Y, at all, is a very good thing.
CaseyL
@Roger Moore:
So, more bloviating about fewer stories, with less and less original information… seems like we’re headed toward an event horizon of some sort.
RedDirtGirl
@The Moar You Know: Maybe because they don’t leave the ground…
UncleEbeneezer
@CaseyL: Ah yes, I forgot to add her. She’s great in the regard I’m talking about.
Anoniminous
@Redshift:
@Ohio Mom:
It doesn’t matter if a pundit is accurate or not.
What matters is if the pundit accumulates eyeballs for the Infotainment Medium to sell to advertisers.
(And with that bit of cynicism …. back to Event Structures in Continuous Memory and Why Catecholamines Are Your Friends)
RedDirtGirl
Ha, I ignored this post at first because I thought it was about sports!
geg6
You people listen to too many political/legal podcasts. Every one I’ve tried is very low quality, IMHO. The only one I subscribe to is the Josh Marshall podcast. One hour, once a week of good reporters and editors talking about facts and not extrapolating out too far or trying to convince anyone of their brilliant chops so as to attract talking head appearances.
I have a big library of podcasts I listen to and they are wonderful. Use podcasts to get away from the garbage these idiots spew out on their pods and regurgitate on cable news shows. Most of the political podcasters are too high on their own supply. I don’t know how you who listen stand it.
Paul in KY
@brendancalling: What a crappy job to have. I hope you were well paid.
WaterGirl
@RedDirtGirl: I had considered titling this post as:
March Madness, No, the Other March Madness
Mai Naem mobile
WG I am kind of impressed at how much TFG lawsuit related media you consume. Jack is pretty much the only political podcast I listen to. I like Andy McCabe. He’s not full of himself.. I’d like to see Pete Strzok do a podcast with McCabe. There’s a reason why TFG was so relentless going after those two. I listen to a lot of Sirius Progress and POTUS channels. Progress is like a cross between MSNBC and the Daily Show. I find Pod Save America too bro-esque for my taste. I go to Raw Story because they do have some new political news stories but I don’t go for the analysis stuff. Last I read the AZ Republic for local news and the Wash Post.
Sure Lurkalot
@The Moar You Know:
This reflects my feelings except I believe the arc of justice seems to bypass people of means and power more generally than just a president. They have gamed the system which is why I think many Americans are cynical about it.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: Gonna steal that!
West of the Rockies
Kind of funny if you think about it… all these hot takes on why hot takes are annoying.
I’m trying to quit Mediaite. It’s mostly rage-inducing insult porn.
Roger Moore
@StringOnAStick:
There was definitely an advantage to the good old days when most people who relied on the TV for their news got a 1 hour news show. It’s not just that people weren’t getting as much of the news. It was that with a 1 hour show, they didn’t have to try to keep you hooked. When the news was over, they could go on to the evening entertainment programming. With 24 hour news, their primary concern is no longer keeping you informed; it’s keeping you from changing the channel. Selling fear is an effective way of doing that.
oldgold
The classified documents case is the best case.
It should be given priority and be expedited.
Mai Naem mobile
I wish this bracket was seen by MAGATs but it never will be. I would love to ask a MAGAT how they expect somebody to be POTUS with all this going on in the background. The right used to talk about Bill Clinton being distracted just by the Monica deal.
brendancalling
@Paul in KY: actually, it wasn’t that bad. I worked from home, which made it easy to get to work. I was done by 4:00 PM CST.
Geminid
@CaseyL: This is one reason I like network radio news. The readers recite 2 to 4 sentences about 3 or 4 different stories. Some stories will have soundbites, example Senate stories typically will have McConnell soundbite paired with a Schumer soundbite.
There is very little room for analysis, but it’s not like normal listeners don’t have analytic skills of their own. Overall, I find it an efficient news source.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
I wonder if your dog is concerned. If he was well trained he would have been exposed to crutches and walkers and may have seen people that do not do well in them, for some they can be a pain in the all over. IOW it might be good nervousness. 99% of the time a person just sits in a wheelchair. (I have a neighbor who lives in a wheelchair and it is a pain in the ass to do, but does give her a level of mobility that otherwise she wouldn’t have at all.) I also used to know a guy who lost all use of his legs in Vietnam and he lived in a wheelchair. Hell of a basketball player, offense or defense, that chair was a weapon – the way he used it.
wonkie
I can’t stand listening to Meidas Touch or any of the leftwing podcasts because the hosts spend too much time telling me what I am going to see and describing how I am going to react than they spend showing me the content of their shows.
Alison Rose
@brendancalling: Yeah, we had our go-to words, too, which I got so fucking sick of after a while. “Eviscerates” if a Dem said something sharp, “chilling” when a Trumper said something awful (usually Stephen Miller), “melts down” anytime Trump got mad about something. For a while, I was the main editor and tried to push back on reusing things so often, but the people above me would be like “no it’s good”. Blech.
frosty
@brendancalling: I’m the same. I’m checking into dKos now and again, after a long time, for the Ukraine coverage and I don’t bother with anything else.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oh, god. I had no idea
narya
I think my ability to listen to Pod Save America is because I’m actually a latecomer to them; I’ve only recently started listening. They can be a little bro-y, but a non-bro point in their favor is that they are all-in on supporting LGBTQ folks; it’s not an afterthought. I admit that I don’t know who’s who among them (and don’t care), but ISTR that one of them is gay? Regardless, I’m glad to have that voice so present.
Brachiator
@Geminid:
I agree that it is easier for news consumption to be siloed. I noted that increasingly younger people do not get any news from legacy media. They may not be as well informed as other people, but they don’t care.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
The do. I’ve heard ads for the same unions (IBEW and the Seamfitters) here in the LA area. I also remember some contractor association advertising they used union labor, so you knew they’d get the job done right the first time. It was an unusually favorable approach to unions coming from an employer.
geg6
@Geminid:
Unions are advertising like crazy during the local news here in Pittsburgh (I don’t listen to radio, so maybe there, too). I see a lot of ads for the Pipefitters, Iron Workers and Heavy Equipment Operators unions. The only news I watch on tv is local.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
If you’re obsessed with the news and demand to find out about everything as soon as it happens. Normal people aren’t like that. Unless it’s a disaster that might affect them personally, they’re just has happy waiting until their regular dose of daily news to find out about that stuff.
Redshift
@frosty: Yeah, Ukraine coverage and Tom Tomorrow cartoons. That’s it for me. I don’t hate the rest of it, but I drifted away way back when it transitioned from having a few writers to being an open blogging platform, and it became too much work to figure out who was worth reading.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I quit listening before he (apparently) got there, but i could see where he was going and it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.
WaterGirl
@narya: Yes, Jon Lovett is gay and is very open about it.
Redshift
@Roger Moore:
I’ve heard some interesting discussions about that effect in the newspaper business. Basically, that there’s a large set of readers who liked to read a newspaper or watch a newscast and feel like they were up to date, and having a news website that’s constantly updating or infinitely scrollable just makes people feel overwhelmed rather than more informed, so they tune out.
It’s one of the reasons news outlets are big on newsletters these days. They produce that feeling of “you know what you need to know” at a specific time.
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
There’s a flip side, though, which is that pundits often don’t want to depart to far from the pack. If they’re wrong the same way everyone else was wrong, they’ll be forgiven because nobody could have predicted it. But if they disagree with the pack, they’ll often be excoriated for being “wrong” even after the facts have proven them right.
We saw this a lot with opposition to the Iraq War. The people who predicted it would be a catastrophe were right, but it didn’t advance their careers at all. Instead, they were pilloried during the early days of the invasion for being a bunch of naysayers. When their predictions proved correct in the long run, their careers were already ruined, while the pundits who had gotten everything wrong were forgiven because nobody could have predicted it.
Geminid
@Brachiator: Younger people may pay more attention to national, state and local news as they get older. That’s been the pattern for older generations, I think. They won’t neccesarily turn to the networks, TV or radio to get it, though.
I’d like to know what the media landscape will be like 10 years from now, and whether people between 30 to 40 pay more or pay less attention to current events than that cohort does now. There has always been a substantial portion of each age group that stays more or less oblivious to news events besides those closest to them. I Interact with very few younger people and would not even guess what the trend is.
Ruckus
@UncleEbeneezer:
That’s why I called it the Dark Side.
Everything doesn’t have to go to the Dark Side but it often does because they scream and shout. A lot.
And I do agree with you on the possible outcomes.
Roger Moore
@Mai Naem mobile:
He couldn’t, but in the MAGA mind, that means all that stuff would need to be shut down while he was president to keep from distracting him. See how nicely that works!
geg6
@Geminid:
I interact with them every day and it hasn’t changed a bit even if their sources are different from what ours were. More of them are tuned into traditional sources of news than you’d guess, mainly because they don’t show up in the traditional ratings. They are streaming everything, even CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, etc.
Gretchen
I agree that the podcasts you mention have gotten a little boring and both-sidsy. The one I still love is the Professional Left/Cornfield resistance. They have been on the outside all along, so they don’t have to stay palatable to the tv bookers. They point out that “the left has been right about the right all along”, and were warning about the people who were driving the right who are all on MSNBC now. They are also just entertaining. I also still enjoy the Bob Cesca show, especially the Thursday one.
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
That sounds about right to me. People have wildly different responses to constantly available news. Some people feel overwhelmed and run away, while others just can’t stop. You don’t become a regular on a site like Balloon-Juice if you’re the first kind, but we need to remember they’re out there and probably represent a bigger fraction of the population than we do.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
RE: By the time the network news comes on, you could have read a summary or detail from online sources.
Not a matter of obsession. TV news used to be 15 minutes. Then they had an advantage over afternoon papers by delivering more up to date news. But they were still largely a headline news service.
Online news services, including those of legacy stations, can satisfy both headline and detail news functions. Often, by the time the main network stations do their thing, the news is already stale.
ETA: Of course, TV news helped kill afternoon newspapers. “Normal people” used to buy an afternoon paper and read it at home, maybe supplemented by radio news. Then it became typical to settle in and watch the evening news.
Times change. People can get as much or as little news as they want whenever they want it.
Gretchen
@Roger Moore: Exactly. Phil Donahue never came back, but Rick Wilson, who drove the attack ads against Iraq War objecters, and Nicole Wallace, who worked in the Bush White House back then, are on my “liberal” MSNBC every damn day.
moops
I don’t bother with any podcasts. I find a few blogs bring me enough content and commentary, from people that have a track record.
Ruckus
@UncleEbeneezer:
I solved this years ago. My TV crapped out and I never replaced it. And I never missed it. I watch Netflix on the internet and play that on the 65in flat screen that a friend bought me as a gift. But no TV, no 6 million ads a day for crap I neither need or want, no bloviating people telling me the ABSOLUTELY MOST IMPORTANT THING TODAY, for which we will change to something else tomorrow. And zero risk that someone dickhead from fox not news will show up in front of me for some reason and bloviate about more bullshit that even as fucking stupid as he is, he doesn’t believe.
Hitchhiker
@UncleEbeneezer:
Ah, thanks for the reminder that I need to give It’s Complicated a try. Talking Feds is worth listening to for sure, especially because it’s just once a week and the panels shift enough that you aren’t hearing the same voices every time. As many people have pointed out here, the issue seems to be that so many of these people are relentlessly fucking expanding — more shows per week, more shows under the same umbrella, more shows if you just chip in $5 per week, yadda blah blah yadda.
I just want to know if something’s happened. And when it has, I want smart, informed analysis. Period.
JoyceH
@Fleeting Expletive:
I wonder if it’s post-pandemic Everybody Back To The Office syndrome – they seem to give preference to people who can physically go to the studio and sit across from the anchor. I sort of miss the lockdown days when people were Skyping in from their homes, you got a wider range of commentators, plus intriguing glimpses into people’s home lives. And thus ratemyskyperoom was born. Some off-site commentators are kept on (Claire McCaskell and her wonderful kitchen), but there’s a lot more around-the-table stuff now.
Beatrice Fitzpatrick
@Ohio Mom: 😜
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
I just think people like us exaggerate the importance of getting up to the minute news. Most news isn’t so critical that finding out about it a day, or even a week, late is that important. Sometimes it’s actually better to wait for a story to develop so you don’t waste time on details that turn out to be irrelevant. There’s a reason newsweekly magazines like Time and Newsweek used to be a popular competitor to daily newspapers.
moops
Also, the classified documents case is the simplest to prosecute and we should already have an indictment. I don’t know why it is just silence now.
Redshift
@AM in NC:
I must have missed that one. When did that happen?
NotMax
Much if not all TV news programming has become a jumbled assault on the eyes. Too bright primary colors, stark lighting and inset panels and boxes of constantly changing unnecessary text cluttering up the real estate.
What the anchors are saying is almost secondary.
WaterGirl
@Hitchhiker: Even the Talking Feds guy has some new 10-minute “breaking” news explainer every day, sometimes more than one.
It’s all competition for audience size, I think. But their weekly podcast is usually interesting because of the 3 different guests each week.
I got partway through one episode of “It’s Complicated” and Renato was sounding the alarm about how the 15 minutes of fame comments from the grand jury foreperson was going to fuck everything up, terribly. Too hysterical for me, especially since I hadn’t heard one other person saying that. That turned me off on them.
Ruckus
@CaseyL:
I tried Mastodon and Spoutible and have just tapered off of both of them. They have their strengths but twitter just did it better. Not that it was always worth it to spend more than 30 seconds there. I think in the long run Spoutible will be better but it will take a while to get up to full speed. Oh well life goes on. Hopefully.
mrmoshpotato
DTAA? Damn Time (For) Arresting Assholes?
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Ruckus: I just signed up for Spoutible but I never engaged heavily in social media.
I’ve been considering the types of posts I’d like to do but am waiting until I have a proper day off to have a good start.
lowtechcyclist
I just can’t be bothered to pay for opinionating, even if it’s knowledgeable opinionating. I contribute to several small news outfits of different sorts, and and I feel I’m doing some good by doing so, even if I only occasionally read their stuff. But opinions? Those and a few bucks will get you a coffee at Starbucks.
Gretchen
@narya: Yes, Jon Lovett is the PSA bro who is gay. He has his own Saturday show, Lovett or Leave It, which is more a comedy show. It still talks about politics but is funny.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@lowtechcyclist: Sometimes opinions come with useful information or edifying new concepts. I restrict my opinion seeking to those who provide these things.
This is why so much of my time on YouTube is spent on media criticism and analysis.
lowtechcyclist
@Roger Moore:
This is all too true. One more reason not to waste one’s time on opinionators.
Brachiator
@Geminid:
I am surprised to see that radio listenership has been stable for a number of years.
Print media is largely defunct (newspapers and magazines). TV is variable.
I thought that Twitter was becoming more mainstream, but Elon Musk is doing his best to kill it. There is no way to know what the media landscape might look like 10 or 20 years from now, but it may be interesting.
People always want some form of news and information.
The Los Angeles Times used to be the big, important newspaper here in my area of Southern California. I worked at an office where one co-worker subscribed to the Times and would bring it in and put it on a table in the break room. Someone would throw the paper into the trash, except for the Sport section.
National news, local news, entertainment news. People got their info from somewhere else. And everyone in the office, except for a few of us, was under age 35.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
There’s a radio in every car. It’s free to use and we are severely dependent on cars.
NotMax
@NotMax
Fortunate, I guess, not to be a particular devotee of Alex Wagner, who now warms the seat Tuesday through Friday in Maddow’s time slot.
The moving multi-colored backgrounds on the set are enough to induce nausea.
NotMax
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Actually, AM radio is fast being phased out in new cars.
Czar Chasm
You might enjoy, then, It Could Happen Here: A podcast that’s very left-leaning, that looks at current events from a humorously fatalistic viewpoint.
The host, Robert Evans, also does another great podcast, Behind the Bastards, where he does a detailed biography of some of the worst people or organizations in history. To help with commentary, he has a rotating selection of comedian friends, who come into the episode with no knowledge of who/what they will be discussing.
Another Scott
@mrmoshpotato: Don… Tru.. Athletic Association (?)
My guess, anyway.
Could also be “double tax avoidance agreement”, but that seems like a long shot.
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@NotMax: Yes, but many local AM news stations like the two I listen to broadcast on FM now as well. So does WTOP out of DC.
Uncle Cosmo
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
If you didn’t pick that signal up in your dental fillings, you weren’t close enough. OUAT I had so much HgAg amalgam in my choppers I’d get Radio Free Uranus on good days. (Crappy playlist.)
coin operated
@brendancalling:
Same here. Swore off them some years ago until I stumbled back and read one of Marc Summer’s Ukrainian updates. His posts are as anticipated as Adam’s nightly updates here.
The rest of the site is the same hot garbage that made me leave before.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Yeah, I left there at about the same time. Can’t even recall why at this point.
Dangerman
Furman!
Raven, I propose first two days if The Dance sre National Holidays; I need a second.
Shit, I love March Madness.
raven
#threalmarchmadness
Paladins!!!!
Kelly
When I see “No Labels” politicians I remember generic beer, the white packaging that just had “BEER” in simple black letters.
WaterGirl
@raven: I was sure you would chime in earlier!
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
I watch the Nightly Nudecast on Pornhub. It’s penetrating and revealing.
NotMax
@Geminid
First they came for the eight-tracks and I said nothing.
Then they came for the cassettes and I said nothing.
Then they came for the CDs….
;)
Dangerman
@Dangerman: Shit, I can’t type even if I’m cold stone cold sober.
Furman. Best ending since Bryce Drew. Going back a few years. Both long distance threes.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: I’m behind also. I was thinking I’d listen to Virginia play, but when I looked up the game time I saw the Cavs had already lost to Furman!
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
I am not saying that getting up to the minute news is important. I am just saying that the younger generation does not care much about legacy and traditional news sources.
Weekly news magazines used to provide more depth and context. I guess the online versions do the same thing, but the print versions are disappearing. The news is too stale by publication date. I don’t even see old issues of Time and Newsweek in doctor’s offices. US News and World Report. Does it even exist anymore?
Fraud Guy
This is why I read top 100 politics blogs–not as much filler.
different-church-lady
@NotMax: $40k for a vehicle, and they can’t be bothered to put a 57 cent chip in the radio?
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: Nixon resigned in advance of impeachment and then got a preemptive pardon. I think he had real reason to be concerned otherwise. The pardon set a bad precedent, that actually prosecuting any of these people would be a horror to be avoided at high cost.
geg6
@Brachiator:
I think it only exists to publicize their bogus college rankings.
West of the Rockies
@JoyceH:
I liked David Beslosch and his library.
japa21
@Dangerman:
IIRC Drew’s was even longer.
Another Scott
@Brachiator:
+1
This happened decades ago with pre-internet computer industry news. One could buy the monthly PC Magazine or ComputerShopper at the newsstand, or if one could say one specified or bought stuff for one’s business, one could qualify for the weekly InfoWorld or the like, for free.
It was a revelation. You’d read about stuff weeks/months before it appeared in the monthly magazines.
Then the internet took off….
The rest of the publishing industry is going through that same transition, because when people want information, they want current information. They may not want it updated every minute, but when they search for it they want it to be current.
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@japa21: There will be no joy in Hoo-ville tonight
Oh well. Coach Bennett said this field was unusually strong top to bottom.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
Yes, unfortunately. Their big moneymaker seems to be their college rankings, which are a plague on higher education. They’re far more influential than they ought to be, to the point that schools do stupid stuff just to improve their US News ranking.
UncleEbeneezer
@Matt McIrvin: Iran-Contra criminals were pardoned too:
“The rest of those indicted or convicted were all pardoned in the final days of the presidency of George H. W. Bush, who had been vice president at the time of the affair.[14] Former Independent Counsel Walsh noted that in issuing the pardons, Bush appeared to have been preempting being implicated himself by evidence that came to light during the Weinberger trial, and noted that there was a pattern of “deception and obstruction” by Bush, Weinberger and other senior Reagan administration officials.[15]”
Trump couldn’t be prosecuted while President due to: 1.) DOJ/OLC policy and 2.) Bill Barr being AG. So my point is that the reason that Nixon, Bush 1 and Trump never faced charges has much less to do with the system, and much more to do with them having loyal Republicans willing (and in position to) thwart the Justice System. That is not the case (at least not wholly so, or for all the cases) for Trump, now. And DOJ, Manhattan DA, Fulton County etc., all, so far, indicate they believe that the high cost is not a deal-breaker for proceeding.
Lapassionara
@Dangerman: Ditto! Best two days of college sports in the year.
As for Trump being a former president, he — unlike Reagan, Bush, et al — is technically eligible for another term. I think his participation in insurrection should disqualify him from office, but he needs to be indicted and tried. In any event, we must find a way to prevent him from ever being US president again.
Geminid
@Lapassionara: I hope we find a way too. It may come down to kicking his ass in November, 2024. I don’t neccesarily think Trump will be the Republican nominee next year, but I can’t rule it out.
UncleEbeneezer
NotMax
@different-church-lady
All it would take is the FCC mandating that all passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. come equipped with both bands.
But no-o-o-o.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, the mysterious Corsican Cat-Fox:
(Includes a couple of pictures)
“I told Rufus not to go into the chicken coop, but he didn’t listen!”
Cheers,
Scott.
UncleEbeneezer
Scout211
At least two dozen Mar-a-Lago employees subpoenaed in classified documents probe.
Dangerman
@japa21: I pulled up Drew’s Youtube. It’s close.
i cannot f’ing believe BD was 1998. Damn, I’m old.
Scout211
@UncleEbeneezer: The judge also issued an arrest warrant for failure to appear in court. He was due in court on Monday
jackmac
That lower left bracket is loaded.
National champ comes out of that one!
WaterGirl
@UncleEbeneezer: I am glad to see that they are going after all the attorneys who participated in or supported Trump’s bullshit.
It shows that they are serious about all of this, and I hope that gives any Republican attorney pause before they support any of this kind of crap in the future. Including the whole “stolen election” crap.
WaterGirl
@jackmac: Quite possibly! But there are some strong candidates in early bracket so I wouldn’t count some of the others out.
I would like to see those on a bingo card!
Nelle
In basketball March Madness, my son was at the Kansas-Howard game this afternoon. Kamala Harris (alum of Howard) was there too). The game is here in Des Moines.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@NotMax: AM radio can get fucked.
AWOL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Nichole Wallace believes the Bush II Junta was the Greatest Administration of All Time and Georgie Was a Man of Great Integrity.
Her show is ‘Republicans in Exile looking for a Paycheck.’
You listened to that lunatic?
EthylEster
@different-church-lady: For me it’s everybody won’t STFU.
Ruckus
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
My car has a radio and CD player. I think the radio likely still works but don’t actually care. Now I know the CD player works. Also another aside, I go to the store maybe once a week and the last 3 yrs I worked I walked to work because the job was a mile away. So my 7 yr old car, in SoCal has less than 17K miles behind it.
The Lodger
@Kelly: That was my favorite thing about Repo Man.
SFAW
@UncleEbeneezer:
Thanks for sharing. Cynical asshole that I am, I think I’ll just wait to see when/where we actually get to point Z for anyone other than the (figurative) foot soldiers.
dearmaizie
Love that bracket graphic!
Only podcast I listen to is Get Sleepy when I go to bed. Try it to take your mind off all the other noise!
Thanks for this post.