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FOCUS | Alternative History: The Dangerous Byproduct of Fake Facts |
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Thursday, 09 March 2017 12:27 |
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Abramson writes: "Fake news has morphed into something far more egregious, fake history. Donald Trump routinely lies about himself, his accomplishments, his businesses and his opponents. This is how he wins the political upper hand and dominates the news cycle. The lying is no longer surprising."
Former executive editor of The New York Times, Jill Abramson. (photo: MediaBistro)
Alternative History: The Dangerous Byproduct of Fake Facts
By Jill Abramson, Guardian UK
09 March 17
From Ben Carson claiming slaves came over as ‘immigrants’ to Betsy DeVos ignoring Jim Crow – history is a new frontline in the battle for truth
 ake news has morphed into something far more egregious, fake history. Donald Trump routinely lies about himself, his accomplishments, his businesses and his opponents. This is how he wins the political upper hand and dominates the news cycle. The lying is no longer surprising.
It’s his willful ignorance of history, mirrored by members of his cabinet, that is astounding and, in some ways, even more demoralizing.
Lobbing a Saturday morning tweet at former President Obama to accuse him of wiretapping his phones at Trump Tower was outrageous, given there is not a scintilla of evidence that this happened. Revealingly, it also showed that Donald Trump has no sense of the history of the office he holds or its traditions.
President Trump’s ignorance about the fundamentals of US history is compounded by the team surrounding him. In his maiden address to his employees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson equated the experiences of slaves and immigrants.
After calling America “a land of dreams and opportunity”, here were the astonishing words that followed: “There were immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder, for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”
Outrage was immediate. The secretary, who has the most prestigious academic credentials of anyone in the Trump Cabinet, clung to this idiocy in subsequent interviews. On Twitter, he went even further out on a limb, insisting, “You can be an involuntary immigrant.” Later, as the limb was sawed off, Carson finally retreated, this time on Facebook.
“I’m proud of the courage and perseverance of black Americans and their incomprehensible struggle from slavery to freedom,” his post stated. “I’m proud that our ancestors overcame the evil and repression that we know as slavery. The slave narrative and immigrant narrative are entirely different experiences. Slaves were ripped from their families and their homes and forced against their will after being sold into slavery by slave traders.” Despite his prior reference to “involuntary immigrants”, he added, “the immigrants made the choice to come to America.”
The new education secretary, Betsy DeVos, barely eked out her confirmation vote after showing jaw-dropping ignorance of federal education policy. But she managed to top that performance in a display of total ignorance about the history of segregation in higher education.
First, President Trump invited the presidents of historically black colleges and universities to the White House for what they thought was a substantive talk. Instead, they were used for a brief photo op with the president. DeVos then hailed the historically black schools as “real pioneers” of school choice, the issue that is her sole passion. These schools were founded after the civil war because black Americans could not attend segregated schools. Choice had nothing to do with their beginnings.
When her absurd comments caused an uproar on social media akin to the storm that confronted Carson, DeVos, too retreated, releasing a statement saying that the history of black colleges and universities “was born, not out of mere choice, but out of necessity, in the face of racism, and in the aftermath of the Civil War”.
The reaction on the internet to these comments was immediate and intense, showing, thank goodness, that many Americans have absorbed the lessons of the country’s racial history.
Finally, in the biggest irony of the week, CNN broke a story that Trump Svengali Stephen Bannon had defended Senator Joseph McCarthy for crusading against communists. Andrew Kaczynski, a CNN reporter known for digging up previously undiscovered statements by political figures, found a 2013 speech in which Bannon hailed the discredited Wisconsin demagogue for rooting out the Reds in the US government.
“The place was infested with either traitors that were on the direct payroll of Soviet military intelligence or fellow-travelers who were kind of compliant in helping these guys get along,” Bannon said. “I mean, there’s absolutely no question of it.”
Well, history has rendered its verdict on the McCarthy period, with its shameful blacklists and forced congressional testimony. It is one of the darkest chapters of modern US politics. McCarthy and his deputy, Roy Cohn, a mentor to Donald Trump in New York, were both exposed and discredited for their false accusations and reign of terror, which needlessly ruined many people who had served their country.
The Bannon speech is especially bonkers given that President Trump, in falsely accusing President Obama of spying on him, decried this as “McCarthyism” on Twitter. In all of these instances, history is being twisted to serve expedient political purposes in service of a rightwing agenda that is anti-immigrant and racist.
The tactics are certainly ones that Joe McCarthy would have approved.
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The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy Against Me |
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Thursday, 09 March 2017 09:49 |
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Keillor writes: "Joe Biden is following me. I go to lunch at Mickey's Diner and he's sitting two stools away, wearing a stocking cap and a fake mustache with a fake nose and glasses but he says, 'Hey, how's it going, fella?' It's Joe Biden. So pathetic. Sad."
Former Vice President Joe Biden. (photo: Jessica Hill/AP)
The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy Against Me
By Garrison Keillor, The Washington Post
09 March 17
 oe Biden is following me. I go to lunch at Mickey’s Diner and he’s sitting two stools away, wearing a stocking cap and a fake mustache with a fake nose and glasses but he says, “Hey, how’s it going, fella?” It’s Joe Biden. So pathetic. Sad.
He is conducting a destabilization campaign against me, putting chemicals in my food that make me behave erratically. Why?
Because he and his secret cabal are terrified of what I represent.
My guiding principle from the beginning has been Make Earth The Center Again. Not the sun. Earth First.
Ever since Pope Urban VIII failed to shut down Galileo and the fake science of Copernicus, Judeo-Christian civilization has been in steady decline. It’s the plain truth. That’s why the Pilgrims came to the New World, to escape solar-centrist ideology.
Solar power is killing us. This country is on the verge of collapse. We are up against powerful forces. Did you know that James Comey is actually Jimmy Hoffa? People are surprised when I point this out, but it’s true. Same first names, last names of five letters. Just a Coincidence? No way. “Comey” was Hoffa’s code name in his Teamster days, short for “Comrade.” He knew the only way to beat the FBI was to join it, and now he’s part of the secret cabal.
So are Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi — note that their first names have five letters — and what is even more shocking: They are the same person. That’s why you never see them arm in arm.
S/he has a dream: to become the first transgender president of the United States and take the “Men” and “Women” signs off every toilet including the ones in your own home so that anyone can come into your home and use the toilet for as long as they please, no matter who else needs to use it, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
That’s why Biden and Jimmy and Schelosi are after me. Because 50 million people read my column every week. Fifty million. It’s the most-read column in American journalism since Robert Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” — that’s why I am paid $500 million a year and travel in a private train and am surrounded by heavy security at all times.
Everywhere I go, people tell me they love my column — black people, Mexicans, Jews, women, people of all ages — and everyone I meet asks me, “Why not the front page? Why are you stuck back in Op-Ed? It’s so sad.”
I’m in Op-Ed with all the wackos because the Deep State is out to undermine my credibility. But the fact is: I have been right all along. About everything. It all happened exactly as I said it would.
The Holy Father wrote to me recently, “You are molto perfecto, mio babbino caro. Infallibilissimo!” He knows the church made a big mistake not cutting Galileo’s head off when they had the chance. Liberals have always wanted mankind to feel marginal, an accident of evolution, not the center. The whole environmental “movement” is based on instilling a sense of unimportance in people, that we’re just mammals.
Liberals call humanocentricity “narcissism,” I call it self-esteem. Because that’s exactly what it is.
I could quit the fight and enjoy a very nice life on one of my many luxury properties but I fight on. Because I am the only one who knows the danger we are in right now. True!
To protect our liberties, we may need to take emergency measures. Congress may need to be shut down. Some Supreme Court justices are showing signs of reduced cognitive ability and may need to be disappeared. There’s no other way to do it.
If one week you notice that my column is missing from this paper, you will know that I’ve been captured. I will need all 50 million of you to park bumper to bumper on the nearest freeway and honk your horns continuously. That may be the only way to accomplish what needs to be done.
Joe Biden is sitting and looking at me as I write this and he is reading these words in the reflection off my glasses. My coffee tastes funny. I hear a high-pitched humming sound. I feel insects crawling up my leg. This may be my last message for a while. I love you all. You are beautiful. It is a better thing I do now than I have ever done.
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Obama Denies Wiretapping Trump: "Like I'd Want to Hear More From That Fool?" |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>
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Wednesday, 08 March 2017 15:35 |
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Borowitz writes: "Donald J. Trump's claim that Barack Obama wiretapped him received a strong denial on Monday from the former President, who said to reporters, 'Like I'd want to hear more from that fool?'"
President Barack Obama. (photo: Susan Walsh/AP)
Obama Denies Wiretapping Trump: "Like I'd Want to Hear More From That Fool?"
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
08 March 17
 The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report." 
 onald J. Trump’s claim that Barack Obama wiretapped him received a strong denial on Monday from the former President, who said to reporters, “Like I’d want to hear more from that fool?”
Obama said that, when he first saw Trump’s allegations on Twitter, “My first thought was, Only a narcissist on the scale of Donald Trump would think people want to hear more from him than they currently do. If anything, I think we’d all like to hear way, way less.”
He said that his wife, Michelle, agreed that the idea of his wanting to hear more from Donald Trump “was one of the funniest things she’s ever heard.”
“When I read her those Trump tweets on Saturday morning, she totally cracked up,” the former President said. “Whenever we’re at home and that guy comes on TV, I’m always, like, ‘Michelle, turn that damn thing off.’ ”
Obama visibly shuddered at the notion of intelligence agencies providing him with hours of recordings of Donald Trump talking. “Don’t even,” he said.
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The GOP's Obamacare Replacement Is Just a Gigantic Tax on Women |
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Wednesday, 08 March 2017 15:18 |
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Ryan writes: "After seven years of grandstanding and hand-wringing, this is the best Republicans could come up with?"
Pregnant woman. (photo: Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast)
The GOP's Obamacare Replacement Is Just a Gigantic Tax on Women
By Erin Gloria Ryan, The Daily Beast
08 March 17
Under the Republicans’ health-care bill, women would face financial repercussions for being poor. Or using birth control. Or being pregnant.
 fter seven years of grandstanding and hand-wringing, this is the best Republicans could come up with?
The GOP answer to the Affordable Care Act was unveiled only yesterday, and it’s already about as big a hit as New Coke. Nobody seems to like it or even see it as an improvement over what we already have, save Paul Ryan and the underlings whose job it is to convince the public that they agree with Paul Ryan. Liberals hate it. Conservatives hate it. And low-income Americans will definitely hate it, once they realize what’s in it.
As policy analysts wade their way through the 123-page bill in an attempt to glean its exact ins and outs, one thing is clear: this bill is not kind to women. In fact, portions of it read as though Republican lawmakers deliberately set out to make having female reproductive parts even more of an expensive headache than it already is. The AHCA contains several ways in which low-income women could be further encumbered with higher healthcare costs and fewer choices.
The GOP’s plan guts the Medicaid expansion, defunds Planned Parenthood, and sunsets a federal rule that requires that qualified insurance plans cover things like mental health care, maternity care, and pediatric dental and vision care, among other things. That means that states could individually choose not to require insurance plans to cover maternity care, and that women who are planning on having a child would need to purchase special insurance riders, which would likely be prohibitively expensive. Further, the fate of the ACA’s birth control mandate—which allowed women to obtain contraception at no out-of-pocket cost, ostensibly because making it extremely easy for a woman to not get pregnant is more cost effective than dealing with a woman who is pregnant and does not want to be—is also up in the air.
In short, if the House GOP plan were signed into law as-is, women could face financial repercussions for being poor, or for using birth control, or for not using birth control, or for giving birth, or for having children who need medical care. How many iPhones does an out-of-pocket Cesarean Section cost?
Stephanie Glover, senior policy analyst at the National Partnership for Women and Families, lays out the AHCA’s one-two-three-four punch to women’s health thusly: “One by one this would be really bad for women’s health. Packaged in a single bill is pretty alarming.”
Glover believes that the bill, if enacted, would harm the financial health of families and make it more difficult for women to choose their own health care providers.
NARAL, unsurprisingly, isn’t too keen on the proposal, either. A prepared statement from the pro-choice organization called the proposal a “dangerous” collection of “greatest hits of failed Republican proposals.”
It’s also not clear who will be paying for health care for poor women and their families under this new plan, if not insurance or government assistance. Money does not simply materialize because Paul Ryan thinks freedom is the ability to buy things. Prior to the passage of the ACA, the poor and uninsured waited to seek health care until it was serious enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room. Then, because they had no way to pay the bill, they’d skip out on it. Which drove the price of other people’s health care up. One way or another, unless doctors are suddenly supposed to turn a blind eye to women who can’t afford reproductive health care giving birth in the streets, somebody is going to pay for their health care.
The GOP bill is, at best, a less-good version of the flawed bill it was supposed to replace. Liberals, moderates, and conservative Senators alike are balking at the notion of passing it through as-is. But the architects behind the House bill clearly aren’t totally stupid; they must have had an inkling that some of the legislation’s wackier aspects would be cut.
Why, then, would House Republicans include so much language in their bill that specifically targeted the poor and/or female, unless it was to throw red meat to a base that wanted to see those groups punished? And what does that say about the moral character of their base?
For all of its flaws, at least the Affordable Care Act gave women relief from the nightmare of the unfettered insurance market, from politicians’ short-sighted attempts to charge men and women different prices for health care. As though having female body parts is a choice. As though men don’t owe their lives and existence to the bodies of women.
Maybe it’s time for a second opinion.
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acial disparities have long been evident in the U.S. criminal justice system, but a new report drilling into statistics on wrongful convictions points up exactly how nefarious the problem is. African Americans are much more likely to be wrongfully convicted of a murder, sexual assault or drug offense than whites.
