Stephan: This tells you the real truth about the Fox propaganda operation. And Carlson is not alone.Tulsi Gabbard and Alex Jones are also notable on this. I find it amazing that there is so little Republican pushback about this, and that Fox allows it.
Tucker Carlson praising Putin on Russian State TV Screen capture
Fox News host Tucker Carlson has continued defending Russian President Vladimir Putin, even as he ordered a full invasion into Ukraine this week.
The Hill’s John Kruzel points out that Kremlin-backed media outlet Russia Today has been keen on exposing its audience to Carlson, and even went so far recently to rebroadcast an entire Carlson monologue about Russia, complete with Russian subtitles.
RT in particular this week showed an now-infamous Carlson monologue in which he questioned whether Americans should even dislike Putin at all.
“It may be worth asking yourself… why do I hate Putin?” Carlson asked rhetorically. “Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity?”
Stephan: The sexual insecurity of MAGAt world, and its obsession with how other people define their sexuality is one of the most notable hallmarks of this cohort. One of the nastiest manifestations of this Republican sexual psychosis is the way these people have attacked transgender children. They seem to think people choose to be gay, lesbian, or transgender. It is an amazing and vile form of willful ignorance. Jennifer Rubin lays this all out very well.
Republican MAGAt Texas Governor Greg Abbott Credit: Eric Gay/AP
Republicans are obsessed with transgender children.
They have spent a ludicrous amount of energy passing legislation to restrict what bathrooms trans kids can use and on which gender’s sports teams they can play. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) even went after transgender people, devoting one of the 11 points in his GOP agenda to the issue, and justifying his attack by invoking the Bible — that “Men and women are biologically different” and “there are two genders.”
It’s not Democrats who have elevated transgender issues to a national obsession. Republicans are the ones who did that by whipping their base into a fury on the issue and convincing them that “elites” are trying to destroy their way of life, as they have with immigration, prayer in school, abortion, critical race theory and many other issues. (The quote from Scripture in Scott’s plan confirms that Republicans would proudly impose their religious views on the rest of Americans.)
The latest to go after trans kids is Texas’s Greg Abbott, the Republican governor infamous for […]
Stephan: Always remember that culture is an expression of collective intention and awareness, and when you stress any system, whether it is mechanical or human you see its weaknesses and flaws. When I look at America, what I see is that a large percentage of Americans hunger for an authoritarian White supremacist, male dominant, christofascist culture. And that is what they want to vote for. The 2022 elections are going to show whether this sad scummy worldview prevails. The only thing stopping this from happening is you, your family, and friends. Don't say you haven't been warned.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Credit: Francis Chung/E&E News/Politico
After the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, JFK observed: “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” It’s one of his more famous aphorisms — but it’s wrong.
In politics, defeat (or the prospect of defeat) has a thousand diagnosticians, each one pointing to the cause of the malady, each prescribing the cure, the magic incantations that will bring back armies of discontented voters.
As Republicans seize on crime and schools and Covid to win in Virginia and beyond, President Joe Biden’s approval ratings are falling into a Trump-like trough. And with signs of further erosion among working-class voters who were once the core of the Democratic Party, notable voices from the center to the left are offering an assortment of rhetorical tools to staunch the bleeding.
All sides of the debate agree that Democrats are currently losing the culture war to the GOP. But the harsh reality is that a simple shift in messaging — either to rebutting Republican attacks or shifting the ground to economic issues […]
Stephan: There seems to be a general sense in American society that we are coming to the end of this pandemic, but the numbers say otherwise. Omicron is still infecting more than 100,000 people and killing about 2,000 people every day in the U.S. Two thousand people a day is 730,000 a year. I urge all my readers to get vaccinated and boosted if they have not already done so, wear a safe mask, and stay away from crowds. This pandemic is far from over.
Thousands of people test positive for the coronavirus in the U.S. daily, and a small but growing fraction of them are for the more contagious omicron variant BA.2. Credit: Jon Cherry/Getty
As the omicron surge continues to decline in the U.S., infectious disease experts are keeping a close eye on an even more contagious version of the variant that could once again foil the nation’s hopes of getting back to normal.
The virus, known as BA.2, is a strain of the highly contagious omicron variant that appears to spread even more easily — about 30% more easily.
Because BA.2 quickly overtook the original omicron in South Africa and other countries and has even caused a second omicron surge in Denmark, researchers have been bracing for the same thing to happen in the U.S.
“A lot of us were assuming that it was going to quickly take off in the United States just like it was doing in Europe and become the new dominant variant,” says Nathan Grubaugh, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public […]
Danny Hakim and Jo Becker, Investigative Reporters - The New York Times Magazine
Stephan: Here is a very comprehensive presentation on Clarence and Ginni Thomas. It is my personal view that Thomas should never have been appointed to the Supreme Court. He was notably partisan, had issues about inappropriately pestering women, and both he and his wife have demonstrated a notable lack of ethics.
Clarence and Ginni Thomas at a Heritage Foundation event to celebrate his 30 years on the Supreme Court last October. Credit: William Mebane/The New York Times
The call to action was titled “Election Results and Legal Battles: What Now?” Shared in the days after the 2020 presidential election, it urged the members of an influential if secretive right-wing group to contact legislators in three of the swing states that tipped the balance for Joe Biden — Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania. The aim was audacious: Keep President Donald J. Trump in power.
The group, the Council for National Policy, brings together old-school Republican luminaries, Christian conservatives, Tea Party activists and MAGA operatives, with more than 400 members who include leaders of organizations like the Federalist Society, the National Rifle Association and the Family Research Council. Founded in 1981 as a counterweight to liberalism, the group was hailed by President Ronald Reagan as seeking the “return of righteousness, justice and truth” to America.
As Trump insisted, without evidence, that fraud had cheated him of victory, conservative […]
