Robert Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center. - Raw Story
Stephan:
Robert Reich, in my opinion has it right. I see two big trends in journalism. First, the rise of AI, which is already spewing out endless misinformation. Second, major media corporations being bought by Rightwing billionaire oligarchs. Just as the christofascists through the Federalist Society and Leonard Leo have restructured the Supreme Court, and several lower courts skewing them to reflect the goals of the christofascists, so they are now doing this with media. This is also a major cause of the growing Great Schism Trend.
Credit: CNN / AFP
Why in hell did CNN give Donald Trump a full hour of prime-time television before an audience of ardent supporters who applauded every lie and laughed at every sexist insult?
The germ of an answer could be found last August, when Chris Licht, CNN’s new chairman and CEO, canceled Brian Stelter’s Sunday show, “Reliable Sources,” which had been a reliable source of intelligent criticism of Fox News, right-wing media in general, Trumpism, and the increasingly authoritarian lurch of the Republican party.
Licht also fired Stelter and his staff.
The show had been commercially successful. It was doing better than several of CNN’s prime-time shows.
Around the same time, Licht told CNN staff they should stop referring to Donald Trump’s “big lie” because the phrase sounded like a Democratic party talking point. Licht also told the staff he wanted more “straight news reporting,” along with more conservative guests.
Why?
Follow the money. CNN’s new corporate overseer is Warner Bros. Discovery Inc, whose CEO is David Zaslav.
Zaslav has been pushing Licht to reposition CNN to […]
AM radio disappearing. This is the beginning of a trend that is going to change our culture.
An AM car radio
America’s love affair between the automobile and AM radio — a century-long romance that provided the soundtrack for lovers’ lanes, kept the lonely company with ballgames and chat shows, sparked family singalongs and defined road trips — is on the verge of collapse, a victim of galloping technological change and swiftly shifting consumer tastes.
The breakup is entirely one-sided, a move by major automakers to eliminate AM radios from new vehicles despite protests from station owners, listeners, first-responders and politicians from both major parties.
Automakers, such as BMW, Volkswagen, Mazda and Tesla, are removing AM radios from new electric vehicles because electric engines can interfere with the sound of AM stations. And Ford, one of the nation’s top-three auto sellers, is taking a bigger step, eliminating AM from all of its vehicles, electric or gas-operated.
Some station owners and advertisers contend that losing access to the car dashboard will indeed be a death blow to many of the nation’s 4,185 AM stations — the possible demise of a core element of the nation’s delivery system […]
The level of Republican racism is so open, so blatant, so racist, I can hardly believe it, but here it is. I thought, hoped, we had gotten past this level of nastiness.
At Jetson Youth Center, a correctional facility in East Baton Rouge Parish, resident Malcolm M. listens during an afternoon check-in on Dec. 12, 2007. Credit: Tim Mueller/AP
On Thursday, the Louisiana House passed a bill to make some juvenile criminal records public in three majority-Black parishes. Sponsors argue that providing the public with these records would offer transparency in crime-afflicted areas. If signed into law, the measure would serve as a two-year pilot program.
Critics of the measure, House Bill 321, say the measure is racist, noting that the three parishes to which it would apply—Caddo, East Baton Rouge, and Orleans—are 50 percent, 47 percent, and 60 percent Black, respectively, with Black residents making up the majority of their populations, according to US Census Bureau data. The bill would not be rolled out in Jefferson Parish, however, which is larger than both Cado and Orleans parishes and is majority white.
“Let’s be real. We know what this is about. The optics are obvious. Let’s stop playing around with this,” Rep. Edmond Jordan (D-Baton Rouge) told the Times-Picayune. “If you’re from Baton Rouge, if you’re from […]
Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch is a creature of Leonard Leo and The Federalist Society. He is an incompetent justice, a lifelong rightwing fanatical ideologue, and a man with a an agenda that will destroy social wellbeing. Here’s a good description of what he is up to. By now it should be obvious to anyone who cares about facts that the MAGAt majority on the Supreme Court have transformed that institution from a fact and law based judiciary to MAGAt cabal, and nothing is being done about this, which is why approval and respect of the Supreme Court is lower than it has been in living memory.
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch. Credit: Jim Bourg / Reuters
Republicans on the Supreme Court are, it appears, planning to gut most of America’s regulatory agencies, in what could be the most consequential re-write of the protective “deep state” since it was largely created during the New Deal in the 1930s.
If they pull it off, they could destroy the ability of:
— the EPA to regulate pollutants, — the USDA to keep our food supply safe,— the FDA to oversee drugs going onto the market, — OSHA to protect workers, — the CPSC to keep dangerous toys and consumer products off the market, — the FTC to regulate monopolies, — the DOT to come up with highway and automobile safety standards, — the ATF to regulate guns,— the FDA to oversee drugs going onto the market, — OSHA to protect workers, — the CPSC to keep dangerous toys and consumer products off the market, — the FTC to regulate monopolies, — the DOT to come up with highway and automobile safety standards, — the ATF to regulate guns,
Fareed Zakaria, Opinion Columnist - The Washington Post
Stephan:
Here is the hard truth about guns in this country, “Every day in America, more than 200 people are wounded by guns; 120 are killed by them. Of these 120, 11 are children and teens. The leading cause of mortality among children in America is now death by a gun. The same number of deaths — 120 — will happen tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, every day, until we come to our senses and do something about it.” The problem is I’m not sure we are going to come to our senses.
Guns for sale are seen at a pawn shop in Ash Flat, Ark., in April 2020. Credit:Terra Fondriest / The Washington Post
The tragic mass shooting last weekend in a Dallas suburb took place as I was leaving the country to visit Britain. I might as well have taken one of Elon Musk’s rockets and landed on a different planet. The Allen, Tex., massacre means that, so far in 2023, more than 15,000 Americans have died from gun violence. In 2021, the last year for which we have complete data, there were 48,830 gun-related deaths, of which 20,958 were gun homicides. In England and Wales, there were 31 gun homicides. Even accounting for its larger population, calculating deaths per 100,000 people, the United States in 2019 had roughly 100 times as many gun homicides as the United Kingdom.
A comparison of suicides is equally depressing. In 2021, 26,328 Americans took their own lives using guns. About half of the people who kill […]
