Lessons of History and Trying To Avoid the Same Mistakes

[Sixties Fan]

One of Fox News’ top hosts said that many of the world’s problems would be solved if women were to vanish from the planet.

Greg Gutfeld, the right-wing channel’s resident jester who was recently promoted to host his own prime time hour, made a series of brazenly sexist comments on Monday’s edition of “The Five” during a discussion on looting.

As surveillance video played showing a smash-and-grab that occurred over the weekend at a Los Angeles Nordstrom, Gutfeld went on a rant portraying women as soft on crime and effectively blaming the entire gender for supposed policies that would prevent such crimes from being committed.

“What would happen if all the women took a ladies week off and they went to Venus … How many of these problems would still exist?” Gutfeld wondered aloud.

Gutfeld, who allowed for the possibility that new problems would emerge in the absence of women, confidently argued that “smash and grabs” and “rampant recidivism” would “disappear.”

At one point during the discussion, Gutfeld acknowledged that what he was saying might not sit well with Jeanine Pirro, a tough-on-crime co-host of “The Five” who previously worked as a prosecutor and served as a New York state judge.
“I know this is offensive to the judge because she thinks like a dude,” Gutfeld joked.

Gutfeld concluded his rant, shouting, “What I’m saying is that we have gotten so soft and it is because we have decided that discipline and punishment is wrong.”

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/15/media/greg-gutfeld-sexist-rant-fox-news/index.html?link_id=2&can_id=6e84143cce349aec0c9a0b4e4a28c9c6&source=email-trump-commits-blatant-act-of-witness-intimidation&email_referrer=email_2018334&email_subject=fox-host-goes-on-wildly-sexist-on-air-rant

 

[Sixties Fan]

[ Another Black Veteran who is mistreated by a White person. And a drunk one at that. Right. Show your true colors. ]

A video showing a white woman attacking a Black veteran at a Louisiana casino physically has gone viral.

According to Devon Leslie Jr., the incident happened on Aug. 3 in Bossier City, Lousiana, but he waited a few days before posting the video. He was unsure if he wanted to go public with the attack.

“Now that I’ve had time to give it some thought I want it known about these two people! This woman went off on me hit me in the face and kicked me in the back, because I sat to (sic) close to her and her boyfriend so this is how I was treated,” Leslie wrote on Aug. 5, adding that the Bossier City Police and the casino stepped in to support him during the confrontation.


(full story and video online)

'Where is the Chair When You Need It?': Crazed White Woman Hits, Kicks Black Veteran Allegedly for Sitting Too Close at Louisiana Casino In Viral Video Sparking Outrage

A video showing a white woman attacking a Black veteran at a Louisiana casino physically has gone viral. According to Devon Leslie Jr., the incident

atlantablackstar.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

In a statement, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said the new law was passed “to ensure that elections in the state’s largest counties are properly managed by individuals who are accountable to the voters, not by unaccountable bureaucrats.”


But in her orders in the lawsuit, Crump said the new law only applies to Texas counties with a population of 3.5 million residents. Harris County, with 4.7 million residents, is the only Texas county with that large of a population. According to the law’s language, no other county would be subject to the law even if their population were to ever surpass 3.5 million residents, Crump wrote.

The Texas Constitution prevents the Legislature from passing any laws that are not uniform throughout the state and only target a specific location, Crump wrote.

The new law is “unreasonable, arbitrary, and simply a means of singling out one county,” Crump wrote.


(full story online)

Judge calls new Texas election law unconstitutional but state says it will appeal ruling

A judge has called a new law unconstitutional that passed in the GOP-led Texas Legislature that will dictate how elections are run in the state’s most populous county.

apnews.com

 

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08/18/2023

Voters are seeking accountability and representation across the nation. From the 41-count indictment of former President Donald Trump and 18 others in Fulton County, Georgia to the fights for fair maps in Florida and Ohio, voters are seeking access to the electoral process that they deserve. Voters in North Carolina will face new barriers at the polls after Republicans passed restrictive legislation. A major victory in Texas comes as a federal judge strikes down part of the voter suppression law S.B. 1 and in Wisconsin, absentee ballots get a makeover. All of this comes at a time when forces are fighting to erode our democracy. As Marc reminded us this week, Trump’s “acolytes [continue to] target election officials and demonize voters. They celebrate voter suppression and funnel their creativity into finding new ways to disenfranchise young and minority voters.” Democracy Docket

 

[Sixties Fan]

With the handing down of the Georgia indictment, we now know the basic contour of former President Donald Trump’s criminality after the 2020 election. Special counsel Jack Smith may have brought a narrower case under federal law while Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis (D) pursued a broader case using Georgia’s RICO statute, but they both agree that Trump lost the 2020 election, lied about it and undertook a scheme to overturn the results.

That scheme — whether called a conspiracy or RICO — involved a group of Republican lawyers and others who first filed frivolous litigation and, when that didn’t work, eventually settled on submitting fake electors with the hope that state legislatures and the vice president would overstep their constitutional boundaries. Finally, it led to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol.

These indictments are critical to our system of justice and the rule of law. But they cover only a fraction of the damage Trump and his allies have done to our system of elections. The indictments only cover a snapshot in time. To present their cases to a jury, prosecutors need to tell a story of criminality with a beginning and an end.

The Georgia indictment claims that Trump began his conspiracy on Nov. 4, 2020 — the day after the 2020 general election. The Washington, D.C. grand jury pegged the date as ten days later, on Nov. 14, 2020. Both indictments agree that the illegal conduct began after the election.

But the specific legal charges do not define the underlying conduct, only its prescribed penalty. We should not allow the criminal law to cramp our understanding of how corrosive Trump was before the 2020 election and how dangerous he remains today. The criminal law may set the outer boundaries of what can be punished but it does not define the parameters of harm to individuals and to society.

The truth is that Trump has never believed in free and fair elections. When he considered running for president in 2012, Trump became the leading proponent of “birtherism” — the racist conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

Before the 2016 election, he claimed that it “is absolutely being rigged.” He decried that Republican leaders were not doing enough to combat “large scale voter fraud.” He used his very first meeting with congressional leadership as president to falsely tell them that “millions of unauthorized immigrants had robbed him of a popular vote majority.”

The run up to the 2020 election was even worse. Though the indictments only charge Trump with conspiring to illegally overturn the results after Election Day, the reality is that he started much earlier.

In 2019, a key Trump aide was caught on tape bragging about the fact that “traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places” and advising Republicans to “start playing offense a little bit.” By spring 2020, Trump was routinely lying about mail-in voting and voter fraud.

In the weeks leading up to the general election on Nov. 3, 2020, Trump’s rhetoric grew bolder — advocating for complete disenfranchisement of millions. It is no surprise that the Georgia indictment notes that on Oct. 31, 2020 — four days before the election — Trump “discussed a draft speech…that falsely declared victory and falsely claimed voter fraud.”

As Politico put it on the morning of the 2020 election: “Trump has been openly discussing murky schemes to prevent legitimate ballots from being counted, escalating threats to disenfranchise millions of Americans as the weeks-long voting season ends tonight and his pathway to reelection becomes increasingly narrow.”

Just as Trump’s attack on democracy did not begin after Election Day, it did not end after Joe Biden was sworn in as president. For a federal prosecutor looking to bring a targeted case and score a quick conviction, ending the conspiracy on the day Biden was inaugurated makes legal sense. But our democracy has not been as fortunate.

Throughout 2021, we saw Republican legislatures enact new voter suppression and election subversion laws. We witnessed attacks on nonpartisan election officials and a weakening of local election administration. In 2022, a new wave of MAGA Republicans ran for office on a platform of election denialism. When they lost, they repeatedly attacked the 2022 election process with the same fervor of false conspiracies as we saw from Trump in 2020. At every stage, Trump was cheering them on, always attacking and always spewing hate and election lies.

To her credit, Willis recognizes that Trump’s lies continued. In her telling, the conspiracy of lies and perjury stretched into 2022. But she too, like Smith, is understandably focused only on the continued lies about the 2020 election, not about 2022 or 2024.

Trump’s attack on our democracy continues to this day. He has converted the entire GOP into an anti-democracy machine spewing hate and disinformation. His acolytes target election officials and demonize voters. They celebrate voter suppression and funnel their creativity into finding new ways to disenfranchise young and minority voters.

We can and should celebrate the two election-related indictments. Smith and Willis have done their jobs and a service to the country. However, we should not allow their narrow mandate of proving a specific crime beyond a reasonable doubt to limit our understanding of the broad harm Trump and his allies have done and continue to do to our country and free and fair elections.

The Indictments Are Only a Snapshot of Trump’s Conspiracy Against Democracy

From Marc | Trump has converted the entire GOP into an anti-democracy machine spewing hate and disinformation.

www.democracydocket.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Karl Rove said on Fox News Thursday that Donald Trumpshould join the Aug. 23 Republican debate to prove he’s in charge. (Watch the video below.)

Rove said doubts are growing over Trump’s viability as a 2024 presidential candidate, despite his massive lead in the polls. So, a strong showing against the likes of Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy and his most vocal critic, Chris Christie, would have a strong upside, he suggested.

Rove, a political contributor for the conservative channel and longtime GOP adviser, acknowledged the danger for Trump of being attacked directly and indirectly by his opponents, some of whom might mention his four felony indictments.

“But I’d show up if I were him because this is this is where you get to demonstrate ‘I am the leader and I will remain the leader,’” Rove said.

“Maybe there’s something that he doesn’t, won’t want to talk about, and doubts will begin to grow. Doubts are growing,” continued Rove, a former deputy chief of staff for President George W. Bush.

A majority of Americans said they would not vote for the former president, according to a poll before he was indicted on racketeering charges in Georgia. The survey indicated that 53% would “definitely not” vote for him if he were the GOP nominee in November, with an additional 11% saying they would “probably not” vote for him. An early August pollindicated that 52% of Republicans wouldn’t vote for Trump if he were in prison on Election Day.

Democratic presidential long shot Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called Trump the “most devastating debater probably since Abraham Lincoln.”

But Trump on Thursday appeared to close the door on showing up for the first debate in Milwaukee, writing: “People know my Record, one of the BEST EVER, so why would I Debate?”

Karl Rove Nails The Reason Trump Should Reconsider And Show Up For GOP Debate

The Fox News political contributor said Trump would take some hits at the debate, but the upside is worth the risk.

nz.finance.yahoo.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

[ Part of American Black History which is not going to be allowed to be taught in Florida as long as Ron De Santis is Governor ]

When black labor broker Moses Norman showed up to vote in Ocoee, Florida, on November 2, 1920, white poll workers turned him away, unceremoniously informing him that he had failed to pay a $1 poll tax. Undeterred, Norman consulted Orlando Judge John Cheney, who advised him of his rights and encouraged him to try again. Upon returning to vote—a show of defiance that attracted the attention of local members of the Ku Klux Klan—Norman reportedly clashed with a growing crowd of incensed observers.

Fearful of the brewing violence, Norman told his business partner, Julius “July” Perry, that he planned to leave town. (Norman was later recorded living in New York City.) That night, a group of armed white men searching for Norman showed up at Perry’s house. A gunfight ensued, and by the end of the evening, the 50-something Perry had been lynched and strung up from a telephone post near Judge Cheney’s home.

n total, the mob of around 250 burned 22 homes, 2 churches and a fraternal lodge. The number of black residents killed in the attack remains unknown, with estimates ranging from 3 to 60. Several contemporary observers placed the death toll at between 30 and 35.

One hundred years later, Orlando’s Orange County Regional History Center is hosting an exhibition commemorating the victims of what historian Paul Ortiz deems “the single bloodiest day in modern U.S. political history.” As Stephan Hudak reports for the Orlando Sentinel, the show—titled “Yesterday, This Was Home: The Ocoee Massacre of 1920”—draws on land records, genealogies and oral histories to tell the long-suppressed stories of Norman, Perry and other Ocoeeans targeted by the white mob.

The culmination of three years of research by the center’s chief curator, Pam Schwartz, and her staff, the exhibition reflects the challenges associated with “piecing together a narrative that was quite literally and deliberately torn apart, of illustrating lives that had been forcibly erased from most records,” writes Matthew Taub for Atlas Obscura. Accounts of the massacre vary widely, in large part due to the decades-long cover-up that followed the attack.

(full article online)

The Little-Known Story of America's Deadliest Election Day Massacre

A new exhibition on the 1920 Ocoee massacre examines the Florida city's history of voter suppression and anti-black violence

www.smithsonianmag.com

 

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Rosalie Silberman Abella is the Samuel and Judith Pisar visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School and is a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. This op-ed is adapted from her speech upon receiving the 2023 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Medal of Honor from the World Jurist Association.

The incandescent Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a jurist, a woman and a Jew. It was a defining combination that shaped her vision and her passions, transforming her from distinguished U.S. Supreme Court justice to iconic global metaphor.

When she pursued justice on the Supreme Court, she was a judicial juggernaut who was catapulted into international orbit by two forces: enthusiastic gratitude for her ever-bolder judgments, but also, as time went on, by the vituperative reaction of an increasingly regressive climate in which those progressive judgments were anathema.

Regrettably, that regressive climate is where we find ourselves today, especially about the judiciary. Critics call the good news of an independent judiciary the bad news of judicial autocracy. They call women and minorities seeking the right to be free from discrimination special interest groups seeking to jump the queue. They call efforts to reverse discrimination “reverse discrimination.” They say courts should only interpret, not make, law, thereby ignoring the entire history of common law. They call the advocates for diversity “biased” and defenders of social stagnation “impartial.” They prefer ideology to ideas, replacing the exquisite democratic choreography of checks and balances with the myopic march of majoritarianism.

All this has put us at the edge of a global era unlike any I’ve seen in my lifetime. We’re in a mean-spirited moral free-for-all, a climate polluted by bombastic insensitivity, antisemitism, racism, sexism, islamophobia, homophobia and discrimination generally. Too often, law and justice are in a dysfunctional relationship. Too often, hate kills, truth is homeless and lives don’t matter.


(full article online)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/14/justice-rule-of-law-ruth-bader-ginsburg-rosalie-abella/

 

[Sixties Fan]

His new book is subtitled “An Altar Call for Evangelical America” but it aims for a broader audience. It contains ample references to Scripture, but also to the journalist Tim Alberta, Jonathan Haidt of New York University, Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, and Robert Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan group.

Of white evangelicals, Moore quotes Jones: “Their greatest temptation will be to wield what remaining political power they have as desperate corrective for their waning cultural influence.” Welcome to the culture wars, and to what Ron Brownstein of the Atlantic has called the coalition of restoration.

Against the backdrop of rising Christian nationalism and January 6, Moore reads the writing on the wall. He is troubled by the shrinking gap between Christian nationalism and neo-paganism. “The step before replacing Jesus with Thor is to turn Jesus into Thor,” he observes. Moore found the presence of prayers in “‘Jesus’s name’ right next to a horn-wearing pagan shaman in the well of the evacuated United States Senate” disturbing, but not coincidental.

The Magasphere and Twitterverse bolster Moore’s conclusions.

“President Trump will be arrested during Lent – a time of suffering and purification for the followers of Jesus Christ,” Joseph McBride, a rightwing lawyer who represents several insurrectionists, tweeted last March. “As Christ was crucified, and then rose again on the third day, so too will Donald Trump.”

Caesar as deity. We’ve seen that movie before. McBride, however, did not stop there.

Hours later, he tweeted: “JESUS LOVES DONALD TRUMP. JESUS DIED FOR DONALD TRUMP. JESUS LIVES INSIDE DONALD TRUMP. DEAL WITH IT.”

Three-in-10 adults in the US, meanwhile, are categorized as religious “nones”. Only 40% of Americans call themselves Protestant. The Wasp ascendancy has yielded to Sunday brunch and walks in the woods. “The Father, Son and Holy Ghost, they took the last train for the coast,” as Don McLean sang. For some, Trump rallies present a variation of community and communion. A younger generation of evangelicals heads for the door. The numbers tell of a crisis of faith.

“We see now young evangelicals walking away from evangelism not because they do not believe what the church teaches, but because they believe the “church itself” does not believe what the church teaches,” Moore laments.

Predation, lust and greed are poor calling cards for religion. Unchecked abuse within the Catholic church left deep and lasting scars among those who needed God’s love most. Moore notes the Catholic church’s fall from grace in Ireland and posits that “born-again America” may be experiencing a similar backlash, as a powerful cultural institution lacking “credibility” seeks to “enforce its orthodoxies”.

Against this backdrop, Catholicism’s boomlet among younger continental Europeans is noteworthy. Recently, hundreds of thousands converged on Lisbon to hear the Pope. The same demographic helps fuel the resurgence of the Spanish far right. Tethering the cross to the flag retains its appeal.

That said, Jerry Falwell Jr’s posturing as Trump-booster and voyeur didn’t exactly jibe with Scripture. The ousted head of Liberty University, son of the founder of the Moral Majority, allegedly paid a pool boy to have sex with his wife as he watched.

“What we are seeing now … is in many cases the shucking off of any pretense of hypocrisy for the outright embrace of immorality,” Moore writes.

America barrels toward a Biden v Trump rematch. The former president is a professional defendant. The country and its religion sag and shudder. Moore prays for revival, even as he fears nostalgia.


(full article online)

Losing Our Religion review: Trump and the crisis of US Christianity

Russell Moore, formerly of the Southern Baptist Convention, thinks evangelicals have come dangerous adrift of morality

www.theguardian.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Newsmax network chief Chris Ruddy apparently told future Republican presidential also-ran Vivek Ramaswamy during a private call earlier this summer that if he wanted more coverage on the propaganda outlet, he should pay for it. Ramaswamy had complained Newsmax was sticking him in little-watched midday slots or ignoring him outright. Ruddy's solution? Buy more ads. Quid pro quo, much?

Republican candidate told associates Newsmax tried to make him pay for coverage | Semafor

If Vivek Ramaswamy wants to appear on Newsmax, he told associates he was told, he should pay to do it.

www.semafor.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Former Vice President Mike Pence dodged when asked if he would apply the “same standard” to Donald Trump that he used when he voted to expel a Democrat from Congress two decades ago. (See the video below.)

Pence, who is now running for the Republican presidential nomination against his former boss, was responding to a question from co-host Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

Karl reminded Pence about his vote to expel then-Rep. James Traficant (D-Ohio) from Congress in 2002 when he was a member of the House, after Traficant had been convicted on 10 felony counts of bribery, tax evasion and racketeering.

If Trump were convicted on any of the 91 criminal charges he currently faces across four cases, Karl asked, “Would you hold that same standard for the White House?”

Pence first explained his Traficant vote. He said it’s Congress’ function “to determine membership where there’s ethical violations” and called the Traficant case “really quite outrageous.”

Then he answered the question:

“But if you’re saying would I, would I apply that to my former running mate in this race, look, I think that needs to be left to the American people.”

“Look, let’s have the former president have his day in court,” Pence continued. “Let’s maintain a presumption of innocence in this matter and in the other matter that unfolded this week here in Georgia.”

Pence previously argued Trump is “entitled to his day in court” in the wake of his second indictment in June.

The former vice president has qualified forboth the first and second GOP debates, though his “former running mate” has indicated that he plans to “NOT BE DOING” them at all.

See Pence’s remarks on “This Week” below:

Pence Won't Hold Trump To 'Same Standard' As Democrat He Once Voted To Expel

Pence helped boot convicted Rep. James Traficant from Congress in 2002, but says only voters should decide whether Trump can hold office if convicted.

news.yahoo.com

 

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A doctor whose false claims that COVID-19 vaccines could magnetize you (and that this was also somehow connected to 5G cell towers) has lost her medical license. The State Medical Board of Ohio decided that Dr. Sherri Tenpenny’s license should be suspended indefinitely due to her refusal to cooperate with its investigation into more than 350 complaints against her.

Tenpenny’s July 2021 testimony in front of Ohio legislators made headlines because of how bananas in the belfry her claims were, including her statements that videos of people claiming to be magnetized by vaccines were real evidence. "You can put a key on their forehead, it sticks,” she said with a straight face. “You can put spoons and forks all over and they can stick because now we think there is a metal piece to that.”

And while the board’s indefinite suspension of Tenpenny’s license was not directly tied to her erroneous claims, the report released with the decision includes a lot of unanswered questions regarding proclamations Tenpenny has made in her capacity as a medical professional over the years.

Some of the questions still lingering in the wake of Tenpenny’s investigation include:

“The Interrogatories asked for information regarding Dr. Tenpenny’s practice in general as well as asking specifically about her practice regarding recommendations concerning, and administration of, vaccines and whether any of her patients subsequently contracted certain illnesses. The Interrogatories also specifically ask how many doses of COVID-19 vaccines she had provided and whether she had personally received a COVID-19 vaccine. ”

And:

“The Interrogatories also asked Dr. Tenpenny what scientific evidence she had, and specifically asked that she cite her sources for this evidence, regarding COVID-19 vaccines causing people to become magnetized or creating an interface with 5G towers; regarding the COVID-19 vaccine not injecting a real virus but strips of genetic material and patients suffering complications such as abnormal bleedings, myocarditis, strokes, and neurological complications; and regarding some major metropolitan areas liquifying dead bodies and pouring them into the water supply.”

One of the board members, Dr. Amol Soin, explained the decision in language even a person with a spoon stuck to their forehead can understand.

“The license to practice medicine is not a right. It’s a privilege,” Soin said. “A privilege that is earned, and a privilege that you have to uphold. And as you get that license, and as you obtain that privilege, you consent to certain reasonable things. And a reasonable thing you consent to... is to cooperate when someone complains about you. In this case, 350 complaints. It is a very reasonable thing to cooperate in that scenario.”

The Trump administration’s botching of our public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic will go down in history as an epic failure. After spending a year trying to figure out how to blame the pandemic on everybody and everything and even helping to promote the idea that it wasn’t that bad in the first place, Trump realized that the only success his administration might be able to hang its hat on was getting an effective and safe vaccine to Americans in under a year.

Unfortunately for Trump and the Republican Party, the toxic cauldron of anti-science rhetoric and bad public health proposals meant they had trained the most vociferous members of their voting base to be anti-vaccine. In the months after the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were rolled out, anti-vaxxers made all kinds of unsubstantiated claims, and Tenpenny’s wild accusations were just one of the more headline-grabbing instances.

Remember the 'vaccines make you magnetic' doctor? Her license just got suspended

A doctor whose false claims that COVID-19 vaccines could magnetize you (and that this was also somehow connected to 5G cell towers) has lost her medical license. The State Medical Board of Ohio ...

www.dailykos.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

The White House’s “U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism,” issued in May of this year, orders the Department of Defense (DoD), by November, to “evaluate its policies to counter discrimination, discriminatory harassment, and extremist activity” and “estimate antisemitic and Islamophobic activity in the military workplace to identify gaps to be addressed in future policies, programs, and procedures to prevent and respond to antisemitism and Islamophobia in the military.”

One place the DoD might want to start, as a very senior U.S. military commander recently wrote to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), is to “find a way to stop the all-pervasive influence of FOX News on virtually all U.S. military installations’ television screens.”

As MRFF has heard countless times over the years from our men and women in uniform, Fox News, with its extremism-promoting programming (that’s “programming” in both senses of the word), is ubiquitous in the military, playing 24/7 on the TVs in workplaces, shopping facilities, waiting rooms, gyms, and other common areas at virtually every U.S. military installation.

Fox News is also given more airtime than the other cable news networks on the DoD’s American Forces Network (AFN), the TV service for military members serving overseas, with Fox being given 8 hours of AFN’s daily news channel line-up compared to CNN getting 5 hours and MSNBC only 4.5 hours. With the Fox News International streaming service, however, which was launched in 2020 and is now available in over 40 countries, overseas U.S. military installations are also playing Fox News non-stop on their TVs.

Whether it’s Greg Gutfield’s recent comment on “The Five,” one of the Fox programs in the AFN line-up, that Jews "had to be useful" in order to survive the Holocaust or Jesse Waters, whose show is also carried by AFN, defending Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Jewish conspiracy theory about COVID, Fox News can be counted on to serve up a healthy dose of pure antisemitism along with its other white Christian nationalist and extremism-fueling rhetoric.

So, why hasn’t the DoD, which is tasked with rooting out extremism and antisemitism in the military, done anything to curtail the omnipresent influence of Fox News on our troops via the TVs playing here, there, and everywhere on military installations? Well, maybe because so many at the Pentagon are themselves Fox News adherents.

One former Marine quoted in a 2022 article from Common Dreams titled “It's Time the Pentagon Pulled the Plug on Fox News,” with the subtitle “Extremist propaganda should not be piped into military bases at taxpayer expense,” told the article’s authors:

(full article online)

Senior military commander: DoD must stop “the all-pervasive influence of FOX News” on military's TVs

The White House’s “U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism,” issued in May of this year, orders the Department of Defense (DoD), by November, to “evaluate its policies to counter discrimination, discriminatory harassment, and extremist activity”...

www.dailykos.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

But despite support from both influential Republican and Democratic politicians, the fund now faces significant court challenges, thanks to lawsuits by conservative activists who claim it’s an unconstitutional tax. Many observers think at least one of the cases has a chance of convincing some judges to kill the fund.

Congress, which created the USF as part of its last landmark telecom law rewrite in 1996, could stop any potential shutdown by fast-tracking legislation securing the fund’s role and its constitutionality, funding sources and missions. But the roadblocks to any kind of deal on Capitol Hill are already looming. It has become the center of a Washington lobbying war between Big Tech and the leading telecom firms, both of which want the other to foot the bill. And partisan politics are seeping in, too, with some Republicans starting to attack the fund as an icon of government waste.

“This Congress, it’s not clear to me they could legislate anything — I haven’t seen it,” said Blair Levin, a veteran FCC official who served in senior agency posts across multiple Democratic administrations, and has been watching the issue as a market analyst for the firm New Street Research.


(full article online)

This $8 billion federal internet-access program is in peril

Leaders in both parties like the Universal Service Fund. But lobbying and Washington politics are making it nearly impossible to fix.

www.politico.com