Yesterday, it literally took me more than four hors to payy just one medical bill with a credit card. A big part of that was that the bill showed a single figure which I had to go through 11 MSNs (formerly EOBs) where i found more than 10 line items for this particular service, not all of which were from this provider, and the only way I could find out which were was by trial and error adding p combinations until I foundthe combination that matched the bill. That took about three hours. Then I spent 15-20 minutes making a PDF of just the claims which applied to this provider,because it would have taken even longer to do it later, and w=even paying by credit card on line I willl eventually have to provide documentation to my HRA. The outher hpur was spent fighting with the provider’s billing agency’s website. I wasn’t expecting that, and after spending all that time just putting the information tpgether, I was not in a good mood to begin with. And then I had to get back to my email inbox, which was pretty well stuffed.
This is a “Missouri leads the way” story, which I can now put up because Nameless’s computers (yes, that’s plural – everything was down) are fixed. It’s not the Missouri government, of course – it’s individual Democrats working together to unsure there is a Democrat in every race.
This is a very moving story about an extraordinary person, who has a warning for all of us.
Yesterday, I decided, with everthing else here quiet, to give you an update on the mailbox for tomcat@politicsplus.org. After getting it cleaned out initially, I’ve been trying to check it every week, or at least every other week. I tried at one point to close his Twitter account, but was not successful. However, this last week he did not get any emails from Twitter … so maybe Elon Musk suspended him for something (non-payment of the new feea?) I’ll just hope there aren’t any more. I did manage to close his account at Fantasy Pros – the fantasy football site. I don’t think there is enough interest for it, and in any case, I would be incompetent to run it. I am only aware of football when something horrible happens, such as the Bengals-Bills game this week. I certainly hope Hamlin survives, but the longer he has to stay in intensive care, the less likely it is that he will ever be able to play again (in fact he may already be past that point) and that will certainly be hard on him emotionally. Back to TC’s inbox, at this point everything that is coming is is emails from WordPress or their partners such as updates or expirations, many of which I already know about because alerts on the Dashboard have advised me. Besides that, there is only spam, and there really is no way to get rid of that.
These articles are not old news yet, since after 3 failed ballots they adjourned. Anyway, one has to take the Schadenfreude where one can get it. Black Woman – Beforre Noon – Round 1 – Chaos
Cartoon – 04 0104Cartoon.jpg
Short Takes –
Crooks & Liars – Zelenskyy Delivers Most Powerful Speech Yet To Ukraine
Quote – “Of course it was hard to celebrate fully because we understand that our soldiers can’t be with their family,” Evheniya Shulzhenko said while sitting with her husband on a park bench overlooking the city. But a “really powerful” end-of-year speech by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on New Year’s Eve lifted her spirits and made her proud to be Ukrainian, Shulzhenko said. Click through. The full video in the headline has a voiced-over English translation, but no CC. But the Twitter clip in the body does have CC. And it’s pretty powerful by itself. I’m not sure I could take much more without melting into a puddle.
Washington Post (no paywall) – White contractors wouldn’t remove Confederate statues. So a Black man did it.
Quote – As a small group of Confederate heritage defenders assembled nearby — at least one of them armed — city safety coordinator Miles Jones lectured the work crew on wearing hard hats and eye protection. And who, he asked, would be the site supervisor? A bearded man in Ray-Ban sunglasses and a Norfolk State University sweatshirt stepped forward. “What’s your name, sir?” Jones asked. “Devon Henry.” “Devon Hen—” Jones began, then dropped his voice respectfully. “Oh, Mr. Henry. Of course.” Click through for story. This mixes my emotions. Sadness because so many wypipo are so bitter and small minded, but happiness that the statues are coming down and that Devon Green exists.
Yesterday, I came across a video related to “Saint Javelin.” I already have some material on “Saint Javelin,” the image (which came from the invasion of Ukraine by Russia) and some of the story. The image is based on an icon of the Virgin Mary, which has shocked some people – I assume mostly people who don’t realize what a badass Mary actually was. Should I do a piece on this? Thoughts?
Cartoon – 05 Labor Day RTL
Short Takes –
Robert Reich – What must we expect of journalism in this crisis?
Quote – Two Sundays ago, CNN’s Brian Stelter said: “It’s not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue. It’s not partisan to stand up to demagogues. It’s required. It’s patriotic. We must make sure we don’t give platforms to those who are lying to our faces.” That was Brian Stelter’s last show on CNN. Today, CNN White House reporter John Harwood said: “The core point [President Biden] made in that political speech about a threat to democracy is true. Now, that’s something that’s not easy for us, as journalists, to say. We’re brought up to believe there’s two different political parties with different points of view and we don’t take sides in honest disagreements between them. But that’s not what we’re talking about. These are not honest disagreements. The Republican Party right now is led by a dishonest demagogue.”… Shortly afterward, Harwood announced he was no longer with CNN. (A source told Dan Froomkin of Press Watch that CNN had told Harwood last month that he was being let go despite his long-term contract with the network, and that Harwood used his last broadcast to “send a message.” Click through for story. We talk about getting the Fairness Doctrine back. But that really isn’t what we need. We need a TRUTH doctrine.
Aeon – The African Enlightenment
Quote – The ideals of the Enlightenment are the basis of our democracies and universities in the 21st century: belief in reason, science, skepticism, secularism, and equality…. But what if this story is wrong? What if the Enlightenment can be found in places and thinkers that we often overlook? Such questions have haunted me since I stumbled upon the work of the 17th-century Ethiopian philosopher Zera Yacob (1599-1692), also spelled Zära Yaqob. Click through for details. This is an article which I can guarantee will be banned in Texas and Florida schools – and that just for starters. But, whether you call us “Democrats and Republicns,” or “Liberals and Conservatives,” or “Progressives and Reactionaries,” both groups have existed everythere and in every time.
Yesterday, I went to see VirgilWe kissed (we are allowed 2, one coming and one going) and hugged (ditto), and we also, as we didn’t do for quite a few years, played some cribbage – for some reason we find that having something to do with out hands stimulates conversation, though it took us years ti realze that.. How the Department of Corrections handles games and game playing during visits wold take a whole column, and I won’t start on thet today. I passed on all greetings you all exprressed to Virgil, and he returns all with thanks.
After getting home, I checked my email inbox whch had hit almost 150 emai and then turned to the hearings. I had pre-written today’s posts except for this introduction, so after getting home and making dinner, I was able to jump into today’s hearing. Again, none of the actual evidence surprised me – even things I didn’t know had happened were so in tune with Republican morals and behavior they were not surprising. But I did get two non-evidential surprises – first, that I can now see why those who are not totally disgusted with his political positions might actually like Mike Pence (I will never understand that about Trump**). Second, I was surprised to learn there is one Republican who has not only actually read goodly chunks of the Bible, but understands it well enough to come up with a whole chapter that is extremely pertinent (it was one of his former attrorneys, a Mr. Jacobs, and the chapter was Daniel 6 [which could be differently numbered in the translation used by Catholics – I know that book has some extra stuff in it which is not in the Bible most Protestants use].) Again, I used the recording from the house.gov link here. And then I goofed around a little and went to bed exhausted.
And – I almost forgot – the email telling me my ballot had been received came in at 11:34 am and the one saying it has been counted came in at 5:35 pm.
Cartoon – 17 Mahal RTL
Short Takes –
The Daily Beast – ‘Pack Your Stuff and Get Out of My House,’ Says Patriot Front Member’s Mom
Quote – Amsden said that after her son was released from jail, he told her he’d continue to stand with the group, so she delivered an ultimatum. “I told him, ‘Well, then you can’t live here. You can choose between Patriot Front and your family.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, I can’t quit Patriot Front.’ I’m like, ‘Well, then you’ve just chosen. So pack your stuff and get out of my house.’” Click through for background. Old saying: “desperate times require desperate measures.” This must break her heart (I assume he doesn’t have one) – but I don’t see what else she could have done.
Wonkette – CNN’s New Boss Remaking Network Into Centrist Safe Space For Republicans
Quote – Licht will give existing talent “a chance to prove they’re willing to uphold the network’s values so that they don’t tarnish CNN’s journalism brand.” If they can’t adjust, they’ll presumably join Chris Cuomo on the unemployment line. Axios specifically mentions Jim Acosta and Brian Stelter as being under the partisan microscope[.] Click through for more. Personally, I would trade Chuck Todd for Acosta in a heartbeat – but I’m not in a position to.
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
A free press is essential to maintain a working semocracy. So said our founders, and I cannot disagree, nor can i trust the motives of anyone who does disagree. That would certainly not be the case with the Nobel Committee, who have awarded this year’s Peace Prize to two active (and embattled) investigative journalists. And it’s clear that the two people they hav chosen are genuine investigative journalists, committed to finding and publishing truth. The below article on them demonsrates that.
Unfortunately, we see around us far too many individuals who are not journalists, do not investigate, and have no prinviples. Alex Jones comes to mind, as does anyone on Fox News. Those people are committed, not to truth, but to deceiving those on the political right. But the left is not immune to being taken in as well. I am still seeing organizations on the left who are still taken in by Julian Assange, for example. Jefferson may have bben correct about his theory that a free press can, as a general rule, be trusted over a government, but he doesn’t appear to have realized that this is not always the case.
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Nobel Peace Prize for journalists serves as reminder that freedom of the press is under threat from strongmen and social media
Thirty-two years ago next month, I was in Germany reporting on the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event then heralded as a triumph of Western democratic liberalism and even “the end of history.”
But democracy isn’t doing so well across the globe now. Nothing underscores how far we have come from that moment of irrational exuberance than the powerful warning the Nobel Prize Committee felt compelled to issue on Oct. 8, 2021 in awarding its coveted Peace Prize to two reporters.
“They are representative for all journalists,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said in announcing the award to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, “in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions.”
The honor for Muratov, the co-founder of Russia’s Novaya Gazeta, and Ressa, the CEO of the Philippine news site Rappler, is enormously important. In part that’s because of the protection that global attention may afford two journalists under imminent and relentless threat from the strongmen who run their respective countries. “The world is watching,” Reiss-Andersen pointedly noted in an interview after making the announcement.
Equally important is the larger message the committee wanted to deliver. “Without media, you cannot have a strong democracy,” Reiss-Andersen said.
Global political threats
The two laureates’ cases highlight an emergency for civil society: Muratov, editor of what the Nobel Prize Committee described as “the most independent paper in Russia today,” has seen six of his colleagues slain for their work criticizing Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Inevitably, Ressa told me recently, one of them says “no.” Maybe that will change now that she has a date in Oslo. But Ressa probably knows better than to hold her breath.
Last year, when I – a long-time journalist turned professor of journalism – helped organize a group of fellow Princeton alumni to sign a letter of support for Ressa, more than 400 responded. They included members of Congress and state legislatures and former diplomats who served presidents of both parties. One of them was former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who died several months later, making a show of solidarity with Maria Ressa one of his last public acts. This show of support is a sign of what’s at stake.
This irrational hatred of purveyors of facts knows no ideology. Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s disdain for the press is at least equaled by that of leftist Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega, whose response to his critics in the media has been to, well, lock ‘em up.
Digital menace
What makes today’s threats to free expression especially insidious is that they don’t come just from the usual suspects – thuggish government censors.
They are amplified and weaponized by social media networks that claim the privilege of free speech protection while they allow themselves to be hijacked by slanderers and propagandists.
No one has done more to expose the complicity of these platforms in the attack on democracy than Ressa, a tech enthusiast who built her publication’s website to interface with Facebook and now accuses the company of endangering her own freedom with its laissez-faire approach to the slander being propagated on its site.
“Freedom of expression is full of paradoxes,” the Nobel Committee’s Reiss-Andersen observed, in an interview after awarding the Peace Prize. She made it clear that the award to Ressa and Muratov was intended to tackle those paradoxes too.
Asked why the Peace Prize went to two individual journalists – rather than to one of the press freedom organizations, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, that have represented Ressa, Muratov and so many of their endangered colleagues – Reiss-Anderson said the Nobel Committee deliberately chose working reporters.
Ressa and Muratov represent “a golden standard,” she said, of “journalism of high quality.” In other words, they are fact-finders and truth-seekers, not purveyors of clickbait.
That golden standard is increasingly endangered, in large part because of the digital revolution that shattered the business model for public service journalism.
“Free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power,” Reiss-Andersen said in the prize announcement. But it is increasingly being undermined and supplanted by what’s called “content,” served up algorithmically from sources that are not transparent in ways that are designed to addict and that drive partisanship, tribalism and division.
This poses a challenge for public policymakers and the democracies they represent. How to regulate digital media and still protect free speech? How to support the labor-intensive work of journalism and still protect its independence?
Answering those questions won’t be easy. But democracy may be at a tipping point. With its recognition of two investigative journalists and the crucial – and dangerous – work they do to support democracy, the Nobel Committee has invited us to begin the debate.
Correction: This story has been updated to state the correct place, Oslo, where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded.
Editor’s note: Naomi Schalit, senior politics editor at The Conversation, signed the open letter “In defense of press freedom” organized by author Kathy Kiely in July 2020.
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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, these two recipients have shown themselves trustworthy and are genuinely deserving of the Prize they are being awarded, Not all journalists, and not all who call themselves journalists, would be deserving. Journalistic ethics are not an arcane subject – an actual professional code of journalistic ethics exists, and will fit on a bookmark if both sides are used. NOt that there’s any infallible means of actually enforcing them. Perhaps we should all print ourselves out a bookmark and keep it handy to help us evaluate what we are reading.
Now This News – Aaaaaaw! Watch these firefighters carefully free a poor squirrel who got its head stuck in the knothole of a tree. Once freed, the little guy scampers off like nothing happened 🐿
John Fugelsang – “Tucker Carlson’s Baffled Bitch Face” – CC in Portuguese – too good not to share – had to delay a day to get a full transcript.
Hello, I’m Tucker Carlson, titan of journalism, beloved by millions, and chances are your grandma already likes me more than she likes you. Got a question. Has this ever happened to you? You’re at your job and you’re debating some virtue signaling human rights activist on your highly rated prime time cable news show, and your very well intentioned snowflake guest is talking about marginalized peoples (that’s their way of calling you racist.) So you counter back by saying that shifting demographics is causing economic anxiety among traditional Americans, which is your way of saying, fuck you who cares if I am. What if I told you there was a way to shut your opponent’s entire narrative down without presenting any counter argument or even any facts. Well, I’m proud to present a brand new online workshop where you can learn my patented, trademarked secrets of Tucker Carlson’s Baffled Bitch Face. That slack-jawed, lipless, mouth agape look of constipated befuddlement that I have mastered, which has made me the hero to millions of guys around the world, who’d like to own the libs, but don’t have time to learn shit. In my new online workshop. I will teach you how to pull focus away from whoever’s speaking by using my trademark, lipless concern troll stare. It looks like a simple doughy grimace, but what you’re really doing is conveying to your entire audience. I don’t know what you’re talking about! I’m trying to understand you, but I don’t like the things you’re saying! I don’t want to understand you! I’m going to make this face until the elderly demo hate you (Inarticulate howls) “Let Dancing With The Stars veteran Tucker Carlson show you how to relax your chin into your neck and find your douche in the headlights gaze!” I think I think I think you’ll find in the early days. It helps to verbalize when you’re practicing the face. Go ahead and make the sounds that match the look (inarticulate wails) “All new exercises!” Wait a second – taxing people who can afford to pay a lot more. A little more can help offset the deficit? [Boinggg] Wait a minute – I should treat trans people like they’re people? [Drumbeat] Once you’ve mastered my dismayed, crypto fascist, misogynist scowl, your enemies will run away faster than my own advertisers! [party horn] Tucker Carlson’s Baffled Bitch Face – Release your smug!
Beau follows up on yesterday’s predictions with amplification and advice.
