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Cheerleading, Mob-Rousing, and Bootlicking—But Definitely Not News
It isn’t.
Remember the Revolutionary War? Historians estimate that only 40-45 percent of the population supported the war. It happened anyway. Remember the Civil War? About 2.5 percent of the country’s population were killed during that war, which would be the equivalent of 8,300,000 today. Now, that was divisive.
We sometimes forget that we’ve always been a country divided—sometimes violently—by conflicting ideologies because we’ve always been a country that not just tolerates, but encourages ideas that are different from the conventional wisdom. Divisiveness can be healthy because it forces groups to articulate their ideas in convincing ways in order to gain more adherents. In other words, prove your ideas are better. Proof includes facts, statistics, and reputable experts. The kind of stuff that pulled humanity out of the Dark Ages when we blamed witches and demons for everything and refused to use lightning rods because it interfered with the hand of God. Instead, we chose the Age of Enlightenment, when we created medicine out of mold and figured blood-letting might not be a great idea.
So, why is there so much teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing in the media about divisiveness? Because there’s a lot of money to be made. Conservative gadfly Ben Shapiro pulls in $7 million a year complaining that Squid Game and Parasite sully the good name of capitalism. Last year, Fox News spun the brittle straw of racist fear into gold worth $3.2 billion. Every time Sean Hannity says “critical race theory” or “socialism” an angel loses its wings—and Fox racks up another couple million bucks.
The polarity in America is not between the left and right, as we’re constantly being told. It’s between, on one side, those from both the left and right who are reasonable, rational people looking to form opinions based on facts—and on the other side, the irrational people worrying about lizard people, stolen elections, microchips in the vaccines, Jewish satellites starting forest fires, and their individual rights over their social duty. Fanning the flames of polarization to fill their own pockets are the soulless entrepreneurial ghouls shrieking about divisiveness.
One of the worst offenders and propagandizers of this divisiveness is Fox News. They have corralled a certain gullible base that attracts advertisers, even though advertisers (including Land Rover, Lexus, Samsung, Papa John’s, Angie’s List, T-Mobile, and more) have withdrawn from Fox several times over the past few years due to their inaccurate and offensive broadcasting.
Fox News is like the AI in The Matrix, feeding off humanity by making them think they are thinking freely but really they are cocooned on their couch in a stupor of simulated reality while Fox, et al uses them as an ATM. People want to hear only what confirms what they already think, like intellectual comfort food. The mac and cheese and mashed potatoes for their beliefs.
One of the most corrosive methods of keeping their adherents in their illusion is by feeding them the blue pills of misleading and emotionally charged headlines. The reason the precise phrasing of headlines is so crucial to brainwashing is because, according to polls, 41 percent of Americans only read the headlines. NPR proved this in 2014 when on April 1, they posted this headline: “Why Doesn’t America Read Anymore?” They were deluged with angry responses from “readers” who described how much they and everyone they knew read. But, had they read the first sentence of the actual article, they would have realized the article was an April Fools joke that, sadly, proved their point.
On October 17, the day I got the idea for this article after reading dozens of Fox News headlines throughout the day, I pulled a few to share.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin speak to reporters on Sept. 10, 2019, in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House. (photo: Andrea Hanks/White House)
Two cabinet members considered invoking the 25th amendment, new book by the ABC White House correspondent says
The amendment, added to the constitution after the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963, provides for the removal of an incapacitated president, potentially on grounds of mental as well as physical fitness. It has never been used.
According to Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, by the ABC Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl, the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, talked to other cabinet members about using the amendment on the night of 6 January, the day of the attack, and the following day.
Removing Trump via the amendment would have required a majority vote in the cabinet. Karl reports that Mnuchin spoke to Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state and an avowed loyalist.
Mnuchin did not comment for Karl’s book, which is published on Tuesday. Karl writes that Pompeo responded only after Karl told Trump the former secretary of state had not done so.
“Pompeo through a spokesman denied there have ever been conversations around invoking the 25th amendment,” Karl writes. “The spokesman declined to put his name to the statement.”
Karl also reports that Pompeo asked for a legal analysis of the process for invoking the 25th amendment.
“The analysis determined that it would take too much time,” Karl writes, “considering that Trump only had 14 days left in office and any attempt to forcefully remove him would be subject to legal challenge.”
Karl says Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, and Elaine Chao, transportation, might have supported invoking the 25th amendment but both resigned after the Capitol attack.
Chao is married to the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell – who broke with Trump over the Capitol riot.
Karl also says that “while the discussions did happen, the idea that Trump’s cabinet would vote to remove him was, in fact, ludicrous”.
Pompeo is among Republicans jostling for position ahead of the 2024 presidential primary but that is a process which demands demonstrations of fealty to Trump, who continues to dominate the party in part by toying with another White House run.
Trump is free to do so because he was acquitted at his second Senate impeachment trial, on a charge of inciting the Capitol insurrection.
At a rally near the White House on 6 January, Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden, by blocking certification of electoral college results. Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, eventually declined to weaponise his role overseeing the vote count, as Trump demanded he should.
Karl reports that in the aftermath of the Capitol riot, around which five people died, “at least two cabinet secretaries” asked Pence, who had been holed up at the Capitol as rioters chanted for his hanging, to convene a cabinet meeting.
Pence did not do so, Karl writes, adding that there is no evidence to suggest Pence was involved in 25th amendment discussions.
On 7 January, Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, and Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, formally asked Pence to invoke the 25th amendment. Pence waited five days, then refused.
Pence is also a potential candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024.
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn, leaves the federal courthouse in Washington, with his lawyer, Sidney Powell. (photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
Michael Flynn, the conspiracy theorizing former Trump national security adviser, and Sydney Powell, the conspiracy theorizing former Trump attorney, made a pair of unhinged pleas to the Department of Defense in search of help overturning the 2020 election results. The efforts were reported in Betrayal, the new book from Jonathan Karl chronicling the last gasps of the Trump administration.
According to the book, after the election, Flynn placed a call to Ezra Cohen, a senior intelligence official who had previously worked under Flynn. Cohen was traveling in the Middle East at the time, but Flynn urged him to get back to the United States because, as Karl writes, there was going to be an “epic showdown” over the election results. Flynn told Cohen that “he needed to get orders signed, that ballots needed to be seized, and that extraordinary measures needed to be taken to stop Democrats from stealing the election.” (To be clear, this is projection on Flynn’s part: The actions he urged Cohen to take would be an effort to steal an election. There’s no evidence of widespread voter fraud.)
Karl writes that Flynn sounded “manic” on the call. When Cohen informed Flynn that the election was over and he needed to get over it, Flynn lashed out at him for being a “quitter.”
The former national security adviser has spent the ensuing year trading in trading in extremist, anti-democratic circles while continuing to push the idea that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. He even in May called for a Myanmar-style military coup in the U.S. before attempting to walk back his comments. Flynn was subpoenaed last week by the House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 last week, with the committee noting that Flynn reportedly attended an Oval Office meeting “during which participants discussed seizing voting machines, declaring a national emergency, invoking certain national security emergency powers, and continuing to spread the false message that the November 2020 election had been tainted by widespread fraud.”
Flynn and Cohen haven’t spoken since the call, but the conversation wasn’t the last frantic, election-related appeal Cohen would hear. Powell called him soon after to inform him that then-CIA Director Gina Haspel had been taken into custody in Germany following a secret operation to seize and destroy an election-related computer server containing proof that “hundreds of thousands, maybe millions” of votes had been switched. Cohen, Powell insisted, needed to launch a special operations mission to obtain the server, get Haspel out of custody and force her to confess to trying to destroy evidence of election fraud. It bears repeating that Powell was part of the “elite strike force” of lawyers Trump tapped to prove the election he lost handily was rigged against him, and that despite countless lawsuits, investigations, and audits, no evidence of significant fraud has emerged.
There also, of course, wasn’t a shred of truth to Powell’s story about Haspel’s secret mission to Germany. Cohen thought she had lost her mind and reported the call to the acting defense secretary.
Protesters demanding justice for Julius Jones leave the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Oklahoma City on Nov. 1, 2021. (photo: Liliana Segura/The Intercept)
The state parole board has twice recommended that Jones, sentenced to execution for the 1999 murder of Paul Howell, be removed from death row, citing doubts about his true guilt. The decision, however, ultimately rests with Governor Stitt, and the execution will take place on 18 November unless he elects to grant Jones clemency.
The Independent has contacted the Oklahoma City Police Department and the governor’s office for comment.
Family members and activists supporting Jones have been camped out around the clock at the state capital, praying, chanting, and hoping to meeting with governor Stitt as he considers whether to allow the execution to go forward. So far, however, the governor hasn’t directly addressed the group or spoken with Jones’s family, though faith leaders supporting Jones have met with governor’s office officials.
Instead, the governor is reportedly in “solitude praying.”
A passionate innocence movement has sprung up around Jones’s case in recent years, and high-profile backers of the “Justice for Julius” campaign rallied to his defense as his execution date grows closer, including actor Mandy Patinkin and reality star Kim Kardashian, who has visited Jones in prison.
“This is the cold machinery of the death penalty,” she wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, “an innocent man could be put to death. My heart breaks for Julius and so many others who have suffered from such tragic miscarriage of justice.”
Immigration activists rally near the White House on Oct. 7 calling for immigration reform and urging President Joe Biden to authorize a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. (photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty)
"There is no building back anything without us," says a New York immigrant activist.
Immigration advocates held a call Monday, hours before President Joe Biden signed a key part of his legislative agenda, a massive infrastructure bill that includes funding for roads, bridges, rails and other construction.
Still awaiting action is the more hotly debated social safety net and climate spending bill, also part of Biden's Build Back Better agenda.
That bill includes an immigration "parole" provision that would give undocumented immigrants — some who have been in the U.S. for decades — permission to work and a temporary 10-year reprieve from deportation.
It takes the place of other proposals that would have given some immigrants green cards signifying permanent legal status, the route advocates prefer.
Advocates want to restore a provision that was yanked, which would have created a mechanism for undocumented immigrants who were here before 2010 to get green cards. They face an uphill climb to restore it.
Angelica Salas, the director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, which is based in Los Angeles, said thousands of the group's members "want a path to citizenship that begins with legal residency, not another temporary program."
Murad Awawdeh, the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, said in a Zoom news conference representing immigrants of multiple racial and ethnic backgrounds: "The threat of deportation is always there. A pathway to citizenship is a pathway to stability."
It's not the first time undocumented immigrants have had to settle for less than they hoped for from Congress. Recently, in lieu of legislation, the administration has provided quasi-legal status to immigrants rather than any kind of legalization benefit.
Some immigrants have been content to accept being able to work legally with some protection against deportation. But the Trump administration's effort to rescind temporary protections has reminded immigrants of the shakiness of such policies.
Zuleima Dominguez, a youth organizer for Make the Road New York, is enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. President Barack Obama created the program, better known as DACA, by executive order in 2012, just before another midterm election and after Congress failed again to address immigration reform.
"If you pass a 10-year parole, it means you want us to self-deport in 2031," said Dominguez, 27, who has been a U.S. resident since she was 7.
DACA has allowed her to remain in the U.S., work and go to college. But she noted that many resources, such as financial aid and scholarships, are closed to immigrants without legal status.
"I know the hard edge of temporary protection," Dominguez said. "I lie with the fear that my DACA renewal will not be processed in time, which means losing my job. I know how a change in administration and Congress can end my life in a blink of an eye."
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said it would complete its cost estimate for the legislation Friday, setting up a potential vote after it is released.
A watered-down immigration plan could have implications for Democrats in the midterm elections next year. Although undocumented immigrants can’t vote, many have family members who are citizens and do vote.
In a February 2020 Pew Research Center poll, Latinos were more likely to cite establishing a path to legal status for immigrants as a very important goal for the U.S.
Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil twice from 2003 and 2010, is circulating as the favorite in all scenarios to return to the Planalto Palace in 2022. (photo: AFP)
The former president of the Federative Republic of Brazil, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, said he is prepared and motivated to aspire again to the National Executive to replace Jair Bolsonaro.
He also described Bolsonaro as a bad copy of Donald Trump. He pointed out that the ruler does not think or have ideas, spreads fake news and destroys what the Brazilian people consume, saying that Brazil did not deserve to go through what it is experiencing.
During the meeting with the media, Lula recalled the "permanent solidarity" he received from the European Parliament during the period in which he was detained for a corruption trial that ended up being annulled due to multiple irregularities.
Luis Inácio Lula da Silva was president of Brazil twice between 2003 and 2010. Nowadays, he is circulating as the favorite in all scenarios to return to the Planalto Palace in 2022.
A Chevron platform in the Gulf of Mexico on May 18, 2018. (photo: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg)
“The Biden administration is lighting the fuse on a massive carbon bomb in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s hard to imagine a more dangerous, hypocritical action in the aftermath of the climate summit,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This will inevitably lead to more catastrophic oil spills, more toxic climate pollution, and more suffering for communities and wildlife along the Gulf Coast. Biden has the authority to stop this, but instead he’s casting his lot in with the fossil fuel industry and worsening the climate emergency.”
On Aug. 31, the day the lease sale was announced, the Center and other environmental and Gulf groups sued the administration over its decision to hold the sale.
The lawsuit says Interior is relying on an outdated environmental analysis that fails to consider new information regarding the numerous harms inherent in offshore drilling. It also asserts that Interior is ignoring a December federal appeals court ruling by relying on the same modeling rejected in that case for failing to properly consider harm to the climate from more oil drilling. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s greenhouse gas analysis for the Gulf lease sale repeats these errors, concluding that not having the lease sale will result in more greenhouse gases.
Interior’s own estimates show the Gulf sale will lead to the production of up to 1.12 billion barrels of oil and 4.42 trillion cubic feet of gas over the next 50 years. That’s equivalent to annual emissions from 130 coal-fired power plants.
“It’s deeply troubling that the people charged with protecting our public lands and oceans are ignoring court rulings and their own data showing this lease sale is illegal and reckless,” Monsell said. “President Biden can’t claim to be addressing the climate emergency or caring about environmental justice if he continues to treat the Gulf of Mexico and coastal communities as sacrifice zones.”
Biden could use his executive authority to halt fossil fuel extraction on public lands and waters. Instead he has abandoned campaign promises to end new federal oil and gas leasing and extraction. His administration has approved 3,091 new drilling permits on public lands at a rate of 332 per month, outpacing the Trump administration’s 300 permits per month. The Gulf leasing poses a disproportionate threat to Black, Indigenous and other people of color and to low-income communities.
Since Interior completed its environmental analysis in 2017, significant new information has emerged showing the worsening climate emergency and the potential for increased harm to endangered species, including Rice’s whales, found only in the Gulf of Mexico and among the most endangered whales on the planet.
In August the United Nations affirmed that the climate crisis is “unequivocally” the result of human influence and that this influence now has a strong hand in climate and weather extremes. That month the Gulf region was lashed by Hurricane Ida, one of the strongest and most rapidly intensifying hurricanes ever to make landfall. The storm caused thousands of oil and chemical spills and other accidents in the region.
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