Deep Sigh
Okay, I’m depressed. I turned off the teevee on Monday morning and haven’t turned it back on. I just can’t do this. I’m too old, too broken hearted, and too filled with rage to watch the horror screaming around my head. I need to learn to knit or something.
I read about the situation so I understand it (somewhat) intellectually. But actually seeing the slaughter makes me crazy enough to believe that Trump gave secret documents to our enemies and that’s how this happened. And then I have distant relatives in Louisiana who say we have to fight this to make Israel safe for Jesus to return. Holy goddamn crap, y’all. Sweet Jesus doesn’t need us to slaughter babies to make something safe. Jesus can still the waters all on his own. Contrary to some Christian beliefs, Jesus is not Stalin.
It’s making me crazy. I’m gonna learn to knit and force you to wear whatever I make because that’s how angry I am.
As an aside, last week my son Mark filed a lawsuit again Elon Musk. You can read about it here. Mark also talks about it on the place formerly known as Twitter. The short of it is that Elon Musk outed a really decent 22 year old kid as a neo Nazi by claiming he was at a riot in Portland. Musk bases his identification of the kid on a bad picture taken at the riot. Mark’s client, while looking a tiny bit like the picture, was in another state at a fraternity party at the time. But, Musk will not back down because Musk is never wrong. Mark’s client is a Jewish kid and Musk declares he’s a Nazi. The results of this for the kid have been horrific. Then Musk declares that he’s going to say what he wants to say and if that costs him money, so be it. He’s going to ruin this kid’s life just because he can afford it.
Man, I’m depressed. So, I’ve got girlfriends coming over today and we’re gonna each bring our favorite guilty pleasure food to share for lunch and make a decision about who makes the quarter final round of sexiest man alive picked by real women who have some experience with this stuff. You’ll be happy to know that Eric Swalwell and Pedro Pascal are still in the running.
My young wife, who is only 70, nominates Norte Dame QB Sam Hartman.
1You’re not going to watch your Astros tonight? My Dodgers are doing their postseason choke so not much chance they’ll be getting a rematch with your Stros this year either.
2“He’s going to ruin this kid’s life just because he can afford it.“
A version of that should be a bumper sticker for gas guzzling cars, and giant city driven pickups.
3Go, Mark!
4I wish Mark all the best of legal good fortune.
5Since you mentioned “media”, or the MSM [different than the RWNJ media]–
A couple of things that I’ve noticed in recent MSM ‘news reports’:
Stories about that corrupt and incompetent US Rep. George Santos have all completely omitted any reference to his political party.
They never mention that he’s a Republican, never put the usual designator ‘R-NY’ after his name!
Y’all know double-damned well that if he were a Democrat, they would be screaming so every other sentence, and the ‘D-NY’ would be prominently and permanently on the screen every second of the segment.
Another MSM item of note– Saw a news ‘teaser’ and segment about how current HS students taking the ACT test have posted the lowest average scores in many years.
Both the ‘news’ teaser [exclusively], and the actual segment [prominently] showed a classroom full of students taking a test. ALL of them BLACK students!
I think that the MSM’s intended inference is obvious, eh?
Do y’all ever notice little thought-shaping TV production things like that?
I had a couple others but mislaid/forgot them, later.
[And the private school that I went to got it’s first black student about the 11th grade, when we all were taking the ‘big’ tests. He was a Dr’s son and did well.]
6I suspect many of us (most?) are depressed because we actually want to give a s**t. And watching people just like us get slaughtered hurts.
As it should: “Never forget”.
7I’d go with Pascal. And Hugh Jackman.
As for the state of the world, I can’t even. And Musk is at the top of my ‘Go to H***’ list.
8Sandridge @ 6
9Many years ago my local ISD started paying the fee for all of their students to take the SAT. IDK why. IIRC, the word was it helped the school evaluate their teaching. But if all schools do that the average score will drop. DD teaches at a private in fl. During the covid one teacher was in the classroom for the kids who came to school. Another taught online. dd had trouble with about half her online kids. A group never showed up for anything. And it was a real PITA because dd had to prepare online for those who were there, those who shared the computer, those who showed up, and those who never did.
Sandridge, I see that crap all the time too.
It’s gotten to the point with me that it’s expected.
And as much as I despise the concept of bothsiderism and how much it’s affecting our national dialogue, I think it’s the second biggest reason our national dialogue is being effected.
The biggest reason is that mainstream media has to make a profit.
And for quite a while now sheep get their “news” from Facebook.
Whose business model is keeping people on Facebook as much as possible.
Advertising dollar opportunities.
So algorithms send folks to the “news” sources they wanna believe.
And mainstream media is bleeding revenue.
Increasingly they can’t afford to piss people off with pesky things like facts that might keep customers from continuing to consume their content.
EVEN IF THAT CONTENT IS ACTUAL JOURNALISM.
IMHO that’s where we’re at.
And without some kinda consensus on First Amendment free speech rights vs.WHO’S RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONSEQUENCES OF DISINFORMATION, we’re at the mercy of whoever’s got the resources to frame the conversation.
I know this is gonna sound ludicrous, but I had an idea.
10A way for the people to maybe reclaim a portion of
Truth?
Accountability?
So here we go.
A requirement for every Media outlet, of any kind (Broadcast, Internet whatever)
claiming to be NEWS to submit every syllable to a national database.
For permanent storage for everyone to have access to.
Forever.
Because IMHO one of the biggest tools the propagandists have is the unlimited resources to keep talking shit so fast and furiously that there’s no way anybody can keep up.
The Kochs and Mercers employ legions of folks to keep us trying to keep up with the latest lies.
I think there’s plenty of folks on our side who’d love nothing better than to point out the fucking avalanches of lies that nobody can keep up with. But they’d have to have access to copyrighted content to point out the double talk and blatant
Contradictory lies.
The right would scream something about censorship.
But it’d be just the opposite.
If you claim it’s news.
It’s there for the world to see forever.
If you don’t want it scrutinized, it ain’t news
AND YOU CAN’T CALL IT NEWS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
It’ll be a government database.
I think I might’ve floated this idea here before, and I apologize for the redundancy.
But I can’t seem to let it go.
And J.J.. how bout them ASTROS!
11Yes, congrats to your Astros, JJ. Looks like a Texas 2 step ALCS. And yes, my Dodgers completeed another elchoko playoff game with their 2nd record setting bad game in a 3 game series. Embarrassing
12My heart goes out to those that suffer and I can not watch the horrors of war (or anything violent) on the TV. But I was all set to watch non stop coverage (had cupboards filled with popcorn) of criminal tRump getting buried with facts and his millions of lies exposed on the TV with the fraud trial. Now there is nada, zip, nothing anywhere. Complete silence.
13The timing is highly suspicious!
Go Mark!