It is classic Russian technique to blame on the other guy what they’re planning to do themselves.
— Victoria Nuland, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, 3/8/22

Here’s the PROOF in their own words….

NONE of the above footage has been shared on Fox News, CNN, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, MSNBC, PBS, NPR, The New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico, The Hill, the Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Teen Vogue, or any other media entity. Had these been #MAGA Republicans and conservatives within the federal government, the headlines would have been deafening and the DOJ would be quite busy rounding up genuine insurrectionists. Had these liberal Democrats been pushed to launch their self-described “coup” against the Trump Administration, who knows what kind of carnage would have been unleashed upon the nation from Election Day on.

It is classic Russian technique to blame on the other guy what they’re planning to do themselves.
— Victoria Nuland, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, 3/8/22

The “Summer of 2020” would have been a mild pretext to the death and destruction that would have ensued.

So, what’s to say these same people are not preparing for Election Day 2024? To date, NONE of them have been arrested and charged with “insurrection” and it’s fair to assume that’s left them emboldened to plot another coup against an incoming Trump transition.

My guess is that the proverbial deep state within the intelligence community will reemerge because presumably a Republican candidate will again be seen as a threat to the internal policies that many intelligence people like.
— Dr. John Gentry, Georgetown University professor, 12-year CIA intelligence analyst

Democrats have a lot to lose in 2024, power being the top of the list but not most important to the apparatus.

Thousands of federal employees could lose their cush taxpayer-funded gigs within months of a Trump inauguration. Like it or not, they are employed to serve at the pleasure of the elected President of the United States. During the four-plus years of the Trump Administration, there were many public displays of insubordination and those efforts were cheered on by the media. President Trump signed a Schedule F executive order near the end of his first term, and that EO was quietly rescinded by Joe Biden almost immediately after he was sworn in.

While the left and their media enjoyed the persecution and imprisoning of Joe Biden’s political opponents, they will be the first to remind an incoming President Trump not to engage in petty, vindictive acts of revenge. But there will be lots to investigate. Many people who tried to disrupt the 2016 Trump Transition Team and his presidency with false claims from dirty tricks have yet to lawyer-up and face the music for the drama (including undeserved impeachments) they created and the “baggage” Trump is said to have because of those dirty trick slanders.

It is classic Russian technique to blame on the other guy what they’re planning to do themselves.
— Victoria Nuland, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, 3/8/22

The media will again go into 24-7 anti-Trump mode despite the fact most repeated lies for years and have yet to admit and apologize for their misinformation. They will double down and further prove they don’t deserve the First Amendment protections afforded a free and fair watchdog media. These are partisan activists and ignorant college hires who’ll repeat falsehoods who, despite the fact they’ll now be called on their lies on Elon Musk’s X, will continue to fan partisan flames to those who are too stupid and/or arrogant to admit they’re being used.

Will we have an actual coup d’etat November 5, 2024? Given the determination of those unpunished leftists, I say the chances are very good.

The left has no problem taking to the streets, vandalizing public and private property, disrupting traffic, burning down black neighborhoods, looting, assaulting law enforcement and killing private citizens.

Taking over the federal government to stop the “peaceful transition of power” is a simple task when that transition will be “mostly peaceful”….

Pravda became an official publication, or “organ”, of the ruling Soviet Communist Party. Pravda became the conduit for announcing official policy and policy changes and would remain so until 1991.
— Wikipedia

Throw out the First Amendment’s protection for journalists who were tasked with being government watchdogs. They’re now mostly utilized as lapdogs eagerly drooling to stay part of the privileged in-crowd and benefit from the generous salaries that come with such exposure. We’ve seen them often commit the worse of journalism violations (bias-by-omission) and they’re expected to do it yet again.

Normally, these kind of Democrat courtesy requests aren’t made public….

“It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, wrote in the letter, according to a draft copy obtained by CNN.

The letter, which said an impeachment inquiry with no supporting evidence should “set off alarm bells for news organizations,” will be sent to executives helming the nation’s largest news organizations, including CNN, The New York Times, Fox News, the Associated Press, CBS News, and others, a White House official familiar with the matter said.
— CNN, 9/12/23

Now THIS is quite the dossier of cut-and-pastable talking points.

We all know today’s media needs to be spoon-fed with tips other than what they find, sitting on their asses, from social media or other news sites.

The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.
— Ben Rhodes, Obama deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, 5/8/16

That said, many of the usual suspects are dutifully obeying in lockstep.

Since gaining the House majority in January, House Republicans have aggressively investigated Biden and his son, claiming without evidence that they engaged in an influence-peddling scheme. The allegations echo those that former President Donald Trump has made for years against Biden and his family.
— Associated Press, 9/12/23

CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins and New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman repeatedly noted there’s “no evidence” to support claims made by ex-President Donald Trump and Republicans to justify impeaching President Joe Biden.
— Mediaite, 9/13/23

Republicans claim they have unearthed evidence of wrongdoing by the president and his family that could rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. In fact, there’s little to back up their allegations.
— New York Times, 9/12/23

Months of Republican allegations and investigations into President Biden have led to the GOP-controlled House of Representatives launching an impeachment inquiry. Republicans have lobbed unsubstantiated allegations against Biden since taking over the House, but have turned up no evidence of wrongdoing so far.
— PBS, 9/12/23

‘Hi, this is Kevin McCarthy and you have reached the House Republicans. We can’t come to the phone right now because we’ve launched an evidence-free impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden!’
— USA Today, 9/12/23

The House has voted to impeach just three Presidents: Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump, who was impeached twice. But even the launch of an impeachment inquiry against a President has only happened a handful of times. Two impeachment experts tell TIME that there is less evidence implicating Biden of wrongdoing than in any of those previous inquiries.
— TIME, 9/12/23

Republicans, who now narrowly control the House, have accused Biden of profiting while he served as vice president from 2009 to 2017 from his son Hunter Biden’s foreign business ventures. But a 2020 Senate investigation and several months of digging by House Republicans this year have failed to turn up evidence of wrongdoing by Biden.
— Reuters, 9/12/23

Thanks in part to official revelations from the Durham Report, most of the informed electorate knows many of the allegations that dogged President Donald Trump were fictitious, malevolent, and the media dutifully repeated those allegations despite a lack of direct evidence that Trump and those in his orbit did anything wrong, let alone anything treasonous. But the media did the job and a large portion of Americans still believe Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the 2020 election from Hillary Clinton just because Jake Tapper and Rachel Maddow said so. To this day, millions of Americans still don’t know what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop and believe it’s irrelevant because mostly “right-wing” media is talking about it.

This appears to be the strategy of White House warroomers like Sams who want those who watch the Today Show and The View to get from any impeachment inquiries.

It will be an interesting exercise in human behavior to watch if those who are told to do something will actually obey and if there are those who’ll behave like petulant teenagers who do the opposite of what they’re told because that’s how the wiring works….

Just before the 2020 election, Joe Biden and his campaign said his son Hunter hadn’t made money from China — and that Biden hadn’t met one of Hunter’s Ukrainian business associates while he was vice president, except for maybe a brief hello.

Both of those claims were false, according to recent sworn testimony by Hunter Biden and his business partner, Devon Archer.
— Axios, 9/13/23

It’s not clear if Sam’s memo is in reaction to this Axios piece, but if the media has finally grown tired of lying for the Biden administration, it could make for some interesting viewing once the inquiry starts rolling. The media may have to explain to their consumers why they didn’t report on these facts years ago and why the “there’s no evidence” excuse will be regarded, going forward, as the bullshit lie it always was.

Asked about the conflicting accounts of Biden’s comments in 2020, an aide said: “As the president said at the time when he was defending himself against Donald Trump’s torrent of lies — and as he’s said since — he didn’t discuss Hunter’s business dealings with him and wasn’t in business with his son.”
— CNN, 9/12/23

Again, the Durham Report mostly concluded that almost everyone involved with election interference and subsequent cover-up have gone unpunished, “intelligence officials” certified lies to protect Biden in 2020, and the media near-effectively censored information that kept a good portion of the nation from casting an informed vote.

A vote that has had severe repercussions financially and security-wise for the nation.

In its letter Wednesday, the White House will ask news organizations to be more clear-eyed in their coverage of the impeachment inquiry, and not to fall prey to the traps of false equivalency in reporting.

“Covering impeachment as a process story – Republicans say X, but the White House says Y – is a disservice to the American public who relies on the independent press to hold those in power accountable,” Sams wrote.

“And in the modern media environment, where every day liars and hucksters peddle disinformation and lies everywhere from Facebook to Fox, process stories that fail to unpack the illegitimacy of the claims on which House Republicans are basing all their actions only serve to generate confusion, put false premises in people’s feeds, and obscure the truth,” Sams added.
— CNN, 9/12/23

Rush Limbaugh often aired montages of media people using the same words and/or “action lines” after clearly coordinated directives coming from a Democrat West Wing were heeded. Sams’ directives are nothing really earthshattering or new. But after years of being told “the border is secure” or “inflation is transitory” or Biden’s staff has a hard time keeping up with him, it will be a tall task to expect all of the media to obey and look the other way.

Stating the obvious, impeachment is serious shit and millions of people will start to pay attention. When they do, some will begin to see what’s been hidden from them because the Democrats and their media believed them to be stupid enough to fall for the spin. Liberals can tend to turn when what little intelligence they do have is insulted.

There are still the ol’ reliables.

The Republican House-led investigations into Biden have yet to provide any direct evidence that the president financially benefited from Hunter Biden’s career overseas.
— CNN, 9/12/23

CNN ended with that little “Okay, massah. I’z do what I’z told”.

That “direct evidence” caveat was gleefully blown off when it came to “Russian Collusion” or the “improper phone call” based on hearsay regarding Ukraine, or even now when states are trying to remove Donald Trump from state ballots because they claim he violated the 25th Amendment for staging an insurrection while NOT ONE of the charges against him is for… wait for it… insurrection.

Trump’s not been charged with insurrection because all who’ve seen the unedited portion of his January 6 rally speech know he never suggested violence or insurrection. And now the Biden White House is obviously worried that Biden’s constant string of lies will be revealed to the world over the coming weeks and months at the same time partisan district attorneys will be trying Donald Trump during the heat of the campaign season.

Even should Joe Biden not be the 2024 Democrat standard bearer, his successor will have to answer for whatever aid and comfort he or she gave those lies; ignorance will be a lame excuse and should be a disqualifier.

Unfortunately for the media, Americans do understand enough about basic business to know in order to receive payment for goods, you have to have goods to sell. Aside from the “brand”, the Bidens haven’t done much to have millions sent to their multiple “businesses” and bank accounts, and it’s even laughable for even a loyal Chris Hayes viewer to assume all that money came in and “The Big Guy” didn’t get a taste.

The pushback will be well-deserved and brutal.

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., called out U.K. Channel 4 Washington correspondent Siobhan Kennedy on Tuesday for claiming that Americans “can’t see” evidence that President Biden has committed wrongdoing worthy of impeachment.
— Fox News, 9/12/23

The desperation from the Biden administration comes from an obvious reaction of guilt. We’ll see how further down the media’s credibility will sink to cover for a corrupt president and his family of leeches.

Pure arrogance, but based on what?

In September of 1990 when I got a job in the upstart Fox Broadcasting Company (pre-Fox Sports and Fox News), one of the first things I noticed was how some people believed they had to “dumb” things down for their audience. Think about the inflated sense of self it takes to assume you’re smarter than millions of people simply because of where you work.

I experienced that attitude throughout my dozen years in Hollywood and that sense of disdain for those who consume their products resulted in simplistic and insulting programming like “Honey Boo Boo” and almost everything on TLC. Do you really think these people would create demeaning productions of those in their industry or neighborhood? No, but they seek out the easily exploitable so they can laugh at us behind our backs and boost their fragile egos.

In the world of politics, we have an elected class that has no problem lying to our faces. Because of abused Constitutional protection, they believe they’re smarter than the public and they’ll have a portion of the media class that will cover for them. We can easily point to many in city councils, state legislatures, and even on Capitol Hill who clearly aren’t the brightest or emotionally stable our nation has to offer but they managed to get elected with something that’s coveted by all grifters: trust.

Watch any news or opinion show, local and national, and observe the formula they all use. You’ll never watch those shows the same way again.

After their opening monologues, they introduce a guest, start out with an elongated summary of the topic (to assure us all about how much THEY know) and end it in a way the guest has to respond with “I agree with you…”. The host is thereby validated by the invited expert on the topic. This also validates the host’s value to his or her employer.

However their “values” are only as good as the company cutting their check.

We’ve seen many who were once reporting for a conservative network jump to a liberal one and their rock-solid values suddenly dissolve. “Christian conservative” Alisyn Camerota anchored for Fox News before jumping to CNN. Kaitlan Collins blogged for the conservative Daily Caller out of college, became a White House correspondent and now host at liberal CNN. Shepard Smith anchored at Fox News before coming out with “fagitude” and moving to CNBC. That didn’t last long.

Kinda’ makes you wonder what their values really were prior to their change of venue.

Unlike politicians with elections and term limits, media personnel are imposed on the public and their bios are normally concealed by their employers. How they got to their current positions could be embarrassing once revealed. Experience, lack of, nepotism, sexual fast-track; all are at play when it comes to the media ladder.

News and opinion broadcasts are splattered with hosts showing us pictures of their wives, children, moms, dogs, family celebrations, vacations, etc. They’re just like us so we must appreciate them in return.

Oh, and don’t forget to buy their latest new book!

Equally as insidious are the politicians and officials who find those convenient parachutes once they’re forced out of their government jobs and suddenly realize their sweet paychecks have ended.

We have a conservative nonprofit who absorbs newly out-of-work Republicans despite the damage they may have done to the base. Vice President Mike Pence got a “fellowship” with the Heritage Foundation shortly after leaving office. Former Trump border czar Ken Cuccinelli also wound up there until he could get another lucrative gig doing what he did after he was Virginia Attorney General: securing state delegates around the nation AGAINST Donald Trump in 2016. Yes, he’s doing it again now and people like him continue on because they assume we’re all too stupid to notice and donor dollars pay well.

Former politicians and officials get paid “contributor” gigs at CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and broadcast news, no matter why some are no longer employed and compensated by taxpayers (government pensions notwithstanding). Andrew McCabe, John Bolton, Jennifer Palmieri, Marie Harf, Stephen Moore, John Brennan, Kellyanne Conway, William Barr, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Claire McCaskill and Kayleigh McEnany get to blab away uncontested, simply because they’re considered experienced “experts” who can attempt to redirect an ignorant consumer base towards a preferred and approved narrative.

Why do we have such a political and social chasm between men and women voters?

Well, if you have smug media professionals targeting women with intellectually stimulating programming like “The Today Show”, “Good Morning America”, and “The View”, it’s easy to understand why so many see things differently that the rest of the voting blocks. They trust the information is true despite how ridiculous and error-ridden. They specifically look down on their female audience and play to hyper-emotion over substance.

While talk radio is crowded enough with whiners like Dan Bongino, Mark Levin, Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon and other small market wrist-slitters, everyone and his brother now has a podcast. You know, a product some people pay for to use only once. Talk about a racket.

Podcasts are another vehicle for former politicians, celebrity wannabes and pundit types to fortify your trust in them and others who hope to get a more lucrative media job by out-shocking the competition. They serve as the potential bench of future “talent” to be inflicted on the nation simply because of a dubious social media reach.

Why do we have so many “fact checkers”? Again, because almost all media jobs are dependent on consumers trusting THEM. Anything that may cast doubt on what we’re being told or have been told by the overpaid has to be squelched by all means necessary. Media people seldom admit they’re wrong about anything. The Washington Post and New York Times have not given their Pulitzer Prizes back despite their Trump “Russia collusion” coverage being proven bogus. Whenever the media is proven wrong, their contrition seldom matches the initial air horns. Retractions are buried and on-air corrections take up a couple of sentences before the end of the broadcast.

It’s enough to question just how much all of these people, who get paid to share with us their abundant wisdom, really know and really care about us.

There is an on-air persona and an off-air.

Many of these people are truly horrible and genuinely believe we must believe what they say because their lofty salaries depend on it. While they claim to feel the pain their preferred politicians inflict on us, they’re quite comfortable while telling us all is not that bad. They’re the first to agree on the need to start and/or perpetuate a war their prep-schooled children won’t have to participate in. They’re the first to tell us it’s hot in the summer and drinking water is a good idea because they assume we’re that stupid and they’ll save lives. They can afford an electric car as a status symbol to save the planet while their gas range is off limits. They can and will start race violence in the streets (always great video) and go home to a secured, gated community with appropriate protective measures.

They consider themselves of extraordinary value and we should be damn grateful they exist.

And whenever we’re told about something that “the public doesn’t know” (as if we’re expectedly stupid), it’s because those who are lavishly paid declined to inform the American people for whatever partisan objective.

For them to call us “everyday”, “average” or “ordinary”, that translates as we are exploitable, expendable and don’t you forget it.

Don’t get me started on “workers”….

Former President Trump and Fox News anchor Bret Baier argued over Trump’s false claims of a rigged election in 2020 during a contentious interview that aired Monday on the network.

“First of all, I won in 2020 by a lot,” Trump said when Baier asked him how he plans to appeal to independent voters in 2024. “You know that’s not what … ” Baier interjected as Trump talked over him.

The former president floated unfounded theories about ballot harvesting and voter fraud, to which Baier pushed back, saying, “Mr. President that’s all been looked into. You lost the 2020 election,” Baier told Trump, noting the numerous recounts and lawsuits that followed Trump’s refusal to admit defeat in the weeks after the election.
— The Hill, 6/19/23

The Founding Fathers gave the media protection in the First Amendment of the Constitution with the caveat that they keep the public informed. It didn’t have to be said that the information presented be accurate. Maybe it should’ve been. Especially over the last decade, the media has made numerous declarations and a good portion of the populace believed them. As usual, when those declarations turned out to be untrue, corrections are buried if issued at all. Apologies? Zip, zero, nada.

Does CNN ever apologize for getting it wrong — putting out false or deliberately misleading information — again and again and again and again and again?

No, CNN simply pretends all of this failure derives from good-faith errors rather than wishcasting and flamboyantly obvious partisan hackery, then dials the whataboutism up to 11.
— New York Post, 10/12/21

The lack of contrition is expected because some of the overpaid in the media risk loss of their income should the public not trust them. Brian Williams seems to be one of the exceptions of a busted liar who continues to get high paying gigs while a laughing stock. But the media gets it wrong so often, it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to insist the public accept them at their word, for example, when it comes to the 2020 election as the “most secure in history“.

In fact, the media is wrong so often, there are posts dedicated to not letting the arrogant off the hook so easily.

There is a major source of misinformation that’s rarely mentioned in news stories — the news media themselves. A Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism study found that “news organizations play a major role in propagating hoaxes, false claims, questionable rumors, and dubious viral content.”  In another study, Harvard’s Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts examined four million online messages transmitted or shared during the 2016 election campaign, including those from the websites of traditional news outlets like the New York Times and fake news sites like those of Russian operatives. The research team expected the Russian effort to be a major source of disinformation, and it was. But they discovered that traditional media were a larger contributor.
— The Journalist’s Resource, 10/27/20

Clutch pearls now.

Here’s Glenn Greenwald’s greatest hits breakdown of media mistakes, lies, whatever you wish….

Beyond BuzzFeed: The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing U.S. Media Failures on the Trump-Russia Story

Donald Trump Jr. Was Offered Advanced Access to the WikiLeaks Email Archive (CNN/MSNBC)

Robert Mueller Possesses Internal Emails and Witness Interviews Proving Trump Directed Cohen to Lie to Congress (BuzzFeed)

CNN Explicitly Lied About Lanny Davis Being Its Source – For a Story Whose Substance Was Also False: Cohen Would Testify that Trump Knew in Advance About the Trump Tower Meeting (CNN)

Paul Manafort Visited Julian Assange Three Times in the Ecuadorian Embassy and Nobody Noticed (Guardian/Luke Harding)

Trump Created a Secret Internet Server to Covertly Communicate with a Russian Bank (Slate)

Russia Attacked U.S. “Diplomats” (i.e. Spies) at the Cuban Embassy Using a Super-Sophisticated Sonic Microwave Weapon (NBC/MSNBC/CIA)

Trump Aide Anthony Scaramucci is Involved in a Russian Hedge Fund Under Senate Investigation (CNN)

A New, Deranged, Anonymous Group Declares Mainstream Political Sites on the Left and Right to be Russian Propaganda Outlets and WashPost Touts its Report to Claim Massive Kremlin Infiltration of the Internet (WashPost)

Russian Hackers Invaded the U.S. Electricity Grid to Deny Vermonters Heat During the Winter (WashPost)

RT Hacked Into and Took Over C-SPAN (Fortune)

You get the drift, but wait, there’s a lot more!

Not fake news, just plain wrong: Top media corrections of 2017
The rise of left-wing, anti-Trump fake news
My Top 10 media lies: Micheal Goodwin
How Did So Much of the Media Get the Steele Dossier So Wrong?
20 Stories The Media Got Horribly Wrong In 2020
The mainstream media’s top 10 missteps in 2021
Trump was just arraigned on federal charges. The media are already getting it wrong
Why Does the American Media Get Big Stories Wrong?
New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in US Politics

You may find ironic and humorous when some of the gross offenders offer sanctimonious introspection only after all harm was done.

And probably the biggest middle finger-mocking of the media and Joe Biden they are protecting, resulted in the slogan-turned-hashtag, found on social media sites and auto bumpers to this day….

NBC NASCAR reporter Kelli Stavast is either hard of hearing, or a very, very quick thinker.
— Deadline, 10/3/21

…

It’s best not to believe any media story nowadays. They’ve clearly earned the mistrust.

Sadly, they also depend on their consumers being too lazy to do the due diligence and investigate further on their own, which unfortunately explains how easy it is to continue to include “The View” under the ABC News banner.

But when the media insists you believe masks work and vaccines are safe, climate catastrophes a century from now can be prevented today, elections where Democrats win should always be accepted, and especially when they insist you believe them because they say so, have one word at the ready…

Why?

USA Today said it has deleted 23 articles from its website after an investigation found that the reporter who wrote them used fabricated sources. The journalist who is said to have used the fabricated sources was identified as Gabriela Miranda, a breaking news reporter who resigned from the Virginia-based newspaper weeks ago, the paper confirmed Thursday.
— New York Post, 6/16/22

One could blame this latest example of journalism malfeasance on the lazy youth, but we also know some of the experienced have fallen, and some have been allowed to get back up.

Here’s the latest tally of lying journalists provided by the self-policing media….

15 Of The Most Disgraced Journalists In The World
10 journos caught fabricating
The Top 12 Journalism Scandals Since 2000
Winner of CNN’s ‘Journalist of the Year’ Award Admits He Fabricated Stories
Journalists Who Were Caught Lying

At least one instance was immortalized….

New Republic reporter Stephen Glass was caught lying for three solid years, writing articles about events and human beings that never existed. Glass, the associate editor at the time, was fired by in the summer of 1998 and became the subject of the Hayden Christensen movie “Shattered Glass”.
— Ranker, 10/4/21

Again, these are only the instances of journalistic dishonesty we know of and that’s been reported: take their word for it.

These are the same people who believe it’s their job to tear down those who violate societal and/or political norms but when they intentionally mislead, their publications either issue muted corrections or delete pieces altogether to cover inconvenient tracks.

Being a journalist is an immense responsibility best left to those who observe classic professional ethics and proven integrity. Two qualifications that is clearly lacking today and there doesn’t appear to be much that can assure the public that the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is something guaranteed to come from the media.

Nice, right?

Subscription business models are based on the idea of selling a product or service to receive monthly or yearly recurring subscription revenue. They focus on customer retention over customer acquisition. In essence, subscription business models focus on the way revenue is made so that a single customer pays multiple payments for prolonged access to a good or service instead of a large upfront one-time price. Now, the economy is trending toward more subscriptions instead of ownership for cars, software, entertainment, and shopping. This increases the lifetime value (LTV) of the customer.
— Investopedia

When you have to call “customer service” and have to endure a Filipino accent when being told what they can’t (or won’t) do, do you feel like a valued customer after they have your money?

Corporations make you pay for monthly subscriptions despite the fact that some of the services provided are those you really don’t want and would never pay for on their own.

You buy a cell phone so you can communicate instantly with others, but you also get a device that spies on you, “free” functionality apps that also sell your data, divulges your location to people you don’t know, and based on your activity online, sends you dozens of annoying ads per month for products you have no intention of buying.

Granted, there are some “free” products that people can obtain like Facebook, Twitter, and their Big Tech subsidiaries. They just sell your personal data to advertisers.

Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly claims Facebook does not sell data. The statement has become a shield in the tumultuous era for the company. But is it true?

“As a data scientist, I am shocked that anyone continues to believe this claim,” wrote Michael Kosinski, assistant professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, in a New York Times opinion piece. “Every time you click on a Facebook ad, Facebook sells data on you to that advertiser.”
— AZCentral, 2/15/19

Multiply that within the estimated 1.9 billion daily users, that’s a good chunk of income from what in essence are just social media websites and after they get user data, they can abuse their customers as they wish. That’s a business model probably not taught at the Wharton School… yet.

Music streaming subscriptions give you access to genres you appreciate, thus there may be two or three channels of music you’d religiously listen to. But as you (and millions of others) are paying for the service on a monthly basis, you’re also paying for genres you may genuinely dislike and artists you really abhor whose music you would never purchase.

Streaming services, like the music companies of old, screw the artists, but that’s another story altogether.

Cable companies charge monthly for hundreds of television channels while there may be less than a handful any given person may watch on a consistent basis. But since millions of viewers are paying (in some cases) close to a hundred bucks a month for bundle packages, consumers are paying for channels that would go belly up if they had to compete in an ‘à la carte’ environment.

Corporations like Amazon, thanks to their “Prime” subscriptions, are in the entertainment business, are actually making product. Some movie companies are in the streaming business. Simply by adding a “plus” on their brand gives you access to new productions of varying quality, old movies and shows you probably viewed years ago and will probably never voluntarily view again. Consistently good product is another thing, but at least Hollywood is getting paid….

But this is the current business model for corporations who want a steady stream of income despite how well their product performs and/or if all the “services” provided are what people really want or will use.

Apple Inc. is working on a subscription service for the iPhone and other hardware products, a move that could make device ownership similar to paying a monthly app fee, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The service would be Apple’s biggest push yet into automatically recurring sales, allowing users to subscribe to hardware for the first time — rather than just digital services.
— Bloomberg, 3/24/22

So now it’s not enough for families to pay outrageous monthly fees to pay for the phone and service but now Apple wants to charge people for the device’s guts every 30 days.

People used to buy physical newspapers because the wanted to be informed of local and national news. But now that the talent pool has degraded the product to the point where people just find the news they want online for free, some companies are putting out introductory hooks that can be as low as a dollar a week.

 
Seriously, if someone is trying to get you to buy something for a dollar a week, just how good is that product? In some cases, all you’re paying for is the privilege of seeing and hearing people blab. On the course of one’s daily activities, paying people (some of whom you may not choose to hear) to talk doesn’t exactly sound like a wise use of the monthly budget.

For the most part, when you pay a subscription you are subsidizing mediocrity. Some companies are making you choose between paying for crap or losing functionality of an expensive device you either bought outright or are making more monthly payments on.

While there are some aspects of subscription services you need or enjoy, you’re also paying for services and/or talent you may truly despise. That’s how they all stay relevant, fed and you get to pay for it. This is the current business model so suck it up.

That is until the Internet goes down.

If that’s the case, either multi-million dollar opinion hosts and smug journalists failed miserably at informing their consumers on important topics or they succeeded greatly in keeping them in the dark so they would vote the way they wanted, albeit via mass ignorance.

It also explains those interactions with hostiles on social media who seemingly bask in their ignorance, forcing you to divert and issue a quick review on a topic they quickly dispute because it wasn’t covered by NPR or The New York Times. They are quick to dismiss “The Big Lie” regarding the 2020 election while being genuinely clueless of almost everything pertinent leading up to it.

While there are those who are still attempting to get accurate tallies of votes and discrepancies of the 2020 election, there is an easier explanation why Donald Trump “lost” to Joe Biden and it’s based on a long-standing problems during elections: media bias and bias-by-omission. It’s more than apparent that without media biases run amok, aided greatly by Twitter, Facebook, and Google, the election would not have been nudged to Joe Biden and those who voted for him are now aware.

To measure the true effect of the media’s censorship on the election, the Media Research Center asked The Polling Company to survey 1,750 Biden voters in seven swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), six of which (all but North Carolina) were called for Biden (survey details below). We tested these voters’ knowledge of eight news stories — all important topics that our ongoing analysis had shown the liberal news media had failed to cover properly. We found that a huge majority (82%) of Biden voters were unaware of at least one of these key items, with five percent saying they were unaware of all eight of the issues we tested.

This lack of information proved crucial: One of every six Biden voters we surveyed (17%) said they would have abandoned the Democratic candidate had they known the facts about one or more of these news stories. A shift of this magnitude would have changed the outcome in all six of the swing states won by Joe Biden, and Donald Trump would have comfortably won a second term as president.
— SPECIAL REPORT: The Stealing of the Presidency, 2020

Putting it picture form really puts the media, Big Tech interference in proper perspective.

This alone could be one reason the legacy media, while begrudgingly and belatedly, is admitting the got one little piece of information wrong during the 2020 presidential campaign. Like the New York Post story on the Hunter Biden laptop, and all the various issues contained within, that was quickly dismissed by the media and censored by social media mere weeks before ballots were to be cast.

Oops. The New York Times now admits they made a boo-boo.

The New York Post first reported this eyebrow-raising information back in October 2020, a month before the presidential election. Pro-Biden, anti-Trump journalists, including several at the Times, portrayed the Post‘s story as unsubstantiated at best. Politico reported that “more than 50 former senior intelligence officials” believed the emails had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Some journalists suggested it was reckless even to acknowledge the Post‘s report. Twitter, which initially blocked links to the article, seemed to agree. While the Times did not ignore the story, the paper’s coverage treated it with skepticism and disdain.

But that was then. A year and a half later, the Times thinks the emails it viewed as suspect before Joe Biden’s election are now newsworthy. “People familiar” with a federal investigation of Hunter Biden, it reports, “said prosecutors had examined emails” between him, his former business partner Devon Archer, “and others” regarding “Burisma and other foreign business activity.” Those emails “were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop.” The messages “were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.”
— Reason, 3/17/22

And don’t let the latest plague on society (the “factcheckers”) off the hook.

Fueled by a panic over misinformation, the fact-checking industry is shifting the media’s primary obligation away from pursuing the truth and toward upholding vague notions of public safety, which it gets to define. In the course of this transformation, journalists are being turned into rent-a-cops whose job is to enforce an official consensus that is treated as a civic good by those who benefit from—and pay for—its protection.

The fact-checkers have proved to be crucial compliance officers for the state, filtering out troublesome information before it reaches the public, torturing “the facts” until they conform to officially sanctioned narratives, and smearing dissenters as dangers to the public or stooges of Vladimir Putin.
— Tablet Magazine, 3/21/22

The left rarely admits to errors in judgment, let alone outright fraud, without a reason. Many of today’s younger journalists may not appreciate or even know the irony regarding “the boy who cried wolf” because Aesop was obviously a white supremacist misogynist. But in the ramp-up to what’s looking like a severe ass-whuppin’ coming Tuesday, November 8, 2022, the media will insist the American people listen to them before casting an informed vote.

After 2020, that will be a hard sell.

Case in point….

It was pretty jarring earlier this month when the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court took the bench for the first time since the omicron surge over the holidays. All were now wearing masks. All, that is, except Justice Neil Gorsuch. What’s more, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was not there at all, choosing instead to participate through a microphone setup in her chambers. Sotomayor has diabetes, a condition that puts her at high risk for serious illness, or even death, from COVID-19. She has been the only justice to wear a mask on the bench since last fall when, amid a marked decline in COVID-19 cases, the justices resumed in-person arguments for the first time since the onset of the pandemic.

Now, though, the situation had changed with the omicron surge, and according to court sources, Sotomayor did not feel safe in close proximity to people who were unmasked. Chief Justice John Roberts, understanding that, in some form asked the other justices to mask up. They all did. Except Gorsuch, who, as it happens, sits next to Sotomayor on the bench. His continued refusal since then has also meant that Sotomayor has not attended the justices’ weekly conference in person, joining instead by telephone.
— Nina Totenberg, NPR, 1/18/21

Sounds pretty insensitive and potentially dangerous.

However, it doesn’t appear to be true as New York Times Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak was one of the first to dispute Totenberg’s musing.

NPR strongly defended Totenberg’s reporting, pointing out that the justices’ statement does not directly contradict their story.

“Totenberg never reported that Justice Sotomayor asked Justice Gorsuch to wear a mask, nor did she report that anyone admonished him,” NPR spokesman Ben Fishel said in a statement.
— Business Insider, 1/18/22

Totenberg’s implications were clear enough as was the response from the justices in question.

The court on Wednesday issued an unusual three-sentence statement from Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch. It read: “Reporting that Justice Sotomayor asked Justice Gorsuch to wear a mask surprised us. It is false. While we may sometimes disagree about the law, we are warm colleagues and friends.”
— ABC News, 1/19/22

Nina Totenberg, “legal affairs correspondent for National Public Radio focusing primarily on the activities and politics of the Supreme Court of the United States” cites no one in her piece. No anonymous source or official speaking under condition of anonymity, zip, zero, nada; a clear flunking of Journalism 1.01.

Turns out she was inspired by the opinion of another conservative-hating liberal.

One justice, Sonia Sotomayor, who had previously been the only justice to wear a mask on the bench, participated remotely from her chambers. Sotomayor has diabetes, which is a risk factor for more severe illness with covid. She also is, or would have been, Gorsuch’s seat mate for the nearly four-hour-long argument session.

The court, having resumed in-person arguments, retains strict limits on who can attend and strict rules for those allowed inside the chamber. Reporters and lawyers must wear masks — N95 masks, not the less-effective cloth variety — and test negative for covid. In fact, two of the lawyers who argued against the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates had to do so remotely after testing positive. And instead of being crammed cheek by jowl in the press section, reporters, along with the justices’ law clerks, are spaced throughout the otherwise-empty chamber.

These rules and practices all make sense for the court (where five justices, including Sotomayor, are over 65) and for the public. Indeed, they offer a model for responsible workplace behavior in an age of omicron.

Which brings me to the question: Where was Gorsuch’s mask?
— Ruth Marcus, Washington Post, 1/7/22

Marcus’ “op-ed” got all this rolling, Totenberg lit the fuse given, and it was dutifully rewritten and distributed.

Slate: The Even Bigger Problem With Neil Gorsuch’s Decision Not to Wear a Mask
Yahoo News: Gorsuch defied a request from Chief Justice Roberts to wear a mask out of respect for Sotomayor
CNN: Gorsuch declines to wear mask, as Sotomayor works from her office
BizPacReview: Gorsuch reportedly refuses to mask-up, ‘forcing’ Sotomayor to work remotely
UK Independent: Diabetic Sotomayor forced to work remotely, Gorsuch refuses to wear mask
Huffington Post: Gorsuch Reportedly Refuses To Wear Mask In Supreme Court, Forcing Others To Call In
NY Magazine: Neil Gorsuch Reportedly Refused John Roberts’s Request to Wear a Mask
Boston Globe: Justice Gorsuch reportedly refused to wear mask during Supreme Court arguments

Either Marcus and Totenberg made it all up, the Washington Post and NPR accepted it without asking her to provide the customary attribution, OR Marcus and Totenberg made it up and it was blindly accepted by the Washington Post and NPR because it was what they wanted to believe, their audience would also accept it because they want to be believe it as true and are too lazy to verify it.

It’s not like so-called liberal journalists making shit up never happened before and it would be interesting to see how justices would rule if #DefundNPR ever made it before them?

But it happened.

Video producer Johnny Harris and actually went there and it will be interesting to see how long he’s employed by The Times after his fellow, open-minded, tolerant colleagues show their appreciation of his work….

This segment could have been produced by Fox News or any competent conservative outlet, but it came from The New York Times and it didn’t take long for the liberal thin-skinned to go off.

The fourteen plus minute video consists of an introductory segment followed by a set of three critiques concerning issues in three different states under Democratic governance: California, Washington, and Connecticut. Several Cascadia Advocate readers were particularly interested in the Washington segment and got in touch to ask for NPI’s take on it.
Our team watched the video and came away pretty disappointed.
— Northwest Progressive Institute, 11/9/21

This video sucks. Stick to maps and stay away from politics.
— Jim Jennings, Facebook comment

well… over all you are wrong when it comes to California… and you are a Republican. I really like your channel but I can’t support a Republican…
I can’t vote for a Donald Trump candidate.
I Can’t drink poison water from Texas.
and I can go an go… bye. for good.
— Victor Alvarado, Facebook comment

Everybody wants a nice place to liv. Having a high density will not give you that place. It Therefore it is perfectly normal not to want to live in a area with multiple dwellings. It not racist to think about yourself first before you think of others. That isn’t being greedy. What is wrong with single family homes. Nothing.
So build them someplace else.
— Saul Neinstein, Facebook comment

Chances are this video may be removed from YouTube and Facebook by the Times after enough employees meet and demand its removal because we all know censorship is tolerated by the left in the most necessary situations (like when the truth is being told).

She’s tired of the day-to-day writing obligations and she wants that much sought-after, paid gig as a Fox News contributor. She probably hopes she fits most of their on-air aesthetic requirements.

A lot continues to be made over her resignation letter, so cue the sad, piano music bed….

Dear A.G.,

It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from the New York Times.

Seriously, who in the private sector does this publicly?

I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of the Times as their home. The reason for this effort was clear: The paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers. Dean Baquet and others have admitted as much on various occasions. The priority in Opinion was to help redress that critical shortcoming.

Twitter is not on the masthead of the New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history.

Whoever told her that must have really been full of his or herself. Then again, we are talking about today’s journalists….

Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing moulded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m ‘writing about the Jews again’. Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly ‘inclusive’ one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

If a conservative accepted a job at MoveOn.org, he or she would know what to expect. When the expected happened, only a narcissist would take to social media and whine about it.

There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.

I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public.

Bari Weiss is either naive or stupid. Despite that, she was still considered New York Times material.

And I certainly can’t square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.

Sincerely,

Bari

While this made for some sensational headlines, political discrimination is nothing new. Anyone who works with liberals knows this, which is why most conservatives keep their personal politics close-to-the-vest for fear of public ostracization and/or even potential job loss.

Weiss, in her resignation letter, claims not to be a legal expert.

However, all she had to do was take (literally) a few seconds to look it up.

Not all forms of discrimination are illegal, however. It is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for employers to make job decisions based on race, color, national origin, religion, and sex. Other federal laws prohibit discrimination based on age, disability, and genetic information. However, political views aren’t covered by these laws and the laws of most states. This means employers are free to consider political views and affiliations in making job decisions.
— NOLO, Can Employers Discriminate Based on Political Beliefs or Affiliation?

Bari Weiss has been an outspoken right-leaning columnist and it suited her well as long as she was relatively comfortable and employed. She’s enjoyed opportunities to appear on national media outlets, safe and enemy, and she was able to absorb the incoming… that is, until now.

It appears the “bullying” was too much for her to bear and her very public announcement that she’s bailing on the New York Times could also be looked at as a Times Square sized billboard saying “I’m available!”

Weiss had the convenience of being able to time her job departure on her terms and timetable. Many others who lost jobs, careers, and more due to being blacklisted by intolerant liberals had no such benefit. Weiss had every opportunity to use her various platforms to remind the public of the ramifications of “progressive” tyranny. She could have interviewed, thus talked to Republican leadership on Capitol Hill and directors of federal and state agencies as an advocate for those who have to remain politically silent just to keep a job.

She could’ve pushed for an addendum to current civil rights legislation.

Bari Weiss didn’t do shit.

She was absent to that party, but now that she’s had enough of being picked on, she’s being embraced as yet another potential conservative star.

When it comes to political discrimination and celebrated self-servers like Bari Weiss, when is enough going to be enough?