Tidbits today. By Hal M. Brown

Image of the day added after the meeting that demonstrated that the United States in no longer part of the free world.

Update on bottom of page.

I don’t have any one particular topic that I think I have a fresh perspective on to write about today. I may think of something later, but for now in keeping with my practice of posting something every morning here are some tidbits.

First is my reaction to my favorite Substacker’s post.

Citizens United allowed the super-rich to pump money into elections for their personal self interest. Most of this money goes to advertsing. In a society where everyone was rational and adept at critical thinking, and also engaged the political process because they wanted to be part of deciding who governed the country, advertising wouldn't matter nearly as much.

Even if some candidates had so much money they could buy 10x as many ads and commercials as their opponents, those who had the inclination would seek information on all the candidates. They would use the tools of reason to analyze the claims of the candidates and vote for those who they thought would best represent their interests and where they wanted their community and country to go.

Many, perhaps half, of the people in the country lack the ability to to be introspective and self-ware. They lack a finely tuned critical thinking ability. This makes them gullible and prone to believe political propaganda.

Let's consider the most racist bigoted voter you can imagine. They also like the idea of having a ruthless dictator run the country. If they knew that voting for them would drastically have a negative effect on the quality of their own life, I mean a significant change for the worst, they might realize they bought into a pack of lies and see - with great embarrassment - the error they made. They'd still be racist bigots who like having a dictator, but decide it wasn't THIS particular dictator and their policies.

Here’s a Substack from my real life friend Dianna Jackson:

She says she’s a nobody. She isn’t. Here’s how she begins:

With what is going on in this country, I can’t help but wonder how it will all end.

If you wanted to get rid of people and you were a billionaire or billionaires, what would be a better way than to stop scientists, stop medicine, stop research, stop staffing the agencies that do all that type of work for the American public. Is there a more effective way to kill a large swath of people everywhere? Obviously this is what the current administration is doing. On purpose. With gusto. With speed. With not a whit of caring about the citizens. Your average Joe Blow, your average Jane Doe. Would you consider the atomic bomb? Probably not because your environment would take a beating. Who would clean it up? Would they clean it up willingly after what you just did which was to drop a bomb on the homeland? So what better way than to hire incompetent people to kill as many people as possible without ruining the place.

Secondly, I wonder about the lawyers of this country. Why are they caught flat-footed by this assault on the rule of law? Wouldn’t it be right to think that if the rule of law is smashed to smithereens, the lawyers would have nothing to do? Reading today that large, prestigious firms were not accepting the cases of people who were illegally terminated, for instance, because the lawyers were afraid of retribution. Well, it seems to this nobody that it would be a moot point ultimately, wouldn’t it? If they, as lawyers, won’t stand up to the criminals, the criminals will feel free to run roughshod over the law. If they don’t disbar the lawyers that are ignoring their oaths, those lawyers will continue to break the law. And then when that happens, the judges will have nothing to do.

Dana Milbank hasn’t left The Washington Post yet, although as I read his columns I think he may be moving that direction. Their loss, our gain since I see him moving to a media that doesn’t require a subscription to read. Today he took a thinly veiled jab at Jeff Bezos.

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos on Wednesday announced a “significant shift” to the publisher’s opinion page that led David Shipley, the paper’s editorial page editor, to leave the paper. The changes upended precedent and rattled a media company that has already been shaken by years of turmoil and leadership turnover. Bezos has justified his censorship as being in support of personal liberties and free markets in a convoluted and incomprehensible ways. This is from CNN

As part of the overhaul, the Post will publish daily opinion stories on two editorial “pillars”: personal liberties and free markets, Bezos teased in an X post on Wednesday morning after announcing the change in a company-wide email. The Post’s opinion section will cover other subjects, too, Bezos wrote, but “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

“I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America,” Bezos wrote. “I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.”

In announcing the shift, the billionaire media mogul championed the changes as based in American principles anchored in “freedom.” This freedom, Bezos emphasized, “is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.”

As a basis for the change, Bezos noted that legacy opinion sections have become outdated and have been replaced by the internet.

In addtion to describing the ways Trump is moving the country towards a dictatorship Milbank writes:

Over the last 48 hours, I’ve been receiving from readers and friends the sort of notes one gets upon losing a loved one, or perhaps receiving a terminal diagnosis.

“So very sorry.”

“Hang in there.”

“Sending you love and strength.”

“With appreciation and sorrow.”

The cause of death? The belief that Post owner Jeff Bezos has just ended the tradition of open debate that has guided this paper’s editorial page for generations. “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Bezos wrote on Wednesday morning. “We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

In its plain language, this is unobjectionable. Personal liberties and free markets are part of the American creed. But many readers I’ve heard from suspect the words are cover for a plan to turn this into a MAGA-friendly outlet.

I don’t yet know for sure. But this much is clear: If we as a newspaper, and we as a country, are to defend his twin pillars, then we must redouble our fight against the single greatest threat to “personal liberties and free markets” in the United States today: President Donald Trump.

Of all the articles on RawStory one piqued my interest and within it there were two paragraphs that stood ut to me.

Here they are:

A Truth Social user identified as @WindinherhairCAS quickly chimed in. After previously posting that Trump's inauguration couldn't "come fast enough," this user had some criticisms of the President.

"President Trump!!! Please get rest. I hope the First Lady will put her foot down to to look out for your health. The briefing with the Prime Minister of the UK … it was clear you were very exhausted," the user wrote. "We need you on the top of your game! GET REST! We understand the urgency with most things. However you have a very good cabinet, let them deal with economics at home, JD can handle the international spectrum. Elon can still write a list to follow up with you. News outlets can go one day without bombing repeated questions. You just did not have that fierce stance. So please get rest and come back stronger! Do not fail to look out for you!"

If this didn’t come from someone on Truth Social I would have thought is was written by an anti-Trump troll being sarcastic. Instead, they took the daring step to observe that Trump wasn’t superhuman.

This was the on HUFFPOST’s opening page:

It was for this article:

The news about consumer spending didn’t interest me. What I was curious about is where the photo of Trump in what looked like a small convenience store came from. I did an image serach.

This is an article about it.

Of course Trump wouldn’t visit a bodega unless he could make politcal hay out of it.

The New York Times published an article titled The MAGA War on Free Speech (subscription - I wish at least these were made free to everyone):

One word stood out:

Over the past month Mr. Trump and his allies have embarked on an expansive crackdown on free expression and disfavored speakers that should be decried not just as hypocritical but also as un-American and unconstitutional.

In the distorted view of the Trump administration, protecting free speech requires controlling free speech — banning words, phrases and ideas that challenge or complicate a government-favored speech. Officials in Washington have spent the past month stripping federal websites of any hint of undesirable words and thoughts, disciplining news organizations that refuse to parrot the president’s language and threatening to punish those who have voiced criticism of investigations and prosecutions.

The Orwellian nature of this approach is deliberate and dangerous. This posture is not about protecting free speech. It is about prioritizing far-right ideology — and at times celebrating lies and hate speech under the guise of preventing the criminalization of language — while trying to silence independent thought, inconvenient truths and voices of dissent.

That word, if you haven’t guessed, is Orwellian. George Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future was written in 1949 and he placed the story in 1984 and in another country.

The story takes place in an imagined future. The current year is uncertain, but believed to be 1984. Much of the world is in perpetual war. Great Britain, now known as Airstrip One, has become a province of the totalitarian superstate Oceania, which is led by Big Brother, a dictatorial leader supported by an intense cult of personality manufactured by the Party's Thought Police. The Party engages in omnipresent government surveillance and, through the Ministry of Truth, historical negationism and constant propaganda to persecute individuality and independent thinking. Wikipedia.

He got the wrong county and was 41 years off.

Evening Update after Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy:

Grotesque is the best single the best word to describe what happened...it means repulsively ugly or distorted, incongruous or inappropriate to a shocking degree, you can add outrageous, monstrous, shocking, astonishing, preposterous,unbelievable, unthinkable, and incredible.

But add all of these words together and I think, because of the imagry it evokes, the word grotesque works the best. I think of the most grotesque evil beasts from movies or fiction and I see Trump sitting there and see a kind of Jabba the Hutt, with his incredibly fat bottom, only Trump is uglier and more malevolent.

If you forget who dispatched him by strangling him with a chain in Star Wars, it was Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher must have had fun filming that).

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - Leia kills Jabba the Hutt.

This is violent:

This was the first time we saw Leia use the Force. It had been revealed earlier that she was Luke Skywalker's twin sister who was seperated from him at birth. He was the Last Jedi, the master of the Force, fighting the Dark Side.

We need a Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia today. Alas, this isn't a story being written by George Lucas which we know will have a happen ending, and even so, to get to the end of the original trilogy the Dark Side had many victories.

I want to thank all of my readers and my Substack subscribers. You can read all of my Substack posts here. If you subscribe you will recieve an email every time I post. Respectful comments are always welcome even if you disagree with me.