The American Empire and Its Media: get the NAMES

 

the unreadable chart

It’s a big news day in the media.  Don Lemon is out at CNN, and Tucker Carlson and Fox News have parted company.  While going through reader comments at Conservative Treehouse, I came across this link to “The American Empire and Its Media; click here.  For Dr. Harold W. Pease’s introduction to this chart, click here.  Among the non-media names that appear in the network are Presidents Bush, père and fils, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Eisenhower, and Hoover.

The chart shown above shows the connections between major media and (1) Bilderberg Meetings;  (2) Council on Foreign Relations;  and (3)  The Trilateral Commission.  Many of the names on the media list are easily recognizable, no matter what programs or publications you access. However, it was impossible to read the fine print.  After a few tries, I was able to persuade this household’s webmaster to convert the teeny tiny print to a readable word document.  The complete list, with abbreviations, disclaimers, and the like appears below:

Note:  Transcribed electronically, so some transcription errors will appear; list includes current, former, and deceased individuals.  Disclaimer at end of this list:  “Based on official participant lists and membership rosters; non-exhaustive; no liability assumed.”

Journalists and media executives:

New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report 1: Mortimer B. Zuckerman, publisher |

Slate 2: Jacob Weisberg, group editor |

The Nation 3: Katrina VandenHeuvel, publisher |

Foreign Affairs 4: James F. Hoge, former editor 5: Gideon Rose, editor | Foreign Policy 6: Moises Naim, editor |

The National Interest 7: Jacob Heilbrunn, editor |'

American Interest 8: Francis Fukuyama, executive chairman |

Financial Times 9: Martin Wolf, associate editor & chief economics commentator 10: Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator |    

Reuters 11: Stephen J. Adler, president & EIC; 12: Tom Glocer, former CEO 13: Harold M. Evans, editor-at-large 14: David Schlesinger, former EIC

Politico 15: Robert Allbritton, publisher; Garrett Graff, former editor

Bloomberg 17: Michael Bloomberg, owner & CEO 18: John Michklethwait, EIC of Bloomberg News, former EIC of The Economists. Matthew Winkler, former EIC of Bloomberg News 20: Daniel Doctoroff, former CEO

Forbes 21: Randall Lane, editor

Los Angeles Times 22: Doyle McManus, Washington bureau chief 23: Shelby Coffey, former editor and EVP

Nc Corp 24: Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman

Fox News 25: Maria Bartiromo, news anchor 26: Heather Nauert, former news host 27: Dan Senor, commentator 28: Trish Regan, television host 29: Linda Vester, former news host

Wall Street Journal (News Corp) 30: Peter Kann, former publisher 31: Karen Elliott House, former managing editor 32: L. Gordon Crovitz, former publisher 33: Rol Bartley, former editor 34: Paul A. Gigot, editorial page editor 35: Alan Murray, deputy managing editor 36: Daniel Henninger, deputy editorial page director 37: Gerald Seib, Washington bureau chief 38: Peggy Noonan, columnist 39: Paul Steiger, former managing editor (1991-2007)

NBC 40: Pamela Thomas Graham, former CEO of CNBC 41: Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric (for owner of NBCUniversal) 42: Cesar Conde, chairman of NBCUniversal International Group 43: Steve Capus, former president of NBC News 44: Tom Brokaw, news anchor 45: Mika Brzezinski, MSNBC news host 46: Andrea Mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent 47: Richard Engel, chief foreign corr. 48: Brian Williams, NBC chief anchor 49: Joe Scarborough, news host 50: Bianna Golodryga news anchor 51: Ayman Mohyeldin, reporter

The Economist 52: Lynn Forester de Rothschild, co-owner and board member 53: John Elkann (Agnelli family), co-owner and board member 54: Zanny Minton Beddoes, EIC 55: Rupert Pennant-Rea, chairman of the Economist Group 56: Vendeline von Bredow, business correspondent 57: Adrian Wooldridge, foreign correspondent 58: Bill Emmott, former EIC 59: Megan McArdle, journalist

The New Republic 60: Walter Lippmann, co-founder 61: Chris Hughes, former publisher 62: Peter Beinart, former editor 63: Morton Kondracke, former executive editor 64: J. Peter Scoblic, former executive editor 65: Ronald Steel, journalist & professor

Time 66: Norman Pearlstine, chief content officer of Time Inc. 67: Michael Duffy, deputy manag. editor 68: Nancy Gibbs, managing editor 69: Henry Luce, founding publisher 70: John Huey, former EIC 71: Richard Stengel, former managing editor 72: Joe Klein, columnist 73: Ian Bremmer, foreign affairs columnist & editor-at-large 74: James Gaines, managing editor (1993-95) 75: Jason McManus, managing editor (1985-87) 76: Henry Grunwald, managing editor (1968-77)

The New York Times  77: Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, former publisher (1963-92) 78: Arthur Hays Sulzberger, former publisher (1935-61) 79: Joseph Kahn, managing editor 80: Andrew Rosenthal, former editorial page editor 81: Serge Schmemann, international affairs editor 82: Susan Chira, former deputy executive editor 83: David C. Unger, former foreign affairs editor 84: David Sanger, Washington correspondent Thomas Shanker, assistant Washington editor and former Pentagon correspondent 86: Thomas Friedman, foreign affairs columnist 87: Ethan Bronner, former deputy foreign editor 88: Andrew Ross Sorkin, financial columnist 89: Carol Giacomo, foreign affairs editor 90: Michael Gordon, chief military correspondent 91: Robert B. Semple, associate editorial page editor 92: Judith Miller, Washing bureau reporter 93: David Brooks, op-ed columnist 94: Nicholas Kristof, op-ed columnist and former associate managing editor

The Washington Post 95: Eugene Meyer, former publisher (1933-46) 96: Jeff Bezos, owner (since 2013) 97: Katharine Graham, former publisher (1969-79) 98: Donald E. Graham, former publisher & chairman (1979-2013) 99: Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor 100: Gl Kessler, diplomatic correspondent and fact checker 101: Anne Applebaum, former editorial board member 102: Walter Pincus, national security journalist 103: Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial page editor 104: Charles Krauthammer, columnist 105: Robert Kaiser, former managing editor and senior correspondent 106: David Ignatius, associate editor 107: Eugene Robinson, columnist and chair of Puli. Prize Board 108: Karen DeYoung, associate editor 109: Marc Thiessen, columnist 110: Richard M. Cohen, columnist 111: Jim Hoagland, associate editor and columnist 112: George F. Will, columnist

CNN (Time Warner) 113: W. Thomas Johnson, former president 114: Walter Isaacson, former CEO 115: Ellana Lee, SVP of CNN International and managing editor Asia-Pacific 116: Mark Whita former EVP and managing editor of CNN Worldwide 117: Fareed Zakaria, foreign affairs show host 118: Erin Burnett, news anchor 119: Sanjay Gupta, chief medical correspondent 120: David Gergen, senior political analyst 121: Christiane Amanpour, chief international correspondent 122: Judy Woodruff, news anchor 123: Peter Bergen, national security analyst 124: Kitty Pilgrim, former news anc and correspondent 125: Paula Zahn, former news anchor 126: Elise Labott, global affairs correspondent 127: Ali Velshi, former chief business correspondent 128: Jake Tapper, chief Washington corr. 129: Sam Feist, SVP and Washington bureau chief 130: Jeffrey Toobin, legal analyst

CBS News 131: Laurence A. Tisch, former CEO of CBS 132: William Paley, founder of CBS 133: Joseph Calif Jr„ CBS director 134: William Cohen, CBS director and former Secretary of Defense 135: Dan Rather, former news anchor 136: Bob Schieffer, news anchor and chief Washington corr. 137: Charlie Rose, talk show host 138: Lesley Stahl, news reporter 139: Margaret Brennan, White House & senior foreign affairs corr. 140: Reena Ninan, news anchor 141: Edward R. Murrow, former broadcast journ.

Time Warner 142: Jeffrey Bewkes, chairman & CEO 143: Gary Ginsberg, communications chief 144: Richard Parsons, former chairman & CEO 145: Gerald Levin, former chairman & CEO

ABC News (Disney) 146: Ben Sherwood, president 147: David Westin, former president 148: George Stephanopoulos, chief anchor & chief political corr. 149: Juju Chang, news anchor 150: Barbara Walt news anchor and show host 151: Peter Jennings, news anchor 152: Katie Couric, news anchor 153: Diane Sawyer, news anchor 154: Jonathan Karl, chief White House corr.

Disney 155: Michael Eisner, former chairman & CEO 156: Monica Lozano, director

The New Yorker 157: David Remnick, EIC 158: Amy Davidson, senior editor international affairs 159: Hendrik Hertzberg, principal polil commentator 160: Lawrence Wright, staff writer 161: Evan Osnos, foreign affairs writer 162: Jane Kramer, European correspondent 163: Mark Danner, foreign affairs corr. 164: Nick Paumgarten, staff writer 165: Mattathias Schwartz, staff writer 166: Robin Wright, contributor

The New York Review of Books 167: Robert Silvers, founding editor 168: Barbara Epstein, founding editor

Newsweek 169: Richard M. Smith, former CEO &, EIC 170: Jon Meacham, former EIC 171: Janine di Giovanni, Middle East editor 172: Evan Thomas, former Washington bureau chief

The Daily Beast 173: Tina Brown, founding editor 174: Barry Diller, chairman of IAC (owner of Daily Beast)

USA Today 175: Joanne Lipman, EIC & chief content officer 176: David Andelman, international affairs column

PBS 177: Donald A. Baer, chairman 178: Hartford N Gunn, founder 179: Jim Lehrer, former news anchor 180: Margaret Warner, senior correspondent 181: Bill Moyers, former news anchor 182: Jonathan Barzilay, COO

NPR 183: Vivian Schiller, former CEO 184: Gary Knell, former president 185: Tom Gjelten, correspondent 186: Dina Temple-Raston, national security corr.

Alphabet/Google 1 Eric Schmidt, executive chairman

Facebook 188: Sheryl Sandberg, COO and director 189: Marne Levine, VP of global public policy

The Atlantic 190: David G. Bradley, chairman of Atlantic Media. |

Based on official participant lists and membership rosters; non-exhaustive; no liability assumed.

Abbreviations:

B: Bilderberg meeting participant;

Br: Bilderberg meeting rapporteur;

C: CFR member (incl. term members and former members);

 D: CFR director;

EIC: editor-in-chief;

F: CFR fellow;

M: married to CFR member;

S: son of CFR member;

T: Trilateral Commission member (incl. former members).

# # #

 

 

Trump’s interview on Tucker Carlson

 

For those of you who have long ago turned off the TV, including Fox News, you may still want to know how President Trump’s interview on Tucker Carlson Tonight went.  Andrea Widburg at American Thinker has a column about it, as well as video clips if you are inclined:

On Tuesday night, Tucker Carlson dedicated his entire program to an interview with Donald Trump. Despite six years of non-stop persecution, including two years of dealing with the fallout from a gamed election, and a recent arrest, Trump looked unchanged. He hadn’t aged a bit, and he was every bit as vibrant and on-the-ball as ever. His communication style hadn’t changed either: Discursive and repetitive, but also insightful and showing his intelligence, humanism, and ego. In addition, the interview contained some serious bombshells on everything from the mundane to the existential. . . .

Ms. Widburg has more confidence than do I in future elections, but this blog links to her report on the Trump interview, because it’s otherwise excellent.

# # #

Bank failures lead to digital currency

 

Amy Mek at RAIR Foundation gives us all fair warning:

Unless people start making a lot of noise and applying a lot of pressure, we will move to digital currency, warns Tucker Carlson.

Big banks are eating up small banks. During his program this week, Tucker Carlson said that means less competition and more government control.

What will the government do with that control? Carlson says that unless people start making a lot of noise and applying a lot of pressure, we will move to digital currency.

Government’s Increased Control

The four largest banks – Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JP Morgan, and Chase – are doing well. Meanwhile, the White House appears to be provoking bank runs at regional banks. The government also seems to be trying to erode confidence in those banks.

Carlson stressed that the Biden administration is using this crisis to increase its control. . . .

More at the RAIR Foundation here.

# # #

John Dale Dunn: Tucker Carlson pulled his punches

 

John Dale Dunn at American Thinker was disgusted with the surveillance footage shown on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program.  Mr. Dunn starts off:

I watched what I thought was a serious journalist blow the first night of the supposed big J6 tape release. But I couldn't help noticing that he picked stuff we already knew -- and he was WEAK. 

Where was the video of fed provocateurs and violence coordinators?

Capitol Police flash bang and rubber bullet/baton attacks on an unarmed citizen crowd?

The deceptions about the barricades?

The beatings of unarmed women and lots of unarmed men, and one, Roseann Boyland, who died?

What was so hard about demonstrating to the public that the J6 was a Reichstag Fire scam?

Sure, he said the J6 committee lied, but he pulled his punches even on the opening night and from there the week went downhill fast and he purposely got weaker and weaker.  Before the week was done, he opened his show about the International Women's Day award?  He didn't care -- he was just going through the motions.

. . .

The commentary below the article is split, many viewers thought the selected coverage moved the ball down the field a bit.  Others agreed with Mr. Dunn and thought the disappointing coverage was probably due to Deep State influences coming from Fox management.  Click here to read the full column and comments below. 

There’s additional footage (“Jan. 6 Videos Show Antifa Disguising Selves as Trump Supporters, Trumpers Stopping Vandals”) at PJ Media’s Catherine Salgado report;  click here.

# # #

Don Surber: January 6 false flag

We’ve all recognized the January 6 “insurrection” as a false flag event, a set-up by the FBI, Capitol Police, Nancy Pelosi, and other bad actors. So many lies, so much obstruction, that it has been challenging to piece everything together.  Now with the surveillance videos surfacing on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program, claims of a set-up are now verifiable.  Don Surber got most of it figured out:

For two years now, we have heard about an insurrection that everyone knows was bogus. The media deliberately lied in its vain attempt to ruin President Donald John Trump — one in a series of attempts by the real deniers of election results.

Tucker Carlson’s revelation that the Capitol Police incited peaceful protesters has been dismissed by a media obsessed with lying. The key to Pravda — the Soviet version of propaganda — was not to get people to believe it, but to get people to stop following the news. Judging by television ratings in the 21st century, it is working. It indoctrinates Americans to believe they are powerless and that resistance is futile.

So the lies continue.

.. . .

After two years of selective leaks of video by Pelosi’s Pretorian Guard, the nation finally gets to see the whole story — and the Capitolists hate it.

CNN said, “US Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger on Tuesday ripped into Fox News host Tucker Carlson over his commentary about footage from the January 6, 2021, insurrection that he aired Monday night, saying the host cherry-picked from the footage to present offensive and misleading conclusions about the attack.”

The political appointee whined in a memo leaked to CNN, “Last night an opinion program aired commentary that was filled with offensive and misleading conclusions about the January 6 attack.”

Manger also wrote, “The program conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video. The commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before or during these less tense moments.”

This is the same group that selective leaked out-of-context video for two years. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy released all the video.

CNN tossed the word insurrection into its report three times, even though it was a mostly peaceful protest. The word insurrection is important for Washington elitists to establish because it is the key to their plan to bar Donald Trump from the presidency.

. . .

Lots more in Mr. Surber’s Substack column here.  Bottom line: there was no "insurrection."

# # #

An Anti-woke Alternative to Amazon

Some good news.  Selwyn Duke at The New American reports on an alternative shopping source for conservatives:

Stop Giving Money to People Who Hate You:
The New Anti-woke, Amazon-like Alternative

. . . there’s a new big-business player in town: a patriotic online marketplace called Public Square (PublicSq.).

. . .

. . . corporate political correctness is now status quo. For instance, major companies have been found conducting woke training that involved “putting ‘marginalized’ staff above ‘privileged’ staff, learning to ‘decolonize their minds’ and combating aspects of an alleged ‘White supremacy culture,’ such as perfectionism, individualism and objectivity,” reported Fox News in 2021.

A few more of a multitude of examples are Covergirl having a male “cover girl,” Lyft allowing users to choose their “pronouns,” Gillette advertising with a “transgender” teen’s first shave, and PayPal banning users critical of Islam. Then there are all the corporations that donated approximately $100 million (and perhaps more) to neo-Marxist organization Black Lives Matter.

The PublicSq. endeavor came on the heels of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, which also was an effort to break the woke industrial complex’s stranglehold on America.

. . .

[CEO Omeed] Malik was also on Tucker Carlson Tonight Monday evening, and he and host Carlson made a point we ignore at our own peril. “We are slouching towards social credit scores in this country,” said Malik, “and so we need to create this economy to insulate ourselves from that — because the battlefield for liberty will be around commerce, not just politics.” . . .

Read the rest here.

# # #

An accidental derailment? Or another wrecking ball?

 

photo via DailyMailUK

At The National File, Charles Downs reports:

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said Monday that Norfolk Southern requested and was granted the controlled release of chemicals, including deadly vinyl chloride, following the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

And on Twitter, DC Draino posted:

Ohio Gov. @MikeDeWine says the railroad requested the “controlled release” of the toxic chemicals. Yes, Norfolk Southern, whose top shareholders incl. BlackRock & Vanguard, told the gov’t how they wanted this disaster handled. Somethings fishy in Ohio

Some crazy theorists are even considering sabotage;  see here and here. 

# # #

Biggest Lies of 2022

It’s almost the end of 2022 and time for all those year-end round-ups.  Here’s a good start from Gabriel Keane at Valiant News:

Tucker Carlson recounted some of what he believes to be the biggest lies told by the Democrat Party and the federal government over the course of 2022 in one of the last editions of his show this year.

“So here, ladies and gentlemen, are our favorite lies of 2022,” Carlson announced. “We had an awful lot to choose from in making tonight’s list from Paul Pelosi’s late night crime scene to the endless propaganda about the Ukraine war, to the million non-existent Americans who actually didn’t get new jobs in the third quarter of the year.”

. . .

“People are dying of COVID, Joe Biden told us, because you have questions about an experimental mRNA shot that doesn’t really work and whose long-term effects we can’t know,” Carlson said. “You are the criminal here, not the Chinese government, because you’re ‘unvaccinated.’ You must be punished. That was the message from the White House picked up and eagerly disseminated by Biden’s equally soulless stooges in the media.”

The Fox News host claimed that vaccinated people are four times as likely hospitalized for Covid as unvaccinated people, a statement corroborated by the CDC.

More here.

# # #

New World Order wants to control you

 

This blog linked to the other day to a report concerning the plan for a CBDC / Central Bank Digital Currency, a major component in the plot for the World Economic Forum's/WEF’s New World Order. Newsbusters is saying the same thing. Here’s Joseph Vazquez at Newsbusters:

Nation of Victims (2022) author Vivek Ramaswamy didn’t pull any punches about how a centralized digital currency would catapult America into a new, scarier era of dystopian government surveillance.

The Strive Asset Management executive chairman went on the Nov. 25 edition of Fox News’s 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' to slap down the “Great Reset — this dissolution of boundaries between the public and private sector, between different nations.”

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), according to Ramaswamy, are a “really bad idea” that amount to a “symptom of that deeper cancer” of a “New World Order.” Host Tucker Carlson kicked off the segment by arguing that CBDCs effectively meant “Chinese social credit scores come to America.”  . . .

Read the rest here. 

# # #

Censorship at Fox News

 

Some of the most valuable and reliable sources of news are now found at Substack – where they can’t be censored.  Emerald Robinson/The Right Way is a reporter who digs, and she’s been going after Faux Fox News for some time.  Previously she posted on “What Happened to Hannity?”  Today, she’s unpacking Tucker Carlson’s injunction to censor any mention of Dinesh D’Souza’s 2000 Mules.  That included having True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht on his show – as long as she didn’t mention the name of the documentary.  Here’s some of her commentary at Substack:

This sort of thing would be unthinkable just a few years ago. D’Souza’s tweet virtually guarantees that he will never appear on any Fox News program again. He will be black-listed — a common practice at Fox (just ask Rudy Giuliani and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Peter Navarro). Dinesh knew all of this and did it anyway — and that should tell you something. (He even tagged a Fox producer on Tucker’s team to name and shame him.) Fox has lost its monopoly power on the Right, and it’s no longer immune from criticism by the conservative community.

. . .

The real reason that “2000 Mules” is being ignored by the conservative corporate media and the liberal corporate media is because it’s true. The stolen 2020 election was the largest political interference operation ever conducted in America. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s charity spent more than $400 million to create a private election system in swing states — and he was hardly alone. It took massive coordination from both political parties and the corporate media and federal law enforcement and left-wing NGO’s to thwart the will of the American people in 2020.

The problem for both political parties and the corporate media and federal law enforcement and left-wing NGO’s is that they pulled it off but they got caught doing it. The fraud was much too pervasive and public to be kept secret. That’s why “2000 Mules” is creating such an awkward moment at Fox News. Our corrupt institutions have no idea what to do next. They can't admit to the fraud — but they also can't dismiss the evidence. (They tried for the last 18 months and it didn’t work.) They have to pretend now that nothing is happening and they have to keep pretending until 2024.

. . . 

Read more at her Substack page here. Includes link to video.

# # #

Josh Mandel: just another dishonest RINO

 

Josh Mandel and William Kristol.  Photo credit: wksu.org

This latest report from BigLeaguePolitics --

"Ohio Senate Candidate Josh Mandel Pocketed Donations Intended for 2018 GOP Nominee, Paid Tens of Thousands to Mistress"

-- will come as no surprise to readers of this blog, although it is of concern that an Ohio liberty group has endorsed Mandel's candidacy for the US Senate seat presently held by RINO Rob Portman.  Richard Moorhead reports:

Ohio Republican Senate candidate Josh Mandel paid tens of thousands of dollars to a woman he was dating during his 2018 Senate campaign, while married to another woman.

FEC reports show that Rachel Wilson, Mandel’s finance director and mistress, was paid more than $100,000 between his 2018 campaign and a PAC supporting his candidacy.

. . .

Three dozen Republican women, including three women who left Mandel’s campaign citing a toxic work environment created by Wilson in her continuing duties with Mandel’s 2020 campaign, have urged Ohio Republicans to reject Mandel, warning he’ll “embarrass” the party if nominated as a candidate for the US Senate.  Mandel has run for statewide office five times in the past 12 years, with some Ohio Republicans criticizing Mandel, who has served in elected office since 2003, as a career politician who’ll put on the act he needs to in pursuit of the next political gig.

. . .

Questions of Mandel’s ethics go beyond his financial arrangements with his girlfriend while he was married to another woman. Mandel broke onto the scene of national politics as a protege of war criminal Bill Kristol, handpicked as an instrument to advance the nefarious neoconservative’s political views in the United States Senate in an ultimately failed 2012 campaign against Sherrod Brown. Kristol, an advocate of Middle East regime change wars Donald Trump partly ran against in 2016, had recruited Mandel as a candidate in Ohio’s 2012 US Senate election to challenge Sherrod Brown.

Read the full – ugly - report here.  Mr. Mandel says all the right things in front of the camera, but he is obviously just another self-serving hack.  Candidate Mike Gibbons looks better and better.

# # #

Falling Down and Falling Apart

 

On his blogsite, Robert Stacy McCain quoted part of Tucker Carlson’s Tuesday monologue yesterday.  Our household deleted Fox from our Favorites list some months ago, but Mr. Carlson made some good points.

The lessons of [the 1993 film] Falling Down were on my mind as I watched Tucker Carlson’s opening monologue for his Tuesday program:

There are a lot of unprecedented things happening, but not all of them are shocking. For example, it probably shouldn’t surprise you that, once they got their hands on real power, the same lunatics who don’t believe in human biology immediately made a serious mess of our economy. It took them less than six months to do it.

First, they acted like the U.S. dollar had no value. They spent money like they’d just printed it for the occasion, which, needless to say, they had. Predictably, we wound up with frightening levels of inflation, which for the record they still deny exists. But inflation does exist, as you well know if you live here.

Corn prices, to name just one example of a staple commodity that’s now out of control, have risen by 50 percent just since January. But that wasn’t bad enough. The lunatics decided to make it worse. They paid millions of Americans more than they make at work, to stay home and do nothing. To justify doing this, they used the word “COVID” quite a bit, but it had nothing to do with the pandemic. They just wanted to break the system. And so they did. And the rest of us immediately wound up with a bewildering combination of rising unemployment in the middle of a severe labor shortage.

So, at the very same time, we found ourselves with too many workers, and also too few workers. That doesn’t even make sense, but thanks to their policies, that’s now exactly what we have. And then, finally, in case 2021 didn’t remind you enough of a grimmer version of the 1970s, we now have serious gas shortages, in a country that just recently was energy independent. All along the east coast of the country today, people couldn’t fill up their cars. The footage looks like Venezuela.

And so forth. The real point — why it reminded me of Falling Down — is that ordinary citizens are powerless to fix this manmade disaster. The people in charge don’t give a damn about ordinary citizens, because if they did, they wouldn’t have done what they’ve done. We find ourselves in a broken system, where the incentives have gone haywire, and the world has stopped making sense. 

See – it’s not just you.  (Mr. McCain's full blog post is here.) 

# # #

The COVID-19 denouement

 

Jeffrey A. Tucker at American Institute for Economic Research has some predictions about the COVID-19 denouement:

There is a sense in the air that the pandemic is winding down, and the toxic culture of division, fear, and hatred along with it. Cases are down dramatically. Deaths too. Hospitalizations are no longer irregular. Restrictions are being repealed. You can follow all the action daily at the CDC’s new and unusually competent landing page on the virus (it only took them a year to build this). 

Despite all the talk of a new normal and infinite mandates, there is hope that it could all unwind quickly, pushed by force of public impatience and frustration with restrictions, and a political scramble to avoid responsibility by running away from all that they did for the last year. 

The list of signs and symbols could be made very long. 

• ·         The politicians who overreached are suddenly being held accountable, with both Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom on the hotseat. Calls for governors and mayors to resign consume state and local news. There is clearly major political tumult building. 
• ·         The Great Barrington Declaration scientists can hardly keep up with the requests for respectful interviews, now that it is becoming clear that they were right all along. 
• ·         The experience in open states like Florida, Georgia, South Dakota, and so on, makes it impossible to ignore the grim truth that the lockdowns achieved nothing for public health but did harm health, businesses, liberties, law, and civilized life. 
• ·         The push to open economies, by the same people who locked down the economies, such as Boris Johnson in the UK, is an implicit repudiation of the nonsensical ZeroCovid movement. Everyone seems now to agree with what AIER has been saying for a year: humanity must deal intelligently with pathogens and stop pretending that political forces can control them. 
• ·         AIER visiting senior fellow Naomi Wolf had a hit just last evening on the Tucker Carlson show, and they spoke as allies in the reopening efforts after years of ideological sparring. 
• ·         There is growing weariness of Anthony Fauci’s daily word salads that have massively mixed up the public health messaging for a full year, to the point that Meghan McCain has called for his firing. 
• ·         A year ago, Slate was making sense until the virus became political and they joined the lockdown mob. Now the publication is back to making sense again, with this excellent piece. 
• ·         British medical journal The Lancet is publishing excellent short pieces on the cost of lockdowns, including this riveting letter from Martin Kulldorff. 
• ·         A prestigious European journal of public health has published a blistering attack on the very idea that a power government should ever be trusted with virus mitigation. 

The people who have committed their careers and lives to this pandemic and the policies surrounding it might soon need to find a new raison d’etre. Then the clean up begins – how did this happen, who did it, how to make sure it never happens again – and does not end perhaps for decades. 

The full article is here.

# # #

TV News Updates: Fox, One America News, Newsmax

 

Here’s a chunk of JD Rucker’s article at NOQ Report a few days ago:

Fox News revealed its true colors on election night. At least that’s the common narrative spoken in conservative circles. But the truth is more nefarious, more sinister. Fox News has been quietly working against President Trump and conservatives since shortly after his election. They just did it stealthily and attempted to shift their network and their formerly massive audience to the center.

This is why they must be pushed even further. If there’s one thing we can say about CNN, MSNBC, and network news channels, it’s that we know the enemy well. There is no subterfuge in their ideology, no false pretense behind their actions. They are progressives, unabashedly, through and through. That makes them less dangerous than a network like Fox News who hides their true intentions. It’s better to face a wolf in the woods than a rattler in your sleeping bag.

What we saw on election night was them turning on the faucet of what had previously been a drip campaign. They did not want to lose their audience too soon, not as long as they could continue to manipulate them. They wanted to carry the mantle as the only major news channel conservatives could go to with the expectation of not being bombarded with Trump Derangement Syndrome. But what they gave us was subtle. 

Read the full report here.  Our household has removed Fox from our “Favorites” menu.  We’ve tried a little bit of Newsmax, which can be accessed online.  But we have decided to turn the dial to One America News Network in prime time.

OANN’s daytime news coverage broadcasts on roughly one-hour cycles.  Once you’ve watched one hour, you’re going to be seeing most of the same reports in the next hour. But it’s the 8pm and 9pm weeknight slots that have interested us the most.

Dan Ball is the host at 8pm (“Real America”).  It’s an opinion format, similar to Tucker Carlson’s, but we had never watched him before, since we were always on Fox, with or without the Mute button.  Mr. Ball is accessible, informed, and refreshingly in-your-face with his conservative values.  His guests are a mixture of A-listers as well as unknown but excellent resources on various topics. And he lets them talk!  Without interrupting!

The 9pm slot is hosted by Kara McKinney (“Tipping Point”).  Her delivery is a bit stiffer, but considering how young she is, she puts a lot of her commentary into historical perspective. She also has good guests.

We’ll continue watching and report again in due course.

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