Category: Notes and Comment Blog

News boss was furious that staff were fact-checking Trump. Facts??! What have facts got to do with reporting the news?!!??

The top executive at Fox News was furious one of the network’s reporters was fact-checking Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, writing in a December 2020 email that it was “bad for business”.

We get it from all directions now. The Financial Times tells Joan Smith to put a lie in her review, Fox News tells staff not to fact-check Trump’s lies.

Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News, was responding in early December 2020 to an on-air fact-check by Eric Shawn, one of the network’s anchors. “This has to stop now,” she wrote to Meade Cooper, another Fox executive. “This is bad business and there clearly is a lack of understanding [sic] what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.”

The audience is furious. Does Scott understand the difference between fiction and news? Does she understand that the audience’s dislike of the plot of a movie fiction is not the same as the audience’s dislike of facts reported on the news? Does she get that the criteria are different?

The message is part of a tranche of internal communications obtained by the voting equipment company Dominion in its $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against Fox. Dominion displayed a copy of the message a court hearing last week as its lawyers argued that Fox knowingly aired false statements about Dominion because it was concerned about losing viewers to rival networks such as Newsmax and One America News (OAN). The Guardian obtained a copy of the message and the slideshow that was presented in court.

I look forward to Dominion’s mopping the floor with Fox News.

How the lies get in.

You want trans visibility? Here’s some trans visibility.

What does “act on them” mean? There is no “act on them.” It’s about rhetoric and belief. We’re not the ones constantly threatening violence.

More on this one, because it’s like a burr in my brain.

What is that?

The ACLU doesn’t talk like that about any other oppressed group. Nobody talks like that about any other oppressed group. It’s weird, it’s out of place, it’s infantilizing, it’s excessive, it’s slushy, it makes no kind of sense. Where did this come from? How did we get here?

Normally conversations among adults about justice and human rights talk about…justice and human rights. They don’t talk about loving and cherishing. It’s a massive category mistake to do so. Justice and rights have to be independent of “love” and “cherishing” because they’re abstract and general, not emotional and personal.

In fact this kind of glurge sounds more like evangelical Christianity than it does a secular civil liberties organization.

And on top of the mismatch with a properly adult civil liberties org, there’s the fact that it’s repulsive. Ick. Who wants the world at large to “love” and “cherish” us? That would be creepy. Loving and cherishing is for people who know each other, not for the 7 billion people on the planet.

Why are they doing this? I suppose one guess is that the “activism” has relied all along on hysteria about transphobia, and that nudges people who don’t think very well into condescending sentimental drool about loving and cherishing. You’d think trans people themselves would object to the condescension, wouldn’t you? But no, maybe you wouldn’t, since the whole thing is deeply narcissistic, so the more offers of universal cherishing the better.

CNN reporter:

What does “support” mean in this context? What kind of “support” is he calling members of Congress to “shore up”? Is it just compassion and friendship? Or is it obstruction of justice? Trump being Trump, it’s bound to be the second. He doesn’t give a fuck about friendship (and he wouldn’t know compassion if he tripped and fell into an Olympic-size pool of it). He’s calling legislators to try to bully them into helping him obstruct justice, which some will be only to happy to do.

Apparently former presidents are supposed to be entirely above the law. Who knew?

Mike Pence, who was Donald J. Trump’s vice president, defended his former running mate on Thursday night, describing Mr. Trump’s indictment in a hush-money case as “an outrage.”

“The unprecedented indictment of a former president of the United States on a campaign finance issue is an outrage,” Mr. Pence told the host Wolf Blitzer on CNN.

It is? Why? Do they become gods once elected?

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is widely expected to challenge Donald J. Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, called the indictment of Mr. Trump “un-American” and said that his state “will not assist in an extradition request” should one come from New York authorities.

It’s un-American? It’s un-American not to put a criminal ex-president above the law? It’s un-American to treat the laws as applying to everyone?

The ACLU really needs to stop letting Chase Strangio write their tweets.

Say it with us – there is one god and Mohammed is his prophet. Say it with us – it’s one nation under God. Say it with us – Jehovah is the most high. Say it with us – Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.

When news reporting leaves out a lot of crucial facts…

Activist Shaneel Lal has become the first transgender person to win a New Zealander of the Year award.

The 22-year-old has been named Young New Zealander of the Year for their work in the rainbow community.

They were instrumental in the fight to ban conversion therapy and in the recent protest against anti-trans campaigner Posie Parker.

That is, the violent riot a week ago that endangered women’s rights campaigner Posie Parker and injured at least one of the women there to hear her.

There’s also the omitted fact that caution about puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones is not “conversion therapy.”

New York lawyer Lloyd Green on Trump’s bust:

The question now looms whether the nation will face Trump-incited violence as a result. The former president threatened “death and destruction” if charged. In a now infamous social media post targeting the Black district attorney Alvin Bragg, Trump depicted himself brandishing a baseball bat at the District Attorney, and called him as an “animal” and “degenerate psychopath”.

That’s where I had to pause reading in order to find the post and share it.

The drumbeat continues. Next month, Trump stands trial for defamation and sexual assault. He faces a civil suit brought in New York by E Jean Carroll. Unlike his purported relationship with Daniels, this case centers on rape and degradation.

Carroll contends that a quarter of a century ago Trump attacked her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store. He parried that she was not his “type”. But at a recent deposition, he mistook her for Marla Maples, his second wife, raising questions about his credibility and mental acuity.

The Trump-Carroll square-off will also provide the country with another opportunity to revisit history. Her lawyers will probably play the infamous Access Hollywood tape. “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump said on a hot mic. “You can do anything.”

If they don’t play it they’re crazy.

Separately, a New York judge has refused to delay a $250m civil fraud action commenced by the state against Trump, his three older children and the Trump Organization, the family business. The October 2023 trial date is “written in stone”, Judge Arthur Engoron said last week.

Maybe, just maybe, the Republicans should try to get a non-criminal to run for president next time. Just a thought.

Senator Rand Paul, the self-styled libertarian, calls for Bragg’s arrest. Marjorie Taylor Greene demands that George Soros, foreign-born and a Bragg-backer, be stripped of his US citizenship.

Law and order! No, wait. Special rules for our crook! Yeah, that’s it.

Jeezus, I missed this. Last week Trump posted a photo of himself with a baseball bat next to a head and shoulders photo of Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA.

Will this nightmare ever end?

The indictment is on.

Members of Congress reacted to news of former President Trump’s indictment by a Manhattan grand jury with a mixture of shock, outrage, fear, uncertainty and celebration.

It’s the first time in U.S. history a former president has been indicted — a shock to the 2024 election and a move likely to harden pro- and anti-Trump sentiments well beyond Washington.

You know, there’s a reason for that – most former presidents hadn’t committed multiple crimes, some of them in full public view. Mind you there have been some very iffy ones – Grant and Harding to name two, plus of course Nixon. But the florid array of Trump’s crimes, the many decades they have behind them, the accompanying fact that he did his best to steal an election – it all adds up to make him Top Crook.

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a close Trump ally, is already fundraising off the anger around the indictment.

• “THIS JUST IN: PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS BEEN INDICTED,” reads a text from his campaign, calling it “unfair on so many levels.”
• The text includes a link to a WinRed page that says Trump was indicted “for being a patriot.”

No, that’s not it.

New Zealand Greens co-leader and Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence Marama Davidson is asked what she thinks of the violent “protests” at the Let Women Speak rally.

She says it very smugly, too, and concludes with “transphobia is not welcome here!”

So it’s ok for a man who claims to be a woman to assault a woman, because the man claims to be a woman? Violence from cis men is bad but violence from men who claim to be women is good? According to the Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence? So, if a married man decides he’s a woman and his wife objects it’s fine if he knocks her about?

Davidson appears to be slightly drunk on her own superiority.

Alarm bell in the night.

Yes! So true! Except for the fact that it hasn’t happened and isn’t happening, so in fact you don’t and can’t know that your claimed outcome is what will happen, so in fact, you’re just blathering about your deranged fantasies.

Other than that, good sound reasoning!

Andrew Tettenborn in The Spectator last July:

Sex offences, violence and fraud have spiked, according to the latest crime figures. Meanwhile, the number of convictions remains staggeringly low: in England and Wales, more than 99 per cent of rapes reported to police do not end in a conviction.

And yet the police still have ample time to punish us for knowing that men are not women.

The College of Policing, the national standards body for police, has said that officers need to focus on cutting crime, take a common sense approach and ‘not get involved in debates on Twitter’. Police have been told to avoid recording trivial incidents and reduce the number of ‘non-crime hate incidents’ (NCHI). In short, this means anything said or done by anyone which the victim (or anyone else) saw as being motivated by hostility or prejudice based on race or a protected characteristic, even if it didn’t amount to a crime. Of course, this comes too late for the 120,000 people in the past five years who were recorded by police even though their behaviour did not meet the criminal threshold. An enhanced CRB check could still flag up exiting non-crime hate incidents, meaning that these people could find their hopes of obtaining sensitive employment jeopardised. 

It also comes too late for Harry Miller, a retired policeman. Back in 2019, someone complained that his tweets on gender recognition went too far; he was visited by police, who told him that although he had committed no offence, they had to ‘check your thinking’. Refreshingly bloody-minded, he sued. Just before Christmas last year, the Court of Appeal said the police guidance behind the practice was unlawful, as it was disproportionate and an undue fetter on freedom of expression.

Not to mention just plain crazy. Punishing people for thinking, saying, writing that men are not women is grotesque.

Shaneel Lal today:

Trans activist Shaneel Lal believes their Young New Zealander of the Year award may receive some online backlash, but said the win is a result of hard work, not to, “fill a diversity quota”.

Lal, 22, who was an instrumental figure in the fight to have conversion therapy banned in New Zealand, was celebrated at the 2023 New Zealander of the Year awards at Auckland’s Cordis Hotel on Thursday night.

Shaneel Lal writing in the NZ Herald five days ago:

Aucklanders and New Zealanders from many parts of the country showed up and showed out.

Keen-Minshull’s minute group of supporters were outnumbered by counter-protests who attended wearing the trans flag colours and carrying signs in support of trans people and condemning Keen-Minshull’s transphobia. Keen-Minshull left Albert Park without saying a single word.

Auckland – I cannot thank you enough. Yesterday, you made me feel like I belong. You made me feel like I can live as my true self in this city. You showed me that I do not need to go back into hiding.

The cops are doing what now?

Hey. How about a day of WOMEN visibility?

But no, don’t be stupid. Women are horrible. No one wants women being visible. Trans people are the only decent people…along with men of course.

Kellie-Jay in The Spectator:

The turn towards violence came in Melbourne at our largest gathering. The police had done a pretty fine job of protecting women with buffer zones between us and the rabid trans activists. But this gathering included competing groups of woman-hating losers: trans incels to the left of me and Nazis to the right, and here we were stuck in the middle and blamed by the media and politicians for the Nazi salute that occurred. I’ve been asked following that incident whether I have sympathies with the far right, but seriously, who does? It’s a vile ideology and frankly anyone convinced by it in 2023 is pathetic. John Pesutto, the leader of the Liberals in Victoria, repeated dangerous lies about me and suspended Moira Deeming MP from his party for her association with me.

Much liberal, very freedom of thought and utterance.

This storm gathered pace and in New Zealand it was magnified a hundredfold. There was a case brought to the high court to try to stop me entering the country and their media started a constant spew of lies, insisting I was a dangerous anti-trans Nazi. At the border I had a two-hour interrogation and search, one hotel cancelled my reservation, and in another a threatening note was slid under my door while I slept. I had been told I would be protected by the police. That couldn’t have been further from the truth.

It’s interesting (though tragically not surprising) that the news media worked up the mob by telling lies about her.

The big event, the one that has been in the news, was in Auckland, and the minute I arrived I felt rising fear. As the car pulled up I could see the thousands gathered to oppose me. My security gathered around me and we pushed through the hateful mob to the centre, where the local organisers and attendees were who had come to speak. Where were the police? Not one officer was in that crowd; not one officer was there to protect the brave women who turned up. Within seconds a man had tipped tomato soup all over my head. I continued to live-stream. But over the next few minutes the mob took on a life of its own. A frenzy grew until it was a deafening swell, a modern-day ‘Burn the witch’. Men started ripping down the barriers and charging forward. ‘The police aren’t coming,’ said my head of security. ‘We have to get you out.’ This meant placing me in the centre of my security and some stewards, women who had volunteered to help, pushed through the baying mob. As we moved, we stumbled. I knew that a body on a floor is fair game and ripe for stomping and kicking. When we eventually got to the outer edge of the park, the police did step in and helped get me to a car. They took me to the nearest police station where I was guarded for six hours before I had an escort of three officers to the airport. They didn’t leave until my plane took off.

There you have it – the police abandoned her to the screaming [yes, fascist in the literal sense] mob. It’s beyond belief.

That day I was told emphatically by each police officer and security that had I fallen I would have been killed. Women were injured that day, women who you may never hear about. You will never know their names. They didn’t get to hop on a plane and leave; they have to stay and live in a country that has told them their lives are not worth protecting.

It’s a horror.

Rubashkyn is on the lam.

Information on Rubashkyn’s charge was first reported by Newsable, which received a statement from Rubashkyn where he again claimed the assault and suggested he was comfortable facing justice.

“I did assault her and I will do it again,” he said. “And if I need to be 10 years in prison I’m happy to be 10 years in prison.”

But despite his words, Rubashkyn fled New Zealand shortly after being made aware that police were planning on issuing a warrant for his arrest on charges of assault.

So he’s confident that the NZ police won’t tell the NY police about his flight from the law?

During the space, Rubashkyn made a number of anti-lesbian, racist, sexist, and violent remarks, including that trans-identified males were the “first victims” of the Holocaust.

“Trans women were the first victims of Nazism. Trans women were killed before the Jews were sent to concentration camps,” he said, continuing: “In the 1930s, Nazis relied on TERFs to promote hate… TERFs became holders of concentration camps for females. TERFs were quite instrumental in the system that the Nazis built for making more babies… to keep Nazi Germany growing.”

Nope. Not a word of that is true. Slaaaay.

This doesn’t sound good at all.

Deep ocean currents around Antarctica headed for collapse, study finds

Cold water that sinks near Antarctica drives the deepest flow of the overturning circulation—a network of currents that spans the world’s oceans. The overturning carries heat, carbon, oxygen and nutrients around the globe. This influences climate, sea level and the productivity of marine ecosystems.

“Our modeling shows that if global carbon emissions continue at the current rate, then the Antarctic overturning will slow by more than 40 percent in the next 30 years—and on a trajectory that looks headed towards collapse,” says Prof England.

…

With a collapse of this deep ocean current, the oceans below 4000 meters would stagnate.

“This would trap nutrients in the deep ocean, reducing the nutrients available to support marine life near the ocean surface,” says Prof England.

So everything that lives on the nutrients will starve, so everything that lives on everything that lives on the nutrients will starve. I have a feeling that’s a lot of animals, including human ones.

Huh. Has SWR ever painted a train to signify inclusion of women?