The news bubble they live in vs. the bubble we live in

 By Hal Brown

Bonus: Links to websites I read

It's like a segment of the population is wearing hearing aides and eye glasses that filter out everything they don't want to hear or see.   Call it living in a bubble. There is a major difference between the news "bubbles" we live in. Ours has a permeable membrane. The boundary of the bubbles they are ensconced in is rigid.

I'm not even going to address the Dominion lawsuit in particular here. Fox News isn't even covering it. This is from Raw Story:

What has been revealed about the abject cynicism about how Murdoch and his minions manipulated their audience for money comes from what the lawsuit has revealed. 

Those of us who follow the news on MSNBC, CNN, Raw Story, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other media that don't lie are well aware of what Fox News is.

Just this morning on MSNBC:

Fox News viewers don't read articles like this in Politico:

Or like this from CNN Business:

You can probably count on the fingers of your hands the number of people who are regular Fox News viewers who will read these articles today:

My hunch is that FoxNew viewers think a salon is a place where cowboys used to drink and cavort with prostitutes.

Click above to read

Here's another from Salon:

Fox News caught editing out Trump’s brag that he would have let Putin “take over” parts of Ukraine

"I could’ve made a deal to take over something, there are certain areas that are Russian-speaking areas, frankly"

How many Tucker Carlson fans will read this? 

Do I hear silence?

Of course all of the above articles require that one have an inclination to get their news by reading and having the ability to actually read at above a sixth grade level. I totally forgot I wrote this in Daily Kos until I did a Web search and found this blog:

Fox News is now guided not just by having popular personalities, all news networks do, but it is dependent on having hosts who hysterically promote lies. 

It may be instructive to look at the actual Fox News building in New York City and see how it has changed over time so their "stars" are now featured on the exterior.

Related:

About one-fifth of Democrats and Republicans get political news in a kind of media bubble

Are You Trapped in a News Bubble?

The news filtered to you might leave out important things you need to know. But how can you tell?

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Addendum:

Thanks to loyal readers and new readers on my blog after readership languished between 700 and 800 a week for months it has finally broken the 1000 readers per week mark:

Lots of Links

 By Hal Brown

The blog is here.

Lots of links

Posting article links:
SubStack
Medium
Booksie
Blogger
Tribel
Mastodon

The first three links I click on every morning are the ones for my email followed by HUFFPOST to see their lead headline and then I go to Raw Story to see the breaking news stories and opinion articles they posted during the morning. I subscribe to Raw Story+ which is where most of their opinion essays are posted.

Raw Story has an excellent comments section with allows you to upload images and format what you post on it.

Raw Story is the go-to website to read summaries of articles on subscription websites like Newsweek Time, the Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and others that either allow a few free article a month or require a subscription to read any articles that they publish.

The next sites I check are the subscription websites which I pay for: The New York Times and The Washington Post.

I then check my two local TV station websites KOIN and KGW.

Then I usually go to Salon.

I have Morning Joe on TV all this time. Between what they cover and what I read I usually come up with an idea for a topic to write about on this blog.

At some point I check my Facebook page to see if anyone sent me a comment. I also look at my Mastodon page. Reluctantly I still use Twitter promote to my blog.

News, politics, and opinion

Click links Below

Another option is to create a Google News alert. This lets you receive emails about your favorite topics. Google searches the internet for any topic you choose and updates you in real-time. 

HUFFPOST 

 Washington Post (subscription).

 The New York Times (subscription)

Salon.

MSNBC

BUZZFEED

AXIOS

Politico

CNN

Google News

BBC

Associated Press 

US News and World Report 

C-SPAN 

Christian Science Monitor 

The Economist 

NPR

ProPubica

Reuters

TPM (Talking Points Memo)

The Bulwark  (never Trump conservative site)

The Sidney Morning Herald is Australia's equivalent of The NY Times (free, requires registration) 

Now This News 

I probably should look at Al Jazeera more than I do. The same goes for  Haaretz.

Infrequently I check Fox News to see who they are covering, or not covering a story I am interested in. 

I don't click on the Daily Beast since they now require a subscription. I count on Raw Story to summarize their articles.

If I want to search the Web I use DuckDuckGo for links and images. I also use Google Images. Unlike Google and other search engines DuckDuckGo doesn't store your personal info. They don't follow you around with ads. They don't track you. Bing often outperforms Google.

I use images for my blog, often manipulating them to convey a message. If I want to find the source of an image someone else posts I can do this by copying it onto my desktop and then searching it on the various image search websites. For some images Bing Image search works better than Google.

I just discovered a website that has links to all the search engines here.

Other websites on my bookmark list are:

General Information

Wikipedia

Google Translate 

Science 

Click Links Below

Google Scholar

PLOS

Medscape 

Neuroscience News 

 Science News

Science Based Medicine 

CNET 

Entertainment, satire, humor, and culture websites

Click Links Below

Rotten Tomatoes

Entertainment Weekly

Deadline

Variety 

 Village Voice

Grunge

The Mary Sue 

The Onion 

Clickhole is operated by the Onion but is very different. 

The Daily Mash is a British version of The Onion. 

The Private Eye is another British satire site. 

Waterford Whispers is an Irish humor site. 

LGBTQ+

Washington Blade 

Out Magazine 

LGBTQ Nation 

The Advocate 

Pride 

Art and Culture

Whitehot Magazine 

Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art LLC was founded by artist Noah Becker in 2005. Here is a mix of news, reviews and interviews. 

Eurozine

Eurozine - is positioning itself as a network of European cultural magazines from almost all European countries. It is also an online magazine that publishes articles from partner magazines and is a rich source of information for an international audience.

Artnet 

Editorial staff says that their mission is to inform, engage, and connect their audience with daily art world news and expert commentary: “We also want to connect you to a global community: dialogue and engagement best describe our approach to reporting on the art world”.

Cosmos and culture

Here we can read how culture and science are combined. Cosmos and Culture is trying to show a connection between these spheres, because, according to the editors, the cultural context explain science importance and significance.

The Art Newspaper 

The Art Newspaper, an online and print publication covers the international art world. Here you can find art news, articles about market, museums and heritage and even podcasts.

Personal use

Amazon 

BeFunky (for blog illustrations)

InPixio (resident on my computer)

Booksie 

Local Weather

Google Translate 

Bing Image Search 

Google Images 

Yahoo Image Search 

OpenVerse (Creative Commons)

WVRes 

New England Chronicle video 

Has Trump really entered his fat Elvis phase?

 By Hal Brown

Bonus: Here's a list of the website links that I use.

This is what Jonathan Capehart said filling in for Lawrence O'Donnell last night:

"The crowd cheered, even if he wasn't playing to a full house. Retributions against whom, exactly? Voters who rejected the Trump brand of democratic values and hand-picked candidates? The lawmakers to impeach him twice? The federal and state prosecutors overseeing many investigations into Donald Trump? But even as Donald Trump enters his 'fat Elvis' stage, it's imperative to take his threat to democracy seriously. It's still not clear who's gonna stand up to him in a Republican primary." Raw Story

Trump has been compared to fat Elvis before. For example in:

Trump Just Took 1 Step Closer To Fat Elvis Tonight, Except the Suit’s Green

December 26, 2022 in Poliztoom

Is this a good comparison? 

I was curious about what the other superstar's late life was really like. I wasn't a fan but do know that he continued to perform as he gained a lot of weight. I didn't know about his drastic decline in health at the end of his life until I did a cursory web search. This is what I found:

Inside Elvis Presley’s weight loss battle: the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll gained 80kg (176 lbs.) during his final years following unhealthy food habits like the ‘Elvis sandwich’ and rumoured eating disorders

and

'Paranoid' Elvis Presley's tragic final days - gorging on cheeseburgers and sad regret

Elvis Presley was overweight, constipated, "paranoid" and "miserable" in the lead up to his death on the toilet - though he was able to have one last piano singalong with his loved ones before he died.

Alas, it seems to me that Trump is nowhere near being in his fat Elvis stage. This is how Grunge described his last years of life:

And yet, when Elvis died on August 16, 1977, he had become something entirely different from his former self. Dealing with addiction and health issues and having a difficult time adjusting to the shifting cultural climate of the '60s and '70s, Elvis died a Vegas showman rather than a groundbreaking rocker. This kitschy new incarnation of his identity at the time of his death — what many refer to as "Old Elvis" — led to him becoming a new sort of posthumous icon, with many claiming his passing was faked and that Elvis was either alive on a private island somewhere or abducted by aliens

Grunge reported:

By 1976, Elvis had become disenfranchised and unhinged, his drug use, bad health, and financial excess chipping away at his composure. He spent most of his time holed up in the elaborate den — nicknamed the "Jungle Room" for its exotic decor — of his Memphis compound Graceland. Most worrisome to his record label, RCA, was that the King had become entirely uninterested in going into the studio and recording.

Compare this with Trump who just gave what your could call a two hour paranoid rant or a rousing speech depending on your politics at CPAC. Trump has embarked on a national tour and shows no indications of his physical health being impaired.

Although he's been accused by critics of recycling his old litany of gripes and his dark vision of where the country is headed this isn't true. He has amped it up exponentially. His CPAC performance was high octane compared to his 2016 and his 2020 campaign which seems now in comparison to have been fueled by cheap gas. 

You can't even accuse him of singing the old songs. He has entirely new songs with lyrics that made the old tunes look lame and tame. If he was a singer the title of his new album and his national tour would be "Retribution and Revenge".

Jonathan Capehart is right about one thing even though I don't think Trump is really in his fat Elvis phase: It's imperative to take his threat to democracy seriously.

Please comment or share on social media below.

The are briefs and there are briefs. One kind may be ominous for Trump.

 By Hal Brown

The other day I wrote about various kinds of blockbusters in 

Another Trump legal jeopardy blockbuster, give me a break (link).

This morning, trying to get a blog written in the 90 minutes before Xfinity shuts off the Internet for an upgrade, I looked at the articles on Raw Story, and found one that I wanted to share once I thought of an illustration to put together which conveyed my thoughts about it. Okay, the two kinds of briefs have nothing to do with each other so it is lame and from an often shared picture of Trump golfing he does at least occasionally seem to wear briefs.

Click above to read article

This story uses the word ominous though it could have easily called the new DOJ brief a "blockbuster".

The word ominous is used twice in the article.

Click above to enlarge image

My computer dictionary defines the word as "giving the impression that something bad or unpleasant is going to happen; threatening; inauspicious."

The thesaurus offers synonyms for the word:

threatening, menacing, baleful, forbidding, sinister, inauspicious, unpropitious, portentous, unfavorable, dire, unpromising; black, dark, wintry, gloomy, ugly.

Back to the word blockbuster. We all know what it means in terms of movies, but may not know that the origin of the word went back to the 1940's:

Click above to enlarge

Mar-a-Lago without Mar-a-Lago, lovely beachfront property.

What's more ominous for Trump than one or more briefs that could bust the entire block that he lives on? 

I am hyperbole adverse when it comes to describing the latest example of a, to use the language the MAGA's hate, caso legal contra Trump.

Even if, and hopefully when, Trump is indicted for a felony which has as its penalty a prison term, I'd hesitate to call this an ominous blockbuster.

I'd prefer not seeing hyperbole at all.  I'd like a straightforward headline that has the words  indicted, convicted, sentenced, and prison in it. 

Please comment or share on social media from links below.

You can also email me.

This Oregon Democrat survived an anxious election night in 2022, now faces a terrifying one in 2024

 By Hal Brown

Photo of author

If you are absolutely convinced that the United States is on the brink of being destroyed by those who want to make your personal life miserable, take away your precious rights, enable people you'd prefer didn't live in the same neighborhood let alone the same country with you, you only have three choices as to who to vote for in the primaries.

If you believe in democracy you vote for Joe Biden. If you are a fascist you have to decide whether to vote for one of the two strongest GOP candidates in the primary. 

The Republicans are divided and lines have already been drawn between those who support Trump and those who support DeSantis or any other candidate GOP not named Trump. This has been clearly shown in the competing conservative gatherings. See:

Dueling CPAC and Club for Growth events highlight divide within GOP ahead of 2024 from CNN

These are some of the things that Trump said at CPAC:

• the nation is in a "communism state of mind" 
• America is a "socialist dumping ground for criminals, junkies, thugs, Marxist radicals and dangerous refugees that no other country wants." He claimed that people in the country illegally are staying in the U.S. in "beautiful hotel suites."
• traditional Republicans are "freaks, neocons, globalist open borders zealots — and fools."
• he has the "personality to keep us out of war."
• “We are never going back to a party that wants to give unlimited money to fight foreign wars that are endless wars, that are stupid.” 
• "I am your warrior. I am your justice. For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution."
  

More about the key moments from Trump's CPAC rant.

We know how Ron DeSantis has taken steps in Florida to turn his state into the sunny anti-woke fascist playground I depicted by making this illustration:

The are two basic groups of Americans:

People who want the country to be a tolerant inclusive society governed by civil servants who believe that all people deserve fair and equal treatment by those empowered to enforce the law. 

People who want the country to be an intolerant exclusive society governed by civil servants who believe that all people  not in their group deserve biased and unequal treatment by those empowered to enforce the law. 

We have no choice but to recognize that there is a significant minority of the population who fall to varying degrees into the second group above. The polls suggest that they don't represent a majority across the country but they do in some states.

The travesty of the Electoral College is that it is the least democratic form of electing leaders short of only allowing one candidate to run for each position which one can imagine. If we had each vote count equally across the states the country wouldn't be in danger of a fascist takeover. Nationwide polls show that the majority of voting age Americans are in favor of things that ought to lead them to vote for President Biden. Consider the results from this poll from prior to the 2020 election: 

National Survey Finds Bipartisan Support for Expansive View of Rights

Click below to enlarge:

There's no doubt that the next election will be the most anxiety provoking one many of us, meaning those who are reading this blog, have lived through. That is with the exception of one commenter who wrote this other day "Your ongoing fixation on Trump is quite sad. I hope you get help."

My friends in Oregon already had practice dealing with a potentially close election because a third party candidate for governor, Betsy Johnson, could have upended the chances of the Democratic Party candidate Tina Kotek and given the election to a far right candidate, Christine Drazen. 

I wonder about what it would be like to be put into an induced coma until after the election. Would I wake up to find we have a President Trump or a President DeSantis? Would I wake to find out the the GOP still controlled the House and won the Senate? Or would I wake up to be told that the Democrats won across the board? I'd be spared all these months of growing anxiety. But then I'd miss out on all the interesting discussions with my political junkie friends. Not only that, by the time I woke up nobody would be reading my blog.

I want to live my life to the fullest and at my age, approaching 80, would not want to give up the time until we know for sure the results of the 2024 elections.

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