Daily Archives: 12 November 2024

Duplicity

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) on ending the filibuster:

Over the coming weeks, the Senate will once again consider how to perfect this union and confront the historic challenges facing our democracy. We hope our Republican colleagues change course and work with us. But if they do not, the Senate will debate and consider changes to Senate rules [eliminating the filibuster]….

And

In a session with reporters at the Democratic National Convention, Schumer (D-NY) suggested that—should Democrats win the White House, Senate, and House in November—he would seek to end the filibuster for purposes of passing voting rights and abortion legislation.

These are deliberate moves to pass legislation unilaterally, in complete absence even of any pretense of bipartisanship.

Soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) today:

The only way to get things done in the Senate is through bipartisan legislation while maintaining our principles—and the next two years will be no different.

Only because, despite Schumer’s efforts, the filibuster remains intact. Nevertheless, his meaning is plain. He’ll have his caucus being just as knee-jerk obstructionist of any Republican initiative as he always has had, now with the added fillip of knee-jerk obstructionism regarding anything Trumpian, just as he had done during the prior Trump administration.

Assuming the Republicans are able to retain their majority in the House, he’ll also have able functional allies—if unintended—in the Republicans’ Chaos Caucus.

“Gatekeepers of Political Discourse”

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That’s how even The Wall Street Journal terms the press. This, as it notices the decreasing control influence the press has on what us average Americans are allowed to know about the political doings of our politicians.

A new media landscape has emerged. The traditional gatekeepers of political discourse—TV networks and newspapers—are shrinking in influence as Americans turn to many more outlets for information.

This comes especially in the wake of the last eight-ish years of naked bias by the press, a period wherein The New York Times has openly announced that there can no longer be objectivity in news reporting, newspapers must take sides, and a major broadcast news anchor announced that there are not two sides to every story; there can be only one side to many. In furtherance of those decisions, the press actively proselytizes on its news pages for its chosen candidates and party while actively suppressing stories that provide different information or that show their denigrated party and candidates in a good light. The press also suppresses stories that cast its chosen party/candidate in a negative light.

Beyond politics, the press actively spikes writing that contradicts its settlement of climate “science,” with the Los Angeles Times saying that it would no longer publish letters to the editor that disputed the LAT‘s determination of the proper discussion.

It’s no wonder that us average Americans no longer take the press seriously and are moving away from it toward other sources—including straight from the horse’s mouth in the podcasts that are becoming ubiquitous, and on some social media outlets like X, Truth Social, even the dangerous TikTok. If we can’t entirely trust these alternative outlets, we can at least hear what the candidates—and other guests—are saying, without the gatekeepers’ censorship filter.