Law, Power, and Justice

WEDNESDAY 14 AUGUST 2024

Peter Navarro is evidently out of jail now, taking over Steve Bannon’s show on AMVO.  This is necessary because Bannon himself is finally in prison.  Bannon won’t be there anywhere near as long as he should be.  Navarro is talking about “Jews coming home.”  He is talking about coming home to the Republican Party.  He is also talking about the “sociopaths” in the corporate news. 

According to Navarro, Walz is “Tampon Tim.”   Harris is “incompetent.”

Navarro is talking on a set with palm fronds blowing in some breeze.  I have no idea why.  Last week, Velshi did a show where behind every guest was a set with two arrows going up and down the margins of the screen while they were talking.  This left the viewed trying to listen while also trying to figure out why these arrows were going up and down.  I just don’t understand it.  It reminds me of a skit Al Franken did years ago to take the piss out of the running news feed the channels now have going on all the time at the bottom of the screen.  Franken was reading the news while someone read the news at a lower volume at the same time.  This is what it is like.  It is so distracting.  Is the theory now that people can selectively tune in and out extraneous information?  I cannot.  I cannot even work in a room with music going on.  I can either work or I can listen to music, but I can’t do both.  Our cats, however, can be laying at the foot of the bed, nearer the TV than we are, and a bomb could go off and they don’t bother to even come to a more aware level of consciousness.  The only exception to this is if there is a doorbell ringing on the screen.

Oh, boy, another Wednesday.  I got a steroid shot in my knee yesterday and I feel like I fought WWII by myself this morning.  I can barely walk.  I could barely walk yesterday, and so…  I went into the doctor’s office with a typed-up list of concerns and background information.  This time, it didn’t work very well.  Doctors treat one specific part of your body, knee, shoulder, finger.  So, you have to go to a different doctor for every tiny thing that’s wrong with you, but nobody is looking at the whole picture, nobody but the patient and they won’t listen to you.  People are always repeating the mantra that we have the best health care system in the world.  We do not.  It is a for-profit organization, churning money, re-routing money from you and insurance companies to them.  All profit should be taken out of the medical profession.  You can either make money or treat patients, you cannot do both.  Britain is well on its way under Conservative political control, to destroying the wonderful national health service, given to the country after WWII by Labour.  When, when will people wake up and stop letting the right rob us blind? 

O.K. Well, I should get to the news, find out if Israel has been attacked by Iran yet.  I assume that if this had happened, it would be on CNN or MSNBC, but that is a stupid assumption.  It costs too much money for the corporate press to cover real world events.  It’s much cheaper to ask every single person with a college degree what they think might happen at the Democratic Convention, or if Trump might be “upset” about the Harris campaign.  What a useless press we have.

I saw the other day where the dreadful, former actress, former right wing shill, Caitlan Collins said on some talk show that CNN covers the news objectively.  The audience laughed out loud.  She said it wasn’t a laugh line.  The host corrected her and said it wasn’t MEANT to be a laugh line.

I’m still waiting for Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC to be fired for the devastating criticism he delivered over the press coverage of Trump’s “press conference.”  He pointed out what a ridiculous, irresponsible performance reporters at this press conference put in essentially by asking stupid questions and doing no follow-up questions.  I don’t think they will fire him immediately.  They will wait until they can come up with some kind of excuse like they did with Keith Olbermann.  Olbermann was an absolutely brilliant journalist and anchor who made MSNBC a lot of money.  Firing him was one of the worst decisions they have ever made. 

Note: Olbermann has a podcast that is well worth listening to.

Ukraine

Reuters (Faulconbridge, 8/14/24) is reporting that Ukraine is moving deeper into Russia.  Note: I just do not see why the US will not give the Ukrainians the weapons it needs and the permission to win the war.  It is infuriating to watch the country be destroyed because the US administration is too weak to allow Ukraine to respond appropriately to a Russian invasion.  I was listening to a reporter on a podcast, talking about a conference of NGO’s and rich people talking about how to “reconstruct” Ukraine.  You could hear the stress and frustration in her voice as she complained that we wouldn’t have to be having big conferences talking about plans of how to “reconstruct” Ukraine if we just gave them the weapons and the permission to win the war and stop it.)

• Thousands of Ukrainian troops went across the Russian border in the Kursk region on August 6. 
• Putin called it a “major provocation.”
• The Ukrainian drone attack included four Russian airfields.
• There is a nuclear power plant about 22 miles from the fighting.
• Reuters is quoting Maria Butina, described now as a “Russian lawmaker” about the incursion.  (Note: Jesus.)
• The inclusion forced nearly 200,000 Russians to evacuate the border regions.
• There are definite advantages of changing the narrative about the war.  Western countries are changing focus, turning to the problems in the Middle East and Asia.  Ukraine needed to demonstrate that it could mount a successful campaign to counter the widespread impression that the war had stale mated.
• Fears are, however, that Ukraine will need to weaken its defenses at other strategic points to fight the Russian incursion.  

Domestic US News

• Ilhan Omar has won a much contested primary challenge fight for Minnesota’s house seat (USA Today, Pitofsky, 8/14/24).
• Two other progressives (Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush) lost their primary elections faced with tons of money to fund a challenger by pro-Israel sources.

International News Notes

• Turkey’s President Erdogan called Netanuahu a “bloodsucking vampire” and praised Hamas as an “organization of liberators.” (NYT, 8/14/24).