The National Enquirer business model is blackmail

The failed attempt by the tabloid to blackmail Jeff Bezos has put a bright light on the way that they do business. It was a fairly open secret that they would threaten to report dirt on celebrities unless the celebrities gave them exclusive access for other stories but now the details of such stories are coming out, with former employees of the parent company AMI, including those who did the investigations for them, willing to speak out.
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The right wing dilemma about the rise in socialist ideas

It was interesting that Donald Trump in his State of the Union speech gave a warning about the rise in socialism in the US. It is clear that the Republicans are testing the water to see if fear of socialism bogey can be made into a successful election slogan. But they are treading warily because the actual ideas being painted as socialist, especially when it comes to health care, turn out to be quite popular.

Seth Meyers describes the right wing freak out, and his segment about nutter Phil Robertson’s statements about who provides his health care is hilarious.

Just because you dislike Trump does not mean you are not a jerk

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie has written a book, the latest in the long line of people associated with Donald trump who are trying to cash in on the connection. Matt Taibbi hilariously rips into the book and says that it inadvertently reveals the extent to which Christie was willing to debase himself in order to get a good job in the Trump administration and how Trump used his desire to humiliate him and leave him empty handed.
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Jeff Bezos versus the National Enquirer

David Pecker, the publisher of the gossip tabloid the National Enquirer, is a friend of Donald Trump. The tabloid is notorious for its aggressive investigations into the lives of public figures and weaponizing that information, publishing it if it does not like them and withholding it in return for favors. Basically it practices a form of blackmail, using its journalistic cover to defend itself from accusations of sleaziness.
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Another case of misleading people by picking a starting point

Recall how climate change skeptics use the tactic of picking a year when the average global temperatures were unusually high as their starting point and then arguing that the relative flatness of temperatures for some years after that year ‘showed’ that global warming is a myth. Kevin Drum says that Donald Trump may be using that same tactic when it comes to his claims about the effectiveness of a wall in reducing crime, when he uses the border town of El Paso as an example. In his State of the Union speech, Trump said, “The border city of El Paso, Texas, used to have extremely high rates of violent crime — one of the highest in the country, and considered one of our Nation’s most dangerous cities. Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities.”

Of course, as with almost everything Trump says, that is a lie.
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How Donald Trump broke up a marriage

No, this is not the usual story that one might have expected to read. Instead it is a story told by a woman that illustrates a point that I made before, that once people support a public figure, they are reluctant to admit that they made a mistake because it reflects poorly on their judgment, so they stick with them, treating them as one might treat allegiance to a sports team. This is a special case of a more general phenomenon where once people believe something because it seems plausible, then it is very hard to change their minds later with new evidence, because they can rationalize the new evidence away to justify their initial belief. This is why governments rush to give their versions of events (always favorable to themselves) whenever something happens because they know that later evidence that contradicts it and shows that they were lying has a good chance of being ignored.
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Another sign of the shifting political zeitgeist

Yesterday, the US senate passed its first bill S.1 of the new congress by a margin of 77-23. It was an impressive display of bipartisanship in a body that has been described as being in gridlock. So what was in this bill that it was elevated to symbolic importance by being the first to be considered and garnered such support? It should come as no surprise that it was a bill strongly promoted by the Israel lobby led by AIPAC that seeks encourage economic punishments on those who support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
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Is ‘billionaire’ now seen as pejorative?

I of course think it is and so, I would guess, would many of this blog’s readers but it seems that Howard Schultz is sensitive to it too and prefers the term ‘people of means’ and ‘people of wealth’. Here he is responding to a question from Anand Giridharadas, author of the book Winners Take All about whether billionaires have too much power over the political process.

Well, too bad, Howard. ‘Billionaire’ is probably the least pejorative label that is going to be used on you. Trust me, there are a whole lot worse that can and will be used as you continue your vanity project.

He also says that what he is trying to do is “walk in the shoes of the American people”. Does everyone wear Gucci and Prada shoes now?

The Brexiteers must be really desperate …

… because some of them are asking that Donald Trump be brought in to salvage Theresa May’s floundering efforts and twist the arms of the Irish over the intractable border issue.

Conservative MPs, who oppose the prime minister’s European Union exit deal, want her to approach the US president and request that he lobby the Irish government to give ground in negotiations, Sky News reported on Tuesday.
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But senior EU figures have resisted calls to reopen negotiations, in part because of opposition from the Irish government to altering the backstop.
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The demand comes amid concerns that the new US Congress would side with Dublin against any changes that would put at risk the Good Friday Agreement, which was negotiated between the UK and Ireland with the help of the US.

That way lies madness. There is no situation so bad that Donald Trump’s intervention would not make worse.

Keeping the Democratic party honest on health care

The Democratic party establishment tries to walk a tightrope. Their party base favors a whole slew of progressive measures. But the party hierarchy consists of either members of the oligarchy or people who are beholden and enamored of it. So they end up saying one thing publicly and another privately to their wealthy donors. We are seeing this now with the idea of Medicare For All as a means of providing universal health coverage. What was portrayed as utterly radical when Bernie Sanders proposed it during the 2016 campaign has caught fire within the party within an incredibly short time, so much so that every single Democrat who has announced a run for the presidency this year has expressed support for it, a remarkable turnaround.
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