Headline Newz

As one of the dozen or so people who still get a daily paper, I usually scan through the stories at lunchtime, on my way to the crossword puzzles, with an eye out for blogging opportunities, which I capture with my iPhone camera. There’s always something to latch onto, especially with my paper’s new ownership, namely the guy who owns Republican media mouthpiece Sinclair Broadcasting. They never fail to take the Republican side, not only on the editorial page, but throughout what’s supposed to be the straight news.

Very few of the stories are written by in-house staff. Most are farmed out to Sinclair and Fox News outlets. Like this one, from “The National Desk,” which is what Sinclair calls its national 10:00 PM news.

In a nutshell, this story gives credence to the Attorney General from Mississippi, who is complaining that AI is biased against conservatives. He goes on to blame fact-checking.

I can see where he’s got beef. When it functions properly, AI should deliver conclusions based on facts at hand. When these facts run contrary to Republican talking points, they must be “biased,” right? That’s how it works in the Republican media bubble. If the facts go against their dogma, the facts must be wrong. They’ve been believing their own bullshit for so long, it’s become second nature.

Pointing out what’s true and what’s false is not a matter of bias, but proof. And no proof will knock the scales from the eyes of these MAGA idiots.

Two weeks ago, there was a staff-written article about the Nation’s AG blaming lower courts for holding up too many of the president’s orders.

This could have easily been headlined, “President refuses to issue Constitutional orders.” Still, the paper takes the view that all those findings against the clearly unconstitutional executive orders coming from the White House are all a big conspiracy, rather than judges literally doing the jobs they are required to do.

It’s also rich that Republicans have used this very same machine to derail anything Biden or Obama tried to do, by filing lawsuits with judges known to be down with the Republican cause. See, when they do it, it’s fine. When it works against them, it’s a vast conspiracy.

Oh, and if you “have a tip” that makes Democrats look bad, be sure to hit up this writer, because they apparently can’t find enough news to report on their own, once they turn all the local Fox News stories into transcripts.

A couple of days before that last joke, they ran this one:

And this one is from the AP, so it’s presented fairly straight, as they quote someone labeling this attempt to re-categorize natural gas as green energy, as “green-washing.” This is just more Republican sophistry. The gas coming from the Louisiana swamps is cleaner than the hot air from those hyping this ploy.

Republicans are trying to repeat what they did when they created “clean coal,” something that never existed. They just changed what they called it and pretended they were actually doing something about climate change. Republicans understand that so many people never get into the weeds with details. They just skim the headlines and absorb the impressions contained therein. So it doesn’t matter if it’s really green or not; a lot of people will believe it is, which means Republicans have something other than an empty cupboard when their constituents want to know what they’re doing about the obvious weather volatility we’re experiencing.

“Hey, don’t blame us, we’re all-in on green natural gas. But the Democrats want you to give up cars and ovens!”

Lastly, we have another AP article about one of the last remaining Republican wet dreams, getting rid of all limits on buying politicians political donations. 

As if Citizens United wasn’t bad enough, and to demonstrate how the rich are never satisfied with the billions they already have, now they want to remove all remaining barriers to literally buying federal policy that caters to them. Given how they’ve already ruined government, I have no doubt the Roberts Court will continue ransacking the government until we inevitably start putting the billionaires' pictures on our money.