The Presidents’ Respective Children

Here is yet more evidence that the two political parties have two separate sycophant news teams.  They cover the dysfunctional children of former President Trump and President Biden in starkly different ways.

Do you remember how the left-leaning news media hid the Hunter Biden laptop discovery? And then Twitter blocked the account of the New York Post as the election drew near? As Glenn Greenwald stated, the story was newsworthy for the corruption angle.

"Pretending that the Biden laptop story was about sex or drugs is utterly deceitful. A person's addiction struggles [and] consensual adult sex is not news. The story was (and is) about financial corruption. And there's *zero* doubt the docs were authentic," Greenwald wrote on Twitter.
Hunter Biden has never denied that it was his laptop. In this CBS interview Hunter Biden stated that it could have been his laptop.

If this laptop and big paycheck (to a person lacking any credentials to merit that kind of pay) had been about any of Trump's degenerate children, the media would have been all over it. I thought about this disparity further while watching excerpts from Russell Brand's recent interview with Glenn Greenwald.

But now there is more about Hunter, yet you will not see any of this in the NYT/NPR/WaPo side of the media:

Really and truly, people are talking about paying Hunter Biden $500K for paintings that look like this.   The NYT did comment on Biden's interest in painting, but never mentioned the big money it is anticipated he would be paid, allegedly, for his paintings. 

Some people who have been in high places are noting the stench in the air:

President Barack Obama's ethics chief on Monday slammed Hunter Biden's 'shameful and grifty' sale of his art pieces for up to $500,000 to anonymous buyers as part of an upcoming exhibition that has already sparked bribery and potential money laundering fears.

Walter Shaub, the former Office of Government Ethics director, also warned that it could be a way for 'influence seekers' or foreign governments to funnel money to the Biden family.

Shaub, who last week called out Biden administration officials for hiring a slew of family members to a variety of positions, has urged Hunter and his art dealer Georges Berges to reveal the identity of the buyers so the public can see if the buyers are trying to get access to the White House.

But there is yet more Hunter Biden news that the left-leaning legacy outlets has ignored. Only a few days after his father delivered a speech on the topic of racism at Tulsa, Hunter is hurling racial slurs in texts directed to his attorney, in the context of his attorney's $88K bill for work done regarding Hunter's joint venture with a large Chinese Oil Company.  One can debate how newsworthy his foul language is, but if any of the Trump kids had written these texts, they would be all over the left-leaning media.

I don't claim to know anything substantive about these deals, including the $50K/month Hunter was being paid by Burisma. Greenwald commented on that back when the story broke in October 2020:

After the Post’s first article, both that newspaper and other news outlets have published numerous other emails and texts purportedly written to and from Hunter reflecting his efforts to induce his father to take actions as Vice President beneficial to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, on whose board of directors Hunter sat for a monthly payment of $50,000, as well as proposals for lucrative business deals in China that traded on his influence with his father.

A few days ago, Hunter Biden is reported to have used additional slurs against Asians. 

My concern is, once again, that we have two media teams. They only report "news" that fits their narrative.  The left-leaning legacy news never hesitated to maul the philistine and despicable Trump children, but it is hands-off when it comes to Hunter Biden, even though big amounts of suspicious money are connected with his exploits.  And even though his moral character with regard to race relations conflicts sharply with the stated positions of his father, Joe Biden. On the other hand, the right wing media, such as the Daily Wire, is happy to heavily criticize Hunter Biden.

I'm convinced that many people don't actually want to be well informed. They choose their news sources so that they hear only those sorts of stories that make them feel like the world is the way they want it to be. This is true on the political left and the political right, and it doesn't seem like anything is going to change anytime soon. That said, can we at least start referring to the news media in a different way? Can we start referring to the two news teams as "news filters"? What news filter do you use? "I use the FOX news filter" or "I use the NPR/MSNBC/NYT/WaPo news filter. Doing this would make me feel 1% less bad about this rampant partisanship.

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Social Media Censors Discussion on the Safety of COVID Vaccines and Potential Alternative Treatments

I am not medically trained. I have nothing to contribute regarding the safety of COVID vaccines or the efficacy of potential alternative treatments such as the use of Ivermectin. I am writing this article because I am concerned about censorship of these issues, especially when these discussions involve well-accomplished experts. This article is a follow-up of my earlier article discussing the censorship of Brett Weinstein and medical experts by Big Tech, "Adverse Side Effects from COVID Vaccines." We need to have these conversations in order to break through the official gated policy narrative on these issues. I will tell this story in tweets. It will never be the case that censorship will improve the quality of the conversations on these issues. Click on these images and dig in:

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The Great Power of False Media Narratives

The false story about the motives of the Pulse Nightclub murderer is alive and well, despite indisputable evidence that he was attempting to kill people, not LGBT people. Legacy media and politicians cling to the false narrative and we simply must assume (at this point) that they know that their story is false. However, their false story is powerful. It serves as effective cheap signaling and it moves people to anger, including people who should know better. The Pulse story is merely one example of a common phenomenon today. The story itself serves as the foundation for a "truth," upon which cherry-picked factoids, most of them easily disproved, make everyone in one's tribe feel the righteous anger. Again, Pulse is one example of many. We could substitute dozens of commonly exchanged "truths" for Pulse. That is what much too often serves as "news" in the year 2021. Glenn Greenwald elaborates.

Whatever Mateen's motives were, the horror and tragedy of the extinguishing of forty-nine innocent lives at PULSE on June 12, 2016, remains the same. But this enduring falsehood — which continues to deceive many well-meaning people through this very day, long past the point that it has been definitively debunked — is damaging for so many reasons.

Lying about what happened dishonors Mateen's victims. It harms the cause of LGBT equality, which does not need lies and fabrications to be a just movement. It obscures how often U.S. violence in the Muslim world causes "blowback” — to use the CIA's term — by motivating others to bring violence to the U.S. as retaliation and deterrence for violence against innocent Muslims. And a major reason for the completely unjust prosecution of Noor Salman was to appease understandable demands within the Orlando LGBT community for someone to be punished, but mob justice rarely produces anything benevolent.

No matter how noble the intent, journalism — and activism — becomes corrupted if it knowingly supports falsehoods. That the PULSE massacre was an act of anti-LGBT hatred is a fiction. Unless you are a neocon, there is no such thing as a "noble lie.” It is way past time for politicians and activist groups to stop disseminating this one.

Seeing that this completely false story still has legs (referring to the murderer's motives, not the murders themselves which certainly happened), I am reminded of Daniel Kahneman's discussion of the power of narratives in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman indicates that we crave consistency in our explanations, not completeness, and this craving leads to overconfidence. We are profligate generators of flimsy explanations and we are "rarely stumped." As a result, poor evidence can make a great story (p. 209). Also, we often believe primarily because our friends believe. Our confidence in our beliefs are preposterous but necessary given our limited cognitive horsepower. That said, once we have our story down pat, it becomes easy to repeat and our confidence in telling that story grows, even if untrue. Confidence results from cognitive ease and coherence, but confidence does not equal truth (p. 238).

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Krystal and Saagar’s “Breaking Points” Rockets to the Podcast Stratosphere

Only a week after splitting from The Hill's podcast, "Rising," Krystal and Saagar are celebrating. Their Independent Podcast, "Breaking Points," is already the #1 political podcast on Spotify and the #3 overall podcast. If you are tired of corporate-filtered news, give them a try. If you want open-ended conversation by inquisitive minds, this is a place for you. If you are distressed by newscasts that needlessly divide us from each other and put financial elites on pedestals, look no further. I'm attaching yesterday's clip of Krystal and Saagar celebrating their stunning news and explaining their mission.

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