With three weeks to Election Day, Washington state ballots are about to drop. Let’s talk about it! Please join us tonight for some politics and a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.
We meet tonight and every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us on the back patio. We start at 8:00pm.
Chapters of Living Liberally are all over the place…if you can’t make it to the Seattle chapter, stop by another chapter near you.
Happy Indigenous People’s Day. I usually don’t post on holidays, but I want to note that KEXP is doing Indigenous People’s Day programming all day and it has been really great so far.
Electile Dysfunction 2024:
LegalEagle: Alex Jones’s entire empire is being sold off
Cult of The Felon Von Shitzenpantz:
John Oliver: Traffic stops
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
Please join us tonight for some political punditry and electoral prognostication over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally. The election is just 27 days away. Let’s talk about it.
We meet tonight and every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us on the back patio. We start at 8:00pm.
Chapters of Living Liberally are all over the place…if you can’t make it to the Seattle chapter, stop by another chapter near you.
Michael Kosta: Jelani Cobb on the history of the Electoral College & a healthy journalism diet
The New Yorker: Zooey Zephyr’s defense of trans lives in a deep-red state
Electile Dysfunction 2024:
John Oliver: Federal courts
LegalEagle: Eric Adams’s ridiculous corruption
Cult of The Felon Von Shitzenpantz:
Vox: Can clean energy handle the AI boom?
Stephen: Chris Wallace on the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
The Late Show: The Adams Felony
Electile Dysfunction 2024:
Jimmy Kimmel: The week in unnecessary censorship
Desi Lydic: NY Mayor Eric Adams indicted in Turkey bribery & fraud scheme
Cult of The Felon Von Shitzenpantz:
Steve Shives: Things in the U.S. are worse than they should be
Roll Call: Congressional hits and misses of the week
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
Dear Journalism,
You have one job: defend democracy. And you fucking suck at it.
Now, I know you like to think your job is simply to report the facts and that you have some sort of sacred obligation to remain “neutral” and “objective” and “fair and balanced,” and if this unbiased brand of nonpartisan journalism unfortunately results in the election of “America’s Hitler” (Trump’s running mate’s words, not mine), well, first draft of history and all that.
Oh, grow the fuck up.
The facts are, you made this rapey orange monster, and now it’s your job to unmake him, and if that means putting your calloused thumbs on the scale in opposition to, let’s be honest, a literal fucking fascist, then fuck your journalistic ethics and lean into it. Ours is a two-party system currently consisting of a democratic party and an undemocratic party, and if you’re not wielding all your power and privilege toward preserving our democratic institutions and norms, then you aren’t doing your fucking job.
I mean, why the fuck do you think the Founders put freedom of the press right up top in my First Amendment? Because they enjoyed the whimsical musings of Silence Fucking Dogood? Fuck no. It was because when you spend four sweltering months at a yellow fever lockdown party like the Constitutional Convention, endlessly debating Enlightenment ideals like how many fifths human a black person is, you really get to know your fellow “patriots.” And so the slave-owning hypocritical assholes who wrote me sure as fuck knew that the fragile democracy they just crafted had zero chance of surviving their own elitist ambitions let alone those of the slave-owning hypocritical assholes across the aisle, without a free fucking press to keep everybody the fuck in line.
And by “free press” I mean free to write whatever the fuck it likes no matter how viciously partisan or slanderous. As Alexander Hamilton famously rapped about Thomas Jefferson, “I’ll use the press, I’ll write under a pseudonym, you’ll see what I can do to him,” and holy fuck did he ever. Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison—hiding underneath those stately powdered wigs were motherfucking gangsters who’d sooner fuck you up the ass with a rolled up broadsheet then give you the time of day. (Fun fact: also hiding underneath those powdered wigs were unsightly patches of syphilitic alopecia, because nearly everybody had syphilis back then as if you couldn’t tell from their absolutely deranged implementation of an Electoral Fucking College. But I digress.)
The point is: the Founders couldn’t have imagined a democracy guided by objective and nonpartisan journalism any more than they could have imagined one in which the 585,000 residents of fucking Wyoming would each have 67 times more representation in the U.S. Senate than 39 million Californians. (Thanks again, syphilis!) No, the Founders’ intent was the journalism they practiced: an unapologetically partisan press beating the crap out of each other in the court of public opinion. In the American system, the only way you get “fair and balanced” is by balancing the other fuckers out! That’s how our democracy was designed to work. But when one side unilaterally disarms—when, for example, the New York Times curls up all Vichy France-like while Fox News gleefully goes full Goebbels—democracy doesn’t stand a goddamn chance.
And BTW, neither does journalism.
What? You think once orange Putin seizes the dictatorial powers the Supreme Court just promised him that somehow I’m coming to your defense? Sam Alito already wipes his bony white ass with me, so put one or two more Federalist Society Elders on the bench and New York Times v. Sullivan? Dead! New York Times v. United States? Dead! Hustler Magazine v. Falwell? Dead! I mean, wake the fuck up. Without a functional democracy to back me up, my First Amendment isn’t worth the brittle old parchment it’s scribbled on, so best of luck clinging to your precious journalistic ethics while stripped naked at Gitmo as Elon sues into bankruptcy one news outlet after another for every imagined slight.
Look, I’m not asking you to lie or anything. (Though to be clear, I’m not asking you not to.) I’m just saying that if all that stands between the survival of the world’s oldest democracy and the imposition of white nationalist authoritarian rule is a little good old fashioned partisan muckraking, then, like it or not, journalism, it’s your fucking job to rake some muck in defense of the candidate who doesn’t promise to dismantle the Constitution. Then, if we still have a democracy come January 6 (normally I’d say November 5, but, you know), by all means feel free to morally cleanse yourself in a paroxysm of this pretentious both-sidesism you call “journalistic ethics.”
And if democracy doesn’t survive this election? Well… given Trump’s open admiration of Putin and his tactics, I’d be awfully careful when standing near any open windows.
So get to it, journalism, before it’s too late. As Aaron Burr ominously asked of Hamilton, “Why do you write like you’re running out of time? Write day and night like you’re running out of time?” Why? Because he was running the fuck out of time!
And so are you, journalism. So are you.
Sincerely,
The U.S. Fucking Constitution
Swiftvoted:
Electile Dysfunction 2024:
Roll Call: Congressional hits and misses of the week
Cult of The Felon Von Shitzenpantz:
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
Roll Call: Congressional hits and misses of the week
Washington Gubernatorial Debate Bits:
John Oliver: School lunch
Electile Dysfunction 2024:
Jimmy Kimmel: The week in unnecessary censorship
Cult of The Felon Von Shitzenpantz:
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
Please join us tonight for an evening of electoral politics as the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally gathers for a presidential debate-watching party.
We meet tonight and every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle.
We’ll get an early start tonight, 6:00pm, and meet in the back room with the debate on the TV. Note that the pub can get loud, so if you really want to hear everything, bring headphones and a way to stream the audio. There is free WiFi available at the Roanoke.
Chapters of Living Liberally are all over the place…if you can’t make it to the Seattle chapter, stop by another chapter near you.
Steve Shives: Why should a teenager have an AR-15? A response to the Apalachee High School shooting
Christopher Titus: Back To school…RUN!!!!!!
Electile Dysfunction 2024:
Robert Reich: How we build an economy that works
Vice News: How the end of Roe v. Wade is impacting Americans
Cult of The Felon Von Shitzenpantz:
LegalEagle: Jack Smith plays chicken with The Supreme Court
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
New York Times: Finding Emmett Till
Electile Dysfunction 2024:
Vice News: The fight for native sovereignty in oil-rich Oklahoma
Cult of The Felon Von Shitzenpantz:
Jimmy Kimmel: The week in unnecessary censorship
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
Electile Dysfunction 2024:
Robert Reich: Here’s why prices are still high
Cult of The Felon Von Shitzenpantz:
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
Electile Dysfunction 2024:
Cult of The Felon Von Shitzenpantz:
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
Pennsylvania is one of the most important swing states for presidential elections. Besides having 19 electoral votes, the state is a bellwether for WI and MI. Since 1992, the three states have voted together and, with the single exception of 2016, have given their electors to the Democrat.
With that context in mind, there are two new polls out in PA. The first is from Franklin and Marshall that has Vice President Kamala Harris leading former President and convicted felon Donald Трамп 46% to 43%. The poll’s margin of error is 3.8%, so Harris’ 3% lead is weak evidence that she would win an election held today. The release summarizes reasons for support thusly:
The main reasons that Harris voters are supporting her candidacy include anti-Трампism (18%), women’s rights (17%), character (15%), partisanship (13%), and democracy (13%). The top reasons voters provide for supporting Трамп include economic policy (29%), immigration (20%), and partisanship (19%). More voters believe Vice President Harris has better judgment, is more trustworthy, and is closer to their views on values issues than Mr. Трамп, while more voters believe Mr. Трамп is better able to handle the economy
The second poll is from Quinnipiac and finds Harris leading Трамп 48% to 45%. This poll’s margin of error is 2.4%, which means that we are getting into “real lead” territory. Note that if the polls are combined, the sample of over 2,600 voters is pretty solid evidence that Harris is now leading in PA. The Quinnipiac poll asked voters to characterize the two candidates:
The two polls, using different methods, find that Трамп has a serious deficit on issues of character for PA voters.
Meanwhile, in news of the weird, Vance has bizarre ideas about the “purpose” of postmenopausal women. Interestingly, Vance’s take is likely based on a tortured misunderstanding of one theory on the evolution of menopause in women. I look forward to a debate question on whether he espouses contemporary evolutionary theory. You already heard about a couple of unearthed photos of Vance in drag. A new addition to the Трамп/Vance campaign photo album is a high school photo of Vance posing with three female classmates pretending to use urinals in the boys bathroom. Good clean fun. But, you know…a little weird. A new audio recording has Vance claiming Amazon funded Black Lives Matter so rioters would burn down their brick-and-mortar competitors—a totally non-weird conspiracy theory.
Трамп gave a rambly “economic” press conference in which he held up Tic Tacs to exemplify inflation, which brought back to mind the Hollywood Access tape in which he mentioned the need to pop a Tic Tac in preparation for any urge to sexually assault Arianne Zucker. Good times. He also falsely claimed (again) that Governor Tim Walz, “wants tampons in boys’ bathrooms.” No word on how the stock markets reacted to this bizarre “economic news.”
Speaking of bizarre…. Трамп’s staff thinks he may have PTSD because he repeatedly watches himself get shot in the ear. Maybe PTSD…or, maybe it’s just a flare-up of his pre-existing narcissistic personality disorder?
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