Political quotes that really shouldn’t be made public

 

Political quotes that really shouldn’t be made public

awful @MeetThePress premise this morning: we're "divided" over Covid and masks! we're not: 70% have a shot. 70% support masks.

Eric Boehlert

The problem with the crush of COVID-19 patients using up most of the available ICU beds* and crowding out emergency facilities is that it’s all so unnecessary.

*Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Florida and Arkansas are nearly out of ICU beds as Covid-19 cases surge across the US — particularly among unvaccinated Americans.

CNN

Here are the ICU beds that are occupied just by Covid patients in each of 14 states. Now, if you’re vaccinated and catch even the dreaded Delta Variant of the coronavirus, it might still result in some unpleasantness, but you’re unlikely even to have to go to the hospital.

To say that Americans are “divided” is to suggest that both sides have good reason to feel the way they do. That, for instance, taking Ivermectin, a cow de-wormer that yes, people can safely take under some very specific circumstances, but that the FDA says please don’t use it for Covid, is a reasonable and rational choice. It isn’t. It’ completely insane to think that the vaccines that the US went to great length to produce and to safety-test and to test for efficacy is less safe or effective than a quack cure pushed by Fox News and other conservative commenters.

There’s also a problem with a claim that anti-choicers/forced birthers make, that the new Texas “snitch” law “...bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is usually after about six weeks of pregnancy, before many women are even aware they are pregnant."

As the C&L piece points out, a six week-old embryo (It won’t become a fetus for another month) doesn’t actually have a heart!

The rhythmic sound that can be heard is "a group of cells with electrical activity. That's what the heartbeat is at that stage of gestation … We are in no way talking about any kind of cardiovascular system." That's all from Jennifer Kerns, an ob-gyn at University of California, San Francisco and director of research in obstetrics and gynecology

There’s absolutely no question that the people who came up with the term did so consciously and deliberately, with malice and forethought. But why mainstream news reporters keep mindlessly repeating that “fetuses” have a heartbeat after six weeks is a real puzzle. This is a claim that fails a very simple true/false test.

Another recent problem is that the Texas “snitch” law didn’t just suddenly pop up out of the blue. The law was passed back in May. The course it took to the Supreme Court was publicly documented. Yet, the Supreme Court decision landed like a bombshell because, apparently, the press was so wholly and completely absorbed in the withdrawal from Afghanistan (a legitimate and worthwhile story) that it just didn’t have any time or attention to spare for the gutting of a Supreme Court ruling that’s been in effect since 1973. The press played catch-up with a number of pieces after the ruling was made, but there was absolutely no need for it to have been such a surprise.

Why does this happen? Why does the press constantly use right-wing talking points that are completely bonkers or ignore a clearly important issue that will obviously have a great impact? My own personal theory is that media people like to run stories through people they feel are outside experts, who are always free to chat and who provide authoritative-sounding quotes. In other words, reporters have right-wing “friends” who have cultivated close relationships with them and who assure them that a fetal heartbeat at six weeks is a real thing and who discourage putting out pieces on something like the Texas “snitch” law that will make right-wingers look bad (Fox News apparently realized how unpopular the new law was as they didn’t mention it for quite awhile). Reporters don’t need to stop talking with right-wing “friends.” What reporters need to do is to get friends on the “other side of the aisle” who can provide corrections and equally authoritative-sounding quotes.

Objective vs partisan news

Lots of anti-democratic actions taken by legislatures in Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin. Curiously, my local paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, wasn’t covering any of this. I looked through their paper edition of December 5^th and checked their news, politics and opinion sections online. Nada. No mention of what was going on in any of these states. The Inquirer published a piece on the 6^th, looking at Wisconsin. This was where the newly-elected governor announced that he’d try and seek an audience with the governor who had lost the election to not destroy democracy in his state.

I was very curious about a paragraph in the Inquirer story:

The session unfolded a month after Republicans were battered in the midterm election. They lost all statewide races amid strong Democratic turnout. But they retained legislative majorities thanks to what Democrats say are gerrymandered districts that tilt the map.

"what Democrats say"? Why is the fact of gerrymandering in Wisconsin treated as though it was somehow controversial for anyone to say this? Why is it treated as though only partisans would agree that Wisconsin's House is very highly gerrymandered?

GQ Magazine says SB 884 passed the State Senate by the very close margin of 17-16, but in the State House, the same bill was passed by 56-27. There were similar margins for SB 886. How can this possibly be explained other than by politicians choosing their voters?

The new legislation tries to protect some of the GOP's achievements in recent years.

Obviously, if the citizens of Wisconsin felt that it was an "achievement" for state health care to have a work requirement, then all of the statewide offices other than the Republican State House majority would have been retained and not tossed out in the November election. There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for Wisconsin Republicans to seek to retain what the the citizens of Wisconsin have plainly rejected.

What this piece does is that it seeks to prettify and make noncontroversial what is plainly a power grab by legislators who've properly and fairly had their legislative program rejected by the voters of Wisconsin. But the Inquirer seems to feel that it must cove everything so that it's always a matter of legitimate debate between reasonable people.

A partisan publication like Daily Kos has no use for the appearance of being objective and non-partisan and so can simply relate what’s happening in Wisconsin and other states without seeking to try and make both sides appear to be equally honest and aboveboard.

Fairness is always good and always appropriate and partisan publications don’t always do that, so partisan publications aren’t always the best way to learn what’s going on. There are plenty of times when more objective, even-handed publications are better at getting across the facts of the case. But when the facts of a case are heavily skewed in just one direction, when one side is plainly guilty and the other side innocent, then a partisan publication is better for understanding what’s going on. Naturally, this means that a good citizen will check out the other side on at least an occasional basis.

No, sorry, there is no “one-stop shopping” when it comes to understanding political issues and events. Citizens who wish to understand what’s going on have to check out multiple sources to get the truth.