A guy named "Bonchie" imagines an intern who probably doesn't exist:
Politifact intern: "What if we go with the lie that Joe Biden was fit to serve? Or how about the lie that Biden wouldn't pardon his son? Those were hugely impactful."
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) December 18, 2024
Politifact editor: "Nah, we're doing the dog thing." https://t.co/x65rPMjsKs
I would imagine the ideological bubble at Politifact is impervious enough to ensure that no intern that uppity would ever be hired.
For actual lie-revealing journalism, this WSJ story went online yesterday, and is in today's print edition: How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge. It's long, but that's a free link, so click away. Sample:
To adapt the White House around the needs of a diminished leader, [Biden's closest aides and advisors] told visitors to keep meetings focused. Interactions with senior Democratic lawmakers and some cabinet members—including powerful secretaries such as Defense’s Lloyd Austin and Treasury’s Janet Yellen—were infrequent or grew less frequent. Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president’s ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.
Senior advisers were often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy, with people such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, senior counselor Steve Ricchetti and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard and her predecessor frequently in the position of being go-betweens for the president.
Press aides who compiled packages of news clips for Biden were told by senior staff to exclude negative stories about the president. The president wasn’t talking to his own pollsters as surveys showed him trailing in the 2024 race.
From further down in the article, an unnamed aide recalls the reason he was given for a rescheduled meeting in the spring of 2021: "He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow.”
The WaPo came up with its "Democracy dies in darkness" slogan in Trump Year One. Four years later, it, and many other sources turned out the lights, preferring not to report on what must have been increasingly obvious. Causing Jeffrey Blehar to wonder: After the Biden Revelations, of What Value Is the Mainstream Political Media?.
Joe Biden’s mental decline was no secret to conservatives for the simple reason that each of us has eyes and the ability to use them to assess Biden’s obvious physical and mental decline. You could condescend to us and insult our intelligence all you wanted, jabber about “cheap fakes” and call us crazy — it didn’t matter. We knew what it was that we saw with Biden, and weren’t going to be gaslighted. We were right because of course we were. It was blazingly obvious.
So what the hell happened to the mainstream media during this entire period? Where were our sentinels of the republic, those tribunes of truth? How can the Fourth Estate, with its eyes forever upon the world of Washington politics, have missed Biden’s advancing mental and physical decrepitude? Why did so many journalists claim they weren’t even suspicious after it all came crashing down in late June?
I have an appealingly simple theory to explain this mystery: They didn’t miss this at all. Everyone knew, and the sorts of people who would have normally pursued these whispers about Biden’s remoteness — obvious enough from his calendar and the behavior of his public minders — simply decided not to because it was not in the best interests of the Democratic Party to do so, at least as perceived by the “herd mind” of the media, the left-tinged blob of assignment editors, investigative reporters, and liberal commentators across Washington.
I must also quote Jeffrey's eloquent conclusion:
Let us take the media professionals at their word, that they really had no idea things were this bad with Joe Biden until the sudden meltdown of the debate. Let us take them at their word that the revelations of the Wall Street Journal‘s piece about his concealed collapse took them by complete surprise. If that is the case, I end with a sincere question: Of what value are these people, then? If the media professionals really didn’t know — when I could tell, when you could tell, when it was a key concern among voters — if every media organ was so flat-footed, incurious, or flummoxed by White House smoke and mirrors that none of them ever thought to seriously investigate whether the president of the United States might secretly be in the midst of massive mental collapse, then why should we respect them? What would we say it is they do here? What are they bringing to the table when they are missing the biggest story of the last four years, one hiding in plain sight?
If the media chose not to explore Biden’s mental decline because of partisan allegiance to the Democrats or dislike of Trump, then they have forfeited their credibility in a devastatingly permanent way. In that case, they would have willingly participated in what I consider to be the single worst scandal in presidential history: a mentally incapacitated president concealed from the public and controlled by his advisers. If they have not done this — if they truly were taken by surprise — then we are in little better a position: We are cursed with the most useless media class in the world, a mass of despairingly hopeless incompetents who failed in the most important duty they were ever asked to perform in their jobs.
I’m not sure which verdict they would prefer.
Reader, that "say it is they do here" link goes exactly where you might hope and expect.
For the record, Pun Salad was kind of late to the party, waiting until February of this year to introduce the "President Dotard" monicker. (And, if you look back at that post, it was pretty obvious to everyone honest at the time.)
Also of note:
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Maybe you can think of a seventh? I can't. Arnold Kling proposes Six Laws of Social Learning. And I'll just list 'em, click over for his insightful commentary on each:
- We decide what to believe by deciding who to believe.
- The motive to seek status competes with the motive to seek truth.
- Better ideas emerge from a competitive process.
- We should trust people who try to persuade, not to delegitimize.
- We should trust people who allow for the possibility that they could be wrong.
- We should trust people who do not dismiss contrary evidence.
With respect to #5: I probably glommed onto Jeff Maurer's substack because its title is I Might Be Wrong.
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They are large, they contain multitudes. Over at Reason, Joe Lancaster looks at some ugly public displays of cognitive dissonance: Prominent Progressives Struggle To Condemn Murder Without Defending the Murderer. Joe talks about the same pols we have: Bernie, Liz, AOC.
But when it comes to half-hearted condemnations of violence, filmmaker Michael Moore takes the cake.
The Oscar-winning documentarian's 2007 film Sicko criticized the American health care industry, advocated a single-payer system like in Canada or Europe, and even touted the health care system in Cuba. Mangione's manifesto seemed to cite Moore for having "illuminated the corruption and greed" of American health insurers.
Moore penned a lengthy Substack post over the weekend, winkingly titled "A Manifesto Against For-Profit Health Insurance Companies," in which he addressed whether he would condemn Mangione's act of violence.
"Throughout my adult life, I have repeatedly stated that I'm a pacifist," Moore writes. But after Thompson's murder, "there was an immediate OUTPOURING of anger toward the health insurance industry. Some people have stepped forward to condemn this anger. I am not one of them."
Well, fine. Over the years, we've all been treated to mainstream media's condemnation of really serious right wing/fascist violence that's gonna happen any day now. But when it comes to actual murderous violence, we get mealy-mouthed excuses.
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Of course they are. The Google LFOD news alert sounded for this article in CNHINews: NH electors a diverse group.
Four New Hampshire women — one transgender, one an immigrant from Venezuela, one Indian-American, and an African-American pledged the state's four Electoral College votes for Vice President Kamala Harris to be President of the United States and Tim Walz vice president at a ceremony on Tuesday.
Picture of this virtue-signaling ceremony at the link. But where's LFOD? Ah, there it is, in a quote from Somersworth's Geri Cannon, the transgender member from Somersworth:
"When I was a teenager, I knew I was different," she said. "I kept my secret safe in a closet. I didn't open that closet door until I learned there were more people like me. I didn't know what would happen to me or how people would react. We live in a state where our motto is 'Live Free or Die,' I decided to find out if it really is."
Um. "It really is" what?