Well, on one hand, I’m not about to recommend you start reading either of those, but don’t discard local or independent media. They serve a very important function in the media ecosystem, and cover a lot of stuff that the big players either don’t care about, aren’t in a position to cover, or simply don’t have the column inches to spare on it. Sure, you might get important news from the big players, but stuff that can effect you on the day-to-day is gonna be in your local paper more often than the larger players in the media landscape.
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Relevant opinion piece:
"I spent 30 years working in the CIA’s Clandestine Service. During those three decades, I was never aware of a whistleblower anywhere inside the CIA or the broader intelligence community. Why?
There are two reasons. The first is because it is a deeply uncomfortable, counterintuitive step for an intelligence officer to decide to become a whistleblower. Not many do. The second is because that is precisely the way the system is supposed to work. I should never have known of any whistleblower, because the law is specifically structured to protect their anonymity…
It is difficult to overstate how great the reluctance of an American intelligence officer would be regarding becoming a whistleblower, but clearly, this was beyond the pale. Members of the Clandestine Service are trained to be … well, clandestine. This is as true for CIA analysts as it is for CIA case officers. We do almost nothing publicly, and, indeed, if the identity of a member of the Clandestine Service does becomes public, it is usually not a good thing. (Recall, for example, the outing of my former colleague Valerie Plame by Washington politicians, which effectively ended her CIA career.) We are trained to stay away from the news media and the limelight…
Any whistleblower in the intelligence community would probably admit there was a good chance that eventually, their identity might leak out. They would still be technically protected against reprisals, but their colleagues would find out. Even in the most justified case of whistleblowing, as this clearly is, there could still be a chilling effect on an intelligence officer’s career. Whistleblowers might be judged by their peers as either indiscreet or, worse, politically motivated. Neither is a trait an intelligence officer wants to be associated with within our world…
The second reason I was never aware of a whistleblower during my time at the CIA is because that is how the system is supposed to work. When a U.S. government employee sees something he or she suspects is illegal or inappropriate, they can report it formally, in a special protected channel. The key element, of course, is protection against reprisals by more senior officials in the whistleblower’s chain of command. There have been whistleblowers in my world, but I never heard about them at the time.
That is the great and unique beauty of how the whistleblower system works. We live in a democracy, an open society in which transparency, especially inside the federal government funded by all Americans’ taxes, is highly valued. There is nowhere else in our government where the natural tension between open society and the work of the federal government is greater than in the intelligence community, where secrecy is required. This is the very reason our system has mechanisms governing intelligence work, mechanisms such as the Office of the Inspector General, two permanent intelligence oversight committees on intelligence and the whistleblower laws. Even the most secret government activity is not exempt from the whistleblower statutes, and if we want this particularly powerful brake on bad behavior inside the intelligence community to remain meaningful, maintaining a whistleblower’s anonymity remains paramount…"
It’s only one poll, but the numbers keep going in the Democrats’ favor:
By a margin of 58 percent to 38 percent, Americans say the House was correct to undertake the inquiry.
Among all adults, 49 percent say the House should take the more significant step to impeach the president and call for his removal from office.
Another 6 percent say they back the start of the inquiry but do not favor removing Trump from office, with the remainder undecided about the president’s ultimate fate. The results among registered voters are almost identical.
Remarkably, nearly 30 percent (about 28%) of Republicans favor an impeachment inquiry and “almost one-fifth of Republicans say they favor a vote recommending his removal.”
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You know, with the entire history of this country, well off white people harping on literacy, even when they qualifying it with “all people are illiterate” as if that justifies anything is a big red flag that you should just stop digging that hole. Just because you also shit on white people doesn’t mean you aren’t also shitting on non white people for being victimized in this country.
“It’s racist to say illiteracy is a problem across the board.” has to be the hottest take I’ve seen in a longass time.
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Two of Giuliani’s toadies/bagmen have been put into custody, which is good.
Also, I am now going to link to a reddit post, but I think it’s a great explanation of the whole situation which helped me a lot to realize how long this attempt at ratfuckery has actually been going on.
This is continuing to escalate rapidly and has been a constitutional crisis for months.
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“The average American is illiterate” is a pretty uncomfortable statement though. It’s a statement I expect to see sharing a paragraph with “poor people are irresponsible with their money” and “you should have to take a test to vote”.
Doesn’t seem that controversial to point out that “the average person is illiterate” is a rather shocking thing to just state outright. It puts me on edge exactly the same way the movie Idiocracy does. Shields fully up.
Edit: context is important too… facts about adult literacy in a discussion about domestic policy priorities or an argument for more comprehensive public education? Sure, go for it. Facts about adult literacy presented as if more people reading at an 8th-grade level would have made the Muller report land better in some abstract way? Not convinced, tbh.
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You really don’t think that if the average American was more literate and therefore more able to absorb and interpret political content it wouldn’t improve the political picture generally? The Mueller report itself is a wonky legal document made by and for lawyers, its thick reading. The news media can distill it down for average Joe but as it stands most of the Joes doesn’t even have the reading comprehension or vocabulary to understand the news. So yeah I do think increased literacy would make the report hit better in a meaningful way. It’s part of why I think cutting school funding isn’t just to line politicians’ pockets I also think its a calculated effort to keep people ignorant of whats being done to them.
I consider myself literate, and I still have no fucking idea what to take from the Mueller report.
“Trump did crimes, but not exactly the crimes everyone is hollering about. Crimes related to the crimes. But it’s not my job to call them crimes, so I’ll lay it all out and hope Congress uses this as basis to establish determination of crime. Oh and the Russia shit happened, but it was gonna happen whether he asked for it or not.”
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This is a good recap of the events from the PoV of an actual lawyer.
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Oh boy. Good luck, unnamed congressman.
“Acting in concert with an unnamed Ukrainian official, Parnas and Fruman allegedly committed to raise $20,000 for a congressman not named in the indictment, as Parnas asked the representative for “assistance in causing the U.S. Government to remove or recall the then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine.”
The indictment goes on to allege that Parnas did this at least partly “at the request of one or more Ukrainian government officials.”
Parnas made the request in May 2018, the same month Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo advocating for Yovanovitch’s removal. Sessions accused Yovanovitch of making anti-Trump comments while posted to the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.”
Lots of dots being connected, lots more dots still to be connected.
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They are all going to die because we were incapable of removing a dangerous idiot from the presidency.
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*trigger warning * Don’t click tweet link, graphic video.
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So Republicans are now appealing to tradition and historical precedents? Ho ho ho.
Having an official “Impeachment Inquiry” also allows the Republicans to issue their own subpoenas and turn the inquiry into a mockery and derail it.
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