Krist Novoselić, April 24, 2023
Reading Andrew Yang's latest Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy. It's a page turner about his 2020 run for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. He also shares reform proposals including Universal Basic Income, Ranked Choice Voting and term limits for the US Congress.
Been also checking out various Substack writers, including the tribulations of Matt Taibbi on Racket News. Yang has a lot to say about his own experience with media during the campaign and his words got me thinking about the evidence Taibbi is currently uncovering regarding political media's connection to government and the election campaigns of insiders. First, let's turn to Yang in Forward,
"The primacy of the media’s narrative control really hit home during the debates. During the first Democratic primary debate in June 2019, I got only two minutes and fifty seconds of speaking time over two hours, compared with twelve minutes for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Some of that was clearly on me; I should have muscled my way into more speaking time. But some of it stemmed from the fact that the moderators from MSNBC were far more interested in generating airtime for certain candidates and narratives they were pushing than they were for the new random interloper. . . I found out later that some campaigns were known to be in touch with debate moderators to suggest that certain questions get asked. . . I also found out later from the producer Ariana Pekary, who left MSNBC publicly in August 2020, that in April 2019 my name was on a list of candidates whom she was told not to seek an interview with without any explanation. This persistent minimization occurred again when MSNBC moderated another debate in November. This time the moderators took thirty-two minutes to ask me a question–the statistical expectation would be about eleven minutes–and the handful of questions posed to me had nothing to do with any issue I’d campaigned on." [My emphasis]
As a subscriber to Racket News, I am not surprised reading Yang's account of the debate which suggests the Biden campaign coordinating an advantage with the MSNBC producers of the Democratic nomination debates. Who could have drew up the list of excluded candidates MSNBC implemented? In an April 21, 2023 post, "News Blackout in Effect The Michael Morell story is disposed of by press janitors", Taibbi says,
"It transpires that the infamous incident before the 2020 election in which 50 former intelligence officials signed an open letter declared a New York Post expose about Hunter Biden’s laptop to have the 'classic earmarks of a Russian information operation' was instigated at the behest of the Joe Biden campaign. This at least is the allegation in a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken released by Jim Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government."
It appears the campaign manipulated their pliant media conduits with disinformation – which was flipping reality by alleging disinformation committed by their opponents! Senior Biden campaign officals are now his cabinet and propaganda is rampant in the USA. If you can't see it, there is nothing I can say to you; so I will turn to more Democratic Party treachery.
In an April 20 Substack post "House Democrats Have Lost Their Mind", Taibbi says,
I learned yesterday Virgin Islands Delegate and Ranking Member of the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government Stacey Plaskett is threatening me with prison, over her own error. Just after I ran a piece called “The Press is Now Also the Police” about the New York Times and Washington Post boasting of roles in delivering a leak suspect to the FBI, MSNBC’s new attack-caster, Mehdi Hasan, got his wish, inspiring first Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and then Plaskett to trumpet his incredibly vicious and mistaken claim that I lied to Congress. The threatened penalty is five years.
There you have it! Democrats / Warfare State Party, in the name of freedom and democracy here and abroad, are threatening to jail journalists.
(Krist Novoselić ©2023 All Rights Reserved)