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A Scent of Evil

Bill Haskell | February 19, 2024 2:33 pm

Journalism

Read a couple of articles this morning. One by Slate and the other by Newsweek. Sneezing away here and not feeling up to par.

I am not going to post them here. Just too long, even if I made the print smaller. My perspective? I thought they were both good. Maybe you will think differently. There is sense of evil in both of the articles.

Ivanka Trump Instagram: The former adviser to the president has slipped back into her rose-colored bubble, SLATE, Greg Olear.

The tragedy in all of this is that Ivanka speaking out against Donald would have mattered. Ivanka speaking out would have had real power. Ivanka speaking out would have saved lives. Yes, there was a price she would have had to pay for speaking out—her father is a petty, vengeful f*ck—but there is also a cost for staying silent. All those preventable COVID deaths brought on by Trump’s and Jared Kushner’s negligent mismanagement of the pandemic response? The officers who died on Jan. 6? All the pregnant women with inviable pregnancies who can’t get abortions? All the teenage rape victims in the red states? That blood is on her hands too. And no amount of the fancy beauty products she touts on her Instagram page will wash it off.

GoFundMe Responds to Calls To Shut Down Donald Trump Fundraiser, Newsweek on MSN, Kate Plummer.

Speaking to Newsweek, a spokesperson from the platform confirmed that the page, which was set up for the former president on Friday, following Judge Arthur Engoron‘s ruling that Trump will have to pay roughly $355 million in penalties for fraud, was “within its terms and services” despite people voicing their concerns about it on social media.

4 Comments

Fred C. Dobbs says:

February 20, 2024 at 11:19 am

Long Island and the Limits of Sabotage

NY Times – Paul Krugman – February 19

Last week, Tom Suozzi won handily in the special election in New York’s Third Congressional District to fill the seat vacated by the serial fraudster George Santos — reclaiming the seat that Suozzi previously held. This was the latest in a series of Democratic victories in special elections, victories that seem on their face to run counter to polls showing Donald Trump leading Joe Biden in the presidential race.

As Nate Cohn, The Times’s lead polling analyst, has been at pains to point out, there isn’t necessarily a contradiction here. Those who vote in special elections aren’t representative of those who will vote in November, and they may be especially motivated by hot-button issues, especially abortion, that have favored Democrats lately. Furthermore, Long Island, on which N.Y.-03 lies, is an unusual place — something I, who mostly grew up there, can personally confirm.

Yet while I make no pretense of expertise in poll analysis, I, like some others, suspect that this election may be more significant than pure number crunching suggests; it may be an early indication that Republicans’ strategy of victory through sabotage won’t work. …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  February 20, 2024 at 3:31 pm
  
  … With the economy improving and persuadable voters beginning to recognize that improvement, the focus of the 2024 campaign — to the extent that it’s focused on policy at all — has shifted to immigration, with Republicans demanding harsh restrictions and greatly strengthened border security. And here’s the thing: Democrats have gone along, negotiating a bipartisan bill that would have given the G.O.P. most of what it said it wanted.
  
  But Republicans, following instructions from Trump, then killed their own bill. They didn’t even really try to hide the cynicism: They’d rather have the American public see a border in crisis than help fix the problem, because they believe this will benefit them politically. …
  
  … The key question is whether the G.O.P.’s cynical sabotage on immigration will continue to work as voters’ minds are focused by the prospect of an election in the near future, with Democrats hammering home the point that they are supporting border security measures while Republicans are blocking them.
  - coberly says:
    
    February 23, 2024 at 11:59 pm
    
    Dobbs
    
    i think the whole art of politics is to see who can most effectively tap the primitive brain (which lies inside all our brains). The R’s seem to have hit the jackpot with immigration.
    
    The D’s had a long run with kindness or fairness, which may also be part of the primitive brain..in that it has nothing to do with facts or logic….but always gives way to fear of being hurt by “the other.”
    
    I think politicians in general don’t care about either, They just play the cards they are dealt. But there is some evidence that after appealing to the primitive fear-mind of voters, R’s have started to elect people who actually believe their own propaganda.
Fred C. Dobbs says:

February 23, 2024 at 11:39 am

I think I noticed that in the latest ruling from the fraud case in NY that while Mr Trump and his two sones have been banned from running Trump properties, Ivanka has not been.