We can no longer treat them respectfully. We can no longer treat them with dignity.We can no longer treat them with tolerance.Tolerance and respect are a two-way street -- and when one side refuses to grant it, the other side must refuse to grant it back.
Biden and his party encouraged this kind of public harassment. They've refused to enforce laws to stop it when the targets are conservative Supreme Court justices. They laughed at Rand Paul and Ted Cruz being mobbed.
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) February 19, 2023
This is the alligator eating the one who fed it. https://t.co/WfYCxbkpPk
Biden said Republicans want to cut taxes for billionaires, “who pay virtually only 3% of their income now – 3%, they pay.”Facts First: Biden’s “3%” claim is incorrect. For the second time in less than a week, Biden inaccurately described a 2021 finding from economists in his administration that the wealthiest 400 billionaire families paid an average of 8.2% of their income in federal individual income taxes between 2010 and 2018; after CNN inquired about Biden’s “3%” claim on Thursday, the White House published a corrected official transcript that uses “8%” instead. Also, it’s important to note that even that 8% number is contested, since it is an alternative calculation that includes unrealized capital gains that are not treated as taxable income under federal law.
Several days ago the most comprehensively documented and carefully written account of the mainstream media’s toxic and ultimately self-destructive relationship with Donald Trump was published by Columbia Journalism Review. And if you haven’t heard about it, then that doesn’t surprise me, because the reaction from the rest of the mainstream media (including its reliably voluble and strident online commentariat) has been notably muted as well.The reason is that the piece from CJR (a reliably institutional media organ, informally the dean of its academic wing) was a thoroughly sourced and timelined four-part series by ex–New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth about how Russiagate — which now best describes the media’s conduct in publishing, amplifying, and laundering what turned out to be partisan-concocted bunk about Trump’s purported treasonous compromise by the Russian government — ended up destroying its institutional credibility. It opens by noting that prior to Trump’s taking office (not winning the election, mind you, but taking office) the mainstream media held a net positive rating among Americans in institutional reputation, but that rating now hovers around a 26 percent level of credibility. And more than anything else, it was their recklessness in pursuing the fantasy of Russiagate that frittered away that institutional capital.
INDEFENSIBLE: If a book-length compilation of errors and dishonest coverage — printed in the Columbia Journalism Review, and written by a reporter with the credentials of Jeff Gerth — doesn’t get picked up by MSM at all, it’s proof they will never reform. https://t.co/ZBDchee5nm
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 1, 2023
Omar, when already a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, compared the United States to Hamas and the Taliban. After she was elected to Congress, Omar diminished the 9/11 attacks—“some people did something”— to exaggerate the presence of “Islamophobia” in this country, a comment that was worse, not better, in context. When Omar says House members are expected to pay “allegiance/pledge support to a foreign country” or that supporters of Israel are in it for “Benjamins,” she is not “being critical” of any policy, she is spreading ugly “tropes.”The press then uncritically repeats Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s claim that Democrats “unequivocally condemned” Omar four years ago, without any pushback. But either Jeffries is lying or doesn’t understand that “unequivocal” means with “no doubt and “unambiguous.” The House passed a watered-down resolution mentioning Alfred Dreyfus, Leo Frank, Henry Ford, and “anti-Muslim bigotry” — and a bunch of other bad -isms — that never even mentions Omar. One expects there will be no media “fact checks” forthcoming.
