Closing the tabs ...
Amazing stuff from @TerryMoran on whether @ABC is biased against @realDonaldTrump
— Mark Halperin (@MarkHalperin) August 3, 2025
cc: @seanspicer @danturrentine
Were we biased? Yes. Almost inadvertently, I’d say. ABC News has the same problem so many leading cultural institutions do in America: A lack of viewpoint…
Ed: Not so amazing; mainly, it's just weak. Moran makes the argument that Bernard Goldberg made in his 2000 book "Bias," which is that the media is biased out of editorial blindness. Even Bernie doesn't consider that true now; he argues that media corruption has since become deliberate. Moran's trying a modified limited hangout to excuse away how the Protection Racket Media masks all slipped over the last five years, especially.
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Jonathan Turley: For decades, all the CPB had to do is refocus on programming to appeal to the greatest cross section of the population and to decline to fund media programs like NPR that became more strident and partisan by the year. It seemed that the CPB was trapped within its own echo chambered existence.
On the left, the CPB was the hero institution standing up to social and political reactionaries. That is what CPB officials heard at cocktail parties and conferences. They heard little from the public outside of their core, narrow constituency. For individual administrators and board members, their status and success were tied to the very bias that was alienating most of America.
For them, the choice was clear between neutrality and nonexistence: they grabbed a hemlock-filled, NPR pledge mug and drank deeply.
Ed: I think Jonestown is a better analogy here than Socrates, but YMMV. CPB drank the Kool-Aid rather than admit to the farce.
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this is who’s fighting to be in the women’s bathroom at the Texas Capitol today btw…scary times we live in pic.twitter.com/SKaG0IF8CO
— blonde conservative (@blondeconserv1) August 4, 2025
Ed: I've lived in the Lone Star State for four years now, and I can say with complete confidence that there is Texas, and then there is Austin. But shouldn't we ask where their Democrat protectors are in this hour of their need? Flying to Illinois via private jet, right? (Via Twitchy)
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ABC News: Abbott said the Democrats could be committing felonies if they solicit funds to pay the $500 daily fines they face for skipping the session.
Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton said those threats might not be practical.
"We'd have to go through a court process, and we'd have to file that maybe in districts that are not friendly to Republicans. So it's a challenge because every district would be different. We'd have to go sue in every legislator's home district," Paxton said in a Monday interview with conservative commentator Benny Johnson.
Ed: I warned about that earlier, too. That would fall on Paxton's shoulders, and it looks as though he's worried that Abbott may have set expectations too high. The same is true about declaring seat vacant, too.
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Was there nobody on the PR side who was like maybe we shouldn’t go to one of the most corrupt gerrymandered states in the country? https://t.co/ahNLnUJGT0
— Andrew Kaczynski (@KFILE) August 4, 2025
Ed: I get this and Andrew's entirely correct, but ... where else would they have gone?
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Axios: Texas' mid-decade redistricting has left members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus scrambling to fend off what some predict would be one of the most brutal battles in the group's history, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: A new map would put the group's chair, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), and one of its longest-serving members, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), in the same district. Lawmakers fear it would be a bloodbath if they both run.
Ed: Interesting. That provides some context for the fleebagging in another way too. Democrats are in the middle of an internecine war for control of the agenda between the more centrist establishment and the progressive wing that led the party into two electoral disasters in a row -- three, if you include 2020 and the seeds of destruction sown in pushing Biden and Harris to the top of the party. This is one way of putting off that reckoning, at least for a little while.
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Sudden newfound respect for billionaires https://t.co/aJdfQcOvV3
— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) August 4, 2025
Ed: Oligarchs for we but not for thee?
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National Catholic Register: For the left, that constitutes a social media meltdown over American Eagle and its model, actress Sydney Sweeney, accusing them of being Nazi eugenicists for an ad campaign featuring Sweeney in their jeans that says simply, “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”
That’s it. A play on jeans/genes, and we have the reincarnation of the infamous Nazi, Dr. Joseph Mengele. For as long as the modern left has existed, they have been blind to the eugenics behind Margaret Sanger’s entire eugenics project at the Birth Control League, renamed Planned Parenthood.
When Sanger began her Birth Control League, her newsletter, The Birth Control Review, had as its tagline, “Birth Control: To create a race of thoroughbreds.” They have ignored her Negro Project, aimed at convincing Black Americans to curtail their reproduction and limit the sizes of their families.
Ed: They turn a blind eye to actual eugenics in action and freak out over the "good genes" of a beautiful woman. It's a great point and deserves more dissemination and discussion.
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Sydney Sweeney was heckled and called racist for her American Eagle ad
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 4, 2025
A beautiful white woman appearing in an ad is racist according to leftists
Unreal pic.twitter.com/8vfjMYp8d1
Ed: Who are the racists in this debate? The actress modeling denim fashion, or the extremists who assume it has something to do with eugenics? Especially given the above argument?
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Huffpost: Multiple outlets reported over the weekend that the “Euphoria” star registered as a Republican voter in Florida just months before Donald Trump took on his second presidential term.
The actor has been registered to the Republican Party of Florida since June 2024, Buzzfeed confirmed after viewing publicly available voter registration records.
Ed: The left-wing attempt at cancellation begins ... and worse. Read on.
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Does nobody else think that Sydney Sweeney’s address being doxxed on her voter registration for being a Republican feel like voter intimidation?
— Brandon Herrera (@TheAKGuy) August 3, 2025
Can’t even be proud of your jeans in 2025… pic.twitter.com/VgoAbdFm0r
Ed: Indeed. I have thought that from the moment someone first published this data, when it was posted without the redactions seen in this image. That's exactly what this was intended to do, not to mention the risk it poses to a celebrity even without the politics attached to it. Maybe people don't remember Rebecca Schaeffer, but I certainly do.
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The media uncovered more about Sydney Sweeny's voting habits then they did about the guy who shot Trump
— Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre) August 4, 2025
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Variety: Yes, there’s money to be had. If a news creator can is “compelling enough to get a scaled number of subscriber — if you can get 25,000 or 50,000 people paying ten buck a month for your Substack account, that starts to become real money,” says Harrison, the consultant. “If you can get a certain number of your followers to start paying attention to you there, it’s a nice landing zone.”
But the money isn’t going to just roll in. Some journalists are surprised by the amount of constant tending these new venues require — and not just at the start. “Many people don’t realize that launching an independent platform is like having a baby,” says Adler, the agent. “The thing about a kid is you have it forever. If you don’t take your kid to school, someone will call you and ask, ‘Why isn’t your kid in school?’ If you develop the kind of relationship with your audience where they come to expect a daily newsletter, but then you don’t manage to get it out, someone is going to be asking ‘Where is the newsletter?’”
Ed: I doubt that these will succeed in the main part, and even those that do will be an anomaly. If these former MSM media stars wanted to engage audiences to this extent and take their feedback seriously, they'd probably still be on the air and their platforms wouldn't be looking at a financial abyss.
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Texas Democrats:
— Christian Collins (@CollinsforTX) August 4, 2025
"CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL."
Also, Texas Democrats:
Flee their jobs by chartering a private jet that costs $15,000+ per hour to Illinois. pic.twitter.com/5CyMtgVe2Q
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