Saturday, July 9, 2022

Middle Finger Symphony Theater

 ~ No Tuxedos Required ~

Brought To You By BLUESJUNKY: Middle Finger Symphony Music Chair of Music

Thursday, July 7, 2022

Your Official Almost Semi-World Famous Irredeemable End of the Week Open Thread

Your Beloved Editrix Turns Things Over
To You, The Readers. 
 You Know The Routine. You Know the Rules.
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This Week's Open Thread Brought To You By 
My Favorite Local Personal Accessory Boutique:

DJT Lives Rent-free in Biden's Head, and It Seems the Lease Has Just Been Renewed.


We are only a year-and-a-half into Biden’s presidential tenure, and things are not going well to say the least. That’s the opinion of a full 85 percent of the Americans from both parties polled who believe the country is headed for the ditch. So, what is a president to do when his whole  administration is collapsing around him? Blame Donald Trump, of course.

Talking nonsense in Ohio yesterday to an audience of paid to be there union members, Joe had this to say:
"The previous administration lost more jobs on its watch than any administration since Herbert Hoover. That's a fact. All based on failed trickle down economics...We came in with a different economic vision."
Yeah, how is that "different economic vision" working out Joe? Sky-rocketing inflation, the deep drop in the stock market, record gas prices, all the foreign policy fuck ups? GD Putz!

I get that Biden’s brain is mush, but you’d think he’d remember the global pandemic that took place in 2020 before spouting off about job losses. State-level lockdowns happened across the country, putting the economy into an artificial coma. Apparently, Biden recalls none of that though, instead choosing to blame “trickle-down economics” for the job losses under DJT, a contention completely devoid of reality.

Never mind that the economy was booming under DJT until COVID hit, making Biden’s critique rather absurd. To put it succinctly, when the current president is spending all his time obsessing over the former guy, that current president is losing.

Biden may not perceive much reality these days given his mental decline, but he knows enough to know he’s been an abject failure. With no accomplishments to talk about, all he has left is making awkward, false mentions of Donald Trump.

While I don’t agree with Biden’s politics one bit, it’s still sad to watch a guy crumble like this. He can barely speak, his jokes make no sense, and he’s been reduced to squinting at a teleprompter, just hoping to get through another event. Someone should really step in and stop this elder abuse. And the country can't take much more of this screaming full speed down the highway blindfolded.

~ Thank You Larwyn's Linx@ Doug Ross Journal for the Linkage! ~

Wednesday, July 6, 2022

The Rise of the New Mediators

We know exactly when and how Rome fell, but why such a backwater of a city became one of history’s greatest empires remains a mystery. And now, from politics and especial the media, the old framework and the old elites seem to be going the way of the dodo. Other institutional developments are less well known but even more pregnant with future possibilities.

The flood of digital content has proved most destructive to those institutions that profited from selling information, what we call for interesting reasons, the media. The word means “in the middle.” Journalists claimed to stand between the public and the facts about the world. While that was never really true, in the last century the news media did sprinkle tidbits of information sometimes useful to ordinary people.

Today, we are drowning in the stuff. The “news feed” is nothing more than a button in social media and the newspaper, cradle of journalism, has lost its business model. The facts of the world as it turns out, are virtually infinite in number and incoherent in pattern. The digital age resembles the Tower of Babel, an uproar of mutually unintelligible voices in a giant circle jerk.

Media like CNN flushed their credibility long ago and now merely contribute to the noise. In such an environment, conspiracy theories can become plausible explanations for the behavior of scientists. The more information we absorb, the less we understand. The New York Times has given up any pretense of objective reporting and is now the interpretive organ for the cult of identity and the progressive left. 

Fox News has long made a good living playing the same part for the unreconciled right, but zoomers and younger millennials have little interest in the pronouncements of people with trained voices and unfashionable hair. 

The new mediators offer themselves as storytellers and interpreters, our local guides through the jungle of contemporary life. They make no claim of objectivity and their ideologies encompass the political spectrum. On the left, for example, the “Young Turks” headlined by the verbose Cenk Uygur (affectionately known to readers of DMF as Cunk Yogurt) and his skinny chick sidekick have become the mouthpiece of the communist-oriented Justice Democrats. The Turks boasts there own fledgling network and more than 5 million subscribers on YouTube alone, far more than CNN’s average cable audience. 

Then there is young lass Bari Weiss, having worked at The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, comes from old media, but she understands the changed landscape and seems to have the right mix of talent and ambition, and a healthy Substack. Though fairly centrist in her politics, Weiss is a fierce advocate of free speech and an unrelenting opponent of the cult of identity. She strikes me as a dragon-slayer and a voice to be heard in the coming years.

Then there is Ben Shaprio. Full Stop.

We go to a purveyor of information as we go to a doctor, because we believe both to combine special knowledge with high integrity. At a time of institutional breakdown this can only be a personal assessment. Institutions are depositories of reputation. They garner trust over long spans of time, often generations. The journey is strewn with the carcasses of experimental forms that succeeded briefly, then failed for good. (cue laugh track) Then there are the CNN+'s that just fail coming out of the chute.  

With the institutional future of media, as with every evolutionary process, many are called but few will be chosen.

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Joe Biden’s Guide to Life

"Hardly anyone was shocked to learn that President Joe Biden is so cognitively impaired that members of his staff are printing out official note cards with detailed instructions to help him carry out his daily tasks. On Thursday, for example, White House photographers caught a glimpse of a card outlining the "sequence of events" for a discussion about offshore wind energy. "YOU enter the Roosevelt Room and say hello to participants. YOU take YOUR seat," the card instructs."

"In addition to these event-specific note cards, Biden also carries a general "cheat sheet" to help him get through the day without humiliating himself. The Washington Free Beacon has exclusively obtained a copy of this official document. It is published below in full to ensure that OUR democracy DOES NOT die in darkness. Enjoy!"

And Now a Word From the President:

Friday, July 1, 2022

Middle Finger Symphony Theater

 ~ No Tuxedos Required ~

Brought To You By BLUESJUNKY: Middle Finger Symphony Music Chair of Music