"Bari Weiss and her hand-picked buffoon, a shallow man with a great head of hair, say that they love America, but they don’t love the American people enough to tell them the truth about the peril at hand."
And our nation and world are in a very perilous situation. You will never hear from Jon Duffy on CBS or any other news outlet catering to our dictator.Jon Duffy, a retired naval officer, wrote a column appearing in my local paper today. It is a condemnation of Trump’s abuse of power by invading Venezuela and a detailed explanation of how dangerous the action is. Some quotes:
“This is not a question of whether Maduro ‘deserved’ removal. It is a question of whether President Donald Trump may unilaterally decide to overthrow another government using American military force—and whether that decision now passes without objection.
The operation in Venezuela bypassed every mechanism normally used to legitimize American power abroad—judicial process, international authorization, collective defense, congressional consent.
Requiring Congress to authorize the use of coercive American power was meant to slow decisions, demand justification and bind military action to collective judgment rather than individual will.
The administration’s insistence that the Venezuelan operation was a ‘law enforcement mission’ is extremely dangerous.
Law enforcement does not involve airstrikes inside sovereign countries, the forcible removal of a foreign head of state, or the projection of U.S. criminal claims across borders by military force.
A U.S. that claims the unilateral right to overthrow foreign governments forfeits its ability to object when others do the same.
A government that learns it can use force abroad without restraint will apply the same logic at home—redefining law, emergency, and necessity to suit its aims.
A public that relinquishes its voice over war should not expect to be heard when power turns inward.
When war powers are exercised this way, Congress does not merely fail in its duties; it becomes ornamental. And when that happens, the constitutional system designed to restrain the use of the military gives way to something far more dangerous: authority asserted by one individual.”
The Daily Gazette (Schenectady, NY), 1/7/25, “Trump just removed the last restraints on presidential power,” p. A4
Thank You Anthony .. Jon Duffy said it clearly. It infuriates me when the newspapers and pundits go on about how Maduro is a bad person and our military is so brilliant . They go and on about how amazing they are . This may be so ,but this is not the story. To go into a sovereign country and kidnap it's leader and his wife is despicable. This is the story. Where is the outrage? Maduro is a filthy swine by all accounts but it is there country and it's people who need to fix it. Who are these maga voters who think it's ok to one day say it's drugs and kill the people in the boats and then the next day we want the oil. Oy ! Don't tell me they don't know because they watch and read other news outlets. I don't believe that they don't know .....lost in america
While I wouldn't call that a nutshell, it sums it up quite accurately Anthony. The insipid orange turd just gave putin and zhie permission to do the same, and anyone that thinks this won't lead to WWIII has their head up their ass just like the IOT and all of his enablers. When you add the breakage of NATO and all of the security that it provided, WWIII becomes much more likely. Nothing is certain, but the odds keep getting worse, add to that his dementia, and that even on his best day he wasn't smarter than your average 6 year old, somehow the nation gave him the keys to our nuclear codes, well if you are depressed about all of this, it's an indication that you are sane.
"A government that learns it can use force abroad without restraint will apply the same logic at home—redefining law, emergency, and necessity to suit its aims."
And today, our government has murdered a woman in Minneapolis in cold blood. Without mercy and without shame - and without reason. We are well and truly fucked.
Half-facetious, maybe…but when friends and family are genuinely asking how to open foreign bank accounts, and a quarter of my social circle has already left in the past year alone, something fundamental has shifted.
The real question isn’t whether people will leave an increasingly authoritarian system, but how many more will go in the next few months.
Who wants to live through this?
The answer, for those with the money and resources to actually have a choice, seems increasingly clear.
Exit is becoming less theoretical and more operational. The people with options are starting to use them.
It's a decision, albeit difficult, to expatriate. I do not judge those who chose to leave. I have no money but should a windfall come my way I'd stay right here and suffer the rot because I still believe we can weather this. I'm invested in America in many ways and it sorrows me that many people are leaving, or weighing leaving. For me, I'll stand fast.
I'm not going anywhere either David, while I might think about moving to Europe because I loved traveling there in the past, if these clowns ignite WWIII, Europe will go up in flames as will the rest of the world. I suppose I could look at it like some of the Jews who escaped the Nazis, and lived productive lives here in the US, moving in their cases promoted life. At 79 I have already promoted as much life as is likely this time around, so I'll just try to bring comfort to my loved ones. The younger generation doesn't have our understanding of how bad it can get, even though we have tried to warn them. VN seared into our consciousness what hell was like, we'll know soon enough if the rest of the country is about to learn that lesson, I hope not.
Dick, thank you for a well reasoned and elegant post. I think many Vietnam veterans are informed from experience and should be compelled to pass on the events we lived through, and not just Vietnam. I'd like to stay around for a while and with any luck, witness a recalibration should it be realized. Courage.
Every elected Republican in DC swore a well known oath to the Constitution. Absorbed by late-stage capitalism, MSM normalizes the monumental daily dereliction of nearly all of them. Democrats meanwhile say “wait ‘til the next election”, essentially normalizing their conscious, ongoing sedition. Perhaps instead of waiting, the DNC should spearhead nationwide initiatives to recall every damned one of them. Supporting evidence abounds.
“CBS News has proclaimed that it is the “We Love America” network, which is a lie built on lies, stacked on more lies, wrapped in layers of more lies.”
So in essence, CBS is a mystery wrapped in an enigma of lies: Transparently so! Good to know!
As to the pathetic display of sycophancy from Tony Dokoupil? My god, how the mighty have fallen. Cronkite and Murrow must be rolling over in their graves….:)
“Let’s all of us hold that Little Marco profile close. It will be the perfect thing to recall when American kids start coming home in boxes.”
This snatch and grab, along with our blockade of Venezuela may lead to the current Cuban government being overthrown. Cuba currently relies on subsidized Venezuelan refined oil to keep what’s left of its annihilated economy running on fumes.
However, if the results are anything close to the solution these clowns have put forward in Venezuela; we will just be replacing on corrupt ruling junta, with one far worse; just getting its marching orders from Washington.
I guess we’ll see if the Miami Cuban community goes along, and whether it was just their hatred of Castro and his regime, instead of communism (actually socialism) that left them wanting their pound of flesh.
That said, I don’t see how our treatment will be any better, unless you’re the businessmen with ties to Trump waiting in the wings, and salivating at the thought of President Miguel Díaz-Cane’s downfall. IMHO…:)
A Jeremiad to realize. But we are now a nation of opinionaters and influencers who "might" offer concrete "evidence", rarely with attribution or provenance. The lie, told often enough, when it is what one is predispostioned to hear, becomes as though coming directly from Mt Sinai.
Sorry Steve, but Bari Weiss should not be the main target of your/our ire with CBS or 60 Minutes for that matter. It is the out-of-control money in the news industry. The entire MSM has been corrupted by Trump. Turner's CNN (which I rarely watch any longer) is unrecognizable. MS Now has admirable commentators (I will not use the word journalists, because most of the people with their own shows are not true journalists, as has historically been the case). CBS' Cronkite/Rather/etc. had honest news feeds delivering facts via stringers (not "network stars"), who were busy taking notes and using their cameras for simple copy/film and not involved primarily in producing interpretation of political policy making - which is what we have today. Interpretation was left to our scholars and historians. Early TV news gathering procedures once mimicked newspaper reporting via Reuters and AP feed, but with television cameras. Took longer to gather the news before satellite technology, but it was reliable on most matters. National Security stories were suspect, because our government always wanted to protect its sources and its ultimate public standing vis-a-vis the Soviet and Chinese threats. How odd that we are back where we began. Worrying and speculating Russian and Chinese threats. However, we have billionaires a plenty and AI promising to produce a few trillionaires here and there, while Americans lose their middle/blue collar/working class rights, privileges, and benefits.
TV news was not then a profit center. Making newscasters multi-millionaires has not helped to proffer the integrity of on-line truthful information via social media, as it is presented anonymously in many cases. News disseminators in the MSM clearly prefer to be rich celebrities, quoted everywhere all the time. It is sickening. Cronkite wanted a normal American life. He retired to the Cape in his 60s to spend quality family time with his beloved wife on his boat. He was a most honorable man in life and remembered with affection and honored in death. No big $$$ for him. It was enough for Cronkite to simply tell the American people nightly "and that's the way it was" before signing off.
Salaries for folks in the news profession need to be brought into balance. Advertising needs to not be permitted to compromise truth-telling to the public. Just the facts are what the American people need, without the frills, cleavage, big hair, and annoying white teeth delivering a con job every minute of every day. I believe sincerely this is the big picture problem with the MSM. As for Weiss? She will annoy the right person at the wrong time, and she will be gone. She is a somebody now with a nobody character. Those types cannot last long in the doggie/dog world of news/entertainment. What frightens me is that she may very well be replaced by someone even more corrupt.
Well stated Barbra, instead of real news we have show biz, I worked in show biz for over 30 years, everyone wants their F You money, and I don't blame people for grabbing it when they can. I have seen so many people I knew or knew about many years ago, in the news recently, most of them look like shit, no one would pay them squat to be in front of a camera anymore, but most of them are probably a lot better off than factory workers of the same age. For some genetics is the luck of the draw. I don't know if we will ever be able to get the news genie back in the can, any more than we'll get people to buy newspapers again. I admit I like looking at beautiful women on TV, I spent 30 years photographing them, but I want them to be telling me the truth about what happened that day, honestly, that is the most important thing to me. Wardrobe make-up and hair people can do wonders, I'm reminded of that every time I walk past a mirror, I have known many of those people over the years, they are good people who work hard at their craft, every time I turn on my TV I see their magic.
Our country started to shift with the convergence of marketing & branding with the mid-80s changes in Wall Street. I was provided PR training in 1990 (was running a small B2B company) and the main point of the training was how to manipulate the media. I was mindblown by the premise. I had grown up with a great respect for journalists, had some minimal training in it and a brother with a degree in journalism from Northwestern. But what I began to see over the next 15 years was that the people making huge money on both sides of the table saw the whole thing as a game, and both sides could make money based on lies. Wall Street would know they were being lied to, but it was ok because "wink-wink" they could make a killing. The concepts of corporate good and valuing both staff and customers were thrown out the window. And now we have a generation that knows nothing else, having been raised on this diet. We the People need to wake up and vote with our wallets by boycotting those companies supporting these efforts, as well as show up for all elections, and doing jury duty (our civic responsibility). It's no surprise that a reality TV show actor became a president. The people had been conditioned for it... isn't that one of the definitions of propaganda?
"Bari Weiss and her hand-picked buffoon, a shallow man with a great head of hair, say that they love America, but they don’t love the American people enough to tell them the truth about the peril at hand."
And our nation and world are in a very perilous situation. You will never hear from Jon Duffy on CBS or any other news outlet catering to our dictator.Jon Duffy, a retired naval officer, wrote a column appearing in my local paper today. It is a condemnation of Trump’s abuse of power by invading Venezuela and a detailed explanation of how dangerous the action is. Some quotes:
“This is not a question of whether Maduro ‘deserved’ removal. It is a question of whether President Donald Trump may unilaterally decide to overthrow another government using American military force—and whether that decision now passes without objection.
The operation in Venezuela bypassed every mechanism normally used to legitimize American power abroad—judicial process, international authorization, collective defense, congressional consent.
Requiring Congress to authorize the use of coercive American power was meant to slow decisions, demand justification and bind military action to collective judgment rather than individual will.
The administration’s insistence that the Venezuelan operation was a ‘law enforcement mission’ is extremely dangerous.
Law enforcement does not involve airstrikes inside sovereign countries, the forcible removal of a foreign head of state, or the projection of U.S. criminal claims across borders by military force.
A U.S. that claims the unilateral right to overthrow foreign governments forfeits its ability to object when others do the same.
A government that learns it can use force abroad without restraint will apply the same logic at home—redefining law, emergency, and necessity to suit its aims.
A public that relinquishes its voice over war should not expect to be heard when power turns inward.
When war powers are exercised this way, Congress does not merely fail in its duties; it becomes ornamental. And when that happens, the constitutional system designed to restrain the use of the military gives way to something far more dangerous: authority asserted by one individual.”
The Daily Gazette (Schenectady, NY), 1/7/25, “Trump just removed the last restraints on presidential power,” p. A4
Thank You Anthony .. Jon Duffy said it clearly. It infuriates me when the newspapers and pundits go on about how Maduro is a bad person and our military is so brilliant . They go and on about how amazing they are . This may be so ,but this is not the story. To go into a sovereign country and kidnap it's leader and his wife is despicable. This is the story. Where is the outrage? Maduro is a filthy swine by all accounts but it is there country and it's people who need to fix it. Who are these maga voters who think it's ok to one day say it's drugs and kill the people in the boats and then the next day we want the oil. Oy ! Don't tell me they don't know because they watch and read other news outlets. I don't believe that they don't know .....lost in america
While I wouldn't call that a nutshell, it sums it up quite accurately Anthony. The insipid orange turd just gave putin and zhie permission to do the same, and anyone that thinks this won't lead to WWIII has their head up their ass just like the IOT and all of his enablers. When you add the breakage of NATO and all of the security that it provided, WWIII becomes much more likely. Nothing is certain, but the odds keep getting worse, add to that his dementia, and that even on his best day he wasn't smarter than your average 6 year old, somehow the nation gave him the keys to our nuclear codes, well if you are depressed about all of this, it's an indication that you are sane.
"A government that learns it can use force abroad without restraint will apply the same logic at home—redefining law, emergency, and necessity to suit its aims."
And today, our government has murdered a woman in Minneapolis in cold blood. Without mercy and without shame - and without reason. We are well and truly fucked.
As usual, thanks Anthony.
The OILAGARCHS are destroying our democracy along with the moneyed elites, politicians are bought off, supreme court is corrupted…..
Lets do something
Do not bend the knee
One can only hope there is some blowback for these creatures.
Simple: leave the U.S.
Half-facetious, maybe…but when friends and family are genuinely asking how to open foreign bank accounts, and a quarter of my social circle has already left in the past year alone, something fundamental has shifted.
The real question isn’t whether people will leave an increasingly authoritarian system, but how many more will go in the next few months.
Who wants to live through this?
The answer, for those with the money and resources to actually have a choice, seems increasingly clear.
Exit is becoming less theoretical and more operational. The people with options are starting to use them.
What the hell?!
It's a decision, albeit difficult, to expatriate. I do not judge those who chose to leave. I have no money but should a windfall come my way I'd stay right here and suffer the rot because I still believe we can weather this. I'm invested in America in many ways and it sorrows me that many people are leaving, or weighing leaving. For me, I'll stand fast.
US Marine Corps, RVN
Yes, I like it and agree. I’m just surprised. But, behaviorally, not that surprised.
I'm not going anywhere either David, while I might think about moving to Europe because I loved traveling there in the past, if these clowns ignite WWIII, Europe will go up in flames as will the rest of the world. I suppose I could look at it like some of the Jews who escaped the Nazis, and lived productive lives here in the US, moving in their cases promoted life. At 79 I have already promoted as much life as is likely this time around, so I'll just try to bring comfort to my loved ones. The younger generation doesn't have our understanding of how bad it can get, even though we have tried to warn them. VN seared into our consciousness what hell was like, we'll know soon enough if the rest of the country is about to learn that lesson, I hope not.
75th Rangers, RVN
Dick, thank you for a well reasoned and elegant post. I think many Vietnam veterans are informed from experience and should be compelled to pass on the events we lived through, and not just Vietnam. I'd like to stay around for a while and with any luck, witness a recalibration should it be realized. Courage.
Who can blame them?
Every elected Republican in DC swore a well known oath to the Constitution. Absorbed by late-stage capitalism, MSM normalizes the monumental daily dereliction of nearly all of them. Democrats meanwhile say “wait ‘til the next election”, essentially normalizing their conscious, ongoing sedition. Perhaps instead of waiting, the DNC should spearhead nationwide initiatives to recall every damned one of them. Supporting evidence abounds.
“CBS News has proclaimed that it is the “We Love America” network, which is a lie built on lies, stacked on more lies, wrapped in layers of more lies.”
So in essence, CBS is a mystery wrapped in an enigma of lies: Transparently so! Good to know!
As to the pathetic display of sycophancy from Tony Dokoupil? My god, how the mighty have fallen. Cronkite and Murrow must be rolling over in their graves….:)
Do the oligarchs, elites, business leaders, and Republicans in Congress actually believe that trump & MAGA will last forever?!
Also, they seem not to understand that in the long-run they will lose everything.
Gonna let others monitor Trump-CBS. Indi-media is for me now.
“Let’s all of us hold that Little Marco profile close. It will be the perfect thing to recall when American kids start coming home in boxes.”
This snatch and grab, along with our blockade of Venezuela may lead to the current Cuban government being overthrown. Cuba currently relies on subsidized Venezuelan refined oil to keep what’s left of its annihilated economy running on fumes.
However, if the results are anything close to the solution these clowns have put forward in Venezuela; we will just be replacing on corrupt ruling junta, with one far worse; just getting its marching orders from Washington.
I guess we’ll see if the Miami Cuban community goes along, and whether it was just their hatred of Castro and his regime, instead of communism (actually socialism) that left them wanting their pound of flesh.
That said, I don’t see how our treatment will be any better, unless you’re the businessmen with ties to Trump waiting in the wings, and salivating at the thought of President Miguel Díaz-Cane’s downfall. IMHO…:)
These are the Murders for Jesus! It shouldn't make sense.
A Jeremiad to realize. But we are now a nation of opinionaters and influencers who "might" offer concrete "evidence", rarely with attribution or provenance. The lie, told often enough, when it is what one is predispostioned to hear, becomes as though coming directly from Mt Sinai.
Yeah..right..That's why they sold their soul to a 2 bit Putin sucking liar, heh?🤨
Sorry Steve, but Bari Weiss should not be the main target of your/our ire with CBS or 60 Minutes for that matter. It is the out-of-control money in the news industry. The entire MSM has been corrupted by Trump. Turner's CNN (which I rarely watch any longer) is unrecognizable. MS Now has admirable commentators (I will not use the word journalists, because most of the people with their own shows are not true journalists, as has historically been the case). CBS' Cronkite/Rather/etc. had honest news feeds delivering facts via stringers (not "network stars"), who were busy taking notes and using their cameras for simple copy/film and not involved primarily in producing interpretation of political policy making - which is what we have today. Interpretation was left to our scholars and historians. Early TV news gathering procedures once mimicked newspaper reporting via Reuters and AP feed, but with television cameras. Took longer to gather the news before satellite technology, but it was reliable on most matters. National Security stories were suspect, because our government always wanted to protect its sources and its ultimate public standing vis-a-vis the Soviet and Chinese threats. How odd that we are back where we began. Worrying and speculating Russian and Chinese threats. However, we have billionaires a plenty and AI promising to produce a few trillionaires here and there, while Americans lose their middle/blue collar/working class rights, privileges, and benefits.
TV news was not then a profit center. Making newscasters multi-millionaires has not helped to proffer the integrity of on-line truthful information via social media, as it is presented anonymously in many cases. News disseminators in the MSM clearly prefer to be rich celebrities, quoted everywhere all the time. It is sickening. Cronkite wanted a normal American life. He retired to the Cape in his 60s to spend quality family time with his beloved wife on his boat. He was a most honorable man in life and remembered with affection and honored in death. No big $$$ for him. It was enough for Cronkite to simply tell the American people nightly "and that's the way it was" before signing off.
Salaries for folks in the news profession need to be brought into balance. Advertising needs to not be permitted to compromise truth-telling to the public. Just the facts are what the American people need, without the frills, cleavage, big hair, and annoying white teeth delivering a con job every minute of every day. I believe sincerely this is the big picture problem with the MSM. As for Weiss? She will annoy the right person at the wrong time, and she will be gone. She is a somebody now with a nobody character. Those types cannot last long in the doggie/dog world of news/entertainment. What frightens me is that she may very well be replaced by someone even more corrupt.
Well stated Barbra, instead of real news we have show biz, I worked in show biz for over 30 years, everyone wants their F You money, and I don't blame people for grabbing it when they can. I have seen so many people I knew or knew about many years ago, in the news recently, most of them look like shit, no one would pay them squat to be in front of a camera anymore, but most of them are probably a lot better off than factory workers of the same age. For some genetics is the luck of the draw. I don't know if we will ever be able to get the news genie back in the can, any more than we'll get people to buy newspapers again. I admit I like looking at beautiful women on TV, I spent 30 years photographing them, but I want them to be telling me the truth about what happened that day, honestly, that is the most important thing to me. Wardrobe make-up and hair people can do wonders, I'm reminded of that every time I walk past a mirror, I have known many of those people over the years, they are good people who work hard at their craft, every time I turn on my TV I see their magic.
Our country started to shift with the convergence of marketing & branding with the mid-80s changes in Wall Street. I was provided PR training in 1990 (was running a small B2B company) and the main point of the training was how to manipulate the media. I was mindblown by the premise. I had grown up with a great respect for journalists, had some minimal training in it and a brother with a degree in journalism from Northwestern. But what I began to see over the next 15 years was that the people making huge money on both sides of the table saw the whole thing as a game, and both sides could make money based on lies. Wall Street would know they were being lied to, but it was ok because "wink-wink" they could make a killing. The concepts of corporate good and valuing both staff and customers were thrown out the window. And now we have a generation that knows nothing else, having been raised on this diet. We the People need to wake up and vote with our wallets by boycotting those companies supporting these efforts, as well as show up for all elections, and doing jury duty (our civic responsibility). It's no surprise that a reality TV show actor became a president. The people had been conditioned for it... isn't that one of the definitions of propaganda?
It seems no one thought that the desperate measures were needed during these desperate times.
Thank you for the inclusion of Yeats. Prescient, wasn't he? As was Shakespeare when he wrote "Hell is empty, and all the devils are here!"