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Matt Lewis, Ron Brownstein, CNN propagandists

On Saturday October 12 2019 in the 8-00 p.m. CNN slot a hit piece about Bernie Sanders was tagged onto the end of another completely different story for which Matt Lewis, senior columnist for the Daily Beast and CNN political commentator Ron Brownstein, senior editor for The Atlantic and CNN senior political analyst were panelists.

The piece featured an interview with Bernie talking about what his response would be to voters who think he is very similar to Elizabeth Warren as far as policy is concerned but she hasn’t had a recent heart attack. In the full video clip, Bernie alludes to policy differences between himself and his friend Elizabeth but this part was not shown in the edited CNN clip (from ‘This Week’ on ABC). CNN do not allow any of their (edited for propaganda) video clips to be embedded in other websites.

Instead, responding to the edited clip Lewis and Brownstein suggest that Warren has been doing better than Bernie in polls (i.e. those polls cherry picked by CNN, misleadingly propagandized by CNN and against a background of opacity (non-transparency) about DNC criteria for presidential debate qualification as Tulsi has recently argued). Tulsi left her position in the DNC due to their rigging the 2016 primary for Hillary against Bernie (though disappointingly she now is not for single payer Medicare for all).

Neither Matt Lewis nor Ron Brownstein mentioned the record-breaking grassroots support and donations for Bernie at the end of September. Neither mentioned his recent phone volunteer grassroots campaign in which more than 1.3 million phone calls were made by Bernie volunteers on his behalf. They both know these facts.

These two - Brownstein and Lewis - are corporate stooges, paid by the status quo. Paid propagandists. How can they live with themselves?

Climate Change And The Prisoner’s Dilemma

(The above caption is from the website of the Union Of Concerned Scientists (https://www.ucsusa.org/.) The following below is a draft excerpt from a forthcoming book, which amongst other things touches on the prisoner’s dilemma (game theory) and its application for climate change and the Green New Deal.)

Suppose there are two prisoners, detained in separate cells, with no way of communicating with each other. We can imagine that the District Attorney knows that she has enough evidence right now in order to convict both prisoners on a lesser charge, but she will only be able to get a conviction on a more serious charge if she can get at least one of them to incriminate the other. The D.A. offers the prisoners a deal, (making it clear to each that the other prisoner is getting the same deal). The deal is this:

If you incriminate the other prisoner of a major charge, he will get the death penalty and you will go free, provided that there is no evidence against you. If you both incriminate each other, you will both stay in prison for life. If you remain silent, and the other prisoner incriminates you, then it will be you who faces the death penalty (and he will go free). If you both remain silent, then you will both stay in prison, but for a limited term, on a lesser charge.

Suppose you are rationally self-interested, and find yourself in the above situation – what should you do? The other prisoner can either incriminate you or not incriminate you. Suppose first that the other prisoner is going to incriminate you. Since you want to do what is in your own best interest, you want to avoid the scenario in which he incriminates you but you don’t incriminate him (because in that scenario you would get the death penalty). So in that case you should incriminate the other prisoner, being rationally self-interested.

Don Lemon Pelosi and AOC

Don Lemon July 11

Don Lemon’s producers included a section in his show regarding Democratic Party House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s public spat with a ‘squad’ of four including ALexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The section was prefaced in terms of Pelosi being reluctant to impeach Trump or investigate Alex Acosta’s connection with the sex-trafficking of Jeff Epstein, but the broader emphasis was on the public disagreement between AOC and Pelosi regarding the direction of the Democratic Party generally. Pelosi represents the old guard establishment, whereas AOC etc. represents the progressive wing of the party. Should these two apparently inconsistent factions within the Democratic Party be reconciled in order to defeat Trump in 2020. Can they be reconciled?

On The Psychology Of Media Propaganda

The primacy / recency effects and how they are subverted for MSM propaganda

A strange thing often happens a few minutes prior to the end of main stream media shows about politics in the USA. Just focusing on CNN, consider the shows of Erin Burnett, Ana Cabrera, Anderson Cooper, Chris Cuomo etc. Unwitting viewers of these shows are often presented with some seemingly light-hearted or otherwise apparently innocuous story (or cringeworthy hand-over from one anchor to another). These contrast starkly in tone with the often acrimonious previously broadcast disputes between politicians and panelists representing the corporate duopoly of the GOP or Democratic Party.

For example, on Saturday September 7, 2019, Ana Cabrera finished with a short segment about recent research on Loch Ness in Scotland and the suggestion that ‘Nessie’ may be a giant eel. Consider the frequent Jeannie Moos short segments at the end of the Erin Burnett OutFront show on CNN. Consider the cringeworthy handovers between Anderson Cooper and Chris Cuomo, or between Cuomo and Don Lemon (not to mention Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC). Not least, remember the day when Trump announced his tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires (to be paid for by cuts to Medicare over ten years)? That day, CNN and other corporate media outlets ran a story at the end of some of their shows about military UFO sightings.

Come on man

On Friday July 5 CNN aired segments of Chris Cuomo’s ‘one-on-one’ with Joe Biden (in a cafe, the kind of place Biden likes to be seen). The same segments were introduced in the afternoon (by Dana Bash in for Jake Tapper) and at eight o’clock (by Jim Sciuto, in for Chris Cuomo).

Monmouth, CNN and Warren - please don’t make me gaffe

On Monday August 26, the result of a new Monmouth University nationwide poll was revealed in the corporate media. Noticeably, CNN did the opposite of what they usually do when a poll favorable to Biden is discussed - they put the poll in at least some context. At least, that’s Wolf Blitzer’s conservative panel on ‘The Situation Room’ generally tried to seem to be doing (with the exception of Jeffrey Toobin).

Breaking news: Cuomo wastes Nina Turner’s time

Tuesday June 25 2019

Chris Cuomo began his show with the usual let’s get after it. Next was a segment billed as a precursor to the first set of Democratic Primary debates, on Wednesday 26 and Thursday 27 June on CNN. Invited guests were Nina Turner (from Bernie’s 2020 campaign, previously denied the opportunity to speak at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in 2016) and former Governor of Pennsylvania and ex DNC Ed Rendell.

Criminal Justice Reform And The Death Penalty

What is it that morally justifies legal punishment (i.e. state sanctioned punishment of criminals)? There are at least four main possible responses as far as the death penalty is concerned.

First, God commands (‘lex talionis’?) that murderers must die. Although this idea is explored briefly in what follows, it depends on the notion that God exists to begin with (which God?). Since Plato showed that even if some God does exist, morality can’t depend on any authority (even a divine one) this possibility won’t be pursued here. However it should briefly be mentioned that governments in other countries (and terrorist groups) enforce religiously motivated capital punishment. For example Saudi Arabia, an ally of the USA, sanctions the religiously motivated beheading of people for actions that would not be deemed as crimes in civilized countries.

The second option is a retributivist one, of which there is an absolute and proportional variety. On each view, the moral justification for punishment has nothing to do with punishment having any deterrence value. Punishment is just a matter of retribution, i.e of giving the offender what they morally deserve.

Rob Astorino Out Front July 16

Interviewed by Erin Burnett (together with April Ryan and Keith Boykin), Trump surrogate Rob Astorino made a number of false statements and fallacious inferences designed to obfuscate and subtly propagate the effects of the racist remarks Trump had made the previous day against four progressive Congress members and women of color. Unfortunately these falsities were not called out in the actual segment, which consisted of righteous indignation to Astorino’s claims rather than refuting them with reason and logic. The following attempts to do what might have been done during the segment in question.

The Smears Of A Clown: CNN

On Monday August 12 2019 Bernie was the top trending topic on Twitter with #myberniestory - over a thousand supporters posted a video explaining why they were supporting Bernie. This is newsworthy one might naively think - maybe not the main political topic but certainly worth a mention in one of the CNN segments that day. Wrong. Instead, CNN spent the day smearing Bernie regarding quite innocuous and obviously true comments he made about the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos etc.

Erin you sound like someone in the media

Tuesday June 18 2019

On Outfront with Erin Burnett, Erin did an interview with Bernie Sanders. The context was that Bernie was going to reply to Trump’s official launch of his re-election campaign in Florida later that evening.

Erin asked what Bernie was going to say in response to Trump’s rally (before Bernie had heard Trump’s speech). Bernie made some tongue in cheek speculative predictions that Trump would probably not talk about having wanted to throw 30 million people off their existing health insurance with no alternative plan for them, or the tax breaks he gave to billionaires etc.

Erin asked about Bernie’s view on recent attacks on commercial oil tankers in the gulf of Oman which the CIA allege are likely Iranian in origin. Bernie responded that the attacks should be investigated, but reminded viewers that the American government lied to its citizens about the pretext for the war in Vietnam and the Iraq war (also indicating that according to the constitution only congress has the power to declare war, not any president).

Two un-televised Biden Gaffes re El Paso TX and Dayton OH

Gaffe number 1:

Two mass shootings occurred early August 2019 in El Paso Texas and Dayton Ohio. In his initial response, Biden falsely referred to the shootings as having happened in Houston and Michigan. According to Snopes.com

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-houston-and-michigan/

(amongst many other sources):

“Presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden incorrectly referred to the locations of two mass shootings in August 2019 in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, as having happened in “Houston,” Texas, and “Michigan.” The remark came during a speech Biden gave at a fundraiser in San Diego, California, on Aug. 4, the same day as the Dayton massacre.

Steve Kornacki HardBall June 17 2019

Several Democratic Nominee Candidates appeared at the Poor People’s Campaign on June 17, 2019. Amongst them were Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. These candidates were the focus of the 2020 race on MSM that day, in the context of an alleged boost in popularity of Elizabeth Warren in polls, suggesting a fall in Bernie’s popularity amongst progressives whilst (most importantly) doing damage limitation on the bad week Joe Biden had just had (in which he switched his position on the Hyde amendment regarding abortion). The subliminal suggestion was that Biden had previously had a bad week, but now Bernie is having one too. (The corporate media’s job is to negate any progressive candidate with a serious chance of being the democratic nominee).

Contrary to the MSM, the above claimed symmetry between Bernie and Biden does not actually exist since Biden’s bad publicity arose from his actual overnight policy change regarding the Hyde amendment, whereas Bernie was just alleged to be dropping in popularity in relation to Warren according to a poll in one particular state. (As we know, the polls that suggest that Biden is the Democratic Party front runner are skewed.)

Healthcare, murder (and mass shootings) - Tapper v Bernie

The issue of health care has been one of the most pressing concerns amongst voters as far as recent polls about Democratic Party candidates for President have been concerned. Following the tragic mass shootings in El Paso Texas and Dayton Ohio (August 3 and 4), the importance of an issue that Jake Tapper raised with Bernie prior to the second round of debates has increased exponentially (though the media are not talking about it).

Tapper basically asked Bernie: are the CEOs of pharmaceutical companies akin to murderers? (If they are, they produce far more death than the El Paso and Dayton murderers and ought to be condemned.)

Aren’t such CEOs and pharmaceutical companies right to think that they are helping people (Jake asked?) Bernie responded that there is a philosophical issue here that needs to be addressed. The format of the tv interview didn’t allow for a philosophical discussion but even a decent undergraduate moral philosophy student can see that Bernie is right if we reject consequentialism.

Chris Cillizza

June 11, 2019, Chris Cillizza wrote (on CNN.com):

“Speaking to a group of donors and lobbyists in Washington on Monday night, Joe Biden said this of the Republican Party post-Donald Trump:

"With Trump gone you're going to begin to see things change. Because these folks know better. They know this isn't what they're supposed to be doing."

That is, without any exaggeration, a radical view from the man who polling suggests is the front-runner to be the party's nominee against Trump in November 2020.

Why? Because the commonly held view among liberals, who compose the base of the Democratic Party, is that Trump is not an anomaly or a virus within the broader Republican Party, he is the Republican Party. That attempts, like Biden's, to say Trump is "other" than the GOP lessens the party's culpability on its capitulation to the darker forces at work in the President's message and the party he represents.

Thomas Friedman, Revolution and the Debt Ceiling

July 22

Anderson Cooper included a prerecorded lengthy segment on his show AC 360 in which he interviewed Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and author of ‘Thank you for being late’. The main point of discussion during the piece concerned Friedman’s recent op ed piece in the New York Times titled ‘Spare me the Revolution’.

The Trump/Biden voter base and the source of morality

(The following is excerpted from a draft of a forthcoming book)

As previously stated in the introduction Jefferson amended Locke’s phrase ‘life, liberty and property’ (from the latter’s 2nd Treatise on Government) to the phrase ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ in the former’s list of what he regarded as self-evidently inalienable rights with which all men have been endowed by their creator (though Jefferson was a deist, not a theist). This was in contrast to the notion that an English king had a divinely granted indirect moral authority to take away the right of life liberty or property (mainly property, i.e. that of the wealthy drafters of the constitution, drafted after Shay’s Rebellion which acted as somewhat of a catalyst). Despite this, the contemporary American Christian religious view is that although one has been endowed by one’s creator with certain inalienable rights, the creator (unlike the king) DOES have the moral authority to capriciously take those rights away.

So for Jefferson, a non-existent theistic God has the authority to take away your property, but not the King of England: i.e. you can consistently reject the King of England (in the war of independence) but accept God. This sounds like a political scam of the sort that Donald Trump would be proud of. Most uneducated people at the time were religious, who (unlike Jefferson) thought that the King of England and God were equally real.

However, set aside Jefferson’s pro-revolutionary war con for a moment. Suppose he was wrong about denying the existence of a traditional theistic God in the Christian or Muslim sense. A deeper question regarding the relationship between authority and morality arises - does what is morally right or good depend on authority? Can ANY authority be the source of moral rights (and morality in general)?

S. E. Cupp Unfiltered - Bernie Media Bias?

‘Bernie media bias?’ was the title of a segment on the S.E. Cupp Unfiltered show, CNN Saturday July 20.

One sometimes comes across the idea online that to think that the media is biased against Bernie is a case of ‘confirmation bias’. In other words, on this view one already believes that the media is biased against Bernie and is looking for evidence which supports one’s preconception, whilst ignoring other evidence that contradicts one’s bias.

However, if one considers the following evidence one cannot rationally deny that objectively, there is widespread and systematic media bias (putting it mildly) against Bernie. For instance, in the 2016 primaries:

Hundreds of Democratic Party super-delegates in 2016 (including Donna Brazile) were portrayed by the media as already on Hillary’s side before a single primary vote was cast, giving voters the impression that Bernie faced an insurmountable task. Although Bernie’s policies were appealing many didn’t vote for him because they thought he couldn’t win - directly because of media bias (super-delegates weren’t supposed to vote until the end of the primary process).

(In 2020, skewed media polls have taken the place of super-delegates (who will become relevant if a second ballot is called for).)

2016 "lesser of two evils" argument debunked again for 2020

(In the above screenshot taken from YouTube regarding video of CNN coverage of the latest cherry-picked poll (SSRS) that favors Joe Biden and the corresponding propaganda footage of Jill Biden included in the video clip, notice that dislikes outnumber likes by almost 3 to 1.)

Tuesday August 20 2019: The for-profit corporate news outlet CNN ran a segment on several of their shows throughout the day (on Tapper, Blitzer, Burnett and more) which highlighted a new SSRS poll claiming Biden to be in the lead and Kamala Harris plummeting. In each of these segments coverage of the poll was combined with new footage of Jill Biden claiming that voters may prefer another candidate on some or other policy e.g. climate change but they should vote for Joe anyway. The comedic gist was that he’s far from perfect as a politician but at least he’s not Trump. The usual conservative panelists (e.g. Bill Krystal, Kirsten Powers) basically agreed, throughout the day playing down the comedic element of Biden’s wife now taking on the gauntlet of perpetuating Biden gaffes.

The Draw Thursday July 18

Anderson Cooper: “Normally the Democratic Party nominee is picked behind closed doors but still wants to give the impression of being Democratic. However, after the 2016 primaries when our panelist Donna Brazille got caught colluding with the DNC to sabotage Bernie we want to try to make the nomination process seem as transparent and unbiased as possible (even though it’s obviously not).”

Wolf Blitzer: “That’s right Anderson. Although we bias our daily political coverage in favor of Joe Biden, we often try to appear like we’re objective and neutral by covering other corporate candidates who claim to be progressive like Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren. To the extent that we mention Bernie, we only do so in a negative way.”

David Chalian: “The candidates are divided into three groups based on how well they are polling. Of course, the CNN / SSRS April poll which had Joe Biden as the front-runner excluded the opinions of people under the age of 50. So the way this whole draw is set up is of dubious reliability.”

David Axelrod: “That’s right. Remember we said that many people’s views changed after watching our coverage in which Kamala Harris attacked Joe Biden in the first debate - yet according to the SSRS poll (in the caption above) 36% said they hadn’t even watched much of the debate but got their opinions from our spin about it. So I think we can expect more of that kind of thing in the second round of debates.”

Gloria Berger: “Don’t forget that many of these candidates need to have a break-out moment which gives them a boost in polls, and don’t forget we only show the polls that suit our corporate bosses. Remember how Bernie was only six points behind Biden (29%) in the recent ABC news / Washington Post and Reuter’s / IPSOS national polls, whereas Harris and Warren were each at 11%. Don’t forget that CNN never mentioned that poll - we always cherry-pick the polls that favor one or other corporate politician.”

John King: “I agree with what Gloria said. Look, I’ve got a new IPad mini, so I can illustrate the cherry-picking Gloria mentioned, thus shaping public opinion against any progressive candidate, most of all Bernie.”

Everyone: “Who?”

Democratic Party progressive kill-switch 2020

Why are there so many democrat candidates for their party’s presidential candidate for 2020? The obvious answer is that this helps the main stream media (MSM) to continue the DNC’s long-standing policy of thwarting any genuinely progressive candidate from gaining the nomination. With so many of these candidates spuriously claiming to be progressive by paying lip service to Bernie’s 2016 agenda (not to mention Jill Stein’s Green New Deal idea in 2016 which no-one in MSM gives her credit for) the MSM can build up these corporate non-progressives to make it seem to you that they are a younger more electable Bernie. This serves to dilute the progressive message and vote (leaving the MSM to then push for any corporate candidate e.g. Joe ‘Biden his time’ Biden like they did with Hillary and Trump in 2016).