From Pine View Farm

Hypocrisy Watch category archive

All the News that Fits 0

Dick Polman takes issue with the claims of Donald Trump’s lawyers that what the Nation Inquirer did for Donald Trump is somehow “normal journalism.” Here’s a tiny pit of his article:

The National Enquirer’s “sort of thing” – paying people off to kill stories, acting as a propaganda organ for one particular candidate in ways that would do Pravda proud, spending corporate money to aid that favored candidate (essentially free advertising) in violation of federal campaign finance laws – is not something that “happens regularly” in American journalism. If ever.

The entire piece is worth the few minutes it will take to read.

Share

If One Standard Is Good, Two Must Be Better 0

Interviewer:  Joining us now is our regular guest, the widely read pundit who is very concerted about freedom of speech on campua.  Pundit Guy:  Every time a free-thinking contrarian who simply wants to ask questions is invited to speak at a campus, there are protests.  Why are these pampered snowflakes so terrified of opposing points of view?  We cannot allow the censorious left to silence these iconoclastic perspectives.  The free exchange of unpopular ideas is a foundational principle of our nation.  Interviewer:  I see.  Well, on a related note, more than 100 Columbia students were just arreasted for peacefully protesting the war in Gaza.  Pundit Guy:  Good!  They are very annoying and their opinions are bad and wrong.  Other students should not be forced to listen to their nonsensical drivel.  These trouble-making provocateurs deserve to be expelled from school and blackblisted from future employment, if you ask me.  Interviewer:  But you remain staunchly opposed to cancel culture.  Pundit Guy:  Absolutely.  It is a scourge on our society.  Interviewer:  Okay, then.  Thank you for sharing your principled view, Pundit Guy.  Pundit Guy:  Anytime.

Click to view the original image.

Share

It’s Okay If I Do It 0

Copyrights and copywrongs.

Share

Giving America the Business 0

NJ.com reports on what Barry Diller, a businessman with a long track record of success, has to say about Donald Trump’s taking Truth Social public. A snippet;

“I think they’re dopes,” Diller said (of persons buying the stock–ed.). “Who would buy [stock in] a company that … what does it have $30 of revenue? How could you put a value on it? They’re buying it for other reasons, just like they bought theaters when there was no theater business or they bought GameStop or whatever. That’s stupid. It’s stupid stuff.

“Why are you even talking about this? It’s a scam just like everything he’s ever been involved in is some sort of con.”

Share

The Eastman Codex 0

Farron looks at a California judge’s ruling that Trump lawyer John Eastman should be disbarred. He starts by noting that the ruling does not disbar John Eastman; rather, that is up the the Bar Association. Nevertheless, the ruling has implications for Donald Trump, as Farron explains.

Share

Misdirection Play: Hot Air about Windmills 0

Rebecca Burns, author and journalist based in Georgia, to discuss her recent piece in The American Prospect entitled “Against The Wind.”

Aside:

I think that this story, which appeared in my local rag yesterday, may be an example of the misdirection play discussed in this clip.

Most of the valid reports I’ve seen of harm to whales involve collisions with boats, not with stationary objects.

Share

If One Standard Is Good, Two Must Be Better, Disinformation Superhighway Dept. 0

The EFF’s David Greene highlights the hypocrisy, A snippet:

In a case being heard Monday (March 18–ed.) at the Supreme Court, 45 Washington lawmakers have argued that government communications with social media sites about possible election interference misinformation are illegal.

Agencies can’t even pass on information about websites state election officials have identified as disinformation, even if they don’t request that any action be taken, they assert.

Yet just this week the vast majority of those same lawmakers said the government’s interest in removing election interference misinformation from social media justifies banning a site used by 150 million Americans.

Details at the link.

Share

The Disinformation Superhighway 0

Using the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp court case as a starting point, Rebecca Watson discusses how bots and trolls are debasing dis coarse discourse.

Share

A Picture Is Worth 0

PoliticalProf.

Share

Twits Own Twitter X Offenders 0

It looks like the self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” is at it again.

Share

Freedom of Screech 0

Actions speak louder than words, especially when the actions contradict the words.

For example.

Share

“The Party of Personal Responsibility” 0

Share

Originalist Sin 0

At the Idaho State Journal, Leonard Hitchcock skewers the sophistry of “Constitutional Originalist.”

Share

Deceptive by Definition 0

At the Idaho State Journal, Randy Stapilus notes that, in Right-Wing Wonderland, words mean what they–right-wingers, that is–want them to mean.

Share

Republican Family Values 0

Methinks Vixen Strangely has decoded de code.

Aside:

Likely light bloggery this week.

Share

Republican Thought Police 0

The Arizona Republic’s Laurie Roberts cuts to the quick:

Free speech, it seems, must be protected … as long as our (Arizona Republican state legislative–ed.) leaders approve what’s being said, that is.

Follow the link for her evidence.

Share

Lies and Lying Liars? 0

Farron points out the perfidity and perjury are not the same thing.

Share

“The Free Speech Absolutist” 0

Title:  Invisible-Hand-of-the-Free-Market Man senses a brewing crisis.  Hand says to Elon Musk,

Click for the original image.

Share

The Privatization Scam 0

Eric Foster calls out the school voucher con for the underhanded fraud that it is: a violation of the public trust and of governments’ fiduciary duty to the citizenry. Here’s a bit (emphasis added):

I call this kind of public financing of private education a reversion because, in my mind, it represents the government abdicating its duty to educate the citizenry. Again, the public school system was created because we decided that the government should be responsible for educating those whom it serves. When the government gives our tax dollars, which are taken so that the government can perform this duty, not to public schools created in furtherance of that public duty, but to private schools created to make a profit or serve some other private agenda, the government is breaching its obligation to the citizens.

I comment his entire piece to your attention.

Share

Establishmentarians 0

Chris Satullo challenges the establishmentarian impulse of the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Two tiny excerpts:

Mike, last night I took your advice. I took my Bible off the shelf and read the four Gospels straight through. What an inspiring, challenging, confounding set of words. Two thoughts:

1) Your idea that the Bible lays out a comprehensive, clearcut judicial code or policy program for a 21st century civil government does not survive five minutes sitting with the book open on your lap and your mind switched on.

(snip)

2) One thing that is clear as day is that Jesus was suspicious (even contemptuous) of both the temporal and the institutional religious powers of his day, of Rome and the Pharisees.

Follow the link for his reasoning.

Share