I bring you one of the most sordid tales of backstabbing intrigue ever. Alex Morse is the victim of one of the grossest smear campaigns I've seen in a long time and the story is a mashup of everything that's wrong with everything right now
So we now know the entirety of the 2020 Democratic ticket, a controversy / conspiracy involving the USPS and our pending mail voting tsunami, and btw we don't know who is supposed to be running DHS but we know who isn't supposed to be running it and surprise it's the two people who aren't supposed to be running it
Matt wrote a piece for Reason about his journey trying to find decent data on the safety of sending kids (namely his own) back into a brick and mortar school environment. Spoiler alert - it was quite the frustrating experience, not made any easier by the media and its current incentive structure. And because it's us there's plenty of talk about other stuff too Link to Matt's piece - https://reason.com/2020/08/12/media-alarmism-is-making-it-difficult-to-assess-school-reopening/
Sure everything is bad is right right now and that includes the current educational mess we find ourselves in for the 2020 - 2021 school year but there may be a silver lining here - parents across the country are going to have to join the school choice conversation Corey and I discuss what this could all mean for school choice going forward, especially as it relates to the money spent on eduction and the options on offer going forward Link to the EdChoice public opinion tracker Corey references ...
Trump decided this is the week he's granting himself the power to decide if Tik Tok and WeChat get to operate in the US and to institute his own covid relief plan via EO (none of this seems particularly legal btw), and Beirut suffers an explosion that due to social media we all knew about in real time
As I'm sure everyone is aware YAL's Mobilize 2020 got canceled at the last minute by the city of Dallas (insert rage emoji here) so I have a brief chat with Cliff Maloney, president of YAL, to find out what happened. Stay tuned after the interview where I give my own thoughts and explanation as to why I am mad about the cancelation.
I think I can use this episode's title for every weekly roundup for at least the rest of the year... We got Q2's GDP numbers and yeah lol we're boned, Portland seems to be healing now that the feds are leaving, the Trump administration is trying another DHS DACA memo out, Congress having another useless tech hearing, and hey did you remember this is still an election year and that Biden has to name a running mate
So as everyone on Earth knows the feds were sent into Portland to do...I don't know what exactly and Nancy went to go document what was going on and report back to us
Things in Portland aren't slowing down and neither is the trend of deploying Feds to cities who didn't ask for their assistance, the Trump administration is *still* trying to keep illegal immigrants from being counted on the Census and to keep from having to reinstitute DACA, and a return of the Covington story now that settlements are being made
Where I look into movements that have come and gone in the past (namely girlboss feminism and #MeToo) to predict the future of the current It Movement Let's just say the future doesn't look bright Link to Leigh Stein's Medium piece referenced - https://gen.medium.com/the-end-of-the-girlboss-is-nigh-4591dec34ed8
Things we learned this past week - root access to Twitter can be bought for an insanely low price, DHS can send CBP into Portland because they feel like it, and libertarians like to fight over dumb stuff (to be fair you probably already knew about that last one)
Jesse and I have a conversation about The Letter (which he is a signer of), the discourse around The Letter (which involves him), The Counter Letter (which also involves him), a bit about Bari Weiss (that does not involve him), and his and Katie Herzog's new (very successful!) new podcast Blocked and Reported Blocked and Reported Patreon page - https://www.patreon.com/blockedandreported Jesse's Substack page - https://jessesingal.substack.com...
Things happened outside The Discourse over the past week, including the Trump administration trying to either force universities to open or force foreign students to go home, some more SCOTUS decisions that are quite significant, and the commutation of Roger Stone's prison sentence It's been a busy week
Awful lot of gaslighting and strawmannirg and willfully (?) misinterpreting certain things this week... Of course this is about The Letter but also about Taylor Lorenz and clickbait culture and the insane reactions people have had to both stories and wow things have been crazy the past few days
We had an abbreviated holiday week with featured a bit of bad and good news on the unemployment front, conditions worsening drastically in HK (and how we can't really help), and the return of a story I first covered waaaaaaaay back when I first started making content - the Shitty Media Men list (yeah I know I missed a few presidents on that statue garden list don't @ me)
So about Parler, the hot new free speech no "censorship" platform that...well...isn't quite Spoiler alert - yeah you might want to go ahead and delete your account before someone decides to sue Parler over something you said on the platform
We've got unemployment claims leveling off at an alarmingly high number, Trump extending the green card ban until the end of the year and adding in some more groups of people who can't come to the US, a whole discussion about a noose, and idiots tearing down statues On the bright side we do have grand jury charges against the men involved in Arbury's death and Braun gave us a bill to significantly change QI so it's not all bad
Where we discusser her Arc Digital article of the same name plus a *lot* of other things Link to Cathy's piece - https://arcdigital.media/feminism-racism-and-the-damsel-in-distress-1aa65c5172cc
In which I discuss the reactions (or lack thereof) to the Brooks shooting, the rather momentous SCOTUS decisions we got this week, and Trump's weird failed Tulsa rally There's also talk about Bolton's book and a slightly off topic ramble about cop who lie about fast food incidents
I don't mean this as shade toward anyone, I just wanted to get some stuff off my chest because I've been thinking about it....
As the country slides even further into delirium we still manage a conversation about what to do about policing, ancoms take over a chunk of Seattle, and (sadly) we have another death at the hands of police
Things have certainly gotten weird(er) in the mediasphere since the NTY - Cotton op-ed incident and the frenzy is continuing at at breakneck pace I have some thoughts
This is a long episode because this was a looooooong week full of fairly important news. We got a boatload of police brutality, a very stupid (but reprehensible) Trump photo op, protesting marking the end of social distancing, and the NYT twisting itself into a pretzel over nonsense
Peter and I talk about his change in philosophical strategy and his new documentary The Monopoly On Violence Which if you haven't seen it.... https://youtu.be/XWAEKQjN-yM
A lot of news happened this week A *lot* We got a ridiculous Trump EO, the internet trying to decide which Karen was the worse Kaen in a total Karen situation, and footage of yet another police killing which has sparked protests and riots across the country.
This week we were reminded that yes there is still a presidential campaign taking place with Biden starting his VP vetting process with a few ladies (and currently minus one lady) And I watched the LP National convention part 1. Yeah. It was quite something.
A discussion about the online reaction to the Arbery case, the Breonna Taylor murder by cop, the Senate reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act (while crying crocodile tears), NYC residents deciding to go back out, and Amash breaking my heart Link to the Pete Quinones piece - https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/how-members-of-gun-culture-view-the-ahmaud-arbery-killing/ Link to the Fleischman piece - https://arcdigital.media/the-ahmaud-arbery-killing-and-georgia-law-72ebb5c7643b...
There have been many a person twisting themselves into a knot over wanting to publicly say they believe Tara Reade but also believe Joe Biden and I found a particularly good example to discuss - the Linda Hirshman op-ed for NYT
Things I discuss from this last week: Unemployment numbers What retail looks like now Trump vetos the War Powers Act Flynn gets acquitted (while I was recording the last episode talking about Flynn) LP finally decides on a convention schedule The almost too bad to be real Ahmaud Abery story
So last week the country got to see a little glimpse into how LEO works via new info on the FBI's questioning of Flynn and the Biden sexual assault allegation becomes quite the quandary for the Believe All Women crowd (I recorded this before the news that Flynn's charges will be dropped so obviously more on that later)
