We’re not much for nuance. This is how things are, this is how things should be, these are the motherfuckers standing athwart history and yelling stop, as William Buckley described himself, his magazine and conservatism generally.1
Of course now conservatives are mostly reactionaries standing athwart history and shouting “Go back, go back!”
The New York Times is popular as a punching bag for people on the right and on the left. (For centrists it seems to be the good porridge.) One has to be alert to the biases on the news side — whence the sources arrive, what the reporters take for granted, and of course one’s own confirmation bias — but the paper has a lot of reporters doing yeoman’s work, and they give discounted subscriptions to poor folk if one asks.
So you’re stuck with people like Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker,2 and with things like the paper’s routinely abysmal reporting on police issues,3 but you get things like their “democracy team” stories, written by a large reportorial cohort, collected in one place.4
One Times reporter took at face value the denunciation of Mussolini by Giorgia Meloni, the leader of Italy’s fascist party,5 who guided the party to a plurality in the recent elections there, and had previously expressed a fondness for Mussolini’s diatribes against “financial speculators,” here meaning “Jews.” Another Times reporter didn’t, and called out U.S. Republicans for admiring Meloni’s “financial speculators” speech.6
Steve Benen at MSNBC also called out Republicans.
To be sure, some of the celebrations [of Meloni’s win] were from more ridiculous GOP figures, such as Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado. But she wasn’t alone: Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo touted Meloni’s win. So did Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas described Meloni’s speech — the one in which the Italian declared that she and her allies “will never be slaves” to “financial speculators” — as “spectacular.”
Ted Cruz, fellow humans, whose wife is a managing director at Goldman Sachs.
Fascism bad.7
The Inflation Reduction Act probably won’t do much to reduce inflation, but it does have some provisions that are helpful on the green energy front. Unfortunately those provisions are tied to others that benefit fossil fuel industries, and won’t be fully implemented unless the fossil fuel ones are.8
One measure Democrats are trying to insert into the continuing budget resolution is mostly Yin. The measure was devised by dirty coal baron Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer, who have both earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from fossil fuel interests.9 It’s meant to streamline the permitting process for energy projects, and pipeline builders and operators are convinced that means them.10
A new old film camera11 will be arriving at Hale ʻAlalā soon, courtesy of a friend who is no longer using it, which means film must be purchased, which means we need money. If any freebie subscribers have been considering a paid monthly or annual subscription ($5 and $50, respectively), this’d be a good time to consummate the purchase.
Music fueling this post includes reader-recommended12 pianist Matthew Shipp, working with drummer Whit Dickey on “Reels.” Shipp is too cerebral to serve as writing music, for us anyway; his work demands too much attention. Listening unconflicted is good, though.
The Magpie Salute’s “High Water II” presented no such issue; nor did one of our favorite albums, Television’s “Television.” The Soft Boys album “Can of Bees” was a bit of a stretch though. The Three O’Clock are playing us out with their “Sixteen Tambourines” album.
One of a number of posts at Press Watch slagging those two reporters.
Civil Rights Corps founder Alec Karakatsanis on the most recent Times police coverage atrocity.
New York Times ongoing curation of stories about threats to democracy.
Michael Crowley on Italy’s “Hard-right Lurch.”
The New Republic on fossil fuel money flowing to Manchin and Schumer.
The Lever on the greenwashing of the permitting provision Democrats are touting.
Ken Rockwell’s Nikon FE review.