Month: December 2023

Free at last!

George Santos is Rep. Santos no more. In a bipartisan vote that handily exceeded the two-thirds requirement, the U.S. House voted to expel the mutiply indicted Santos on Friday morning.

Not to worry, George Washington Anthony Elizabeth Taylor Devolder Kitara Julius Caesar Santos will land on his feet, even if he has (for now) denied he is in talks with “Dancing With the Stars.” He’ll have no trouble staying busy. Facing 23 felony charges (he has pleaded not guilty) Santos has a full schedule planning for his trial in September next year:

The schemes laid out by prosecutors are wide ranging. Prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York say he falsified campaign reports with fake donations and fictional personal loans to artificially bolster his standing. They say he stole from donors, using their credit cards without authorization and through a Florida company called Redstone Strategies. And they have charged him with collecting more than $20,000 in unemployment payments when he was, in fact, employed.

Prosecutors say that Mr. Santos used the money on personal expenses, including designer goods and credit card payments. (House ethics investigators added more detail, showing that Mr. Santos used donor funds on Botox treatments, his rent and a website called OnlyFans known for adult content.)

Santos will have his Trumpish revenge on his former colleagues sooner (Newsweek):

Santos hit back on X, formerly Twitter, in a series of posts. He wrote that he will report four of his former colleagues, three Republicans and one Democrat, who voted against him to the Office of Congressional Ethics. Those listed were New Jersey Democrat Rob Menendez and Republicans Nicole Malliotakis, Mike Lawler and Nick LaLota. Newsweek has reached out to the offices of Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, Rep. Mike Lawler and Rep. Nick LaLota by email, as well as that of Rep. Rob Menendez by telephone and voicemail message.

Posting on X, Santos wrote that he would request an investigation into Malliotakis, “regarding her questionable stock trading since joining the Ways and Means committee this Congress.”

The disgraced former congressman accused Lawler of “questionable campaign finance violations,” adding: “Congressman Lawler owns portion of Checkmate Strategies and he uses the same firm that he is a beneficiary of to pay for services related to his campaign. The concerning questions are; is Mr Lawler engaging in laundering money form his campaign to his firm then into his own pocket?” Newsweek has not as yet been able to verify Santos’ claims.

In recognition of his accomplishments in the field of public corruption, Michelle Goldberg declares Santos a Child of the MAGAverse:

Should the blessed day ever arrive when Donald Trump is sent to federal prison, only one of his acolytes has earned the right to share his cell: George Santos, who on Friday became the sixth person in history to be expelled from the House of Representatives, more than seven months after he was first charged with crimes including fraud and money laundering. (He’s pleaded not guilty.) A clout-chasing con man obsessed with celebrity, driven into politics not by ideology but by vanity and the promise of proximity to rich marks, Santos is a pure product of Trump’s Republican Party. “At nearly every opportunity, he placed his desire for private gain above his duty to uphold the Constitution, federal law and ethical principles,” said a House Ethics Committee report about Santos released last month. He’s a true child of the MAGA movement.

No less than the trees and the stars….

That movement is multifaceted, and different politicians represent different strains: There’s the dour, conspiracy-poisoned suburban grievance of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the gun-loving rural evangelicalism of Lauren Boebert, the overt white nationalism of Paul Gosar and the frat boy sleaze of Matt Gaetz. But no one embodies Trump’s fame-obsessed sociopathic emptiness like Santos. He’s heir to Trump’s sybaritic nihilism, high-kitsch absurdity and impregnable brazenness.

Santos learned from the master and earned his star in the MAGA Walk of Shame:

As New York magazine’s Shawn McCreesh reported in March, at a Manhattan birthday party for the Breitbart editor Emma-Jo Morris, Santos was “the ‘It’ girl. His wrists are bedizened with bling from Hermès and Cartier, and fawning fans line up for selfies.” A month later, The Intercept’s Daniel Boguslaw described Santos being feted at a bar in Washington: “A milieu of young conservatives, operatives and House staffers were assembling to howl in the next-gen model of Donald Trump’s societal wrecking ball, and the name on everybody’s lips was George Santos.” A hard-core MAGA group called Washington, D.C. Young Republicans posted about Santos’s “inspirational remarks” at that event, including his insistence that his enemies will have to “drag my cold, dead body” out of Congress. Gosar chimed in with an admiring response: “Based.”

Adam Serwer, Goldberg reminds readers, observed that for Trumpists, “the cruelty is the point.” Beyond that, however, “Rule breaking is key to Trump’s transgressive appeal; it situates him as above the strictures that govern lesser men while creating a permission structure for his followers to release their own inhibitions.”

Perhaps that is part of Trump’s appeal to evangelicals. Their faith is a web of prohibitions and peer pressure to conform to the oversold image of what a Christian husband or wife is. Add to that prohibitions on drinking or dancing or fun outside church and the pressures to deliver must be intense, almost but not quite cult-like.

Trumpism is like a papal indulgence to throw off all that and … indulge. Indulge in hating your enemy, in bathing in riches, in lying and cheating. All secure in the belief that their liberation has received the Donald J. Trump Seal of Approval.

“Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Polar bear babies!

Mierlo, November 30, 2023 – A healthy polar bear has been born in Dierenrijk. The delivery took place peacefully in the Frimas polar bear maternity. Mother and the newborn are doing well.

Head animal caretaker Stephan Rijnen: “In early November, we noticed that the mother was retreating to the maternity room. From this, we could deduce that the mating we observed in March was likely successful! A polar bear gestation lasts about eight months, so we had to wait a bit. Tuesday morning, we reviewed the camera footage and discovered good news! A young polar bear the size of a guinea pig was lying with mother Frimas.”

The maternity room is a separate enclosure connected to the indoor enclosure of the polar bears in Dierenrijk. This space is built so that pregnant polar bears can withdraw for childbirth. When designing the maternity room, the natural behavior of female polar bears in the wild was also taken into account.

Rijnen: “In the wild, the expectant mother goes into winter hibernation, in the snow den she has dug herself. First, the mother eats to fullness so that she is strong enough to survive the winter. The birth of the cubs also happens in this tranquility. Only upon awakening will she meet her offspring.”

Therefore, the mother and the newborn will remain safely in the maternity room for the next few months. Rijnen: “In about a month, the eyes will only open. The cub needs to grow before facing the outside world. Right now, it’s still too small.” It is expected that the newborn will grow an average of 200 grams per day in the coming months.

In Dierenrijk, a screen will be set up showing a live connection to the maternity room. “This way, visitors can still catch a glimpse of the development of the young polar bear!” says Rijnen.

Threats

The status of polar bears in the wild is ‘vulnerable.’ This means that if the natural habitat of polar bears is not better protected, the species is at great risk of extinction.

Polar bears are threatened because their habitat is shrinking, mainly due to climate change. As the ice melts, it becomes difficult for polar bears to hunt ringed seals, the main food source for the species. In the search for food, polar bears increasingly enter inhabited areas, leading to conflicts between the local population and polar bears. This results in dangerous situations for both the local population and the polar bears.

The polar bears in Dierenrijk are genetically the most important pair in the European management program. The management program ensures a healthy population in zoos. Each species has one studbook keeper from this program who critically examines both the genetic background of the animals and the available space for offspring in European zoos. Based on this information, the studbook keeper provides advice. Rijnen: “Currently, in Europe, there are only three polar bear pairs with a recommendation. The question remains, of course, whether young animals actually result from these recommendations. It makes it extra special that we have succeeded here at Dierenrijk!”

Polar Bears International

Through the Wildlife Foundation, Dierenrijk supports Polar Bears International. This organization not only protects the polar bear but also the ice on which these bears depend. Polar Bears International does this through education, research, and by engaging in political discussions.

When leaders ignore threats, they should pay a price

That August 6th memo to George W. Bush with a big warning that “Al Qaeda determined to strike inside the United States” which he and others in his administration ignored, may be the moment that permanently destroyed Bush’s reputation, (There were a lot of them, of course.
Mission Accomplished” was also one of the worst.) It looks like Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was similarly warned and did nothing about it, which they wouldn’t, since they believed Hamas was contained and that the real issue was giving the extremist Israeli wingnuts on the West Bank everything they wanted. Oy vey.

The NY Times reported today:

Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.

The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.

The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.

Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened on Oct. 7.

The plan also included details about the location and size of Israeli military forces, communication hubs and other sensitive information, raising questions about how Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks inside the Israeli security establishment.

The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.

Last year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said that Hamas’s intentions were unclear.

“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” read a military assessment reviewed by The Times.

Then, in July, just three months before the attacks, a veteran analyst with Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency, warned that Hamas had conducted an intense, daylong training exercise that appeared similar to what was outlined in the blueprint.

But a colonel in the Gaza division brushed off her concerns, according to encrypted emails viewed by The Times.

“I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary,” the analyst wrote in the email exchanges. The Hamas training exercise, she said, fully matched “the content of Jericho Wall.”

“It is a plan designed to start a war,” she added. “It’s not just a raid on a village.”

Officials privately concede that, had the military taken these warnings seriously and redirected significant reinforcements to the south, where Hamas attacked, Israel could have blunted the attacks or possibly even prevented them.

Instead, the Israeli military was unprepared as terrorists streamed out of the Gaza Strip. It was the deadliest day in Israel’s history.

They really fucked this up:

Israeli security officials have already acknowledged that they failed to protect the country, and the government is expected to assemble a commission to study the events leading up to the attacks. The Jericho Wall document lays bare a yearslong cascade of missteps that culminated in what officials now regard as the worst Israeli intelligence failure since the surprise attack that led to the Arab-Israeli war of 1973.

Underpinning all these failures was a single, fatally inaccurate belief that Hamas lacked the capability to attack and would not dare to do so. That belief was so ingrained in the Israeli government, officials said, that they disregarded growing evidence to the contrary.

The Israeli military and the Israeli Security Agency, which is in charge of counterterrorism in Gaza, declined to comment.

Officials would not say how they obtained the Jericho Wall document, but it was among several versions of attack plans collected over the years. A 2016 Defense Ministry memorandum viewed by The Times, for example, says, “Hamas intends to move the next confrontation into Israeli territory.”

Such an attack would most likely involve hostage-taking and “occupying an Israeli community (and perhaps even a number of communities),” the memo reads.

The Jericho Wall document, named for the ancient fortifications in the modern-day West Bank, was even more explicit. It detailed rocket attacks to distract Israeli soldiers and send them hurrying into bunkers, and drones to disable the elaborate security measures along the border fence separating Israel and Gaza.

Hamas fighters would then break through 60 points in the wall, storming across the border into Israel. The document begins with a quote from the Quran: “Surprise them through the gate. If you do, you will certainly prevail.”

The same phrase has been widely used by Hamas in its videos and statements since Oct. 7.

One of the most important objectives outlined in the document was to overrun the Israeli military base in Re’im, which is home to the Gaza division responsible for protecting the region. Other bases that fell under the division’s command were also listed.

Hamas carried out that objective on Oct. 7, rampaging through Re’im and overrunning parts of the base.

[…]

The failures to connect the dots echoed another analytical failure more than two decades ago, when the American authorities also had multiple indications that the terrorist group Al Qaeda was preparing an assault. The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were largely a failure of analysis and imagination, a government commission concluded.

“The Israeli intelligence failure on Oct. 7 is sounding more and more like our 9/11,” said Ted Singer, a recently retired senior C.I.A. official who worked extensively in the Middle East. “The failure will be a gap in analysis to paint a convincing picture to military and political leadership that Hamas had the intention to launch the attack when it did.”

I have included a NY Times gift link for you to read the whole thing.

I can’t imagine Netanyahu will survive this. He was hanging by a thread already and the Hamas strategy was his baby. It can’t happen too soon.

The media refuses do it

Kevin Drum:

On a monthly basis, core PCE inflation was down to 2.0%, which is the Fed’s target rate. Headline inflation was even better, clocking in close to zero.

On a year-over-year basis, headline inflation came in at 3.0% and core inflation at 3.5%.

POSTSCRIPT: Now that inflation is going down instead of up, I notice that neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post even bothers to report it on their front page. Even the Wall Street Journal mentions it only under a headline about consumer spending slowing down. And we wonder why people don’t seem to know that inflation is way down?

I’m very sick of hearing excuses that the reason people say the economy is bad is because they just don’t “feel” it. They do. They’re spending like crazy. The problem is that when people are polled they reflect the conventional wisdom which they get from the media. The right wing media will never tell the truth about this. But there is no excuse for the way the MSM is covering this story.

I highly recommend clicking over to Brian Beutler’s newsletter for a thorough analysis of what’s going on with this and how it can be remedied. Here’s a excerpt:

I’m not saying you have to believe the economy is good, or that it has necessarily been good for you personally. Just that the economic challenges the country faces today are much less severe than they’ve been in the past, when economic sentiment was somehow better. Across all major indices, including inflation (now basically kicked), unemployment, and interest rates, our problems have been worse in prior eras without running public opinion this deep into the dirt. Wish mortgage-interest rates were lower? Well, they’ve been higher in the past, again without creating mass despair. 

Everyone should be a bit puzzled by this, and everyone should want to understand it, even if only because it’s fascinating. Democrats (and really everyone who wants to stop Donald Trump) should be particularly interested, because a) making big macroeconomic policy changes under divided government is nearly impossible, and b) even if it were easy, the phenomenon itself suggests people aren’t really responding mechanistically to specific hardship indicators. Gas prices are currently way down! And yet… 

Which is to say, the best hope for arresting and reversing the sentiment probably doesn’t lie in tweaking policy but in changing mass conventional wisdom. That doesn’t mean condescending to the minority of people who really are struggling by telling them that they’re imagining things. It means reaching people who say things like “everyone knows the economy sucks” (it doesn’t) the same way they might say “everyone knows Sinbad starred in a movie called Shazaam” (he didn’t, there is no such movie), and convincing them they’ve got bad information. 

[…]

Mainstream media has become addicted to emphasizing plucking bad economic news from the surfeit of good data, and sniffing out stories of distress rather than the larger number of happy anecdotes (e.g. expensive groceries, rather than all the raises people have gotten to make those same groceries affordable). In some cases they just mislead news consumers about what the data means.

And then there’s the even more passive phenomenon of consensus wisdom bouncing around in an echo chamber. The writer of one of my favorite Twitter accounts recently observed, “Just the other day I was incidentally listening to a pledge drive and part of the pitch was ‘I know it is hard to give money in these trying times, but…’ and I think a deluge of that kind of talk has *got* to affect people. But it’s not the same as, say, watching Fox News.” […]

He takes an in-depth look at the polling that is completely disconnected from economic reality, particularly among the young. I think he may be on to something here (or at least it’s one of the few hypotheses I’ve seen that may usefully explain what’s happening.) He looks at the numbers showing that young people are more negative about the economy than Fox viewing Republicans (what?) and shares a theory I haven’t heard before:

I have another, underbaked theory: that what we’re seeing in youth public opinion are the metastases of a long-run strategic effort (well-intentioned though it was when progressives first adopted it) to use climate alarmism to mobilize young people into politics. It seemed like it could only work one way: note that without change the climate future is bleak, then observe that only one of our two parties believes in climate change. Make young people upset, harness their anxieties, and that’s millions of voters who’ll stay active in politics and vote progressive for life.

Reflecting now from my front row seat to the Gen Z doom spiral, it suddenly seems obvious how that could go awry. How we might have deluded ourselves into thinking existential despair could be easily harnessed for good, without curdling into nihilism. 

Biden’s economic approval among the young looks like what you’d get if the president had four years, and only four years, to fix every problem in the economy—and if he failed or didn’t try it meant the future was ruined. But that’s the logic of climate doom applied to the economy.

It’s also perfectly compatible with the idea that young people (like Republicans) inhabit social milieus where everybody just knows the economy sucks. Young people may not be getting their news from CNBC (for that we give thanks) but they do rely on platforms where catastrophism has a leg up over careful assessment of evidence. Why should we be surprised that their political sentiment has come to resemble what the algorithms encourage?

That’s exactly what I see in my personal life and on social media but it’s not only in young people. Nihilism is a defining characteristic of our age and it isn’t just on the right although that’s where it’s really dominant. It’s disturbing to say the least.

Beutler’s great newsletter called Off Message is here. I encourage you to read the whole thing.

Hookay, Christian Ziegler, the Chairman of the Florida GOP, has been accused of committing sexual violence against a woman who was in a longstanding, consensual sexual relationship with him AND his wife.

And the wife, Bridget Ziegler, is the co-founder of Moms For Liberty, an organization that treats LGBTQ people, especially Trans people, like they are sexual predators.

They were in a bisexual threesome relationship and the husband is accused of sexually predator behavior.

Oh, and they’re big Christians. MAGA… sigh.

One had fun, the other one not so much. Guess which was which.

Newsom: When are you going to drop out and at least give Nikki Haley a shot to take down Donald Trump…. pic.twitter.com/fJJ8qY32Nc

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 1, 2023

Even big GOP influencer “Catturd” notices. (I’m no joking , he’s the leader of MAGA twitter.)

When Florida Gov. Ron Desantis agreed to debate California Gov. Gavin Newsom it’s unlikely he knew his presidential campaign would be flailing to the extent it is. But he still should have thought twice. Whatever his political skills might be, he is terrible on the debate stage. He managed to barely hold his own in the sad Trumpless GOP primary debates that have been dominated by his rival former S. Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. He did himself no favors on Thursday night when he finally met with Newsom on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show.

Any Trump fan, which would include virtually all Fox viewers, were primed to watch him be humiliated. Trump spokesman Steve Cheung either taking dictation from the boss or channeling him perfectly, put out this humdinger of a statement in advance of the event:

“Ron DeSanctimonious is acting more like a thirsty, third-rate OnlyFans wannabe model than an actual presidential candidate. Instead of actually campaigning and trying to turn around his dismal poll numbers, DeSanctus is now so desperate for attention that he’s debating a Grade A loser like Gavin Newsom.

At the debate, Ron will flail his arms and bobble his head wildly, looking more like a San Francisco crackhead than the governor of Florida. This isn’t a prediction. It’s a spoiler.

“Hopefully for Ron, it’s a seated debate so he won’t have to mash his foot into his high-heels to look taller. But if not, he’ll definitely be on a 12 inch step stool so he can peek right above the podium.”

Ouch. That’s harsh, even by Trump standards. Trump didn’t personally weigh in but he did post this on his social media site Trump Social:

Hannity was much kinder to DeSantis than that but it didn’t help much and DeSantis certainly didn’t help himself.

Hannity’s questions were all loaded with statistics in favor of DeSantis designed to put Newsom on the defensive. I don’t think there was even one data point he presented that put Florida in a more negative light. So it was up to Newsom to provide context and correct the record which he did quite effectively.

For instance, DeSantis was programmed to insist that Californians are moving to Florida “in droves” which he did approximately a dozen times, and maybe those Fox viewers were convinced. But it’s just not true. (As Newsom pointed out repeatedly, per capita more Floridians have actually moved to California than the other way around. )

Hannity threw one question after another right over the plate to DeSantis, but he was the one who ended up on the defensive as Newsom not only stood up for his state but made a great case for Joe Biden on Fox News, (which was the whole point of the exercise.)

Wow DeSantis is losing badly pic.twitter.com/bShq8CrdeF

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 1, 2023

They sparred about their COVID response with DeSantis making repeated fatuous comments about Newsom going to the French Laundry restaurant during the lockdowns. But Newsom got the better of the argument by pointing out that DeSantis wants to have it both ways by portraying himself as a defiant contrarian on the mitigation measures when in fact he called for all of them early and then decided that it would be in his best interest to prematurely repeal all of them resulting in many unnecessary deaths. DeSantis claimed it wasn’t true but it certainly is.

According to an LA Times analysis of the Johns Hopkins University data on COVID deaths:

-California: 2,560 COVID deaths for every 1 million residents
-Florida: 4,044 COVID deaths for every 1 million residents

“In other words, Florida’s raw death tally — 86,850 in early March — came close to California’s total, 101,159, despite California having roughly 18 million more residents,”

It is true that Florida has a large senior population but that should have argued for DeSantis to be more cautious not less. His legacy on COVID is shameful and the fact that he actually brags about it is mind-boggling.

They also argued about crime statistics with DeSantis accusing Newsom of presiding over a crime wave while Newsom pointed out that it had actually decline precipitously over the past couple of decades. One set of statistics (which Hannity showed, naturally) has California having more violent crimes than Florida but Newsom responded, correctly, that Florida actually has a higher murder rate than California.

I wondered when (or if) Hannity would discuss abortion, seeing as it is a serious problem for DeSantis due to the draconian laws he signed, first for a 15 week ban and then a 6 week ban a few months later. Hannity tried to nail Newsom with the right’s tiresome question about whether he would outlaw all abortions after a certain period of time, but he didn’t get very far. Newsom said that these instances are exceedingly rare and are almost always because of a tragic fetal anomaly, which is correct. (If I were a politician, I would always use the example of a real person in that situation and then ask whether or not politicians and judges are competent to make such complicated medical decisions. Most people would agree that they are not.)

DeSantis pretty much just stood there like a potted plant obviously wanting to get past the subject as soon as possible. Just yesterday, a poll was released showing that 62% of Floridians want to vote the right to abortion up to 24 weeks into the state constitution and that includes 52% of Republicans. He made a huge mistake in judgement on that one.

One of the most jarring aspects of the debate was that throughout, DeSantis kept bizarrely talking about feces. That’s right, feces. This is actually an old right wing obsession going back to the civil rights marches, the Vietnam war protests and most recently Occupy Wall Street. There are always tales of rampant public defecation and they can’t stop talking about it. DeSantis seems to have a particular fetish about this feces problem as illustrated in this bizarre moment:

Newsom: Ron has literally the worst mental health system in America. Forgive me outside of Mississippi and Texas..

DeSantis: *hold up feces map* pic.twitter.com/mVmAHY5LsX

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 1, 2023

Politifact, which fact checked much of the debate if you’re interested, explains what that’s all about if you really want to know.

Apparently, DeSantis’ hapless campaign thought it would be a good idea to showcase him on the friendly network because it would give him a chance to talk about how great Florida is. The problem is that there isn’t a Republican primary voter on the planet who hasn’t heard him drone on endlessly about what a fantastic job he’s done in Florida and frankly, they’re sick of it. But that’s what they got last night along with a laundry list of culture war talking points that merely show DeSantis watches the same shows they do. It’s possible that a few people came away thinking they should give him a second look but I doubt it was more than a handful. He’s just so odd:

Tonight did not go how Ron DeSantis hoped pic.twitter.com/y4qsHgupbw

— DNC War Room (@DNCWarRoom) December 1, 2023

Newsom probably made a few new fans among the Democrats who tuned in to watch the cage match. He was loose and confident and why wouldn’t he be? He’s not running for anything, a point he made clear when he archly declared that the one thing everyone can agree on is that neither of the two of them were going to be president in 2025.

The debate was best summed up by Never Trumper Stuart Stevens who quipped:

In the history of American politics, @RonDeSantis will go down as the chump who not only lost every debate in his race, but lost to a guy who isn't even in the race. That's talent.

— Stuart Stevens (@stuartpstevens) December 1, 2023

Salon

ICYMI. (You did not, of course.)

Medhi Hasan’s take-downs are what people watch MSNBC for.

MSNBC is canceling Mehdi Hasan’s weekend program and show on the streaming service Peacock.

Two people familiar with the move tell @maxwelltani that Hasan will become an on-camera analyst and fill-in host.https://t.co/s23l5aitj5

— Semafor (@semafor) November 30, 2023

Chris Hayes (MSNBC primetime host):

The nature of this business is that people who are supremely talented sometimes have shows cancelled. It’s rough every time, but it comes with the territory (lord knows I’ve been close myself!) But I just want to say that @mehdirhasan is one of the most talented broadcast journalists I’ve ever seen or worked with and probably the single best interviewer in American TV. Grateful to have him as a colleague.

Taylor Lorenz (Washington Post technology and online culture columnist):

Mehdi is literally one of the only people in cable TV with a moral compass still intact. What a huge loss

I think it was this clip that got him fired: https://t.co/wWQULEbhdZ

— Rebel speaking truth (@anp69anp) December 1, 2023

Washington Post:

Although Hasan was not among MSNBC’s top-rated stars, his segments often went viral on social media, where users celebrated his takedowns of conservatives such as former Trump adviser John Bolton and Israeli government adviser Mark Regev. During a Nov. 16 interview on his show for NBC’s Peacock streaming service, Hasan pressed Regev on the children killed in Gaza by Israeli strikes. When Regev said that Hasan had seen photos of dead children “because they’re the pictures Hamas wants you to see,” the host responded, “and also because they’re dead, Mark. They’re also people your government has killed.”

The segment, as shared by Hasan, was viewed nearly 6 million times on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The British-born Hasan, who formerly worked for Al Jazeera English and the Intercept, began hosting his Peacock show in 2020 and joined MSNBC’s lineup the following year

"It's a problem of occupation, it's a problem of injustice, it's a problem that goes back decades." @mehdirhasan on the danger of responding to political problems with military solutions pic.twitter.com/00QX8JdBV1

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) November 30, 2023

Hasan doesn’t pull his punches. That makes him a threat for CW types.

Are you curating your feed or is something else?

A medical professional at a friend’s party recently asked if I’d had any contact with a mutual acquaintance. No, not since before the pandemic. But I’d been horrified a year or so earlier when I glanced at her Facebook page and found a stream of anti-vax and “do your research” style postings. He knew. It’s why he asked. He’d run into her at the gym. She told him she’d not received the Covid shots and had lost friends over it. And she’d been a medical professional as well.

What happened? Perhaps the isolation during the pandemic. Perhaps too much time exposed to an algorithmically generated diet of such stuff. David French this morning cautions about the dangers of creating our own curated bubble realities.

Conspiracy theories have been with us forever. Rachel Maddow’s “Prequel” recounts tales of Depression-era Americans convinced that Jews and communists had taken over the government. They stockpiled canned good and weapons for when the Jews came marching down the street to make slaves of them. They planned an insurrection to put in place a strongman who’d bring fascist order.

If the parallels to today are eerie, Maddow means them to be. What’s different today, French suggests, is the sheer ubiquity of such alternate realities. They are no longer the hobby interests of a few cranks, but redefine their world views (New York Times, gifted):

There is a fundamental difference between, on the one hand, someone who lives in the real world but also has questions about the moon landing, and on the other, a person who believes the Covid vaccine is responsible for a vast number of American deaths and Jan. 6 was an inside job and the American elite is trying to replace the electorate with new immigrant voters and the 2020 election was rigged and Donald Trump is God’s divine choice to save America.

Such individuals don’t simply believe in a conspiracy theory, or theories. They live in a “bespoke reality.” That brilliant term comes from my friend Renée DiResta, the technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, and it refers to the effects of what DiResta calls a “Cambrian explosion of bubble realities,” communities “that operate with their own norms, media, trusted authorities and frameworks of facts.”

Online algorithms are more than happy to customize our rabbit holes:

Combine vast choice with algorithmic sorting, and we now possess a remarkable ability to become arguably the most comprehensively, voluntarily and cooperatively misinformed generation of people ever to walk the earth. The terms “voluntarily” and “cooperatively” are key. We don’t live in North Korea, Russia or the People’s Republic of China. We’re drunk on freedom by comparison. We’re misinformed not because the government is systematically lying or suppressing the truth. We’re misinformed because we like the misinformation we receive and are eager for more.

DiResta’s “bespoke realities” customize a “choose-your-own-adventure epistemology” for us. Whatever you’d like to believe, “some news outlet somewhere has written the story you want to believe, some influencer is touting the diet you want to live by or demonizing the group you also hate.”

“If you don’t buy into a conspiracy theory, that means you’re part of the conspiracy,” one former Twitter user posted Thursday. “And lack of evidence for the conspiracy is proof that the conspiracy is WORKING,” replied Lindsay Beyerstein. And I note regularly, what conspiracists lack in quality evidence they make up for with quantity.

The internet will furnish all the quantity any budding conspiracist could want.

What’s important, says French, is to remain self-aware and not get too far down any one rabbit hole, especially for those of us steeped in political news.

Understanding this dynamic helps us better understand one of the most interesting and troubling studies of our modern political moment. In June 2019, the group More in Common released a study demonstrating that Americans are wrong about their political opponents in a particularly destructive way: They believe them to be more extreme than they really are. Moreover, those who consume political media were more wrong about their political opponents than those who consumed no media at all. Those who follow the news “most of the time” were roughly three times as wrong about their opponents as those who follow the news “hardly at all.”

None of us are immune, including him, French admits. Read more from credible people with whom you disagree, French advises. “That means reading the best and smartest people I can find who disagree with me. These practices help both challenge me and humanize my opponents.” (I’m reading David French. Does that count?)

Because right now, dehumanization is all the rage.