SCOTUS: Asking The Right Question

With the unfortunate and highly regrettable, yet hardly unexpected nor even alas untimely, passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the nation is once again in an uproar. And yet the tempest is at present a mild one — more than “in a teapot”, perhaps, but certainly less than Class Five. And this is as it should be.

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CNN Is Biased. So What?

Lead image taken from the CNN website, 17 September 2020.

Opinion (No shit, Sherlock. -Editor)

The suggestion that CNN might possibly show some slight bias against President Donald Trump is hardly outré. After all, Mr. Trump did effectively declare war on the press as a whole early in his first year in office, calling it the “enemy of the people” fairly frequently. He also singles out reporters from CNN, the Washington Post, and sometimes even the New York Times as “fake news”. It’s not unreasonable that they might feel justified in striking back, and a detached observer examining the front page of their website might well conclude that this is precisely what they do.

So I’m not going to statistically analyze their coverage; if you’re reasonable, you’ll stipulate that I’m right and move on. And, if you’re not, you’ll never believe anything I say after “Opinion” anyway. So let’s skip all that and get right down to it, shall we?

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The Not Fake News Update: 15 September 2020

We here at The Not Fake News consider it a good sign that fewer people seem to be clicking on our posts these days. It fits with a trend that’s been observed: People are spending less time on social media. We hope it continues; there’s more to life.

On the theory that some of you will return, here’s a quick rundown of some of the events that have happened over the past couple of weeks, just so you don’t feel you’ve missed anything important. They’ll keep until you get back, and I promise: The world won’t end without you noticing.

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Restore Tulare Lake!

The wildfires in California are horrific, and that’s just the beginning: at this writing, there are nearly 100 major wildfires in the West, half along the coast. There’s a series of major disasters underway, and the best we can do at this point is contain the damage.

What makes it worse is, we can be pretty sure it’ll happen again — and again, and again.

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Trump, Veterans, and The Atlantic

We’ve been neck-deep in propaganda season most of the year. Not only is it getting harder to tell fact from fiction from spin from nuanced interpretation — and it was never easy — it’s actually becoming a topic people no longer care about. Fake news is the new normal; as a nation, we’re growing accustomed to believing what we choose to and disregarding anything that doesn’t fit our preconceptions. The alternative would be to do our own fact-checking — and who has time for that?

(Present company excluded, of course.)

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Hallowe’en in the Age of COVID

October 31st, 2020 falls on a Saturday. It’s far too soon to know the weather, but the fact that there’s a full moon is pretty unlikely to change. In other years, this would be a Hallowe’en-lover’s dream. And I, as you know, am a Hallowe’en lover.

This, alas, is not other years.

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FAKE NEWS: Legalizing Pedophilia?

It helps to read things through before reacting.

For most of the country, this topic isn’t even on the radar. As usual, California’s out beyond the normalcy curve. And yet, even much of California (and most of the rest of us) lack the context to follow what’s going on. So, to help understand both the law and the backlash, here’s a bit of background:

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F&L 2020: But I Don’t Wanna!

“But why would you vote third party? Don’t you realize that Trump is an existential threat? It’s not like the Greens will win anyway.”

I’ve heard this dozens of times and in many different ways, but the message is always the same. Substitute Biden for Trump and Libertarian for Green and it still works — though I more often hear words like “disaster” and “horrific” from my conservative friends.

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