Honestly, Bari?

Today I turned off one of my favorite podcasts, "Honestly" with Bari Weiss. She was "cancelled" (aka fired) by NYT and started a very successful news service, "The Free Press." She began her analysis of the Trump sweep and comeback by stating, not opining, that Trump was the most flawed candidate in our history, and said it again in slightly different terms before she got to her first guest, a trans woman, Brianna Wu.

In the introduction Bari stated, in my opinion, many errors about the 2020 election. She didn't even use the journalistic weasel words like "allegedly" or "it is said." And then she reminded the audience, with no doubt in her voice, about the completely phony impeachments, the lawfare cases brought by Soros funded goons, and the dreamed up sexual assaults.

 
Then Brianna, one of the 3 guests, begins listing his fears about attacks on Trans people that Republicans funded in their pro-Trump ads. Whoa! The only ads I saw were about the sexual mutilation of children, cross sex hormones for adolescents and men in women's locker rooms. If Brianna who is an adult wants to pretend to be a woman that's his business, but he should at least have the concerns that women have. Women are safer in a Trump presidency.

 
So, I switched to Will Cain's podcast. He was interviewing a Jewish Lebanese Canadian immigrant, Dr. Gad Saad, who is thrilled that Trump is president and has his own evaluation of the Trump victory, who is at fault and how it will affect Canadian and U.S. citizens.

IT'S ALL OVER! How Trump won the Presidency | Will Cain Show

1967 and 1968 were scary in presidential politics

Today I was reminded of just how scary 1967 and 1968 were for our country--which put today's problems with Biden and 2 wars in perspective. Our children were born in 1967 and 1968 and this podcast reminded me of how helpless we felt.  You want your kids to have a better life, but it all seemed to be crashing.  Especially awful were the assassinations.  If you were around then and have forgotten what a mess the Democrats (and the country) were in, take a listen to the podcast "Honestly." Bari Weiss is the founder of Free Press and main speaker on the Honestly podcast, but she has a guest host, Eli Lake, for this one. I'd forgotten how much LBJ and RFK hated each other, and the level of disruption the Chicago riots caused. Mr. Lake brings it all back with some of the interviews. Honestly with Bari Weiss: When a President Drops Out: What Biden Can Learn from 1968 on Apple Podcasts

From the transcript: "Today, Free Press writer Eli Lake hosts a special episode about what happened in 1968 when President Johnson decided he was not fit for reapplying for his job. He listened to his critics and backed away from the White House, allowing the Democrats an opportunity to stage an open convention to choose their next candidate for the presidency. But why did the party want him gone so badly? And how did this seismic decision work out? It’s a tale of murder, war, and riots that culminated in the most explosive convention in the history of America."

DEMOCRATIC_CONVENTION_1968_REEL_1_306-1424-r1.webm.720p.vp9

Javier Milei talks with Bari Weiss

At one time Buenos Aires was known as "the Paris of South America." That was 100 years ago. What happened? Socialism. Argentina is a mess of government bureaucracy and control. And now, it has elected the equivalent of a Maga man, South American style. Kick out or reduce the poverty pimps who have abandoned freedom for collectivism. I really don't know anything about Javier Milei, the "skunk at the garden party," but I heard an interview on "Honestly" by Bari Weiss, The Free Press.

Milei and Trump would not agree on many things, but they do agree on the dangers of socialism. Be bold. Be the skunk at the garden party thrown by the Democrats and Totalitarians.

 
In the 21st century we are being hit from all sides by Marxists and political Islam. Stop pretending, you loyal Democrats and weak Republicans, that nothing is wrong. When Obama and Biden promise us that they can totally transform the country, they aren't kidding. It's a promise they intend to keep. We are in crisis. We are fighting psychological warfare (men can be women, abortion is women's rights, more government is good government, the USA is weak and feckless, the swamp is pure, you need another jab to be a good American) and Lawfare (destruction of our values using our own courts and overwhelming illegal immigration). What we saw in NYC last week, what we've been seeing on our elite campuses since last fall, plus all the climate change hoaxes and all the DEI nonsense for 2 decades are all part of the subversion and planned chaos to shake us to the core. They are well funded and patient.

Be a skunk at their garden party.

Latest Episodes | Honestly Podcast

Batya Ungar-Sargon talked to the people

Yesterday I listened to an interview of Batya Ungar-Sargon who went out into America and actually talked to working people about what they believe about immigration, abortion, the economy, education, etc. What a concept! She's published a book "Second class: How the elites betrayed America's working men and women." I'd be surprised if one would vote for Biden because Democrats haven't been the party of the working class for decades. Their pollsters also lie to you every night on the news about the working class beliefs. If they don't answer the questions as the elites want, then the check mark is racist/ homophobic/ xenophobic etc. And Americans DO want those jobs that the elites wouldn't do. Dem economists are such snobs and have a low opinion of the people who allow them to live well that they skew the results of polls. Batya works for Newsweek.

Honestly with Bari Weiss: How the Working Class Became America’s Second Class on Apple Podcasts

"Bari Weiss: My guest today, Newsweek opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon, has been on a journey for the past eight years to understand how Trump won the White House in 2016 and how the left fundamentally misunderstood the American working class. She eventually came to the conclusion that the most salient feature of American life is not our political divide. It’s “the class divide that separates the college-educated from the working class.”

Democrats have historically been the party of the working class. But for the better part of the past decade, Democrats have seen their support among working-class voters tumble. Policy wonks and demographic experts kept saying just wait: the future of the Democratic party is a multiethnic, multiracial, working-class coalition. But that didn’t pan out.

Instead, in 2016, Trump carried 54 percent of voters with family incomes of $30,000 to $50,000; 44 percent of voters with family incomes under $50,000; and nearly 40 percent of union workers voted for Trump—the highest for a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Meanwhile, in 2022, Democrats had a 15-point deficit among working-class voters but a 14-point advantage among college-educated voters.

In order to understand how and why this happened, Batya decided to spend the last year traveling the country talking to working-class Americans. Who are they? Do they still have a fair shot at the American dream? What do they think about their chances to secure the hallmarks of a middle-class life?

She collected these stories in her new book: Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women. What she found is that for many of them, the American dream felt dead.

Today, Batya discusses who really represents the working class; why she thinks America has broken its contract with the working class; how we reinstate our commitment to them; and what will happen in 2024 if we don’t.

Eat real food, get more rest, and move more

It's odd for me to enjoy podcasts (auditory processing), but I do. Since I got a smart phone, I use it more for podcasts than phone calls. Here's Bari Weiss (one of my favs) in a conversation with Dr. Casey Means, a Stanford trained physician who left the traditional medical system behind to solve the one problem that she says is going to ruin us all: bad food.

Honestly with Bari Weiss: Eating Ourselves to Death on Apple Podcasts

I've often wondered about the "equity" push in medicine and public health. A large number of health problems are caused by lifestyle--eating, drinking/drugs, exercise (or lack of) and sexual promiscuity. Like Covid. We knew 2.5 years ago obesity was a predictor of serious Covid complications, including death. But pushing pills and vax was the solution. What if "equity" is just one more way to kill off Americans, particularly minorities? (Someone out there hates BIPOC, and it isn't the Trumpsters).

Dr. Means in this podcast talks about all the body parts that go bad from poor nutrition, and particularly obesity. 4 out of 5 black women are obese or overweight. Body positivity can kill you and that's a hot trend. Healthy at any size is a lie. 93% of us have metabolic disfunction according to her even if we aren't obese. By the time you find out you're pre-diabetic, it may have been 10 years in the making. Is this all a part of Big Pharma profits? Which foods are really bad for you, according to Dr. Means? Fake meats (highly processed); seed oils; sugar. She approves of intermittent fasting.

Just bought Halloween Candy today. The first 4 ingredients in those little orange pumpkin candies are sugar, corn syrup, salt and honey. Now I'll have to hide it from me.

The Best and Worst Foods for Your Metabolic System – Dr. Casey Means - Levels (levelshealth.com)

Recommended podcast--Honestly with Bari Weiss

I often repost a link to Bari Weiss' material. She's started a new source for information and opinion, Common Sense (on Substack), after resigning from New York Times. She's also started a podcast, Honestly. This one, an interview with a Big Tech whistleblower, David Sacks, is well worth your time. How they are controlling private companies and free speech with their threats and power policies and coercion. And we're about to be hit with the social credit system. Maybe you thought shutting down Alex Jones or Donald Trump was just fine, but they are coming after YOU. If you are shut out of the digital town square, you have no free speech or the right to assemble. They are acting as a cartel.

https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/honestly-with-bari-weiss-1971579/episodes/how-big-tech-is-strangling-you-132356030

Progressives have to pay the rent, so they go woke not to go broke

Remember the pain of the liberal/progressive journalist. "You cannot pay rent if you offend people." They go along to get along. They don't believe the woke nonsense anymore than we do, but they have to pay the rent. Listen to Eve Barlow's tale.

"In the summer of 2020, George Floyd was killed by a white police officer, and Black Lives Matter protests erupted in cities all over the United States. I feel comfortable saying this now: I felt conflicted. I remember surrendering to the peer pressure to donate every single day, and to post receipts of those donations (like I was in trouble for something—oh yeah, being “white”). I remember my Instagram stories were just re-post after re-post of this, that and the other activist, of whom I had no background knowledge, but who I was told were the people to re-post. I’ve since unfollowed them all because all of them showed themselves to be antisemitic. 

I was performing. I was absolutely performing. And I am not ashamed to admit it. I was so scared. I was still a hired freelance journalist, and I knew the impact of staying silent. Freelance writing isn’t a joke. You cannot pay rent if you offend people. So I kept a foot in the world of music writing, and with my paychecks, I splurged on bailing out protestors via GoFundMe pages, or whatnot. At least, I think I did. Who knows?" (Eve Barlow, music journalist) "A ghost story," Common Sense with Bari Weiss.

Francis Fukuyama on Ukraine and the U.S. problems

I don't know if Francis Fukuyama is a liberal or a conservative, but he is an anti-Trumper and an academic who will not give Trump his due. From a Bari Weiss round table podcast with Niall Ferguson, Walter Russell Mead ,and Francis Fukuyama on Ukraine: he was alarmed by Trump supporters who believe he won in 2020, but apparently not alarmed by the chaos of BLM and Antifa taking over cities controlled by Quisling Democrats in 2020. So he thinks our divided nation is a weakness exploited by Putin (and I'd agree). Here he barely condemns Biden's weakness on protecting Ukraine, yet blames Trump for saying Putin was tough, smart opponent.

"FF: I think that many American presidents have a role in bringing us to where we were. I think that we should really begin with the Bucharest summit in 2008 [he leaves out Clinton's role], when Ukraine was first promised a NATO membership [U.S. says no, that's Putin's interpretation]. At the time, I thought that was a big mistake, because we couldn’t actually fulfill that promise. That was under George W. Bush. And I would agree with the criticisms of Obama: I think his refusal to sell weapons to Ukraine and not observing the red line in Syria were bad moves.

But I think that you guys have let Donald Trump off the hook. It’s not just that he was upset about Russiagate [which was all a hoax, but FF apparently believed the Democrats and doesn't know Hillary was behind it]. He has been issuing statements supporting Vladimir Putin from well before he was elected president [he says complimentary things about all international opponents]. Even after the invasion, he talked about Putin being a genius and very savvy. He gave a speech just a few days ago at CPAC where he attacked who as a global tyrant? Justin Trudeau—not a single word about Vladimir Putin. [Yes, we were all alarmed at what was happening in the country closest to the U.S. and Biden said nothing.] He and his followers on the right have a real affinity for strongman leadership [as opposed to the leftist 2-faced Democrats?]. That’s really what is at stake. When you go to Helsinki and you say, “I believe Vladimir Putin more than my own intelligence community,” that’s giving aid and comfort [no, it's the truth--his own intelligence community was part of the deep state]. That’s close to being treasonous, in my view [perhaps FF's favorite theories have been blown up too?].

There is good reason for Putin to think that America is weak under Joe Biden—partly because Trump hasn’t gone away after January 6, and a significant part of the Republican Party believes this lie that the election was stolen. [And Hillary still believes she was elected in 2016.] The country is seriously divided because of the failure of the Republicans to concede the peaceful transfer of power [it was divided long before that--remember when Bush was being called Hitler?]. And so if you’re Putin, you’re thinking that you can rely on your Republican friends to soften any blow. [That's ridiculous, and another lie of the left wing media who can't accept what a joke the Biden-Harris team is.]

Finally, on Biden, yes, I think that he did not do certain things [like helping Putin finance this war by not shutting off his oil]. I was very disappointed when he pulled back on trying to cancel Nord Stream 2. Really, four presidents [don't forget Clinton]  have contributed to this image of American weakness and have made mistakes on policy. But where we are right now, I think, is pretty good given, you know, given that legacy.

Hollywood's New Rules, they are so woke

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/hollywoods-new-rules?

"Hollywood had always pushed boundaries—from the 1947 “Gentleman’s Agreement,” which confronted antisemitism, to “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” (1967), which tackled interracial marriage, to “All in the Family” (1971-1979), which grappled with race and women’s liberation. The original run of “Will and Grace” (1998-2006), did more to advance the cause of gay marriage than anything else pre-Obergefell.

And then there were the villains: The vast majority—from the Terminator to Hannibal Lecter to Gordon Gekko—were uber-white: an Austrian (robot), a Lithuanian, a WASPy, pinstriped capitalist. (For the insider’s list, see this from The Hollywood Reporter.) . . .

Then came George Floyd, and, in the summer of 2020, everything that had been happening in slow motion started to happen much faster."

The new rules (no white men allowed as actors, directors, screen writers--their agents are dropping them) definitely are being applied to TV advertising.

Why have we turned over our first amendment rights to Big Tech?

"Dr. Robert Malone, a key contributor to mRNA vaccine technology and an outspoken critic of COVID-19 mandates and rules, was suspended by Twitter. Writing on his Substack page, Malone, who had massed more than 500,000 followers, confirmed that his account was "permanently suspended from Twitter" and said, "We all knew it would happen eventually." "Over a half million followers gone in a blink of an eye. That means I must have been on the mark, so to speak," he wrote on Dec. 29. "Over the target. It also means we lost a critical component in our fight to stop these vaccines being mandated for children and to stop the corruption in our governments, as well as the medical-industrial complex and pharmaceutical industries.” (Epoch Times)

"Twitter has permanently suspended Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal account for repeatedly violating the platform’s rules on COVID-19 misinformation, as noted in a report by CNN. Since the ban only affects Greene’s personal Twitter account, @mtgreenee, she can still access and tweet from her governmental account, @RepMTG." (The Verge)

Marjorie Taylor Greene permanently suspended from Twitter after fifth strike | Washington Examiner

"Last week [July 2020], opinion editor Bari Weiss resigned from The New York Times, alleging that the newspaper has fostered a culture in which anyone who so much as tolerates dissenting viewpoints is subjected to professional and social ostracization.

“Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor,” wrote Weiss in her scathing resignation letter. “As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions." (Daily Wire)

"On Sunday, Twitter took down the tweet in which [Scott] Atlas said: “Masks work? NO.” The company said the post violated its policy on Covid-19 misinformation that prohibits “sharing false or misleading content which could lead to harm”.

In a stream of posts, Atlas falsely claimed that several US states and other countries had taken up widespread use of masks without evidence of any positive effect. He also incorrectly said that there were “many harms” to the practice.

Twitter’s move to block Atlas’s public comments is the latest controversy to hit since he joined the White House as a pandemic adviser in August [2020]." (The Guardian)

NEW: Joe Rogan Joins GETTR | Newsbusters

GETTR - The Marketplace of Ideas

 

Who has given us more misinformation than Dr. Fauci?

Covid--Omicron and some sanity

Nellie Bowles at Common Sense by Bari Weiss (the reporter who very publicly resigned from NY Times because Twitter had become the editor and started her own on-line column so she could tell the truth) writes on December 31, 2021:

"Hello and a very happy New Year! Here in California it’s been pouring rain for more than a week, which undermines all of my justifications for the taxes. It is the slow week between Christmas and New Years, but Omicron has meant a good bit of news.

→ Omicron shuts down the world: Almost everyone I know either has Omicron—or else they are stuck somewhere random because everyone else has Omicron. The numbers bear that out: On Wednesday, according to the CDC, 486,428 positive Covid cases were reported. It’s the highest number of reported cases in the U.S. at any point in this pandemic.

People are waiting in lines for many, many hours for Covid tests. Thousands of flights were cancelled. (Some of the passengers who did make it onto planes didn’t exactly seem grateful for the privilege.)

But amidst all the chaos, a bit of sanity, strangely, is prevailing. The CDC cut the quarantine time in half, from ten days to five, so society can keep functioning.

And mainstream liberal commenters are coming around to a new conclusion: “As we recognize that COVID-19 is not a deadly or even severe disease for the vast majority of responsible Americans, we can stop agonizing over ‘cases’ and focus on those who are hospitalized or at risk of dying,” writes the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin. We’re even getting Good News reports from Twitter-popular doctors. Are they a year late to these realizations? Yes. Do they deserve to be mocked for the delay? Probably. Will I celebrate their seeing the light anyway? Absolutely.

The White House is also pivoting hard on its messaging. “There is no federal solution. This gets solved at a state level,” President Biden said on Monday, prior to a gathering of governors. Just a little over a year ago, Biden was telling Trump that the death toll was somehow his fault or related to his coarse rhetoric: “It is what it is because you are who you are,” Biden had said.

→ Great news they won’t tell you on cable: The number of Covid deaths each week is dropping. A lot. On Wednesday, there were some 2,100 deaths reported. Compare that to more than 3,600 on this day in 2020. The point is: everyone is getting Covid, but thanks to the vax it seems markedly less dangerous. Which is perhaps why…

→ Even Covid religious totems are falling: Dr. Leana Wen, one of the regular public health voices on CNN and a former president of Planned Parenthood, went on the nightly news this week and said something entirely true: “Cloth masks are not appropriate for this pandemic. It’s not appropriate for Omicron. It was not appropriate for Delta, Alpha, or any of the previous variants either because we’re dealing with something that’s airborne.”

If you are vaccinated, healthy, and happy, you are probably already living life like someone sitting in a New York City restaurant (i.e., unmasked but vaguely waving one around as you walk).

If you just love the feel of fabric across your cheeks, by all means. If you really care about not getting COVID, wear an N95 for as long as you’d like. But it’s long past time to take life back from the hypochondriacs.

→Die-hards are not going to give up without a fight (masked, six feet away). Take Nicole Wallace, Host of Deadline: White House on MSNBC: “I’m a Fauci groupie. I’m a thrice-vaccinated mask adherent. I buy KN95 masks by the, you know, caseload. They’re in every pocket. I wear them everywhere except when I sit down.”

One area where the excesses are still unchecked is in schools. Colleges around the country are imposing draconian rules (making students truly miserable). And unions around the country are laying groundwork for more remote learning. In Chicago, the union is polling teachers on “a district-wide pause” and going back to remote."

Look for Bari  Weiss columns--I get the free one, but there's more on subscription.