

News
3 Democrats faced expulsion in TN legislature, only the two named “Justin” were expelled
Republicans in Tennessee held a vote to expel three Democrats from the state Legislature. Two of those Democrats were black, one was white. The white Democrat was allowed to stay.
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A lot of assumptions can be made from that nutshell of the story, but you can safely bet that’s the nutshell of the next 48 hours with perhaps a brief resurrection during the Sunday talk shows (pun intended). Democrats in Tennessee are eager to stoke those assumptions pointing to “The racism that is on display today! Wow!”
But is it racism on display?
For the bulk of media coverage it likely will be. It seems to be the lens through which stories must be contorted. After all, there’s not much controversy and click gold in pointing out “Three Democrats faced expulsion in TN, two were named Justin, one wasn’t. The Justins were ousted.” This headline would be true of the current story, but not an angle with a lot of legs.
The racism angle doesn’t look to have a lot of legs either except it will. There are political advantages to be leveraged, and politics is war by other means. In reading the AP account of this story this morning, I noted in the latter half a key difference between the protesting legislators other than the color of their skin. It was pointed out during the expulsion proceedings — the Democrat who was white pled her case by pointing out she protested in the chamber, but did not “raise her voice nor did she use the bullhorn.”
The other two Democrats did use the bullhorn– indoors– to disrupt proceedings.
As someone whose career has led them through several protests with bullhorns I can assure you that its use is vastly more disruptive and irritating than one without. Surely that distinction would be enough to sway a few votes and keep the Democrat not named “Justin” in?
Doesn’t matter. The infamous “optics” of politics matter, and Democrats in the state know they have a well-framed story to tell, and much of the media is unlikely to let such an angle go wasted, especially against the GOP in a Southern state.
Now for a quick list of other exciting insights and first reactions:
1. Have Tennessee Republicans not seen Star Wars? If not, just go to YouTube and check out the Obi-Wan vs. Darth show down. Spoiler Alert! Obi doesn’t make it. But he says, “If you strike me down now Darth, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” And he does! He becomes part of the all-powerful Force aiding his allies from the beyond. Star Wars fans therefore know, sometimes striking down (in this case, expelling) an opponent only makes them stronger.
2. Back to the same theme. You have two young members protesting with bullhorns and disrupting the proceedings, so to “punish” them for the disruption, you gave them a national platform on a silver platter.
Who, pray tell, couldn’t see that coming?
Also, the two members expelled are black, the member without the bullhorn was white and not expelled, but how was that going to look? Inspector Clouseau wouldn’t be able to miss that one.
3. Shame, no shame? State Rep. Gloria Johnson, the white lady who avoided expulsion by pointing out she didn’t yell or use a bullhorn, then throws her colleagues under the bus for sparing her based on her own reasoning — that she didn’t deserve expulsion because she protested differently. She told reporters she wouldn’t be surprised if the real reason they let her stay was the racism of her colleagues and the pale color of her skin. This strikes me as a particularly shameful and cynical stoking of racial division and the reduction of civility in politics.
4. Biden’s unique sense of Democracy and outrage: Reacting from Washington D.C., President Biden called the expulsions ” undemocratic.” For clarity, the president sees the disruption of the vast majority of elected officials as the proper exercise of Democracy? Think about it. Expelling members is an assault on Democracy because you’re denying the representation of the voters who elected the disruptors, BUT the legislators who disrupt the duly elected representatives of the people from the rest of the state from doing their job of representing the people are champions of Democracy. Got it.
5. Did I mention this spills over from a debate about school safety in the aftermath of a mass murder by a severely deranged young woman? Some Ds think the disruption is justified because the Rs weren’t going along with the gun restrictions Ds want and their position is to “save lives” while the other position is to sacrifice them. It couldn’t possibly be a more complicated debate. Right? Of course, that’s a convenient way to end debate and democracy if you decide your views are the only views legitimate and worthy of debate. It’s a way of thinking that guarantees rules apply to the other side but not to you. Also, grandstanding in the wake of such tragedy, even if sincere, gives me a feeling of sorrow and disgust.
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Ron DeSantis was in a real pickle… Should he or shouldn’t he run for President. Now that he has decided to run for President, he finds himself in a REAL pickle. PolitiCrossing Founder Chris Widener explains in this short video analysis:
News
Mainstream Media: Intentionally and Diabolically Unfair and Unbalanced
All pretense that the mainstream media strives for objectivity is gone
by Jay DeLancey and Jeff Davidson
The grandest mistake the American populace committed in the last half-century was assuming that our media was even somewhat fair and balanced. Likewise proceeding in the last two decades as if the Internet giants had no dog in the political arena proved to be a mistake of historical proportions.
Today because so many people, still, are conditioned as such, the mere fact that say, a CNN, has a website prompts some people to believe that the network have something of value to offer. Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, whose focus is classics and military history, says that the New York Times is “a shell of what it used to be.”
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Nothing Objective to Offer
The paper always leaned to the left, since it’s founding, but it did an intermittently semi-decent job in reporting the facts. The Times sent their reporters out to the streets to do hard-core reporting. The mission was to gather relevant data, identify sources, talk to people, find eye witnesses, speak to bonafide experts, attain corroboration, and then when they were sure of what they had written, submit the story or feature.
Their articles probably never represented a 50-50 balance – perhaps 55-45 or 60-40 in favor of the left. Today, no rational media observer would contend that the balance is 70-30, or even 80-20. Study after study reveals, say, in the case of covering Donald Trump, that 92% of all features are negative, and that is not to say the remaining 8% are positive. Mostly, they’re neutral.
If you are a Trump or DeSantis supporter, or a Republican running for Senate or the House of Representatives, for governor in your state, or for any other position of prominence, you simply cannot expect a fair shake from the press, nationally, and in most cases locally. Indeed, you’re likely to be demonized, endlessly, over issues foo which Democrats receive a free pass.
Compromised to the Breaking Point
The New York Times and The Washington Post of old, as biased as they might’ve been, at least offered some semblance of up-to-date information, with facts and figures when they had them, and timely reporting as situations unfolded. Hansen remarked that today the people who run these newspapers are trading on the decades of hard work and the reputations built up over more than 100 years.
Those who put in the seed work are dead and gone and thus, obviously, have no say about what’s going on today. The Times and the Post, in less than a generation, are destroying their own reputations. The people who currently run these ‘news’ organizations are dragging them down at warp speed and don’t even recognize the damage that they are doing.
By 2030, what is now a shell of an organization will be less so, and it wouldn’t be too wild to predict that the Times could totally morph into something else. The Post is not far behind in devising its own demise.
The Pretense is Gone
Each of the countless newspapers that feed off of these two publishing giants suffer as well. All such pretense that the mainstream media strives for objectivity is gone. The good news, if you could call it that, is everyone on the right is now vitally all aware that this has happened.
Those who strive for integrity in elections, those who are on the right, and those who are routinely demonized by the left, understand what’s occurring to the nth degree. It’s not fair, but to know what you face is a benefit of sorts.
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