Claims And Issues

TODAY'S ORDER DENYING INJUNCTION AGAINST INTIMIDATION IS ALREADY ON APPEAL.

Today, Friday, October 28, 2002, a federal Court Order denied an injunction against voter intimidation in Maricopa County, Arizona.  Download Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans v. Clean Elections USA et al. Doc. 32 Order filed Oct. 28 2022 (D. Ariz. No. 2.22.cv.01823.MTL).

The Court held that the Ku Klux Klan Act requires intent to intimidate.  Id. at 11.  There is nothing in the Ku Klux Klan Act that requires intent, and no Court has ever said so, until today; the intimidation is the point.

The Order is already on appeal the same day.

Please see the previous articles published here and here.

Please read the disclaimer.  ©2022 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

WHY IS SUBSTACK MANDATING THE LISTEN APP FOR REICH & RICHARDSON?

I subscribe to the Substack newsletters of Heather Cox Richardson and Robert Reich.

To get the Listen feature on each Heather Cox Richardson newsletter, I have to download the Substack App.

Until today, Robert Reich put a right-leaning triangle (►) on his posts for readers to Listen In.  Then you could hear his piece spoken.  You still had the option to read it, of course.

So, the technology exists for an author on Substack to make their posts audible without downloading Substack's Listen app.

Then why make downloading Substack's Listen app mandatory for all of its writers, when the technology clearly already exists to Listen without Substack's app?

There must be some reason.  Well, looking at those who offer apps, it seems pretty clear that not one is a charity.  Each party offering apps is in a money-making business.   If you or I download the app,  the one requiring the app  may make money, whereas if you or I do not have to download the app, they may not make money.  (Or more money, in some cases.)

What could be sold, or what could make money, from downloading an app?  Well, it seems like a query regularly pops up when you download an app, something like this:  "Are you sure that you want this program to make changes to your computer?"  It never says what changes, and I do not know what changes.

That may be the point.  If the changes were good for me and for my computer, the ones who want me to download that app would say so, but if the changes are not good for me or for my computer, they would not be very likely to say.

I don't know, as I say, what if any changes that any app may make.  I do know, however, that the technology exists for me to listen to Robert Reich's newsletter without me ever having to download Substack's app.

©2022 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

IT'S BEING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE ... 2018.

(Common Ground Project)

The Midterm Elections of 2018 broke voting records.  More people turned out than the pundits had a right to predict, and they predicted very poorly.

The polls were wrong in 2018, and they may very well be wrong now too.  The polls were also wrong in 2016 and 2020.

Just ask President Hillary Clinton about the polls in 2016, and just ask the rejected un-reelected Grievance Guy about the polls in 2020.

We may be standing on the shore of another Blue Wave Midterm like what happened in 2018.  That's the thing about the future.  It's so hard to predict.

Still the corporate media keeps talking about the polls.  God Bless them, it may be easier for them to get paid for speaking and writing, than for thinking.

Please read the disclaimer.  ©2022 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

 

SOCIAL MEDIA: TALK WITHOUT SOUND?

Social Media Clockface (Bing Clipart, Barry Law School 07.08.15)

Social media is an extension of talk by other means.*  Let's take a look at two features of two of the social media platforms with which I myself am most familiar, Twitter and Facebook.

    In two ways, social media is like a conversation.  One way is that when a person goes on for 10 or 20 tweets in what they call a "thread," readership attention drops off dramatically between the first one and the last one.  The same seems to be true of extended posts on Facebook that never seem to end.  These long threads and endless posts are like a person talking so long that it seems they do not stop to take a breath.  When they start talking, politeness may demand that we pay attention even if we are not especially interested.  After awhile, sanity demands that we -- politely -- leave the conversation completely.

    The second example is like the first example.  Social media, and Twitter and Facebook in particular, suffer from people who tend to monopolize the conversation.  On Twitter, some people tweet so frequently that they sometimes use up all the air in the room, so to speak.  The same is true of some people on Facebook.  These people are like the people who monopolize our other conversations:  Once again, at the beginning politeness often demands that we pay attention regardless of our interest in the speaker or the subject, but after awhile we have to leave the conversation to save our sanity.

    Social media is talk without words.  Whenever and wherever we talk, the best kind of talk is always hard work but always worthwhile:  First, let's speak to the point, and no further; second, invite replies and listen to them, and always speak as though God and the world can hear you, because they can.

*This is inspired by Clausewitz's famous observation that "War is the extension of diplomacy by other means."

Please read the disclaimer.  ©2022 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

WHEN JOURNALISM BECAME "HE SAID, SHE SAID,"

…  IT COULDN'T REPORT THE TRUTH ANY LONGER.

Some time in the past 30 years or so, journalists changed the way they report.  Perhaps it was because they heard the cries against them, people like the dog handlers in Birmingham or the governor standing in the school-house door,  and so they decided to give the criers equal time.  (The criers were very loud; for that matter, they haven't stopped.)  Whatever the reason, reporters began to equate even-handedness with "he said, she said."

From that point on, Journalism School (or "J School") unceasingly put out the theme that equality of treatment demanded that every side be heard from. 

The end result was that Nazis became "some very fine people."  There are no "fine" Nazis.  They are just plain evil.

There are no "good" racist lynch mobs, no "good" anti-Semites, no "fine" people filled with such hatred that they harm, even kill, other people.

Yet J Schools continue to turn out people who call themselves journalists when they graduate, people who go on to dutifully write that 'good said, evil said,' and they call that even-handed.  Which works for them, obviously, at least so long as they make money for the hedge funds that own their outlets.

These are the people who claim to tell us the truth.  Except they don't, not under their outdated J School model,  "he said, she said."  Not when they write only what makes a profit.  They – and we who depend on them to report what is actually happening – need a different model.  We deserve better.

Please read the disclaimer.  ©2022 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

A MEMORY.

FOR NEXT WRITER'S BLOCK, WHICH IS SCHEDULED FOR NEXT MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2022:

A Memory

by

Dennis Wall

I won the bald-headed kabobble at the Connecticut State Fair on October 10, 1964.  I should probably put "won" in quotes because I did not actually win it, it was given to me.

          I was at the rifle range or the baseball pitch when it happened.  I was 13.  As I was not a particularly coordinated boy, I was generally not so good at games of physical skill.  That was the case in Danbury, Connecticut 58 years ago.

          Whether I was at the rifle range or the baseball pitch that cool Autumn day, I missed the target every time.  The man who ran the booth announced my failure, as was his duty lest I or my parents fail also to understand that I had not earned a prize.

          It was very important then for a boy to be physically proficient, to be good at games.  Those of us who did not often win prizes or were not often successful at playing games knew instantly from our peers and from adults that we had not won.  We knew our place in the boys' life in America at that time and we generally did not protest the injustice of it all, until later.  But not in 1964 and certainly not at the Connecticut State Fair in Danbury, Connecticut.

          Then the man who ran the booth did something unexpected.  He gave me a baldheaded kabobble.  "Everybody should win something," he said.  I kept that baldheaded kabobble for many years but I do not have it now.  It was lost somewhere among many moves in my life since then.

          That man's act of kindness has lived in my memory ever since.  Even without the baldheaded kabobble in my custody, I still remember.  The country has changed, the world has changed, and I have changed since then.  For some, it may add context that President Kennedy's body was not yet in the grave for a full year at that point.

          But I have never forgotten that man's kindness.  I remember during the year, and it is guaranteed that I will remember that day every October 10th.

          The number of times that we have affected other people's lives without being aware of it, in ways both small and large, is unknown to us.  We can unknowingly affect other people's lives with our kindness or with our cruelty.  Sometimes we eventually find out that actions we did not think much about at the time meant a lot to another person.

          And so it is that I fondly remember October 10, 1964.

Please read the disclaimer.  ©2022 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

 

SAUDI ARABIANS' SECOND ATTACK ON THE UNITED STATES.

Saudi Arabia is raising gasoline prices.  President Biden flew to Saudi Arabia earlier this year to sweet-talk the Saudi leader, MBS.  They famously fist-bumped.

Biden's reward?  OPEC's actions raise gasoline prices at the pump in the U.S.  Right before the U.S. midterm elections.  This is not only a deliberate humiliation of the current U.S. President in preference to his predecessor.  This is a planned attack on the elections in the United States, and not for the first time.

One of the actors that urged OPEC to do this was Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman or MBS.  The second actor was OPEC's current co-chair, Russia.

The United States was successfully and infamously attacked by Russia beginning by 2016 at  least.

Now it's Saudi Arabia.  Again.  Saudi Arabia is the country that spawned the vast majority of the terrorists of 911 who attacked the U.S. in 2001.

President Biden was humiliated by MBS.  The U.S. has been attacked – for a second time – by Saudi Arabians, MBS in particular.  We will get to see President Biden's response and what his response will be.  Sweet-talking just does not produce positive results with MBS and the Saudis – nor the Russians.

There are things that the U.S. can do in response.  Here are only some of them:

As to MBS: 

• The evidence is pretty clear that he directed the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist employed by a U.S. newspaper. Indict MBS now.  Put him on trial in the U.S., even if MBS never sets foot here personally again (which alone is a good result for the U.S.).
• If the Department of Justice does not think it has enough evidence to indict MBS for the horrible Khashoggi murder, then investigate MBS.
• At the time of the Khashoggi murder, Turkey reportedly had a tape and Khashoggi's screams were audible on it. Also, CIA agents reportedly heard that tape.  Dollars to doughnuts, the CIA has a copy.  Publish it.    Link the Khashoggi murder to the person who ordered it from Saudi Arabia.
• MBS reportedly over-rode the rejection of Saudi Arabia's multi-billion dollar payment to the Grievance Boy's son-in-law. The press operation in the White House has enough experienced people in it, to make sure that this fact stays in the minds of the American public.

As to Saudi Arabia:

• Saudi Arabia buys a lot of weapons from the United States. There are almost certainly a lot of questions arising from those contracts including unexplained and unforeseen delays in delivering whatever the Saudis have already paid for.  As to weapons that the Saudis have not yet paid for, saying that such contracts might need to be rescinded can be a good first step to possibly rescinding them if the U.S. chooses to rescind them in the future, depending on future Saudi and MBS actions. 
• Reportedly, the U.S. is supporting the Saudi atrocities from its bombing campaign in Yemen on civilians. I do not know exactly how the U.S. is supporting that campaign, but it must stop. 
• There are also reportedly some U.S. soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia. Female soldiers are wearing head-scarves in compliance with Sharia law in Saudi.  The soldiers should wear the same uniforms that they wear in every other country for as long as they are stationed in Saudi Arabia.  It would be even better if U.S. soldiers were withdrawn completely from Saudi Arabia. 

As I said at the beginning, these are only some of the things that can be done now.  These are some of the ways that the United States can respond to Saudi Arabians' second attack on the United States—and to Russia's continuing attack on the United States.

Please read the disclaimer.  ©2022 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

Book Review: "The Destructionists" by Dana Milbank.

The author has done a public service with this book.  Together with David Corn's book, "American Psychosis" (reviewed here recently), the picture comes clear that only one of our two major parties runs on racism and hatred every day.  And it's not the Democrats.

The Democrats absolutely have their racists and their episodes of hatred, but there is no comparison.  The Democratic Party does not feed on racists and hatred as their reason for being.  To the contrary, they shut down racists and tamp down anger regularly, as a part of their operation.

There is no room for "me-tooism" here.  One party, the Republican Party, has kept the name Republican Party and replaced the party's ideals and principles with one reason for being:  Power.  To get power and, after getting power, to stay in power.

The author shares many of his observations from a life-long career as a journalist along the way to this insight, including the observation that the proponents of the current group using the Republican Party name replaced "shared experience in war [the Greatest Generation] with opposing experience in culture war."

Please read the disclaimer.  ©2022 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

I RESPECT PEOPLE WHO …

• go the extra mile.
• give to anyone who begs from you.
• do not turn their back on anyone who wishes to borrow from you.

(See MT 5:41-42)

I try to do these things.  I want to do them more often.  I respect people who do, not just talk.

Please read the disclaimer. This blog article  ©2022 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.