June 28, 2023

Nicolle Wallace to host Biden in sit down interview tomorrow

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/biden-interview-deadline-white-house-supreme-court-rcna91652

June 19, 2023

RFK Jr. has a big primary problem: Democrats like Joe Biden

One big takeaway from this polling: RFK's support among Democrats comes not from "the left" as is already being thrown out here by some, but is strongest among conservatives and moderates who vote in Democratic primaries (and no they are not all disrupters):

"Per the CNN poll, Kennedy garnered 35% among Democratic primary voters who identified as non-liberal (i.e., moderate or conservative) independents. He got 10% among liberal Democrats. Kennedy’s averaging about 15% support among self-identified Democrats of any ideology."

snip

The president is averaging in the mid-60s nationally, and there is zero sign his support is weakening. For Biden to start dropping, Democrats would have to stop thinking he’s doing a good job as president. Biden’s approval rating among Democrats in a Quinnipiac University poll released last week was 84%. Just 16% either disapproved (13%) or didn’t hold a view (3%).There is no precedent – at least since World War II – of an incumbent president losing a contested state primary while polling above 70% nationally within his party.

Biden also scores high on a slightly different intraparty metric: His favorability rating is at 85% on average. That is, most Democrats think he’s doing a good job as president and are fans of him personally.

Kennedy’s other big problem goes beyond Biden. While the vast majority of Democrats like the president, the same cannot be said for Kennedy. A mere 25% of Democratic voters had a favorable view of him in the Quinnipiac poll – 39% had an unfavorable view. Among self-identified “strong Democrats” in a May Marquette law school poll, the split was 27% favorable to 50% unfavorable for Kennedy.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/18/politics/robert-kennedy-democratic-primary-joe-biden/index.html

June 9, 2023

Oklahoma Sooners win third straight NCAA softball title

Sooners set numerous records in winning their third straight title:
only second team to accomplish the feat
set a record for winning percentage in a season
set a record with a 58 game winning streak

A dynasty in a rapidly growing sport

GREAT DAY!!! dump indicted and Sooners do it again!

https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/37822687/oklahoma-tops-florida-state-third-straight-ncaa-softball-title

June 7, 2023

CNN Chairman and CEO Chris Licht is out

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/07/media/chris-licht-cnn/index.html

snip

Chris Licht, the embattled chief executive and chairman of CNN, whose brief one-year tenure at the network was stained by a series of severe missteps, will depart the company.

“I met with Chris and he will be leaving CNN,” David Zaslav, the chief executive of parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, told CNN employees at the start of the network’s daily editorial call Wednesday.

Licht’s departure, which came days after a devastating 15,000-word profile in The Atlantic, capped a tumultuous year for CNN, marked by layoffs, historically low ratings, and rock-bottom employee morale.

May 12, 2023

Wow Nicolle is going after Anderson Cooper and CNN

RN. Heilman and the rest are joining in on the criticism, mocking Cooper's silo defense and the format, lack of fact-checking, and pro-dump audience.

May 12, 2023

Trump's team revels in town hall victory as CNN staff rages at 'spectacle of lies'

A couple of takes from this reporting: I'm coming to the point of view that Licht is more a lackey stooge who is in way over his head. He's one of those oily, amoral types you find in large organizations whose main talent is playing the system and sucking up. His ridiculous excuse for the disaster that it served democracy was not only self-serving but showed he doesn't have the faintest clue about our democracy - and really doesn't care anyway. His interaction with dump in the article illustrates that.

The other is that Collins is not some poor reporter who doesn't deserve blame but rather a Haberman-like tv personality who plays both sides.

***

snip

Trump was not particularly concerned by whether the broadcast would get high ratings, though he told CNN’s chief executive, Chris Licht, backstage that he would boost their ratings, to which Licht nodded and said he should have “a good conversation and have fun”, two of the people said.

Trump’s advisers saw the town hall ultimately as a strategic win for the former president, who revelled in playing off the live audience of Republican and Republican-leaning voters in New Hampshire, which is hosting the first 2024 GOP presidential primary, and talked over the CNN moderator, Kaitlan Collins, as she tried to factcheck him in real time.

In stark contrast to the Trump camp’s jubilation, the mood inside CNN was dour amid widespread reports of internal disgust. The network’s own media reporter Oliver Darcy wrote in his newsletter on Wednesday that it was “hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN”. But the Trump campaign appears to have got what it wanted out of the CNN town hall in part because it negotiated the terms of the event with an unusual degree of leverage, according to multiple people familiar with how the planning unfolded.

Trump’s team also figured that CNN worked for its needs because it could have Collins as the moderator, a rising star who co-hosts the network’s morning show but has also remained on the Trump beat and has taken care to preserve her relationship with the ex-president.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/12/trump-town-hall-cnn-staff-rages

May 12, 2023

CNN Employees Are Not Happy With The Network's Trump Town Hall

This adds to Darcy's opinion piece this morning and includes a shot by Herr Licht at their media critic (who may get the door like Stelter did).

snip

“I don’t know anyone who was happy with last night,” one unnamed journalist told Vanity Fair. “The mood is absolutely the lowest it’s been in the Licht tenure, and that’s saying a lot.”

Multiple CNN insiders also gave their reactions to Rolling Stone, calling the event “appalling,” “just brutal,” “a fucking disgrace” and “1000 percent a mistake.” One questioned why the network would arrange a town hall that was “stacked with his voters.”

Michael Fanone, the former Washington police officer who was assaulted by rioters during the 2021 Capitol attack, now serves as an on-air contributor for CNN. He told HuffPost that he was upset by the broadcast.

“It’s worse than I could have ever imagined. It’s an absolute disaster,” he said. “There’s no way to fact-check this guy in real time. He’s a volcano of bullshit.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-town-hall-cnn-employees_n_645d281de4b03e16f1a1c1a7

May 11, 2023

CNN faces harsh criticism after Trump unleashed a firehose of lies during its live town hall

Some light criticism of CNN's disaster by their media reporter. And no, doing "fact-checking" afterward on a show no one watched does not mitigate or justify the decision to give free air time to an evil criminal. Besides, as Tapper admitted, there wasn't enough time to fact check all the lies. If so, then why have him on in front of an admiring audience? Because of ratings for a failing network shift instigated by a repug owner and, more importantly, for that owner, changing the narrative to fit the desires of the oligarchs.

We'll see if this take gets Darcy fired, like they got rid of Brian Stelter.

snip

It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening.

Trump’s team was, naturally, delighted with the result, according to reports. “Advisers to Trump are thrilled at how this is going so far for him,” The NYT’s Jonathan Swan reported. “They can’t believe he is getting an hour on CNN with an audience that cheers his every line and laughs at his every joke.”

Neither could anyone else.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/11/media/cnn-town-hall-donald-trump-reliable-sources/index.html

May 9, 2023

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: The Covid-19 emergency is ending. It's time for the patient to leave the hospital

snip

But right now, the trends – in cases, hospitalizations and deaths – are all still high but thankfully moving in the right direction for my patient, our country.

This is also true globally. “For more than a year, the pandemic has been on a downward trend,” WHO’s Tedros said Friday, explaining why the PHEIC declaration was coming to an end. But he said that he would not hesitate to declare a global health emergency again if there is a significant rise in Covid-19 cases or deaths in the future.

snip

If the US weekly death rate at the end of April held steady for 52 weeks (or represented the average weekly death rate), we would have about 54,700 deaths per year. This puts Covid on par with a bad influenza season. And remember, when it comes to flu, less than half the adult population in the United States gets a vaccine every year.

Solid medical science in the form of vaccines and effective public health strategies, such as high-quality masks and indoor ventilation, can get us only so far if there isn’t a collective will to use them.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/09/health/covid-public-health-emergency-ends-gupta/index.html

May 2, 2023

Here's why you need to be cultivating awe in your life

snip

Empirical research by me and other psychologists has found that the cultivation of awe can be done, as with mindfulness practices, anywhere, and only takes a minute or two. You don’t need a lot of money, nor to travel to exotic locales, to find awe; it literally is always around you, if you just take a moment to pause and open your mind to what is vast and mysterious nearby. Still other studies suggest that awe is up to the task of responding to the crises of individualism, of excessive self-focus, loneliness, and the cynicism of our times, and even to some extent to rising problems of physical health.

Feelings of awe shift attention away from the self toward what is around you – to being, in the words of Jane Goodall, “amazed at things outside the self”. In one simple test of this power of awe, students who were led to look upward into a stand of eucalyptus trees just for one to two minutes later reported less narcissism and entitlement than students in a control condition, and these awe-filled students offered more help to a stranger in obvious need nearby.

Today I regularly teach students simple awe-practices that orient attention outward: to look to the sky, or clouds, for example, or a stand of trees, or the movement of city dwellers making their way to lunch; or to the collaborating sounds within a moving piece of music.

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I have been trying to do this every chance I get. It helps.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/02/awe-psychology-life-death-dacher-keltner