Tag Archives: news

SEEK VALIDATION or SEEK CONTEXT AND UNDERSTANDING

If you want to sleep well, smugly, confident you’re right, confident you know it all—watch your news channel of choice. Get your validation.

If you want to learn more. If you want to improve our discourse, watch how the channel you don’t watch (or that you mock, or laugh at, or discount) is covering what happened today.

It’s a worthwhile exercise. It will expand your thinking. I’m not saying what’s right or wrong. I’m just learning. Doing so won’t change your mind, but it will give you lots of interesting context. It’s a rare night where all outlets are covering the same story rigorously.

#iamgrateful and #iamthankful for this first panel and all the contextual reminders they’re pushing. It’s a rare night indeed. Where you get true clarity on the POVs that are driving how what happens is perceived, especially because you can change the channel and immediately get the precise counterpoint. It’s an excellent way to grasp the tension within our populace.

Also, 2:3 panelists on Fox News are of South Asian descent. I have no idea how to feel about it.

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MONDAY MORNING POV

An excellent primer on the hottest topic of the day (outside of that ball game from…this morning): the Mueller indictments.

Katyal covers the dynamics at play between:> Mueller – admirably independent but easily curtailed if not stopped in his tracks> Rosenstein – with generous power to terminate Mueller based on legal latitude> President Trump – with the constitutional power to terminate Mueller or force Rosenstein to do so> The Congress – who, whether in the majority or minority party, must be informed of said termination

He also covers the difference between constitutional authority and practical, sensical reality (though he uses a universally egregious and idiotic extreme example, PT’s constitutional authority to bomb London now, that everyone disagrees with, to make his point which I think, weakens his narrative.)I thank the just amazing Emily Bazelon for catching and sharing this. I recommend following her as

#iamgrateful and #iamthankful for her feed and how much smarter it makes me.

As for Katyal, remember he is the Professor of National Security Law at Georgetown University. Before that he wrote the laws that define the above, and from his bio: “He has served as Acting Solicitor General of the United States, where he argued several major Supreme Court cases involving a variety of issues, such as his successful defense of the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, his victorious defense of former Attorney General John Ashcroft for alleged abuses in the war on terror, his unanimous victory against 8 states who sued the nation’s leading power plants for contributing to global warming, and a variety of other matters.” What saddens me is some of you will see who wrote it and discount this altogether as opposed to learn from and engage with the POV of a person who was instrumental to drafting the framework that set the stage for all those dynamics above.

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TRUTH (2 of 3):

If America is my country. Donald Trump is my President. And that makes this the inaugural address by my new President. #Iamgrateful and #Iamthankful for NPR and how they walk through the speech, step-by-step. It’s honest and objective. Look at the first piece of analysis on Trump’s opening lines: “Trump ran on a nostalgic slogan of “Make America Great Again.” But it was never clear what, precisely, that meant. By many basic measures and statistics, the country is better off than eight years ago. The country was on the precipice of a potential Great Depression and more than 100,000 troops were overseas, entangled in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, the economy has improved; the unemployment rate is below 5 percent. And the number of troops in conflict is drastically reduced. There has, however, been some permanent damage to some after the recession — some have had to take jobs for less money and struggled to retrain for new careers. Many retirement plans were decimated. And the red tape and cost to some for Obamacare caused a backlash against President Obama and his party.” If you accept the first half of this analysis, you have to accept the second. If you accept the second half of this analysis, you have to accept the first. It’s how we’ll heal together.

https://www.npr.org/2017/01/20/510629447/watch-live-president-trumps-inauguration-ceremony?fbclid=IwAR0bYdbemixfWNdiOJdwnvsv3nYutyRwhtVZo6ul8OgYnvsOgzIEV0HLNAE

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POVs

I fully missed Trump’s press conference. I started reading headlines from NYT, CNN, FOX, Breitbart, Young Conservatives … and I’m lost. Did any of you folks watch it? Would love to hear all sides. Also, side note … does anyone else feel that people and their political parties are starting to act like NFL fans? I compare reading headlines about this news conference (and last night’s speech) to watching a football game between rival teams, with rival fans — and arguing every penalty. It’s amazing how the exact same thing, that everyone sees, can have two such wildly different interpretations.

#Iamgrateful and #Iamthankful the Broncos aren’t in the playoffs this year. I can watch football objectively, or, do what I’ve been doing, and ignore it altogether. 🙂

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