There is NOTHING like good old fashioned flame, and all those hippies who say electric is just as good also eat tofurkey and other vile hippie food. No wonder they're so cranky all the time.
I wanted to get the source for the "dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe," so I tracked it down to Tom Wolfe's "The Intelligent Coed's Guide to America," republished in Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine (1976). In the process, I found a more extended discussion that struck me as worth repeating. Here's the relevant excerpt, from pp. 115-17 of the hardcover edition; it reports on a panel discussion at Princeton in 1965, in which the participants included Paul Krassner, editor of The Realist magazine, Günter Grass, and Wolfe:
The next thing I knew, the discussion was onto the subject of fascism in America. Everybody was talking about police repression and the anxiety and paranoia as good folks waited for the knock on the door and the descent of the knout on the nape of the neck. I couldn't make any sense out of it. . . . This was the mid-1960's. . . . [T]he folks were running wilder and freer than any people in history. For that matter, Krassner himself, in one of the strokes of exuberance for which he was well known, was soon to publish a slight hoax: an account of how Lyndon Johnson was so overjoyed about becoming President that he had buggered a wound in the neck of John F. Kennedy on Air Force One as Kennedy's body was being flown back from Dallas. Krassner presented this as a suppressed chapter from William Manchester's book Death of a President. Johnson, of course, was still President when it came out. Yet the merciless gestapo dragnet missed Krassner, who cleverly hid out onstage at Princeton on Saturday nights. . . .
Support [for Wolfe's view that fascism wasn't coming to America] came from a quarter I hadn't counted on. It was Grass, speaking in English.
"For the past hour, I have my eyes fixed on the doors here," he said. "You talk about fascism and police repression. In Germany when I was a student, they come through those doors long ago. Here they must be very slow."
Grass was enjoying himself for the first time all evening. He was not simply saying, "You really don't have so much to worry about." He was indulging his sense of the absurd. He was saying: "You American intellectuals — you want so desperately to feel besieged and persecuted!"
He sounded like Jean-François Revel, a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.
Not very nice, Günter! Not very nice, Jean-François! A bit supercilious, wouldn't you say! . . .
So Tapper puts out a book spilling the Biden beans, progs go berserk with rage, Trumpers still don't like him, and this is what happens:
Honestly I'm shocked he still has an audience at all. He's a proven liar and propagandist - he admitted it himself - wrote a freaking book about what a liar and propagandist he is - not sure why anyone would consider him a legit news source.
BARI WEISS: Speaking of fake news and misinformation, you’ll remember that days before the catastrophic debate that we’ve been talking about, The New York Times came out with a story, labeling that the clips of Biden looking sort of lost and disoriented — this is a news story — were “cheap fakes.”
ALEX THOMPSON: I have a good story about this. So, when we were reporting the book, I remember talking to a fairly senior White House person, and they were like — basically made like, yes, he was bad; yes, we shouldn’t have run him again; yes, like, he was really struggling — but they sort of got in my face. They were like, “You guys, like, bought some of our spin, and they specifically mentioned the “cheap fake” stuff. They were like — this person — “We could not” — at least, they were speaking for themselves — they were like, “I could not believe we got those stories placed.” [emphasis added]
BARI WEISS: …It is our job to distrust politician spin.
JAKE TAPPER: …So the “cheap fake” thing is so fascinating to me, and we — [talks a little about their book’s pitch and planning]. “Cheap fakes” is such an interesting topic. “Cheap fakes” is a term that this Harvard professor or expert on misinformation came up with as a play on “deep fakes.” We all know what deep fakes are: Using technology to make it look as though Bari Weiss is saying something she would never say… “Cheap Fakes” is, it’s too cute by half the term. It’s just meant as a play on deep fakes because it’s not using technology, it’s just, like, editing. So, for example, Joe Biden, at the anniversary of Normandy, is sitting down and they’re announcing Lloyd Austin, and he freezes in place. …Why does he freeze in place? He freezes in place because it is a huge effort for this man to sit down. It is a huge effort for this man to stand up. So he just freezes in place until they’re done introducing Lloyd Austin, and then he sits down. The clip is him just freezing without him sitting down. It is a clip of something weird. It is a clip of a man who is enfeebled. It is not a clip of a man freezing for no reason, and this is one of the reasons why the White House was able to get some reporters — and I would say, not me and not Alex, some reporters — to buy this “cheap fake” thing is because there were edits that they were able to use to say, “Look, it’s not even real,” or “It’s not fair.” When he’s wandering off at the G7 in Italy, he is wandering towards a bunch of paratroopers. That does not make the moment any less weird. It is still strange, and it is still him wandering off, and it is still Prime Minister Maloney bringing him back, but the edit of not showing that he’s actually walking towards… a paratrooper allowed the White House to successfully tell some reporters — I’m not defending the White House here; I just want people to understand I’m not defending it — but I’m saying, having that edit where it was allowed them to sell to Washington Post, New York Times, other newspapers — I believe those two papers; I might be wrong — but some mainstream [media] organizations the idea that these are “cheap fakes.” Now, I didn’t think so. I thought that they were edited, but they were weird moments regardless. I think that that is part of the story of a gullible press and the White House taking advantage of edits that didn’t need to be made to make an argument that went way too far in the White House’s direction, to the point that even the White House people were telling Alex, “I can’t believe you bought it.”
CBS News: Misleading Biden videos go viral
NBC News: Biden campaign calls out what it calls ‘cheap fake’ viral videos
MSNBC: Joe on ‘cheap fake videos’
Al Jazeera: White House says Joe Biden is a victim of ‘cheap fakes’
The New York Times: Biden Battles Age Doubts and a Trail of Misleading Videos
The Washington Post: How Republicans used ‘cheap fake’ videos to attack Biden
The Hill: ‘Cheap fake’ Biden videos burst into national spotlight
MSNBC: Misleading GOP videos of Biden are going viral. The fact-checks have trouble keeping up.
Poynter: ‘Cheap fake’ videos, and the phrase itself, take 2024 election’s center stage (Note: This title is also used in a head-scratching PolitiFact “debunking” of these videos, which warned readers: “‘Cheap fake’ videos of President Joe Biden that have been selectively edited or taken out of context to undermine his mental and physical fitness have inundated social media and are the subject of political spin.”)
Newsweek: White House Calls Biden Videos ‘Fake’, Sparking Republican Outrage
Deadline: Joe Biden “Cheap Fake” Videos Parrot GOP Talking Points
News Nation: ‘Cheap fakes,’ explained: How manipulated media hurts candidates
MSNBC: Did you fall for this fake video of Joe Biden at the G7 in Italy?
The Independent: White House fumes at ‘cheap fake’ Biden video
Rolling Stone: ‘Cheap Fakes’: Republicans Target Biden Over His Age With Deceptive Videos
London Evening Standard: White House blasts ‘cheap fake’ videos of Joe Biden
CNN Audio: White House Slams “Cheap Fake” Videos of Biden
The Wrap: The New ‘Cheap Fakes’ and the Coming Presidential Debates
AP News: Seeing is believing? Not necessarily when it comes to video clips of Biden and Trump
The Hill: White House slams ‘bad faith videos that claim to show Biden confused
WIRED: Conspiracy Theorists Aren’t Even Bothering With Biden’s Debate Performance
The Daily Beast: The GOP Operative Making Those Viral Frozen Biden Videos
Snopes: The Facts About Biden’s Purported ‘Freeze Up’ (Note: Snopes STILL hasn’t updated this 2024 story about “cheap fakes,” telling readers: “We will update this story if we find or receive any further facts or official statements to add to the article.”)
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"Part of the problem with Harvard is that there are about 31% of foreigners coming to Harvard ... but they refuse to tell us who the people are," Trump told reporters May 25. "We want a list of those foreign students and we'll find out whether or not they're OK. Many will be OK, I assume. And I assume with Harvard many will be bad."
The Department of Homeland Security says Harvard did not provide the information it requested about the university’s international students. DHS cited that as one reason for revoking Harvard’s certification. But Harvard disputed that in its lawsuit against the Trump administration.
Courts have not yet ruled on whether Harvard complied with providing DHS with the additional information it requested.
However, immigration law experts said Trump’s statement that the U.S. government doesn’t know the identities of Harvard’s international students is incorrect.
U.S. colleges and universities that enroll international students must be certified under the Department of Homeland Security’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program, called SEVP.
SEVP’s database "contains all information about every student visa holder. Addresses, courses, grades, jobs, social media accounts, and much more," Charles Kuck, an Atlanta-based immigration lawyer and Emory University law professor, said.
Even the Biden Administration Couldn’t Believe How DUMB and GUILLIBLE the Mainstream Media Was!
What’s especially galling is the post-election gloating of the Biden team: They don’t feel guilty about hiding Biden’s senility from the American people. There’s zero contrition over their attempted Folgers Crystals taste-test swap of President Biden with President Autopen.
Instead, the opposite is true. They’re proud of their lies! So proud, in fact, that they couldn’t resist bragging about it.
Check out this exchange at the 1:19:35 mark:
Even the brain-dead Biden White House was stunned by the mainstream media’s stupidity!
“I could not believe we got those stories placed” is a PR pro’s gloat when a crappy, idiotic pitch defies the law of gravity and somehow flies. (Yes, I know the feeling: I once landed a sales guru on the cover of Ad Age by claiming he’s so smooth, he could sell hairbrushes to bald guys. If you click on my profile pic, you’ll probably figure out how I came up with the pitch.)
Jake Tapper elaborated on the “cheap fake” con-job at the 1:20:42 mark:
Let’s overlook Jake Tapper’s self-congratulatory back-slapping. (I know it’s annoying, especially after he spent most of the past half-decade carrying water for the Biden White House.) But let’s look at the bigger picture:
The Biden White House now admits to conning the media over “cheap fakes.” So, it beckons the obvious question: How many outlets were stupid and gullible enough to fall for it?
Here’s your list of shame:
“I can’t believe you bought it.”
Republican Sens. Eric Schmitt and John Cornyn will co-chair a first-of-its-kind Senate Judiciary Committee hearing next month on the subject, which they say was covered up by members of the media. The focus echoes President Donald Trump's oft-repeated claims about Biden's mental fitness while president and criticism of Biden's use of autopen, a mechanical device to automatically add a signature to a document that's been utilized by several past presidents, including Trump in his first term.
'We need to get past the failures of the media, which were legend as you pointed out, or the political issue of 'were you for Biden or against Biden?' This is about a constitutional crisis, where we basically have a mentally incompetent president who's not in charge,' Cornyn said Thursday on Fox News' 'The Will Cain Show.'
One year ago today, a jury of 12 New Yorkers convicted Donald Trump for falsifying business records as part of an alleged hush money scheme to influence the 2016 election.
The conviction left an indelible mark on Trump -- making him the first president or former president to be found guilty of a crime -- and his fight to erase that legacy continues to this day.
On June 11, a federal appeals court in Manhattan is set to hear oral arguments in the president's renewed legal fight to move his criminal case from state to federal court.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg opposes the move -- arguing that a case can't be removed to federal court after conviction -- but Trump's lawyers have argued the 'unprecedented criminal prosecution of a former and current president of the United States belongs in federal court.'