If you’re paying close attention to the latest Debt Limit Ceiling Crisis, well, I pity you — you’re an all-day sucker. Last I checked Republicans were offering to move the standoff to December, but frankly, I don’t give a flying fuck. It will happen or it won’t, and nothing you or I do will make the slightest bit of difference to the outcome.
Ditto the Texas abortion law, enforcement of which has been suspended by a federal judge, the next step in what figures to be a long legal battle. You can read all about it, over and over again, for the next two years or so.
Those of us who thought the country would eventually emerge from its Trump bender were right — it’s the media that have been slow to catch on. An outfit called SocialFlow that tracks internet traffic told Axios interest in Trump-related stories is still dropping, down from even the deflated levels of earlier in the year (handy chart at link). The expired equine will be flogged regardless.
Here’s a story the media buried: Elizabeth Warren (‘memba her?) called attention to a revolving door at the Treasury Department through which people from the big accounting firms are hired at Treasury, where they change rules to benefit their former/future employers. The media, of course, would rather tell you what turds just fell from Trump’s mouth, because it’s a fuckton easier and won’t upset their few remaining advertisers.
Of course, the media-consuming public — that's us — is the ultimate problem. We get bored easily and tune out stories that seem stale and repetitive, like those detailing Trump’s very-much-involved efforts to stage a coup. We all figured that’s what he was doing, amirite, so why dawdle over details?
We’d like to think that all the money funding the wingnutosphere comes from rich Right Wing Nut Jobs, but it’s just not so. One America Network, the kook show that out-Foxes Fox, has been totally funded by AT&T, and was born from a suggestion from their execs. This was in sworn court testimony:
OAN founder and chief executive Robert Herring Sr. has testified that the inspiration to launch OAN in 2013 came from AT&T executives. “They told us they wanted a conservative network,” Herring said during a 2019 deposition seen by Reuters. “They only had one, which was Fox News, and they had seven others on the other [leftwing] side. When they said that, I jumped to it and built one.”
Since then, AT&T has been a crucial source of funds flowing into OAN, providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, court records show. Ninety percent of OAN’s revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms, including satellite broadcaster DirecTV, according to 2020 sworn testimony by an OAN accountant.
Herring has testified he was offered $250 million for OAN in 2019. Without the DirecTV deal, the accountant said under oath, the network’s value “would be zero.”
The floor’s yours. You will be held responsible for mopping up any spills.