Tell Tom Friedman to Stop Weeping

 If I had ever subscribed to the New York Times for its editorials and paid opinionators, I would have cancelled a long long time ago. The editorial board's unceasing support of corporate education initiatives and racist testing schemes would be more than enough to never subscribe again, but then there's the smarmy manipulative candy-ass Republican, David Brooks, America's favorite middle brow intellectual, Tom Friedman, and a whole stable of other pompous neo-libs and libs who provide America's deciders with rationale aplenty for continuing to steer socioeconomic policy down America's white privileged highways.

And yesterday the Editorial Board had the audacity to conclude that the Board's knee-jerk fake liberals should decide who Americans get to vote for in America's most critical presidential election--ever.

Following the phony Debacle Debate Thursday night, Times columnists formed an immediate knee-jerk dogpile pushing Joe Biden to step aside, resign, or crawl under a rock. Tom Friedman wept, for god's sake, Nick Kristoff clucked, and Paul Krugman ciphered Biden irredeemably deep into the liability column of his presidential odds spreadsheet. 

CNN, meanwhile, belatedly published the fact check that it should have done on Thursday night during or following the "debate," during which time Jake and Dana mechanically read questions that could have been generated and delivered by ChatGBT. You can read here the details of the Insane Clown's 30+ lies that he repeatedly spewed into viewers' living rooms Thursday night. 

As Biden summed it up some hours after the debate, "how do you debate a liar?" Personally, I'm with Maryland's governor, Wes Moore, who quipped, "Instead of focusing on [phony] debate performance, let us please focus on presidential performance."

I am with the citizen who told CNN yesterday when asked about her take on the current fake debate frenzy, "I would rather vote for the corpse of Biden than Trump's lying face."

Is Campbell Brown Just Another Corporate Lackey Posing as a Journalist?

From Media Matters:

Former CNN anchor Campbell Brown criticized New York teachers unions in a Wall Street Journal op-ed over the weekend without disclosing a possible conflict of interest -- her husband, Dan Senor, is a board member of an organization that opposes teachers unions.

On July 29, Brown criticized the New York teachers unions' handling of teachers accused of sexual misconduct:

Under current New York law, an accusation is first vetted by an independent investigator. (In New York City, that's the special commissioner of investigation; elsewhere in the state, it can be an independent law firm or the local school superintendent.) Then the case goes before an employment arbitrator. The local teachers union and school district together choose the arbitrators, who in turn are paid up to $1,400 per day. And therein lies the problem.

For many arbitrators, their livelihood depends on pleasing the unions (whether the United Federation of Teachers in New York City, or other local unions). And the unions--believing that they are helping the cause of teachers by being weak on sexual predators--prefer suspensions and fines, and not dismissal, for teachers charged with inappropriate sexual conduct.

But in her op-ed, Brown never disclosed that her husband, Dan Senor, is a board member of the anti-teachers union organization StudentFirstNY. This disclosure is even more important given the fact that one of the two teachers quoted in her piece, Michael Loeb, has blogged for StudentsFirst.org.

When confronted over the issue of her husband's work on Twitter and her lack of disclosure in herWall Street Journal op-ed, Brown wrote: "B/c protecting kids from sex predator teacher is a partisan issue?"

This is at odds with a New York Times op-ed she wrote in May that was critical of President Obama, where she included the following statement:

I should disclose here that my husband is an adviser to Mr. Romney; I have no involvement with any campaign, and have been an independent journalist throughout my career.

Questions of disclosure over her husband's work for Mitt Romney also surfaced when she was a panelist during a Democratic presidential debate in 2007. . . .