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The Republican party has become the most dishonest political movement in the history of the United States.
An acquaintance of mine gave me a copy of the South Tidewater News that was delivered to her home. To call it a right wing rag would legitimize it too much. It's not even a rag. It's a fake publication printed on newsprint to give its right wing propaganda a glow of legitimacy.
The publishers of this collection of lies are so dishonest they even copied ads from other publications to make it appear more realistic, but my acquaintance confirmed that at least one of those ads was not submitted by the supposed advertiser. It's pretty clear that all of the ads were just copied. The publication also includes small bits of local information that anyone can find on the internet.
I've changed this post a bit since I first wrote it because a colleague sent me a link to an article from the Columbia Journalism Review, which says these publications are distributed by The Metric Media network. According to CJR, there are two primary stakeholders of the network including one who had been reported on for plagiarized and fake content.
After reading the article, I was surprised that with all the funding these Republican shills receive, the publications are so sloppy, with poorly written articles, photos that don't match the content (their Lynchburg publication had two photos of Bobby Scott in for articles about Bob Good) and several ridiculously mundane and short AI generated stories listing recent tweets by politicians. It's mostly AI and doesn't seem to go through any human proofreading.
And the pretense is striking. CJR points out that while posing as local newspapers, they often miss significant local news stories.
For example, our analysis found, when a building collapsed in Miami in June, across the local news network, just one story was published, six days after the event, despite the network having about 40 Florida-based titles. In August, Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana, but none of the fifteen-odd Louisiana-based sites even mentioned the Category-4 storm.
But what do you expect from the right wing? The people who cry "Fake News" when confronted with evidence that doesn't match their beliefs are behind America's most dishonest propaganda outlets which refer to themselves as "national news". Why wouldn't they generate a series of fake local newspapers as well?
The publication I have is filled with accusations of Democrats promoting violence, when it's Republicans who spent decades promoting violence against us. They talk about 2nd Amendment solutions to political problems. They wear t-shirts promoting the murder of journalists. Winsome Earl Sears called for the murder of abortion activists, saying, "Murder is murder, and one day it's going to be your turn." But they accuse Democrats.
They lied about trickle down economics. They lied about covid. Winsome Earle Sears is lying about Virginia's economy. Jason Miyares is lying about crime. They're lying about the cause of the government shutdown which is causing so much pain for all of us.
The Suffolk Democratic Committee is getting some backlash from the right about their "Stop Fascism" buttons, which you can get by visiting them at events like the upcoming Fish Fry fundraiser or Peanut fest
According to Nathanial Hirt, who is Jason Miyares's campaign manager, the buttons show a level of "fear-mongering and divisive rhetoric." Jen Kiggans weighed in, too.
"Stop Fascism" isn't fear-mongering when our leadership in Virginia is supporting the illegal use of federal forces invading states and cities against the will of the people who live there, rounding up people - sometimes law-abiding American citizens, and holding them for days without due process for having brown skin. I don't think "Stop Fascism" is fear-mongering when leadership in Virginia illegally purged voters from the rolls right before an election, in service to a candidate who told his supporters, "In four years, You don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, you're not going have to vote."
As for divisive language: the would-be murderers of Donald Trump were a Republican and a former Trump supporter. The murderer of Melissa Hortman, her husband, and her dog was a Republican. You can do some Googling and maybe find a few left-wing attempted assassins but overwhelmingly they come from the right.
If Republicans want to protect Americans, they should worry more about right-wing fear-mongering and divisive language and less about a few buttons telling the truth about what's happening in our country
Edits: 2025-09-20 I removed "Charlie Kirk's murderer was a Trump supporter convinced by other Trump supporters that Kirk didn't support Trump enough." I still don't think Robinson is a left wing radical, but he wasn't motivated by a perception of Kirk's disloyalty to Trump
I've been hearing lies about Jews and Israel all my life. Land purchased by Zionists from Arabs who were happy to sell it is today called "stolen land". In 2000, an image of a Jewish student beaten by Palestinian rioters was featured in the New York Times mislabeled as a Palestinian beaten by Israeli police. I've seen pictures of Syrian victims and Iraqi victims labeled as Palestinian victims of Israel. The fact that Hamas and other Palestinian militants have used hospitals and schools as staging grounds for attacks on Israel has been given limited coverage compared to that of Israel's responses.
So I've had plenty of reason to doubt reports of war crimes. And another reason: I still don't think Israel was committing war crimes in late 2023 or early 2024. The IDF employed several measures to mitigate civilian harm at the start of the war: Warnings and time to evacuate; Precision weaponry; Daily pauses. But it's difficult to avoid civilian casualties in a densely populated region where militants are hiding underground and among civilians. And when Al Shifa Hospital was hit by Palestinian rockets, the world condemned Israel.
Today's violence between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East traces back to riots in the early 1900's, committed by Arabs. This is not a condemnation of Arab people or Palestinians. Many Arabs sheltered their Jewish neighbors from the rioters.
The Arabs who lived on land that would become Israel and the occupied territories had legitimate grievances against the Zionist movement. While Zionism was good for many Palestinians, Europeans where buying up land with the goal of taking political control of the region, and were displacing tenants and eliminating jobs. Zionists discounted and in many cases deliberately caused economic hardships which forced many Arabs out of their homes.
But no amount of legitimate grievance justified the kind of brutality that occurred during the riots. The rioters raped, committed genital mutilation, and murdered children. And the greatest amount of suffering caused by the rioters fell on non-Zionist Jews, suggesting that the violence wasn't just a reaction against a political movement, but a series of sadistic rampages fueled, at least in part, by bigotry.
Since then terrorist attacks have repeatedly scuttled peace efforts. Terrorists bombed civilian airlines, attacked busses and bus stations, including a school bus, restaurants, and other civilian targets.
I fear the strain of hatred and sadism that runs through the anti-Zionist movement no matter how just the original cause may have been. I also fear the violent religious fundamentalism which has taken root within the Palestinian movement. Not all of the terrorists are interested in freedom for Palestinians.
Despite chants about the river and the sea, the idea that Palestine would be free under Hamas is ludicrous. We only have to look at Hamas's primary backer, Iran, to see what Palestinian life would be like under Hamas. -
Enforced disappearances and torture and other ill-treatment ... Arbitrary detention and unfair trials ...
women and girls ... harassment and violence in public spaces. ... forced “morality” classes; imprisonment and flogging ...
Consensual same-sex sexual relations ... criminalized with punishments ranging from flogging to the death penalty.
All this and more kept me quiet about Israel's war crimes. I doubted the stories and thought they were being told by religious fanatics and terrorist sympathizers who revel in the deaths of Jews. And I thought the stories were being bolstered by ignoramuses who don't know or care about history, and who blindly empathize with the poorer or less European side of any conflict. I still think that's true to a great extent.
But despite my mistrust and fears, I don't want to ignore Israel's crimes. The evidence is overwhelming.
I can't help thinking of the cliché, "The call is coming from inside the house" when I read of Israeli generals, Mossad agents, political leaders, and human rights organizations all saying that Israel is committing war crimes. They're even saying "genocide".
And even in the beginning, I thought, is this necessary? Certainly a harsh response to the October 7th massacre was justified but such destruction? Death to so many children? And how can I discount the fact that Israelis were mortified by the attack, and Netanyahu is a war-mongering nationalist who was in political turmoil from his own corruption before October 2023. It's unrealistic not to consider that a corrupt hard-right leader in trouble wouldn't call for excessive brutality to appease an electorate thirsting for revenge after a horrifying attack that happened under his watch.
I can't support a Palestinian state without supporting terrorists, but I can't oppose a Palestinian state with supporting warmongers. Whatever I decide to support, I'll be siding with murderers. I support two states.
I've have a recurring, small, donation to Standing Together, and occasionally give to other organizations which work towards a peace that doesn't require one side eliminating the other.
As a U.S. Citizen, I support Democrats because Republicans fully support the oppression of Palestine. But Democrats are tearing their party apart over the Israel/Palestine conflict. It was painful to watch pro-Palestinian "Genocide Joe" protest voters (or non-voters) join forces with Zionist Democrats who broke party ranks to help Donald Trump destroy America because they thought he'd be better for Israel. We're being torn apart by ignorance but the truth might bring some of us together.
The truth is: Israel is committing war crimes. These war crimes are part of a century-long cycle of terrorism and collective punishment starting with sadistic riots, but they're still war crimes.
There is still a part of me that hopes that I'm wrong. I would love for someone to prove to me that Israel is doing the minimum necessary to stop terrorism, and that the terrorism Israel is stopping is even worse than the carnage being created to stop it.
I've updating this post a few times in the days since first posting it, mostly to improve my phrasing. I added the paragraph about hoping to be wrong, and this paragraph. I might update this post with comments I get on social media. You can find me on Bluesky or Mastodon (AssortedFlotsam.com) by looking for "bnmng"
We don't know Tyler Robinson's politics. We know (as much as we can know anything reported in national news) he was in a relationship with a trans person, or a person in the process of transitioning. But being gay or trans doesn't make you a left-winger. Caitlyn Jenner, formerly known as Olympian Bruce Jenner, is right wing trans person as was her (now deceased) Trump supporting friend Sophia Hutchins. The Republican candidate for LT Governor of Virginia is openly gay.
We know Robinson didn't like things Charlie Kirk said about transgender and gay people. But we don't know Robinson's views on immigration, taxes, or even anti-discrimination laws. We know he liked his guns.
I'm going to have a hard time trusting any new information released about Tyler Robinson. I think it's strange that after Robinson turned himself in, authorities now say he is not cooperating. Why wouldn't he be cooperating? I think it's possible they're trying to make him say something he doesn't want to. I imagine a written statement saying "I was radicalized by left wing media" could save him from the chair, but he's not yet willing to write one.
The Trump administration and supporters have been spinning the killer's image since before they knew who he was. Progressives also spun, but at least they waited for some information to start dribbling in. I got caught up in that spin when I wrote "Charlie Kirk's murderer was a Trump supporter convinced by other Trump supporters that Kirk didn't support Trump enough." Now, the most politicized FBI since Hoover under the most incompetent leadership ever has custody of Robinson, and I think we'll never know the truth about the killer's motivations.
Recently, in a letter to the editor of a Virginia newspaper, the writer accused Democrats of wanting to make the election "All about President Donald Trump", even though "the election is all about Virginia, not Trump"
Shortly after, Republican candidate Winsome Earle-Sears posted on Social Media, "I'd be honored to have President Trump campaign with me here in Virginia"
The writer is partially correct - the election is not "All about" Trump. But it is a lot about Trump and Republicans are the reason. While governors in other states are resisting Trump's use of federal forces against civilians, Virginia's Republican leadership happily supports it. When Trump delegated his authority to Elon Musk who cobbled together a band of idiot savants to fire tens of thousands of military veterans, many of whom were employed to help other veterans find jobs, Winsome Sears said she supports what Trump was doing, and laughed it off saying people lose jobs "all the time"
All across the nation, state and local Republicans are looking for ways to prevent people from voting, including voter registration purges, rejecting student IDs as valid forms of identification, and closing polling locations in Democratic neighborhoods.
Donald Trump, taking election advice from Vladimer Putin, says he's going to eliminate mail in voting. He'll need support from state and local Republicans to get it done.
The greatest form of Trump derangement syndrome is the fealty that Republicans show to Donald Trump as inflation rises, jobs disappear, and civilians are rounded up and taken away by federal forces invading states against the will of the people who live there.
It's true that Virginia's upcoming election is about Virginia. But if we elect Republicans, Virginia will be all about Trump.
Reneging on the promise to show us the Epstein files; Trying to make us forget about them; angry outbursts at people who ask; bogus investigations meant to distract us. These are enough evidence for a reasonable person to conclude that those files implicate Donald Trump as being involved with Epstein's sex ring.
With the technology we have today, the fact that it's taking them this long to show us a version of the Epstein files which they find acceptable - and the fact that he tried to make us forget about them - means to me that Trump is deeply embedded throughout those files and removing his name is more complicated than they realized.
When we combine the delays and distractions with all of the photos of Trump and Epstein, with Epstein saying that Trump was his best friend for ten years, with Trump saying that Epstein and he have a lot in common and that Epstein likes girls on the younger side, with Trump's disgusting sexual comments about his own daughter, we have enough evidence to come to a conclusion - or at least a highly informed assumption.
All that evidence should be enough for us to conclude that that Donald Trump is deeply implicated in those files. We can keep demanding those files but we have to accept that anything we get, when we finally get anything, will be altered. The delays and distractions are probably the best evidence that we'll get.
How does Trump know that the job numbers are cooked?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) gets its numbers from data it collects from households and businesses. It often posts estimates before all of the data is received, so revisions aren't unusual.
Had Donald Trump reviewed all of that data? Of course not.
Believing that Trump knows that the data is cooked means believing that he is God like. You don't understand how he knows what he knows; you just accept that he knows. He knows because he's Donald Trump and no other reason is necessary.