Tag: media

Mental Illness In the Political & Media Class

In one of Cicero’s letters to a friend, he references Pompey the Great’s decision to divorce his wife, Mucia. Cicero attributes it to Pompey’s discovery that she was having an affair with Julius Caesar. Cicero believed that Caesar had many affairs with the wives of Roman patricians, and he perceived this as a sign that Caesar was a dangerously aggressive man.

Pompey apparently didn’t take the matter too seriously, and according to Suetonius, he humorously called Caesar “Aegisthus,” the name of a Greek mythological character who was known to have seduced a king’s wife. It’s likely that Pompey later regretted not taking it seriously when Caesar waged war against him and defeated him in the so-called “Caesar’s civil war.”

It takes a lot of energy, drive, and ambition to get ahead in this competitive world, but I’ve often wondered if these advantageous traits are sometimes—or perhaps even frequently—combined with mental disorders.

In recent years I have watched many prominent figures in the public forum say and do things that strike me as expressive of a mental disorder.

According to the NIH National Institute of Mental Health:

Mental illnesses are common in the United States and around the world. It is estimated that more than one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness (59.3 million in 2022; 23.1% of the U.S. adult population). Mental illnesses include many different conditions that vary in degree of severity, ranging from mild to moderate to severe. Two broad categories can be used to describe these conditions: Any Mental Illness (AMI) and Serious Mental Illness (SMI). AMI encompasses all recognized mental illnesses. SMI is a smaller and more severe subset of AMI. Additional information on mental illnesses can be found on the NIMH Health Topics Pages.

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ABC, George Stephanopoulos to Pay $15M to Trump in Rape Defamation Suit.

ABC News and its anchor, George Stephanopoulos, have reached a settlement with President-elect Donald Trump in a defamation lawsuit. The agreement, filed publicly on Saturday, will see ABC News pay Trump $15 million as a charitable contribution toward his Presidential foundation and museum. In addition, the network will cover $1 million in Trump’s attorney fees.

The settlement arises from a lawsuit Trump filed after Stephanopoulos made claims during a March 2024 interview on “This Week” that Trump had been found liable for rape. These statements were made in an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace following a civil case involving E. Jean Carroll, where the jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, not rape, under New York law. The settlement includes ABC News and Stephanopoulos releasing a statement of “regret” over the inaccurate claims, which will be included as an editor’s note in the related article.

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Martha MacCallum Can’t Believe John Kirby’s Outrageous Response to Her Question: ‘Why Not Just Take One Down and Figure Out What’s Going On?’

In a jaw-dropping interview with Fox News’ Martha MacCallum, White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby struggled to provide clear answers about a bizarre and alarming series of drone sightings in New Jersey.

MacCallum, unimpressed by Kirby’s evasions, grilled him relentlessly on why the administration hasn’t even bothered to shoot down one of these drones to uncover their origins.

Instead of providing clarity, Kirby fumbled through talking points about “policy options” and “inter-agency conversations.” His repeated refrain of “we don’t know” underscored what critics have described as the Biden administration’s signature approach to crises—delay, deflect, and deny.

During the interview, MacCallum confronted Kirby over his outrageous claim during the White House press briefing, where he brushed off more than 3,000 reports of “car-sized drones” as mere misidentifications of helicopters or airplanes.

Martha MacCallum:
A lot of people were unhappy with that comment you made yesterday and felt like you were telling people they were nuts or that they didn’t know what they were seeing with their own eyes.

John Kirby:
No, not at all, Martha. That’s the farthest thing that I would ever do. I was simply reiterating what the FBI and what the Department of Homeland Security have relayed to us about what they’ve been able to corroborate. We haven’t been able to corroborate everything. I said many of the corroborated sightings have turned out to be piloted aircraft. I didn’t say all of them.

And what I said was those are the ones we were able to corroborate. There’s certainly ones that we have not been able to, and we don’t know the answer to it. And I strongly recommend that for folks that are seeing these things and documenting them to share that as they can with Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, the investigator.

Kirby couldn’t even look at the photographic evidence presented during the interview as he conveniently turned off his monitor to avoid distractions. MacCallum called out the absurdity of the situation, asking how a former admiral and current top White House official could dismiss clear visuals of the drones.

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President Trump Named TIME Magazine Person of the Year, They Refuse to Use His Iconic Image, and Slap Him with a Fake Fact-Check

President Donald Trump was named TIME Magazine Person of the Year on Thursday morning.

TIME Magazine refused to use the iconic image of President Trump facing the assassin’s bullet.

That would be obvious and too honest for the TIME staff.

TIME also couldn’t help themselves and fake fact-checked President Trump on the link between vaccines and Autism.

TIME says without hesitation that there is no link. They got this from Big Pharma.
Millions of Americans today would disagree.

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Murdoch Outlets and Bezos’ WaPo Demand More Sympathy for Health Insurance Execs

The early morning murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was met on social media with a “torrent of hate” for health insurance executives (New York Times, 12/5/24). Memes mocking the insurance companies and their callous disregard for human life abound on various platforms (AFP, 12/6/24).

Internet users are declaring that the man police believe to be the shooter, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, is certifiably hot (Rolling Stone, 12/9/24; KFOX, 12/10/24). A lookalike contest for the shooter was held in lower Manhattan (New York Times, 12/7/24).

If so many people are unsympathetic at best in response to such a killing, that might be a reason to revisit why health insurance companies are so loathed. The rage “was shocking to many, but it crossed communities all along the political spectrum, and took hold in countless divergent cultural clusters,” the New York Times (12/6/24) noted. Mangione was reportedly found with an anti-insurance manifesto that stated “these parasites had it coming” (Newsweek, 12/9/24), echoing a resentment largely felt by a lot of Americans, and targeted fury at UnitedHealthcare specifically.

UnitedHealthcare has always stood out for exceptionally high rate of claims denial generally in the industry (Boston Globe, 12/5/24; Forbes, 12/5/24). For example, a Senate committee found that “UnitedHealthcare’s prior authorization denial rate for post-acute care jumped from 10.9% in 2020 to 22.7% in 2022” (WNYW, 12/7/24).

The Times (12/5/24) reported that the Senate committee found that “three major companies—UnitedHealthcare, Humana and CVS, which owns Aetna—were intentionally denying claims” related to falls and strokes in order to boost profits. UnitedHealthcare “denied requests for such nursing stays three times more often than it did for other services.”

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Reuters Fact Checks Babylon Bee Article Stating ‘Allahu Akbar’ Has Replaced ‘Cheerio Mate’ As UK’s Favoured Farewell

Reuters is at it again with their team of ‘fact checkers’. They’re targeting The Babylon Bee, a satirical website, over an article that states the most favoured farewell  in the UK, ‘cheerio mate’ has been replaced with ‘Allahu Akbar.’

The humorous satire piece states, “A recent poll conducted by the University of Oxford just revealed that ‘Allahu Akbar’ has officially replaced ‘Cheerio, mate!’ as the most popular greeting in the UK,” adding that experts called the results of the “survey” a “flippin’ landslide, old bean.”

Kyle Mann, the Editor-in-Chief of the Babylon Bee, shared the lunacy on X, noting that “Reuters fact-checkers reached out for comment on our Babylon Bee story about ‘Allahu Akbar’ replacing ‘Cheerio Mate’ in the UK. I tried to help them out.”Mann then shared screenshots of the ridiculous message he was sent by Reuters 

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Pseudology – has the media industry perfected the art of lying?

TV has a physiological impact on the brain, deteriorating mind activity and potentially turning it into a “mashed potato” state, with some speculating it’s part of a larger project for control and domination.

Research suggests that prolonged exposure to television can be detrimental one’s life, with some studies indicating that children who watch three to four hours of non-educational TV daily will have seen almost 8,000 murders by the end of grade school.

At the time the documentary was made, Dr. Dmitry Csokas was a paediatrician and Director of Seattle Children’s Hospital.  His research found that exposing developing brains to rapid sequencing of television programmes, particularly baby digital video discs (“DVDs”), can precondition the mind to expect high levels of input, leading to shorter attention spans later in life.

Research has progressed to developing a mouse model to study the effects of overstimulation on the developing brain, exposing newborn mice to “mouse television” with lights flashing and sound for six hours a day, resulting in shorter attention spans, greater risk-taking, and poorer cognitive development.

The average age at which children began to watch television regularly has shifted from four years old in 1970 to four months old today, with the advent of baby DVDs and products aimed at young children.

The American Paediatrics Association recommends that children under the age of two should never be exposed to television, while France has made it illegal to produce programming geared towards children under the age of three.

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‘Moral Stain’: Black Church Coalition Demands MSNBC Suspend Al Sharpton Over Undisclosed Kamala Harris Campaign Payments

A black church organization is calling on MSNBC to suspend and investigate host Al Sharpton over donations his organization took from Kamala Harris’s campaign.

The National Black Church Initiative, a coalition that says it represents 27.7 million people and 150,000 black churches across the country, said Wednesday that the payment to Sharpton’s group “puts a moral stain on the integrity of the black Church.” The group, which said it is “very concerned” by the “growing scandal,” urged MSNBC to “launch an investigation” and expressed support for “Rev. Sharpton’s suspension until the investigation is complete.”

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Harris campaign made donations of $250,000 on September 5 and October 1 to Sharpton’s National Action Network, the nonprofit he founded in 1991. Sharpton aired an October 3 segment featuring Harris on his MSNBC show PoliticsNation and conducted a favorable interview with her on October 20.

Founded in 1991, the National Black Church Initiative says it represents 27.7 million churchgoers across the country, with a mission of reducing “racial, social and … economic disparities” and preserving “the authority of the black church’s voice.” The group has focused on health issues pertaining to black Americans and has criticized Sharpton before for taking donations from tobacco companies while opposing a ban on menthol cigarettes, which are popular among black smokers.

The initiative’s president, the Rev. Anthony Evans, said Sharpton is “loved and admired by many in our coalition.”

“But that does [not] take away from the fact he is facing significant moral and journalism ethics [concerns] regarding this payment or donation to the National Action Network,” Evans went on. “In addition, Rev. Sharpton is a minister of the Gospel. This payment does not look good for a man supposed to represent integrity.”

Sharpton did not disclose the donations to viewers or to MSNBC executives, according to a spokesman for the network.

The host has not addressed the scandal, and MSNBC has refused to comment on whether he was punished for failing to disclose the apparent conflict of interest. In 2010, MSNBC suspended network hosts Joe Scarborough and Keith Olbermann for donating to political campaigns, saying that the payments violated the network’s policies that require employees to disclose political activity to company executives.

The Society of Professional Journalists, a prominent journalism ethics group, has criticized MSNBC and Sharpton over the conflict of interest, calling it a “black eye” for the network and the media industry as a whole.

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THE UK DAILY MAIL FAKES PRESENCE OF NORTH KOREANS IN UKRAINE

Daily Mail article (“Kim Jong Un sends North Korean women to fight in Ukraine”) with the altered image has now been removed.

Link now redirects to Daily Mail home page.

No apology or explanation.

They AI altered a video from 2023 of Russian twin sisters Zhenya and Sasha, made them look Korean, and ran with the BS narrative of North Korean women soldiers fighting in Ukraine.

These lies from the media are pushing us to nuclear war, and they cry about how X is fake news. Daily Mail is fake news

THIS is where the link goes

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Fascism comes to New Zealand

It’s the abuser’s Swiss army knife for the empty-headed. Multipurpose, its meaning has near-infinite elasticity. You can be labelled ‘fascist’ if you say that there are only two biological sexes, or that women should not have to undress in front of men, or that men should be excluded from women’s sports, or that men can’t get pregnant, or even if you voted for Trump.

Such is the ignorance of the 1930s and 1940s that in contemporary discourse, ‘fascist’ has lost all meaning.

Yet, in a very real sense, New Zealand is now Fascist. If this seems an extraordinary statement, consider Mussolini’s widely reported (though not documented), definition [Emphasis added]:

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

This definition may not be to everyone’s liking, but has the virtue of simplicity and clarity. Moreover, it is an accurate description of what is happening in America, Europe, Australia and – as I shall show – New Zealand.

There can be no clearer illustration of the corporate rule of New Zealand than the stranglehold the pharmaceutical industry has on government and media.

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