Posts Tagged → NBC
Why I do not have a podcast, and won’t
Couple years ago, a longtime older friend, financially successful and politically active, asked me why I do not have a podcast.
“I see all these podcasts online, and I think, Wow, Josh would be great at that You should do it.”
And to me, even though I am not going to be a podcaster or have a podcast, what a great and appreciated compliment that is, for several reasons.
The most important being that discerning thinkers — people who more carefully consider the information they consume — are increasingly tied into podcasts. Both Left and Right, and a lot of Americans in the middle, are hungry for information that breaks from the worn out, politically partisan, and openly fraudulent mainstream legacy media outlets like the New York Times, ABC-CBS-NBC-CNN-NPR-BBC, Washington Post, LA Times, etc.
These mainstream legacy media organizations are not fair-minded arbiters of accurate information. Rather, they are highly tuned political activism outlets. And it is no “conspiracy theory” to say this; they proudly flaunt their partisanship every single day. At this point, there is no material, substantive difference between the New York Times and Mother Jones magazine, other than the NYT is living off the fumes of its once great reputation and the closed circuit dopamine high that leftists live in (“I only read information sources that align with my values” said an old friend to me several years ago, deliberately not self-aware about how self-defeating such a non-diverse, mono-syllabic approach to information is to those people, especially, who pretend to consume only the very best and purest of information).
The NYT masquerades as a serious place, whereas Mother Jones has been a gleeful juvenile bomb thrower for decades. Both are far-left America-hating Marxist activism proponents who abuse their masochistic audiences.
And yes, I have the hands-on experience with both of these outfits to speak authoritatively about them. Suffice it to say that we all have a family…
And so, in this general vacuum/absence of accurate news i.e. mainstream media’s deliberate misinformation fake news, podcasts have opened up huge opportunities for people genuinely interested in learning the actual factual truth. And market demand has been met by market supply; podcasts are now such a thing that plenty of Americans run for office or commit public displays of strangeness, just to get enough of a following to launch a podcast.
Today, there are an awful lot of podcasts available. It seems like every would-have-been college professor and wingnut and ex-CIA officer and ex-combat veteran with loads of ink on his arms has started a podcast. A podcast is what serious would-be “influencers” do. The actual “influencers” just seem to post brief TikTok videos of themselves in various stages of undress, or eating messy sandwiches in an expensive car while wearing expensive clothes.
I would say most of the podcasters on the right are pretty careful thinkers, not all, but most. People who kind of defined conservative podcastistan for a long time (long by podcast terms), like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones, have largely discredited themselves by abandoning facts and rigorous thinking for nonsense only slightly better packaged than the trash at the New York Times or Mother Jones.
This is the beauty of the podcast world today: Dip your toe in the water and check it out. Jump in for a swim and lap up all the many flavors of individual opinions you like. It is a much richer, more diverse, more interesting, more informative place than all of the monosyllabic legacy media outlets put together.
So given my positive view of podcasts in general, why did I not start a podcast of my own? Several simple reasons: I do not have the time to do it; I am not narcissistic enough; though I am a very strong public speaker, I enjoy writing much more than talking; and I do not know how to do the necessary selfie videos, which feel socially awkward to me.
Too many podcasters really scramble to stay on top of the wave, every day, which can lead to some humorously foolish, or sophomorically high schoolean, dis-believable grasping at straws. Publicly. Which I am old enough and old school enough to feel self-conscious about. So, no thanks. This blog is a satisfying enough outlet for me. And I am not in the information “business” or in this for money, i.e. note the absence of advertising on this website.
I write because I feel compelled to write. It is an undeniable energy that wells up inside me all the time, and it is part of the reason I had at one time aspired to be an academic. If you do a search of “Josh First Harrisburg” outside of Google (which is not an honest broker about accurate information, but rather has made itself highly politicized with inaccurate search results), you will find dozens and dozens of essays and articles I have written over the past 25 years, as well as news reports and interviews on my various land projects and on some of the political races I have run in.
What emerges from that resulting morass of printer’s ink, I think, is the clear image of a guy who has strong opinions about a lot of subjects, who enjoys public speaking and writing, and who has several feet in several different worlds simultaneously.
And I am most happy limiting that all to writing one or two essays a week in my blog here, which fits in with my busy work schedule. No podcast necessary. No podcast desired.
But I will give credit to the conservative podcastistanians, whose overall grand number, high volume, interesting topics, and really wide intellectual diversity shows us just how important the First Amendment is, even as the legacy media try to hog that all to themselves, and to discredit and take it away from anyone who does not march in lockstep with their leftist narrative.
I recommend that anyone with an ounce of interest in starting a podcast do so. Explore it. Be your best self. And if you fail, that is OK. At least you will have checked it off your list. Take comfort from knowing that I will not be able to do that, because I am just too lazy.
a thousand points of light, a thousand glorious small cuts
Watching a boat sinking out on the water because it was deliberately holed by its occupants is a curious thing.
Watching the people in the sinking boat then continue to deliberately punch more holes into the ruptured hull, even as water is being taken on, which expedites the boat’s failure as a floating refuge on water, is more than curious. Now, we are pretty certain that the self-destructive people in the boat either are stupid, suicidal, or do not even realize what they are doing.
They might think that adding more holes in the boat actually lets the water out…?
Thus is the recent statement by political activist George Stephanopoulos that media personalities having live interviews on TV with President Donald Trump is “journalistic malpractice“ perfectly framed.
George Stephanopoulos is the longtime political director for ABC “News.” As a former extremely politically partisan political activist employed by President Bill Clinton, Stephanopulous somehow seamlessly glided into the awkward and disbelievable role of “news reporter” and “journalist” at ABC. You know, as the kind of news reporter and journalist that is supposed to be accurate, fair, balanced, fact-based, truth-seeking no matter where it takes him. Ideally, and probably much more so in America’s distant past, journalism is done by fair-minded arbiters of truth and accuracy, not political activists.
These two roles are mutually exclusive: Political activists are by definition not fair minded arbiters of truth and accuracy, and so they cannot possibly communicate anything but one-sided political propaganda, narrative, and self-serving lies to their viewers and audiences. Which is what George Stephanopoulos does…speaking of journalistic malpractice.
George Stephanopoulos is not a journalist, he is an aggressive political activist masquerading as a journalist. And the reason he wants to prevent President Trump from having live interviews on mainstream media outlets is that George Stephanopoulos wants to deprive American audiences of having an honest and unfiltered view of Trump. Because Americans seeing and hearing Trump in his own words, as his own self, is going to be completely at odds with the lies, propaganda, falsehoods, and partisan political narrative that political activists like George Stephanopoulos try to paint Trump with all the time.
George Stephanopoulos is actually a censor, the opposite of a journalist. He is someone who tries to stop, limit, or blunt the dissemination of inconvenient facts or truths that undermine the political goals of the censor. Censorship runs totally at odds with the spirit and intent of America’s First Amendment, as well as the open and sometimes raucous format for all of our political discourse since our founding.
Recall that American politicians used to give a “stump speech” literally standing on a fresh tree stump surrounded by interested citizens, such was the nature of America’s rapidly expanding frontier and European settlement. So, a so-called “journalist” trying to prevent a politician from giving his live “stump speech” is actually doing the opposite of journalism: He is conducting censorship, at war with America.
All censors will tell you they are blocking you from having access to the truth, the facts, a certain point of view, for your own good. But they are never really doing this for your own good, or for mine. Like George Stephanopoulos, all censors throughout history engage in censorship for their own good. Whether it is personal monetary rewards or a political outcome favorable to a censor’s political views, censorship is conducted purely for the benefit of the censor.
Censorship is evil, and so-called journalists who are actually censors, like ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, are evil people. Censorship is un-American. Don’t be a censor, don’t support censors, don’t engage in censorship.
Here is an interesting very brief little video of President Trump at a small town hall, with an audience of Americans who had not heard him in person before. The audience members are stunned by the difference between President Trump in person, the actual President Trump, versus the false and heavily filtered/censored image of President Trump they had been fed by the mainstream media, like ABC “News” and George Stephanopoulos.
Here is why censorious political activists like George Stephanopoulos are becoming so bold about their political efforts under guise of “journalism,” which in the past would have itself been a headline: Totally partisan and politicized fake news legacy mainstream media outlets like ABC, CBS, NBC, MSDNC, NPR, PBS, New York Times, Washington Post, etc. are being engulfed in a maelstrom of alternative information outlets, and they are becoming desperate.
Hence shameless George Stephanopuslous in effect knocking holes in his own boat in full public view, destroying his own credibility as a “journalist” and as an American, when he openly admits that he has no other defense against President Trump than artificially filtering Trump, censoring him, stopping the public from viewing him as he really is, and outright lying about Trump.
A thousand points of light (to beneficially borrow a phrase from one of the worst, most corrupt establishment politicians in modern history) are shedding unceasing light on the lies of George Stephanopoulos et al. A thousand small, independent alternative information outlets have sprung up across the internet and anywhere else they are not artificially repressed, censored, or suppressed. They exist because of the truth vaccuum left by George Stephanopoulos and his ilk, and the marketplace of ideas abhors a vaccuum.
Sites like www.breitbart.com, www.thegatewaypundit.com, www.zerohedge.com, www.dailycaller.com, www.rebelnews.com, and a million small websites like this one at www.joshfirst.com, not to mention an incredibly diverse, rich, and interesting constellation of independent political commentary and analysis at www.rumble.com, are each making a tiny cut into the corpulant, stagnant, odiferous, and pus-filled rotting meat that is the body of mainstream media.
This thousand points of light alternative news sources is making it impossible for liars like George Stephanopoulos to get away with his lies any longer. And this thousand tiny cuts of alternative information sources is slowly bleeding out the lying mainstream media, exposing them, weakening them.
Of course every information and news outlet has its own flair, its own bend, its own flavor and goals. This goes without saying. But when I read someone actually bragging about getting their news and information from MSNBC, NPR, and CNN, I wonder how anyone could be so incurious about the wider universe or galaxy they live in. If you are addicted to fake news, like NPR, ABC and George Stephanopoulos, you owe it to yourself to at least add a little cream to your coffee, and see what other people are reporting about the same whatever subject that ABC-NBC-CBS-NPR-ProPublica-CNN happens to be talking about at the moment.
Only censors try to blot out the light that other people need to be able to see clearly. Only fearful, close-minded, incurious, purposefully ignorant people steadfastly choose to support censors and remain behind their own artificial curtain.
Let the sun shine in, America.
UPDATE: Goodness gracious, I was in such a rush to get this essay up that I neglected to include all of the amazing podcasts that Amerians are dialing into every day. There are a whole bunch of podcasts and interactive radio/internet shows, too, that are a blend of Libertarian/freedom/ constitutional/ just askin’ that are just smokin‘ the mainstream media. Shows like Joe Rogan (who I disagree with about 45% of the time, and who has occasionally said some racist stuff that leaves me shaking my head, but who nonetheless addresses important issues head-0n), Dan Bongino, whose uncensored balls-to-the-wall New Yawk accented bare knuckle bulldozer of a daily show is one of the highest rated in America for good reason, can be found on Apple and on Rumble. Dinesh D’Souza is my favorite faux felon, who is incredibly smart, quick, witty, and insightful. Ace interviewer Jan Jekeliek has the most incredible people from all walks of life on his American Thought Leaders podcast. Russell Brand has grown on me over the years, and while he is in no way a conservative, he is a witty, quick, and funny advocate for transparency, accountability, and honesty, which are all good and necessary things in any government, and especially in a government of, by, and for The People like ours. Russell Brand’s mocking of the corrupt FBI agents stealing people’s gold watches is hilarious and cutting.
I could go on and on, and in the interest of time, this short list is a “starter pack” for intelligent, curious, open minded, patriotic Americans. Give these folks a whirl or two and see if you aren’t hooked. Each has a different style and really different content, and yet each of these independent-minded people is providing a life-saving end-run around the rotten and corrupt establishment media complex like ABCNPRCNN…this is the thousand points of light exposing the lying mainstream media and the resulting thousand glorious small cuts bleeding out the fake news media.
Science Denier Chuck Todd Declares NBC a Heretic-Free-Zone
In the 1600s, the Catholic Church was on a roll with great momentum. The church’s Great Inquisition was well under way, as a money making venture and as a barbaric instrument of terror, coercing both potentially wayward believers and outright non-believers back into a dark corner, out of fear of physical torture, financial ruin, or burning alive at the stake. Due process and the rule of law were not yet concepts the church embraced outside of a small group of inner circle elitists.
This is the world that early scientists like Galileo and Copernicus stepped into, and where they met with the buzz saw of censorship. This is an old and well-known story from the church’s dark days, and it will not be repeated in detail here. It is mentioned, however, for the benefit of its irony: Today, openly partisan political propagandists like Chuck Todd of NBC “news” have set themselves up as the new church censors, deciding what is truth and what may not be said, for fear of upsetting a political arrangement of things he favors.
Chuck Todd has declared that no heretics will be permitted in his presence. His true goal is to shame and coerce non-believers into submission, out of fear of retribution and ruin.
Like the 1600s church censor before him, Giancito Stefani, the “Master of the Sacred Palace,” Chuck Todd has now declared that no person will be allowed on his NBC television show who defies or questions politically correct dogma, that being human-caused “climate change.”
Not even real scientists who have actually studied climate change are welcome! Really!
Chuck Todd and his coercive brethren today are like the 1630 church fathers; they have the same anti-science goal of control and censorship. In 1630, the church fathers were quite certain that scientists Galileo and Copernicus were way off base, that their ideas were heretical, and that those ideas must be declared haram, off-limits, unwelcome, wrong, banned, and unacceptable. Galileo was to be stopped at any cost. His ideas were dangerous.
To a certain political arrangement of things the church favored.
Similarly, Chuck Todd asserts that climate science is and has been settled, and that is that, he says. It shall not be questioned, he says. Not on his TV show, and, he hopes, not on anyone else’s TV show, either.
Chuck Todd name-calls people who disagree with the idea or claims of human-caused climate change “climate deniers.” This is a fancy name for ‘heretic’. The irony is that Chuck Todd and his co-believers are science deniers, because they deny the scientific refutations of human-caused climate change, and because there is absolutely no science behind the climate change belief Chuck Todd espouses; he and they will permit no actual science to contradict what is essentially a faith belief he and they have.
As if real science is ever settled. The whole point of real science is that it is an ongoing open, transparent enterprise of search and study, curiosity and analysis. Subjects that were once said to be dreamy fairy tales and heresy are today concrete fact.
The problem with human-caused climate science is that it is not transparent, it has been completely politicized, and it is almost 100% built on flawed computer modeling, which is something I know a lot about.
Much of the raw data fed into the computer models has been faked, and the models themselves contain a lot of sloppy methodology (e.g. certain variables are artificially heavily weighted while other variables’ importance are diminished, without any proof of why or how the decision was made).
The East Anglia University scandal is just one example of the complete corruption surrounding climate science.
Recently, Aaron Doering (see his official mugshot below), a purported “climate change expert” professor at the University of Minnesota, was charged with felonious beating the hell out of his girlfriend. Why did this saintly professor strangle his girlfriend? Why, only because she dared to challenge his views. And that right there is the summation of science-denying climate change advocates: Stand them up to scrutiny, and they will lay you down with coercion and violence, because they cannot stand to be challenged or questioned. Bullies, all of them, Doering, Chuck Todd et al.
Pseudo professor Aaron Doering likes beating up women who question “climate change”
An example of how established science changes is how the initial dominance of Einstein’s relativity physics resulted in a rejection of later quantum physics. Because for years the two were considered mutually exclusive, and scientists favored Einstein’s physics, which were already well established (the giant mushroom cloud thingy is pretty persuasive Einstein knew what he was talking about). But as quantum physics began to find its way forward with huge particle accelerators that defied what we thought we knew about atomics, Einstein’s relativity physics had to give way. It isn’t that one or the other is proven right or wrong; it is that both appear to be correct and we do not yet know enough about how that can be true, when both are operating on mutually exclusive rules.
So here is Chuck Todd, not a scientist, picking sides in an ongoing scientific debate without any scientific training himself, and without having held a scientific debate to educate his viewers, and using his position to squash dissent and ideas he does not like. This is because he is most loyal to the politics of human-caused climate change. No surprise there, but hey, let’s just say what needs to be said.
A tattered old bumper sticker my friend John Johnson has on his pickup truck says “Liberal ideas: So good they have to be required.”
The flip side of John’s bumper sticker is that totalitarians like Chuck Todd and Aaron Doering are so insecure about the truth of their views that they must censor all contrary arguments. Like almost all others in his establishment media, Chuck Todd bans his critics because he cannot withstand basic scrutiny.
But if the church is any indication, there is hope for Chuck Todd. Fast forward from the bad old days, and the church became an irreplaceable cornerstone of Western Civilization; without its Biblical values, there would be no universal truths or individual rights that make America so great today. The church just had to look inward and answer some basic questions about freedom, liberty, individual conscience, and then everything else fell into place.
And as unjustifiably confident as Chuck Todd is in public, he must have a spark of curiosity buried somewhere in his conscience. A normal person would.
Chuck Todd and Aaron Doering and all other liberals are envious of the Catholic Grand Inquisition’s ability to burn “heretics” alive
Chelsea Clinton: One of the 1%, Happily
Chelsea Clinton is daughter of impeached president Bill Clinton and his wife, current US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Chelsea has grown up exceptionally wealthy and connected to people in positions of power. She has never had a “job,” certainly not a professional job, not a career where she developed as a person, but she just got hired by NBC News.
Chelsea Clinton is going to be a top-level reporter and commentator for an international news program.
Chelsea is accomplishing something that 99.99% of college graduates her age can only dream of. Except that those people know that in order to land a job like that, they have to gradually prove themselves from job to job over time, over decades.
Chelsea is very much a member of “The 1%” as the Occupy ________ folks call hard working, successful Americans.
You can’t help but wonder how her achievement looks and is perceived by the people with whom she shares so many political views. She has it made. She has Easy Street. Her dad made a phone call and got her the job of a lifetime, and she didn’t have to work for it at all.
But you just know that once Chelsea is in there, reporting just the facts, of course, that she will stand as one with the Occupy _________ people. And they will give her a pass, because she is the right political party…so much for any principles in any of this situation, right?
And it is just one more example of how the politically correct in America choose to say one thing, but do another.