joerogan

In Plain Sight

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Two political campaigns culminated two weeks ago today.  One spent roughly 1.5 billion bucks and is 20 million in the red. The other spent about one-fourth of that and is headed to the White House.

How did we get here?  Perhaps you should saunter down your driveway this AM to retrieve your newspaper and “read all about it.”  It’s chilly.  Be sure to double-cinch your robe and put on the furry slippers first.

Maybe you don’t “take” the paper anymore.  “Anymore” might mean 20 years or so.  Maybe you don’t even watch the evening news anymore.

Each quarter Nielsen ratings show fewer Americans watch than the previous one.  Combined ABC, CBS, and NBC reach about 18 million views nightly these days.

And for two months if you turned on your TV you saw a Harris/Walz political ad.

How many views on YouTube did Joe Rogan’s three-hour podcast with Donald Trump have in the three days following its cast?  Thirty-eight million.  As Joe Biden would say, “Not a joke, folks!”

Harris was offered “free” airtime with Rogan and declined.  But, Saturday Night Live called and she was there in a New York minute.

Donald Trump and his team aggressively used social media platforms to refute Kamala Harris’ claims at her rallies in real time.  While Walz was waltzing on stage Team Trump was typing.  Social media posts cost very little.

Share research shows 46% of young people aged 19-29 voted for Trump, up from 36% in 2020.  That’s yuge.  They’re dancing the “Trump dance” from coast to coast nonstop.

Dour MSNBC reported this morning that nearly one in five Americans consider social media their first source for news.  In the important 19-34 age bracket two out of five do too!

MSNBC show anchors spent weeks calling Trump a fascist and comparing him to Hitler.  Morning Joe with Mika in tow spent last Friday at Mar-A-Lago making nice with President-Elect 47.  They say they want to call it down the middle now even if they still differ with many of Trump’s policy initiatives.  They won’t say if they kissed the ring or bent the knee.

Morning Joe’s producers woke up and smelled the coffee.  What’s brewing is a viewership shift from one platform to another and a philosophical shift from far left to some normalcy.

As usual, all of this was hiding in plain sight.

As usual, Musk saw it first.  He bought Twitter.  Free speech was unburdened from what had been.

Trump mastered the media manipulation game way back when.

Together they took down all seven swing states.

They may have taken down the legacy media with it.

Next, they tackle DC.

The WH press room will never be the same.

 

 

 

Russia, China, GoFundMe, and Spotify

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

You only have two eyeballs.  If you’re looking globally at the Russia/Ukraine border buildup with one and the Communist China Oppression and Olympics with the other you might be missing something.

Big Tech has entered(yet again) into its own global border buildup and oppressive tactics.  And, when you consider the long-term consequences the stakes might be higher than Russia and China combined.

Let’s start with GoFundMe.com.  Apparently, the fundraising website has applied to the FCC for a name change and a new domain address.  It’s called Go F@#$ Yourself.com.  They really haven’t applied but the newly suggested name would be quite apropos.

Surely you’ve heard by now that a GoFundMe fundraiser for the Canadian Freedom Convoy that crossed over 10 million dollars was closed down by GoFundMe. Then they announced that instead of the money going to the truckers protesting the vax mandate, they would “redirect” the donations to “credible and established charities” verified by GoFundMe.

The justification offered by GoFundMe was that it had turned into an occupation.  They went on to say that there were “police reports of violence and other unlawful activity.” Both are against GoFundMe regulations to conduct a fundraiser.

This is the same platform that allowed and even gave its backing to fund the lovely new residential (tents) development in 2020 in downtown Seattle called CHOP (Capital Hill Occupied Protests).  If you want to talk occupation, how about cordoning off six square blocks in the middle of downtown?  If you want to talk violence, the mostly peaceful community was closed down three weeks after it broke ground after numerous 911 calls for burglaries, rapes, four shootings with two of them being homicides.  Thirty new neighbors and its “civic” leader in all were arrested.

Six states, all red by the way, had aggressive Attorney Generals who filed or threatened to file suit alleging “fraud and theft” by GoFundMe of the promised money.  It should be downright scary to all that we’ve gotten to this spot.

And, then there is the Spotify/Joe Rogan arm wrestle.  Former hippy musicians like Neil Young have taken their music off of the platform that gives the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast a platform that over 11 million people tune in to regularly.  Once upon a time, hippies sang for freedom from government intervention, now they apparently embrace it, but we digress.

First, it was “misinformation” as the culprit as Rogan brought one or two docs on that told us the entire approach to the pandemic was upside down.  How dare they exhibit their right to free speech?

Cancel Joe Rogan for this misinformation (misinformation is slang for “I don’t agree with you”)! How dare he ask questions that allowed the docs to step outside of the test or vax lines?

Shouldn’t we revoke the docs’ licenses to practice while we are at it? Nah, they’re not the real threat.  Rogan’s common sense and growing listenership are.

But the campaign to cancel doesn’t stop there.  Now it’s “Joe Rogan is a racist!”  He used the dreaded “n-word” a time or two too many in previous podcasts, the context of which is apparently immaterial.

Do all of these cries of misinformation and racism sound like a Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, Failure, or Nils Lofgren song that’s old and tired?  They left Spotify, too.

Barbara Streisand even threatened to do so as well.  Woah, scary, or not.  If you’re Spotify, what to do?  What to do?

So far Joe Rogan apologized for what we aren’t sure about.   And Spotify has now quietly deleted over 110 of his older podcasts and we aren’t sure why.  You can’t be half pregnant and you can’t have some free speech.

Whoppi apologized last week and two weeks from now all will go on as usual.  Rogan and Spotify should easily be able to do the same, but it won’t be easy.

GoFundMe should be ostracized to the point of going out of business, but it won’t.

Hey, did you hear that Putin has more tanks headed to the Ukraine border?

Who just won gold in the women’s downhill skiing?

 

 

Ten Piece Nuggets-Life

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Our overworked and underpaid staff needs a day off.  Unfortunately, or fortunately for news wonks, this world continues to deep fry Ten Piece Nuggets at a prodigious clip.  There is no nugget supply chain shortage.

  1.  We borrowed this line.  Ok, we stole it.   It’s too good not to.  It looks like the only person at CNN that can keep his hands to himself is Jeffery Toobin.
  2.   Jeff Zucker is out at CNN.  He’s just another in what is becoming a long line of, ahem, “exposed” frauds.  The lovely and talented Chris Cuomo helped in the dethroning.  CNN is an AT&T property that is merging to form the new and bigger Discovery Co.  What to do?
  3. We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again.  CNN should pivot (we hate that word) to the middle of the political spectrum.  They lose straight up in nearly every hour in the ratings to MSNBC for left-leaning viewers.  They get smashed by the juggernaut that FOX is.  In many hours measured MSNBC and CNN combined don’t reach what FOX does.  The middle lane is wide open for market share to be taken and we sense America is wide open for some middle-of-the-road thinking.
  4. If you’re just waking up know that ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was killed in a “successful” U.S. Special Operations counterterrorism mission in northwest Syria Thursday, President Biden said.  The world is a safer place for it and Biden will tell us about it this morning.
  5. If you combine that with his nonsensical movement of 3k US troops nearer to the Ukraine/Russia mess he’s got the opportunity for a willing press to focus abroad v the mess we have here at home.  Color us jaded and a wee bit cynical.
  6.  What if you made it to the final round of Wheel of Fortune and picked “person” as your final category and the board lit up 39 blank squares that had ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi hidden behind them.  Pat, “Five consonants please.”  You, “B, H, Q, Y, and R.  Pat, “Really? And your vowel?” You, “I.”  Pat, “Wow.  Ok, Vanna, turn them around, and amazingly let’s see what we’ve got.”   Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.  Too soon?
  7. The three women that share the set on The View with Whoppi Goldberg unanimously decried her suspension two days after her non-race rant about the Holocaust.  They also did not address the matter on the show the day after the suspension.  They wouldn’t do the same for other “misinformation” (we hate what this word is now used for) rants like Joe Rogan, would they?
  8. Speaking of Joe Rogan, the Republicans should boldly announce that he has been asked to lead the first 2024 Republican Presidential Debate. It’s never too soon.  The best defense is a great offense.  Something like, “Keep Free Speech Free.”
  9. Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross vigorously denied former head coach Brian Flores claims about performance bonuses for losses. “I take great personal exception to these malicious attacks, and the truth must be known. His allegations are false, malicious, and defamatory.” Predictable.  Flores’ lawyers surely know that the NFL is a tight-knit group of deep pockets with great incentive to defend and plenty of in-house legal counsel to help do just that.
  10. Hue Jackson, former Cleveland Browns Head Coach publically stated yesterday that he was paid extra to dump games for the miserable Browns a few years back during his tenure. He says he has proof.  Maybe so.  If so, he definitely earned the incentive money.  The product on the field and his in-game management decisions were awful.  His press conferences, if possible, were worse.  He amassed a record of 3–36–1 during his tenure with the team including 0-20 on the road.
  11.  He is debating whether to join Flores’ lawsuit.  Why?  He had eight coaching stops in the NFL including two HC spots ( Oakland and Cleveland) and three Offensive Coordinator positions.  He was fired in Oakland by first-year GM Reggie McKenzie who is also black.  It sounds like great work over 18 NFL seasons if you could be so fortunate.

Ok, you were overserved.  It happens.