Commercial teevee created Trump

When anyone over 45 stops to ask themselves how TF did we get to a point where a cancelled TV game show host, who is wildly unfit for the office of dog catcher, much less a SECOND term as president got elected, Neil Postman tried to warn us decades ago.

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— Darick (@darickr.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 10:14 AM

Until the Vietnam War school shootings were rare and scattered but after commercial teevee brought the carnage into every American living room something changed. 

So how did we get here and how did a career criminal like DonOld Trump reach his under-educated, gullible audience? People exposed as children to teevee are more likely to vote for populist politicians.

Television has conditioned us to tolerate visually entertaining material measured out in spoonfuls of time, to the detriment of rational public discourse and reasoned public affairs. In this eloquent, persuasive book, Neil Postman alerts us to the real and present dangers of this state of affairs, and offers compelling suggestions as to how to withstand the media onslaught. Before we hand over politics, education, religion, and journalism to the show business demands of the television age, we must recognize the ways in which the media shape our lives and the ways we can, in turn, shape them to serve out highest goals. [Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business]

College graduates make up 43% of the electorate and 55% voted for Vice President Harris while 56% of voters without degrees voted for Trump because Generation X is a disease.

Natives push back on faulty exit poll

In an effort to reverse voter apathy in Indian Country the Montana Democratic Party became the first state party to formally include Indigenous as equitable partners. Montana is home to 12 Indigenous languages three of which are at risk of going extinct after Donald Trump weaponized a novel coronavirus strain killing many Assiniboine, Gros Ventre and Montana Salish elders. 

Trump hates American Indians so deeply after losing a 1993 casino case under the 1988 Indian Gaming Act he deployed Covid as a biological weapon in 2020 to exterminate as many Indigenous people as he could and so far he has gotten away with attempted genocide. 

So an exit poll conducted by the National Election Pool and Edison Research then released by NBC of 229 voters who self-identified as Natives that showed Trump winning a majority of NDNs is facing a backlash especially since none of the persons polled were on reservation properties. Even the Indigenous Journalists Association called the poll “highly misleading and irresponsible.” 

For example, in counties with majority Native populations, support for the Democratic candidate was larger than support for the Republican candidate in states such as Montana (67% to 28%), North Dakota (72% to 27%), South Dakota (63% to 33%), and Wisconsin (87% to 12%). [Native American Organizations Respond to Flawed NBC Exit Poll]

President Joe Biden restored the White House Tribal Nations Summit after the former guy declared war on Indian Country and undercounted Indigenous Americans because Republicans want citizens to believe democracy isn’t for everybody. 

November is Native American Heritage Month. 

Women and Democrats did well in parts of North Dakota, too.

On the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, 92% of voters cast their ballots for Kamala Harris. On the Menominee Indian Reservation in Wisconsin, 80% voted for Harris. In Apache County, Arizona, where the Navajo Nation accounts for two-thirds of the population, 58% voted for Harris compared to 39% for Trump. [Getting the Native Vote Right; The National Media Should Not Rely on Self-Identified “Wannabes”]

Reservation counties in Montana voted overwhelmingly for Democratic Senator Jon Tester. 

During Montana's last legislative session Trump worshiping reactionary Republicans moved to cut funding for Native cultural preservation. Outside Montana’s reservations the state has become the new Orange County, California where the Last Best Place is becoming the next best strip mine and a welfare rancher's wet dream. A transplant to Montana, the state's christianic Republican governor was the richest member of Congress who literally bought his seat in the state’s Executive Branch.

Allison Neswood, a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, said Native voters face a range of issues. “These barriers are structural, you know, rooted in the history of colonialism,” explained Neswood. [Native voters still face barriers to election participation]

Learn more at Big Horn County News.

ip photo from the 2012 Santa Fe Indian Market: The Means Justifies the End, Angela Babby.

Red state failure brings extreme fire danger to South Dakota

Yep, the grassland fire danger index will reach the extreme category again today for much of Kristi Noem's stupid red state.

Another study warns that aspen is at risk to grazing

The Mountain West and Black Hills have been home to much larger aspen communities in the fairly recent past. Because it reproduces clonally underground from adult trees aspen (Populus tremuloides) is one of the first plants to reestablish after fire. The timber industry doesn’t like prescribed fire because burns release aspen and kill pine species. Ponderosa pine sucks billions of gallons from aquifer recharges, needles absorb heat and accelerate snow melt while aspen leaves reflect sunlight in the summer months and hold snowpacks in winter. Insects like the mountain pine beetle and spruce bud worm can help promote drought- and fire-tolerant species like aspen. 

A study released in October by Northern Arizona University's Ecological Restoration Institute revealed that animal grazing and wildfire management have contributed to the decline of aspen trees in the area.

Although aspens can produce seeds, the most successful method of reproduction occurs when new sprouts, known as “suckers,” grow out of the root system of an existing tree. The suckers are growing back after disturbances, but cannot reach maturity due to elk grazing and lack of resources from prolonged drought and rising temperatures. [Drought, higher temperatures, hungry elk threaten aspen trees near Flagstaff]

Yep, kill off apex predators like grizzlies, wolves and cougars, spray atrazine, neonicotinoids and glyphosate on everything then wonder why cervids like deer and wapiti contract a prion contagion like chronic wasting disease. 

ip image.

Pope speaks truth to Jewish war crimes

President Harry Truman failed the United States and world peace by recognizing the illegal creation of Israel.

Today no Middle East leader is more unstable than Benjamin Netanyahu and there is no more rabid state sponsor of terrorism than Israel so the pontiff wants an investigation of the genocide Jews are perpetrating in Gaza.

“According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide,” the pope said in excerpts published Sunday by the Italian daily La Stampa. “We should investigate carefully to determine whether it fits into the technical definition formulated by jurists and international bodies,” he added. [Associated Press]

In 2015 Pope Francis backed President Barack Obama's groundbreaking action with Iran. But in 2024 young voters who turned out en masse for Pres. Obama in 2008 and 2012 turned up their noses at Vice President Kamala Harris over the Biden administration's support for Israel's war crimes in Gaza so Trump won in states where Democratic senators also won.

And last November, His Eminence sacked an apostate who is an open opponent of women's rights, rejects a vaccine that prevents COVID-19, is critical of the pope’s stance on LGBTQ rights and endorsed the phrase, "you cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat." Then in January Francis banned John Nienstedt from any public ministries in all of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Now, the pontiff is pondering pink slips for a plurality of predatory pulpiteers.

Zionists, terrorists, war criminals: just a few truths being spoken to power.