Colorado GOP Kicks Out Reporter Because He Doesn't Like the First Amendment & Elon Musk Admits He Did No Research Before Mistakenly Destroying Man's Life
Women More Likely to Die of Heart Disease Because of Medical Bias, Fox Pundit Thinks Biden Wants to Replace God with Trans Community (Huh?), What I'm Reading, Lesley Gore Sings "You Don't Own Me"
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: How much responsibility does the average person have for the spread of Evil? A lot.
Colorado GOP ousts reporter from event, claiming ‘unfair’ coverage: Even some Republicans have criticized this clear rejection of the First Amendment.
Read Elon Musk’s Wild Deposition in Neo-Nazi Brawl Case: Musk tweeted without any facts. Was wrong. Put the lives of the man and his family in jeopardy. Still has no remorse.
Why Heart Disease Research Still Favors Men: Another clear sign that we don’t value the lives of women as much as we do those of men.
Fox reporter claims trans people want to replace God in bizarre rant: Did Fox ever have any integrity? If they did, this is another sign that they don’t now.
What I’m Reading: Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect is the highly entertaining sequel to Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone.
Lesley Gore sings “You Don’t Own Me”: Seventeen-year-old Lesley Gore delivers a power anthem that still resonates today.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
Ignorance is the handmaiden of evil.
Anonymous
Whew! That’s a lot to unpack. First, what is evil? For me, evil is when a person deliberately takes actions that serve themselves when they know those actions will devastate others. There’s lots of evil out there: child abusers, rapists, murderers, scammers stealing from the elderly, and much more. But the evil that affects the most people—and is preventable—comes from politicians who put their careers above the good of the people, including the likes of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Kari Lake, Ron DeSantis, and Greg Abbott to name a few. But they aren’t the worst villains of this story.
In recent movies like Dune: Part Two and Monkey Man, key plot points hinge on changing the minds of the masses of people. In Dune, they must manipulate the people into believing the protagonist is the messiah who will free them from political evil. We have that scene where Timothée Chalamet walks through the worshiping masses. In Monkey Man, Dev Patel is in the ring fighting while the crowd boos and throws stuff at him. When he wins, they start chanting his name. He becomes their messiah, going after corrupt politicians who have been manipulating the masses.
Who’s the real evil in these kinds of stories? Yes, the politicians, but also the People—the unquestioning masses who blindly follow them in the first place. The hero/messiah’s job is to reveal to the people just how corrupt their false leaders are. But why should they have to? Why aren’t people smart enough to figure it out on their own? Especially in a country like the U.S. where we have access to all the information necessary to never elect these evil politicians, or at the very least not re-elect them.
There are two types of ignorance: not knowing something and willfully not knowing something. The first can be remedied by anyone with access to the internet or newspaper. The second is evil because it is the handmaiden that serves evil people and evil deeds. I recently read an article in Scientific American (“Why Some People Choose Not to Know”) that cites studies showing that 40% of people are willfully ignorant—they choose not to know the consequences of their actions. That allows them to act evilly but still think of themselves as good. The good news is that 40% of people are altruistic—they choose to know the consequences of their actions.
Yet, willful ignorance is gaining ground. According to a recent Washington Post article, “Six years ago, just about 1 in 4 Republicans (26 percent) agreed that millions of fraudulent votes were cast in the 2016 election. Now, 38 percent of Republicans — and 47 percent of strong Trump supporters — believe that is the case.” Despite an enormous amount of evidence coming out over the past six years that proved Trump knew he was lying about the election and that his advisors pushing the claims knew they were false, the number who believe the lie has increased! Willful ignorance equals willful evil.
So, when I see movies that require a messiah character to free the masses from their stupidity, I’m less sympathetic to those people. To me, they are a drunken lynch mob in a saloon ready to follow whoever is buying drinks. I want to tell them, “Quit waiting around for someone else to tell you what you already know. Be your own savior and read a newspaper. Stop following leaders who are fleecing your money and rights.” But they are willfully ignorant. They are Evil. And we all have to pay the price.
Colorado GOP ousts reporter from event, claiming ‘unfair’ coverage (The Washington Post)
SUMMARY: As a veteran journalist in Colorado, it wasn’t Sandra Fish’s first time reporting on the state GOP assembly. But it was her first time getting kicked out.
The Colorado Republican Party expelled Fish from its event in Pueblo, Colo., on Saturday after she was told the party chairman finds her reporting “very unfair.”
A sheriff’s deputy escorted the longtime reporter out, drawing backlash from lawmakers from both sides of the aisle and fellow journalists who criticized the move as an affront to democracy.
“It’s unfair to do this,” Fish said Monday. “It concerns me that people only want the information they agree with presented, and if they disagree with something, they want it concealed from the public. And that’s not how democracy works, no matter who’s in charge.”
Colorado GOP Chairman Dave Williams, a Donald Trump supporter who is running for a seat in the U.S. House, said he stands by the ejection.
“We make no apologies for kicking out a fake journalist,” Williams said in a text message Monday, echoing Trump’s oft-used epithet of “fake news.” Williams added that the Colorado Sun, a nonprofit news outlet founded in 2018, “is just an extension of the Democrat Party’s PR efforts.”
Williams declined to say what has been unfair about Fish’s reporting.
MY TAKE: Everything about this is frightening. When the GOP supports only news media that is favorable to them, they’ve made it clear that they do not support the First Amendment’s protection of the free press. Designating “fake journalists” as anyone whose editorial platform disagrees is to remove all opposition. They wish to shut down public discourse about people running for office, which is the opposite of a democracy. Without digging any deeper, we already see that Williams envisions a GOP that rejects the U.S. Constitution and democracy. Where did they get this subversive idea: Trump promised to punish all opposition journalists if he’s re-elected.
Not every Republican agreed with Williams’ authoritarian approach. Republican state Rep. Matt Soper posted on social media that political parties “shouldn’t be ejecting reporters from meetings” regardless of disagreements. Former Colorado GOP chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown said Williams’ rejection of Fish was “dangerous” and argued that “transparency is necessary for our nation.”
When Deborah Flora, the GOP candidate for the state’s 4th Congressional District, called Fish’s removal a “violation of the First Amendment,” the Colorado GOP endorsed Flora’s rival, Rep. Lauren Boebert (yeah, that Boebert), as their candidate.
The best way for Colorado residents to reject this kind of anti-American behavior is to not vote for Dave Williams or Lauren Boebert because they don’t represent America’s political values.
Read Elon Musk’s Wild Deposition in Neo-Nazi Brawl Case (The Daily Beast)
SUMMARY: Elon Musk, the owner of X who baselessly amplified a tweet linking a 22-year-old Jewish man to a neo-Nazi group last year, said he didn’t believe the man had been “meaningfully harmed” by being subjected to the full force of his considerable social media clout. Testifying in a deposition for a libel suit brought by the man, Ben Brody, Musk said, “People are attacked all the time in the media, online media, social media, but it is rare that that actually has a meaningful negative impact on their life.” A transcript of the two-hour deposition from March 27 was made public on Monday, and was first obtained by HuffPost. In it, Musk admitted that he had a “limited understanding” of Brody’s allegations against him, to the extent that he originally believed Brody’s attorney was the plaintiff in the case. He also said he did no research of his own before tweeting last June that a brawl between two right-wing extremist groups in Portland, Oregon had actually been “a probable false flag situation,” and that Brody had been involved. Brody, who has said he and his family have had to flee their home in the wake of harassment spurred by Musk’s tweet, which remained live on X as of Monday, is seeking more than $1 million in damages.
MY TAKE: Musk told his 180 million followers that this 22-year-old Jewish man was an undercover federal agent out to bring down neo-Nazi groups. He then admitted he did no research before making this claim. Then he says there’s no substantial damage against Brody, despite putting a target on the backs of Brody and his family for violent groups to attack. My mind hurts from the sheer recklessness and arrogance of these admissions. (Read Musk’s testimony here.)
Musk posted: “Looks like one is a college student (who wants to join the govt) and another is maybe an Antifa member, but nonetheless a probable false flag situation.” The information Musk based his opinion on was false. Yet, the post is still up, still going out to anyone looking to attack the wrong person.
Musk operates like Godzilla, too big and powerful to care about the innocent people he crushes as he strolls through the city. And too arrogant to change, even after he sees the damage he’s caused. After all, those people are way down there while he’s way up here.
Kareem’s Video Break
I wish I’d had a fraction of this girl’s focus and concentration at her age. Someone with this kind of passion will get so much out of life. Meanwhile, we get so much joy just watching her.
Want to share that little girl’s enthusiasm for life?
Why Heart Disease Research Still Favors Men (Time)
SUMMARY: Katherine Fitzgerald had just arrived at the party. Before she could even get a drink, she threw up and broke out in a sweat. “I was dizzy. I couldn’t breathe. I had heart pain,” Fitzgerald says.
She knew she was having a heart attack.
What she didn’t know then was that the heart attack could have been prevented. Fitzgerald, a health-conscious, exercise-loving lawyer, should have been taking statin drugs to stop the buildup of plaque in her arteries that caused the heart attack and two others that followed.
Fitzgerald’s case illustrates a dangerous gap in medical care between men and women. While they are equally likely to suffer heart attacks, women are more likely to die from theirs. It’s one of the many symptoms of the medical system’s neglect of women.
Life-saving statins, like so many other medications, have been developed based on clinical trials that primarily recruited men. As a result, many women like Fitzgerald don’t receive prescriptions for the drugs that could help them the most, says Dr. Laxmi Mehta, director of Preventative Cardiology and Women’s Cardiovascular Health at The Ohio State University.
…More than 30 years ago, Congress directed the National Institutes of Health to include as many women as men in clinical trials. But while some progress has been made, equity remains elusive. And that’s dangerous for women. “Since 2000, women in the United States have reported total adverse events from approved medicines 52% more frequently than men, and serious or fatal events 36% more frequently,” research firm McKinsey & Company said in a report released in January.
MY TAKE: To address this fatal flaw in our healthcare system, the Biden Administration set up a White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research and funded the newly formed Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) with $100 million to increase early-stage research focusing on women.
That’s great for the future, but right now we need doctors to be aware of the differences in how women are treated and the biases that affect the medical advice given to them that can be life-threatening or life-saving. Statins lower the risk of heart attacks by about 25%, yet women are less likely to be offered the drug by doctors. And when prescribed, they sometimes quit taking them because of perceived side effects. Are the side effects real or is the drug blamed for other causes? We can’t be sure since no major studies have been done on the side effects on women, only on men.
Doctors use risk calculators to determine the potential for heart disease in a patient so they can give them preventative treatment. However, this doesn’t work as well on women because the factors used were based on men’s physiology, not taking into consideration women’s smaller coronary arteries, thinner heart walls, and their higher susceptibility to diabetes and autoimmune diseases.
Women make up more than half the U.S. population, yet we don’t take their health as seriously as we take men’s. Forget the flowers and candy. This says everything.
Fox reporter claims trans people want to replace God in bizarre rant (LGBTQ Nation)
SUMMARY: In a short but memorable statement on Fox News, panelist Lisa Boothe claimed the trans rights movement is a coordinated effort to remove God from society and force people to worship trans folks instead.
The statement stemmed from the right-wing outrage over the fact that the annual Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV) happened to fall on Easter this year. TDOV is always on March 31st, whereas Easter’s date changes annually, but that simple fact has not stopped conservative leaders from accusing Democrats of planning the two holidays to fall at the same time in an effort to mock right-wing Christians.
The Fox segment in which Boothe appeared slammed both the Biden administration and NBC News for supporting TDOV.
“This is a clear effort and a coordinated effort to remove God from our society,” Boothe declared, “and replace God with false Gods, and with this instance, it’s the trans community. They clearly want us to bow at the altar of the trans community instead of bow to God.”
MY TAKE: Ordinarily, people who offer such irrational opinions spew them from park benches or the next table in a diner or revival tents while holding venomous snakes. But Fox News has no problem giving them a national platform because they have long ago abandoned any journalistic standards or moral values.
There is no government effort to “remove God from our society,” but there is an effort to keep religion and state separate. That coordinated effort began back in 1787 with the writing of the U.S. Constitution. Boothe should take up her complaint with Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. Her statement about replacing God with the trans community goes beyond irrational and borders on a need for a mental health intervention. Recognizing the rights of marginalized people is kind of the U.S.’s thing. Boothe’s rant could just as easily been said by racists rejecting the civil rights movement. Same “logic.”
Remember the 1980s Vicks Formula 44 ad in which Peter Bergman, who played a doctor on All My Children said, “I'm not a doctor but I play one on TV,” then proceeded to dispense medical advice? That’s how I feel about Fox News’s inflatable cast: “I’m not a journalist, but I play one on TV.”
What I’m Reading
Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson
A few weeks ago, I recommended Stevenson’s first novel in the series, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone. This follow-up is just as entertaining, witty, and clever. Six mystery writers gather on a train going through the Australian Outback for an onboard mystery writing festival. Murder ensues. Our amateur sleuth is a fledgling writer who unravels the mystery while playing fair with the reader about the clues and suspects. I love that he reinvented the classic Murder on the Orient Express setting for his own purposes. Murder at mystery writers’ gatherings is also a familiar trope, but Stevenson makes it fresh and fun. The mark of a good novel for me is that I can’t wait to return to it to read more pages. That’s how I felt here.
Kareem’s Jukebox Playlist
Lesley Gore: “You Don’t Own Me” (1963)
“You Don’t Own Me” was a pop song recorded by seventeen-year-old Lesley Gore who, with her simple dresses and flipped-ends hair, embodied America’s vision of innocent young girls. Protecting that image is why her record producer refused to let her record “A Groovy Kind of Love” because he didn’t want her saying the word “groovy” (which was instead recorded by The Mindbenders and became a huge hit). Despite her many songs about teenage romance and boys—she had an album titled Boys, Boys, Boys—Gore was a lesbian, which also didn’t fit her carefully crafted image. What made “You Don’t Own Me” unusual was the defiance of the typical role of teen girls (and women):
And don't tell me what to do
Don't tell me what to say
And please, when I go out with you
Don't put me on display
The song was quickly embraced as an anthem for women’s empowerment, despite being written by two men, David White and John Madara. The night of the 2018 Women’s March, which included around 250 nationwide rallies of over a million people, Jessica Chastain joined the female cast of Saturday Night Live to sing “You Don’t Own Me.” The song was also used by the #MeToo movement. For many young girls and women in 1963, the song helped them articulate the discontent they felt but were unable to say aloud. Once the words had been spoken, they rippled through pop culture as others joined the chorus.
Of course, she was still young and trying to build her career. The following year she released “That’s the Way Boys Are,” an apologist defense of boys cheating on girls and treating them rough:
When I'm with my guy and he watches all the pretty girls go by
And I feel so hurt deep inside, I wish that I could die
Not a word do I say
I just look the other way
'Cause that's the way boys are
That's the way boys are
Still, that doesn’t detract from the power of Gore’s rendition of “You Don’t Own Me,” and the many teenage girls who felt empowered whenever they listened to it.
Musk 🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️
Kareem. Wishing you a happy birthday. Hope you have a wonderful day.