After Russiagate, where do you go for news?

Above, a cartoon borrowed from a lefty. I'm surprised that he's still hanging on to this issue. Can't decide if that lefty agrees that networks like the one Colbert dissed should die, too. Would you be okay with that?

The Colbert kerfuffle is widely misrepresented as involving his cancelation after CBS gave in to Trump concerning the way Trump was portrayed on CBS. But remember that Trump's lawsuit concerned the refusal of CBS to release the transcript of the interview of Kamala Harris on "60 Minutes". It was NOT about programs like Colbert's criticizing Trump.

One of my lefty's own commenters said, "He's still alive but no longer caged!" What repression!

Their misrepresentation of the Trump suit against CBS in current memes demonstrates that they aren't used to people fighting back.

He then posted a worrisome meme about the impending transformation of CBS into another Fox News with the upcoming buy-out of the network. You get the idea . . . Progressives are under siege in the mainstream media. Heh.

Matt Taibbi:

“Threatening television networks” lol. I seem to remember the IRS coming to my house and House Democrats threatening me with jail and not a peep of protest from the supposed civil liberties party

This seems to me to be an example of the left's ability to create images in our minds. Trump is from the world of entertainment, and they don't quite understand his non-linear, fun-house version of the ways they "mold" the truth. But the left still has the edge.

Though most everybody stayed with the message, the iconograpny suffered a little with Kamala.

Things are gonna get worse with AI. David Thompson, No Escape from Now.

On the bright side, Media Matters is in trouble. And at Reason: The CEO of NPR Made the Best Case for Defunding It

The notion that NPR can somehow become unbiased is about as believable as the IRS sending you a fruit basket to commend you for filing your taxes.

Once again, making Adam Schiff your muse is a bad idea.

Russiagate hurt people

Many on the left say that we should just forget about Russiagate and move on. But in addition to the obvious people hurt (in the Trump Administration, etc.), other people were deeply hurt. This surprised me:

Scott Adams: Obama's Russia Hoax & 'Fine People' Lie Ruined My Life and Divided America!@ScottAdamsSays: "Let me say that again. Those two hoaxes, Russia, Russia, Russia and the fine people hoax ruined my life because those are the hoaxes that allowed my entire social group to… pic.twitter.com/wCHJ46yORc

— Quotes By Scott Adams ☕️ (@QuotesFromCWSA) July 24, 2025

Incidentally, Scott Adams had a detailed conversation with Cynical Publius about why the crimes of Russiagate would be hard to prove in court. Interesting reading.

Walter Kirn was treated very badly by members of the press when he was trying to get information about issues involved in Russiagate back when the issues were first in the news. He still seems quite passionate about this. He and his commenters have thoughts:

Growing up we laughed at the sick old people running the Soviet Union.. Brezhnev, Chernenko, Andropov... I must say I was surprised to find the press over here in the states treat Biden much the same way Pravda treated Soviet heads of state!

— Richard Clarke (@richard_cl30978) July 23, 2025

Walter Kirn again:

Our society was torn in two by the deliberate lie that Trump was a Russian agent & his supporters, by extension, Putin patsies, fools, traitors. This lie was amplified by the media into a years-long chainsaw roar by media, from news to comedy shows to the NYT. Out with them.

Simply ignore, turn off, delete, & unsubscribe from the outlets that lied to you, loudly, relentlessly, knowingly.

Instantly doable.

And the reporters, observers, & companies remaining will be the rootstock for the future.

It's a surprisingly diverse group.

Give it sun.

— Walter Kirn (@walterkirn) July 23, 2025

So, who do you trust for news now?

Should we make a list?

History

How has war changed since this?

A Daily Dose of History (FB), today:

On this day in 1945 the governments of the United States, China, and Great Britain issued what would come to known as the “Potsdam Declaration,” calling upon the Japanese government “to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action.” The final sentence of the Declaration announced, “The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.”

U.S. President Harry Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, had gathered in Potsdam, Germany, on July 17, ten weeks after the German surrender, to reach an agreement on how the disarmament and occupation of Germany would be handled. With the war against Japan still continuing, Truman decided to use the opportunity to issue a demand for Japanese surrender, having been advised a day before the conference began that an atomic bomb had been successfully detonated at a test site in New Mexico. Although Stalin had agreed to enter the war against Japan, the Soviet surprise attack was not scheduled to occur until August 9, so he declined to join the Declaration (the Soviets would adopt it later, after their invasion of Manchuria).

The 13-paragraph Declaration first described the Allied intention to continue the war until Japan ceased resistance, employing all the military power that had destroyed the Nazis. “The full application of our military power,” it stated, “backed by our resolve, will mean the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland.”

Although three members of the six-man Japanese Supreme War Council were in favor of opening negotiations for surrender, the war minister and the chiefs of staff of the Japanese army and navy flatly rejected the terms as too harsh and urged that the war continue. Meanwhile the moderates were still holding out hope that the Soviet Union might mediate a peace deal, unaware that the Soviets were on the eve of declaring war against Japan. Finally, the Japanese government publicly announced that their response to the Potsdam demands was “mokusatsu.”

Kazuo Kawai had been an editor of the Nippon Times in Tokyo during the war. Afterwards, when he was a professor of Far Eastern history at Stanford University, he lamented the poor decision by the Japanese government. “Mokusatsu,” he wrote, “is a word which has no exact equivalent in the English language. It is a word which is ambiguous even in the Japanese. It might be translated roughly as ‘to be silent’ or ‘to withhold comment’ or ‘to ignore.’ ‘To withhold comment’ probably comes closest to its true meaning, implying that something is being held back, that there is something significant impending. Certainly, that is what the Japanese government meant.” The Japanese government had never intended to reject the Potsdam Declaration outright, Kawai argued, but was counting on the Soviets to make known the Japanese willingness to surrender.

Further, the ambiguity of “mokusatsu” gave the military hardliners room to construe it as meaning rejection by ignoring, and they insisted that Japanese media construe it that way. A Tokyo newspaper printed the Potsdam Declaration terms under the heading “Laughable Matter” and the Japanese English-language propaganda agency “Radio Tokyo” declared flatly that Japan was “ignoring” the Declaration.

Thus, to the Allies the Japanese response seemed plain enough—they had decided to reject the Allied demands by “ignoring” them rather than responding to them. Accordingly, Truman authorized the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9. . .

Music

How many of you knew that Clint
Eastwood was quite the singer?

Well here he is in a 1962 episode of
Rawhide, entertaining us with his
cowboy crooning 🤠 pic.twitter.com/nnFWTQa7pp

— Farm Girl Carrie 👩‍🌾 (@FarmGirlCarrie) July 26, 2025

Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

Last week's thread, July 19, NPR provides community and emergency information to Rural Americans?

Comments are closed so you won't ban yourself by trying to comment on a week-old thread. But don't try it anyway.

At root, the NPR story and the Colbert story are the same: progressives took over a product, made it so that people didn’t want to pay it for it—whether via advertising, subscriptions, or donations—and they’re now upset that it won’t be perpetually bailed out by a third party.

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) July 19, 2025

posted by K.T. at 11:07 AM

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