Axios

Boeing workers fight for fair pay… on beach vacation

“When Boeing fails... BET ON SPORTS! #STRIKE #IAM751 #NFL #MLB,” a striking Boeing employee recently posted on Facebook, geotagging a three-star hotel and casino in Washington State. Posts in a private Facebook group purporting to belong to the striking workers of Boeing reveal that, amid the first Boeing employee strike in almost two decades, the workers of the world are uniting on vacation. The group, called “Boeing Employees (Lazy B),” contains a multitude of posts from striking members on vacation in Mexico, gambling in casinos and on fishing trips. “On strike in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco Mexico. #iam751 #boeing,” another post reads. A third reads, “strike fishing again.

Kamala rebrands as the ‘joy’ candidate

Vice President Kamala Harris is almost three weeks into her presidential campaign and not only has she failed to hold an unscripted press conference or sit for a media interview, she also has zero policy positions on her campaign website. Democratic strategists have repeatedly assured me that she will adopt whatever platform comes out of the Democratic National Convention, which certainly won’t help the perception that she is a manufactured candidate willing to do whatever it takes to seize power, but I digress. The clear indication we are getting from the early stages of the Harris-Walz campaign is that it is all about “vibes” and the idea that Harris is selling “joy.

Want to buy Russia Today’s DC broadcast studio?

Axed-ios Axios announced in an email to staff this week that they are laying off 10 percent of their workforce — and to add insult to injury, the announcement was stylized like one of their editorial products.“Why it matters: We’re eliminating about 50 positions to get ahead of tectonic shifts in the media, technology, and reader needs/habits,” the email read. The canned staffers were also informed via email rather than in an in-person meeting, which Axios claimed was for logistical reasons.It gets worse. A spy tells Cockburn that the laid-off workers were summarily frog-marched out of the media company’s northern Virginia building Thursday by security.

The media’s flip to Harris was predictable

This time last week, America’s media was excruciatingly examining Joe Biden’s current health condition and fading campaign to Donald Trump, with leaks coming from White House and campaign Zoom calls. George Clooney, after hosting a Biden fundraiser, called for Biden to withdraw in the pages of the New York Times. Reports of a mysterious Covid diagnosis followed. But when Biden’s Twitter/X account posted his withdrawal letter on Sunday, the story instantly turned to Vice President Kamala Harris, a presumptive nominee in-waiting who has received more New York Times fluff profiles than she has primary votes (that number is zero, by the way). The media has dug a hole in the woods for Joe Biden.

Axios bravely points out Covid hurt Trump’s economy

Axios reporter Emily Peck isn’t afraid to state the obvious out loud and pass it off as inspired. In a hit piece published Thursday, “Why Trump supporters give him a pass on record-high unemployment,” Peck made the case that the economy suffered during Trump's last months in office due to coronavirus. Huh, who knew a global pandemic and lockdown could cause record unemployment?  “Trump's economic record is only good if you leave off what happened from March 2020 to the end of his administration,” Peck wrote, as if that were not exactly what any reasonable person would do. Prior to the pandemic, the unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent, the poverty rate hit a sixty-year low, and the country saw the largest real household median income increase since 1967.

axios

Kari Lake grabs the headlines

Choking up with the Faith and Freedom Coalition Imagine a venue where you can watch Kane from WWE following up Vivek Ramaswamy. That’s where Cockburn finds himself this Friday morning: in the ballroom of the Washington Hilton at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to the Majority Conference. Sound like a mouthful? Cockburn is counting the mentions of the left’s agenda being “rammed down our throats” (two so far — is this a biblical reference?). Seven presidential candidates are speaking today. So far Cockburn’s clocked Vivek, Mike Pence, Tim Scott and Francis Suarez — unforgivably he missed Asa Hutchinson after getting wrapped up in conversation with a trafficking advocate (anti) in the entryway.

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Nick Adams doesn’t write his own tweets

Nick Adams doesn’t write his own tweets Heartbreaking news from the social media world: a spy tells Cockburn that Nick Adams, the Trump surrogate, author and self-proclaimed “Alpha Male,” hires a communications firm to write most of his tweets. He may not, therefore, be the author behind classics such as "Joe Biden has never been to a Hooters." Adams's entire “Alpha Male” persona is a highly effective troll job that has led his account to reach massive engagement levels. Adams recently made headlines for getting into a Twitter war with former professional golfer Paige Spiranac after he said slow female golfers should only be allowed to play par-three courses. Cockburn wonders what "alpha male" would intentionally alienate Spirinac and what she calls her “fantastic milkers.

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DC coronavirus newsletters get assist from Big Pharma lobby

News outlets across the globe are grappling with how to expand or adapt their operations to adequately provide readers with the latest news about the novel coronavirus. In the US, for example, various digital publications have reduced their paywalled content so that more people have access to their reporting. Cockburn’s masters at The Spectator are even giving away three months’ free digital access. Away from home though, Cockburn has particularly enjoyed Politico’s nightly newsletter dedicated COVID-19 news, aptly named, ‘POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition.’ However, while settling into his fourth scotch one evening, Cockburn noticed something in his Politico email that greatly disturbed him: the newsletter is sponsored by PhRMA.

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Think Republicans will lose the House, Senate and presidency in 2020? Dream on

Politics, said Bismarck, is the art of the possible. Among other things, that apothegm pays homage to the pressure of the impossible, since deployment of the possible tacitly acknowledges the alternative. Invocation of 'the possible' is what makes Bismarck’s mot memorable; but what gives it teeth (not to mention logical coherence) is the appeal to 'art'. The statesman displays his skill by dancing gracefully among alternatives while avoiding the potholes of mere possibility that would topple him. In this sense, Bismarck’s observation is at odds with Jesus’s claim that 'With God all things are possible' (Matthew 19:26).

2020

In ‘Executive Time’, the president is doing everything but presiding

Is Donald Trump a new Winston Churchill? Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who fancies himself an expert on history, entered the lists today to defend Trump from allegations that he’s spending too much time loafing on the job. Churchill, too, Gingrich suggests, was a late riser who enjoyed luxuriating in his pajamas in between delivering speeches denouncing the depredations of the Nazis. Today, Gingrich tweeted: ‘The distortions of the hate Trump movement are never more obvious than in the reaction to the President’s leaked schedule. The ignorance of history of the current elites is pathetic. Churchill slept late, worked late, took a nap every afternoon (getting into his pajamas).

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Axios on HBO: dumb TV for people who think they’re smart

We are so plagued by experts and inundated with know-it-alls that the popular reaction is to turn out the technocrats and embrace the know-nothings. A cynic might wonder if Axios, the political website that promises to cover issues with a series of bullet points totaling no more than 300 words, is a technocrat’s way of heading off the know-nothings, if only by ensuring that the people who still believe in expertise know a little. Brevity might be the soul of wit, but is it the meat of political analysis? Axios describes its info-gobbets as ‘smart brevity.’ Like smart foods and smart phones, this means pre-digested information, shot out in hard, pre-formed pellets. Axios offers smart conclusions, delivered with digital smartness.

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Calm down, President Trump won’t change birthright citizenship yet

Donald Trump has been on full offense in the run up to next week’s midterms. The latest front he’s opened with Democrats is over ‘birthright citizenship,’ the practice of awarding citizenship to almost anyone who happens to the born in US territory, regardless of the parents’ allegiance. Liberals insist that the 14th Amendment guarantees this method of making citizens; conservatives take a more restrictive view of the amendment’s language, which recognizes the citizenship of ‘All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof…’ Are children born to illegal immigrants, for example, subject to US ‘jurisdiction’ in the every sense?

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