The TV producer in Ailes saw a marketing niche, and the political operative in him saw a direct way of courting voters. Rupert Murdoch owned the network, but Ailes was its intellectual author. In the two decades since, the network has thrived without legitimate competition of any kind. It has proved to be a big tent, sheltering beneath it some excellent reporters but also a collection of blowhards, performance artists, cornballs, and Republican operatives in rehab from political failures and personal embarrassments. With the help of this antic cast, the Fox audience has come to understand something important that it did not know before: The people who make “mainstream” news and entertainment don’t just look down on conservatives and their values—they despise them.
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Can Megyn Kelly Escape Her Fox News Past? - The Atlantic - 0 views
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Her understanding of the legal aspects of news stories and her tendency to conduct interviews as hostile cross-examinations (“Stay in bounds!” “I’ve already ceded the point!” “Don’t deflect!”) made her a riveting journalist-entertainer
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Almost as soon as the election ended, Fox News went back to work on the mission, emphasizing a variety of themes, each intended to demonize the left. At the top of the list was the regular suggestion that Barack Obama was an America-hating radical, an elaboration of Glenn Beck’s observation (on Fox) that the president had “a deep-seated hatred for white people.” Other themes included the idea that straight white men were under ever-present threat from progressive policies and attitudes; that Planned Parenthood was a kind of front operation for baby murder; that political correctness had made the utterance of even the most obvious factual statements dangerous; and that the concerns of black America—including, especially, those of the Black Lives Matter movement—were so illogical, and so emotionally expressed, that they revealed millions of Americans to be beyond the reach of reason.
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We will never know to what extent Fox created or merely reported on the factor that turned out to be so decisive in the election: that to be white and conscious in America was to be in a constant state of rage.
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In the middle of all this, feeding clips of ammo into the hot Fox News machine, was Megyn Kelly. To watch her, during one of her interviews on the subject of race and policing, interrupt a black guest to ask her whether she’d ever called white people “crackers” was to see Kelly in action, fired up and ready to go. In some respects, she was an independent actor at Fox, with her own show and ultimate control of its editorial content. But she was also a cog in something turning, and what the great machine ultimately produced was President Donald Trump.
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As she tells it, one of the first questions Ailes asked her was “how the daughter of a nurse and a college professor understood anything other than left wing dogma.” She replied that although she’d been raised in a Democratic household, she had always been apolitical. She got the job.
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he wanted people who hadn’t been tainted by the left-wing media machine, so they could be trained in the attitudes and opinions the network had been founded to advance.
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Kelly is an unbelievably talented broadcaster—smart, funny, quick-witted, and able to handle a bit of fluff with as much zeal as she tackles a serious story. There can’t have been anyone more telegenic in the history of the business.
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By 2010, the network had become so popular that—according to Gabriel Sherman’s biography, The Loudest Voice in the Room—Ailes added a new goal to the mission: the election of the next president.
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she evinced her signature political stance: free-market enthusiasm combined with Nixonian law-and-order conservatism. “Enjoy prison!” she would call out after showing a video of an especially inept criminal enterprise.
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She popped off the screen—fun, sexy, tough—and became popular not just with conservatives but also (in the mode of a guilty pleasure) with many progressives, including her sometime nemesis Jon Stewart, who once said she was his favorite Fox personality.
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to see her segments on Black Lives Matter—which first aired as the primaries were getting under way and continued until the general election itself—was to see how Fox often stirred up racial anger among its viewers, a kind of anger that was crucial fuel for the Republican outcome Roger Ailes so desired.
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hen Kelly was a litigator in high-stakes lawsuits, she learned a skill of the trade: taunting her adversaries until they snapped. “I might say something passive-aggressive just to get opposing counsel mad,” she writes. “And then when he got worked up about it, I would say calmly, ‘You seem upset. Do you need a break? We can take a moment if you’d like to step outside and get yourself together.’ ” She became “an expert in making them lose their cool.”
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n her regular application of it to black activists, she contributed to an ugly mood that was the hallmark of Fox all last year: one of white aggrievement at a country gone mad, led by a radical black president supported by irrational black protesters who were gaining power.
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, she introduced her TV audience to Malik Shabazz, the president of Black Lawyers for Justice and a former president of the New Black Panthers Party. Shabazz is a radical—an anti-Zionist who believes that Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade and were involved in the 9/11 attacks, he is in a sense far more radical than Bill Ayers—but Kelly did not tell the audience that. Nor did she tell them that she had had Shabazz on her show in the past. The two proved useful to each other; he got to go deep behind enemy lines to spread his theories, while she got to show her audience members a black man who really does hate them. But to the casual viewer, he seemed like merely another Black Lives Matter supporter, no more or less extreme in his views than D. L. Hughley.
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This was Fox News last spring and summer and into the fall: a place where black guests were always a few prodding questions away from telling the audience what they really felt about whites, and a place where white hosts were quick to defend other members of their race from unfair accusations of bias. These tactics were integral to the network’s mission: to get conservative ideas out there, to help elect a Republican president, and to make exciting television while doing it. Kelly proved adept on all fronts.
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Can Democrats' Resistance Summer Take Down Trump? | The Report | US News - 0 views
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Rallies. Canvassing. Demanding answers at congressional town halls. Voter registration, organizer training and candidate recruitment. It sounds like it could be some sort of political rehab plan for Democrats, who found themselves losing what most agree was a very winnable presidential race last year, despite having a more experienced, conventional and more traditionally organized nominee. Democrats are calling it Resistance Summer, a season they hope will mark the transition from the shock-and-awe reaction to Donald Trump's inauguration as president to a more focused strategy that will result in more than just abandoned protest signs and deflated balloons.
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The official Resistance is being run by the Democratic National Committee, which is working with state parties to take the energy now being directed at GOP lawmakers at town halls and turn it into something more tangible. The party is giving matching grants to state affiliates under the program, which the DNC expects to top seven figures by the time it's done. Already, the party has subsidized on-the ground efforts, including activating black, Latino and Asian-Americans who did not vote in the congressional primary in Georgia's sixth district special election, and who could make a difference in the general election contest Tuesday.
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They Had Mild Covid. Then Their Serious Symptoms Kicked In. - The New York Times - 0 views
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In the fall, after Samar Khan came down with a mild case of Covid-19, she expected to recover and return to her previous energetic life in Chicago. After all, she was just 25, and healthy.But weeks later, she said, “this weird constellation of symptoms began to set in.”
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She had blurred vision encircled with strange halos. She had ringing in her ears, and everything began to smell like cigarettes or Lysol. One leg started to tingle, and her hands would tremble while putting on eyeliner.
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The study of 100 patients from 21 states, published on Tuesday in The Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, found that 85 percent of them experienced four or more neurological issues like brain fog, headaches, tingling, muscle pain and dizziness.
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This month, a study that analyzed electronic medical records in California found that nearly a third of the people struggling with long Covid symptoms — like shortness of breath, cough and abdominal pain — did not have any signs of illness in the first 10 days after they tested positive for the coronavirus. Surveys by patient-led groups have also found that many Covid survivors with long-term symptoms were never hospitalized for the disease.
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Participants in the study were overwhelmingly white, and 70 percent were women. Dr. Navis and others said that the lack of diversity quite likely reflected the demographics of people able to seek care relatively early in the pandemic rather than the full spectrum of people affected by post-Covid neurological sympto
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In the Northwestern study, 43 percent of the patients had depression before having Covid-19; 16 percent had previous autoimmune diseases, the same percentage of patients who had previous lung disease or had struggled with insomnia.
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“Waking up every day in this body, sometimes hope feels a little dangerous,” said Ms. Khan, who will soon start the cognitive rehab program. “I have to wonder: Am I going to recover, or am I going to just figure out how to live with my new brain?”
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Life after al-Shabab: Driving a school bus instead of an armed pickup truck - 0 views
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Any caught trying to leave are put to death. At the same time, the government tries to encourage defectors, and runs rehab centres to help them re-enter society.
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"We are not afraid to tell our stories. Ask us anything you want. You can take our photos and use our real names."
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al-Shabab, which has been in existence for more than a decade and controls large parts of Somalia, imposing harsh rules and punishments. The group has set up a parallel administration, with ministries, a police force and a justice system. It runs schools and health centres, irrigates land and repairs roads and bridges, and needs people to carry out this work.
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The penalty for defecting is death. Al-Shabab has told me this penalty applies to anyone who leaves the group without permission, not just fighters.
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Every two weeks they sent a brainwashing team to our battalion which sat with us for hours reciting verses from the Koran and repeating over and over again how the government, the African Union and its other international supporters were infidels and apostates.
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There are efforts to spread the word inside al-Shabab territory about this defectors' programme. Colourful leaflets have been designed, with images for those who cannot read showing members of al-Shabab being rescued, and a phone number they can call. These efforts have led to an increase in defections, with more than 60 leaving al-Shabab in a two-month period earlier this year.
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He says he will never return to his home village - he will spend the rest of life trying to melt into the big city of Mogadishu
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some active members of al-Shabab slip through the net and send messages to the group from within the camp.
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Sheikhs visit to help with deradicalisation, to convince the young men that there is another kind of Islam unlike that drilled into them by al-Shabab.
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I meet a neatly dressed and softly spoken young man, Bashir, who recently left Serendi after two years there. It is difficult to imagine how such a gentle person could have been a member of a group that focuses so intently on violence, both in its actions and its words.
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Now that Serendi is operating more successfully, rehabilitation centres are also being set up for defectors' wives
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Al-Shabab regularly assassinates people in Mogadishu; residents of the city say the militants are everywhere. They "tax" people, distribute charity and dispense justice in areas nominally under government control.
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Hart Island: Coronavirus burials in New York remake history - The Washington Post - 0 views
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Only 11 miles from Manhattan, Hart Island has been the final resting place for New York’s unclaimed and poor for over a century.
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It is the largest mass grave in the United States. At least 1,000 bodies are buried on the island a year, and more than 1 million can be found in the plots of its potter’s field, known as City Cemetery.
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Its earliest iteration was as a training ground for soldiers during the Civil War. Purchased by the city in 1868, the land in the Long Island Sound has been home to a boys reformatory, asylum, prison, rehab center and even a Nike missile silo
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The first documented burial took place on April 22, 1869, according to Melinda Hunt, director of the Hart Island Project, a nonprofit organization identifying and tracking burials on the island.
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This concept of honoring the dead was particularly relevant during the AIDS epidemic of the late ’80s and ’90s, which killed more than 100,000 people in New York. Many AIDS patients were laid to rest at Hart Island in an isolated area from other remains and in deeper individual graves because of the stigma and lack of knowledge about how AIDS spread.
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Those epidemics include the yellow fever and tuberculosis outbreaks of the 19th century, when the island was used as a quarantine station for those who were infected. It also proved key in handling the waves of victims associated with the spread of the great flu pandemic of 1918, when over 30,000 deaths were recorded in the city — 20,000 of which came that fall alone.
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Mass burials on Hart Island often hold a negative association, most likely because of the way burials have evolved throughout history, as private funerals have become the norm.
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Hunt says New York City as a whole has never run out of burial space. “The city is able to recycle graves after 25 years
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The burials were long conducted by inmates, most often from Rikers Island. “You hear people who say if you go to Hart’s, you’re going to be haunted the rest of your life,” said Saxon Palmer, a former Rikers inmate, who was on the job for the entirety of his four-month sentence in 2019. “Then most people wouldn’t come back the next week.”
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“I’ve often referred to Hart Island as New York City’s family tomb. … There’s something really meaningful about that, to be buried with earlier generations,” Hunt said. “We want for people to be able to stay connected … because that’s what is going to make us feel safe in the end, that the city has honored every life.”
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Opinion | How Ed Markey beat Joe Kennedy: The miracle of being green - The Washington Post - 0 views
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green socialism progressive young 2020 election
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It’s been clear for a while that the word “socialism” is no longer a dealbreaker for younger voters. If the old associate it with the oppression of the Soviet Union, the young think of it as describing Denmark or Norway — lovely, livable places with decent social programs
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And the young left, as AOC knows, sees climate change as a decisive voting issue because it’s the existential challenge of our time. This is also increasingly true among older Democratic middle-class suburbanites and city voters living in the rehabbed neighborhoods of lofts and exposed brick.
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He’ll now always be known for working a political miracle — and for making clear, to borrow from JFK, that saving the planet is this generation’s long twilight struggle.
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Covid hospital bills arrive for patients as insurers restore deductibles and copays - T... - 0 views
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hospital costs Covid-19 health care insurance
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Nationally, covid hospitalizations under insurance contracts on average cost $29,000, or $156,000 for a patient with oxygen levels so low that they require a ventilator and ICU treatment,
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The calculus in place in 2020 changed with the advent of vaccines, which now makes most hospitalizations preventable,
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Hospitals along the Connecticut River, the border between Vermont and New Hampshire, draw patients from both states. Vermont health plans are waiving deductibles and co-pays into 2022. In New Hampshire, where Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield has a dominant presence, insurance companies have reinstated cost-sharing.
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Marvin Mallek, a doctor who treats covid patients from both sides of the river at Springfield Hospital in Vermont, said New Hampshire covid patients are now facing business as usual from insurers, suffering the same sort of financial stress that routinely affects patients with cancer, heart disease and other serious ailments.
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“The inhumanity of our health-care system and the tragedies it creates will now resume and will now cover this one group that was exempted,'' he said. “The U.S. health-care system is sort of like a game of musical chairs where there are not enough chairs, and some people are going to get hurt and devastated financially.”
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Hospitals also are in the position of having to resume billings and collections for individuals who may have been laid off because of the pandemic or been too sick to work, experts said.
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“These waivers ended in January as we all had gained a better understanding of the virus, and people and communities became more familiar with best practices and protocols for limiting COVID-19 exposure and spread,” the company said in a statement. “Also, at this time vaccines, which are proven to be the safest and most effective way to protect oneself from COVID-19, were starting to become readily available.”Anthem took in $4.6 billion in profits in 2020, compared to $4.8 billion in 2019.
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The reintroduction of cost-sharing mainly affects people with private or employer-based insurance. Patients with no insurance can have 100 percent of their expenses covered by the federal government, under a special program set up by the government for the pandemic, with hospitals reimbursed for care at Medicare rates.
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Covid patients with Medicaid, the government plan for lower-income people that is paid for by states and the federal government, continue to be protected from cost-sharing, insurance specialists said
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Patients on Medicare, the federal plan for the elderly, could face out-of-pocket costs if they do not have supplemental insurance.
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Last year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 88 percent of people covered by private insurance had their co-pays and deductibles for covid treatment waived. By August 2021, only 28 percent of the two largest plans in each state and D.C. still had the waivers in place, and another 10 percent planned to phase them out by the end of October,
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general, a person with Azar’s type of plan would have an in-network deductible of $1,500 and an in-network out-of-pocket maximum of $4,000,
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“We still don’t know where the numbers will land because the system makes the family wait for the bills,” s
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Bills related to her stay at the out-of-network rehab hospital in Tennessee could climb as high as $10,000 more, her relatives have estimated, but they acknowledged they were uncertain this month what exactly to expect, even after asking UnitedHealthcare and the providers.
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In 2020, as the pandemic took hold, U.S. health insurance companies declared they would cover 100 percent of the costs for covid treatment, waiving co-pays and expensive deductibles for hospital stays that frequently range into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.But this year, most insurers have reinstated co-pays and deductibles for covid patients, in many cases even before vaccines became widely available.
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Portugal's drug decriminalization faces opposition as addiction multiplies - The Washin... - 0 views
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Cocaine production is at global highs. Seizures of amphetamine and methamphetamine have exploded. The multiyear pandemic deepened personal burdens and fomented an increase in use.
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In the United States alone, overdose deaths, fueled by opioids and deadly synthetic fentanyl, topped 100,000 in both 2021 and 2022 — or double what it was in 2015.
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Across the Atlantic in Europe, tiny Portugal appeared to harbor an answer. In 2001, it threw out years of punishment-driven policies in favor of harm reduction by decriminalizing consumption of all drugs for personal use, including the purchase and possession of 10-day supplies.
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Consumption remains technically against the law, but instead of jail, people who misuse drugs are registered by police and referred to “dissuasion commissions.” For the most troubled people, authorities can impose sanctions including fines and recommend treatment. The decision to attend is voluntary.
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Other countries have moved to channel drug offenses out of the penal system too. But none in Europe institutionalized that route more than Portugal. Within a few years, HIV transmission rates via syringes — one the biggest arguments for decriminalization — had plummeted. From 2000 to 2008, prison populations fell by 16.5 percent. Overdose rates dropped as public funds flowed from jails to rehabilitation. There was no evidence of a feared surge in use.
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None of the parade of horrors that decriminalization opponents in Portugal predicted, and that decriminalization opponents around the world typically invoke, has come to pass,” a landmark Cato Institute report stated in 2009.
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But in the first substantial way since decriminalization passed, some Portuguese voices are now calling for a rethink of a policy that was long a proud point of national consensus. Urban visibility of the drug problem, police say, is at its worst point in decades and the state-funded nongovernmental organizations that have largely taken over responding to the people with addiction seem less concerned with treatment than affirming that lifetime drug use should be seen as a human right.
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“At the end of the day, the police have their hands tied,” said António Leitão da Silva, chief of Municipal Police of Porto, adding the situation now is comparable to the years before decriminalization was implemented.
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the percent of adults who have used illicit drugs increased to 12.8 percent in 2022, up from 7.8 in 2001, though still below European averages
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Overdose rates have hit 12-year highs and almost doubled in Lisbon from 2019 to 2023. Sewage samples in Lisbon show cocaine and ketamine detection is now among the highest in Europe, with elevated weekend rates suggesting party-heavy usage
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In Porto, the collection of drug-related debris from city streets surged 24 percent between 2021 and 2022, with this year on track to far outpace the last.
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Crime — including robbery in public spaces — spiked 14 percent from 2021 to 2022, a rise police blame partly on increased drug use
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When crack pipes are available, the social workers give them out. There’s no judgment, few questions, and no pressure to embrace change.
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Summing up the philosophy, Luísa Neves, SAOM’s president, said: “You have to respect the user. If they want to use, it is their right.”
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Police deployed in force to the area three months ago to crack down on dealers, who can be and are being arrested. Patrol cars are now stationed in the neighborhood 24 hours a day, scattering people using drug
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“When you first back off enforcement, there are not many people walking over the line that you’ve removed. And the public think it’s working really well,
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“Then word gets out that there’s an open market, limits to penalties, and you start drawing in more drug users. Then you’ve got a more stable drug culture, and, frankly, it doesn’t look as good anymore.”
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An eight-minute walk uphill from Porto’s safe drug-use center, in a neighborhood of elegant two-story homes with hedgerows of roses and hibiscus, neighbors talk of an “invasion” of people using drugs since the pandemic
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In Oregon — where the policy took effect in early 2021 openly citing Portugal as a model — attempts to funnel people with addiction from jail to rehabilitation have had a rough start. Police have shown little interest in handing out toothless citations for drug use, grants for treatment have lagged, and extremely few people are seeking voluntary rehabilitation
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We have to do something with the law. We know they can’t stay here forever. What happens when the police leave?”
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Porto’s mayor and other critics, including neighborhood activist groups, are not calling for a wholesale repeal of decriminalization — but rather, a limited re-criminalization in urban areas and near schools and hospitals to address rising numbers of people misusing drugs.
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In a country where the drug policy is seen as sacred, even that has generated pushback — with nearly 200 experts signing an opposition letter after Porto’s city commission in January passed a resolution seeking national-level changes.
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ave today no longer serves as an example to anyone.” Rather than fault the policy, however, he blames a lack of funding.
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After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that engage with people who use drugs. The country is now moving to create a new institute aimed at reinvigorating its drug prevention programs.
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Twenty years ago, “we were quite successful in dealing with the big problem, the epidemic of heroin use and all the related effects,” Goulão said in an interview with The Washington Post. “But we have had a kind of disinvestment, a freezing in our response … and we lost some efficacy.”
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Of two dozen street people who use drugs and were asked by The Post, not one said they’d ever appeared before one of Portugal’s Dissuasion Commissions, envisioned as conduits to funnel people with addiction into rehab
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Gibraltar mansion could be saved by Wilmington Delaware ownership plan - 0 views
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Gibraltar Preservation Group – a limited liability company of which Drake Cattermole and David Carpenter are principals – has owned the 6-acre property since 2010. The two spent the following years amassing adjacent parcels to propose a financially viable rehabilitation project for the historic property.
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During that time, the mansion sat vacant and deteriorated, an aspect that opponents of redeveloping the historic property have pushed to the forefront in their arguments.Local developer Robert Snowberger, of 9SDC – a Wilmington-based historic preservation contractor – introduced plans in February to turn the Gibraltar mansion into a boutique hotel, renovate the greenhouse and garage into restaurant and retail space, and build townhomes on vacant land surrounding the property.
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“All would be subject to appropriate restrictive covenants to ensure against unwanted commercial uses,” he wrote. “The city will contract with 9SDC to act as developer of the site, most especially because they have been integral to negotiations with the owner entity, because they have been deeply involved with securing the vitally needed historic tax credits and because they have experience with restoration of historic properties.”
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The mayor’s proposal, sent to residents in the Highlands community May 25 under Purzycki’s personal letterhead and address, attempts to strike a compromise to ensure the mansion is rehabilitated while reducing the project’s impact on the community.
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“When the mayor says this should be taken off the owner’s hands, I applaud him for that,” said Michael Melloy, a Forty Acres resident who grew up in the Highlands. “But the city of Wilmington is in no position to manage a high-end historic mansion and garden.”
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Melloy and others continue to press for the state to enforce the conservation easement – which requires the current owners to stabilize and secure the mansion at their expense – and consider taking ownership of the property as it has done with other historical sites in Delaware.
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Purzycki told Delaware Online/The News Journal during a recent phone interview that the bond bill funding request would go toward rehabilitating the mansion, not the owners, per his latest proposal.Melloy argues in a draft letter that while the state funds wouldn't go directly to the owners, "the effect is the same: the owners’ financial responsibility is absolved and transferred to all Delaware taxpayers."The developer did not return calls requesting comment.
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That pursuit would mean lawsuits and potentially years of red tape that would stall any progress in rehabbing Gibraltar, the mayor said.Melloy contends city departments have neither the historic preservation nor the horticultural experience to own and maintain Gibraltar and the accompanying gardens. The Wilmington resident points to a lack of code enforcement at the property over the years, and the recent condemnation of several buildings on North Adams Street as examples of the city’s failure to maintain properties in general.HISTORIC NEGLECT:Wilmington landlord of condemned apartments has long history of property neglect
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As for the state or a nonprofit taking ownership of the historic estate, Purzycki said the state isn’t interested and noted that Preservation Delaware – a nonprofit – previously owned Gibraltar “and that didn’t work out, did it?”Got a tip? Contact Amanda Fries at afries@delawareonline.com, or by calling 302-598-5507. Follow her on Twitter at @mandy_fries.