The Alleged News®

Judging from the news reports, it could have been tragic: “Rainbow fentanyl,” produced by evil drug lords, handed out like candy to unsuspecting children from coast to coast. Halloween, 2022 was threatening to become the most tragic holiday since…. Well, since New Years Day, 2000, when, after months of breathless reporting and endless speculation about civilization grinding to a halt. When 1999 ended and 2000 began, as cable TV anchors held their breath…computers kept running and the world kept spinning. It turns out the programmers running the mainframes knew their jobs and how to do them. The true catastrophe of the year 2000 came in …

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by Brett Wilkins Corporate media outlets are mostly ignoring a Republican ploy to use the debt ceiling fight to gut Social Security and Medicare if the GOP regains control of Congress—a plot that one leading watchdog called “perhaps the single most consequential story” of the midterm elections. “Social Security and Medicare are on the ballot next month,” said Media Matters for America senior fellow Matt Gertz. “If the American public doesn’t know that, it’s in part because the press isn’t telling them.” Common Dreams reported last week that Social Security and Medicare defenders are warning that the popular programs—which each serve tens of millions of …

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In 1934, a cabal of leading U.S. businessmen tried to enlist U.S.M.C. Major General Smedley D. Butler in a plot to assemble a corps of disgruntled veterans of World War I and lead them in an effort to overthrow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The plutocrats involved included J.P. Morgan Jr., General Motors head Alfred P. Sloan, and Irénée du Pont, ex-president of DuPont. Rather than become a traitor, Butler blew the whistle. Congress investigated. Butler’s story held up. The press, unwilling to challenge the powers-that-were, then let the story drop. From time to time, some have suggested that Prescott Bush—Father of President George Herbert [Hoover] …

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If only all our problems could be solved by jailing #45…. Even if the roll call at Leavenworth were to include the name of a former President in 2024, that would hardly assure that the nation had returned to normal operations. Equally-deranged replacements seem to be springing up like poisonous mushrooms after a toxic rain. On Wednesday, the nerds at fivethirtyeight.com reported that “From the Carolinas to California, Montana to Florida, election denialism has spread across the country. Candidates who support former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen will appear on ballots in nearly every state this fall.” After reaching …

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by Jake Johnson A right-wing dark money group controlled by Leonard Leo—a legal activist who has played an outsized role in packing the U.S. Supreme Court with conservative ideologues—was the beneficiary of a massive, possibly unprecedented donation of $1.6 billion from a shadowy electronics mogul with ties to the Koch network. The enormous infusion of cash, first reported Monday by the New York Times, could bolster and embolden right-wing efforts to drag the U.S. judicial and political systems even further to the right for decades to come, imperiling the climate, what’s left of abortion rights, the franchise, and other freedoms that have come under growing …

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