The Alleged News®

Two weeks ago the New York Times published a story headlined “A Charity Tied to the Supreme Court Offers Donors Access to the Justices.” The story describes in detail the previously-obscure Supreme Court Historical Society [SCHS]. This entity is “ostensibly independent of the judicial branch of government,” the Times writes, but “in reality the two are inextricably intertwined.” Judging from the facts presented by the Times, SCHS provides a critically important societal function: it gives important people—those who have money to burn, and cases before the court—with a dignified way to put their manicured thumbs on the scales of justice. Annual dues start at a …

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by Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute The United States Senate acted in a show of rare unity recently in voting 80 to 15 to pass a bill forcing rail workers to accept their employers’ contract offer without a strike. There was no such unity to pass an amendment introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that would have given rail workers seven paid sick leave days. That bill did not pass even though 52 senators voted for it, as it failed the requisite 60-vote threshold. According to the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, “Almost every elected member of Congress campaigns on being ‘for the working class.’” But, …

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Charles “Sparky” Schultz, whose 100th birthday was recently celebrated, was a mensch with remarkable talents. Never what you would call a flashy draftsman, he was able nevertheless to draw humor out of the unlikely raw material of existential dread, using children as his medium. Perhaps the most lasting image he inserted into our national imaginarium was that of Charlie Brown lying flat on his back after trying to kick a football which has been whisked away at the last moment by Lucy van Pelt. Charlie Brown’s chagrin is compounded annually. He knows he’s been through all this before. Maybe he’s smarter than Congressional Democrats. We’ll …

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by Kenny Stancil Refuting President Joe Biden’s recent claim that “the pandemic is over,” a group of physicians, epidemiologists, and other experts warned in an open letter published last month that Covid-19 remains a deadly and disabling threat, including in the United States, which is ill-prepared for a possible winter surge “fueled by the emergence of new Omicron strains.” “We know from our clinical and research experience that the pandemic is far from over, and that national efforts to secure the health and well-being of the American public are far from complete,” the scholars wrote in the esteemed British Medical Journal. “We are deeply concerned …

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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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