Jen The Libertarian

Things we learned this past week - root access to Twitter can be bought for an insanely low price, DHS can send CBP into Portland because they feel like it, and libertarians like to fight over dumb stuff (to be fair you probably already knew about that last one)

Jesse and I have a conversation about The Letter (which he is a signer of), the discourse around The Letter (which involves him), The Counter Letter (which also involves him), a bit about Bari Weiss (that does not involve him), and his and Katie Herzog's new (very successful!) new podcast Blocked and Reported  Blocked and Reported Patreon page - https://www.patreon.com/blockedandreported Jesse's Substack page - https://jessesingal.substack.com 

Things happened outside The Discourse over the past week, including the Trump administration trying to either force universities to open or force foreign students to go home, some more SCOTUS decisions that are quite significant, and the commutation of Roger Stone's prison sentence  It's been a busy week 

Awful lot of gaslighting and strawmannirg and willfully (?) misinterpreting certain things this week... Of course this is about The Letter but also about Taylor Lorenz and clickbait culture and the insane reactions people have had to both stories and wow things have been crazy the past few days

We had an abbreviated holiday week with featured a bit of bad and good news on the unemployment front, conditions worsening drastically in HK (and how we can't really help), and the return of a story I first covered waaaaaaaay back when I first started making content - the Shitty Media Men list  (yeah I know I missed a few presidents on that statue garden list don't @ me)

So about Parler, the hot new free speech no "censorship" platform that...well...isn't quite  Spoiler alert - yeah you might want to go ahead and delete your account before someone decides to sue Parler over something you said on the platform 

We've got unemployment claims leveling off at an alarmingly high number, Trump extending the green card ban until the end of the year and adding in some more groups of people who can't come to the US, a whole discussion about a noose, and idiots tearing down statues On the bright side we do have grand jury charges against the men involved in Arbury's death and Braun gave us a bill to significantly change QI so it's not all bad

Where we discusser her Arc Digital article of the same name plus a *lot* of other things Link to Cathy's piece - https://arcdigital.media/feminism-racism-and-the-damsel-in-distress-1aa65c5172cc

In which I discuss the reactions (or lack thereof) to the Brooks shooting, the rather momentous SCOTUS decisions we got this week, and Trump's weird failed Tulsa rally There's also talk about Bolton's book and a slightly off topic ramble about cop who lie about fast food incidents 

I don't mean this as shade toward anyone, I just wanted to get some stuff off my chest because I've been thinking about it....

As the country slides even further into delirium we still manage a conversation about what to do about policing, ancoms take over a chunk of Seattle, and (sadly) we have another death at the hands of police

Things have certainly gotten weird(er) in the mediasphere since the NTY - Cotton op-ed incident and the frenzy is continuing at at breakneck pace  I have some thoughts 

This is a long episode because this was a looooooong week full of fairly important news. We got a boatload of police brutality, a very stupid (but reprehensible) Trump photo op, protesting marking the end of social distancing, and the NYT twisting itself into a pretzel over nonsense

Peter and I talk about his change in philosophical strategy and his new documentary The Monopoly On Violence  Which if you haven't seen it.... https://youtu.be/XWAEKQjN-yM

A lot of news happened this week A *lot* We got a ridiculous Trump EO, the internet trying to decide which Karen was the worse Kaen in a total Karen situation, and footage of yet another police killing which has sparked protests and riots across the country.

This week we were reminded that yes there is still a presidential campaign taking place with Biden starting his VP vetting process with a few ladies (and currently minus one lady) And I watched the LP National convention part 1. Yeah. It was quite something. 

A discussion about the online reaction to the Arbery case, the Breonna Taylor murder by cop, the Senate reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act (while crying crocodile tears), NYC residents deciding to go back out, and Amash breaking my heart  Link to the Pete Quinones piece - https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/how-members-of-gun-culture-view-the-ahmaud-arbery-killing/ Link to the Fleischman piece - https://arcdigital.media/the-ahmaud-arbery-killing-and-georgia-law-72ebb5c7643b 

There have been many a person twisting themselves into a knot over wanting to publicly say they believe Tara Reade but also believe Joe Biden and I found a particularly good example to discuss - the Linda Hirshman op-ed for NYT

Things I discuss from this last week: Unemployment numbers What retail looks like now Trump vetos the War Powers Act Flynn gets acquitted (while I was recording the last episode talking about Flynn) LP finally decides on a convention schedule The almost too bad to be real Ahmaud Abery story 

So last week the country got to see a little glimpse into how LEO works via new info on the FBI's questioning of Flynn and the Biden sexual assault allegation becomes quite the quandary for the Believe All Women crowd  (I recorded this before the news that Flynn's charges will be dropped so obviously more on that later)