What Was Spike Lee Thinking?


From the O’Dwyer’s newsletter op-ed section:

The Brooklyn filmmaker had featured 9/11 conspiracy theorists in the final installment of his four-part “NYC Epicenters 9/11-2021 ½” series to be aired next month on HBO.

He interviewed members of the nutjob “Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth” group, which spread the garbage that the World Trade Center was destroyed by controlled demolition and not by aircraft.

In giving them facetime, Lee justified the group. He then set up a false equivalency situation by including interviews with scientists who trashed the notion that 9/11 was an insider job.

The Architects and scientists shouldn’t be on the same set, Spike

The filmmaker defended his work, telling the New York Times on Aug. 23 that he survived past criticism of his films “Do the Right Thing” (racist), “Mo’ Better Blues” (antisemitic) and “She’s Gotta Have It” (misogynist).

He said it was up to viewers to make up their minds about 9/11. After reviewers hammered Lee for showcasing the 9/11 debunkers, Lee caved and is re-editing the last episode.

How out of touch could Spike be?

His endorsement of the 9/11 conspiracy spreaders is a boost to those who deny the results of the 2020 election and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines.

Does Lee want to be a leader in the army of truth-deniers that is ripping the nation apart? One wonders if Lee has gotten his COVID-19 shot, or is that going to be part of his next documentary?

HBO also doesn’t emerge from the Epicenters mess smelling like a rose.

Dr. Democrat Assesses Afghanistan Ramifications for Dems


Dear Dr. Democrat,

I know that our team — the Democratic Party — is famous for unforced errors, but oh man. I’ve been against us leaving Afghanistan from the moment Biden announced he was following through on Trump’s deal to do so. Nothing, and I repeat, NOTHING has changed my mind on that, and as the withdrawal has progressed, I just wish we could turn back the clock and not do it. But we can’t, and here we are. I see only bad things ahead for the Biden administration at this point. The time to get the stuff done that we beat Trump in order to do is running quickly out. I don’t think we’ll prevail at the midterms, so it’s now or never and “now” evaporated today with ISIS attack on the Kabul airport. Please, Dr. Democrat, convince me I’m wrong.

Troubled in Toledo

Dear Troubled:

On a societal level, it’s tragic. But I’m having a hard time understanding how 75,000 Talibanis are able to hold a nation of 38 million hostage. There are about 40 million people in California. Could 75,000 MAGATs shut us down, take over our government, force women to wear burkhas and the rest?

[…]

Vaxxed Democratic Counties Are Driving Economy

Bloomberg: “[Interesting] new data on the overlap of electoral politics and economic dynamism suggest another reason: The geography of America’s economic engine is heavily concentrated in counties that Joe Biden won in 2020. These counties are much more heavily vaccinated than the rest of the country and thus better able to withstand the economic effects of Covid’s delta variant.

“The shift of U.S. economic production toward blue counties predates the arrival of the coronavirus. After the 2016 election, Mark Muro, the policy director of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Project, found that the 472 counties Hillary Clinton won produced 64% of the country’s economic output, while the 2,584 counties Donald Trump won contributed just 36%. That was a significant jump from the 2000 election, when the blue-red county economic split was 54% to 46%. Muro dubbed this divide ‘high-output America’ vs. ‘low-output America.’

“Last year, after Biden defeated Trump, Muro looked again and found that the economic output divide has grown even more pronounced. The 520 counties Biden won account for fully 71% of U.S. gross domestic product, while the 2,564 that Trump carried produced just 29%. In other words, America’s economic engine is bluer than ever.”

Clinton and Others Charter Flights to Rescue At-Risk Afghan Women

Independent: “Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who previously warned of the ‘huge consequences’ of withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan, has now reportedly attempted to charter flights out of the country for the country’s at-risk women…

“‘Last week, the evacuation options to get women’s rights activists out came largely from an informal network of powerful, connected, some very wealthy people, some trying to literally charter private jets to evacuate women thought to be Taliban targets,’ Marie Clarke, the vice-president of global programmes at Women for Women International, told The Guardian.”

Minority Rule in Congress Likely to Worsen – 2020 Census Shows Dramatic Reduction in Rural Population

Percent Change in County Population 2010 to 2020
Percent Change in County Population 2010 to 2020

Slate.com: “[While] metro areas grew, vast stretches of the country continued to bleed population. About 53 percent of all U.S. counties shrank between 2010 and 2020. You can see them in the sea of burnt orange on the graph [above], rural regions and small towns that often have few residents to begin with. In total, they were home to about 50.5 million people in a nation of more than 331 million.”

“This isn’t a new story per se. Rural America and small towns have been losing residents for decades. But the trend seems to have accelerated. From 2000 to 2010, for instance, only around one-third of all counties lost residents.”

This will undoubtedly exacerbate a longstanding inequity of representation in Congress.

[…]

‘Socially Liberal’ Republicans Are too Scared to Leave GOP

“Data and interviews with Gen-Z Republicans illustrate a cap on young Republicans’ more socially liberal views, particularly as it pertains to recent political fights over ‘cancel culture’ and how socially progressive or ‘woke’ Americans should be. … This could be related to research that suggests Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that they self-censor their political views due to fear of judgment for what they believe.”

FiveThirtyEight

Thanks for Helping Pay for the Unvaccinated Sick

$2 billion

A new Peterson-KFF analysis finds the spike in hospitalizations of unvaccinated adults — which are almost all preventable — cost the U.S. health system more than $2 billion in June and July. Axios: “Those costs are ultimately shouldered by all of us, not just those who remain unvaccinated and then get severely ill. A coronavirus hospitalization costs, on average, around $20,000.”

Biden Firm on Afghan Withdrawal — No One Will Be Fired

“Let me be clear: The evacuation of thousands of people from Kabul was going to be hard and painful no matter when it started, when we began. It would have been true if we had started a month ago — or a month from now. There’s no way to evacuate this many people without pain and loss of heartbreaking images you see on television. It’s just a fact.”

— President Joe Biden, who “isn’t inclined to fire any senior national security officials over the chaos in Kabul unless the situation drastically deteriorates or there’s significant loss of American life,” Axios reports.

Republican Kinzinger Blames Trump for Afghan Crisis

“Let’s keep in mind, Mike Pompeo met with the Taliban. As Donald Trump was publicly saying, ‘We have to get out of Afghanistan at all costs. It’s not worth it,’ Mike Pompeo meets with the Taliban and tries to negotiate something.” He added: “They set this up to fail. But always, of course, Joe Biden could have easily turned this around, and instead used it as the excuse to get out.”

— Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) placed blame on the Trump administration for the unfolding crisis in Afghanistan, saying its 2020 agreement with the Taliban sowed the seeds for the United States’ turbulent exit from the country, CNN reports.