Connect with us

Politics

Taylor Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ Isn’t As Edgy As She Thinks

Published

on

After over a year of extensive press coverage thanks to The Eras Tour, Taylor Swift has claimed her spot as America’s top celebrity.

After winning Best Album of the Year at this year’s Grammys, Swift announced her new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” which was released last week. For Swifties, it was the next thing to look forward to after establishing cultural hegemony over the past few months.

According to Fox Business, “[H]er 11th studio album also [became] Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day in their history.” If there was any doubt that she has outmaneuvered all competition in her genre, the commercial success clearly favors her music. Does she still have any daring edge left in her? Will the fans be right that the new album is merely an extension of the uptempo “Midnights” album? Not quite.

What got fans and media outlets raving about the album was the drama surrounding her notorious celebrity romances outside the studio. Songs taking fans through the gossip with former boyfriends Joe Alywn and Matt Healy is exactly what tabloid journalists are looking for. Was this more of the same “trying to move on but can’t” theme? Swift decides to don the mask and pour it into Lana Del Rey’s type of material. Rather than stick to the typical high school dating drama, Swift took the gloves off in bringing up decades-old grudges and new love interests alike.

The opening tracks set the stage for the “Midnights”-esque tone, however, diehard fans

CLICK HERE to read the rest of this ARTICLE. This post was originally published on another website.

Politics

Last Week In Lawfare Land: ‘Vindictive Prosecution’

Published

on

The lawfare crusade against former President Donald Trump continued in Manhattan this week as the criminal trial for alleged “hush money” payments wrapped up its 11th day, in what is expected to be a weeks-long affair. 

But as the criminal trial in Manhattan heats up, the other cases against President Trump have slowed to a halt while appeals and motions are pending, including District Attorney Fani Willis’ case in Georgia over Trump’s questioning of election results, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 case accusing Trump of conspiracy and obstruction, and Special Counsel Smith’s classified documents case. 

Here’s the latest information you need to know about each case.

Read our previous installments here.

Manhattan, New York: Prosecution by DA Alvin Bragg for NDA Payment

How we got here: In this New York state criminal case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — who The New York Times acknowledged had “campaigned as the best candidate to go after the former president” — charged former President Donald Trump in April 2023 with 34 felony charges for alleged falsification of business records. Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen paid pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election as part of a nondisclosure agreement in which she agreed not to publicize her claims that she had an affair with Trump (who denies the allegations). Nondisclosure agreements are not illegal, but Bragg claims Trump concealed the payment to help his 2016 election chances and in doing so was concealing a “crime.” Judge Merchan, a donor to Biden’s campaign and an

CLICK HERE to read the rest of this ARTICLE. This post was originally published on another website.

Continue Reading

Politics

U.S. Government Helps Pro-Ukraine Media Spread Propaganda And Silence American Critics

Published

on

Ukraine’s American-backed fight against Russia is being waged not only in the blood-soaked trenches of the Donbas region but also on what military planners call the cognitive battlefield — to win hearts and minds.

A sprawling constellation of media outlets organized with substantial funding and direction from the U.S. government has not just worked to counter Russian propaganda but has supported strong censorship laws and shutdowns of dissident outlets, disseminated disinformation of its own, and sought to silence critics of the war, including many American citizens.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs, commentator Tucker Carlson, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer are among the critics on both the left and the right who have been cast as part of a “network of Russian propaganda.”

But the figures targeted by the Ukrainian watchdog groups are hardly Kremlin agents. They simply have forcefully criticized dominant narratives about the war.

Sachs is a highly respected international development expert who has angered Ukrainian officials over his repeated calls for a diplomatic solution to the current military conflict. Last November, he gave a speech at the United Nations calling for a negotiated peace.

Mearsheimer has written extensively on international relations and is a skeptic of NATO expansion. He predicted that Western efforts to militarize Ukraine would lead to a Russian invasion.

Greenwald is a Pulitzer Prize-winning independent journalist who has criticized not just war coverage but media dynamics that suppress voices that run counter to U.S. narratives.

“What they mean when they demand censorship of ‘pro-Russia propaganda’ is anything that questions

CLICK HERE to read the rest of this ARTICLE. This post was originally published on another website.

Continue Reading

Politics

Democrats’ Election Games Have One Thing In Common: Shifting Power From Voters To Party Bosses

Published

on

Just about every election cycle, Democrats spring a new voting scheme on unsuspecting voters, each one more complicated than the last, with the predictable result of confusing voters and reducing confidence in the eventual results. This is all by design. Instead of earning voters’ loyalty, leftists would rather gain or maintain power by manipulating the election process however possible.

Control by Party Bosses

An egregious example of this took place earlier this year in New Hampshire, where the office of the state attorney general ended up issuing a cease-and-desist order to Democratic National Committee (DNC) officials for purportedly violating state voter suppression laws. Party bosses, who wanted South Carolina to be the first Democrat primary in the nation, bumped the presidential primaries in New Hampshire and Iowa down on the calendar after claiming the latter’s caucuses were “too white and too undemocratic.” When New Hampshire went forward with a January primary anyway, in accordance with state law, the DNC instructed the state party to tell voters their votes would be “meaningless” if they voted on Jan. 23, rather than on the DNC’s preferred primary date later in the year.

According to The Federalist, “in his cease-and-desist order to the DNC, Assistant Attorney General Brendan O’Donnell underscored how ‘[f]alsely telling New Hampshire voters that a New Hampshire election is ‘meaningless’ violates New Hampshire voter suppression laws,’ and further ordered the organization to stop engaging in such ‘unlawful’ conduct.”

On Saturday, New Hampshire Democrats fell in line with the DNC bosses by holding a

CLICK HERE to read the rest of this ARTICLE. This post was originally published on another website.

Continue Reading

Trending