MEDIA WATCH-The White House warned states that are considering anti-transgender bills this year that those bills are illegal under federal law.

“The president believes that trans rights are human rights and that no one should be discriminated on the basis of sex. Not only is this the law of the land, it’s his own deeply held view,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki during a press briefing.

Psaki was asked about President Joe Biden’s views on the dozens of states that are considering anti-transgender laws. According to HRC’s latest count, 37 bills have been proposed in state legislatures that would ban transgender girls and women from playing school sports.

MEDIA WATCH--White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki is a master at shutting down “gotcha” questions from right-wing reporters. Owen Jensen of the EWTN Global Catholic Network found out the hard way.

Jensen asked Psaki about the Equality Act, landmark civil rights legislation that would protect LGBTQ people, women, and the disabled from discrimination. The bill is opposed by the religious right who have been making wild claims about “religious freedom” and transgender teenagers.

“There’s pro-life groups, right now, who are very concerned about the phrase ‘pregnancy discrimination’ in the Equality Act — you’re familiar with that, I’m sure — that it would force doctors to perform abortions even if it violates their conscience,” Jensen said. “There are also concerns the bill would force doctors to perform gender transition surgeries and sterilizations, again, even if the violates their conscience.”

“What does the president — President Biden — say about those concerns?”

MEDIA WATCH--CPAC 2021! Wingnut City on Steroids! The first day of this year's exercise in flamboyant delusion featured a parade of alternate-reality speakers laboring hard and loud to out-bonkers-and-hoodwink each other, with impressive results. 

There was Ted 'Braveheart' Cruz, devotee of violent insurrection, who ended his incoherent speech by shrieking "FREEDOM!" - from masks, Democrats, people making fun of Cancun? - in an attempt to channel William Wallace without the face-paint, we think, though many noted Wallace got drawn and quartered and Cruz is just like Wallace "except for all the courage, honor, patriotism, bravery, strength, integrity, morality, virtue, toughness, wisdom, fearlessness, goodness, scruples and righteousness" which makes him "less like Braveheart and more like Naivefart." 

MEDIA WATCH-I missed the first round of talk about the New York Times’ publication of a moving and forthright letter by Woody Allen’s adopted daughter, Dylan, regarding his alleged sexual molestation of her over two decades ago. 

Woody Allen is an American icon as well as a human being capable of all things human, perhaps including the capacity for exercising the inhumanity of humans.

I admire those on this website who have taken on the subject and expressed a philosophical and/or moral stance about Allen’s reported alleged behavior. 

It is a troubling scenario with only speculation not evidentiary confirmation achievable from our distance as citizens and consumers.  His alleged crime is certainly inflammatory in nature and thus all the more fodder to be sensationally skewed by a mainstream corporate media so often less than reliable in framing scenarios within mature, moral, restrained and empathetic boundaries. 

MEDIA WATCH--Donald Trump reported making more than $1.6 billion in outside revenue and income during his four years as President of the United States, according to a review of his financial disclosures by CREW. While Trump publicly took credit for donating his taxpayer-funded salary, that ended up being less than 0.1% of the revenue and income he disclosed during his presidency. Far from being a sacrifice, the donation was merely a fig leaf to cover up four years of brazen corruption.

Despite seeing a major dropoff in hospitality related revenue in 2020 due to the pandemic, in total Trump disclosed at least $1,613,583,013 in revenue from the Trump Organization and other outside income. Trump disclosed a high end of $1,790,614,202, but it is impossible to know exactly how much he pocketed as president, as some of his assets list a vague “Over $5,000,000” in yearly income and because of the structure of Trump Organization businesses, reported revenue does not necessarily reflect his personal income from them. One of the reports also included 19 days of revenue and income before Trump assumed the presidency.

MEDIA WATCH--As Texas reels under a historic polar vortex that's left millions without heat or power and at least 23 dead, GOP state leaders have responded with their usual grace and logic, feverishly blaming their own catastrophic failures on wind turbines, Democrats, socialism, federal regulation, "corrupt 'green' policies that leave us in the dark" and anything else that isn't them. In harrowing stories, residents describe a once-in-a lifetime "classic cascade failure" as the storm hit and stayed, from miscalculations by power grid operators to unprecedented winter demand to plunging temps: "Then it froze. 

The whole state in one night." Experts say the cold has ravaged an out-of-date, fossil-fuel-based energy infrastructure, for years deliberately de-regulated and privatized in the name of profits for a few, in a state run 80% by natural gas, coal and nuclear power.