Bret Stephens

===

denier pow

nyt?

---

pow

an 4 26

The press has actually been pretty skeptical about the Iran war. There's some egregious cheerleading from people like New York Times columnist Bret Stephens and other neoconservative hacks, but it's nothing like with the Iraq War. I don't think the press would just shrug and go along with it if Trump declares victory.

alex w zeteo rt wing media

sun show is bona fide converve and mainstream jrnl assumed to rep liberal left

i might be conf w c affairs

---

11 25

There Have to Be Consequences For Advocating Illegal Wars

yet again, the New York Times’ Bret Stephens advocates the overthrow of a sovereign government. Why do the readers of the “paper of record” tolerate this dangerous propaganda?

Nathan J. Robinson

filed 18 November 2025 in Media

In early 2003, readers of the New York Times were treated to a column by resident foreign affairs expert Thomas L. Friedman, in which Friedman claimed that invading Iraq and overthrowing its government would be a useful, moral, and sensible thing to do:

*Regime change in Iraq is not some distraction from the war on Al Qaeda. That is a bogus argument. And simply because oil is also at stake in Iraq doesn't make it illegitimate either. Some things are right to do, even if Big Oil benefits. Although President Bush has cast the war in Iraq as being about disarmament -- and that is legitimate -- disarmament is not the most important prize there. Regime change is the prize. Just by mobilizing for war against Iraq, the U.S. has sent this region a powerful message: We will not leave you alone anymore to play with matches, because the last time you did, we got burned[…] in today's globalized world, if you don't visit a bad neighborhood, it will visit you.

Friedman voiced some unease about the potential war, and at one point wrote a column in the voice of an imaginary “pro-American Arab leader” (instead of asking a real Arab leader for an opinion) to muse on the possibility of merely forcing Saddam Hussein into exile using the threat of war, rather than actually waging war. But Friedman felt that a war with Iraq would be good “shock therapy” and would “stimulate some real change in an Arab world that is badly in need of reform.”

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would soon die from Friedman’s recommended “therapy,” and the invasion of Iraq quickly became the worst crime of our century. As the war turned into a bloody catastrophe, rather than showing any contrition, Friedman accused France of “becoming our enemy” for having declined to support the atrocity. (In fact, France should have been praised for its good sense and foresight.)

:{There was little accountability at the New York Timesfor publishing such shameful propaganda for this terrible crime, which went well beyond Friedman’s columns. The worst offender, reporter Judith Miller, was forced to leave the paper after publishing unverified stories on Iraq’s alleged “weapons of mass destruction”—reporting which the U.S. government used to bolster support for the war, and which turned out to be false. But Friedman continues to pump out vapid columns to this day, including an outright racist flight of fancy last year imagining different Middle Eastern populations as different members of the animal kingdom. (Iranians were labeled “parasitoid wasp[s].”)

Nor was there any hesitation about publishing calls to bomb or invade othercountries. Subsequent years saw the publication of “Bomb North Korea, Before It's Too Late” and “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran” (by John Bolton!). Neoconservative columnist Bret Stephens has published many opinion pieces calling foror praising the bombing of Iran. Now, becaus always needs a new war, he’s turned to calling for attacking Venezuela and deposing its government. In January, Stephens published “Depose Maduro,” and now he’s given us a repeat in “The Case for Overthrowing Maduro.”}:

IFrame Content

What’s striking about Stephens’ “case” for overthrowing Maduro is how thin it is. Stephens says that (1) the U.S. has a “vital interest” in seeing Maduro gone, that (2) there is no way other than war to dislodge Maduro, that (3) Maduro is bad at governing Venezuela, and that (4) while there is a risk the invasion will plunge the country into a catastrophic quagmire, “we can learn from our past mistakes.” Stephens does not even attempt to answer two of the most obvious questions that should face an advocate of aggressive war, namely: “What right does the U.S. have to overthrow a sovereign government?” and “Do other countries also have the right to overthrow any government whose actions negatively affect their perceived national interest?”

What “vital interest” does the U.S. have in overthrowing the government of Venezuela? Stephens doesn’t actually press too hard on the justification offered by the Trump administration, that Maduro is some kind of international drug kingpin. Indeed, as my colleague Alexexplains, even the U.S. government’s own analyses have not identified Venezuela as a top exporter of illegal drugs to the U.S.. Stephens does link toa reportby the State Department funded InSight Crime, but the report actually refutesthe claim that Maduro operates as a ringleader of the country’s drug trafficking, portraying him instead as trying to carefully maintain power while dealing with the reality of powerful drug traders existing within the country. The report states explicitly that “Criminal groups that have grown wealthy and powerful from cocaine are growing ever more difficult to control” and “Maduro is trying to bring order to the growing criminal chaos.” Stephens does not quote this line, and the report Stephens cites actually destroysthe case for regime change over drug trafficking; after all, if Maduro is nota “godfather” figure, then anyVenezuelan head of state would have to deal with the reality of powerful drug traffickers, and a successor government is likely to suffer from much of the same corruption and deal-making. The report says:

*The Maduro regime’s political enemies like to see the Venezuelan cocaine trade through the prism of the government’s own left-wing rhetoric; depicting drug trafficking as a nationalized state monopoly. But in truth, it is more akin to the wild west capitalism seen following the collapse of the Soviet Union: a game of wealth and power with oligarchs and gangsters jostling for position as an authoritarian leader tries to hold it all together.

If that’s the case, it sounds an awful lot like removing Maduro could well make things worse.

Probably sensing how weak this argument is, Stephens mentions it only in passing. Instead, his main accusation against Maduro is that he is “an importer and exporter of instability.” What is “instability”? Well, as is often the case in U.S. propaganda discourse, a “stable” country is one favorable to the U.S., while an “unstable” country is one that contradicts or opposes U.S. leaders even in the smallest ways. Stephens is open about this. Maduro is an “importer of instability” because “the regime’s close economic and strategic ties to China, Russia and Iran give America’s enemies a significant foothold in the Americas.” As usual, it helps to ask the question: How would this argument sound if any other country used it? Imagine China saying that Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan were “importers of instability” because their ties to the U.S. gave America a “significant foothold in Asia.” Would this justify a Chinese invasion of these countries? Or would we see that as blatant aggression?

As for “exporting” instability, what is that? Well, Stephens cites the number of Venezuelans who have emigrated (millions over the last ten years) as proof that the country is being governed poorly and we may therefore legitimately overthrow its government. He says that we have a “moral right” to invade because Venezuela’s government produces misery for its people. (He does not cite any polling of Venezuela’s people to show that they support a U.S. attack, since the opinions of a population are irrelevant to whether we should liberate them.)

It says a lot about the state of discourse in the United States that in a liberal newspaper, the “Paper of Record,” a columnist does not feel the need to provide any legaljustification for waging war against another country. Attacking a sovereign nation is an explicit violation of the basic principles of the UN Charter, which says that uses of force must be authorized by the UN Security Council. Stephens doesn’t even mention international law in his columns. The right of the U.S. to rule over the rest of the world, and to “coup whoever we want” (to use Elon Musk’s memorable phrase) is simply assumed.

IFrame Content

Stephens is not only producing propaganda for a criminal war of aggression, but he’s barely putting in any effort. His assurances that the “risk” is worth it fail to take seriously the disasters that can occur after deposing a foreign government with no day-after plan, and he doesn’t explain why we should invade Venezuela but not other dictatorial countries. If we care about stopping countries that abuse human rights, we should invade Israel and Saudi Arabia. If we care about stopping the flow of refugees, we should have boots on the ground in Sudan. Why is Venezuela being singled out for an attack? As Skopic explains, the actual reason is obvious and barely disguised. Large portions of the American ruling class resent that Venezuela’s government has violated the Monroe Doctrine and is not slavishly subservient to the U.S., and they reason that if we had a friendlier government we could, in Donald Trump’s words, get “all that oil.” For Stephens, the “real” reason may be a little different, because neoconservative columnists just always need new war crimes to advocate, lest they struggle to fill their weekly column inches. What would a columnist like Stephens even write about if he weren’t proposing new wars for other people’s children to fight in?

Sadly there is no editing, and there is no accountability. The Timeseditors do not make Stephens answer even basic questions that his argument raises, they do not make him address the question of legality, they do not make him represent his sources fully and accurately, and they do not seem to learn from their history of publishing vile justifications for homicidal atrocities.

But here at Current Affairs,we’ve thought of one small way you can hold the Timesaccountable for publishing Stephens’ atrocious, and very dangerous, opinion writing. You can cancel your subscription and subscribe to Current Affairsinstead. We will even offer you a free one-year digital subscription if you send proof you’ve canceled your subscription to the New York Times.Email proof to help@currentaffairs.org and we’ll give you your subscription. (The offer also extends to subscribers of The Atlantic,the worst magazine in America. Cancel today!)

Sadly, we here at Current Affairshave to keep reading the New York Times,so we can keep holding it to account. But you don’t have to! And when you switch your dollars to supporting independent media, you are helping us build an alternative. Yes, people read the Timesbecause of the reporting it does, much of which remains important. But when you subscribe to independent publications like this one, or our friends at Drop Site, The Lever, Zeteo, The Intercept, The Majority Report, In These Times,etc., you help us build out our own journalistic capacities. If sufficient numbers of people support these publications through their subscriptions and donations, there will be no need for anyone to get their news reporting from a publication that prints justifications for war crimes. It’s true that a few people canceling their Times subscriptions doesn’t make much of a difference to such a large company, but it’s important to exact a price from them for choosing to allow Stephens to push views that—if accepted—will result in horrific atrocities. War is not inevitable, but if we continue to fund publications who try to manufacture consent for war, then the cycle of violence will be much more likely to continue.

Current Affairs

https://www.currentaffairs.org › news › there-have-to-be-consequences-for-advocating-illegal-wars

There Have to Be Consequences For Advocating Illegal Wars

Nov 18, 2025Yet again, the New York Times' Bret Stephens advocates the overthrow of a sovereign government. Why do the readers of the "paper of record" tolerate this dangerous propaganda?

New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com › column › bret-stephens

Bret Stephens - The New York Times

Nov 17, 2025Bret Stephens joined The New York Times as an Opinion columnist writing about foreign policy and domestic politics in April 2017, after a long career with The Wall Street Journal, where he was ...

ggl 12 24

The New York Times

Opinion | Done With Never Trump

There's plenty to dislike and fear about Trump, but Never Trumpers overstated our case, defeating our purpose.

5 days ago](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/opinion/never-trump-republicans.html)

[

MSNBC News

Done with Never Trump? polarizing op-ed divides anti-Trump conservatives ahead of second Trump term

Former Never Trumpers—and even some Democrats—are suggesting Donald Trump deserves another chance. In a New York Times op-ed, "Done with...

16 hours ago](https://www.msnbc.com/ayman-mohyeldin/watch/done-with-never-trump-polarizing-op-ed-divides-anti-trump-conservatives-ahead-of-second-trump-term-227711045761)

[

The Daily Beast

The ‘Never Trump’ Movement Is Dead. Long Live ‘Never Trump’

Oh look, it's that time again: The sad, but seemingly inevitable, moment when former anti-Trump figureheads give up the ghost.

3 days ago](https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-never-trump-movement-is-dead-long-live-never-trump/)

The contortionists among American ruling political class are at it again. This week, New York Timescolumnist Bret Stephens—a (formerly) prominent Never Trumper and one of the paper’s requisite moralizing conservatives—threw in the towel. In his column, entitled “Done With Never Trump,” Stephens wrote:

*“We also thought that Trump represented a form of illiberalism that was antithetical to our ‘free people, free markets, free world’ brand of conservatism and that was bound to take the Republican Party down a dark road.

:{*:{In this we weren’t wrong: There’s plenty to dislike and fear about Trump from a traditionally conservative standpoint. But Never Trumpers also overstated our case and, in doing so, defeated our purpose.”}:

Meanwhile, CNN has been reporting that Republican lawmakers have decided Liz Cheney “should be prosecuted for probing what happened during the January 6th Capitol attacks.” In just the past couple of days, president-elect Donald Trump has sued Iowa pollster Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register because they released a poll she conducted that showed Harris winning Iowa during the final days of the campaign, while ABC News has settled a defamation suitbrought by the president-elect to the tune of $15 million. (The network will also pay Trump’s legal fees in the case.)

How Trump Felled Democratic Golden Boy George StephanopoulosUNSPUN

Further, we’re seeing widespread preemptive obeisance from the plutocrat class to Trump’s wishes and his outstretched hand, as I wrote about here. Does this all sound like Never Trumpers “overstated their case” to you?

Bret Stephens has never found a noodle limp enough for his liking, but this is ridiculous. I don’t know what was worse: When the nation’s elites blamed the nation’s underclass for Trump’s successes in 2016 or when they’re blaming themselves now. Actually, I do—it’s when they blame themselves. As Stephens wrote:

:{*:{“What ordinary people really cared about this year were the high cost of living and the chaos at the border. Why did Trump—so often deprecated by his critics as a fortunate fool—understand this so well while we fecklessly carried on about the soul of the nation?”}:

Who are these “ordinary people” of whom you speak, B? And why are you placing Kamala Harris voters outside of the “ordinary” domain? Who is an ordinary American, anyway? Does one have to order bottomless coffee and two eggs over easy at a diner in the Midwest to be ordinary? Yes, most diners have signs that read “No shirt, no shoes, no service,” but the shirt you choose need to wear not be a hairshirt.

President Donald Trump holds up a sign during an 'Evangelicals for Trump' campaign event on January 3, 2020 in Miami, Florida.Joe Raedle/Getty Images

This handwringing among the nation’s chattering class amounts to little more than self-pitying twaddle. The new administration is exactly the threat to democracy and American institutions that they’ve long claimed it would be. Just because Trump didn’t sic the Justice Department on his political enemies last time around doesn’t mean he won’t do it in the future—the near future, if not the right now, as Stephens’ own newspaper is currently reporting.Here’s the Times’ take on the Selzer news: “President-elect Trump has said he would use his power to punish people he claims have wronged him. Those goals are now coming into focus.”

Bret, sorry for harping on this, but how is Trump using his power to punish his political opponents nota form of illiberalism antithetical not just to your precious party but to the entire country?

Three Presidents. One Country. What Could Go Wrong?THREE UNWISE MEN

[

I remember in 2016 when Trump first got elected, those same contortionist folks were tripping over themselves to “give him a chance.” The American people had spoken, they said, and we ought to listen to what they’d said they wanted; to swallow our pride and give the man an opportunity to demonstrate what he could do. And then we saw what he did—it sucked.

Never Trump Republicans have always left me with a sour taste because, as I suspected, “never” really means “never until such a time as it becomes inconvenient.” We’ve seen capitulation from prominent Republicans like David French, Joe Scarborough, Christopher Wray, Mitt “I’m not particularly worried about criminal investigations” Romney and more since Nov. 5.

In his piece, Stephens wrote that we should stop the “heavy moralizing” around Trump? Should we, though? Should we stop insisting that a man found liable of sexual battery not to inhabit the Oval Office? Should we stop pointing out the frauds, grifts, lies, threats and saber-rattling that flow like nonsense clockwork every time he opens his mouth?

In a January 2021 column, Stephens wrote that the GOP was “walking to the edge of moral irredeemability.” Bret, would you say the GOP has become more or less moral in the days since then? If they were at the edge then, where are they now? Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like they broke right and are now paving new and most certainly irredeemable “dark roads.” The only difference between then and now is that you’ve just strapped on a neon safety vest to assist the work crew.

Trump Tries to Troll Biden by Cosplaying as a Garbage ManTRASH CAN’T

William Vaillancourt

Stephens and his peers might be done with Never Trump, folding their hands—and their principles—as their former foe returns to power, but there are millions of us who are not. There has not been a hopeful sign since the election that Trump has any intention of moderating his rhetoric, and just about every action he has taken during the transition has indicated that he plans on being the worst version of himself. Maybe the country can hold itself together for another four chaotic years. But it won’t be because of capitulation.

If we make it through, it will be because millions of ordinary Never Trumpers like me held tough.

[

Newsmax

NY Times 'Never Trumper' Stephens: Let's Stop It

A New York Times columnist urges President-elect Donald Trump's critics to stop moralizing and doomsaying about his incoming administration.

4 hours ago](https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/ny-times-bret-stephens-opinion/2024/12/23/id/1192625/)

The New York Times

Opinion | A Party of Prigs and Pontificators Suffers a Humiliating Defeat

A story in chess lore involves the great Danish Jewish player Aron Nimzowitsch, who, at a tournament in the mid-1920s, found himself...

1 month ago](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/06/opinion/donald-trump-defeat-democrats.html)

[

The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/10/opinion/syria-assad-israel.html)

---

an 1 23

Although the New York Times’ opinion section is famous for its liberal columnists — including Michelle Goldberg, Jamelle Bouie and economic Paul Krugman — it has had some well-known conservative columnists as well. Two of them are Bret Stephens and David Brooks, neither of whom are happy with the direction that the Trumpified Republican Party has taken in recent years.

In an opinion piece published in the Q&A format on January 11, Stephens and Brooks discuss the GOP’s dysfunction and “path to authoritarianism.” The GOP, they lament, has abandoned traditional Reagan conservatism and taken a radical, anti-intellectual turn. And the conservative columnists cite some of the precursors to Trumpism.

Brooks told Stephens, “My thinking about the GOP goes back to a brunch I had with Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D’Souza in the ’80s that helps me see, in retrospect, that people in my circle were pro-conservative, while Ingraham and D’Souza and people in their circle were anti-left. We wanted to champion Edmund Burke and Adam Smith and a Reaganite foreign policy. They wanted to rock the establishment. That turned out to be a consequential difference because almost all the people in my circle back then — like David Frum and Robert Kagan — ended up, decades later, Never Trumpers, and almost all the people in their circle became Trumpers or went bonkers.”

Brooks went on to describe President Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp and Sen. John McCain as Republican “internationalists” of the 1980s and 1990s who were “cosmopolitan” and “believers in the value of immigration” — all the things that “populist” MAGA Republicans are not.

“Then the establishment got discredited: Iraq War, financial crisis, the ossifying of the meritocracy, the widening values gap between metro elites and everybody else,” Brooks told Stephens. “And suddenly, all the people I regarded as fringe and wackadoodle — Pat Buchanan, Donald Trump, anybody who ran CPAC — rose up on the wave of populist fury. Everybody likes a story in which the little guy rises up to take on the establishment, but in this case, the little guys rode in on a wave of know-nothingism, mendacity, an apocalyptic mindset, and authoritarianism.”

Brooks went on to say that while he had been a big admirer of McCain and voted for him in 2000’s GOP presidential primary, he ended up voting for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election after McCain decided to make then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin his running mate.

Stephens told Brooks, “There have been previous Republican presidents who rode to office on waves of populist discontent, particularly Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. But as presidents, they channeled the discontent into serious programs and also turned their backs on the ugly fringes of the right. Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and expanded the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Reagan established a working relationship with Democratic House leaders to pass tax reform and gave amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.”

Brooks asked Stephens where the “old core of the conservative movement” can “go” when the GOP has become “Matt Gaetz’s clown show.” And Stephens responded, “When people get on a bad path, whether it’s drinking or gambling or political or religious fanaticism, they tend to follow it all the way to the bottom — at which point, they either die or have that proverbial moment of clarity.”

---

11 22 gmail

conservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens has spent years writing columns questioning climate change. So it was a surprise when, earlier this week, he announced that a recent trip to Greenland changed his mind [nyt op vid]

in a 6,000-word feature essay, Stephens said he’s now convinced that the ice sheets are melting due to human-caused warming. After speaking with scientists, risk assessors, and policy experts, he said he believes climate change, like cancer, is “manageable or curable in its earlier stages, disastrous in its later ones.” He wrote: “Global warming is a fact. So is the human contribution to it. So are observed increases in temperature and sea levels.”

It was a remarkable transition for someone who previously described climate change as a “mass hysteria phenomenon” and falsely claimed that “much of the science has been discredited.” But Stephens did not apologize for spreading those falsehoods, or for any of his previous misleading remarks about the crisis.

Instead, Stephens tried to convince his readers that, following his come-to-Jesus moment on climate change, he now knows how to solve the problem. (Typical first-time climate dude behavior). His approach to climate, however, is virtually indistinguishable from fossil fuel companies.

Stephens said climate change should be solved by the market, not the government. He chastised activists for “alarmist” rhetoric, arguing humanity will be able to adapt. He criticized the “limitations” of clean energy, and emphasized the benefits of fracking and natural gas to lower emissions. He suggested that many people who want to address climate change do not "accept economic growth as a benefit.”

To come to these conclusions, Stephens ignored many of his own sources who told him climate change would be catastrophic. For example, oceanographer Josh Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory told him that scientists could not predict the “upper end” of sea level rise by 2100. Willis said it “hopefully less than seven or eight feet" but cautioned that we don't know "just how fast the ice sheets can melt."

Stephens took this to mean that the upper limit of sea level rise is, in fact, 8 feet. This would literally annihilate the world’s coastal cities, home to hundreds of millions of people. Still, Stephens wrote:

On the face of it, that sounds manageable. Even if sea levels rise by eight feet, won’t the world have nearly 80 years to come to grips with the problem, during which technologies that help us mitigate the effects of climate change while adapting to its consequences are likely to make dramatic advances?

Even the man who invited Stephens to Greenland is not convinced. In an interview, Oceanographer and author John Englander said that while he was “very pleased” that Stephens “acknowledged the ways he might have been shortsighted” about the climate crisis, “I would like him to acknowledge the probabilities and the devastation a little more.”

“Usually, when I’m giving a presentation, most people come to understand that it’s a certainty that the ice sheets will melt to the point where global sea level is 5 to 10 feet higher,” he said in an interview. “[Stephens] accepts this, but it’s still a worst-case scenario in his mind … I wish he had been a lot stronger.”

The Timesmarketed Stephens’ piece as if it were a fresh and important new approach to tackling climate change. In reality, it is a collection of discredited talking points from the fossil fuel industry, and a prime example of delay discourse.

Delay discourse, as defined by scientists, are talking points that “accept the existence of climate change, but justify inaction or inadequate efforts.” It has been branded “the new denial” by, ironically, The New York Times – and it is the fossil fuel industry’s favorite way to pretend they care about climate change while continuing to pollute as long as possible.

Here are a few ways Stephens’ rhetoric mimics the fossil fuel industry’s delay discourse

the market will solve everything

Stephens’ core thesis is that his trip to Greenland "changed my mind about climate change while reinforcing my belief that markets, not government, provide the cure."

This is a core argument made by the oil and gas industry, through their primary lobbying group, the American Petroleum Institute (API). In a 2016 tweet, API asserted that "[m]arket forces can achieve our nation’s energy, climate & econ[omic] goals better than gov[ernment] mandates."

In a Facebook ad last year, API asserted: "America’s energy leadership has delivered economic growth and environmental progress. But burdensome regulations and anti-industry legislation threatens U.S. national security and global competitiveness."

Stephens makes the exact same argument in his column. The only difference is that the fossil fuel industry didn't have to pay for it.

As "proof" that market forces can address climate change, Stephens cites the history of water use. "In the United States, the difference between total water consumption in 1965 and 2015 is less than 4 percent," Stephens says. "In the same span of time, population grew by more than 60 percent." Stephens attributes that success to farmers who "gradually adopted sprinkler and drip irrigation systems, rather than more wasteful flood irrigation, not to conserve water but because the technology provided higher crop yields and larger profit margins."

What Stephens does not address is that farmers generally source their own water or buy it from the government. So changes that result in less water usage save farmers money, and there is no industry lobbying for excessive water use. The fossil fuel market is completely different. There is a powerful industry that wants to produce and burn as much oil and gas as possible. In the absence of government action, that is exactly what they will do.

Climate activists want to take away everything you love

Stephens writes that any policies related to climate change need to "align with human nature." He argues that phasing out fossil fuels is impossible because you can't have "modern life without plastics, made mainly from the hydrocarbons ethylene and propylene, or steel, made with coking coal and natural gas, or cement or asphalt." Giving up fossil fuels would require millions of people to return to "farming, while accepting a world that can feed far fewer people," Stephens writes.

Stephens says humanity has an "overwhelming and, for now, inescapable dependence on fossil fuels."

The fossil fuel industry is also eager to argue that modern life would be destroyed without oil and gas. Earlier this week, API tweeted that the "natural gas & oil industry helps bring Halloween traditions to life." The group emphasized that "costumes and decorations are made possible through natural gas and oil."[twt api and --]ut just as there are renewable alternatives to oil and gas for transportation and electricity, there are alternatives to plastics, including reusable and biodegradeable materials. Many communities, most recently New South Wales, are banning single use plastics. A Halloween without plastic is possible and would not require kids to stop trick-or-treating. (Here is a step-by-step guide.) But Stephens, like the fossil fuel industry, pretends that the choice is between continuing to use fossil fuels and abandoning modern life.

The solution to the fossil fuel problem is more fossil fuels

Stephens argues that if the world wants to get serious about climate change, it should ignore "environmental activists" and produce more natural gas:

[T]he biggest single driver in emissions reductions from 2005 to 2017 was the switch from coal to natural gas for power generation, since gas produces roughly half the carbon dioxide as coal. This, in turn, was the result of a fracking revolution in the past decade, fiercely resisted by many environmental activists, that made the United States the world’s largest gas producer.

Stephens' view on natural gas is virtually identical to the oil and gas industry:

API supports policies that expand the use of U.S. natural gas in both domestic and global markets – and for good reason. U.S. CO2 levels are at generational lows, due in large part to coal-to-natural gas switching in the power sector.

While it's true that natural gas emits less carbon dioxide than coal, presenting natural gas as a solution to climate change ignores the science. According to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), between 1850 and 2019, approximately 2,390 gigatons of carbon dioxide were emitted worldwide. That warmed the planet by about 1.1 degrees Celsius. To have a chance to cap total warming at around 2 degrees Celsius, which is necessary to avoid many of the very worst impacts, the IPCC estimates that the world can emit about 1,150 more gigatons.

The point that the IPCC makes clear is that there is no "sustainable" rate of CO2 emissions. Switching from a fossil fuel that emits somewhat less carbon will not cut it. It will still drive us toward the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. Emissions need to go to net zero sooner rather than later.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/academic-specialist-on-international-affairs-takes-down-new-york-times-conservative-bret-stephens-with-incredible-twitter-thread

says he did recent talk on how not to make decisions

luntz flake [rove?]

https://www.c-span.org/video/?468104-3/author-discussion-2020-presidential-campaign

===

new republic

Eventually he made his way to Mexico City, where he founded a chemical ... So to summarize: Bret Stephens's grandfather—a captain of industry, ... And if your family had a personal connection to the Mexican ruling class, you ...

===rancho miragehttps://www.c-span.org/series/bookTv==

frontrunner out of iowa, thus flak serenghetti (chris matthews?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/the-myth-of-bernie-bros-how-a-misunderstanding-of-social-media-is-driving-media-elites-to-psuh-an-easily-disprovable-stereotype/

no lnx many

The myth of ‘Bernie Bros’: How a misunderstanding of social media is driving elites to push an easily disprovable stereotype

Written by Keith A. Spencer February 9, 2020

The nature of punditry makes it hard to tell which myths media personalities earnestly believe in, and which they perpetuate in bad faith. Consider the “welfare queen,” a villainous trope popularized by Ronald Reagan in stump speeches in the 1970s, and which never actually existed. Despite being a clear fiction, the idea was tantalizing both to politicians and pundits, and hence the welfare queen became embedded in culture. Pundits and politicians today still invoke the racist caricature, often through dog-whistles.

Why do some myths persist, or remain uncorrected by the media, while others dissipate? The short answer seems to be that when they serve a media narrative, or play on existing stereotypes, they grow to possess a power that goes beyond fact or truth. To this list of indefatigable myths, one might add the pernicious “BernieBro” — so ubiquitous a concept that it has its own Wikipedia article. The self-explanatory neologism was coined by Robinson Meyer in an Atlantic article in 2015 before being distorted by the Twittersphere and the punditry — something that Meyer later came to regret, as he felt the term he reified suffered from “semantic drift.”

But that was five years ago, before we had as much data on Sanders’ support base — which, as it turns out, should be sufficient to debunk the stereotype that Sanders’ support base consists entirely of a mythic tribe of entitled, pushy young millennial men. To wit: young women make up more of Sanders’ base than men. He polls especially high with Hispanic voters, far more so than with white voters; Hispanic voters also donated more money to him than any other Democratic candidate. Polls consistently show that nonwhite voters prefer him over the other candidates. Notably, the demographic group that likes Sanders the least is white men.

Moreover, of all the candidates, Sanders has taken in the most money from women.Many of Sanders’ female supporters bemoan how they are ignored by the mainstream press. “The ‘Bernie Bro’ narrative is endlessly galling because it erases the women who make up his base,” writer Caitlin PenzeyMoog opined on Twitter. “To paint this picture of sexism is to paint over the millions of women who support Sanders. Do you see how f**ked up that is?”

And yet. Even with all this demographic data on Bernie Sanders’ support base, many intelligent pundits and politicians persist with the myth. How do they justify it? They just know, apparently. But specifically, they feel it on Twitter.

Just one week ago, New York Times op-ed columnist Bret Stephens published a column with the headline “Bernie’s Angry Bros.” The column did not contain a shred of the aforementioned demographic data about Sanders’ support base, but rather was driven by a series of anecdotes supposedly proving his point about the irascible fans of the Vermont senator. Stephens’ main evidence, aside from social media anecdotes, was a story about Sanders supporters getting angry during or after the 2016 Nevada caucuses, believing they had been rigged against their candidate. (The idea that people might grow angry at being disenfranchised is horrifying to Stephens, probably because he is a well-insulated upper-middle class pundit for whom political decisions have no real material impact on his life — unlike the people in Nevada he disparages.)

The Daily Dot has a long feature listing pundits who have helped perpetuate the BernieBro narrative long after demographics showed his support base to be a multiracial, working-class coalition. Hillary Clinton apparently still believes that Sanders is tailed by a horde of “online Bernie Bros” who issue “relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women,” as she said in a Hollywood Reporter interview just last month.

What could compel otherwise intelligent people to perpetuate a false and harmful narrative that essentializes Sanders supporters and erases their real and diverse identities?

Again, the answer to that is Twitter. Specifically, how Twitter is understood by journalists and pundits, and how it is wielded by angry people online.

The skewed demographics of Twitter

Twitter, unfortunately, informs the worldview of many of the country’s most elite pundits, and some of its politicians too. Opinion columnists like David Brooks and Bret Stephens (both of the New York Times) are excellent examples of pundits who, at various times, seem to see the world as refracted through the bluebird’s drinking glass.

The problem is, Twitter is very much not a representative sample of the world. It is not a zeitgeist; it is not a cross-section of the population.

It is hard to understand this, even for very smart people, because the corporation that runs Twitter tries very hard to make it seem like Twitter is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of every cultural and political conversation.

But it is not true. However, the eponymous corporation behind Twitter profits from this perception of its platform as a zeitgeist. After all, the president is on it! Still, Twitter (the company) promotes this narrative of itself as where the conversation lives. They make money off of the lie that it is a representative cross-section of the world’s opinions and thoughts.

But a study of Twitter demographics say otherwise.

Pew Research polls from 2019 found that about 22% of the US population is on Twitter, and 44% of users are in the 18-24 age range. Linger on that for a second: a substantial proportion of the people getting in Bret Stephens’ mentions and making him upset may be scarcely older than children. Interestingly, Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine — a pundit with whom I rarely agree — is on the mark here.

“It is hard to exaggerate the degree to which the platform shapes the minds of professional political observers,” he wrote in a recent column. “Part of Twitter’s allure to insiders is that it creates a simulacrum of the real world, complete with candidates, activists, and pundits all responding to events in real time. Because Twitter superficially resembles the outside world’s political debate — it does, after all, contain the full left-to-right spectrum — it is easy to mistake it for the real thing.”

But a study of Twitter demographics say otherwise.

Demographics and “real” users aside, Twitter — like most social media sites — has a huge number of accounts that aren’t even individuals. A great deal of Twitter users are instead are brands, spam accounts or bots who behave like actual people.

Because of this, getting in arguments with “people” on Twitter — or even just seeing Twitter as the so-called public sphere — is akin to arguing politics with a clown in a funhouse mirror. It is so heavily distorted — by corporate PR and marketing, by the way that people behave differently online, and even by powerful bad actors (whether state or individual) who can wield Twitter armies quickly and easily — as to be effectively useless as any sort of gauge of public opinion. It is a terrible place to gauge human behavior, or make broad pronouncements of what humans are like. And it’s an even worse place to get a sense of a politician’s support base.

I have a modest proposal for my peers in the journalism world: I would like to propose that anyone writing about a Twitter “mob” of any political ilk be required to include the previous paragraph in an asterisk at the bottom of their story. We should all be forced to include a disclaimer to clarify that it is impossible to make any kind of quantitative assessment of human behavior on Twitter because of how deeply skewed it all is — by hackers, PR professionals, paid influencers, intentional government or corporate misinformation campaigns, and the way the online disinhibition effect makes people act.

The reactionary mind at work

After reading all this, someone with a personal story of a (purported) Sanders supporter being cruel to them online might still object. The Bernie Bro is real! This anecdote proves it.

But to say “a single candidate’s follower was mean, therefore I don’t support this candidate’s policies regardless of their actual political implications,” is a rhetorical fallacy. There are definitely individual assholes out there. Likewise, assholes can believe in good causes, and nice people can support terrible causes. It is a reactionary mistake to oppose a candidate — who represents a set of specific political positions poised to help or harm different social classes — on the basis of another’s individual behavior.

That means that the normalization of the BernieBro also diminishes the experience of those who are bullied by other candidates’ supporters. A video went around of an Elizabeth Warren supporter accosting two Sanders fans at the Iowa caucus; yet it didn’t get a lot of play because it didn’t reinforce existing stereotypes that we have about Warren’s supporters. Plenty of stories about online bullying by other candidates’ supporters are ignored because we lack a comparable stereotype to bundle them.

It would be one thing if Bernie Sanders — or any popular politician — told their supporters to be angry and menacing and threatening online, and then that behavior was reified on Twitter and in real life. But that has not happened with Sanders, nor with anyone else among the current crop of Democrats. You cannot draw a line from Sanders’ rhetoric to any of the stereotypes of BernieBros, because his rhetoric and voting records speaks to him being an egalitarian, a civil rights advocate and a compassionate progressive voice.

tip pt? grew a pair?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/conservative-ny-times-columnist-here-are-4-ways-trump-is-turning-the-us-into-ukraine-and-why-i-changed-my-mind-on-impeachment/

no lnx

Conservative NY Times columnist: Here are 4 ways Trump is turning the US into Ukraine — and why I changed my mind on impeachment

Written by Alex Henderson November 25, 2019

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went from being the Democratic Party’s most high-ranking impeachment skeptic to favoring an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, one Trump critic who remained an impeachment skeptic and thought Pelosi made a bad decision was New York Times columnist Bret Stephens — who, in a September 25 opinion piece, argued against an impeachment inquiry. But Stephens has since changed his mind, and he is now arguing in favor of impeachment — stressing in his November 25 column that Trump is making the United States look more and more like Ukraine circa 2011/2012.

“Donald Trump ought to be impeached and removed from office,” Stephens declares. “This isn’t what I thought two months ago, when the impeachment inquiry began. I argued that the evidence fell short of the standards of a prosecutable criminal act.I also feared impeachment might ultimately help Trump politically, as it had helped Bill Clinton in 1998. That second worry might still prove true.”

Stephens goes on to describe several ways in which he believes the U.S. resembles Ukraine in the Trump era.

“If the congressional testimonies of Marie Yovanovitch, Bill Taylor, Gordon Sondland, Alexander Vindman and especially, Fiona Hill, make anything clear, it’s that the president’s highest crime isn’t what he tried to do to, or with, Ukraine,” Stephens asserts. “It’s that he’s attempting to turn the United States into Ukraine. The judgment Congress has to make is whether the American people should be willing, actively or passively, to go along with it.”

One way in which the Trump-era U.S. is resembling Ukraine, according to Stephens, is “the criminalization of political differences.” The Times columnist explains, “Years before Trump led his followers in ‘lock her up’ chants against Hillary Clinton, then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych did exactly that against his own political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, who was sentenced to seven years in prison on a variety of byzantine charges after she had narrowly lost the 2010 election. She spent three years in prison before her release during the 2014 Maidan Revolution. Key to Yanukovych’s efforts to discredit Tymoshenko was — who else? — Paul Manafort.”

A second way, Stephens adds, is “the use of political office as a shield against criminal prosecution and as a vehicle for personal and familial enrichment.” Stephens observes, “Why have so many of Ukraine’s oligarchs — including Burisma Holdings founder Mykola Zlochevsky — also served as government ministers? Simple: Because, until recently, it shielded them from criminal prosecution thanks to parliamentary immunity.”

A third U.S./Ukraine similarity, according to Stephens, is “the netherworldization of political life, in which conspiracy theories abound, off-stage figures wield outsized influence, and channels of formal authority are disconnected from the real centers of power.” And a fourth, Stephens adds, is “covert Russian interference, usually facilitated by local actors.”

Stephens writes, “Ukraine offers the world’s most extreme example of this kind of interference — nearby Georgia is a close second — since large parts of the country have been seized outright by Russia and its proxies.” Fiona Hill, Stephens points out, testified on November 21 that the Russian government has gone to great lengths to interfere in U.S. politics.

In the past, Stephens argued that the best way to remove Trump from the White House was to vote him out of office in 2020 — not impeach him. But after the testimony presented in this month’s public impeachment hearings, the Times columnist believes Trump should be removed from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue sooner rather than later.

“It’s to the immense credit of ordinary Ukrainians that, in fighting Russian aggression in the field and fighting for better governance in Kyiv, they have shown themselves worthy of the world’s support,” Stephens emphasizes. “And it’s to the enduring shame of the Republican Party that they have been willing to debase our political standards to the old Ukrainian level just when Ukrainians are trying to rise to our former level. The one way to stop this is to make every effort to remove Trump from office. It shouldn’t have to wait a year.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/the-right-wings-massive-free-speech-hypocrisy-bret-stephens-and-mo-brooks-are-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/

no lnx

The right-wing’s massive free-speech hypocrisy: Bret Stephens and Mo Brooks are the tip of the iceberg

Written by Sophia Tesfaye / Salon September 1, 2019

Last week’s embarrassing “bedbug” saga, in which a harmless joke finally drove New York Times columnist Bret Stephens off Twitter, is a perfect example of the incredibly thin skin possessed by most of the vocal “free speech warriors” who have used fear-mongering over the supposed silencing of discourse on college campus to leapfrog from the right wing into the mainstream. The hilarious anecdote also usefully breaks down the false premise upon which this particular battle in the culture wars is built on.

After it was reported this week that the New York Times headquarters has a bedbug infestation, David Karpf, an associate professor at George Washington University, tweeted: “The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens.”

Without even being tagged in a tweet that had initially garnered zero retweets, Stephens noticed. He then wrote an email to Karpf to bemoan his lack of civility, sending a copy to the provost of Karpf’s university.

“I’m often amazed about the things supposedly decent people are prepared to say about other people — people they’ve never met — on Twitter,” Stephens wrote in a now-infamous email to Karpf. “I would welcome the opportunity for you to come to my home, meet my wife and kids, talk to us for a few minutes, and then call me a ‘bedbug’ to my face.”

Stephens later explained on MSNBC that he snitched to Karpf’s boss not in an effort to get him fired, but because “managers should know” about their employee’s private speech. This is the same Bret Stephens who has warned against trigger warnings in the classroom: “If you can’t speak freely, you’ll quickly lose the ability to think clearly.”

A day before Stephens’ Twitter-induced meltdown, aright-wing Republican congressman called for a university professor to be fired for his speech.

After Allen Frances, former chair of the Duke University department of psychiatry, appeared on CNN last weekend, Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., took to Twitter to call for his firing. Brooks objected to Frances’ argument that “Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin and Mao were in the last century.”

Brooks, who has previously compared Democrats and the media to Hitler, declared in a recent press release: “I support freedom and free enterprise. I oppose free speech suppression and Socialism.”

Both calls for suppression of speech from prominent voices on the right come about a week after a targeted campaign by right-wing media resulted in a professor actually losing his job because of political speech and association.

Conservative websites piled on Jeff Klinzman, an adjunct English professor at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, over a post on a Facebook page named“Iowa Antifa.”After someone shared a tweet in which Trump referred to antifa protesters as “Radical Left Wack Jobs who go around hitting … people over the heads with baseball bats,” Klinzman commented, “Yeah, I know who I’d clock with a bat,” ABC affiliate KCRG reported.

Trump said in July that his administration was considering designating anti-fascists as a terrorist organization after GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Ted Cruz of Texas introduced a non-binding resolution to label members of antifa groups as “domestic terrorists.”

Klinzman was forced to resign from his teaching position following the national outcry.

Few so-called free speech advocates came to Klinzman’s defense. Not New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who once wrote, “Political correctness on college campuses has run ridiculously riot,” or his colleague Ross Douthat, who complained about the “fainting-couch politics of recent campus and online progressivism.”

Even fewer have taken up the cause of Ismail B. Ajjawi,a 17-year-old Palestinian student recently detained at Boston’s Logan Airport on his way to Harvard University. The Harvard Crimson reported that U.S. officials interrogated Ajjawi, who was arriving to begin his freshman year at Harvard on a full scholarship, for eight hours. After searching his phone and computer, authorities eventually revoked his visa and sent him home to Lebanon, where he had lived as a refugee. Ajjawi’s visa cancellation came just days before the U.S. State Department removed Palestine from its official list of countries.

According to a written statement by Ajjawi, an immigration officer claimed she “found people posting political points of view that oppose the U.S.,” though she discovered nothing Ajjawi had posted himself.

Not enough details are available on Ajjawi’s case to know whether any of his friends’ offensive posts were threatening in nature. But since there was no official boasting about having stopped a potential terrorist, it seems highly unlikely there was any imminent threat or any apparent history of radicalism. Indeed, Ajjawi is not even being punished for something he said — but for something his friends apparently said.

And his case comes the same week an inspector general released a report on political targeting within the State Department.

That investigation was launched following media reports of political retribution and the administering of a sort of loyalty test after Donald Trump’s inauguration. The State Department inspector general’s office found a pattern of inappropriate actions by Kevin Moley, assistant secretary of state for the department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs, and his senior adviser, Mari Stull.

According to Foreign Policy, Stull’s job had been to “scour the social media accounts of employees, diplomatic staffers, and employees of international organizations connected to the US, to determine if they’re devoted and dutiful to Trump and his agenda.”

Moley and Stull were also accused of deciding not to fill a bureau role that dealt with human rights because they did not like the leading candidate for the role, possibly because of the person’s relationship with the LGBTQ community. The person’s past work with a UN agency that deals with Palestinian refugees was also said to have bothered Stull, who felt the agency was anti-Semitic.

The IG’s report found that Stull had referred to her colleagues in the IO Bureau as the “swamp” on her personal Twitter account. On the allegation that Stull retaliated against career officials perceived as politically disloyal, the inspector general “found evidence of leadership and management deficiencies and mistreatment of career employees in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs.”

The majority of the employees the inspector general’s office interviewed, the report stated, “either directly experienced hostile treatment or witnessed such treatment directed at others.”Many of the bureau’s staffers said Stull “made positive or negative comments about employees based on perceived political views,” including referring to career employees as “‘Obama holdovers,’ ‘traitors,’ or ‘disloyal.’”

Stull told Foreign Policy that the inspector general’s “report is politically motivated payback for my efforts to implement President Trump’s agenda over the resistance of Deep State bureaucrats who opposed his reform agenda.”

Free speech is just a tool for conservatives, who have no serious commitment to the First Amendment or any other doctrine of basic human rights. The moment such freedom doesn’t further their ideology, it magically disappears.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/how-to-fix-the-conservative-pundit-problem-in-the-age-of-trump

no lnx

How to fix the conservative pundit problem in the age of Trump

Written by David Atkins / The Washington Monthly August 31, 2019

Big media organizations have a Bret Stephens problem.

It could also be called a David Brooks problem. Or a George Will problem. But Bret Stephens’ embarrassing actions in the bedbug controversy over the past few days make him the perfect poster child for a challenge that spans the much of the journalism industry. To recap briefly, a university professor called Stephens a “bedbug” in response to a typically sophomoric column; Stephens responded by trying to get the professor fired in email exchanges; the professor took the issue public; and Stephens escalated with a ludicrous and falsely attributed column comparing the professor’s rhetoric to Nazi dehumanization that should never have made it past the editor’s desk.

Stephens is the sort of conservative columnist that major newspapers love to hire: anti-Trump, contrarian mediocrities ostensibly concerned with free speech and liberal overreach. He and others like him allow editors and ombudsmen to include “conservative opinion” without actually giving voice to conservatism as it truly exists today. A more genteel version of the provocateur pseudo-intellectualism of a Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson, Bret Stephens and his fellow NeverTrump commentators offer the sort coded antebellum conservatism that even a good book-fair-tote-bag-carrying liberal can love. They provide climate denialism not as an affront to God’s plan or a conspiracy of pointy-headed nerds in it for the grant money or an interference in the workings of glorious libertarian capitalism, but merely as a questioning of consensus tyranny of thought; they offer imperialism as expansion of human freedom rather than jingoistic corporate and militaristic predation; they offer appeals to a patriarchal order of racial hierarchy not as a matter of overt Bible-thumping or white supremacy, but coded appeals to a “culture” of “family” and “respect” that just so happen to resemble a whitewashed Norman Rockwell painting where Father Knows Best.

The problem, of course, is that men like Stephens, Will and Brooks–and they almost uniformly middle-aged or older white men–represent very few people in actual civil society. Notably, very few of their kind wind up in elected office. Somewhere around 85% of Republicans support and approve of Trump; most Republicans think anti-white racism is a bigger problem than anti-black racism. And neither Democrats nor independents are buying in to their perspective. Ostensibly non-prejudiced, anti-Trump conservatism is far overrepresented in the media compared to its actual constituency. Why is this?

While some of the explanation lies in the sort of interpersonal chumminess among select opinion-makers who go to the right parties and went to the right schools as Chris Hayes lays bare in his Twilight of the Elites, it’s also true that big media organizations face an unenviable challenge when it comes to presenting conservative opinion in the Trump era.

On the one hand, editors have an obligation to their readers to present a wide spectrum of opinion–including ones with their core readers may disagree politically. On the other, editors also have a duty to maintain accuracy and social responsibility. Finally, they have both a financial and moral incentive to ensure that the opinions they print be interesting and well-considered, and not just a rehash of partisan talking points. As the conservative movement delves ever further into anti-scientific ignorance, overt bigotry and lockstep loyalty to its current leader, presenting responsible, accurate and interesting conservative opinion can be a challenge.

So let’s say you’re the editor of a major magazine or newspaper, and you want to give voice to the somewhat less than half or so of the country that identifies broadly with conservative perspectives. Do you hire an alt-right figure with openly racist and sexist attitudes who actually represents what modern conservatism truly is and what its voters are, even though it will outrage your readers and provide a dangerous platform for hateful views? Do you hire partisan operatives who will parrot the talking points du jour and defend whatever outlandish pronouncements Donald Trump makes next, at the risk of ruining your brand in much the way CNN has done by inviting commentary from the likes of Jeffrey Lord and Trump Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany? Or do you hire a never-Trump conservative like Bret Stephens who doesn’t actually represent very many people, but won’t unduly offend readers’ sensibilities or actively encourage racist violence (unless, of course, you include stumping for the Iraq War as the racist violence it is)?

Time and again, editors choose the third option as the path of greatest comfort and least resistance, at the cost of actual representation.

For what it’s worth, they do this on the left as well. Despite the strong progressive tilt of the Democratic electorate over the last decade, including but not limited to the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her ideological allies, the resilience of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential primary, as well as of course Sanders’ own surprisingly strong showing in the 2016 primary, both cable news and major newspapers have a dearth of representation from pundits and opinion writers who might generally be described as falling into the Sanders coalition. They continue to sample opinion from writers much more concerned about preserving the false veneer of past cultural unity and the economic stability of those with six-and-seven-figure mutual fund and real estate portfolios, than the more representative and growing class of people struggling to afford a downpayment on their first mortgage while working two gig economy jobs, paying off exorbitant student loans and stuck in a private insurance hell of making too much for Medicaid, but too little to afford adequate medical care. The opinion-makers are still much more old, white and male than the Democratic electorate at large, and even when younger women and people of color are added to the mix, they rarely espouse the more openly democratic socialist and social democratic positions of those demographics among the actual public.

Solving this problem for left-leaning commentary is simple: including more diverse and more progressive voices won’t endanger or embarrass anyone or damage a media company’s brand, though it may discomfit some centrist traditionalists.

But in terms of conservative commentary, media organizations should look to err more on the side of actual representation. Why risk the ire of readers and do potential harm in order to present contrarian viewpoints that few Americans truly share? There is nothing novel or interesting in the sort of content that George Will, David Brooks and Bret Stephens provide; their takes are as predictable as the rising of the sun and the passing seasons; and it’s not actually instructive as to the opinions of the Americans who continue to empower Republican policymakers.

A better approach would be to hire Trump loyalists willing to defend the president and his actions (as well as those of Senate Leader McConnell and the Roberts Court), while strictly adhering to standards of fact-checking and anti-racism. If a conservative writer could manage to defend modern Republican politics while remaining honest, accurate and without resorting to bigotry, that would be both potentially interesting and skillful enough to deserve publication. It would be more satisfying to conservative readers and more informative for liberal ones.

But the time for providing a special platform for contrarian NeverTrump conservatives should be at an end. It’s both embarrassing and unproductive.

// neo-con col

Michael Cohen's guilty plea, President Donald Trump has potentially been implicated in serious criminal acts.

And conservative New York Timescolumnist Bret Stephens — who, while never a fan of Trump, was up until this point skeptical of taking serious action against his presidency — has come to one conclusion: Trump needs to be impeached.

"The Constitution's standard for impeachment is 'Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,'" Stephens wrote in a new op-ed for the Times. "The standard is now met."

"As a candidate," Stephens continued, "Trump is credibly alleged to have purposefully conspired with Cohen to commit criminal acts ... It also means that, as president, Trump allegedly sought to conceal the arrangement by failing to note in his 2017 financial disclosure forms his reimbursements to Cohen. The president most likely continues to lie to the American people about the nature and purpose of these payments."

Stephens then invoked the words of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — now one of Trump's major political supporters in Congress — from the 1990s, during the impeachment proceedings of President Bill Clinton, who drew a parallel between Clinton's sex scandal and Watergate by saying that Richard Nixon "cheated the electoral system" whereas Clinton "cheated the legal system":

To conservatives reading this column, ask yourselves the following questions:

If breaking the law (by lying under oath) to conceal an affair was impeachable, why is breaking the law (by violating campaign-finance laws) to conceal an affair not impeachable?

If “cheating the electoral system” (by means of a burglary) was impeachable, why is cheating the electoral system (by means of illicit hush money) not impeachable?

If cheating “our institutions” (by means of an “assault” in “every way” on the legal system) is impeachable, why is cheating those institutions (by means of nonstop presidential mendacity and relentless attacks on the Justice Department and the F.B.I.) not impeachable?

Stephens lays out the cold, hard facts of the situation and politics, in a way that Republicans in Congress have desperately sought to ignore. With more legal problems for Trump and his associates on the horizon, like a potential deposition and testimony in the Stormy Daniels lawsuit and a second, potentially more revelatory Manafort trial, the reality of what Trump is accused of, and the choice our nation faces, is impossible to brush aside.

https://www.alternet.org/conservative-slams-gop-hypocrites-mike-pence-strzok-theres-reason-theyre-called-stupid-party

peter strozic sp

Washington Post’s Megan McArdle, who suggested people run toward mass shooters after Sandy Hook and the New York Times’ Bret Stephens who doesn’t believe in climate change and called Black Lives Matter “really thuggish."

perhaps minor fails? patterns? fodder?

http://www.alternet.org/media/new-york-times-grovels-right-wing-and-other-despicable-media-moments-week

agw hurricane harvey, nyt stephens [50 min total last year?]

ABC and NBC ignore climate change’s role in extreme weather events.

As Media Matters notes, of the three major news networks, only CBS has bothered to point out the glaring, existential threat of climate change in the context of Hurricane Harvey, which devastated Houston earlier this week. CBS aired three segments that addressed the connection: one on CBS This Morning and two featuring environmental engineering professor Jim Blackburn; an August 30 episode of CBS Evening News and an August 31 episode of CBS This Morning. As of Thursday, neither ABC nor NBC bothered to mention climate change, instead settling on routine disaster porn and personal interest stories

2. Washington Post casually calls Venezuela an 'enemy of the U.S.'

For some reason editors at theWashington Postdecided to call Venezuela “an enemy of the U.S.,” which is odd considering Venezuela has never done anything to harm the United State.

Venezuela, enemy of the U.S., offered $5 million in aid to Harvey victims https://t.co/gUTmyiBKVO

— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 31, 2017

The article in question was actually noting aid Venezuela offered to Harvey victims this week, but according to thePost,this was just a devious plot (unlike American aid, which is purely benevolent). It described the offer with the dystopian phrase “trolling U.S. leaders with kindness.” Evidence for why Venezuela is an “enemy" was never made clear in the article, but the headline was later changed to something less nakedly ideological.

3. World’scoppiestreporter snitches to police duringnationaldisaster.

Oh boy, did ABC News’ Tom Llamas have a bad day on Twitter Wednesday. After posting a tweet saying, “We informed police of the looting and Coast Guard is flying overhead. Multiple officers now on the scene,” he was righteously piled on by thousands of Twitter users for snitching to the police in a time of emergency. “F**k off, snitch,” Baffler editor Brandy Jensen tweeted.

“In a disaster scenario the first response should be helping those in need, not criminalizing them,” another user insisted. All in all it was ugly; Llamas eventually deleted the tweet and tried some half-baked excuse about how there was “a body nearby,” but no one really bought it. From there it just got worse. After many failed attempts, he finally learned the first rule of handling social media pile-ons: log off.

4. What the hell is going on with the New York Times opinion section?

In a week of uniquely terrible takes, theNew York Times was the unexpected winner for worst takes in the shortest period of time. In one 72-hour period, it published op-eds by neocon hatchet man James Kirtrick bashing Chelsea Manning; an infomercial by suspected war criminal and former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince shilling his wares in Afghanistan; racist victim blaming of Arabs by Thomas Friedman; gross GOP revisionism by David Brooks insisting “racism was not a common feature in the conservative moment”;veiled climate change denial by columnist Bret Stephens; and a tedious AM radio screed against cultural appropriation by Bari Weiss. TheTimes insisted it had hired neoconservative Bret Stephens from theWall Street Journal because it values “ideological diversity,” which evidently means it really just wanted to seek out more odious far-right-wing viewpoints.

ref

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/31/opinion/hurricanes-climate-capitalists-wealth-.html

Texans will find few consolations in the wake of a hurricane as terrifying as Harvey. But here, at least, is one: A biblical storm has hit them, and the death toll —38as of this writing — is mercifully low, given its intensity.

This is not how it plays out in much of the world. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch ripped through Central America and killed anywhere between 11,000 and 19,000 people, mostly in Honduras and Nicaragua. Nearly a decade later Cyclone Nargis slammed into Myanmar and a staggering 138,000 people perished.

Nature’s furies — hurricanes, earthquakes, landslides, droughts, infectious diseases, you name it — may strike unpredictably. But their effects are not distributed at random.

Rich countries tend to experience, and measure, the costs of such disasters primarily in terms of money. Poor countries experience them primarily in terms of lives. Between 1940 and 2016, a total of 3,348 people died in the United States on account of hurricanes, according to government data, for an average of 43 victims a year. That’s a tragedy, but compare it to the nearly 140,000 lives lost when a cyclone hit Bangladesh in 1991.

Why do richer countries fare so much better than poorer ones when it comes to natural disasters? It isn’t just better regulation. I grew up in Mexico City, which adopted stringent building codes following a devastating earthquake in 1957. That didn’t save the city in the 1985 earthquake, when we learned that those codes had been flouted for years by lax or corrupt building inspectors, and thousands of people were buried under the rubble of shoddy construction. Regulation is only as good, or bad, as its enforcement.

A better answer lies in the combination of government responsiveness and civic spiritedness so splendidly on display this week in Texas. And then there’s the matter of wealth.

Every child knows that houses of brick are safer than houses of wood or straw — and therefore cost more to build. Harvey will damage or ruin thousands of homes. But it won’t sweep away entire neighborhoods, as Typhoon Haiyan did in the Philippine city of Tacloban in 2013.

Harvey will also inflict billions in economic damage, most crushingly on uninsured homeowners. The numbers are likely to be staggering in absolute terms, but what’s more remarkable is how easily the American economy can absorb the blow. The storm will be a “speed bump” to Houston’s $503 billion economy, according to Moody’s Analytics’ Adam Kamins, who told The Wall Street Journal that he expects the storm to derail growth for about two months.

On a global level, the University of Colorado’s Roger Pielke Jr. notes that disaster losses as a percentage of the world’s G.D.P., at just 0.3 percent, have remained constant since 1990. That’s despite the dollar cost of disasters having nearly doubled over the same time — at just about the same rate as the growth in the global economy. (Pielke is yet another victim of the climate lobby’s hyperactive smear machine, but that doesn’t make his data any less valid.)

Climate activists often claim that unchecked economic growth and the things that go with are principal causes of environmental destruction. In reality, growth is the great offset. It’s a big part of the reason why, despite our warming planet, mortality rates from storms have declined from .11 per 100,000 in the 1900s to .04 per 100,000 in the 2010s, according to data compiled by Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser. Death rates from other natural disasters such as floods and droughts have fallen by even more staggering percentages over the last century.

That’s because economic growth isn’t just a matter of parking lots paving over paradise. It also underwrites safety standards, funds scientific research, builds spillways and wastewater plants, creates “green jobs,” subsidizes Elon Musk, sets aside prime real estate for conservation, and so on. Poverty, not wealth, is the enemy of the environment. Only the rich have the luxury of developing an ethical stance toward their trash.

The paradox of our time is that the part of the world that has never been safer from the vagaries of nature seems never to have been more terrified of them. Harvey truly is an astonishing storm, the likes of which few people can easily remember.

Then again, as meteorologist Philip Klotzbach points out, it’s also only one of four Category 4 or 5 hurricanes to make landfall in the United States since 1970. By contrast, more than twice as many such storms made landfall between 1922 and 1969. Make of that what you will, but remember that fear is often a function of unfamiliarity.

Houston will ultimately recover from Harvey’s devastation because its people are creative and courageous. They will rebuild and, when the next storm comes, as it inevitably will, be better prepared for it. The best lesson the world can take from Texas is to follow the path of its extraordinary economic growth on the way to environmental resilience.

just metphor?

---

The Great Global Warming Fizzle

The climate religion fades in spasms of anger and twitches of boredom.

By Bret Stephens

November 29,2011

How do religions die? Generally they don't, which probably explains why there's so little literature on the subject. Zoroastrianism, for instance, lost many of its sacred texts when Alexander sacked Persepolis in 330 B.C., and most Zoroastrians converted to Islam over 1,000 years ago. Yet today old Zoroaster still counts as many as 210,000 followers, including 11,000 in the U.S. Christopher Hitchens might say you can't kill what wasn't there to begin with.

Still, Zeus and Apollo are no longer with us, and neither are Odin and Thor. Among the secular gods, Marx is mostly dead and Freud is totally so. Something did away with them, and it's worth asking what.

Opinion: Pagans and Witches in the Air Force

Climate of Poor Rhetoric

The New York Times' new conservative columnist, Bret Stephens, immediately stirred up controversy when he used his inaugural column to criticize liberals for being too "certain" about climate change. But while many piled on Stephens for seemingly undermining the seriousness of climate change, the New Republic's Brian Beutler wrote that it wasn't Stephens' opinions that we should be worried about. Bob talks to Beutler about the failure of Stephens' rhetoric and why we should ask for more from our columnists and the papers that hire them.

http://www.wnyc.org/story/climate-poor-rhetoric

The New York Times' new conservative columnist, Bret Stephens, immediately stirred up controversy when he used his inaugural column to criticize liberals for being too "certain" about climate change. But while many piled on Stephens for seemingly undermining the seriousness of climate change, the New Republic's Brian Beutler wrote that it wasn't Stephens' opinions that we should be worried about. Bob talks to Beutler about the failure of Stephens' rhetoric and why we should ask for more from our columnists and the papers that hire them.

http://www.ecowatch.com/new-york-times-hires-climate-denier-2379607444.html

New York Times Defends Hiring Climate Science Denier

By Graham Readfearn

The New York Times has been defending the paper's hiring of a climate science denier, fighting off its critics with what it claims is a standard fashioned from hardened "intellectual honesty."

The controversial hire in question is that of Bret Stephens, formerly of the Wall Street Journal, who has joined the New York Times as a columnist and deputy editorial page editor.

While at the Wall Street Journal, Stephens consistently undermined and disparaged climate change, one time describing it as an "imaginary enemy" and another comparing it to religion with a "doomsaying prophecy and faith in things unseen."

Stephens' new boss, editorial page editor James Bennett, told the paper's public editor Liz Spayd: "The crux of the question is whether his work belongs inside our boundaries for intelligent debate and I have no doubt that it does. I have no doubt he crosses our bar for intellectual honesty and fairness."

Suffice to say, there are plenty who disagree. One climate scientist has already canceled his subscription in protest, with others watching closely.

No doubt that Stephens can write—he won a Pulitzer in 2012 for lots of opinions on stuff other than climate.

But like other conservative columnists admired for their poetic prose and strident opinions while attacking climate change, the methods used by Stephens might be compared to those of a fake chef producing a lumpy and unsatisfying word soup.

Crap Soup

There's no real care with the preparation and no quality control over the freshness or blending of the ingredients, but these indiscretions are suitably masked with enough flavor-enhancers to give some short-term satisfaction to unsuspecting diners/readers.

But the New York Times should probably be serving up something far more substantial than crap soup and three-day-old bread to its massive audience.

Let's take, for example, a November 2015 column which Stephens wrote in the build up to the United Nations climate negotiations in Paris.

Stephens wrote that a trend in rising global temperatures was "imperceptible" and that the "hysteria" around climate change ignored how this trend could be "a product of natural variation."

There is a mountain of evidence that global warming is not caused by "natural fluctuations" and this evidence has been in existence for decades. To suggest that it isn't, would be to fall below any bar of intellectual honesty erected in the newsroom of the New York Times or in any science academy around the globe.

In the same column, Stephens chose to highlight "the hyping of flimsy studies—melting Himalayan glaciers; vanishing polar ice" that he said were being used to push a political viewpoint.

Stephens was referring to an error on Himalayan glaciers buried away in a UN report, while choosing to ignore the decades-long trend of melting that has been recorded at glaciers all over the planet.

Climate Agnostic?

Stephens himself has told Huffington Post that he's an "agnostic" on climate change and said while it "seems" the weight of scientific evidence points to human causes for global warming, that evidence might be wrong because "the history of science is replete with consensus positions that have evolved."

Now, the New York Times' own defense of its hiring of Stephens is almost as redundant as the arguments that Stephens borrows from climate science deniers.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, the New York Time's Bennett said there was "more than one kind of denial."

"And to pretend like the views of a thinker like Bret and the millions of people who agree with him on a range of issues, should simply be ignored, that they're outside the bounds of reasonable debate, is a really dangerous form of delusion," he said.

Let's think about what the New York Times opinion page might look like if we based it on the beliefs of millions of Americans.

According to Gallup polling data, some 20 percent of Americans believe in witches, which is roughly half the number of people who think extrasensory perception is actually a thing.

A poll conducted by Harris in 2016 found that two out of five Americans think ghosts are real. Belief in evolution? That's at 49 percent. Creationism? Some 37 percent are down with that.

Lizard people controlling societies? One in 25 Americans fear their presence, but where's their representation in the New York Times editorials?

Arguing that someone should be hired to the editorial desk of one of the world's most influential newspapers because "millions of people" hold a particular belief is a clear path to supporting the sort of delusional thinking that has more Americans believing in the paranormal than accepting that climate change is mostly human-caused.

That 1970s Cooling Myth

Opinions are worth printing when they're based on the preponderance of credible evidence, not the self-interests of fossil fuel–funded "fellows" at so-called think tanks or the whimsy of attention-seeking contrarians.

In an August 2011 interview on Fox News Business, Stephens told viewers "in the 1970s we were supposed to believe in global cooling."

Were we? Well, if you want to base your intellectually robust opinion on a moldy-old myth based on a couple of 1970s news items, then fine.

Alternatively, read a 2008 review of science papers published between 1965 and 1979 finding that only seven papers were predicting cooling against 44 saying temperatures would rise.

Also in that interview, Stephens lauded an essay by the late author Michael Crichton that attacked the consensus on global warming.

In that essay, based on a lecture, Crichton said: "Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had."

So let's just stop a second and think about what Crichton was advocating here.

The consensus of medical science says smoking will massively increase your risk of getting cancer and heart disease, even if you can't say exactly which cigarette killed your wheezy relative. You're being had, folks.

Crichton was putting up a straw man argument—that science is done by consensus—in order to then attack it.

Climate Consensus

When people talk about a consensus on the causes of climate change, they're describing the collective findings of thousands of peer-reviewed articles published in leading scientific journals over decades using multiple methods from a diverse set of observations.

The consensus that climate change is caused by humans comes from the long-studied physical properties of greenhouse gases to the measurements of warming oceans, the atmosphere and the places on the planet where there is or was, ice.

Don't get me wrong here, folks. You're free to choose a glib sound bite from a science fiction writer based on a misrepresentation of the concept of scientific consensus.

But take care not to be had by charlatans promising to chat to your very dead Aunty Betty or save your soul from the claws of the lizard people.

I think it might be time someone broke into the editorial office of the New York Times and raised that bar of intellectual honesty.

Reposted with permission from our media associate DeSmogBlog.

Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens' Sick Souled Neurosis ...

Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens thinks so in his article, Global Warming as Mass Neurosis. ... Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens' Sick Souled Neurosis.

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bret%20stephens%20wsj%20climate%20global%20warming%20desmog+site:www.desmogblog.com&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain www.desmogblog.com"):{https://desmogblog.com:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline"):}::{/wall-street-journals-bret-stephens-sick-s...:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;opacity:1;visibility:visible"):}:

New York Times Defends Hiring of Climate Science Denier Bret ...

... of Bret Stephens, formerly of the Wall Street Journal, ... of Climate Science Denier BretStephens, ... against global warming alarmism that ...

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bret%20stephens%20wsj%20climate%20global%20warming%20desmog+site:www.desmogblog.com&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain www.desmogblog.com"):{https://desmogblog.com:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline"):}::{/2017/04/25/new-york-times-defends-hiring-...:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;opacity:1;visibility:visible"):}:

Bret Stephens: Climategate: Follow the Money - WSJ

Bret Stephens writes in The Wall Street Journal about the billions of dollars of funding for ... of global warming just as a priest must believe in ... Bret Stephens.

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bret%20stephens%20wsj%20climate%20global%20warming%20desmog+site:www.wsj.com&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain www.wsj.com"):{https://wsj.com:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline"):}::{/articles/SB100014240527487039394045745661...:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;opacity:1;visibility:visible"):}:

Bret Stephens - The Huffington Post

... Barack Obama, Bret Stephens, Climate Change, Global Warming ... Wall Street Journal's BretStephens ... Bret Stephens, Global Warming Mass ...

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bret%20stephens%20wsj%20climate%20global%20warming%20desmog+site:www.huffingtonpost.com&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain www.huffingtonpost.com"):{huffingtonpost.com:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline"):}::{/news/bret-stephens/:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;opacity:1;visibility:visible"):}:

... guest Bret Stephens from the Wall Street Journal simply refuses to acknowledge science in a debate ... Climate Science Debate : Global Warming Alarmist ...

:{[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bret%20stephens%20wsj%20climate%20global%20warming%20desmog+site:www.youtube.com&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain www.youtube.com")} $:{https://youtube.com:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline"):}::{/watch?v=4i\--Uq8VXas:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;opacity:1;visibility:visible"):}:$

Stephens: The Great Global Warming Fizzle - WSJ

In The Wall Street Journal, Global View columnist Bret Stephens writes that the climate religion is ... The Great Global Warming Fizzle The climate religion fades ...

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bret%20stephens%20wsj%20climate%20global%20warming%20desmog+site:www.wsj.com&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain www.wsj.com"):{https://wsj.com:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline"):}::{/articles/SB100014240529702039356045770661...:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;opacity:1;visibility:visible"):}:

Will Bret Stephens' Climate Denial Threaten The Integrity Of ...

Will Bret Stephens' Climate Denial ... of outright climate denial in The Wall Street Journal, ... in 2010 that "global warming is dead." Stephens has also ...

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bret%20stephens%20wsj%20climate%20global%20warming%20desmog+site:www.nationalmemo.com&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain www.nationalmemo.com"):{nationalmemo.com:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline"):}::{/will-bret-stephens-climate-denial-threate...:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;opacity:1;visibility:visible"):}:

Bret Stephens | Media Matters for America

So let me ask you Bret about ... the blizzard somehow disproves the firmly established science of global warming. ... Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal ...

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bret%20stephens%20wsj%20climate%20global%20warming%20desmog+site:mediamatters.org&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain mediamatters.org"):{https://mediamatters.org:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline"):}::{/people/bret-stephens:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;opacity:1;visibility:visible"):}:

Bret Stephens - Wikipedia

... and for his climate change ... Stephens began his career at The Wall Street Journal as an op ... Stephens was named a Young Global Leader by ...

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bret%20stephens%20wsj%20climate%20global%20warming%20desmog+site:en.wikipedia.org&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain en.wikipedia.org"):{https://en.wikipedia.org:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline"):}::{/wiki/Bret_Stephens:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;opacity:1;visibility:visible"):}:

After hyping itself as antidote to fake news, New York Times ...

... just hired an extreme denier of climate science as a columnist. Bret Stephens was most ... debunk Wall Street Journal ... "Global Warming as Mass ...

[](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bret%20stephens%20wsj%20climate%20global%20warming%20desmog+site:thinkprogress.org&atb=v31-5__ "Search domain thinkprogress.org"):{https://thinkprogress.org:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline"):}::{/new-york-times-hires-extreme-climate-deni...:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;opacity:1;visibility:visible"):}:

Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens' Religion of Denial | The ...

Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens ... facts and not helping perpetuate a climate of ... Religion BretStephens Global Warming Mass Neurosis ...