Last edited Sat Sep 27, 2025, 10:07 AM - Edit history (1)

That’s the big story they are missing.

Putin and trump are circling the drain. Yesterday Netanyahu experienced a massive display of rejection.

Everyday we see evidence of their dwindling support and resulting desperation. Johnson’s refusal to accept the new representative’s taking office is the latest. That can only fly for so long and reality will slap him upside the head.

Milei claimed libretarian "Economic Success" now needs a bailout.

My niece is German and lives in Munich. She too asked me why the Democrats aren't doing anything and like you, I told her they were but the MSM doesn't report their efforts.

I seem to be on several (at my request) and they are all busy. I didn’t anticipate myself feeling so under the weather for so long — but they are not sharing my malaise.

on behalf of the American people, too, that US news doesn't fairly report ...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=20676017

basically the same as over here, way too much is owned by right leaning oligarchs and they have
their own agendas? Granted they do inform people that dumpie is evil.

Much of the electronic media here is quasi government owned, though not socialist style. No TACC or anything like that, although the two main quasi dictatorships, Hungary and Russia do muzzle their press when it comes to permitting anything critical of their own governments—i.e. they don’t. Sometimes semi-official directives are issued, like the time the Belgian press was forbidden from reporting that violent crimes were committed by Moroccan immigrants. The intent was to reduce discrimination against them, but the Belgians, not being idiots, knew exactly what was only going on when the crimes were reported with no mention of who committed them. They cynically said, “it was those Swedish immigrants again (there are none). “ Interestingly, Murdoch tried to organize a Fox Germany cable TV station, and faltered when running up against Germany’s anti-Nazi laws, probably the most restrictive laws on fully free speech still on the books in Europe. They gave up.

Otherwise, government-owned electronic press, like the BBC, AFP, the main German channels ARD and ZDF, enjoy near total press freedom as long as they attempt to remain pretty much objective. There is no government printed press. That died with socialist-run governments here. Therefore, there is a far greater range of slanting in the print press, where the full range exists in most countries.

The problem here, as I see it, is that the European correspondents don’t dig deeper than what they see on the surface. They don’t get the humor of Colbert or Kimmel (for years, my wife didn’t either), so it was hard for them to grasp how much their loss traumatized so much of our nation. They are sometimes understaffed, and if they don’t look for the significance of people like Pritzker, Schiff, Crockett, they will never understand how important they are. I don’t even know one European who knows the name Rachel Maddow.

They don’t look, and so they don’t see. I’m not the only one to notice this. The same complaint was expressed, and far more forcefully, by a German friend who was Moscow station chief for the WDR (local western German radio and TV news). He took his job seriously, learned Russian, traveled all over, from the Ukrainian border to Kamchatka. He lamented that many of his German colleagues there were too content to parrot other people’s reporting, and not get out and dig for the stories themselves. So the problem here is not with higher-ups telling journalists what to report, but rather the journalists, themselves, being too quick to decide that what is most important is that which requires the least work.

One time, when I was in NYC, I was stopped by a German TV crew for a random American “man-on-the-street” interview. I said sure, OK, and started speaking German to them. They said what I said was fascinating, but they couldn’t use my interview. I asked why not? They said their prescribed formula assumed that Americans are never able to speak German, and that I didn’t fit their narrative. It’s a far more subtle way to slant their news. I’m as American as anyone else on the street, but I’m too familiar with Germany, so my opinion isn’t newsworthy to Germans—so say the German media, anyway.

My late uncle who was shot down over the Ploesti refineries was glad he learned German growing up.
The German doctor who saved his life hated Hitler so they had something in common and became
life long friends.

While I'm normally not in favor of celebrities going into politics, we could use one now.

Though in an age of political violence, the families and friends of any celebrity considering entering politics would probably plead with them not to.

It is a problem that there is no clear Democratic leader, party leader, at the moment. It isn't just the lack of European media coverage. There's no Democrat who can at this time command the sort of media attention we need, and be recognized by most Democrats as the spokesperson for the party.

When Howard Dean took over as DNC chair sfter Kerry’s “loss,” he made it clear it was not to pave the way for another candidacy of his own. Howard was everywhere, and paved the way for us to retake the House and the Senate in 2006. I didn’t even know the name of the current DNC chairman without looking it up, and that’s just wrong. Even with Howard’s dynamic DNC leadership, we didn’t have clearly declared presidential candidates for 2008 until 2007. Even Obama took a little time to catch fire. Inevitability invites burnout. I’m happy to have a rotating roster of dynamic Democrats with no presidential ambitions occupy the TV screens for now, until the next Obama steps up in 2027 to lead us to a victory every bit as decisive as the one we enjoyed in 2008.

…we end up with blowback from people on the lookout for the next Jesus.

I liked Dean, by the way. I still have all my old t-shirts.

We don’t get together nearly as much as we used to. Thank goodness for email. For that matter, I guess I owe him a visit in Burlington. After all, we have met up in Düsseldorf.

I can’t believe he’ll be 77 this November. Now THAT is scary.

I have the opposite (or is it contrapositive?) problem. I seek out distant news sources online (dw.com, straitstimes.com, etc) to get away from constant Trump news and to hear about things going on outside of that bubble. I'm not sure if I see their regular news or if the sites detect my IP and think all I want is us politics 24/7.

…and it pisses me off, too — because the vast majority of DUers aren’t living tens of thousands of miles away. (Looks around the hall and says: Are We? )

Loved your post.