Frederick Clarkson

Senior Research Analyst, Political Research Associates. Find my recent work @RDispatches, @PRAEyesRight, @Salon, and @MsMagazine @inthesetimesmag

[Frederick Clarkson @FredClarkson]

My latest @Salon "Unfriending" America: The Christian right is coming for the enemies of God"

People like you and me.

https://t.co/ajeVMgPr4l

[Karen Attiah @KarenAttiah]

Wearing @PostGuild red today.

I was able to challenge my @washingtonpost firing — and win reinstatement plus back pay — all thanks to being a part of the @WBNG32035 Guild.

Binding Arbitration is a part of our contract.

This is why unions matter!!!

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

“I don’t want Jews in positions of elected office and I don’t want Jews having financial ties to the Democratic Party. I don’t like Judaism. If I could wave a magic wand, I would round up Jews and deport them from America. Most Democratic voters agree with me.”

I don’t want to sound like a broken record on this but can you imagine if a top adviser to, and ally of, President Joe Biden had said this? It would be the *only* story in America. For days and weeks on end. Biden and Dem members of Congress would be asked about nothing else by rightly outraged reporters.

So every American political reporter, editor, anchor, executive producer, reading this right now: ask yourself, why aren’t you as outraged when it’s Muslims not Jews, and Trump’s ally not Biden’s?

[Lara Korte @lara_korte]

Today, I was informed that the Department of Defense is firing me for insubordination after I told a CBS reporter that I work for Stars and Stripes – not the Pentagon, not any administration, and not any policy maker.

[Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD DSc(hon) @PeterHotez]

Actually no, the Roman Empire was undone by two types of malaria, vivax and falciparum that made the Romans chronically ill and growth stunted, followed by a third hit from the Antonine plague (most likely smallpox) 166-180 CE introduced by returning Roman armies from Seleucia (Mesopotamia). Two additional plagues didn’t help. Bottom line it was failure to control pandemic threats, which undid the Roman Empire, and now we’re making the identical mistake.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

The reason we hate dandelions is because of a 1950s marketing campaign to sell weed-killers made in a chemical weapons lab.

Prior to the 50s, very few people seemed to have strong opinions about dandelions. European colonists brought them here on purpose in the 1600s. The leaves were used for salads, the flowers for wine, and the roots roasted as a coffee substitute.

They were pretty much a home garden staple into the 1800s.

The shift in thinking happened after the second World War, when 2,4-D (originally developed for chemical warfare research) was approved as a residential herbicide. Companies like Scotts built the modern lawn-care industry around the idea that a perfect green lawn meant zero "weeds."

Dandelions, being bright yellow, resistant to mowing, and tough to pull, became a visible enemy. And the campaign worked. By the 1970s, "dandelion-free" was synonymous with a well-kept lawn, the signature of the middle class's American Dream.

If you hate dandelions, it's most likely due to a marketing campaign that ran before you were even born.

[Jerome Adams @JeromeAdamsMD]

Senator @tedcruz
I give you the benefit of the doubt and assume your (repeatedly fact checked and community noted as FALSE) posts that the COVID vaccine produced an 82% miscarriage rate for women vaccinated in the first trimester was an honest misunderstanding of the data. That figure comes from a 2021 @NEJM study. The actual reported rate among completed pregnancies was 12.6% (104 miscarriages out of 827), which is within the normal background range. The higher number only appears when hundreds of women who were vaccinated later in pregnancy (and went on to have live births) are removed from the calculation.

As a doctor I’m grateful you deleted those posts - thank you for doing so! Given how widely the claim circulated and the potential it has to scare so many pregnant women away from a vaccine that protects both them and their babies (and as protecting the health of moms and babies would seem to be the impetus for your concerns here), would you please also issue a clear public correction so the record is set straight? 🙏🏽

[Frederick Clarkson @FredClarkson]

Here in MA, we believe in the freedom to read, and we oppose book bans and attacks on schools and public libraries.

https://t.co/2V53X1HeUh

[Frederick Clarkson @FredClarkson]

Here in MA, we believe in the freedom to read, and we oppose book bans and attacks on schools and public libraries.

https://t.co/2V53X1HeUh

[Daniel Dale @ddale8]

Vaccines do not cause autism

Vaccine doses are nowhere close to “the size of a bottle of soda,” they’re a fraction of a teaspoon

The combo MMR vaccine is not “quite lethal,” it’s been very safe for more than five decades

There are no separate M/M/R shots available in the US and won’t be anytime soon 

Autism prevalence wasn’t “1 in 10,000” in 2006, it was 1 in 110

No state has been requiring little kids to get “72 jabs,” nor even by age 18

Fact check on the rapid-fire vaccine misinformation President Trump delivered yesterday while pushing to change US vaccine policy: https://t.co/qSF53N8XJW

[Jamie Raskin @jamie_raskin]

Young people interested in democratic socialism—not the psychotic Stalinism of Trump’s friends Kim Jong Un, President Xi and Vladimir Putin!—are more than welcome in the Democratic Party I believe in. Young Americans are not talking about the dictatorship of the proletariat or seizing the means of production.   They just want healthcare for everyone in the richest country in the world, a dramatically increased minimum wage and to get rid of corporate rule by our dangerous billionaire oligarchs. Down with Trump and the octogenarian oligarchs; power to young America.

[Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD DSc(hon) @PeterHotez]

It’s not fun living in such a dark time in American history, to have our nation’s scientists, professors, writers, journalists, intellectuals portrayed as public enemies or cartoon villains, is tough stuff. Especially when it’s so obviously for an oligarchy’s authoritarian control and filthy lucre. They don’t even try to hide it, that’s raw and unhinged power, like we warned about in our book #ScienceUnderSiege @MichaelEMann @PeterHotez

[Joe Trippi @JoeTrippi]

Umberto Eco, writer: “The tragedy of the Internet is that it has promoted the village idiot to the level of bearer of truth” - AS USA https://t.co/fJjQ3PA7Ah

[Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD DSc(hon) @PeterHotez]

Nobody beat up on anybody dissenting. In our book #ScienceUnderSiege @MichaelEMann @PeterHotez we detailed in almost 400 pages how the Murdoch media empire, Fox News, NewsCorps, together with 4-6 members of Congress including 2 U.S. Senators, selected Spotify podcasters and others, waged a war of anti-science disinformation and caused the needless deaths of 200,000-300,000 Americans from 2021-22. Everything you are hearing this week is an attempt by them to obfuscate and obscure what they did to this country. We have the receipts

[Jerome Adams @JeromeAdamsMD]

Funny how the “constitutional rights vs. public health” debate forgets its own origin story.

In 1777 George Washington ordered the mass inoculation of the Continental Army against smallpox - the first large-scale mandatory immunization in American history -because the disease was killing far more soldiers than the British! 🤯

Without that prioritization of collective survival over individual choice, there almost certainly would be no United States and no Constitution. 🤔

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

MAGA cult members, remember when Trump personally awarded Dr. Anthony Fauci a Presidential Commendation for his work on Operation Warp Speed and the COVID vaccine?

Trump apparently didn’t.

When Megyn Kelly asked him about it, he claimed he had no idea who gave Fauci the award. Kaitlan Collins pulled the receipt: Trump himself issued it on January 19, 2021—his final full day in office.

Thanks, Kaitlan Collins. The internet never forgets, even when Trump does.

[David Frum @davidfrum]

The 20% who lived in the most pro-Trump places suffered 70,000 more COVID deaths than the 20% in the most pro-Biden places. Red America obeyed those who told them not to mask, not to vaccinate. They died for it. No, Fauci is not the villain here. https://t.co/7hxuP9yOfi

[National Park Service @NatlParkService]

On World Ranger Day, we celebrate the dedication, courage, and commitment of rangers who protect and care for national parks and protected areas around the world.

[The Intercept @theintercept]

The report, which covers enforcement actions over a six-month period, highlights the obvious: Corporations — not small immigrant-oriented healthcare providers, or undocumented immigrants illegally taking benefits — are responsible for the vast majority of alleged fraud in the American health care system. Released earlier this month, the report highlights billions of dollars’ worth of healthcare fraud from corporate executives.

[Willie Nelson @WillieNelson]

To whom it may concern and to everyone else as well,

[Democracy Now! @democracynow]

The tech company Flock, makers of traffic cameras that automatically record and log car license plates for law enforcement agencies, is facing increasing scrutiny over accusations that its vast, AI-sorted database has created a new, nationwide mass surveillance system.

With few regulations or oversight on its use, Flock’s data can be sold to third parties or shared with federal agencies such as ICE, says the ACLU’s Chad Marlow, who works on efforts to regulate and cancel Flock’s contracts with local law enforcement.

https://t.co/MvWflznelX