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A New York Magazine piece argued Friday its a good thing the Disinformation Governance Board is on "pause" because otherwise it would have let liberals continue to "lie to themselves," avoid "the agony of self-reflection" and only "exacerbate the populist revolt."

Author Sam Adler-Bell began his article with some skepticism towards the Washington Posts recent assessment that a coordinated attack shut down the board in which "far-right influencers attempt to identify a target, present a narrative and then repeat mischaracterizations across social media and websites."

Adler-Bell wasnt so given to this dramatic reading of the situation, rather, he claimed it was a typical "activist endeavor."

"The rights campaign against the Disinformation Board resembled any other successful advocacy effort to halt a government initiative," he wrote, adding, "when it comes to political messaging in our polarized age, par for the course."

WAPO'S TAYLOR LORENZ RUNS COVER FOR 'VICTIM' NINA JANKOWICZ WHILE REPORTING DHS PUT PAUSE ON DISINFO BOARD

DHS put a pause on the Disinformation Governance Board less than a month after its start. (iStock)

Having inoculated his readers from the thought that what the right did wasnt a horrific propaganda campaign warranting arrest and punishment (former Disinfo Board executive director Nina Jankowicz claimed that conservative attacks on the board threatened "national security"), Adler-Bell then dinged liberals for their efforts to stop "disinformation" altogether.

The author admitted he sees the importance of "smart people" looking at how "the architecture of social media facilitates and incentivizes witch hunts and the dissemination of hateful, dishonest content," but clarified, "I dont think it requires any great leap of conspiratorial thinking to find fault with a disinformation board under the aegis of the DHS."

"Government officials whoever resides in the White House are professional liars," he declared, adding, "They lie haughtily in the interest of national security, sheepishly in the interest of saving face, and passionately when their jobs are on the line."

Adler-Bell also wondered, "Would Jankowiczs office have been empowered to counter disinformation coming from her own department? Or only from those criticizing it?"

Nina Jankowicz, former head of the Disinformation Governance Board (Arkadiusz Wargua/iStock)

NINA JANKOWICZ COMPLAINS DISINFO BOARD UNDONE BY DISINFORMATION, CHILDISH ATTACKS

He admitted the fear of having a Republican administration inevitably in charge of a board like that. "And what would its remit have been under the next Republican presidency?" he asked, following that question with a statement from National Review writer, Nate Hochman.

"As one conservative writerput it, Its not clear to me that Democrats have fully reckoned with the non-negligible possibility that Donald Trump is in charge of the new Disinformation Governance Board in 2 years," he stated.

Adler-Bell continued, hitting liberals even harder: "But the other pernicious problem with liberals fixation on disinformation is that it allows them to lie tothemselves."

The author said, "Disinformation was the liberal Establishments traumatic reaction to the psychic wound of 2016. It provided an answer that evaded the question altogether, protecting them from the agony of self-reflection."

New York Magazine writer claims that now-defunct Disinfo Governance Board would have only fueled the populist right.

Essentially, it made it so that liberals didnt have to address real issues. The game of disinformation was about characterizing the Trump-voting part of the country as having "beenduped, brainwashed by nefarious forces both foreign and domestic. And if only the best minds, the most credentialed experts, could be given new authority to regulate the flow of fake news, the scales would fall from the eyes of the people."

Adler-Bell illustrated the phenomenon, "Like other pathological reactions to trauma, the disinformation neurosis tended to re-create the conditions that produced the affliction in the first place."

"By doubling down on elite technocracy and condescension toward the uneducated rubes suffering from false consciousness liberals have tended to exacerbate the sources of populist hostility," he wrote.

Former President Barack Obama spoke at a disinformation conference in April. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

The author then slammed a recent liberal disinformation conference headlined by Barack Obama at the University of Chicago: "[G]athering the leading lights of liberalism to an auditorium at the University of Chicago so that they together can decide which information is true and safe to be consumed by the rabble outside strikes me as a hollow exercise in self-soothing," Adler-Bell opined.

He claimed it was "more likely to aggravate the symptoms of our legitimacy crisis (distrust and cynicism) than resolve any of its impasses."

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Adler-Bell cited Harpers Magazine author Joe Bernstein, writing, "the new class of disinformation experts, however well intentioned, dont have special access to the fabric of reality."

He concluded his piece, claiming, "If faith in our institutions is to be restored, I dont think it will be accomplished by stigmatizing doubt or obstructing the dissemination of falsehood."

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NY Mag: Disinformation a fantasy that lets liberals lie to themselves, avoid agony of self-reflection - Fox News

After a 2017 state election bloodbath which toppled Colin Barnett's long-term government, WA Liberals consoled themselves with the message that things could not get any worse.

How wrong they were.

In the five years since, things have continued to get substantially worse for WA's once-dominant political force.

At a state level, the Liberals barely exist.

They held on to just two lower house seats in the 2021 election wipe-out, forcing them tohand leadership of the Opposition to the Nationals.

Like in 2017, Liberals thought that result 14 months ago was as bad as things could get for them.

And they were wrong again.

Follow all the post-election action as vote counting continues

The scale of the Liberal losses in WA's federal seats may not be quite as extreme as that state result, but blue-ribbon territory has once again fallen all over Perth.

And instead of battling irrelevance at just the state level, WA Liberals now face exactly the same fate federally.

Once again, the WA electorate has sent a loud and clear message to the Liberals.

And once again, voters will be watching closely to see how the party responds.

Liberal strategists always knew some WA losses were possible, given the popularity of Mark McGowan, apparent voter resentment towards Scott Morrison and the Coalition's support for Clive Palmer's High Court border challenge.

But as the campaign wore on, WA Liberals expressed optimism the damage might not be as bad as they once feared.

Going into election night, they knew Swan and Pearce were deeply vulnerable and they had a serious fight on their hands from 'teal' independent Kate Chaney in Curtin.

But strategists were expressing hope, bordering on confidence, that Ken Wyatt would hold on in Hasluck and the Curtin challenge would be overcome.

In the end, the losses in those two seats were not even the most surprising results.

Tangney, which has only been won by Liberals since 1984, fell to Labor by anot-insignificant margin.

And even more shockingly, the Liberals are no certainties to hold on in Moore a seat thought of as so safe that neither party really spent any real time even thinking about it going into polling day.

Liberal Ian Goodenough is ahead there, but not by anywhere near enough to feel close to comfortable.

In Pearce, Swan and Hasluck, the results were not even close.

The Liberals barely even got 40 per cent of the two-party preferredin Pearce and Swan

And while things were substantially closer in Curtin, that was not enough to prevent what should be the bluest of domains falling out of Liberal hands.

The upshot is that the Liberals were thrashed right across Perth, even in territory they once felt comfortable in.

And the losses were across the board too, from ritzy Curtin to outer suburban battlegrounds such as Pearce and Hasluck the swings against the Liberals in many seats were in the double digits.

For the WA federal Liberals who remain, the coming days and weeks will bring heavy soul searching as they try to begin rebuilding a shattered party.

But there will also be extremely tough questions facing state Liberals.

More than a year since their WA electoral annihilation, can they say things have actually improved, as they look ahead to the next WA election now less than three years away?

Questions about how long David Honey should remain as WA leader may well become more pressing for state MPs nervous about what they saw on the weekend.

The WA Liberal team hoped McGowan's popularity had taken a hit from the dire situation facing the state's hospitals and how he handled reopening interstate and international borders.

But whether that is true or not and the evidence of Saturday night's result certainly makes it seem dubious, at the very least is now almost a side issue for conservatives, because WA voters have again made their views about the Liberals painfully clear.

In the space of five years, the WA electorate hasdelivered three incredibly emphatic rejections of Liberals in the state.

Now the clock is ticking to turn things aroundbefore voters are left to contemplate if they should repeat the trick next time they go to the polls.

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Posted23h ago23 hours agoSun 22 May 2022 at 9:07pm, updated19h ago19 hours agoMon 23 May 2022 at 1:20am

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How will the WA Liberals rebuild after three emphatic election victories for Labor? - ABC News

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There is no better way for politicians to avoid accountability for their decisions than to allow civil servants to be scapegoated for government screw-ups

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Candidates for the federal Conservative leadership have until June 3 to sign up new members; at that point, almost three months before the actual election date, the result may be more or less baked in. Pierre Poilievre must hope thats true not just because he seems to be the prohibitive favourite, but because his war with Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem over Canadas inflation rate may well be unsustainable.

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Few of us understand monetary policy or have any interest in cryptocurrency, which is another of Poilievres niche interests. Poilievres campaign seemed to want to wink at people who do, without upsetting anyone else. But there has been no shortage of pushback, including from within the party.

Poilievre supporters will dismiss Ed Fasts resignation as Conservative finance critic this week as the petulance of a Jean Charest supporter, and not, as Fast claims, a reasonable response to attempts to muzzle his defence of independent central banking around the finance table. (Fast is the co-chair of Charests campaign.) But Fast is relatively well known and reasonable a good Tory soldier, a former Harper cabinet minister, and not from Toronto, Ottawa or Montreal. As arcane as monetary policy might be, the general principle of central-bank independence shouldnt be hard to defend: If theres one thing we should want to wall off from politicians panicky, self-interested, quotidian concerns, surely its the currency. A government seeking re-election would have every incentive to reduce interest rates, for example, deal with the long-term consequences later (if at all).

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Intuitive as that argument is, it may not make a dent in the leadership campaign. But it certainly could in a general election campaign. Poilievres cryptocurrency gambit could be another severe vulnerability in that respect too. At almost the very moment in late March that he suggested Canadians might opt out of inflation with crypto, Bitcoin and Ethereum began their nearly 40-per-cent collapse. Its a Liberal attack ad ready to happen. (The smart money, of course, is on Poilievre winning the leadership by hook or by crook, then beetling immediately to the centre and disappointing all his revolution-minded supporters. But that too would be a severe liability. Surely it can only happen so often within Canadas Conservative movement before it begins to fall apart.)

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I wonder, too, if the Poilievre team has miscalculated somewhat in making things so personal. Ed Fast and Jean Charest would have no problem firing a waitress or welder for not doing their jobs. But they wont do the same for a big-shot banker whose failures have cost our people a fortune, Poilievre said in a populism-by-numbers statement after Fasts departure.

Its not unprecedented: Former Bank of Canada governor James Coyne was Canadian Presss Newsmaker of the Year in 1961 for his open war with then finance minister Donald Fleming. But that was 60 years ago. Its not as if only Canada is dealing with inflation just at the moment: Canadas 6.8 per cent in April was below the G20 and OECD averages of 7.9 per cent and 8.8 per cent, respectively. That doesnt help anyone put food on the table, but nor do knee-jerk terminations.

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Its not that prominent civil servants should be off-limits for criticism. Indeed, one of the salutary benefits of the pandemic was to knock some sense into those of us with an unhealthy post-SARS instinct to make heroes of public health officials. Faced with the most serious crisis of their careers, many of our chief public health officers failed miserably in their most basic job: Communicating and justifying public-health measures to the population.

So, there is nothing wrong in theory with longshot Conservative leadership candidate Roman Baber criticizing Dr. Theresa Tam, for example or even to say he would try to fire her as prime minister. Tams pandemic record is that of downplaying the risk to Canada and casting aspersions on those who disagreed, until it was too late even to delay COVID-19s arrival at our borders. Having changed her mind on border controls or more likely having pretended to change her mind under political pressure she quickly set about rubbishing the sort of rapid-antigen tests that other countries were using. Her departments failures to coordinate with border officials are the stuff of legend. She has not been good at her job.

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But reading about Baber this week, it occurred to me that his intervention actually makes Tam more secure in her job because no Liberal government would want to be seen capitulating to such populist rabble-rousing. Thats not great in itself: Just because Baber thinks Tam should be fired doesnt mean she shouldnt be. But in the longer term and broader view, allowing civil servants to be scapegoated for government screw-ups would be a politicians dream and a detriment to democracy: There is no better way for politicians to avoid accountability for their decisions. When the next federal election comes along, no matter whos leading the Conservatives, there should be more than enough decisions on the Liberal record to make attacking individual bureaucrats wholly unnecessary.

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Chris Selley: Blaming bankers and bureaucrats only lets Liberals off the hook - National Post

As a candidate whos named on the ballot, you always have to take responsibility for a loss, but I also acknowledge that it wasnt as though it was just existing in our community.

The trends [are evident] in Higgins, its in Kooyong, existing in Wentworth, existing in Mackellar and North Sydney.

An emotional Mr Wilson thanked his husband, Ryan Bolger, for his support.

My contribution at this point seems to be ending, but I always want to continue to be able to play a role.

Mr Wilson was elected in 2016, having previously been Australias Human Rights Commissioner.

He proposed to Mr Bolger in the House of Representatives shortly after the same-sex marriage bill was introduced.

Mr Wilson also campaigned heavily against Labor's proposed changes to franking credits at the 2019 election.

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Liberals need to focus less on 'fringe agendas': Tim Wilson - The Australian Financial Review

Outgoing minister Angus Taylor has called on the Liberal Party to return to its core valuesafter its heavy defeat in the federal election.

The election loss has cost Mr Taylor the energy and emissions reduction portfolio, which he has held since 2018.

But hewill remain in parliament after retaining the NSW seat of Hume, according to the latest ABC projections.

"It is critical now for the Liberal party to regroup and refocus on our core values,"Mr Taylor said.

"We must recognise who we represent and that in a time of great economic challenge, core liberal values have much to offer."

Mr Taylor won the seat of Hume for the fourth time despite a challenge from Labor and independent candidates.

Before the election Hume was considered one of the safest Liberal seats in the country, held with a margin of 13 per cent.

With 78 per cent of the vote counted, that margin is estimated to have slipped to 7.6 per cent.

The former frontbencher suffered a 10 per cent first-preference swing against him in his expansive electorate, which covers an area from the suburbs of south-west Sydney to the NSW Southern Tablelands.

Mr Taylor said there wouldbe a lot of focus on the shift to "left-wing independents" but said parts of the country had shifted to conservative parties.

"We also need to recognise the fragmentation of the primary votes of the major parties across the nation," he said.

"Labor has gained government legitimately with a 32 per centprimary vote which is unprecedented, while we saw strong support for smaller conservative parties in the suburbs and the bush."

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Among his challengers was first-time independent Penny Ackery, a Goulburn resident campaigning for a federal Independent Commission Against Corruption and increasing emissions reduction targets.

"I am really not sure exactly what he means by this, we saw this in a rural area where he lost his margin which was very large," Ms Ackery said.

"Iknow there are places where the Liberals have completely lost out."

The man behind funding for the successfulTeal independents, Simon Holmes aCourt, was at Ms Ackery's campaign launch in Goulburn last year.

The retired schoolteacher declined his offer to back her campaign through the Climate 200 fund.

"Accepting funding when it was a matter of integrity that I was really campaigning on, we felt that was not going to go down well, we decided against that," she said.

"We have no regrets about that."

Ms Ackery said ultimately it was difficult to compare the success of the inner-city independents with those challenging for rural seats.

"The actual demographics are different," she said.

"We have very rural areas down here as well as the outer suburbs of Sydney, so it is a very different electorate in regards to the issues we are dealing with.

"But they are all Australians, they are all having difficulties and they have concerns about things like integrityand about making sure we have a renewable economy into the future, it doesn't matter where you live, these things matter."

Mr Taylor said despite his role change he wouldremain focused on delivering the local projects included in the federal budget.

"It is now my job to make sure the government delivers on what we need the new airport and local jobs, the Picton bypass, a Goulburn Medicare-funded MRI and a host of other road and communications projects, in addition to delivering on cost of living commitments."

"These are all budgeted, and I will make sure you all know if the new government decides to change direction."

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Posted11h ago11 hours agoMon 23 May 2022 at 9:23am, updated11h ago11 hours agoMon 23 May 2022 at 9:27am

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Angus Taylor says Liberal Party must focus on core values after federal election loss - ABC News