OptOut's Weekend Picks (Aug. 22, 2020)
Written by:
Greetings, OptersOut!
I’m Walker Bragman, co-founder of OptOut.
First, welcome to our new partners this week!
- QAnon Anonymous—A podcast where hosts Jake, Julian, and Travis chop and screw the wildest conspiracy theories of the post-truth era.
- Staying Home with Josh Fox—Documentary filmmaker Josh Fox, an OptOut adviser, chats with fellow environmentalists and other figures on a nightly basis.
- The Rational National—David Doel’s one-man video channel that analyzes the news of the day.
- Utopian Horizons—A podcast that covers a different utopia, dystopia, utopian thinker, or movement in each episode.
While our app is still in development, we want to give you our selections of the top news stories each week. As you may know, the forthcoming OptOut app will curate daily picks and offer a personalized feed of your favorite outlets, authors, podcasts, video channels, categories, and locations.
Here are our weekend picks, exclusively from OptOut partner outlets. If you dig the content, please consider subscribing and donating to these excellent outlets. As independent sites, podcasts, and video channels, they depend on support from the public, not corporations or oligarchs who want some good PR. According to our user survey, over half of our potential users pay for their news. Let’s get that as close to 100% as possible.
Too Much Information: Team Biden Now Signals Austerity, Despite Campaign Pledges
Too Much Information’s David Sirota points out that Ted Kaufman, a longtime Biden ally and head of his transition team, told the Wall Street Journal that the new administration’s hands would be tied because of the huge deficit that Trump and Republicans have caused. This contradicts what Biden has been running on since his campaign launched, but it does fit with his general political stance throughout his career. Biden has long sought a budget deal with the GOP that slashes spending on social programs.
More on The Democrats™:
- Katie Halper talks with Malaika Jabali and Ben Burgis about “the typical, vapid, empty rhetoric of the DNC” during convention week.
- OptOut adviser Nomiki Konst and her show partnered with The Majority Report on Friday to host a DNC recap with guests Noam Chomsky, who needs no introduction; Bhaskar Sunkara, the publisher of OptOut partner Jacobin; and Nabilah Islam, national organizing director of Matriarch PAC.
Image credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr
Gilded Age: Weapons of Mass Destruction, Part 1
Check out the latest episode of Gilded Age, OptOut’s first original production. This week, Mark and Walker discuss nuclear proliferation and the insanity of living one malfunction or judgment error away from total annihilation.
More podcasts:
- On Sh!tpost Podcast, Jared Holt interviews reporter Will Sommer and QAnon Anonymous co-host Travis View about the bizarre, pro-Trump conspiracy cult QAnon and a true believer who’s on her way to Congress.
Sludge: Kennedy Fails to Return Fossil Fuel Lobbyist Donations
Sludge reports that Rep. Joe Kennedy III, who is challenging fellow Democrat Sen. Ed Markey in Massachusetts, has not returned money his campaign took from a fossil fuel lobbyist despite promising to do so and having signed the “No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge,” a commitment to reject donations from the PACs, executives, and lobbyists of oil, gas, and coal companies.
Kennedy, who until very recently owned millions of dollars worth of fossil fuel stock, is trying to unseat the sponsor of the Senate’s Green New Deal Resolution.
Acute Condition: Quest, LabCorp, and slow COVID-19 results
Acute Condition’s Olivia Webb exposes why your COVID-19 test results are taking longer than expected. Two companies, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, which have been buying up laboratories across the U.S., have focused more on market share than efficiency in testing because reimbursements are the same regardless of how fast results come in.
Tim Black TV: Ex-Trump Adviser Steve Bannon Arrested, Charged with Fraud
Tim Black of TBTV talks about recent news that ex-Trump strategist Steve Bannon is the latest of Donald Trump’s allies to be arrested—this time for wire fraud and money laundering related to a fundraising scam around Trump’s proposed border wall.
Counterpunch Radio: Doug Henwood
CounterPunch Radio host Eric Draitser interviews journalist Doug Henwood, whose radio show and blog are OptOut partners, about the COVID-19 pandemic and Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine the election.
More Doug Henwood:
- Listen to Doug interview Christian Parenti about appropriating the state-led developmentalism of Alexander Hamilton.
We hope you will enjoy these stories and check out our other partners’ content as well! Stay tuned for more of our top picks!
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OptOut is now a totally volunteer operation. We’re up to 95 paid subscribers through this newsletter, which is great. To each person who decided to fund our initial startup costs: THANK YOU! But we need to raise a lot more to cover long-term expenses like web hosting, marketing, and paid staff.
Please consider supporting us as we move forward with OptOut. We appreciate it!
