US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7661

On May 27 2017 13:06 On_Slaught wrote:
Don't forget his staff actively attempts to keep negative news away from him. He thinks things are a lot better than they are for him.

On May 28 2017 01:09 Adreme wrote:


So your point is what exactly? That you can find videos of police not shooting white people. I can find videos of police not shooting people of all colors but most of the posts reek of confirmation bias which is a thing that massively hinders fighting against racism in america. When I say that I mean that not every action against a minority is based on race but when those that are not are called racism and are lumped with the ones that are it taints the entire pool so suddenly everyone stops listening. It was the same problem i posted about almost a year ago when I said the term racist is being overused to apply to pretty every single mispoken line someone says and it taints everything.

Its harder now to truly ostracize racists from modern society when everything is being called racial even when it is not. Not every police shooting is a murder but many of the ones that get focused on are not the problem ones.

On May 28 2017 01:02 Mohdoo wrote:


I think the point was that his life was sparred (after actually killing people already) whereas a black dude simply existing in the wrong neighborhood has been enough for a black dude to be killed.

On May 28 2017 01:28 LegalLord wrote:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/868441116726710272
Better make the right decision here.

In an unusual admission, Group of Seven (G7) leaders have said in their final communique from a summit in Italy that they had failed to bridge differences over climate change with US President Donald Trump - and America was unable to join other countries in committing to the Paris Agreement.

“The United States of America is in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris Agreement and thus is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics,” the communique read.

“Understanding this process, the heads of state and of government of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom and the presidents of the European Council and of the European Commission reaffirm their strong commitment to swiftly implement the Paris Agreement,” it added.

Under pressure from allies, Mr Trump backed a pledge to fight protectionism, but refused to endorse the global Paris climate change accord, saying he needed more time to decide, with European diplomats frustrated at having to revisit questions they hoped were long settled.

Mr Trump, who has previously called global warming a hoax, tweeted that he would make a decision next week on whether to back the 2015 Paris Agreement on curbing carbon emissions following lengthy discussions with G7 partners.

“The entire discussion about climate was very difficult, if not to say very dissatisfying,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said. “There are no indications whether the United States will stay in the Paris Agreement or not.”

On May 28 2017 02:06 LegalLord wrote:

Yes, but he's about unprincipled enough that it might happen.

On May 28 2017 02:02 ChristianS wrote:

I read the quoted tweet chains, as well as the big washington examiner list. I agree that most of those should never have been published, although a few of them I might challenge, and several come down to "somebody wrote an article, the WH disagreed," which isn't worth much these days. Some of them the WH wouldn't even be in a position to deny, like "Spies Keep Intelligence from Donald Trump on Leak Concerns." If a story comes down to the media claiming something about the administration and the administration denying it, we can hardly call that "fake news" without some proof the administration is actually right. You can even see at the bottom of their list they were originally calling it fake news when CBS reported that Trump's pick for Navy secretary was on the verge of withdrawing, just because the WH denied the report. A week later, the guy withdrew. There's also several items on this list that are probably showing the Washington Examiner's biases much more than they are actual fake news (e.g. citing a single Washington Times article to support the claim that ~2 million illegal immigrants voted in this election, and labeling all reports that this didn't happen fake).

But yeah, there's a lot of stuff on here that isn't up to journalistic standards. In most cases it looks like just a mistake on the part of the news outlet – CNN probably didn't set out to misinterpret Nancy Sinatra, for instance, they probably just misinterpreted a tweet. Obviously just calling her and asking for comment before publishing would have been a good idea, but it seems unlikely that this was a sinister plan on CNN's part, just not doing their homework on a fluff story. I could speculate on each one and why it happened, but at the end of the day you probably wouldn't take my speculation as worth much anyway. I could also point out that mistakes happen even in times of high journalistic integrity, and ask what baseline we should expect for how often improperly sourced stories should come out, but again I don't think that would much reduce your frustration with the reporters whose incompetence or laziness or partisanship let these stories out the door.

Here's where I'd push back, though. The practice you're criticizing (news outlets using anonymous sources within the administration to publish critical stories) has been essential for us to learn about some of the uglier things happening in this administration, and has already helped keep the administration honest on several of them. The media is why Flynn got fired; the media is why Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel; the media is how we know Trump was freely sharing intelligence that we promised Israel we wouldn't share. Because if we made a similar list of all the times Trump and his team had blatantly lied about something, I bet it'd be at least as long. And in he face of so mendacious an administration, we need to have somebody checking up on them to make sure we're not getting the wool pulled over our eyes.

So you'd probably like if a new journalistic standard were promulgated, under which any information learned from anonymous sources is not used for a story – only if they will go on the record. But realistically that world means that anybody wanting to expose lies or corruption or mere incompetence in the administration would essentially have to ruin their career to do so. Which means either a) people would be too selfish to give up their career, and shady behavior would never come to light, or b) some people would be courageous enough to give up their career to leak about shady dealings, but very quickly those people would be weeded out, leaving only those that lack the conscience or courage to speak out. In other words, an ethic like that is an authoritarian's wet dream, and given Trump's track record I think we need every defense we can get right now.

Which is why I was asking specifically about fabricating sources. If there was good reason to think that practice had become common and widespread, then very quickly we couldn't trust any anonymously sourced article, but I still haven't seen a single instance in which a source appeared to have been fabricated. I wasn't drawing the distinction between that and things like lazy vetting, deceptive headlines, etc. to tell you not to call those things fake news, or to say that those things aren't really breaches of journalistic ethics. But if WaPo wrote some headlines I thought were deceptive and then claims to have an anonymous source within the administration and give some quote, I can still probably assume that there is in fact an administration source that said that quote. If the National Enquirer has an anonymous source that said some quote, I can probably assume they made that shit up.

On May 28 2017 02:04 PhoenixVoid wrote:
I wonder if there will be a domino effect of other countries pulling out of Paris because the U.S. refuses to sign on. Six out of seven G7 nations is a strong majority, but the U.S. is still the big guy in the room, and that might be enough to convince other countries it's not worth pursuing. Who knows, Trump is the guy who parrots whatever the last person he met told him, so the Pope and six heads of state might be enough for a last minute change of mind on the Paris Accord.

On May 28 2017 02:38 Danglars wrote:

I'm not even alleging it's all sinister from the start. Much is, like I criticized in source conflicts of interests, but the size and scope of poor journalistic standards is absolutely troubling. I think you understand my point of view at some level, even though you differ from the conclusion. The fabrications have been used to say the complete opposite of what sources have said in the past. That lends itself to the conclusion that between the source's selective leaking and interpretations and journalists biased interpretations, it matters little if there's an official source and a quote on the subject, because it will be stretched to mean things completely different than a leak. This is what mainstream news outlets must seek to correct before anonymously sourced articles are believed again.

The good news is the more serious charges are being actively investigated. All the foolish claims that obstruction attempts will succeed (that it was attempted is no longer a foolish claim from Comey) are misplaced. If any FBI findings are concealed from Congress or the public (as appropriate), we'll have the Deep Throat patriotic leaks on the double. Nobody would stand for it. So the impact on the side of citizen distrust will be mostly allayed. I'm not going to invest the time in a mega post of what the partisan leak campaign means for America, and how it compares to what possible damage Trump could cause, until most of this current stuff plays itself out. I do really see much of this helping Trump in the long run to preserve his relationship to his base.

On May 28 2017 02:04 PhoenixVoid wrote:
I wonder if there will be a domino effect of other countries pulling out of Paris because the U.S. refuses to sign on. Six out of seven G7 nations is a strong majority, but the U.S. is still the big guy in the room, and that might be enough to convince other countries it's not worth pursuing. Who knows, Trump is the guy who parrots whatever the last person he met told him, so the Pope and six heads of state might be enough for a last minute change of mind on the Paris Accord.

On May 28 2017 01:43 GreenHorizons wrote:


No.

And @Zero, this isn't supposed to be a critique of Portland police. I actually applaud them for getting him into custody without killing him.

It was much closer to:



While people were whining about the unfairness of some small group in Portland raising a stink about appropriated food/culture for profit, a cop in another state in America got off after an unarmed black man who was simply needing AAA got murdered in cold blood by the officer.

And then the later in the day, in the same city, a known white-supremacist verbally assaults two young Muslim women and stabs 2 people to death wounding a third and threatens officers with a weapon and is taken into custody without being killed.

Yet people have the gall to suggest that we should go back at least 60 years to find real racism, that racism/xenophobia aren't significant and immediate problems, expressing more concern over the rhetoric of BLM than those who embolden white-supremacist terrorists like this tool, on and on and on, and then complain about my tone... It's absurd.