US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8981

On October 13 2017 03:24 zlefin wrote:

what sites/sources would he accep tas truth?
with someone spouting such utter garbage as that, I'd expect they both have no concept of what fake news is, and would dismiss any evidence as having come from a fake site.

On October 13 2017 03:29 Plansix wrote:

Folks are right, it’s a trap. There is no way to quantify the amount of fake news, or establish what is a liberal outlet. Also it comes dangerously close to proving a negative, since you need to prove an excessive amount of false stories does not exist.

But the real response to him is: Please show your work.

He is making the claim, not you.

On October 13 2017 03:30 ShoCkeyy wrote:


Definitely InfoWars. And this is his take on "fake news".

+ Show Spoiler +

On October 13 2017 03:30 ShoCkeyy wrote:


Definitely InfoWars. And this is his take on "fake news".

+ Show Spoiler +




He's going to end up posting a Youtube video like this one:

+ Show Spoiler +

On October 13 2017 03:30 ShoCkeyy wrote:


Definitely InfoWars. And this is his take on "fake news".

+ Show Spoiler +




He's going to end up posting a Youtube video like this one:

+ Show Spoiler +

On October 13 2017 03:11 ShoCkeyy wrote:
So I had a friend tell me this, and while I don't care enough to disprove him since I'm a centrist and see both sides are total shit. Would any of you have something?

+ Show Spoiler +

Death tolls are the primary way we understand the impact of a disaster. And for nearly two weeks after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, as a humanitarian crisis was intensifying, the death toll was frozen at 16.

“Sixteen people certified,” Trump said on October 3 during his visit to the island, repeating a figure confirmed by the territory’s governor. "Everybody watching can really be very proud of what's taken place in Puerto Rico."

It was a moment that crystallized two conflicting narratives about the Puerto Rico disaster. The first one, from the federal government and Puerto Rico’s governor, is of a disaster that’s been managed well, with lives being saved and hospitals getting back up and running.

Lives surely have been saved in the response. But images and reports from the ground tell a story of people, cut off from basic supplies and health care, dying. They tell of hospitals running out of medication and fuel for their generators and struggling to keep up with the “avalanche of patients that came after the hurricane,” as one journalist put it.

The death toll from the hurricane is now up to 45, according to Gov. Ricardo Rosselló. But 90 percent of the 3.4 million American citizens on the island still don’t have power, and 35 percent still don’t have water to drink or bathe in. And given how deadly power outages can be, 45 deaths seems low, according to disaster experts.

At Vox, we decided to compare what the government has been saying with other reports of deaths from the ground. We searched Google News for reports of deaths in English and Spanish media from Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria. We found reports of a total of 81 deaths linked directly or indirectly to the hurricane. Of those, 45 were the deaths certified by the government. The remaining 36 deaths were confirmed by local public officials or funeral directors, according to the reports. We also found another 450 reported deaths, most of causes still unknown, and reports of at least 69 people still missing.

The broader issue here relates to how storm deaths are counted. There are clear deaths from the storm, clear deaths indirectly from the storm, and then deaths that are harder to determine — for instance, a sick patient who died in a hospital experiencing frequent power outages. And then there’s the issue of how effective authorities are at finding and investigating the deaths to make sure they’re included in the count. The breakdown of these categories suggests that the government is being much more cautious in designating deaths as directly or indirectly hurricane-related, given the public information available.

At a Sunday news conference, Karixia Ortiz, press officer for the Department of Public Safety, said that “every death must be confirmed by the Institute of Forensic Science, which means either the bodies have to be brought to San Juan to do an autopsy or a medical examiner must be dispatched to the local municipality to verify the death,” according to an audio recording obtained by Huffington Post.

John Mutter, a disaster researcher at Columbia University who studied the death toll in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, says he’s skeptical of this methodology. “This is the way to go about it if you want to come up with smallest number possible,” he said, adding he suspects the death toll in Puerto Rico from Maria should already be in the hundreds based on what’s known about the conditions on the ground.

On October 13 2017 03:05 LegalLord wrote:
It's unfortunate that Israel was founded where it was, though I don't know if there was any other place it could have been formed. But it is where it is, and there's certainly no changing that now. And if you want to ignore an officially-not-nuclear power, then that's your choice.

On October 13 2017 04:23 Biff The Understudy wrote:

Herzl considered Argentina, but decided the symbolic appeal if Israel was too much of an asset. Oh and they all considered Palestine to be "empty". Talk of fuck ups...

On October 13 2017 04:32 Simberto wrote:
Regarding the fake news friend topic, there is no way that that debate is going to work out (If what was given as quotes are actual quotes and not just your take on it)

The definition given amounts to the Trump definition: "fake news is any news that i dislike", and he wants you to prove a negative with that shitty definition. You are not going to be able to prove that on undefined liberal news outlets there is less news that he dislikes than on undefined conservative news outlets.

On October 13 2017 04:49 Plansix wrote:
No one told Trump that being president meant he was going to be criticized endlessly for 4 years and beyond. Not a job for the thin skinned.