US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9643

On January 07 2018 05:49 TheTenthDoc wrote:
I do love that Trump's right to free tweets came up when he is furiously trying to suppress publication of a book at the moment.

On January 07 2018 04:50 oBlade wrote:

Assuming what you claimed without demonstrating were true, that would only make them even more important. Yet this is what grabs people's attention when there are protests against the ayatollahs in Iran and North and South Korea are talking before the Olympics. It's probably true Trump's candidacy has lowered the level of discourse in the country, but it isn't solely his responsibility, it's him and people who drag everything through the mud just to try to beat and him, together, which is why people's opinion of the president and the media have both sunk.

On January 06 2018 06:55 Mohdoo wrote:


I imagine the titles vary a lot. I've seen places where the guys walking around are considered "support engineers" lol. I'm saying the dude I had to coordinate with for taking days off was paid a smidge more than me. I am sure there is someone in Target making more than $10/hour, but I don't know who that is. More specifically, my point is that a lot of these big stores have this nailed down pretty well. For a given department store, what % of people do you think are above $10/hour?

On January 07 2018 06:12 zlefin wrote:

what I claimed and is indeed true has already been demonstrated dozens of time in thread and elsewhere. we already relitigate things too much in this thread, going over the points every time isn't necessary for things that have been established.

I don' tsee how that makes them more important than ever, when they were always very important.

On January 07 2018 06:12 zlefin wrote:
it may not solely be his responsibility, but the very large majority of it is. and much of the rest belongs to other Republican groups. and on people who support/enable him when he does bad things.

people's opinion of the media has sunk because some people bought into trump's foolishness, and chose to believe him over the media.

media that do everything right will still have less popularity, because real people do shoot the messenger sometimes when they don't like the message. when the truth is your enemy, you attack its purveyors, and the truth is trump's enemy.

On January 07 2018 04:07 oBlade wrote:
Why don't we wait until he actually poops in his hands, assuming it would even fit, and throws it at reporters, first? Because where we are now, in reality, is far from that, which you know is never going to happen. And if it did I'd mainly be worried about how people could react credibly to something of that level when they've already used up so much steam.

On January 07 2018 18:38 Acrofales wrote:


Awesome. Our biggest Trump fanboy just made a joke about either the size of Trump's hands, or that Trump is full of shit.

Either way, progress!

On January 07 2018 19:29 Longshank wrote:

I'm not so sure, could be a brag about Trump taking the biggest dumps.

On January 07 2018 15:20 oBlade wrote:

If you already thought substance was more important than style and agreed with me then why did you feign ignorance as to what the point was except to inject that it's common knowledge that zlefin is right about the Trump admin? It wasn't necessary for you to bring this up and pass it off as settled using the previous times you've done the same thing and said it was settled as evidence of past litigation. Also, I've been to "elsewhere" and many of the people there also seem to come to the opposite conclusion of yours.

If results are good then it's like no news is good news, whereas if the results are that bad then it should be an enormous priority that would constantly supersede all the petty bullshit, right? Hence "more" in "more important."


Media that do everything right is a set you can define, but that doesn't mean it has members, in reality we have gradations. And "popularity" means something different for the president and the media. You only have one president so you can't turn him off or change the channel, there is an opinion on him, whatever it is, he's not competing for market share with other presidents. Reliable media that does justice to issues is uncommon and has less viewership because it's hard to make let alone because it's hard for people watch as it involves thinking. What I'm talking about is already media leaders turning further and further to garbage by making petty lies about crowd size photos (I know the president has been caught exaggerating crowd sizes, that's not a rebuttal, it's what sinking to the same level means - standards) and filling airtime with White House ice cream and McDonald's orders and anonymous sources..

On January 07 2018 22:15 a_flayer wrote:
Some rich dude complaining about the Democrats being too far left:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBm8ILOgVEw

If you don't want to listen that mouth-breathing sack of shit talking, here's the gist of what he said:

"How dare these Bernie supporters say money in politics has a corrupting influence on politicians!!!!"

"Anyway, I called Pelosi and Schumer and told them they won't get my big donations anymore if they don't do what I say".

Some hard-hitting questions of the reporter, too, of course, who immediately noticed that apparent hole in logic and ... oh wait, no, they just laughed and nodded.

On January 07 2018 15:20 oBlade wrote:

Media that do everything right is a set you can define, but that doesn't mean it has members, in reality we have gradations. And "popularity" means something different for the president and the media. You only have one president so you can't turn him off or change the channel, there is an opinion on him, whatever it is, he's not competing for market share with other presidents. Reliable media that does justice to issues is uncommon and has less viewership because it's hard to make let alone because it's hard for people watch as it involves thinking. What I'm talking about is already media leaders turning further and further to garbage by making petty lies about crowd size photos (I know the president has been caught exaggerating crowd sizes, that's not a rebuttal, it's what sinking to the same level means - standards) and filling airtime with White House ice cream and McDonald's orders and anonymous sources..

On January 07 2018 21:59 zlefin wrote:

petty bullshit doesn't get superseded jsut cuz other things are more important; it still happens a lot and gets talked about. that other people came to bad conclusions as a result of not thinking doesn't amount to much. it's a forum, none of this is necessary, we can bring it up anyways though. I didn't feign ignorance; your point had an implied case that there was substance to backup trump, and/or that that substance was good; which is not true.
your response to my media response to yours misses the point of my argument, and seems to be movin to different claims endlessly, rather than sticking to one cogent line of argument. and the media hasn' tsunk anywhere near trump's level. standards have many gradations, and the ones trump has used are far far lower than the media. and complaining about anonymous sources just means you don' tcare; because anonymous sources most certainly do matter a lot.
also i'm havin trouble parsing your arguments right now, and it feels like they're getting off track on tangents and/or unfocused at times.

On January 08 2018 00:20 oBlade wrote:

I think one of us doesn't know what supersede means.

Tangents, because I don't have the goal of belaboring and dissecting the same point forever and bashing you over the head until you submit and say something is unequivocally and indisputably objectively true. I'm not existentially bothered by disagreement, I'm trying to move things along because frankly my whole point is there are more interesting things going on. Please take my word when I say I don't have trouble understanding anything you say (if you were really worried I didn't get something) but there's other people here and thread courtesy.

Anonymous sources are important and I like investigative journalism and I liked Wikileaks since the Iraq War logs and still like them. But anonymous sources are indistinguishable from utter fabrications in the absence of corroboration. Like the piss dossier that credulous people ate up. Things like that rightfully have a cost in trust and credibility. But if the GOP just admitted they voted for someone who like Russian prostitutes to pee on him, we could move on, but it's the hypocrisy, right? It's not the pure lies directed against you that are the issue, it's the fact that you don't cave to them. What did Trump ever do that you would say is comparable to that example, or far far lower, I'm curious?

On January 08 2018 00:43 zlefin wrote:
the first part of the second paragraph is ok; but then you start losing me as you go on some weird rant.
odd that you're focusin on the piss part nobody cares about rather than the serious stuff which is why people did care. it's like you're being extremely disingenuous.

On January 08 2018 00:00 iamthedave wrote:


He's not competing for marketshare with other Presidents? Is that why he mentions Obama constantly and apparently has made it his mission to undo everything Obama did?

On January 08 2018 00:00 iamthedave wrote:
Anonymous sources are 100% necessary. They also aren't actually anonymous. They're usually people speaking who don't want their names known publically, but who the journalists know.

On January 08 2018 00:00 iamthedave wrote:
It's the standard thing; shoot the messenger as often as possible so people stop listening to the message. If you don't trust that journalistic outlets do their due diligence (some do not, the majority do, even if they make mistakes at times) then sure, 'anonymous sources' sounds really suspicious.

It's sad that most people don't understand how journalism works. It'd be much harder for the elites to pull the wool if they couldn't just run around screaming 'fake news' like a banshee under the full moon and have people believe them.