US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1175

On March 03 2019 04:36 Simberto wrote:


I think the US conservative opinion on this is that anything but Fox News is leftist.

On March 03 2019 04:36 Simberto wrote:


I think the US conservative opinion on this is that anything but Fox News is leftist.

To laughter, Trump continued, mockingly: “No planes. No energy. When the wind stops blowing, that’s the end of your electric. ‘Let’s hurry up. Darling, darling, is the wind blowing today? I’d like to watch television, darling.’”

The crowd erupted in cheers and applause.

On March 03 2019 03:51 xDaunt wrote:

All of the above except for the WSJ.

“Right now I don’t even have healthcare,” Thompson said.

“I go to the emergency room,” Gaudet said, laughing.

“I just go to the emergency room,” Thompson agreed.

I asked if they would support higher taxes for millionaires if it meant that people like them would get free healthcare. Gaudet didn’t hesitate. “No, because one day we might be the millionaires.”

On March 03 2019 05:23 FallDownMarigold wrote:


Well no offense, really, but I think your definition of "leftist" is made up then, and in that case it's not really a useful label to apply to something like the NYT, which is actually pretty centrist.

In any case, I didn't mean to derail the thread with a tangent on the media, but I was curious if you were referring to actual leftist media outlets in the US, because I haven't actually encountered many in the mainstream. Maybe I don't look hard enough.

On March 03 2019 05:23 FallDownMarigold wrote:


Well no offense, really, but I think your definition of "leftist" is made up then, and in that case it's not really a useful label to apply to something like the NYT, which is actually pretty centrist.

In any case, I didn't mean to derail the thread with a tangent on the media, but I was curious if you were referring to actual leftist media outlets in the US, because I haven't actually encountered many in the mainstream. Maybe I don't look hard enough.

On March 03 2019 05:29 Nouar wrote:
Damn, I don't even know why I'm caring when I see this kind of reaction (Trump latino supporters at the El Paso rally). The con is so obvious, it's even worse than a casino, but it still works, like moths to a flame...



https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/02/why-donald-trump-could-win-again-by-dave-eggers

On March 03 2019 03:30 FallDownMarigold wrote:


What is a leftist media org in the US? NYT, WaPo, WSJ, NBC, CNN, ABC, etc... none of those are leftist. They're more like moderate, maybe *slightly* left (WaPo) or right (WSJ) leaning.

On March 03 2019 05:18 Nouar wrote:


Trump's critique of the Green New Deal and wind energy. There are clear downsides to Wind Energy, but when part of a proper energy mix, it's fine. It's really appaling to see "the leader of the free world" having an IQ of 2, being proud of it, and his idiots cheering him on.

I guess, I should be happy that he is often too dumb to even advance his dangerous agenda. So maybe there is a chance there is still a country at the end of the tunnel.

edit : woops, the source https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/02/donald-trump-cpac-speech-democrats-green-new-deal-bullshit

On March 03 2019 06:55 KwarK wrote:

If he thinks that’s bad wait until he hears about solar power and this new thing called night.

On March 03 2019 07:00 Nouar wrote:

No, that IS a very fair criticism to make about solar power, and why we cannot really make solar panels our main source of power, since the consumption peak is usually when the sun sets. Even being able to store energy would be nigh impossible in a country grid, due to the sheer amount of batteries that would be needed. (Think Total Annihilation and saving up for shooting huge energy cannons, if some of you remember xD)
So I would have been ok if he complained about that. But this television/wind bullshit, man...

On March 03 2019 06:48 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


Why do you think people on the right think that those sources are biased on the left? Conservative friends of mine have insisted that news organizations that disagree with their personal views must be biased to the left, not realizing that the news could still be neither left nor right leaning, and that any article that disagrees with their position isn't necessarily biased or inaccurate.

For the simple reason that the bias and deceptive reporting goes beyond simple political point-of-view disagreements and it is very invisible to the ones perpetrating it. Kevin Williamson does an ample job outlining the problem:
A few days ago, I had a conversation with an earnest, left-leaning media executive who bristled a little at the suggestion that his firm was deeply biased. Bring up bias to most Democrat-leaning newspaper editors or mainstream-media executives, and you’ll almost always get the same answer: “I don’t believe we are biased,” or “I don’t see where we are biased.”

And that is the thing about genuine bias, as opposed to the devious and programmatic shaping of news coverage for partisan ends with malice aforethought: Bias is almost always invisible to the bias-holder. That’s what makes it bias. E.g., when Lydia Polgreen writes something very stupid about U.S. gun policy and reveals that she doesn’t understand what a semiautomatic weapon is, she isn’t really being malicious. She’s just ignorant of the facts about firearms and is surrounded by similarly ignorant people. Ignorance is the most common form of bias. It’s why the New York Times et al. end up sounding like Jane Goodall among the chimps when they cover conservatives, Evangelicals, those salt-of-the-earth voters who seem to spend all their time at diners in Iowa or New Hampshire, etc.

(Yeah, you’d think Polgreen et al. would write a little less authoritatively about firearms regulations — or simply write a little less about them, period — until they figure out the difference between a machine gun and a hunting rifle. But that’s journalism, circa 2018.)

(“Journalism.”)

The upside of these biases is that they can be very amusing. The indispensable Noah Rothman wrote an essay in Commentary a while back about a funny rhetorical tick in American political journalism: “Republicans pounce!” When a Republican does something stupid or wrong and gets criticized for it, the story is that a Republican has done something stupid or wrong. When a Democrat does something stupid or wrong, the story is “Republicans pounce!” on the episode, cynically looking to wring some petty advantage out of the mess. For those who lean Democrat, that is a much more pleasant story to report.

I thought of that this morning when reading the New York Times: “Vatican Power Struggle Bursts Into Open as Conservatives Pounce.” The story is about allegations that Pope Francis may have known about and was covering up for the disgraced former cardinal Theodore “Uncle Teddy” McCarrick. Many of Pope Francis’s critics, especially in the United States, are conservatives. But, presumably, the more progressive elements in the Church are also against raping children and sexually exploiting seminarians, and against covering up such crimes. There are some hard-Left elements in American Catholicism, but it is difficult to believe that any substantial portion of them would be less critical of such crimes than would their more conservative colleagues. They may be politically backward, but they are not monsters.

If true, the allegation about the pope would be a development of enormous institutional importance for the Catholic Church. But, for the New York Times, the real story is “conservatives pounce.” It’s a predictable and banal equivocation.

I am, as I sometimes feel obliged to disclose, a New York Times reader and subscriber, and an admirer of the first-rate reporting work the newspaper does. But this sort of reflexive defensiveness does point to a deep and disfiguring bias at the newspaper, one that is not necessarily rooted in malice but rather in intellectual and cultural homogeneity. That it is so easy to lampoon indicates, to me, that they are not quite aware of it. But there isn’t much excuse for being that blockheaded, either.

On the subject of the Times, I sometimes feel like Group Captain Lionel Mandrake considering the Japanese who held him prisoner and tortured him. “I don’t think they wanted me to talk, really. I don’t think they wanted me to say anything. It was just their way of having a bit of fun, the swines. Strange thing is, they make such bloody good cameras.”

People that work for me, just the other day, two years old, beautiful child went to have the vaccine and came back and a week later, got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.

On March 03 2019 07:00 Nouar wrote:

No, that IS a very fair criticism to make about solar power, and why we cannot really make solar panels our main source of power, since the consumption peak is usually when the sun sets. Even being able to store energy would be nigh impossible in a country grid, due to the sheer amount of batteries that would be needed. (Think Total Annihilation and saving up for shooting huge energy cannons, if some of you remember xD)
So I would have been ok if he complained about that. But this television/wind bullshit, man...

On March 03 2019 07:25 KwarK wrote:
Danglars, if a considerable proportion of the population believe in something that is demonstrably false would a neutral journalist present both sides as if they have merit?

Take vaccines for example. How would a centrist journalist cover Trump's statements on vaccines and autism such as


Incidentally the anecdote is also untrue, if that helps at all.