The Many Faces of US Politics...

[Eamonnca1]

LOL

And The NY Times, WaPo, CNN and MSNBC are neutral commentators in all this?

They are the biggest pack of fvckin liars that ever existed

Your buddy Chick Todd just had to apologize for using a selectively edited clip this week

Here ya go again Whitey... absurd equivalence
The current score on the lie count is
Trump 18000 Chuck Todd 1
BTW why do you never answer or challenge any of my posts.

Tr

Messenger-shooting is the last resort of the conservatives now that they've been exposed for the shower of incompetent criminals they are. Did you see the conservative president running with his tail between his legs yesterday after two female reporters tried to question him at the briefing? I'd be embarrassed to have a coward like that running my Home Owner's Association, never mind a country.

[Gmac]

Diane Feinstein sold 1 to 5m worth of stock after feb18 but according to media she was just questioned and gave over all records whereas burr  house was raided and phone confiscated see how they spin it , or maybe Diane is a little more nuanced in such matters.

[sid waddell]

take a listen to gaslit nation podcast heard it's right up your alley. I have to work now I'll get back to you .

How long have you been listening to it? You seem to be very familiar with it!

[whitey]

Diane Feinstein sold 1 to 5m worth of stock after feb18 but according to media she was just questioned and gave over all records whereas burr  house was raided and phone confiscated see how they spin it , or maybe Diane is a little more nuanced in such matters.

I have had a securities license for 30 years and am mandated to do a compliance training module twice a year on insider trading. When the news broke I looked into it, and if what was said was true, Feinstein and the Republican lady from GA were in the clear, but Burrs actions were definitely questionable

[J70]

Diane Feinstein sold 1 to 5m worth of stock after feb18 but according to media she was just questioned and gave over all records whereas burr  house was raided and phone confiscated see how they spin it , or maybe Diane is a little more nuanced in such matters.

I wouldn't worry about it.

AG Barr will see he's looked after, assuming he's someone Trump cares about.

[dec]

Diane Feinstein sold 1 to 5m worth of stock after feb18 but according to media she was just questioned and gave over all records whereas burr  house was raided and phone confiscated see how they spin it , or maybe Diane is a little more nuanced in such matters.

Diane Feinstein didn't sell any stock after February 18th. Her assets are in a blind trust. Her husband sold stock on 13 January and 18 February. She did not attend the non public briefing that Burr attended.

[sid waddell]

LOL

And The NY Times, WaPo, CNN and MSNBC are neutral commentators in all this?

They are the biggest pack of fvckin liars that ever existed

Your buddy Chick Todd just had to apologize for using a selectively edited clip this week

Utterly hilarious. Trump's performance is measured in LPD, Lies Per Day. What's it up to today?As of January he was up to over 16,000 false or misleading claims since he took office.

As for the likes of CNN, Jon Stewart explained them better than I could. He said that if they have any bias, it's in the direction of sensationalism and drama, but to suggest that they're the equivalent of Fox is just ridiculous. MSNBC tries to be the left's version of Fox, but they don't quite make it. Fox is a well-oiled lying machine that's skilled in the art of propaganda to the point where Goebbels would have been impressed by it.

The New York Times, CNN and to an extent the Washington Post have a terrible propensity to frame stories on Trump's terms and stay away from stories that are genuinely harmful to him or not draw attention to the real stories that matter about him because they're petrified of being seen as biased against him. Consistent threats against the media tends to have that effect (and threats against the media have been Trump's stock in trade for his whole adult life) but it's still a big failing on the part of those organisations. Also CNN platformed an actual Nazi in Richard Spencer, for fook's sake. These organisations have major, major failings, but they are not in the direction that Trumpbots portray - they are in in the other direction - the direction that is advantageous to Trump.

Anybody who is still running with the narrative that "the media are anti-Trump" is strictly for the slow learners class.

On the contrary, CNN etc. made Trump because they gave him oceans of free coverage and the US media in general has consistently treated Trump as a normal politician when he's an existential threat to the US.

Bias doesn't even come into things. The concept of the media being "biased" against Trump is as ludicrous as the notion of the press having an "anti-Hitler bias" in 1938. Trump is objectively a fooking sociopathic, possibly psychopathic monster running a grotesque regime.

Incompetence is another thing that isn;t relevant, because it implies a measure of good faith on the part of Trump which does not exist. Trump is a wrecker, he's a nihilist. He is not there to be "competent" in any normal sense of the word that normal people understand. The problem is that he's actually highlly competent for wwhat he's there to do, which is to destroy the US from the inside and strip it for parts, make himself and his criminal kleptocrat buddies rich as hell, and completely trash the reputation of the US internationally and destroy the post World War II western alliance. It comes back to Trump being a Russian asset and in bed with the Russian mafia for four decades.

Media as entertainment has been an utterly disastrous development over the last three decades. The person who says the most ludicrous things is deemed the most "entertaining" by media desperate for ratings/sales/clicks/advertising, and thus gets the most coverage.

This is closely related to the far right idea of "the marketplace of ideas", a truly disastrous concept, which holds that there are no objectively right or wrong opinions or ideas, and that the worth of an opinion or an idea can only be measured by how much reaction it generates, ie. its entertainment value.

Idiocy and criminality are "entertaining". Stable, competent government is not. It's little wonder right-wing crackpots out to wreck the gaff continually say "people have had enough of experts".

Racists, flat earthers, climate crisis deniers and anti-vaxxers are "entertaining". Sober science, sober expertise and tolerance are not "entertaining".

Which is why the ideas and opinions that win in our age are so often the stupid ones, and why the politicians who win are so often the criminals and the psychopaths, the so called "charismatic" ones. It's no coincidence that so many of the looney right-wingers now in power or close to power around the world have so called "big" personalities. They understand politics as entertainment and soap opera.

It is capitalism in its purest form. And education is another enemy of such right-wing crackpotism. Rupert Murdoch has not just dedicated his life to making the rich richer and the poor poorer, but to making the poor less educated by serving them up a diet of sensationalist trash wherever he has gone. Trump and his criminal cabal hate education too, they hate liberal arts education most of all because it gives young people a ability to think critically. They hate public education, which is why Trump appointed as Education Secretary a billionaire who has a history of opposing public schools, to destroy the public school system. Education, and especially working class education, is a mortal threat to right-wing crackpotism.

Trump's followers (and that is what they are, followers, in the cult sense) all have the perfect mix of cyncism and gullibility, and a love of seeing others endure pain that has been developed by propaganda, that a pied piper is just waiting to exploit. All the most notorious fascists and authoritarians did that. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Putin in Russia, Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkey, Netanyahu in Israel, Orban in Hungary, Terreblanche in South Africa, Paisley in Northern Ireland.

[Gmac]

Diane Feinstein sold 1 to 5m worth of stock after feb18 but according to media she was just questioned and gave over all records whereas burr  house was raided and phone confiscated see how they spin it , or maybe Diane is a little more nuanced in such matters.

Diane Feinstein didn't sell any stock after February 18th. Her assets are in a blind trust. Her husband sold stock on 13 January and 18 February. She did not attend the non public briefing that Burr attended.

she ever speak to him you think.

[dec]

Diane Feinstein sold 1 to 5m worth of stock after feb18 but according to media she was just questioned and gave over all records whereas burr  house was raided and phone confiscated see how they spin it , or maybe Diane is a little more nuanced in such matters.

Diane Feinstein didn't sell any stock after February 18th. Her assets are in a blind trust. Her husband sold stock on 13 January and 18 February. She did not attend the non public briefing that Burr attended.

she ever speak to him you think.

Yes

And she still didn't sell any stock

And her husband didn't sell any stock after February 18th

But other than that you were pretty accurate.

[screenexile]

take a listen to gaslit nation podcast heard it's right up your alley. I have to work now I'll get back to you .

How long have you been listening to it? You seem to be very familiar with it!

Yes because some niche podcast nobody has heard of is the same as the Cable news behemoth Fox News...

[whitey]

Sid- if you looked up Trump Derangement Syndrome in the dictionary your picture would be right next to it

[Gmac]

Diane Feinstein sold 1 to 5m worth of stock after feb18 but according to media she was just questioned and gave over all records whereas burr  house was raided and phone confiscated see how they spin it , or maybe Diane is a little more nuanced in such matters.

Diane Feinstein didn't sell any stock after February 18th. Her assets are in a blind trust. Her husband sold stock on 13 January and 18 February. She did not attend the non public briefing that Burr attended.

she ever speak to him you think.

Yes

And she still didn't sell any stock

And her husband didn't sell any stock after February 18th

But other than that you were pretty accurate.

she sold half to a million dollars of Allogene therapeutics on Jan 31st and her husband sold 1 to 5 million of stock from same company on feb 18, burr is thought to have sold up to 172 m

[dec]

Diane Feinstein sold 1 to 5m worth of stock after feb18 but according to media she was just questioned and gave over all records whereas burr  house was raided and phone confiscated see how they spin it , or maybe Diane is a little more nuanced in such matters.

Diane Feinstein didn't sell any stock after February 18th. Her assets are in a blind trust. Her husband sold stock on 13 January and 18 February. She did not attend the non public briefing that Burr attended.

she ever speak to him you think.

Yes

And she still didn't sell any stock

And her husband didn't sell any stock after February 18th

But other than that you were pretty accurate.

she sold half to a million dollars of Allogene therapeutics on Jan 31st and her husband sold 1 to 5 million of stock from same company on feb 18, burr is thought to have sold up to 172 m

No she didn't

[sid waddell]

There's a couple of things in this I disagree with, namely the concept of Trump being incompetent - he's not there to be competent - and the concept of right-wing media being a "perpetual misinformation machine"- it's a perpetual disinformation machine - misinformation implies inadvertant false information when there's nothing inadvertant about the false information peddled by right wing nutcases.

But the broad thrust of the piece - that right-wingers in the US are in the iron grip of a dangerous and nonsensical paranoia complex brought about by propaganda - is spot on.

It's been absolutely fascinating yet horrifying to see them desperately try to plug the Coronavirus into their insane right-wing culture war. America is living through a ghoulish age of disenlightenment.

https://theweek.com/articles/914220/conservative-victimhood-complex-made-america-impossible-govern

The conservative victimhood complex has made America impossible to govern

Ryan Cooper

The United States has had the worst national response to the coronavirus pandemic among rich nations largely because President Trump is an incompetent leader whose narcissism means he can focus on little beyond his own approval ratings. From the start of the crisis to today, he has completely failed to take the virus seriously, and refused to do anything meaningful to stop it. It was his job to protect America, and he can't do the job.

But Trump's appalling failure is only the most visible part of a vast ocean of right-wing dysfunction. For conservative zealots and media figures, the pandemic is quickly becoming just another culture war battleground — an axis of postmodern symbolic conflict, another vent for bottomless grievance, and fuel for a screeching victimhood complex. The practical effect will be to fuel infection and hamstring economic recovery. It's a stark obstacle before fixing this or any other crisis.


Let's take mask-wearing. As research about the coronavirus has developed, the effectiveness of masks in slowing the spread of the disease has become clear, above all in confined indoor spaces. Studies have found that being outdoors is relatively low-risk, and most infections happen when people are in proximity to each other indoors for a long time — but also that masks can drastically reduce the possibility of infecting others if you happen to be contagious. Offices, public transportation, stores, restaurants, church services, and especially homes are where most transmission happens. Wearing a mask whenever one is indoors around strangers is a cheap and no-consequence way of protecting one's community — even if it only helps a little, it's a minuscule inconvenience.

Yet a developing narrative on the right holds that masks are a sign of weakness and cowardice. Trump refuses to wear one even to set an example, reportedly because he thinks it will make him look bad. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) refuses to wear one even though it is not clear he is permanently immune after recovering from the disease. Vice President Pence refused to wear one even while visiting COVID-19 patients. On Fox News, Laura Ingraham defended Pence from critics, saying "They'll say this whole mask thing is settled science just like they do with climate change. Of course, it's not and they know it," despite having previously endorsed wearing them. (Naturally, after two cases of coronavirus cropped up in the White House last week, all staffers are now required to wear masks when in the building.)

Further down the conservative food chain, anti-mask fulmination has gotten more extreme and much weirder. First Things editor R.R. Reno claimed on Twitter that "Masks=enforced cowardice." A city order in Stillwater, Oklahoma requiring masks in businesses was quickly reversed when conservative lunatics threatened violence against workers trying to enforce the rule. The conservative base is taking the elite cue — in a recent poll, just 47 percent of Republicans report wearing masks in public, against 69 percent of Democrats. At New York, Ed Kilgore reports that in a suburban Georgia grocery store, conservatives glared daggers at him for wearing a mask.

Something similar is holding true with pandemic control measures like business closures. Smallish groups of mask-less protesters have swarmed state capitols across the country, demanding the economy be somehow reopened. When one Dallas salon owner refused to obey business closure rules and was locked up for a week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott quickly reversed his own action. "Throwing Texans in jail who have had their businesses shut down through no fault of their own is nonsensical, and I will not allow it to happen," he said. The salon owner, of course, successfully claimed victimhood and collected over half a million dollars from a crowdfunding campaign (which very well might have been the entire point).

It shouldn't be surprising that the reality of masks and other pandemic control measures is the precise opposite of the conservative agitprop line. Most masks and lockdown orders are primarily a way to protect others, not just yourself — which you would think would be exactly in line with purported conservative values of traditional masculinity. But facts have never stood in the way of the conservative persecution complex. Nothing gets their blood flowing like playing martyr before imaginary liberal tyranny. Casting oneself as Anne Frank for having to wear a two-dollar cloth mask at Walmart during the worst pandemic in a century would be a stretch for most people in the world, but not American movement conservatives.

This instinct is strengthened by how badly Trump has botched the crisis. He is the hero-president, the man before whom all Republicans must bow five times per day. His gargantuan, world-historical failure cannot be admitted, but neither can it be avoided. Therefore scapegoats and distractions must be found to relieve the cognitive dissonance. The virus is fake, or it only kills worthless old people, or it's a Chinese conspiracy. Measures to fight it are howling liberal tyranny, even if it's Republican governors enacting them.

Conservative media probably just can't help itself. The entire "perpetual misinformation machine," as Alex Pareene calls it, runs on whipping elderly white conservatives into a frothing rage over whatever is happening. Plus today, the president and half of the Republican congressional caucus are themselves eager right-wing propaganda addicts, forming a perfectly-sealed loop of insanity. It was likely inevitable that the pandemic would get sucked into the hysteria industrial complex, because that's what right-wing media does with everything.

Already this has created an ideal coronavirus transmission pool — a critical mass of right-wing extremists who are unwilling to obey government pandemic control measures and are convinced personal measures to do so are beta male cowardice. Many will become sick as a result, and some will die — but not only conservatives, as the virus will infect any available host. This will keep the pandemic raging, and hence further delay the restoration of the economy.

A different president who wasn't an addle-brained dolt would certainly have done something to fight the pandemic. But he or she still would have run directly into the conservative lunacy problem. It's hard to see how America can be governed when much of the country has taken leave of its senses.

[armaghniac]

This whistleblower medical guy that was sacked does not induce much confidence

Bright claimed he also agitated for a greater stockpile of masks, swabs and other urgently needed medical equipment but was met with "indifference" and was then sidelined. "I was told that my urgings were causing a commotion and I was removed from those meetings," he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/14/rick-bright-testimony-coronavirus-trump-ousted-whistleblower