The Many Faces of US Politics...

[dec]

Britain's Number One columnist Jeremy Hopkiss is back in today's Daily Heil, and boy does he tell it like it is!

STOP MOANING AND GET OVER IT, YOU PC FASCISTS!

HOPKISS AT LARGE ON THE US ELECTION - TELLING IT LIKE IT IS!

... Load of moaning and whinging deleted ...

For someone who doesn't seem to like moaning and whinging, he does a lot of moaning and whinging.

[Declan]

Interesting thoughts on a possible new US approach to foreign affairs

The World at One ‏@BBCWorldatOne  · 3m3 minutes ago 
"What difference does who owns Crimea make to the US?" Trump-backer and ex-senior CIA official Michael Scheuer #wato #Trump

[seafoid]

Lefty liberals force feeding education down the throats of people who value liberty
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3940402/A-parade-Kourtney-Kardashian-shares-revealing-image-sister-Khloe-bathing-suit-posts-equally-naughty-one-herself.html

[Denn Forever]

Trump has been unfairly victimised by the bullies. He wants to make America great again. He stood up for the little people. He knows that by making people stand up on their own two feet, he's freeing them from the shackles of the tyranny of social security, the t

I think that people here are disarppointed that the democrats had someone like that (Bernie Sanders) but then the party machine got involved and selected someone in their image.

If the repuublicans party had their way, Trump would never have run.

[easytiger95]

Non-college educated means that the people within that demographic did not go to college- it does not mean that they are not educated in any other sense. It was also used mainly by pollsters as it is one of their main ways of differentiating voters for measurement.

But if being called non-college educated, when you are, in fact, non-college educated, is your reason for voting for a vicious, bigoted, sexual predator, then I believe the term "snowflake" applies. Whitey, would you not be giving those people a boot up the hole for their sensitivity?

The transition is falling apart, it's hilarious. Trump is too incompetent to be a dictator.

Lol.....keep ignoring and issues and keep up the name calling.

Sticks and stones Whitey, or have the snowflakes on the right forgotten that? And if you believe that being called "non-college educated" even compares to some of the labels applied to the left and minorities by Pravda (sorry, Breitbart...) and other alt right sources, then you truly have drank the Kool-Aid. But of course, you voted Jill Stein...didn't you? For a Green voter, you're awfully worried about the sensibilities of the right.

I'd have a lot more respect for Trump voters if they owned what they voted for, instead of whining on about being forgotten.

And the MSM also need to stop colluding in the post election consensus that Trump will pivot to rationality. Nothing he has done since the election gives any indication that he will rule in any fashion other than how he campaigned.

Which means ICE will be trawling Dorchester, Worcester and the suburbs of New York for Irish illegals to deport as well as the barrios of LA.

The Republic is in free fall, because Trump voters cut the parachute cords.

[seafoid]

Journalists are helping to create a dangerous consensus

Brexit vote and US election showed media's failure to ask the really difficult questions
Declan Lawn

If the job of investigative journalism is to put new and relevant facts into the public domain, then the American media performed relatively well during the recent presidential campaign, and in some cases, it did brilliantly.

The "hot mic" tapes and Donald Trump's tax returns were, by anyone's standards, excellent scoops and most probably, in any election before this one, they might have ended the hopes of a presidential candidate. But not this time. This time, the facts no longer mattered.

We've heard a lot recently about the concept of a "post-factual society" and there has been a great deal of debate about what that means.

Some say it's a society where facts no longer exist; in fact it's a society where they exist, but don't matter.

In that scenario, serious investigative journalism finds itself in the novel position of making less and less impact.

Until relatively recently, a methodical piece of revelatory investigative journalism could expect to produce two results – outrage on behalf of its readership and audience, and shame on behalf of its target.

Fifteen years ago when I first went to work as a reporter for Panorama, the BBC current affairs and investigative programme, we could count on a general set of moral and ethical assumptions shared across society and work out pretty well how our journalism would play in them.

If you did a story about how a tycoon was treating his minimum-wage workers terribly and you told it with compelling testimony, perhaps with secret filming and supported by documentary evidence, you could pretty much guarantee that when it went out on prime-time television, the audience would be outraged.

Then, almost certainly, the "shame" element would follow, like a necessary bedfellow. We could expect a mea culpa from the tycoon, perhaps a public apology and a declared determination to make things better.

All of that is changing fast. One of the greatest changes I have noticed in journalism is that stories we would consider to be important no longer make the impact we expected.

So why is that? A simple and rather superficial answer – although it contains a lot of truth – is social media. Outrage is in short supply because it is a muscle that has been over-used. The human heart can only summon so much outrage.

If you are checking your Twitter feed 20 times a day, the chances are that on a fairly regular basis you are seeing sights that most humans were, until recently, rarely exposed to. A dead baby in the ruins of Aleppo; a mother holding her child, killed in a chemical attack; a teenager who has been run over by a lorry in a terrorist attack in France.

Most big broadcasters have "ingest editors" – people whose job it is to look at the raw footage sent in from all over the world, and to cut out the horror that cannot be shown on mainstream television.

It's a tough job and people who do it regularly receive breaks from it as well as counselling to help them deal with it.

These days, we're all ingest editors, but without the breaks or the counselling.

In that context, the human capacity for outrage becomes exhausted very quickly.

You cannot be outraged all of the time and so when you hear news of another political scandal or tax-evading business person, the moral and emotional bank is empty.

Take the concept of shame. These days if you're the centre of a big story and you have done wrong, you can be almost guaranteed it will blow over.

An entire industry of crisis management PR consultants has grown up around the task of telling clients to sit tight.

And the brutal truth about shame, both the public and private kind, is that too often it is a factor of expectation; those who think the punishment will be fleeting or non-existent feel it a great deal less.

In today's political climate, would US president Richard Nixon have been impeached? Would he have resigned? I don't believe so.

He might instead simply send out a tweet saying his enemies were out to get him, and God Bless America, and now it's time to move on – and we all would.

So, how have we got here? It starts with the financial crisis of 2008. When the history books are written, the seismic political events of the past year will be traced to that beginning.

Before, during, and after the 2008 crash, serious journalism dropped the ball. Because we knew, didn't we? We knew.

In Belfast, London and Dublin, we knew on some instinctive common-sense level but we subjugated our instincts to the judgments of experts who did not exist. We knew it didn't feel right, that it was unsustainable.

But as journalists we missed it. Or more to the point, we didn't tell it, until it came from the bottom up and could not be ignored – until it had already happened.

The central issue is that journalists buy into narratives just like everybody else and just like everybody else we can be wrong on a collective and massive scale. This is no surprise – we are not supernatural sages.

The problem is that we are getting ever worse at going against the dominant consensus. Fewer and fewer of us are anti-authoritarian enough and difficult enough to go with our gut and challenge the narrative.

These days journalists are not rewarded for being difficult. A culture does not exist in which a journalist can render an alternative narrative without being dismissed as a loonie leftie or alt-right conspiracy theorist.

Thirty years ago journalists questioned dominant narratives all the time – it was what journalists were for.

Today, questioning the consensus is a dangerous game; whether it's the consensus of neoliberalism or military interventionism or whatever – it gets you called a "conspiracy theorist". This is how journalism fails.

As humans we have instincts about things we see around us. Intuition. Common sense. And as journalists, we have a duty to follow these observations wherever they take us, even if it is against the prevailing wisdom.

Yet now, too many of us have had that instinct trained out of us; we stay with the herd, even when there are no real fences us around to hold us in – just our own expectations and those of our peers.

I should point out, if it isn't already obvious, I am entirely guilty of the sin of which I speak. I spent a decade travelling around the UK doing Panorama after Panorama.

The subjects were diverse – welfare cuts, the National Health Service, undercover investigations into criminals, migrant labour exposés – I put a lot of facts out into the world and as far as I know they were all correct.

But the bigger story was the one all around me. It was what I was seeing in towns such as Stoke and Scunthorpe, Merthyr Tydfil and Bradford. It was the despair. The grim, grinding, daily despair in the lives of so many of the people I met.

And yet I had no way to tell it as a story, to sum it all up, to tie it together, even though I felt it instinctively. I never even suggested it. I should have. And then on June 23rd in the vote on EU membership it became a story after all.

So how have we failed? We have failed in America and the UK by narrowing the acceptable boundaries of investigative journalism.

We have failed by allowing a climate of intellectual adventure to wither away from journalism, the one part of society that should support voices who seriously and thoughtfully challenge the dominant narratives that shape our world.

We have allowed ourselves to become a herd of sheep, and the more closely the herd bunches together, the smaller the corner of the field it takes up.

Pretty soon we think this corner of the field is the whole field.

But it isn't – it's just our corner.

So is there a way forward? I think so. First, mainstream newspapers and broadcasters need to fundamentally change the kind of content they commission.

They need to seek out voices on the extremes of right and left instead of allowing new, single-politics media outlets grow up at the fringes.

They should feature these voices and interrogate them, holding them to the standard we all aspire to – of fact-based reason. Bring everyone into the tent. See how they hold up under questioning.

Journalists need to pull off the greatest trick of all – to recognise the limits of their own perceptions and try to exceed them. To see that there might be another narrative and another way of looking at the world.

We need to use journalistic rigour to stress-test the basic assumptions we all live under.

We need to question the consensus because the only thing that is certain is that the consensus nearly always turns out to be wrong. As a journalist, I look forward to it all, now that everything has changed.

In a way, I find these strange, dark and ridiculous times to be exciting. They say that soldiers need wars. Journalists too get stale without a fight. We should get out of the corner of the field and go looking for one.

This is an edited version of a contribution to the Cleraun Media Conference on Investigative Journalism on the Digital Frontier held last weekend in Dublin. Declan Lawn is a reporter with BBC Current Affairs, working mainly for Panorama and BBC Northern Ireland's Spotlight programme.

It's groupthink and self censorship . There were loads of articles. But it wasn't in the interest of your career to join the dots

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/05/america-supersized-unequality-gridlock-follows
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/feb/17/bruce-springsteen-wrecking-ball
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/77969ab0-956a-11e1-ad38-00144feab49a.html
http://www.progressive.org/shame-on-obama-for-abandoning-wisconsin-during-the-recall
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/the-squeezed-middle-abroad-tales-of-toil-and-turmoil-1.459088
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bca4c114-29d8-11e3-bbb8-00144feab7de.html

Journalists operate in silos. The finance ones don't talk to anyone. The political hacks don't understand finance.
Stephen Collins has no idea of how the Eurozone works. That is not his job.
 
If you look at UK economic stats it has been clear for a while that the rich are creaming it and that the working classes are being shafted.
But everybody wants an optimistic story

There is far too much trust in broken institutions.

[seafoid]

Give them enough rope

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3938170/Let-Nigel-Farage-help-build-bridge-Donald-Trump-says-Katie-Hopkins.html

It's pretty obvious that Trump is a con. The economic story may hang together as far as March. But not longer. there won't be any payrises. there might be a half a million new jobs.
There will be healthcare increases and tax cuts for the ultra rich.
It will be hard to keep the bullshit going.

And people who flock to Trump now like Ms Dogshit and Nigel Falange and Dershowitz are going to be exposed for the frauds they are.  After WW2 in France the likes of Katie were executed.

[stew]

Non-college educated means that the people within that demographic did not go to college- it does not mean that they are not educated in any other sense. It was also used mainly by pollsters as it is one of their main ways of differentiating voters for measurement.

But if being called non-college educated, when you are, in fact, non-college educated, is your reason for voting for a vicious, bigoted, sexual predator, then I believe the term "snowflake" applies. Whitey, would you not be giving those people a boot up the hole for their sensitivity?

The transition is falling apart, it's hilarious. Trump is too incompetent to be a dictator.

Lol.....keep ignoring and issues and keep up the name calling.

Sticks and stones Whitey, or have the snowflakes on the right forgotten that? And if you believe that being called "non-college educated" even compares to some of the labels applied to the left and minorities by Pravda (sorry, Breitbart...) and other alt right sources, then you truly have drank the Kool-Aid. But of course, you voted Jill Stein...didn't you? For a Green voter, you're awfully worried about the sensibilities of the right.

I'd have a lot more respect for Trump voters if they owned what they voted for, instead of whining on about being forgotten.

And the MSM also need to stop colluding in the post election consensus that Trump will pivot to rationality. Nothing he has done since the election gives any indication that he will rule in any fashion other than how he campaigned.

Which means ICE will be trawling Dorchester, Worcester and the suburbs of New York for Irish illegals to deport as well as the barrios of LA.

The Republic is in free fall, because Trump voters cut the parachute cords.

So in essence the man has spent nit one minute in office and the 'republic is in free fall because Trump supporters cut the parachute chords'

If the republic is in free fall it is because of Obama and Clinton's failure on virtually every political policy they touched, don't put this on people who voted for Trump, that is wrong and cowardly, and typical of the left.

Trump got elected because the eight years under the democrats sickened the electorate, scandal after scandal, the lies added up and then your champion Hillary throws a world class wobbker at the news she was going to lose and starts hitting people with objects she uses as projectiles, who would vote for a nasty bitch like that?

[seafoid]

Interesting thoughts on a possible new US approach to foreign affairs

The World at One ‏@BBCWorldatOne  · 3m3 minutes ago 
"What difference does who owns Crimea make to the US?" Trump-backer and ex-senior CIA official Michael Scheuer #wato #Trump

Any borders can be changed by force. That is what it will mean

[whitey]

Non-college educated means that the people within that demographic did not go to college- it does not mean that they are not educated in any other sense. It was also used mainly by pollsters as it is one of their main ways of differentiating voters for measurement.

But if being called non-college educated, when you are, in fact, non-college educated, is your reason for voting for a vicious, bigoted, sexual predator, then I believe the term "snowflake" applies. Whitey, would you not be giving those people a boot up the hole for their sensitivity?

The transition is falling apart, it's hilarious. Trump is too incompetent to be a dictator.

Lol.....keep ignoring and issues and keep up the name calling.

Sticks and stones Whitey, or have the snowflakes on the right forgotten that? And if you believe that being called "non-college educated" even compares to some of the labels applied to the left and minorities by Pravda (sorry, Breitbart...) and other alt right sources, then you truly have drank the Kool-Aid. But of course, you voted Jill Stein...didn't you? For a Green voter, you're awfully worried about the sensibilities of the right.

I'd have a lot more respect for Trump voters if they owned what they voted for, instead of whining on about being forgotten.

And the MSM also need to stop colluding in the post election consensus that Trump will pivot to rationality. Nothing he has done since the election gives any indication that he will rule in any fashion other than how he campaigned.

Which means ICE will be trawling Dorchester, Worcester and the suburbs of New York for Irish illegals to deport as well as the barrios of LA.

The Republic is in free fall, because Trump voters cut the parachute cords.

Theyre not the ones requiring safe spaces, trigger warnings and cute cuddly puppies to deal with the trauma of their candidate losing. They're too busy humping it 60 hours a week because their healthcare premiums have doubled and their coverage has been cut in half

2018 midterms do not favor the Democrats and if Trump does a halfway decent job, Republicans could pick up a super majority.

Keep mocking.....it's all going to end badly for you

[seafoid]

Non-college educated means that the people within that demographic did not go to college- it does not mean that they are not educated in any other sense. It was also used mainly by pollsters as it is one of their main ways of differentiating voters for measurement.

But if being called non-college educated, when you are, in fact, non-college educated, is your reason for voting for a vicious, bigoted, sexual predator, then I believe the term "snowflake" applies. Whitey, would you not be giving those people a boot up the hole for their sensitivity?

The transition is falling apart, it's hilarious. Trump is too incompetent to be a dictator.

Lol.....keep ignoring and issues and keep up the name calling.

Sticks and stones Whitey, or have the snowflakes on the right forgotten that? And if you believe that being called "non-college educated" even compares to some of the labels applied to the left and minorities by Pravda (sorry, Breitbart...) and other alt right sources, then you truly have drank the Kool-Aid. But of course, you voted Jill Stein...didn't you? For a Green voter, you're awfully worried about the sensibilities of the right.

I'd have a lot more respect for Trump voters if they owned what they voted for, instead of whining on about being forgotten.

And the MSM also need to stop colluding in the post election consensus that Trump will pivot to rationality. Nothing he has done since the election gives any indication that he will rule in any fashion other than how he campaigned.

Which means ICE will be trawling Dorchester, Worcester and the suburbs of New York for Irish illegals to deport as well as the barrios of LA.

The Republic is in free fall, because Trump voters cut the parachute cords.

Theyre not the ones requiring safe spaces, trigger warnings and cute cuddly puppies to deal with the trauma of their candidate losing. They're too busy humping it 60 hours a week because their healthcare premiums have doubled and their coverage has been cut in half

2018 midterms do not favor the Democrats and if Trump does a halfway decent job, Republicans could pick up a super majority.

Keep mocking.....it's all going to end badly for you

That is a keeper, Whitey
The economy may have had the crash by 2018
Trump is taking the piss

He will not do anything about healthcare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOuf69G7AQU

[easytiger95]

Non-college educated means that the people within that demographic did not go to college- it does not mean that they are not educated in any other sense. It was also used mainly by pollsters as it is one of their main ways of differentiating voters for measurement.

But if being called non-college educated, when you are, in fact, non-college educated, is your reason for voting for a vicious, bigoted, sexual predator, then I believe the term "snowflake" applies. Whitey, would you not be giving those people a boot up the hole for their sensitivity?

The transition is falling apart, it's hilarious. Trump is too incompetent to be a dictator.

Lol.....keep ignoring and issues and keep up the name calling.

Sticks and stones Whitey, or have the snowflakes on the right forgotten that? And if you believe that being called "non-college educated" even compares to some of the labels applied to the left and minorities by Pravda (sorry, Breitbart...) and other alt right sources, then you truly have drank the Kool-Aid. But of course, you voted Jill Stein...didn't you? For a Green voter, you're awfully worried about the sensibilities of the right.

I'd have a lot more respect for Trump voters if they owned what they voted for, instead of whining on about being forgotten.

And the MSM also need to stop colluding in the post election consensus that Trump will pivot to rationality. Nothing he has done since the election gives any indication that he will rule in any fashion other than how he campaigned.

Which means ICE will be trawling Dorchester, Worcester and the suburbs of New York for Irish illegals to deport as well as the barrios of LA.

The Republic is in free fall, because Trump voters cut the parachute cords.

Theyre not the ones requiring safe spaces, trigger warnings and cute cuddly puppies to deal with the trauma of their candidate losing. They're too busy humping it 60 hours a week because their healthcare premiums have doubled and their coverage has been cut in half

2018 midterms do not favor the Democrats and if Trump does a halfway decent job, Republicans could pick up a super majority.

Keep mocking.....it's all going to end badly for you

Unless there is an apocalypse (no guarantee there with Trump) it will be you rather than me it will be ending badly for.

Hey, look, one of my cuddly puppies just brought this headline through the door

http://www.abc10.com/news/local/california/how-many-americans-are-affected-by-obamacare-price-hikes/341809982

So, in the reality based world, a miniscule level of people are seeing premium rises, average premium rates actually down in 2016 when subsidies are included and 2017 enrolment increased, even after the scare stories, from 2016. But in the world of the right wing snowflakes, the forgotten men and women can barely see through their tears to read their insurance bills. You guys really do think that you're oppressed. Good Jesus.

Poor petals.

[easytiger95]

Non-college educated means that the people within that demographic did not go to college- it does not mean that they are not educated in any other sense. It was also used mainly by pollsters as it is one of their main ways of differentiating voters for measurement.

But if being called non-college educated, when you are, in fact, non-college educated, is your reason for voting for a vicious, bigoted, sexual predator, then I believe the term "snowflake" applies. Whitey, would you not be giving those people a boot up the hole for their sensitivity?

The transition is falling apart, it's hilarious. Trump is too incompetent to be a dictator.

Lol.....keep ignoring and issues and keep up the name calling.

Sticks and stones Whitey, or have the snowflakes on the right forgotten that? And if you believe that being called "non-college educated" even compares to some of the labels applied to the left and minorities by Pravda (sorry, Breitbart...) and other alt right sources, then you truly have drank the Kool-Aid. But of course, you voted Jill Stein...didn't you? For a Green voter, you're awfully worried about the sensibilities of the right.

I'd have a lot more respect for Trump voters if they owned what they voted for, instead of whining on about being forgotten.

And the MSM also need to stop colluding in the post election consensus that Trump will pivot to rationality. Nothing he has done since the election gives any indication that he will rule in any fashion other than how he campaigned.

Which means ICE will be trawling Dorchester, Worcester and the suburbs of New York for Irish illegals to deport as well as the barrios of LA.

The Republic is in free fall, because Trump voters cut the parachute cords.

So in essence the man has spent nit one minute in office and the 'republic is in free fall because Trump supporters cut the parachute chords'

If the republic is in free fall it is because of Obama and Clinton's failure on virtually every political policy they touched, don't put this on people who voted for Trump, that is wrong and cowardly, and typical of the left.

Trump got elected because the eight years under the democrats sickened the electorate, scandal after scandal, the lies added up and then your champion Hillary throws a world class wobbker at the news she was going to lose and starts hitting people with objects she uses as projectiles, who would vote for a nasty bitch like that?

Scandal after scandal?

Would that be real scandals (like say, Watergate, Irangate, Enron, misleading the UN over WMDs, the financial crash of 2008) or ones where there is, despite repeated partisan investigation, no case to answer (Benghazi and emails)?

Poor stew - now that you have no one to blame, who will you blame?

[Declan]

http://www.pollingreport.com/obama_fav.htm

Overall opinion of Barack Obama:
Favorable 62%
Unfavorable 37%
(Gallup Poll, 11/9-13)


You'd wonder who they polled wouldn't you

[dec]

They're too busy humping it 60 hours a week because their healthcare premiums have doubled and their coverage has been cut in half

If they are getting their health insurance through an Obamacare exchange they will save money by not having healthcare insurance after Trump gets rid of Obamacare.